Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Six influencers. One house. Millions watching.

Gojo Satoru bursts into the frame, sunglasses on, hair perfect, tossing a grin at the camera like he owns the place. Though he is a lifestyle and fashion influencer - he is the pure definition of charismatic chaos.

Geto Suguru leans against the balcony, calm and unreadable. Commentary and mindfulness influencer. Smooth, collected, and somehow the only one who can handle Gojo's antics without breaking a sweat.

Nanami Kento taps furiously at his laptop, sleeves rolled, perfectly measured. Productivity and finance influencer. Schedules, spreadsheets... and a growing sense of regret that he ever signed up for this mess.

Toji Fushiguro throws a punch at the heavy bag, protein shake in hand, smirking at the camera. Fitness and combat influencer. All muscle, all energy... hiding the softer side only a few will ever see.

Shoko Ieri moves quietly through the room, phone pressed to her ear. A med-student influencer. Smiles for the audience... while secretly fighting to keep her loved ones alive.

Riko spins her camera, catching every angle, laughing as flour flies across the kitchen. Vlogger and content creator. She sees everything, misses nothing... and makes sure the rest of the house can't hide a thing.

They clash. They laugh. They live, film, and fight under one roof. Phones ding. Secrets spill. And behind every staged smile... a story waits to be told.

Six influencers. One house. Every post is a performance. Every glance hides a truth. And the cameras... never stop rolling.

#NoFilterNoShame II PREMIERES NOW

Chapter Text

The drone hovered lazily over the mansion, catching every gleaming white angle, every mirror-polished step, every glass pane reflecting the rising sun like it had been photoshopped into existence. Gojo Satoru’s voice crackled through the vlog mic, casual, and just sharp enough to cut.

“Perfection isn’t fake - it’s filtered!”

He grinned, even though nobody but the drone could seet it, and already, his fans were commenting faster than he could read: “Iconic already”, “King energy” , “Why is he always this extra?”

The limousine rolled up first, tires squealing slightly against the cobblestone driveway. Gojo leapt out theatrically, sunglasses on, hoodie zipped halfway, hair defying gravity like it was part of the brand. He tossed the keys to the chauffeur with a lazy flourish, smirking for the camera even though the lens was still warming up.

Then came Nanami Kento, spreadsheets in hand, planner tucked under his arm like a shield. His sneakers squeaked against the driveway tiles as he muttered, “If they think this house will function without a schedule, they’re insane.” He glanced around, noting the absurdly expensive fountain in the yard, the neon “#LimitlessHouse” sign, and the limo still idling. Then he scowled. “Why is he here already?”

Toji Fushiguro arrived next, dragging a duffel bag so large it practically had its own gravitational field. Protein tubs clanged against each other with every step. “Who designed this?” he muttered, brushing past the gate as if it were a nuisance he had to endure. The security cameras blinked lazily at him. He ignored them.

Riko Amanai, camera in hand, was a tornado of energy. “Hi, everyone!” she shouted into her lens, running ahead of the movers who were lugging in her suitcase like it contained the hopes of a thousand content creators. She caught Toji flexing at the fountain and squealed: “Yes! Flex for the clout!”

Shoko Ieri arrived last. She didn’t shout. She didn’t flail. She just stepped through the doors, eyes scanning the surroundings, sanitizer in one hand, tote bag of me supplies in the other. “This is… already going to be a problem,” she muttered under her breath.

Inside, the mansion was a labyrinth of gleaming surfaces and minimalist design choices that somehow didn’t feel cozy. The living room had a ceiling higher than some apartments, the kitchen counters gleamed under lights that could blind, and a series of cameras were already blinking at every angle, capturing every second.

“Welcome everyone,” a producer said, stepping from the shadows near the staircase. “You all share one house, one channel, one brand. Cameras are rolling 24/7. We’ll provide content ideas, and -”

“Wait,” Gojo cut in smoothly, leaning casually against the counter. “One channel? You mean… I have to share my clout with these… mortals?” His grin widened, teeth white against the sunbeam streaming in.

Geto Suguru appeared then, almost silently, as if he had materialized from thin air. Black hoodie, earbuds dangling, a small smile on his lips. “Don’t worry, Satoru,” he said, voice smooth but weighted. “You’re not the only one who can annoy people while looking effortless.”

Gojo blinked behind his shades, pretending he didn’t recognize him immediately, but there was a twitch at the corner of his grin. Geto always knew how to get under his skin without trying. He had that effect.

Riko, oblivious to the subtle tension, raished her camera. “Wait! Are you guys friends? Rivals? What’s happening? This is content!”

“Neither,” Geto said softly, his gaze briefly meeting Gojo’s before he looked away. “Just… housemates.”

The first group meeting started in the dining hall. Nanami spread spreadsheets across the table like a general marshalling troops in classic finance vlogger style. “Listen, if we’re going to survive in this… whatever this is, we need schedules. Meal times, filming times, editing rotations, downtime-”

Toji flopped into a chair, nearly breaking it under the weight of his duffel. “Down time? I thought this was a house, not a jail.”

Riko spun around, waving her camera. “Downtime is boring. Give me chaos.”

Gojo leaned back in his chair, swinging his feet, and tapped Geto lightly on the shoulder. “What abot you, Suguru? Are you team chaos or team spreadsheets?”

Geto’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Neither. But I’ll watch the fireworks.”

By now, Shoko had quietly stepped out, muttering into her phone: “They moved her again?” Her voice was soft, nearly drowned by the clamor of the room, but if anyone listened closely, there was an edge of exhaustion. The hospital bills, her mother’s condition - she carried it all quietly, behind the lens and the humour.

Meanwhile, Nanami’s phone buzzed. A coded text lit up the screen: “Still writing about your kind?” He frowned., typing a reply he would later delete.

Riko, spinning for a close-up, accidentally captured something she shouldn’t have. The lens caught Gojo watching Geto in a way that wasn’t just attention. She didn’t realize until she reviewed it later, laughing at how her camera always caught the “uncatchable” moments.

The producer clapped her hands, trying to regain control. “Okay! Let’s try a little icebreaker activity. Everyone shares one weird fact about themselves while the cameras are rolling.”

Toji grunted. “I’m allergic to losing.”

Riko chimed in, “I once slept through an entire hurricane because I was live-streaming!”

Nanami dryly added, “I color-code my socks by spreadsheet priority.”

Everyone side-eyed Nanami.

Shoko muttered, “I disinfected the house three times before arriving.”

Gojo finally spoke, leaning forward just enough to make Geto’s ears catch the faintest teasing. “I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t the smartest person in a room. This is gonna be interesting.”

Geto’s smirk was faint, almost imperceptible. “We’ll see.”

Minutes passed. Laughter, half-serious eye-rolls, cameras capturing it all. Then, the producer raised her hand. “And remember, the first day is key. Fans will be watching, every interaction counts.”

Gojo tilted his head, half-smile still in place. “Relax, this like college… but with more cameras and with less homework.”

“Exactly,” Geto murmured. “But the drama is the same.”

The drone above caught it all: chaos, personalities clashing, subtle glances, unspoken history.

By the evening, the house settled into the first night. Lights dimmed, cameras still rolling, shadows stretching along the walls. Gojo sat in the lounge with a cup of tea - ironically decaf, because he “wasn’t feeling caffeinated enough to care.”

Geto sat across from him, headphones dangling around his neck, pretending to read a book but actually listening.

“You ever feel like this… all of it, the cameras, the dits, the likes-” Gojo’s voice trailed off. “Like it’s fun, but also… maybe it’s just pretending?”

Gojo smirked, the shadows of the room flickering across his features. “Maybe. Or maybe pretending is the only way to survive.”

Riko’s camera flashed as she tried to catch a “candid” night scene, and she laughed quietly. “You guys are the most dramatic intro ever. Fans are gonna die.”

Gojo leaned back, resting an arm behind his head. “They don’t even know the half of it.”

And for the first time that day, Geto allowed himself a small smile, the kind that menat he understood Gojo better than anyone else in the room - and also meant he knew trouble was inevitable.

The night settled. Lights blinked on in rooms, drones hovered outside windows, and the mansion, despite its perfection, seemed alive with chaos, unspoken tension, and possibility.

Perfection isn't fake - just really filtered , Gojo thought, looking at Geto across the room. But maybe some things shouldn't be filtered at all.

— — —

The night deepened, but the mansion didn’t sleep. A faint hum of air conditioning, the occasional click of cameras adjusting angles, and the soft murmur of voices filled the halls. Gojo found himself wandering aimlessly, half out of boredom, half out of habit, until he reached the kitchen.

Toji was there, crouched near the fridge, examining a protein shaker like it was a relic from a bygone era. “You guys ever notice,” Toji started, voice low, “that these places always make you feel like you’re being watched even when you aren’t”

Gojo leaned on the counter, sipping his tea. “You mean, like a Big Brother meets Big Brother meets… Big Brother?” He smirked, but his eyes caught something in Toji’s expression - something that wasn’t just sarcasm. It was fatigue. A kind of quiet awareness.

“Something like that,” Toji muttered. He gave Gojo a sideways glance. “Don’t act like you’re not used to it.”

“Used to it?” Gojo laughed, a little too loud. “Suguru would disagree.”

From the hallway, Geto’s voice floated over, calm, precise: “He’s not wrong. You never really get used to it. You just get better at pretending.”

Gojo froze mid-sip. His voice had that edge again - the one that could cut through even the thickest layer of charm. Slowly, he turned, finding Geto leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, gaze neutral but attentive. “Better at pretending?” Gojo echoed, tone teasing but careful.

Geto’s expression didn’t change. “Yeah. Some people are better liars than others. Some are just… afraid to stop.”

Gojo’s smirk faltered slightly. He leaned back against the counter, suddenly aware of the way Geto’s presence filled the room, the quiet weight of it. “And you?” he asked, almost too casually. “Are you afraid?”

For a beat, Geto didn’t anser. Then, with that faint smirk that never fully reaches his eyes, he said, “I don’t think you’d like the answer anyway.”

Riko’s laugh rang from the living room, a bright intrusion into thetension. “Guys! I just checked - millions of fans are already watching you two! You’re practically a ship!”

Gojo rolled his eyes dramatically, but a flicker of something - annoyance? Amusement? Longing? - passed over his face. “Suguru, remind me why I let you be in the same room as me again?”

Geto shrugged, stepping closer, casually leaning against the counter opposite Gojo. “Because someone has to keep you in check. Or maybe you just like the competition.”

The words lingered longer than either of them intended.

Shoko returned from her brief absence, a quiet presence in the doorway, the dim overhead light catching the edge of her tired eyes. “Everyone okay?” she asked softly, already knowing the answer. Her mom’s voice echoed in her head, a reminder she carried with her everywhere. Gojo caught the way her hands were trembling slightly, and for a moment, he wanted to say something - anything - but only nodded toward her and tilted his head in a mock bow.

Riko ran into the kitchen, still filming, still hyper. “Okay, okay, bonus content! Gojo and Geto, tell me your weirdest roommate story!”

Gojo shot her a look, half amused, half warning. “You really want me to do that?”

Geto’s expression didn’t change. “Sure. But I’d have to be honest.”

That was enough. Gojo laughed, a little too hard, trying to cover the sudden tension in his chest. “Honest? On camera? Suguru, you’re cruel.”

The group gradually settled into a kind of uneasy rhythm, laughter and light teasing breaking the silence like water over rocks. Shoko quietly started preparing tea for everyone, Toji shrugged off the tension and started tossing protein bars to Riko, who caught them theatrically for the camera, and Nanami scribbled notes in his planner while muttering about “the unpredictability of amateur chaos.”

But the undercurrent between Gojo and Geto never fully dissipated. At one point, Gojo moved to the sink, washed his hands slowly, and glanced toward Geto, who was watching him, unreadable.

“Do you ever stop?” Gojo asked softly, a question that sounded casual but was loaded.

“Stop what?” Geto replied, voice even, masking everything.

“This,” Gojo said, gesturing vaguely - toward the cameras, the performances, the pretending. “Watching, thinking, caring… even when you say you don’t.”

Geto’s gaze softened for the briefest second. “Some things aren’t about stopping. They’re about surviving.”

Gojo leaned back, exhaling slowly. “Surviving… yeah. That sounds about right.”

Night deepened further. The mansion’s echoing walls swallowed footsteps and whispers. IN the living room, Riko finally stopped filming, setting the camera down with a satisfied grin. “You guys are literally perfect chaos,” she said, voice echoing slightly. “Fans are going to love every second.”

Shoko finally exhaled, the tension in her shoulders easing slightly. “We’re all just… people,” she added before pouring herself a cup of tea.

Nanami closed his planner and leaned back, watching the room carefully, silently noting the subtle dynamics forming already. “This is going to be interesting,” he muttered under his breath.

Gojo, finally sitting on the couch, feet up, tea in hand, glanced at Geto once more. There was something in the way Suguru held himself - quiet, controlled, deceptively calm- that made the room feel simultaneously heavier and lighter.

Geto’s gaze met his for a fraction of a second before he looked away. And that was enough.

The mansion, for all its luxury and cameras, felt alive- not with the clamor of fans or content, but with subtle, fragile human chaos.

Gojo sat back on the couch, eyes following the flicker of blue light from the camera indicato. Across the room, Geto scrolled his phone silently, the glow soft on his face. Every now and then, their eyes met - accidental, fleeting, but charged in a way neither of them was ready to name.

Shoko yawned, mumbling something about sleep and caffeine with drawal as she disappeared down the hallway. Riko was editing her vlog at the dining table, humming under her breath, completely oblivious to the tension around her. Toji cleaned up the kitchen quietly, every motion neat, methodical, and practiced.

And Nanami - ever the quiet observer - sat at the far end of the table, away from the ring lights and laughter. His planner lay open in front of him, filled with scribbles that no one else would ever see. He reached for his phone, and it buzzed again.

One new message.

"Don't forget who you are."

The words blinked on-screen, small and sharp against the soft glow of the kitchen lights. Nanami stared at it for a moment, expression unreadable, then sighed and locked his phone.

The laughter from the living room drifted back into the silence - Gojo teasing Riko, Geto’s low chuckle, Shoko shouting from somewhere down the hall- and for a moment, it almost felt normal.

But Nanami knew better. He always did.

Outside, the mansion lights flickered once before steadying again - just enough for the cameras to catch the reflection of a dozen uneasy truths waiting to surface.

Chapter Text

The mansion woke up fake.

At least, that’s how it looked through the cameras.
The sun was barely up, but ring lights already glowed like miniature suns. Alarm clocks beeped in unison - except none of them were real. Each influencer had staged the same thing: a perfect, aesthetic “morning routine.”

Gojo, of course, was first.

“Good morning, my beautiful sleep-deprived followers,” he said into the lens, face half covered in an expensive face mask. “I woke up like this. Literally. I never sleep.”

Behind him, the chaos betrayed him: a pile of laundry, an untouched green juice from yesterday, and Geto’s half-folded blanket still on the couch.

Downstairs, Riko was staging a smoothie tutorial. “Okay guys, the secret to my morning glow is…” she froze mid-sentence as Toji walked past shirtless, cracking open an energy drink. “Um - realism!”

Toji glanced at ther blender, unimpressed. “That thing got protein?”

“Vegan,” she said proudly.

He grunted. “So, no.”

Shoko appeared next, already dressed in sweats and holding a mug of coffee that read 𝘐 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘢. “I don’t do mornings,” she said flatly into her phone. Then, smiling for the camera: “But I love taking care of my body!”

She took a sip. “This is espresso and despair.”

Gojo barged into the kitchen then, towel slung around his neck, holding his phone horizontally. “We’re filming a 𝘎𝘦𝘵-𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺-𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩-𝘔𝘦 collab, people. It better be the epitome of chaos and it better be brand-safe.”

Nanami looked up from the dining table, already typing something on his laptop. “Chaos isn’t marketable. Consistency is.”

“Consistency,” Gojo said dramatically, pointing at him, “is the enemy of engagement.”

Geto, leaning against the counter, raised a brow. “And attention span is your religion.”

Gojo grinned. “Finally, someone who gets me.”

The camera panned over the breakfast spread - perfect smoothie bowls, gluten-free pancakes, a suspiciously untouched plate of eggs. Offscreen, someone sneezed.

“Cut that,” Gojo said.

“Bless you,” Geto murmured.

Gojo shot him a look. “You’re not supposed to be charming this early.”

“I’m never trying,” Geto said.

Riko clapped her hands. “Okay! House challenge time - everyone pairs up and films a GRWM collab. We’ll do a compilation for the channel. Authenticity sells!”

Nanami sighed. “Authenticity doesn’t sell. Illusion does.”

“Exactly,” Gojo said. “And who better to create an illusion than me?”

— — —

They split into pairs.

Riko and Nanami.
Shoko and Toji.
Gojo and Geto.

Predictably.

— — —

Riko’s room looked like a hurricane made of pastel filters. She adjusted her tripod while Nanami stood stiffly beside her, holding a streamer he didn’t know how to turn on.

“Okay, so smile,” she said, checking the camera focus. “We’re doing morning skincare routines!”

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“That’s fine! I’ll just pretend you do.”

“Is that not lying?”

“Welcome to the internet.”

She giggled, and for the briefest second, Nanami smiled too - small, unplanned, real.

His phone buzzed again.
“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘹𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴.”
He froze.
The message from an unknown number. No name. Just that sentence.

He slid the phone face down and rolled his sleeves higher. “Let’s just get this over with.”

— — —

Downstairs, Toji’s room was chaos of a different kind. Shoko had set up her camera on a tripod, adjusting the frame while Toji glared at the ring light like it had insulted him.

“Why does it make everything look so… phony?” he asked.

“Because it does,” Shoko said cheerfully. “That’s the point.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “They want me to pretend I care about skincare?”

“You have good skin for someone who eats like a raccoon,” she said.

“Take it how you want.”

For once, Shoko looked genuinely happy. Her laugh wasn’t the tired, polite kind - it was soft, real. She was good at pretending everything was fine, but today she was pretending too well.

When her phone rang mid-shoot, she silenced it instantly. “Spam call,” she said too quickly. But the notification banner had flashed just long enough: 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵.

“Everything good?” Toji asked.

“Perfect,” she lied, with a smile that could sell a product. “Now hold still - I need a thumbnail.”

He leaned closer to the camera, deadpan. “Buy soap.”

Shoko laughed again.

— — —

Gojo’s room was all mirrors. Every surface gleamed. It looked like a museum dedicated to narcissism.

He stood shirtless at the vanity, narrating dramatically while Geto, half-awake, scrolled on his phone.

“So, step one,” Gojo said, holding up a moisturizer, “is believing you’re better than everyone.”

“Step two,” Geto murmured, “is pretending that’s self-care.”

Gojo turned, smirking. “You think I need to pretend?”

“I think you need therapy.”

Gojo grinned wider. “Therapy doesn’t get views.”

Geto set his phone down. “Neither does burnout.”

For a second, Gojo faltered. The banter slipped. His reflection stared back - perfect, unreal, empty. Then the camera beeped, reminding him who he was supposed to be.

He switches tones instantly. “And that’s how you glow up, kids!”

— — —

By noon, the editing room was in chaos.

Riko sat at her laptop surrounded by half-empty mugs and three open browser of “royalty-free music.”

Toji hovered behind her. “Why’s it taking so long?”

“Because editing is art,” she said. “And I’m cutting out the parts where you looked like you hated life.”

“I did hate life.”

“Exactly.”

Shoko passed behind them, humming softly, a brightness in her face that fooled everyone. She joked, smiled, and offered snacks. No one noticed the dark circles she hadn’t covered fully.

Nanami sat by the kitchen counter, reviewing contracts and muttering. “Sponsorship with ClearSkinPro. They want every post retouched to match the brand tone.”

Toji frowned. “Retouched?”

“Airbrushed. Fake.”

Toji crossed his arms. “Not happening.”

“Then they’ll drop you.”

“Good.”

Nanami didn’t argue. He respected that kind of defiance. Across the room, Gojo was up to something. He’d stolen half the lighting rigs and switched their angles - making shadows fall in strange, unflattering ways.

When the others started filming, the footage looked real. Pores. Sweat. Wrinkles. Uneven light. Disarray.

Geto caught him mid-adjustment. “Sabotaging your own team?”

“Revealing the truth,” Gojo said. “Let’s see how long they can handle not being perfect. I bet they hate each other.”

“You think people want the truth?”

“They say they do.”

“But you don’t.”

Gojo met his eyes. “Maybe I just want someone to notice when I’m not pretending.”

Geto’s voice softened. “Someone already does.”

Before Gojo could respond, Riko shouted from across the room: “UPLAOD COMPLETE!”

Everyone turned.

“Wait,” Nanami said. “You uploaded it already?”

“Yeah! It’s perfect!” she said, grinning - until she saw Gojo’s expression. “...What?”

— — —

The video was live.

Riko had meant to upload the polished compilation. Instead, she’d dragged the wrong file.

What went online, wasn’t filtered, edited, or branded.

It was raw footage.

Gojo is sitting in silence, staring at the mirror after Geto left frame. His expression - no smile, no performance, just exhaustion.

He didn’t notice the camera was still rolling.

The clip lasted ten seconds.

Fans went insane.
"𝘏𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭."
"𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮."
"𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯."

The comment section flooded. The post hit a million views withiin an hour.

Gojo stared at the screen, unreadable. Then he started laughing. Not his usual performance laugh - something lower, almost genuine.

Geto stood beside him, arms crossed. “Accidents make the best content, huh?”

Gojo looked up at him, still smiling faintly. “Guess so.”

Riko looked terrified “Should I delete it?”

“No,” Gojo said. “Let it stay.”

Nanami’s phone buzzed again.
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴."
He didn’t reply.

Shoko leaned against the counter, watching everyone scramble to control the fallout. “Well,” she said, sipping coffee, “at least it’s honest.”

Toji muttered, “Honesty doesn’t pay bills.”

Shoko smiled. “Neither does pretending forever.”

— — —

The mansion had never been quieter the next day.

And yet, every wall vibrated.
From phones. From pings. From the weight of people watching.

Gojo Satoru’s face - tired, unguarded, still for once - was everywhere. On Twitter, TikTok, even morning news reels with captions like:

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥'𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯."
"𝘎𝘰𝘫𝘰 𝘚𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘶'𝘴 𝘳𝘢𝘸 𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘵."

Clips that had been slowed down, edited, analyzed like sacred scripture. One reaction channel titled theirs "𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥."

The mansion smelled like burnt toast and anxiety. The blender was still running, no one remembered turning it on.

Shoko was the first to speak. “So,” she said staring at the newsfeed on her phone “We’re famous. Again.”

Gojo sat at the kitchen island, scrolling through comments at lightning speed. His expression was unreadable. The sunlight through the blinds striped his face like prison bars.

Riko burst into the room, phone shaking in her hand. “We’re trending in twenty-two countries! Satoru, do you even realize what this means? You-”

“Yeah,” Gojo cut her off, still scrolling. “It means the algorithm’s hungry again.”

Toji, sitting on the counter with a protein bar, grunted. “Hungry for what?”

Gojo’s eyes flicked up. “Me.”

He said it with a smile, but it didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes.

— — —

Within an hour, the house had become a crisis control center.

Nanami locked himself in the dining room with a laptop, two phones, and a cup of black coffee. His tie was half loosened, his tone clipped and professional as he spoke into a headset.

“No, I understand Ms. Yamazaki,” he said, fingers drumming the table. “But this - no, it’s not a breakdown. It’s a brand moment. We’re calling it the ‘Unfiltered Project.’”

He muted the call, pinching the bridge of his nose. “God, that sounds like something Gojo would say.”

Riko hovered nearby, chewing her thumbnail. “We could… make it athing. Like a campaign. ‘Real is the new perfect.’ We could sell the illusion of being real!”

Shoko snorted. “You do hear yourself, right?”

Riko’s hands flailed helplessly. “It’s what people want! They want to see cracks. Vulnerability. But only if it’s beautiful.”

“Then make sure the breakdown has good lighting,” Toji muttered.

Nanami shot him a glare. “No one’s breaking down. We’re reframing this.”

“Reframing what?” Gojo asked, appearing in the doorway like a ghost in sunglasses.

His voice was calm, casual - but the silence that followed wasn’t.

“The world’s seeing you, Gojo,” Riko said carefully. “We just have to control 𝘩𝘰𝘸 they see you.”

Gojo tilted his head. “Control. Right.” He gave a wry smile. “That’s what got us here in the first place.”

— — —

By afternoon, the mansion was split in half.

Riko and Nanami were in full PR mode - staging posts, scheduling live streams and calling brand managers. Toji and Shoko sat on the couch with a shared bag of chips, watching chaos unfold like it was bad reality TV.
And Gojo and Geto were missing.

It wasn’t hard to find them.
They were on the rooftop.

The city stretched out below them - glass, noise, smoke.

Gojo was lying on his back, one arm over his eyes, phone tossed aside.
Ghetto sat cross-legged beside him, quietly rolling a coin across his knuckles.

“They love you more when you’re broken,” Geto sat cross-legged beside him, quietly rolling a coin across his knuckles.

Gojo’s laugh was soft, almost bitter. “Everyone loves a tragedy they don’t have to live.”

The wind caught his words dragging them into the distance.

Geto looked at him - really looked. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

Gojo moved his arm just enough for one blue eye to peek out. “You think I planned being pathetic on camera?”

“I think,” Geto said, “you’ve been planning to be seen for a long time.”

For once, Gojo didn’t have a comeback.

The silence stretched - too long, too real.

Finally, he sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you ever feel like we stopped being people? Somewhere between going viral and going numb.”

“Yeah,” Geto said. “But people stopped paying us when we acted human.”

Gojo laughed again, dry and hollow. “Guess that’s why I’m trending.”

— — —

Back inside, Riko’s laptop pinged. “Oh my god,” she said. “We just hit ten million views.”

“Congratulations,” Nanami muttered, not looking up. “Now explain that to our skincare sponsor who’s threatening to pull out.”

Riko groaned. “Why are they mad?”

“They said your post violated ‘visual consistency.’”

“Because Gojo’s face looked tired?”

“Yes.”

Toji looked up from his phone. “Can’t believe the prettiest man on the planet’s getting canceled for being ugly once.”

“‘Ugly’ doesn’t trend,” Nanami said. “‘Relatable’ does.”

Gojo walked in then, stretching lazily. “We’re calling me relatable now? What’s next, a humble merch drop?”

Riko perked up. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Riko,” Shoko said, cutting her off, “please let him spiral in peace.”

“Spiral?” Gojo echoed, pretending to be offended. “I’m soaring.”

He sat on the counter beside Shoko, stealing her mug. She didn’t stop him.

“You shouldn’t drink that,” she said.

“You shouldn’t lie to your doctor,” he shot back.

Shoko’s expression froze. “What?”

“Hospital billing department,” he murmured. “Toji saw it, and told me. He said it flashed on your phone this morning.”

Her jaw tightened.

“I know everything,” Gojo said, tone lighter now, almost teasing.

She took the mug back, grin crooked. “Guess gossip travels faster than ambulancces, huh?”

Gojo grinned. “You sound like Geto. Take it as a compliment.”

— — —

That evening, Riko announced they were doing a group live stream.

“Damage control,” she said. “We just need to show unity. That everything’s fine.”

Toji scoffed. “Nothing says unity like forcing six people who hate each other to sit in front of a camera.”

“Who said we hate each other?” Gojo asked sweetly.

“You did,” Toji said. “Yesterday.”

“Oh right,” Gojo said. “That was before I became a martyr.”

Nanami pinched the bridge of his nose again. “We go live in five minutes.”

They arranged themselves on the couch like a PR poster.

Riko was in the middle, smiling too brightly, Gojo was lounging beside her, sunglasses indoors, Shoko with a mug of something suspicious, Toji pretending to care, and Nanami holding the iPad that displayed chat messages flooding in.

"𝘎𝘰𝘫𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 😭"
"𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘬𝘰'𝘴 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘯!"
"𝘛𝘰𝘫𝘪 𝘥𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘺 𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴."
"𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘪 𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦."

Gojo laughed at that last one. “See? They get me.”

Nanami ignored him. “Focus. We’re doing the Q&A in sequence.”

“Question one!” Riko said, forcing cheer. “How do we stay authentic online?”

Everyone looked at Gojo.

He leaned forward, smirked, and said: “We don’t.”

The comment section exploded.

Riko’s smile faltered. “What - what he means is -”

 

“I mean,” Gojo interrupted, “we perform authenticity. It’s not the same thing.”

“Cut the stream,” Nanami hissed.

But it was too late.

Geto, behind the camera, didn’t move. His eyes were on Gojo - steady, unreadable.

Gojo kept talking. Calm. Almost eerily so.

“People don’t want the truth. They want the hallucination that they found it themselves. So we give them that. Perfectly packaged pain.”

The chat went feral. Screenshots. Edits. Outrage. Worship.

And at that moment, for the first time, Gojo looked alive.

 

— — —

The stream ended abruptly.

Riko slammed the laptop shut. “What the hell was that, Satoru?!”

Gojo stretched. “Honesty.”

“Honesty doesn’t pay!” she shouted.

Shoko sipped from her mug. “Maybe it should.”

“Not everyone has that luxury,” Riko snapped, eyes flicking toward Shoko.

The stillness that followed was colder than any ringlight there.

Toji stood. “I’m done with this circus.”

He walked out, muttering something about real work.

Riko stormed off next, clutching her phone. Nanami followed, already on another damage-control call.

That left Gojo and Shoko.

She looked at him for a long moment. “You did that on purpose.”

“Maybe.”

 

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to see if anyone’s still watching when I stop performing.”

She sighed. “You’re addicted to attention.”

He met her gaze. “No. I’m addicted to proof that I exist.”

Shoko didn’t have an answer to that.

— — —

Later that night, Nanami sat alone in the living room in his pyjamas, laptop glowing faintly. His phone buzzed again.

𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯: "𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘢, 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶?"

He froze.

He scrolled up - two older messages from the same number:

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘹𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴.”
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴."

He exhaled slowly, pressing the lock button. He just watched the screen fade to black.

Across the hall, Riko was pacing, whispering to a brand rep.
In her room, Shoko sat by the window, the hospital envelope unopened on her lap.
In the kitchen, Toji reheated leftovers, humming off-key.

And upstairs - Gojo scrolled through his mentions until his eyes blurred.

#GojoUnfiltered had become a movement. People were posting their own “raw” videos, crying prettily into the cameras, thanking him for “starting a new era of honesty.”

He wanted to laugh.

He did this. Accidentally. And now they were copying his pain.

He opened his camera, flipped it to selfie mode.

His face looked perfect again. Too perfect.

He hit record anyway.

“You know what’s funny?” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to show you that clip. But maybe… you needed to see it.”

He smiled - not the practiced one. The smaller, lonlier one that never made it to the camera.

“Just don’t call it real. It’s just another filter. You just like this one better.”

He uploaded it without thinking.

And the notifications began again.

He lay back on the bed, screen lighting his face in a cold blue glow.

Downstairs, Geto watched the video in silence. Then he typed one comment - just one: “He’s not lying.”

— — —

The mansion slept, or pretended to.

Outside, the city pulsed with artificial light.

Inside, every heartbeat belonged to a performance.

Nanami stared at the shadows under his door, the phone still buzzing.
Shoko pressed her hand over her chest, whispering numbers from the hospital bill like a prayer.
Riko drafted apology posts she didn’t mean.
Toji scrolled through Gojo’s feed and shook his head. “Kids,” he muttered.

And Gojo - Gojo smiled into the dark, knowing that somewhere out there, a stranger’s comment would decide what version of him woke up tomorrow.

Chapter Text

The morning started with chaos, glitter and the kind of music that made your brain feel monetized.

Gojo burst into the kitchen wearing a white fur jacket, holding a confetti cannon in one hand and a sign that read in pink marker: "𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗪𝗘 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗬!"

Riko ducked as glitter rained from the ceiling. “Are you insane? It’s eight a.m.!”

“Insane?” Gojo grinned. “No, darling. Inspired. The audience wants romance, tension, emotional carnage - today - they get all three!”

Nanami sighed from his corner, already scrolling through contracts. “Who approved this?”

Gojo pointed at himself. “The CEO of Chaos. You’re welcome.”

From behind him, Geto walked in slowly, coffee in hand, hoodie half-zipped. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” Shoko said dryly, entering with mug that read 𝘚𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘛𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥. “But you’re about to.”

Gojo clapped. “Couple challenge Day! Everyone gets a fake partner. Sparks, jealousy, drama - let’s feed the beast!”

Riko squinted. “We’re really doing this?”

“Absolutely. The pairs are Nanami & Shoko, Riko & Toji, and obviously…”
He turned, flashing his grin like a weapon. “Suguru and me.”

The pause that followed wasn’t silence - it was static.

Geto tilted his head, unreadable. “Of course,” he murmured. “You always pick the hardest role.”

Gojo laughed too loudly. “Someone’s got to carry the show.”

– – –

They filmed in the mansion garden - all staged sunlight and artificial laughter.

Nanami wore his usual button down, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Shoko had swapped her lab-coat aesthetic for something floral but wrinkled. They sat at a small table set with two cups of coffee and one dying rose.

“Okay,” Riko said behind the camera. “Pretend you’re a couple doing Q&A! Be cute! Be real!”

Shoko smirked. “Be a fraud, you mean.”

“Exactly!” Riko said cheerfully.

“Everything about this house is unethical,” Shoko said. “Smile.”

They started rolling.
The questions were simple, scripted. “Who said ‘I love you’ first?” “What’s your partner’s biggest flaw?”

Shoko played along with quiet sarcasm. “He falls asleep reading finance articles.”

Nanami replied flatly, “She hides her caffeine addiction behind sarcasm.”

It worked - awkward, natural, oddly endearing.
Halfway through, her phone buzzed on the table. She reached for it, but Nanami’s hand got there first. Their fingers brushed. - brief, unintentional - and for a split second, both of them froze.

The screen flashed:
𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗣𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗚 - 𝗣𝗔𝗬𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗗𝗨𝗘.

Nanami caught it. Said nothing. But when the cameras cut, he slid the phone back to her carefully.

“You know,” he said quietly, “you don’t have to smile through everything.”

She raised a brow. “Says the man who hasn’t smiled since 2017.”

 

He almost laughed. “Fair.”

Then 𝘩𝘪𝘴 phone buzzed.
He checked it automatically - another anonymous message:

𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯: "𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦."

He frowned, typing back before he could stop himself.
𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀?

Three dots blinked.
Then it disappeared.

Shoko leaned forward. “Work thing?”

Nanami pocketed the phone. “Something like that.”

— — —

If Riko’s energy was sunlight, Toji’s was gravity.

She’d turned the living room into a pastel battlefield - string lights, fake flowers, and a neon sign that said “#CoupleGoals.” Toji stood in the middle of it, arms crossed, looking like he’d rather be audited.

“Okay,” she chirped. “Pretend we’re dating! You just have to look at me like I’m the most interesting thing you’ve ever seen.”

He blinked. “I’ve fought in cages. That was more believable.”

“Come on, big guy. Give me something.”

He sighed, sitting beside her on the couch. The camera light blinked red.

“So,” she said dramatically, “how did we meet?”

“At the gym,” Toji said deadpan. “You were blocking the mirror.”

Riko snorted mid-line. “Wow. Romance.”

“Yeah,” he said, dead serious. “You’re too smart to like guys like me.”

She froze - caught off-guard by the honesty in his tone. It wasn’t part of the script.

Behind the camera, Shoko watched silently. The air shifted.

Riko blinked, stammered something about “hashtags,” and ended the scene early.

Later when she uploaded the clip by accident, it went viral within hours. #TooSmarttoLikeGuysLikeMe trended worldwide. Edits, fanfics, tears.

“Congratulations,” Toji muttered when he saw the numbers. “I accidentally started a movement.”

 

Shoko laughed softly. “You underestimate your charm.”

He looked at her. “You overestimate it.”

 

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you just hide it better than most.”

For the first time, he smiled - a real one, small and sharp. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, doc.”

She sipped her coffee. “Stop making it easy.”

— — —

Gojo’s room looked like a fever dream designed by a brand intern on too much caffeine - rose petals scattered across a king-sized bed, LED hearts blinking pink and blue, and mirrors everywhere, reflecting them into infinity.

It smelled like perfume, ring-light heat, and trouble.

Geto crouched near the tripod, adjusting the frame with quiet precision. His hoodie was half unzipped., hair tied loosely, expression calm - the kind of calm that always got under Gojo’s skin.

“Okay,” Geto said, tightening a screw on the tripod. “If you want this in focus, stop walking around like you’re auditioning for a fragrance commercial.”

Gojo leaned against the vanity. “And if I am? It’s not my fault the camera loves me.”

“The camera,” Geto muttered, “has questionable taste.”

Gojo grinned, sauntering closer. “That’s not what you said last time.”

“Last time, you nearly broke my mic stand.”

“Ah,” Gojo sighed dramatically. “Memories.”

Geto looked up then - just a glance - but his eyes held that faint glimmer of amusement Gojo could never quite ignore. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re still here,” Gojo replied.

For a moment, silence hummed between them, like feedback before a song starts. Then Gojo clapped his hands. “Alright! Let’s make magic, baby!”

 

Geto rolled his eyes. “You’re unbearable.”

“Unbearably charming.”

“Unbearably loud.”

Gojo winked. “You love it.”

“Sure,” Geto said dryly. “Let’s call it that.”

The camera light blinked red. Gojo’s entire face changed - not faked, exactly, but dialed up, sharpened, practiced.

“Hey, everyone!” he said, voice bright enough to light a room. “It’s your favorite problematic duo - Satoru and Suguru!”

Geto sighed, pretending to be exasperated but already slipping into rhythm. “We’re here to prove love is algorithmically optimized.”

Gojo laughed. “Translation: we’re gonna pretend we’re dating so you don’t have to.”

“Exactly,” Geto said smoothly. “Public service. You’re welcome.”

The comment counter on the screen blinked - thousands watching live.

They did a “couples challenge Q&A”: Who’s the clingy one? Who’s the messy one? Who said I love you first?

“Messy?” Gojo said, gasping in mock offense. “I’m immaculate. I radiate order.”

“You radiate mayhem incarnate,” Geto said flatly. “I know you once ironed your shirt with a hair straightener.”

“It worked!”

“It caught fire.”

“Still counts as multitasking.”

The chat was filled with hearts and crying emojis. "𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥." "𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭." "𝘎𝘦𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘚𝘖 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦."

Gojo glanced at the live feed mid-scene and smirked. “See? They get it.”

Geto didn’t even look at the screen. “They see what you want them to see.”

“That’s the point,” Gojo replied. “We give them the dream.”

Geto’s tone softened. “And where does the dream end?”

Gojo hesitated, just for a second. Then he reached for the prop dessert - a slice of cake. “Right about here,” he said, lifting a fork toward Geto’s mouth.
“Say ‘ah.’”

Geto blinked. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, I’m deadly serious.” Gojo grinned. “C’mon. It’s for the fans.”

Geto sighed, leaning forward with mock reluctance - but when the fork touched his lips, Gojo’s smirk faltered for just an instant.
Something about the simple act - the nearness, the quiet - felt wrong and right all at once.

The camera clicked softly.

“Sweet?” Gojo asked.

“Overrated,” Geto said, voice lower now. “Like most things you chase.”

Gojo laughed it off, but there was something brittle about it. “You’re jealous I’m trending again.”

“You’re addicted to being watched,” Geto said, tone light but eyes too sharp. “You can’t stand the silence.”

Gojo leaned closer, smile slipping. “And you can’t stand being seen.”

They stared at each other across the space of two breaths. Then the camera beeped, signaling a cut. The illusion broke.

Gojo cleared his throat, glancing away. “So. That’s a wrap on emotional intimacy. Let’s move on to the TikTok dances.”

Geto chuckled quietly, shaking his head. “You never change.”

“Why would I?” Gojo said, with his usual cocky tilt. “I’m perfect.”

“Perfection’s lonely,” Geto said before he could stop himself.

Gojo froze mid-laugh.

The silence that followed wasn’t planned. The kind of silence producers would call dead air. But the camera was still rolling - red light steady, capturing everything.

Then he stood, walked past him, and clicked the camera off.

Gojo stayed where he was - surrounded by the tacky LED hearts and silence - smiling at his own reflection in the mirror, pretending not to feel hollow behind it.

— — —

After filming, Nanami sat alone in the dining room, laptop open, phone beside him. The house buzzed with laughter upstairs, but he barely heard it.

Another message.

𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯: "𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘚𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯?

He stared at the words. There was something hauntingly familiar about the rhythm, the phrasing. Someone who knew him all before this.

He typed: 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗲, 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘁.

A pause. Then:

𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯: "𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳."

His throat tightened.

He deleted the thread. Then he opened it again. Then deleted it again.

From the doorway, Shoko spoke softly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He looked up, startled. “Maybe I have.”

She gave a faint smile. “Tell them I said hi.”

He almost smiled back - almost. “You’re not sleeping are you?”

“Not when there’s too much to fix.”

“Your mom?”

Her silence was answer enough.

He hesitated, then said quietly, “If you ever need help - financially or otherwise - say something.”

“I don’t take charity,” she said.

“It’s not charity. It’s a loan.”

Her lips curved. “You’re too kind to survive here, Nanami.”

He shook his head. “Too tired to keep pretending otherwise.”

— — —

Late afternoon light poured through the mansion windows - gold and lazy, softening everything it touched.
The challenge decorations were still scattered around: fake rose petals, leftover confetti, a half-empty cup of bubble tea sweating on the coffee table.

Gojo sat cross-legged on the couch. Geto sat next to him, scrolling through the footage on the camera, his hair falling into his face.

“Do you ever think we’d end up doing this?” Gojo asked, tossing a pillow up and catching it. “Pretending to be in love for strangers on the internet.”

Geto didn’t look up. “You’ve been pretending to be in love with the internet for years.”

Gojo gasped dramatically. “I’ll have you know, the internet and I have a deep, committed relationship. She understands me.”

“Uh-huh,” Geto said, deadpan. “You ghosted her last week.”

Gojo grinned. “I was emotionally unavailable.”

“You’re emotionally unreachable.”

Gojo laughed and leaned over, plucking the plate from the table. “You know what’s sad? Half the cake’s still alive. Think it deserves a second chance?”

Geto gave him a side-eye. “You’re not seriously-”

But Gojo was already holding a forkful toward him, grinning. “C’mon. No cameras. Just cake.”

Geto sighed, pretending to protest. “You’ll drop it, as usual.”

“I won’t! I’ve evolved.”

“Into what, exactly?”

Gojo leaned closer, fork still raised. “A man of precision and grace.”

Geto arched a brow. “Prove it.”

So Gojo did - or tried to. The bite wobbled dangerously on the fork, but he steadied it with exaggerated concentration, tongue poking at the corner of his mouth.

Geto laughed, despite himself. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet,” Gojo said softly, “you’re still sitting here.”

He finally offered the cake again - steady this time. Geto hesitated then leaned forward, taking the smallest bite. The moment was intimate, stupidly so - frosting on his lip. Gojo watched him with that unguarded smile that wasn’t meant for the internet.

“See?” Gojo said quietly. “No disasters.”

Geto swallowed, eyes flicking up to his. “You say that like you almost didn't drop it again.”

Gojo grinned. “Almost doesn’t count.”

Geto chuckled, shaking his head as he took the fork and set the plate down. “You’re a menace.”

“And you like me that way,” Gojo said, leaning back with mock pride.

“Sure,” Geto said, smirking. “Let’s call it that.”

They fell into easy silence, the kind that didn’t need editing - this time, it was just light, air and a faint smell of vanilla.
Gojo’s head found Geto’s shoulder, almost unconsciously. Geto didn’t move away.

Outside, the sun dipped lower, frosting the room in the same soft gold as the cake crumbs on the plate.

For once, everything - even the pretending - felt gentle.

— — —

That night, the mansion glowed in blue light.

Everyone gathered in the living room for the premier. Riko hit upload, and their challenge compilation went live:
Riko and Toji’s banter. Nanami’s rare laugh. Shoko’s half-smile.
And then - Gojo and Geto’s scene.

The audience saw the shoulder lean. The silence. The unspoken.

Comments flooded instantly.

"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦."
"𝘕𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥."
"𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭."

Gojo smirked, watching the numbers climb. “We broke the internet again.”

Geto didn’t look up. “Congratulations”

“You’re not gonna repost.”

Gojo laughed, too brightly. “Says the guy living on camera.”

Geto stood, heading for the door. “Some of us still remember life off-screen.”

When he was gone. Gojo stared at the monitor. The thumbnail glowed - 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘍𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘍𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭.
He clicked play once more.

For the first time, he didn’t see the edits, the filters, the lighting.
He saw himself - leaning into someone who didn’t move away.

— — —

Nanami, sitting alone in the kitchen, rereads the deleted messages. A new one appears.

𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯: "𝘞𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘴. 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳."

He doesn’t reply. But his hand trembles. Only 𝘴𝘩𝘦 can read him like that.

Could it truly be 𝘩𝘦𝘳?

— — —

Upstairs, Gojo scrolls through comments like - “iconic,” “unfiltered love,”
“They’re soulmates.” He smiles, but it never reaches his eyes.

Down the hall, Geto sits at his desk, editing alone. The cursor blinks over an unfinished audio titled: “𝗘𝗽 𝟯: 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆.”

He listens to a fragment - Gojo’s laugh caught mid-take - and closes the laptop.

— — —

The house had started to dim.
The light that had burned bright for content was now warm, golden, quieter.
Somewhere upstairs, Riko was editing. Nanami was typing. Gojo and Geto were still trending.

Downstairs, in the gym-turned-studio, Shoko stayed behind to clean up after filming.
The air smelled like protein powder, sweat, and static electricity.

Toji was still there - sitting on the bench, scrolling through his phone, the glow of the screen catching the cut of his jaw.

“You don’t sleep either?” she asked, half-teasing.

He looked up. “You’re saying that like you do.”

“I sleep,” she said. “Just… in shifts.”

He snorted. “Doctors and boxers. Both are allergic to rest.”

“The difference is,” she muttered, picking up a fallen towel, “one of us gets paid to stay conscious.”

Toji smirked. “You charge for staying awake.”

She gave him a look that could disinfect a wound. “I should start.”

He laughed - a real laugh, low and scratchy. “You’re not like the others.”

She tilted her head. “That supposed to be a compliment?”

“Maybe. Haven’t decided yet.”

Shoko rolled her eyes, but there was a tiny curve to her mouth. She moved to pack away the resistance bands.Her hand trembled - just slightly.

Toji noticed. “You good?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “Just low blood sugar.”

He tossed her a protein bar. “Eat.”

“I’m fine.”

“Eat,” he repeated, tone softer but firmer - the kind of voice people listened to without meaning to.

She caught it midair, sighing. She tore it open, the silver foil crinkling. “You’re bossy.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“Must be why they didn’t pair us for that fake couple thing,” she said, taking a bite.

He grinned. “Probably too much real chemistry.”

 

Her gaze flicked up. “You sound like Gojo when you lie.”

Toji laughed again - quieter this time. “I’m nothing like that guy.”

“I know,” she said, almost too fast.

That hung there - the unintentional intimacy of truth.

Later, they found themselves sitting side by side on the gym floor, backs against the mirrored wall. The LED sign still glowed faintly: #𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘎𝘰𝘢𝘭𝘴.

Toji leaned his head back, eyes closed. “Do you ever think we’re all just… lab rats with better lighting?”

Shoko snorted. “Speak for yourself. I’m the one cleaning up after the rats.”

 

“Same difference,” he said. “You patch us up. I keep breaking things.”

“Self-awareness looks good on you,” she said.

He cracked one eye open, smirking. “So does this lighting. Admit it.”

She laughed despite herself. “You’re insufferable.”

“You keep sitting next to me, doc.”

“Maybe I like suffering.”

He looked at her then - really looked. Not with hunger, but with recognition. Like he saw the cracks she tried to polish away.

“You’re running on fumes,” he said quietly. “When’s the last time you rested?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said.

“I know about your mom,” he replied.

Her throat tightened. “You overheard.”

“Didn’t mean to,” he said. “But yeah.”

There was a long pause. The hum of the air vent filled it.

“She’s… getting worse,” Shoko said finally, voice small. “And I’m just - here. Filming. Pretending.”

Toji didn’t try to comfort her. Didn’t say 𝘪𝘵'𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵. He just sat there, solid, quiet, real.

Then, gently: “You don’t have to tell anyone. But don’t carry it alone either.”

She looked at him. “You volunteering?”

He shrugged. “I’m bad at a lot of things. Listening’s not one of them.”

Shoko smiled faintly. “That’s dangerously close to flirting.”

He smirked. “Who says it isn’t?”

— — —

Midnight. The house was finally asleep - or pretending to be.

Shoko stepped out to the balcony, lighting a cigarette she didn’t plan to finish.
The smoke curled into the blue night like punctuation.

“I don’t drink tea,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “Didn’t make it for you.”

She laughed softly. “So I get company but not caffeine?”

“You’ve had enough of both today.”

 

They stood side by side, the city lights glittering beneath them like another kind of filter.

“Funny,” she said. “Everyone here’s performing. But you - you act like you’re hypersensitive to the camera.”

“I am,” he said. “But it pays.”

“And the fighting?”

“That paid too. Just cost more.”

She looked at him. “You don’t talk about it.”

He sipped his tea. “Neither do you.”

There was something in the way he said it - not accusing, just honest. She felt the words settle somewhere deep, somewhere tired.

“I used to think helping people meant fixing them,” she said quietly. “Now I just try to stop the bleeding.”

He glanced at her cigarette. “You’re bleeding too, doc.”

She exhaled smoke, eyes glassy with a streetlight reflection. “Yeah. But I’m not the kind worth saving.”

He turned toward her, his voice low. “Don’t say that. Not even as a joke.”

For a heartbeat, neither looked away.
Then she smiled - small, almost shy. “You really are flirting with me.”

He smiled back. “You started it.”

She flicked the cigarette off the edge of the balcony, “Guess we’re both bad at pretending.”

“Guess so.”

They stood there in silence. Not uncomfortable - just… aware.

When Shoko finally turned to leave, Toji just called after her. “Hey, doc.”

She stopped.

“If you ever need air,” he said, “you know where the balcony is.”

She didn’t look back, but her smile was audible in her voice. “I’ll bring the tea next time.”

Back inside, the camera above the hallway blinked faintly - forgotten, but still rolling.

It caught Toji standing alone on the balcony, watching the spot where Shoko had been. Then it caught her, pausing just outside her room, hand pressed to her chest like she was trying to slow her own heartbeat.

Neither said a word.

The next morning, when Riko checked the footage logs, she noticed a new file from the balcony camera - unnamed, untagged, ten minutes long.

No one uploaded it.
No one deleted it either.

Chapter Text

The next morning started with an argument about Wi-Fi.

Gojo was standing on the dining table, holding everyone’s phones like trophies. His hair was a mess, his grin brighter than the overhead lights.

“Let’s be primitive!” he shouted. “No screens, no streams, no filters! For twenty-four hours, we live like…people!”

Riko groaned into her cereal. “People still sleep at nine a.m., Gojo.”

Nanami, already in a pressed shirt, reached for his confiscated phone. “We have sponsorship deadlines.”

“Nope!” Gojo hopped back, waving the devices in one hand. “Today, we go full prehistoric. Think of it as… a digital cleanse for our collective souls.”

“Digital control freak,” Shoko muttered, stirring her coffee.

Toji leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “You just want us to film something ‘authentic’ without the distraction of actually being authentic.”

Gojo gasped. “Rude and accurate.”

From the corner, Geto looked up from his notebook. “You realize that’s the exact opposite of rest, right? Forcing people to relax on camera?”

Gojo pointed at him. “Exactly! Contradiction breeds art.”

Riko tossed a dishtowel at him. “You breed messes.”

Gojo caught it mid-air and twirled. “Same thing, babe.”

— — —

By noon, the kitchen looked like an apocalypse staged for a cooking vlog.

Nanami was attempting to follow a pasta recipe with the precision of a man defusing a bomb. “Two teaspoons of salt - does anyone know what constitutes a ‘teaspoon’ when all we have are these novelty mugs?”

Riko held up a glitter covered spoon that read 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘦. “Does this help?”

He sighed. “No.”

At the counter, Gojo was cracking eggs one-handed like a show-off magician while Geto tried to stop him from turning the stovetop into a fireworks display.

“Cooking,” Gojo said proudly, “is ninety percent confidence and ten percent pure mess.”

“You’re missing ninety percent technique,” Geto said.

“Technique is overrated. Look at this wrist action.”

“Look at the mess,” Geto replied, deadpan.

Flour drifted through the air like snow. Riko sneezed. Toji tasted the sauce and winced “You put sugar in the noodles?”

“It’s 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯,” Gojo said.

“It’s dessert,” Toji said flatly

Shoko laughed quietly from her spot by the sink, sleeves rolled up, tying her hair back with a rubber hand. It was the first time in days she almost relaxed.

The camera wasn’t on, but the room glowed with that same careless light - the kind you couldn’t smoke.

— — —

When the food inevitably burned, they ate anyway.

The table was cluttered - mismatched plates, half-melted candles from last night’s decor, laughter that sounded real. For once, no one was checking views.

Gojo raised a toast with his water glass. “To humanity - flawed, hungry, tragically offline.”

Riko clinked hers. “To the idiot who made us do this.”

Nanami added dryly, “And to the bandwidth we’ll miss.”

Geto smiled faintly, pushing his hair behind his ear. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “Silence, I mean.”

Gojo turned to him, grin softening. “Look at you, appreciating the void.”

Geto met his eyes for a beat too long. “It’s peaceful. Temporary, but peaceful.”

— — —

After lunch, the house quieted. The laughter faded into that lazy kind of calm that only happens when everyone’s tired in the same room.

Shoko slipped out onto the balcony, phone retrieved secretly from her pocket. The rain clouds were starting to gather - thin grey lines on the horizon.

She dialed, the tone echoing once, twice.

“Hi,” she said softly. “Yes. I’m calling about my mother…yes, it’s me again.”

Her voice lowered. “How bad?”

A pause. Her shoulders dropped.

“Okay. I’ll find a way. Just - don’t move her yet.”

Toji’s reflection appeared in the glass behind her. He didn’t speak, just lingered, pretending to check the weather. When she hung up, she turned slightly.

“How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

She gave him a tired smile. “You’re supposed to be resting. Primitive day, remember?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t know quiet was this loud.”

That made her laugh - short, real. “Yeah. That’s the problem.”

He nodded toward her empty hands. “You want me to pretend I didn’t hear?”

“Please.”

“Done.”

They stood there for a moment - two people pretending not to need anyone - while the wind carried the faint smell of burnt noodles from the kitchen.

— — —

Inside, Nanami sat at the dining table with a notebook instead of his laptop. The paper looked too white, his handwriting too deliberate.

He wrote:

"𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 '𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵' 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦.
𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘴.
𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘴."

He paused tapping the pen. The absence of notification buzzes made him restless. He turned the page, started again:

"𝘐𝘧 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘵, 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨?"

He closed the notebook, exhaling. Somewhere upstairs, someone laughed - Gojo, probably. The house felt alive in a way he didn’t trust.

— — —

By late afternoon, rain began to fall - soft, steady.

Most of them had drifted into the living room. Gojo sprawled on the couch, legs over the armrest. Riko painted her nails on the rug. Toji had half-fallen asleep in a chair, head tilted back.

Shoko sat cross-legged near the window, reading something she wasn’t actually reading. Nanami wrote again in his notebook, quiet.

Geto entered last, carrying two bowls of noodles. Steam curled in the dim light.

“Lunch part two,” he said.

“Dinner,” Gojo corrected. “Time doesn’t exist when you’re offline.”

Geto set one bowl down and handed the other to him.

Gojo grinned, picking up a pair of chopsticks. “You cooked?”

“Barely,” Geto said. “I boiled the water and hoped for the best.”

Gojo slurped a bite, then made an exaggerated moan. “It tastes like salvation.”

Geto blinked. “That’s not how noodles work.”

“Everything’s a metaphor if you’re poetic enough.”

 

“Or delusional enough,” Geto muttered.

Gojo nudged him with his elbow, smile smaller now. “Feels like college again, huh?”

“Yeah,” Geto said quietly. “We were better liars then.”

For a while neither spoke. The sound of rain filled the space between them.Gojo leaned his head back, watching the ceiling lights flicker against the wet window.

“Hey, Suguru?”

“Mm?”

“Thanks for staying.”

Geto didn’t answer. He just reached for the bowl, took a bite, and handed it back without looking. The gesture said enough.

— — —

As night deepened, power flickered once, then went out completely.

“Perfect!” Gojo declared in the dark. “Nature’s mood lighting.”

Riko lit a candle with a squeal of delight. “We’re like a cult now.”

“Finally,” Toji mumbled.

They gathered in the living room - one candle, one circle of warmth. Rain pressed against the glass like static.

Nanami read a line from his notebook aloud, barely above a whisper: “You can’t record quiet.”

Gojo smiled at that. “You can hum it, though.”

 

And he did - a low, tuneless hum that filled the silence. Slowly, Geto joined in. Their voices weren’t in sync, but somehow it worked.

Shoko leaned her head against the couch cushion, eyes closed. Riko watched the flame sway. Toji cracked one eye open, listening.

For a few minutes, everything was still - no filters, no feeds, just breath and sound and the soft echo of rain.

If anyone had filmed it, it might’ve looked perfect. But no one did.

— — —

The house was quiet.
For the first time all day, no laughter, no clattering fishes, no hum of cameras. Just the soft patter of rain against glass.

Shoko sat on the edge of her bed, half-asleep, half floating. The lights were off. The only glow came from her phone charging on the nightstand.

It buzzed once. Then again.
She frowned, blinking the fatigue from her eyes.

𝗛𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹.

Her breath caught. The rain outside seemed to pause, just for a second, before growing louder again - like the world exhaling what she couldn’t.

She swiped to answer.
“Ms. Ieri?”
The voice on the other end was calm, careful.
“You should come. Tonight. She’s not responding to treatment.”

The words didn’t hit all at once. They landed quietly, one by one, sinking through her chest like stones into water.

Shoko stared at the floor, the edge of her bedsheet twisted in her hand. Her voice came out steady, practiced. “I’ll be there soon.”

The call ended. The room was too still. She sat there for a long moment, phone pressed against her knee, the dial tone still echoing in her head.

Finally, she stood. Pulled on a hoodie. Grabbed her car keys.
In the mirror, her reflection looked wrong - hair loose, eyes unfocused. She tucked a strand behind her ear and whispered, “Don’t fall apart yet.”

Outside, the rain kept falling - soft, unhurried, real.

As she stepped out, the house remained dark behind her.
The others slept on, unaware.

Her footsteps echoed down the hallway like a heartbeat fading into the night.

— — —
The apartment was always cold after midnight.
No heater, just the hum of the monitors and the rain outside.

The figure sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on a crate, several screens flickering different feeds from the mansion. None of it was public; these weren’t livestream windows. They were test angles, rehearsal cameras - the ones left running after production wrapped each night.

On-screen, the group looked peaceful.
Gojo asleep on the couch, one hand still holding a blanket like a flag of surrender.
Geto in his chair by the window, headphones on but not playing anything.
Riko’s laptop closed for once.
Shoko’s room was empty now, her lamp still faintly glowing over the unmade bed - a soft light waiting for someone who’d already left.

The observer lowered the hood of their sweatshirt and began typing.

"𝘚𝘶𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘥𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘳.
𝘎𝘰𝘫𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘳; 𝘎𝘦𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴.
𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘪 𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘥𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘵.
𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘬𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥."

They paused, reread the note, then deleted the word 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 and replaced it with 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.
Old habits, maybe.

A folder on the desktop was labeled "𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀_𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵". Inside it were hundreds of short clips - raw footage never meant to air.
They opened one: the balcony feed from last night.

Shoko and Toji, framed by blue light, cigarettes and tea.
The conversation was low, fragile.
When Shoko flicked the cigarette into the rain and smiled, the observer pressed pause.

For a moment, they simply stared.
There was no commentary in this one - no angle, no noise. Just two people being real.

The observer whispered, barely even audible to themselves,

“They deserve better than the edit.”

The screensaver time blinked, and another feed replaced it - the kitchen earlier that morning, Gojo stealing phones, flour in the air.
The laughter looked genuine here too, uncut, unmarketed,

They sighed typing another note.

"𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘐'𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨."

The rain hit harder against the window.
A kettle whistled from the other room, but they didn’t move.

They scrolled through the private message thread with Nanami.
Each line glowed faint blue against the dark.
They reread his last "𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗲, 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘁."

The cursor blinked under their unfinished draft:

"𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨."

The message stayed unsent.

They leaned back, rubbing their eyes. The fatigue was heavy, familiar - the kidn that came from living behind too many screens for too long.
On the far monitor, the mansion’s hallway camera showed only flickering light.

A cleaning bot rolled past. Nothing human.

Still, the observer murmured, “You’ll all wake up soon. The phones will turb back on. You’ll remember who you’re supposed to be.”

They hesitated, then opened a new document titled "𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗡𝗼 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿 - 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲." Paragraph by paragraph, they began writing - not analysis this time, but something closer to confession.

"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵.
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧.
𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵.
𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴."

Their reflection stared back from the dark monitor - tired eyes, half a smile.

Another line appeared, slower, deliberate:

"𝘏𝘦'𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘰𝘯. 𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘪 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴."

They saved the file, disconnected the live feeds, and sat in the sudden quiet.

For the first time all day, they heard the rain clearly - not through microphones, not through static, but through the thin glass of their own window.

“You can’t record quiet,” they whispered, quoting him.
“But you can miss it.”

The screen went black.

Outside, the night pressed heavier against the windows, and miles away, inside the mansion, the phones buzzed back to life.

— — —

Rain began before the storm - light, uncertain, like the sky couldn’t decide whether to weep or to hold it in.

Shoko’s car cut through the wet streets, headlights smeared into pale ribbons across the windshield. The wipers kept time with her heartbeat: too fast, too fragile.

The hospital’s address glowed on her phone, but she already knew the way. She could’ve driven it blindfolded. She probably had, once or twice - half-asleep, coffee in hand, living off nicotine and guilt.

She took the turn past the old park - and that’s when the memory hit her. Not like a flash. More like a gentle rewind.

The sky was the color of laundry left too long in the sun - warm and faded.

Shoko was eight, maybe nine, sitting cross-legged in the grass, a bandaid on her knee and a magnifying glass in her hand. Her mother was beside her, sketchbook open, drawing the trees that swayed lazily above them.

“Why are you drawing that one?” little Shoko had asked. “It’s crooked.”

Her mother smiled, pencil moving in light, confident strokes.
“Because it still grows,” she said. “Even the crooked ones reach for the sun.”

Shoko watched her, the way her mother’s hair moved in the breeze - not neat, not perfect, but alive. She didn’t know that adults could glow when they did something they loved.

A butterfly landed on the edge of her sketchbook. Her mother didn’t move. She just whispered, “Careful - it thinks we’re part of the world.”

Shoko giggled, too loud, and the butterfly fluttered away. Her mother pretended to pout. “See? You scared it off.”

“Sorry,” Shoko said, though she was still laughing.

Her mother closed the book gently, pulling her close.
“Don’t ever apologize for being loud when you’re happy,” she said. “The world’s already quiet enough.”

— — —

Back in the car, the rain thickened. Shoko blinked hard, the lights outside melting into blur.

She passed the park again - smaller now, fenced in by years. The crooked tree still stood, bare but unbroken.

Her chest tightened. The steering wheel trembled under her grip.

The phone rang again. 𝘜𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘕𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳.
She didn’t pick up. She knew who it was - the nurse, probably. Or the silence that follows bad news.

She rolled down the window slightly, letting the rain hit her hand. The drops were cold, grounding. Real.

Her mother’s words echoed like a heartbeat between thunderclaps.

"𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘯."

The car smelled faintly of old coffee and antiseptic - her second home’s scent. She laughed under her breath, watery and cracked. “You’d hate this place, Mom.”

Trafffic slowed near the bridge. Red brake lights painted her dashboard. She let her forehead rest on the wheel, just for a second.

In her mind, the memory didn’t fade. It rewound again - to her mother sitting at the kitchen table later, hair thinner, hands shaking but still sketching.
The same tree, over and over, Each time a little lighter, a little softer, as if she was trying to draw her way back into the sunlight.

Shoko had once teased her. “You could draw something else, you know.”

Her mother smiled weakly. “When you love something, you see it everywhere.”

Now, on that rain-slick road, Shoko whispered it back to herself.

“When you love something, you see it everywhere.”

Her reflection flickered in the windshield - tired, small, but alive.

She reached the hospital parking lot and sat there for a moment before going in. The engine hummed softly, rain tapping on the roof like fingertips.

“I’ll be loud when I see you,” she murmured. “I promise.”

When she finally stepped out, the camera in her car’s dash - the one always recording for content - blinked red, then quietly died.

For once, the world didn’t need to see this part.

Only the rain did.
Only her.

Chapter Text

The morning began without color.
Just the pale, paper-light grey of rain before dawn - the kind that didn’t pour, just stayed. The kind that seeps.

Inside the hospital, Shoko Ieri sat in the waiting room still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Her hoodie clung to her arms, damp from the drive, and the coffee in her hand had long gone cold.

The nurse’s voice was gentle, too gentle.
“You should go home, Dr. Ieri. There’s nothing left to monitor tonight.”

Shoko nodded but didn’t move. Her body obeyed hospital rhythms even when her heart didn’t.
Machines hummed behind glass. A monitor blinked.
Her mother’s room felt like it was underwater - sound muted, breath heavy.

She stood, finally, the floor squeaking under her shoes.
Her reflection in the window was a stranger - pale, half-awake, jaw trembling from holding it all in.

On her way out, she stopped by the nurse’s desk. “Call me if anything changes.”

“Yes, of course.”
But they didn’t need to say the rest.

Outside, the city glistened like static. Every window reflected light and rain, overexposed and fragile. Shoko pulled her hood up, the drizzle soft against her face.

She reached into her pocket, felt the small orange bottle there - the painkillers.
She didn’t open it this time.
She just gripped it until the label crinkled.

When she finally reached her car, she sat with her head on the steering wheel for a long moment, the engine humming quietly under her hands.
Then she whispered, to no one, “Just don’t fall apart yet.”

— — —

By the time Shoko returned to the mansion, the day had already burned itself out. The others were awake, but their noise came from somewhere else - a tension she could feel before she could hear it.

“Where were you?” Riko asked softly when Shoko stepped inside.
Shoko offered the smallest smile. “Home.”

That was all she said.

Gojo started to make a joke, but something in her expression - still, distant, exhausted - stopped him.

She went straight to her room, dropped her bag, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. And for a second, the world tilted - the weight of two lives pressing against her shoulders: the one that healed and the one that couldn’t.

She pulled the curtain shut.
Outside, the first ripple of commotion began.

— — —

Gojo’s scream broke through the walls like an alarm.
“WHO POSTED THIS?!”

Riko nearly dropped her cereal. “What-what happened?”

In the living room, the television blared a shaky old video - low lighting, sweat, and shouts echoing through a concrete basement.
Toji, younger and bloodied, raising his fist after a brutal knockout.
Caption: "𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗼𝗸𝘆𝗼 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝘄𝗹 (𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵)"

Millions of views.
Millions of opinions.

Toji appeared in the doorway, silent at first. He didn’t flinch.
“That’s mine,” he said. “From before.”

Gojo turned toward him. “It’s 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, man! They’re saying it was illegal-”

“It was,” Toji said.

Silence.

Riko’s phone buzzed. Nanami’s too.
The notifications came faster than they could swipe them away.

“Okay,” Gojo said finally, pacing. “We can fix this. We’ll make a statement. Rebrand you as - like - a survivor story.”
Geto’s voice cut through the room like an electric snap.
“Don’t.”

Gojo blinked. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t turn this into a fucking slogan.”

Toji’s jaw clenched. “He’s right.”

“Someone has to say something,” Gojo argued. “You want to let them crucify you for clicks?”

Geto stood. “Maybe being quiet is better than putting a spin on things.”

Gojo’s voice rose - a crack of desperation under the charm.
“If I stop spinning it, it eats me alive.”

“Then maybe it should,” Geto said.

The rain outside grew heavier - the kind that made the world feel smaller.

— — —

By noon, the mansion looked like a newsroom in crisis.
Nanami was already in front of his laptop, headset on, voice clipped and calm - the kind of calm that warned everyone to shut up.
“PR is drafting a statement,” he said. “No one goes live. No one posts. Not even a meme.”

Gojo sprawled on the couch, arms crossed, expression infuriatingly casual. “You can’t contain the internet, Nanamin. It’s like -” he gestured vaguely, “-entropy, but horny.”

“Then stop feeding it,” Nanami snapped.
His tone was so sharp even Riko froze mid-scroll.

She hesitated, glancing at her phone. “They’re calling him ‘Bloodsport Barbie,’” she muttered. “That’s… creative, at least.”

Toji, arms crossed in the corner, didn’t flinch. “Don’t bother fixing it,” he said. “They’ll move on. They always do.”

Nanami looked up from the laptop, eyes narrowed. “You think this is temporary? You think you can tank a scandal and walk away clean?”

Toji’s jaw flexed. “Worked for you lot.”

“That’s different,” Nanami said. “We screw up online. You broke an actual law.”

Gojo sat up at that. “Okay, hold on - he didn’t kill anyone. It was an old fight clip-”

“Illegal,” Nanami cut in. “And now trending.”

The silence after that felt weighted - too many truths hanging unspoken.

Toji straightened slowly. “You talk like you’ve never done anything you regret.”

Nanami’s reply was quiet but cold. “I regret every second I spend cleaning up after people who mistake recklessness for honesty.”

Gojo whistled low. “Ouch. That one’s gonna bruise.”

“Stay out of this, Gojo,” Nanami said sharply. “You’ve already made it worse with that half-baked apology stream.”

“It was satire,” Gojo protested.

“It was tone-deaf,” Nananmi shot back. “You turned damage control into a punchline.

Gojo’s grin faltered, just slightly. “That’s what people expect from me.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Nanami said. “You’ve started believing the act.”

Toji’s voice cut in - rough, quieter. “At least he knows who he is. You’re just hiding behind management emails and crisis reports.”

Nanami stood up. “At least I manage something. What do you manage, Toji? Your temper?”

That landed like a slap.
Even Gojo stopped breathing for a second.

Toji’s hands clenched at his sides. “Careful.”

Nanami didn’t move. “No, I’m done being careful.”

The room felt too small - air thick, everyone waiting for someone to break first. Finally, Toji took another step forward, then another.

“Say what you really want to say,” he said.

Nanami’s voice was low, almost steady. “You don’t get to throw your life away because you’re tired. Some of us still need this to mean something.”

That hit harder than shouting ever could.

Toji stared at him for a long beat - then laughed once, humorless.
“Maybe you should figure out what ‘this’ even is.”

He turned and walked out - heavy footsteps, heavier silence.

Gojo exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. “Well,” he muttered, “that went great.”

Riko sank into her chair, whispering, “We’re so screwed.”

Nanami sat back down, jaw tight, headset forgottein. “Not yet,” he said quietly. “But we’re close.”

— — —

The rain had stopped, but the air in the house still felt charged - like lightning had passed through and forgotten to leave.

Gojo slipped into his filming room, shutting the door with his foot. He didn’t look angry - he looked tired in the way people who are always “on” can be.

A ring light flicked on.

Chat exploded before he even spoke:

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘞𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌'𝘚 𝘛𝘖𝘑𝘐
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘎𝘖𝘑𝘖 𝘍𝘐𝘟 𝘛𝘏𝘐𝘚
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘉𝘓𝘖𝘖𝘋𝘚𝘗𝘖𝘙𝘛 𝘉𝘈𝘙𝘉𝘐𝘌 𝘓𝘔𝘍𝘈𝘖𝘖
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘗 𝘓𝘈𝘜𝘎𝘏𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘐𝘛'𝘚 𝘚𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘜𝘚

Gojo smiled - too bright, too much.

“Hey besties,” he said, voice sugary and sharp. “So apparently we’re trending for combat instead of content today.”

He crossed his legs dramatically on the couch.

“Let’s talk about it, since PR Daddy Nanamin says I can’t make memes.”

Chat spammed:

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘉𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘕𝘈𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘐 𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘗𝘙 𝘋𝘈𝘋𝘋𝘠??
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘞𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌 𝘛𝘖𝘑𝘐 𝘈𝘛?

Gojo laughed. “He’s fine. He’s not in jail. Nobody’s dead. Except maybe our brand deals.”

He waited for a laugh that didn’t come.

His smile faltered - just a millisecond. Blink and you’d miss it.

“So - yeah - someone leaked old footage of Toji fighting in an… enthusiastic underground environment.”

He wiggled his fingers like jazz hands.

Chat was unimpressed:

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘠𝘖𝘜 𝘔𝘌𝘈𝘕 𝘐𝘓𝘓𝘌𝘎𝘈𝘓 𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘗 𝘉𝘌𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘊𝘜𝘛𝘌 𝘈𝘉𝘛 𝘊𝘙𝘐𝘔𝘌
𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: 𝘏𝘌 𝘊𝘖𝘜𝘓𝘋 𝘎𝘖 𝘛𝘖 𝘗𝘙𝘐𝘚𝘖𝘕??

Gojo’s expression twitched - irritation disguised as charm.

“Okay, First of all - we don’t know any of that yet. Second - Toji is a grown man. He can speak for himself.”

He looked at the door like he was waiting for Toji to appear.

He didn’t.

Gojo covered the moment with a too-loud laugh.

“Anyways! Let’s answer questions. But like… nice questions. Emotional support influencer questions. Not ‘why does Toji fistfight people in basements’ questions.”

Gojo’s throat worked once - swallo, mask, resume.

“Of course we care,” he insisted softly.

But his voice cracked - barely, but it cracked.

Chat slowed.

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁: …

Gojo forced the grin back on.

“You guys love drama. You don’t want real. You want aesthetic vulnerability. Crying with ring lights on. Beautiful trauma. Cute breakdowns.”

He laughed - empty.

“Trust me - real doesn’t look good on camera.”

He ended the stream mid-sentence.

Screen black out.

No outro.
No apology.
No wink.
No joke.

Just nothing.

— — —

Nanami stared at the blank TV screen where the stream had just ended.

Riko’s hands covered her mouth.

Geto, leaning against the doorway, whispered:
“He doesn’t know how to be loved unless people are watching.”

No one answered.

The house felt… hurt.

— — —

The mansion was too quiet once the stream ended - the kind of quiet that didn’t settle, it hung. Gojo closed his laptop with a click that sounded louder than it should have.

The ring light flickered off. Shadows took the room back.

Geto was already there.

He didn’t slam the door. He didn’t raise his voice.
He just stood in the doorway, arms crorssed, jaw tight, breathing slow like he was holding something back.

“Why would you do that?” Geto asked.

Gojo didn’t pretend not to know what he meant.

“It was supposed to make them laugh,” he said, voice flat.

“It didn’t.”

Silence.
Geto stepped forward.

“You made 𝘩𝘪𝘮 a spectacle. You turned something painful into entertainment because you didn’t want to feel the weight of it.”
His voice wasn’t angry - that was worse. It was disappointed.

Gojo stared at the floor, hands in his pockets, shoulders too small for someone who always took up rooms.

“I panicked,” he said. “Everyone was tense. I just… wanted to fix it.”

“You can’t fix pain by puting glitter on it,” Geto said. “You can’t turn everything into a joke and call it care.”

Gojo’s throat worked like he was swallowing something sharp.

“And if I don’t joke,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid the quiet will eat me alive.”

 

That stopped Geto.
The distance between them changed.

Gojo didn’t move closer - he didn’t dare. He just stood there, breathing like it hurt.

“I don’t know how to be real,” Gojo said. “Not without losing something.”

Geto stepped forward - slow, deliberate - until he was close enough to see every flicker behind Gojo’s eyes.

“You don’t have to know,” Geto said. “You just have to stop running from it.”

Gojo looked up, and the mask cracked just a fraction.

His voice was small when he said it:

“Suguru. I’m tired.”

Geto didn’t answer with words.

He just wrapped his arms around him.

Not tight. Not dramatic. Just there. Warm, steady, human.

Gojo’s hands hovered like he didn’t know if he was allowed to hold back - then slowly, he clutched the back of Geto’s hoodie, fingers curling in the fabric like an anchor.

Neither of them cried. Neither of them said it was okay.

They just stood there - the loudest silence in the world, breathing the same air.

“You don’t have to perform with me.”

Gojo nodded into him. Just once.

They didn’t move for a long time.

It was quiet, the kind of quiet that felt earned.

Somewhere outside, the storm that had hung over the city for days finally began to break - not all at once, but slowly.
The clouds thinned. Light pushed through in soft, pale streaks across the kitchen tile.

The first hint of day.

Gojo loosened his grip only when he felt Geto breathe in, deep and steady - the kind of breath you take when you decide to stay.

Sunlight touched the corner of the table, then the floor, then the hem of Geto’s hoodie.

And it felt like a small, stubborn mercy.

— — —

The sun hadn’t returned all at once - it seeped in. Gentle. Careful. Like the sky was still deciding if it was allowed to be warm again.

It lay over the streets in thin, golden sheets - turning puddles into glass, rooftops into mirrors. The city looked blurred at the edges, as if reality had been softened on purpose.

Inside the city, a small office tucked above an empty karaoke bar, a laptop screen glowed pale blue in the dark.
Multiple feeds flickered across it - the mansion’s kitchen, hallway, rooftop, the living room where Gojo had just shouted about the leak.

Every room told the same story: panic wrapped in performance.

A pair of hands hovered over the keyboard, slender, steady.
No rings. No nail olish.
The hands of someone used to typing more than talking.

She leaned closer to the monitor. The light caught the curve of her cheek, the tired hollow beneath her eyes - just enough for someone to see she wasn’t a ghost.
She was real and she was watching.

The feed replayed Toji’s leaked fight footage - sweat, blood, chaos. Her expression didn’t change, but the faint muscle in her jaw did.

She opened a backend window - system logs, timestamps, access trails. Lines of data scrolled like confessions.

Then she stopped.

Upload origin: 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗿.
Internal.
Authorized.

Her reflection in the monitor flinched - just slightly.

“...No,” she whispered, voice low and even.
She clicked again. Same result.
The company had leaked it themselves.

— — —

She picked up the desk phone, cord coiling like a nervous thought. After three rings, a man’s voice answered - smooth, unbothered.

“You’re not scheduled for a check-in.”

“This wasn’t in the plan,” she said.
Her voice was controlled, clipped - the kind of calm that came before anger.
“The footage. The leak. You said the narrative would stay internal.”

There was a pause, then the sound of quiet laughter.
“Every scandal is.”

Her fingers tightened around the receiver. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

“That’s the industry,” the man said. “Emotion sells. If he bleeds, they’ll watch. If she cries, they’ll subscribe. And if it all collapses - we’ll spin it as growth.”

“They’re human,” she said sharply.

He sighed. “They’re content.”

She opened her mouth - but the static swallowed whatever she was going to say. The voice on the other end softened, almost pitying.

“You knew what this was when you joined, didn’t you?”

Something in her expression cracked - the faintest tremor behind composure.Then. quietly, she said: “Not like this.”

And hung up.

The dial tone droned in the dark - a flat, endless hum.

— — —

The office was small - no decoration except a dying plant and a wall of screens. On one of them, Gojo’s live stream thumbnail froze mid-laugh. On another, the security feed showed the group sitting in candlelight, quiet and unaware.

The woman leaned back in her chair, exhaustion etched into every line of her face. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then reached for a worn jacket draped over the back of the seat. A small name tag dangled from the pocket - faded letters - just barely visible in the glow:

𝗨𝘁𝗮𝗵𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗜𝗼𝗿𝗶 - 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.

The observer had a name. And a conscience.

She stared at the screens for a long time, as if memorizing each face. Then she whispered, half to herself, “The truth’s always the first thing to go.”

Her voice was tired, not from guilt - from knowing too much and changing too little.

Utahime turned back to her computer. The cursor blinked - patient, waiting. She opened the root directory and created a new folder.

𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲: “𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦_𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩.”

Then she began dragging files in - raw footage that had never been meant to air - like the one with Gojo whispering into an unplugged mic, “If I stop, I’ll break.” Or when Shoko was sitting by a hospital bed, motionless.

The progress bar crawled forward, slow and deliberate.
When it finished, she stared at the folder for a moment - then typed a single line into her personal log.

𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭.
𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺'𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘸.

She hesitated. Then added:

𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 - 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘐 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘪𝘵.

She saved it under a nondescript file name and minimized the window.

— — —

On another monitor, Nanami appeared in a grainy hallway feed - sleeves rolled, phone in hand, head bowed.
He looked like a man holding something invisible together.

Utahime’s gaze softened. She traced the outline of his figure on the screen with her fingertip, a ghost of contact.

The chat log between them was still open on her laptop. His last message: "𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦, 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘪𝘵.” Her unsent reply still blinked beneath it: "𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨." She expanded on her unsent message, "𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘰."

She closed the chat window with trembling hands. Then she whispered, barely audible, “Not like this. Not yet.”

— — —

The rain outside eased into the mist. Neon from a vending machine painted the walls in faint pink and blue - the same kind of glow as the mansion’s LED hearts.

Utahime zipped her jacket, glanced once more at the monitors. On-screen, the mansion had gone still, Gojo asleep on the couch, Geto half-slouched beside him, Riko editing and Shoko’s light still burning faintly under her door.

She reached out, fingertips brushing the cold glass.
“They think this is about the audience,” she murmured. “But it’s always been about who’s watching.”

She unplugged the main router. The feeds flickered, then cut out one by one - except for one window that refused to go dark.

The last feed to remain: Nanami, sitting alone, head in his hands.

Utahime watched it for a moment longer. Then whispered, “I’ll make this right.”

She powered off the monitor.

The office fell into shadow. The rain had stopped entirely.

On her desktop, one process continued in silence - a background upload.

𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲: 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦_𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩_001.𝘮𝘱4
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦.

Utahime exhaled.

Not relief. Something closer to resignation.

She hovered over the “Send To” field.

Her cursor didn’t shake - but her chest did.

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁:
𝗞𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶
(Private - direct transfer link)

She clicked send.

The file disappeared into the digital dark - not viral, not public, not broadcast - just one person to one person. Direct. Quiet. Unavoidable.

A message window blinked open automatically, waiting for her to type.

She didn’t.

She closed the laptop instead.

The room dimmed to only her reflection the blackened screen - tired eyes, soft mouth, hair pulled back like she’d forgotten she ever cared how she looked.

She stood, pulling her hood up, stepping out into the corridor.

Outside, the city was washed clean - moonlight replacing the brief moment of sunlight.
The pavement was still wet and glowed silver. Everything smelled like after.

The mansion far across the skyline still glowed warm, unaware, spinning in its own orbit - still laughing, still hurting, still performing.

She started walking forward.
Not away.

Just forward.

— — —

Across the city, in the mansion’s kitchen, the lights were low. Nanami sat alone, half finished tea cooling beside him.

His phone buzzed.

A file link.
No sender name.
No subject.

He stared at it for a long second - then tapped to play.

A quiet clip opened.

Shoko on the balcony.
Toji beside her.
Blue night.
Two people talking like no one was watching - because no one was supposed to be.

Nanami didn’t breathe.

He let the video play through.
Once.
Then again.
Then he rested his head in his hands.

His thumb hesitated over the keyboard only once.

Then:

𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶: 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

He didn’t add anything else.

He didn’t need to.

— — —

The house woke up slowly - like everyone was afraid to make the first sound.

Riko was the only one already dressed. Hoodie, hair tied up, camera hanging at her neck. She stood on the back patio where the training mats were still damp from last night’s humidity.

Toji was there, shirtless, hands taped, rhythm steady and controlled - not violent. Not trying to prove anything. Just breathing, existing.

Riko didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She lifted the camera and hit the record. Not for content. Just because it was beautiful in the quiet way life occasionally is.

When Toji finished the last strike, he turned, a little startled to see her. “You filming?”he asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. You look… calm.”

Toji huffed a soft laugh - almost shy. “That’s a first.”

Riko hesitated, then: “You’re allowed to be more than what they think you are.”

He paused - really looked at her this time.

“Yeah,” he said. “So are you.”

Riko smiled - small, warm, real.

Later, she posted the silent clip at dawn. No music or flashy transitions. Just Toji breathing in the morning light.

𝗖𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦'𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.

It exploded within an hour. Not in a scandal way but in a human way.

The comments were quiet and gentle.

"𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵."
"𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦 𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘦."
"𝘏𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥. 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘰𝘬𝘢𝘺."

His scandalous underground boxing clip was old news within minutes.

Toji saw it trending while lounging in the kitchen. His eyes softened. Just a little.

— — —

Nanami found him in the kitchen. They stood there for a moment, unsure - the argument from yesterday still between them. Nanami nodded first. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

Toji shrugged. “I was being an ass.”

“That too,” Nanami agreed.

It was quiet - but the easy kind.

Riko popped her head in between them like a bridge holding two cracked edges together.

“Okay,” she announced, clapping once. “Group peace treaty. No punching, no brooding, and no arguing for at least two hours.”

Nanami blinked. “...I do not brood.”

Toji raised a brow. “You definitely brood.”

Riko pointed at both of them like a teacher.
“Sit. Drink tea. Act normal.”

So they did.

Toji sat. Nanami sat.
Riko poured tea like this was an altar.

Nanami exhaled slowly. “The video was good,” he admitted.

Toji’s gaze dropped - not embarrassed, but something very close. “Yeah. Riko did that.”

“No,” Riko corrected, stirring honey into his cup, “you did.”

Nanami added quietly,
“You don’t have to apologize for having a past. Everyone here is hiding something.

Toji met his eyes - searching for mockery.
He found none.

“So we’re good?” Toji asked.

Nanami nodded. “We’re good.”

It wasn’t dramatic.
It didn’t need to be.

— — —

Gojo came downstairs last.

Hair messy, eyes tired, hoodie sleeves too long - the kind of tired that came from emotion, not lack of sleep.

The room stilled when he entered.

Riko lowered her tea. Nanami looked up. Geto paused beside the doorway. Shoko, still in her jacket from the hospital trip, sat quietly at the table.

Gojo swallowed.

“Hey,” he said. Voice small. Unpolished. “Yesterday as… I messed up. I know. I made things worse when I was trying to keep us from falling apart.”

He looked at Toji first.

“I shouldn’t have turned your pain into a bit.”

Then Nanami.

“I shouldn’t have dismissed yours.”

Then Shoko.

“I should’ve seen you were drowning.”

Finally - Geto.

He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.

The silence between them was whole, not empty.

Geto nodded once - the soft kind of forgiveness.
Not loud. Not for slow.

Gojo released a breath like he’d been holding it for days.

Riko stood, held up her mug.

“Okay. Group reset?”

Everyone reached out - hands, cups, elbows, whatever was closest one by one. Gojo’s hand was last to join the circle - hesitant, then certain. The warmth that met his touch wasn’t just from the tea or morning light; it was something steadier, something human.

Riko grinned. “Alright, everyone repeat after me: no leaks, no lies, no livestream meltdowns.”

Gojo snorted. “You’re taking away all my hobbies.”

Geto rolled his eyes, but his mouth twitched. “You’ll survive.”

Shoko, for the first time that morning, smiled - tired but real. “Barely.”

Nanami’s voice softened. “Barely counts.”

Their laughter was quiet, but it carried - bouncing off walls that for once didn’t echo tension.

— — —

Later, when the others scattered - Toji out back training again, Riko editing her footage and Shoko disappearing into her room - Geto found Gojo sitting on the steps outside the mansion. No cameras, no audience. Just him.

“You meant it?” Geto asked.

Gojo nodded without looking up. “Every word.”

“You don’t always have to fix everything,” Geto said. “Sometimes it’s enough to just feel it.

Gojo leaned back against the railing. “Feels weird. Like walking without my sunglasses on.”

“Maybe you’ll start to see better that way.”

Gojo smiled faintly, gaze distant. “Maybe.”

For once, there was no punchline waiting at the end of his words.

— — —

In another part of the city, Utahime’s apartment lights glowed faintly through drawn curtains. The laptop on her desk chimed softly - a reply notification.

She hesitated, then opened it.

𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶: 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶.
𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶: 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

No questions. No accusations just that.

Utahime exhaled - slow, unsteady, but lighter. She typed one line back:

𝗨𝘁𝗮𝗵𝗶𝗺𝗲: 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩.

Then she closed the laptop again, and for the first time in days, she allowed herself to sleep.

— — —

Chapter Text

The mansion glowed like it was trying too hard to be happy.
Ring lights framed the living room in pink and blue, the colors of celebration - or exhaustion disguised as it.

Gojo stood on the coffee table, champagne bottle in hand.
“One million subscribers!” he shouted. “We’re officially part of the problem!”

Riko cheered behind the camera. “You’ve been the problem.”

“Semantics,” Gojo said, tipping an invisible hat.

Nanami was already seated, tie loosened but composure intact. “If you shatter a glass, I’m adding it to your invoice.”

Geto smiled from the couch, calm in the chaos. “He’d frame the invoice and call it merch.”

Shoko wandered in last, hoodie, hair tied back, coffee in hand. “Can we start before he turns the lights up to God level.”

— — —

They sat around the low table.
Shot glasses lined the center like a border between honesty and damage control.

Cables trailed across the floor, connecting ring lights to power banks, a soft halo bouncing off half-empty bottles. The camera’s red light blinked like a heartbeat.

“Three… two…” Riko counted under her breath, tapping the spacebar.

The stream went live.

Gojo threw his arms wide. “Welcome, beloved disasters! One million subscribers - against all odds, common sense, and Nanami’s existential dread.”

Riko laughed behind the camera. “You’re supposed to thank them, not insult them.”

“I did both,” Gojo said.

Geto, sitting beside him, leaned forward just enough for the mic to catch his voice. “For anyone new - welcome to what will inevitably become blackmail material.”

“Truth or drink,” Riko announced. “Rules are simple. If you won’t answer, you drink. No cuts, no filters, no faking.”

Shoko raised an eyebrow from the far end of the table. “So, like every other day here.”

Toji smirked. “Except this time, we get to watch Gojo implode in real time.”

“Excuse me,” Gojo said, mock-offended. “I am a master of public image management.”

Nanami muttered, “You started one of your streams by choking on cereal.”

“That was in the past and it was basically relatable content,” Gojo shot back.

The chat on-screen rolled faster than Riko could read it - fans spamming hearts, emojis, theories, and timestamps before anything even happened.

Riko picked the first cue card from the pile. “Alright - ‘Ever fallen for someone in this house?’”

The camera panned automatically - AI tracking, Utahime’s setting. She watched the feed remotely from her office miles away, monitoring metrics, suppressing real-time AI tracking to give them a little privacy. Just this once.

Gojo twirled his glass between two fingers, grin lazy. “Define fallen.”

Geto read the next line without missing a beat. “Emotionally compromised.”

The feed erupted.

Riko made a small choking sound. “Chat’s going feral.”

Gojo looked straight into the lens, voice dipping. “Then only someone who’d ruin me completely.”

For a second, silence. Even the comments slowed - hearts replaced by question marks and nervous emojis.

Geto’s gaze met his. No words, no movement, just that charged quiet between them. Then he looked away, jaw flexing once.

Shoko reached across the table, clinked her glass against Gojo’s. “Drink. That’s a cop-out.”

Gojo grinned too wide, too loud. “To creative self-destruction!” He downed the short, coughed, and slapped the table. “Burns like truth!”

Toji chuckled low. “You wouldn’t know what that tastes like.”

The room’s tension loosened on laughter.

Riko fanned herself dramatically. “Okay, moving on before we get banned. Next question-’ Who would you trust to delete your search history if you died?’”

“Shoko,” Gojo said instantly.

“Absolutely not,” Shoko replied. “I’d leak it for the greater good.”

Geto sipped his drink. “You’d make a profit, at least.”

Toji leaned back. “I’d trust Nanami. He’d do it cleanly, like a man filing taxes.”

Nanami didn’t look up from his glass. “And I’d never forgive any of you for making me do it.”

The chat spammed crying emojis and edits of Nanami’s deadpan expression.

Riko picked another card, eyes glinting. “Nanami, your turn - ‘Are you seeing someone’”

He froze. It was brief, subtle. But Shoko saw it - the twitch of his thumb, the half-second delay before he spoke.

“Yes.”

Riko nearly dropped her cue card. “Wait, what - seriously?”

Gojo leaned in like a gossip columnist. “Name, address, blood type.”

“None of your business,“ Nanami said, calm, sipping instead.

Chat exploded again - heart emojis, wild theories.

“Whoa,” Riko said, scrolling through reactions. “They’re shipping you with everyone.”

“Of course they are,” Gojo said. “The mystery factor. Stoic man with hidden passion - classic.”

Shoko gave Nanami a small, real smile. “I’m happy for you.”

He nodded once, almost grateful.

Only Geto noticed how his hand lingered on the glass - how he didn’t drink, didn’t move. Just thought.

Utahime saw it too, watching from her screen, the faint light reflecting in her eyes.
She typed something into the backend dashboard, disabling chat replay - an invisible mercy.

For the next question, Riko aimed for safer ground. “What’s something you regret posting?”

Toji snorted. “Everything.”

“Your protein tutorial did save lives,” Gojo offered.

“Barely,” Toji said. “I got death threats for mixing vanilla and strawberry.”

Geto answered next. “My first podcast episode. Thought I was saying something profound. Turns out, I was just lonely.”

Gojo’s smile faltered, but he didn’t say anything.

Shoko stared at her glass for too long before someone nudged her. “You?”

She smiled thinly. “The vlog I made on my mother’s birthday. She was already in the hospital then. I just didn’t say it.”

No one spoke for a few seconds. The room felt too small, too human.

Then Riko, softly: “You don’t have to-”

“I know,” Shoko interrupted, forcing a laugh that cracked halfway. “I’ll drink.”

She tossed the shot back, winced, wiped her eyes. “Guess that’s honesty enough.”

The camera stayed on her longer than it should’ve. Utahime hesitated before cutting the feed to a wide shot.

Gojo clapped once. “Alright, my turn! Give me something dangerous.”

Riko suffled cards until she found one. “Who’s the one person you’d risk your career for?”

“Easy,” he said, almost instantly. “Geto Suguru.”

The silence that followed wasn’t dramatic - it was heavy. Familiar.

Geto didn’t look up this time. Just stared at his drink, tracing the rim with his thumb.

Riko tried to fill the space. “Oookay, emotional damage much-”

But Gojo was still talking, quieter now. “He edits my mess into meaning. I’d be a headline without him.”

Geto’s voice was low. “That’s not a compliment.”

“It’s the truth,” Gojo said.

The feed flooded again - shipping comments, crying emojis, heart spam.

Riko coughed. “Let’s… move on before this turns into therapy.”

Too late. The air had already shifted.

The rest of the stream passed in fragments: Toji admitting he once cried during an anime finale, Riko confessing she Googled herself every night, Shoko refusing every question with a drink, her smile slipping each time, Gojo laughing louder than necessary, and Nanami saying almost nothing.

By the time they ended, half the glasses were empty, and the lights had dimmed to that strange blue that makes everyone look honest.

Riko signed off with a grin. “One million strong, and somehow, still standing.”

“Barely,” Shoko muttered.

Gojo waved at the camera. “Remember kids - truth is temporary, but embarrassment is forever!”

The stream ended, no one moved.

Shoko stood first, muttering something about needing air. She walked out before anyone could follow.

Toji cleaned the glasses without being asked. Nanami shut his notebook. Riko started unplugging cords.

Gojo stayed seated, spinning a bottle cap between his fingers.

Geto stayed too. Watching him.

“You’re going to regret that line,” Geto said finally.

“What line?”

“The one about me.”

Gojo smiled faintly. “You say that like I haven’t been regretting it for years.”

Geto’s mouth twitched. “You could’ve just said nothing.”

“I don’t know how to,” Gojo admitted.

Geto stared at him for a long second - then sighed. “You’re impossible.”

 

“I’m charming.”

“Infuriating.”

“Still, here, though.”

 

And before Geto could reply, Gojo leaned forward, arms wrapping around him in a quick, clumsy hug.

Geto froze for a heartbeat, then let out a soft exhale. “You’re drunk.”

“Emotionally, always.”

When he pulled back, Geto’s expression was unreadable - something caught between fondness and fatigue.

“Go to bed, Satoru,” he said.

Gojo nodded, eyes brighter than they should’ve been. “Only if you promise not to disappear again.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Then I’ll stay awake.”

Geto gave a small, tired smile. “Then at least stop performing.”

Gojo’s laugh was quiet this time, almost sad. “You sound like someone I used to love.”

“You probably still do,” Geto said, turning away.

The room dimmed as the last light clicked off.

— — —

The house had finally gone quiet.

The neon ring lights were off, the laughter from the stream already dissolved into memory. Empty glasses and half-melted candles lined the table like ghosts of celebration. Every screen had gone dark - except for the faint glow spilling from the laundry room.

Shoko sat on the floor, her knees pulled up, face buried in her hands.

The camera from earlier - the one mounted high in the corner had long since stopped recording But the silence felt just as exposed.

She’d been holding it together all evening.
Smiling through questions. Drinking instead of speaking. When Gojo deflected with charm, when Geto’s eyes lingered too long, when Nanami’s words cracked under honesty - she’d laughed with them. And then the lights turned off, and she couldn’t anymore.

Her fingers trembled as she pressed the edge of the sink. Her reflection in the washing machine door looked like someone else. Mascara faintly smudged, eyes rimmed red. She hated crying - it made everything feel cliche, even grief.

The door creaked open.

“Toji?” she said softly, not turning.

He hesitated in the doorway. His voice came rough, low.
“Didn’t think anyone would be up.”

“I wasn’t planning to be.” She wiped her face quickly, forcing a half-smile. “Guess I failed.”

Toji leaned against the doorframe. He didn’t come closer, but his presence filled the room anyway - solid, heavy, grounding.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You look terrible.”

Shoko huffed out something between a laugh and a sniff. “You’re terrible at comfort.”

She turned then, eyes finding him in the dim light. “That’s worse.”

He crossed the room, slow steps on tile. He crouched beside her, the scent of rain and soap mixing faintly between them. His shadow stretched across the floor.

“Want me to leave?” he asked.

She thought about lying. Instead, she said, “No.”

— — —

He’d seen this before - people trying not to break.

In the ring, it was physical: the set jaw, the shaking hands pretending they weren’t. Here, it was quieter. A kind of collapse you couldn’t punch through.

Shoko’s eyes were different from anyone else’s in that house. Most people there looked at cameras. She looked through them.

He sat down beside her, the wall cold against his back.
“You were quiet on the stream,” he said. “Didn’t think that was your style.”

“I don’t really have a style,” she said. “I just survive.”

“That’s a style,” he murmured. “It’s called being alive.”

She laughed once. “You sound like Nanami.”

He smirked. “Insulting.”

For a moment, the silence between them was soft. The hum of the washer filled it, spinning water and detergent like a lullaby for people who didn’t sleep much.

He noticed her fingers shaking against her sleeve.
“You drink too much coffee,” he said.

She shot him a look. “You notice everything, huh?”

“Bad habit,” he said. “Comes from fighting. Always watching who’ll hit next.”

Her gaze softened. “You think someone’s going to hit you here?”

He shrugged. “Never say never.”

He was joking, but there was truth in it - Toji’s entire posture was defense. Even sitting still, he looked like someone waiting for impact.

She wanted to tell him she understood. That hospital corridors had taught her the same thing: always be ready for bad news.

Instead, she said, “You don’t have to keep pretending you don’t care.”

He looked at her then - really looked. His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. “Neither do you.”

That caught her off guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He nodded at her trembling hands. “You’ve been holding the same coffee mug for an hour and haven’t taken a sip.”

She blinked, realizing he was right. “You’re observant.”

“I’m bored,” he said simply. “And you’re loud when you’re quiet.”

Her breath caught. “That's… strangely poetic.”

He grinned faintly. “Don’t tell Gojo. He’ll start quoting me on merch.”

That made her laugh - a small, shaky sound, but it was laughter all the same.

Her laugh did something he didn’t expect. It softened the room. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been until then.

Shoko’s head dropped against the wall, her hair brushing her face. She looked tired, beautiful in that unguarded way people never let themselves be on camera.

He reached over without thinking, brushing a strand of hair away from her cheek.
She didn’t flinch.

“Better?” he asked.

“Barely,” she said. “You’re not magic.”

“Never said I was.”

But his voice had gone gentler.
And when she turned her head to look at him, her eyes met his for a long, quiet moment.

It wasn’t dramatic. No music. No lights.
Just two people sharing air in a room that smelled faintly of detergent and exhaustion.

He broke the silence first.
“You miss her, don’t you?”

Shoko’s throat tightened. “Every second.”

He nodded, slow. “Then don’t hide it.”

Her jaw set. “If I start crying again, I won’t stop.”

“Then I’ll stay until you do.”

That undid her more than any comfort could’ve.

— — —

Something cracked open inside her - not loudly, not visibly, but deep. She turned her face toward him, trying to steady her voice. “You don’t even know her.”

“I don’t have to,” he said. “I can tell she mattered.”

She studied him, the faint scar along his jaw, the way he kept one hand fisted even hen relaxed. “You talk like you’ve lost someone too.”

He didn’t look at her when he said, “More than one.”

The words hung between them - heavy, but not suffocating. She wanted to reach for his hand, but didn’t. He wanted to move closer, but didn’t.

Still, the distance between them felt smaller.

She whispered, “Toji?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t scare me.”

He exhaled, a sound that was almost a laugh. “Good. Everyone else thinks I do.”

“That’s because they don’t look long enough.”

He met her eyes again, and for a second, it felt like gravity shifted - like something quiet but irreversible had started.

He didn’t know what to do with that look.

He’d spent his life being the wrong kind of seen. By opponents, by cameras, by people who wanted something. But this - this felt different. Like she wasn’t seeing him as what he’d done, but what was left of him after.

He stood suddenly, stretching his arms like he was shaking off the stillness.
“Wait here,” he said.

She frowned. “Where are you going?”

“To get you something that isn’t regret in liquid form.”

Before she could respond, he was gone - footsteps soft against the hallway floor.
She listened to the sounds that followed: the faint creak of a cupboard, the hush of running tap water, the hum of a kettle heating up.
Somehow, the home-lovingness of it - Toji in a kitchen, at this hour - felt surreal.

When he came back, steam curled from a plain white mug in his hand. He crouched again, setting it beside her with quiet care. “Hot water,” he said. “It helps.”

She blinked. “You made me water?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said, half-smiling. “I can boil things.”

“You burn noodles,” she reminded him.

“That was performative.”

She smiled despite herself, the kind that ached on its way out. “You’re weird.”

“So are you,” he said, handing her the cup.

Their fingers brushed - briefly, unintentionally -but neither pulled back. The heat from the cup seeped into her palms, grounding her.

She took a sip, exhaled. “You’re right. It helps.”

He leaned back against the wall, watching her over the rim of his own shadow.
“Told you.”

“Maybe you should be a doctor,” she said, eyes still on the steam.

“Nah,” he murmured. “I don’t fix things. Just make them hurt less for a while.”

Something about that answer stuck in her throat.
She wanted to ask what he meant - what he was really trying to say - but the question never came.

He stood after a moment, glancing toward the dark window. “You want to go outside? The air’s cleaner after the rains.”

The night was cool, the city lights softened by leftover mist.
They stood side by side, not touching, but close enough that their breaths mingled in the cold air.

“You were right,” she said quietly. “It does smell cleaner.”

“Told you.”

 

They stayed there for a while, saying nothing.

Shoko turned slightly, studying him under the pale light. “You ever get tired of pretending you’re fine?”

“Every day,” he said. “You?”

She smiled, tired and real. “Every second.”

He laughed once, a sound low and genuine. “Guess that’s our thing.”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re terrible liars.”

And for a fleeting heartbeat, their eyes met - no tension, no walls, just understanding.

The kind of understanding that doesn’t need words.
The kind that feels like the beginning of something unknown.

— — —

Back inside, the others were asleep.
Shoko lingered in the hallway, pausing by her door. She turned back once - Toji was still at the window, his reflection against the glass, watching the fading night.

She didn’t say goodnight.
Neither did he.

They didn’t need to.

The quiet between them said enough.

— — —

The warmth between Shoko and Toji didn’t last long after she went inside. The house fell back into stillness - soft, heavy, almost too fragile to breathe in. The kind of quiet that felt borrowed, not earned.

Down the hall, Nanami sat alone at his desk. The light from his lamp drew a perfect circle around him - order in the middle of chaos.
He’d been writing again, lines about silence and memory, but none of them sounded right.
His glass of water had gone warm. His phone, face-down beside it, buzzed once.

He didn’t look. Not yet.
He already knew the tone of that vibration.

When he did turn it over, her name was there.
Mei Mei.

For a moment, he just stared at it - at the contact photo still saved from a different lifetime, when she’d laughed at one of his terrible jokes and stolen his tie for a video thumbnail.

He answered before he could stop himself.
Her voice was smooth as ever, low and sharp.

“Took you long enough.”

He leaned back in his chair. “It’s late.”

“You never sleep early.”
“You still keep track?”

A soft chuckle, like silk tearing.

“Old habits. You don’t call. You don’t write. You vanish. Then you confess to a million people that you're in love with someone. I had to see if that someone was still me.”

He sighed quietly. “You know it was never about names.”

“No,” she said. “It was about timing. And you never had good timing Nanami.”

There was a pause. Then, lighter:

“My editor wants the receipts.”

The way she said it - casual, playful - made his chest tighten. She wasn’t threatening him. She was teasing, the same way she always had when she wanted something.

“Don’t do this,” he said softly.

“Do what?”
“Turn what we had into leverage.”

“Leverage?” she echoed. “That’s such a cold word. I prefer insurance.”

He closed his eyes, the silence between them stretching thin.
“You’re better than this,” he said.

Her laugh was quiet, almost sad.

“No, darling. I’m just better at surviving than you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that - because part of him still loved the way she said darling.
He still pictures the nights she’d fall asleep with her hair against his chest,
Murmuring ideas for content neither of them ever filmed.

“Do you remember Kyoto?” she asked suddenly. “The storm that trapped us in that awful hotel?”

He almost smiled. “You ordered champagne from room service and said it was romantic to pretend we were rich.”

“We were rich,” she said softly. “In a different kind of way.”

That stopped him.
For a second, he forgot what they were arguing about. He only remembered the way her laughter had filled the tiny room back then - how she’d called him boring and kissed him anyway.

Then she broke the silence.

“I’ll send you an invoice tomorrow,” she said, tone snapping back to business. “It’s easier that way.”

He almost laughed, but it came out tired. “You always did love efficiency.”

“And you,” she said, “always loved believing people could be good.”

The line clicked off.

Nanami sat there for a long time, phone still in his hand, the ghost of her voice lingering in the room like perfume that wouldn’t fade.

He opened his notebook again and wrote:

Love isn’t always a lie. Sometimes it just changes jobs.

He closed the book, leaned back, and let out a slow breath.

Outside, the first light of dawn pushed through the clouds - soft gold after too many grey mornings.
The mansion began to stir again, unaware that some things inside it had already broken.

— — —

The office lights never turned off.
Rows of monitors cast Utahime in a pale blue glow - a ghost inside her own machine.

She had the footage from the Confession Stream playing on loop. Every spike in engagement, every pause in speech, every tremor of breath was mapped out in color-coded bars. Except this time, the data didn’t match the emotion.
The algorithm couldn’t explain silence.

She clicked “Re-analyze.”
The same error message blinked back.

Data anomaly detected.
Recalculate emotional yield

Her headset crackled.
“Utahime?” A man’s voice - smooth, rehearsed. Her superior. “We’re seeing spikes we didn’t predict. Did Gojo stage that silence?”

She turned her chair toward the screen showing Gojo and Geto’s quiet moment - the long pause after his line, ”Only someone who’d ruin me completely.”

“It wasn’t staged,” she said.
“It has to be,” the voice replied. “Nothing unplanned gets numbers like that. Check the emotional sync ratio.”

She muted him.
Her reflection hovered on the dark monitor - tired eyes, unblinking.

Another analyst joined the call.
“Utahime, rerun the feed. There's a distortion at timestamp 48:09.”
She played it. The chat was a blur of hearts and noise - but between frames, something flickered. A half-second of raw feed - Nanami off-camera, pouring another drink for Riko.
Shoko wiping a tear.
Moments that weren’t meant to be there.

“Where did that come from?”
Utahime frowned. “You edited the reply before upload, right?”
Her superior hesitated. “No. That’s your department.”

The silence stretched.

“So,” she said slowly, “no one edited it.”
“No intentionally.”
“Then maybe it wanted to be seen.”

“Don’t get poetic on me, Utahime,” the voice snapped. “Just scrub it.”

She muted the call again. The cursor blinked on the timeline - an invitation. She hovered over the delete button, then dragged those raw fragments into a new folder.

Folder Name: Failsafe Truth

The voice came back irritated.
“Utahime, are you there? We need confirmation that anomaly 48:09 has been removed.”

She unmuted.
“It’s gone,” she said. Technically true. Just not from her drive.

When the call ended, she replayed that flicker again - Shoko’s brief, human tear. Nanami’s quiet hand steadying hers. It wasn’t perfect footage. It was real.

Utahime leaned back, whispering to the empty room:
“Maybe that’s why it broke the algorithm.”

The lights hummed overhead.
On her secondary monitor, the auto-upload queue refreshed - one file quietly marked as “Hidden Backup.”

Outside, Tokyo’s skyline flickered with a soft glow - dawn trying to climb through the glass, uncertain but insistent.

And in that half-light, Utahime smiled, the kind that didn’t quite reach her eyes but still meant defiance.

For the first time, she didn’t feel like a watcher.
She felt human again.

Her hand hovered over the keyboard a moment longer, tracing the reflection in the darkened monitor - faint outlines of faces she hadn’t seen in a while. Gojo’s restless grin. Shoko’s tired smile. Nanami’s calm, deliberate gaze.

She remembered that night - before the show’s launch, when everything still felt possible. Shoko had joked, ”If things go to hell, at least you’re the one who can hit delete.”
Utahime had laughed, but she’d promised.
Just one line, said softly across a cluttered table of empty takeout boxes:

“If it ever gets bad… I promise I’ll find a way in.”

She never broke promises.
And even now, she couldn’t reach them - not directly.
Only through Nanami. Always through him.

The servers hummed around her, it was morning already but Utahime didn’t move.

She opened a new note on her screen, typed a single line, and left it unsent:

It’s starting. I’m keeping my word.”

Then she closed the laptop.

And for a brief moment, the glow of monitors looked almost like sunlight.

— — —

The sky outside the mansion was washed in the pale glow of dawn - the kind of light that made everything look softer, truer.
After a night of chaos and half-slept hours, the world felt slow, like it was still deciding whether to begin again.

Gojo sat curled on the couch, swallowed by one of Geto’s hoodies. It hung off his shoulders like borrowed warmth, smelling faintly of rain and espresso. His hair stuck up in careless tufts, his bare feet tucked beneath him.
Across from him, Geto sat in the armchair, one hand around a mug gone cold, the other idly tracing the rim as if keeping rhythm with the quiet.

The TV was still on, looping fragments of their latest stream - laughter, pauses, almost-confessions. On mute, it looked less like content and more like memory.

“Do you ever think,” Gojo murmured, voice hushed and hoarse, “we’ll get to be normal?”

Geto didn’t look up. “Define normal.”

Gojo smiled, that lazy, dangerous kind of smile that meant he wasn’t really joking. “You know… a version of us that doesn’t have an audience.”

Geto’s eyes flicked to him - brief, unreadable. “You’d hate that.”

“Would I?”

“You’d miss the noise.”

Gojo tilted his head, thinking. “Maybe. But you were always better at silence.”

A small laugh left Geto’s throat, quiet and genuine. “And you were always afraid of it.”

Morning began to spill through the curtains - slow streaks of gold reaching across the floor. Gojo leaned into it, tilting his face toward the warmth like he was remembering how to feel sunlight.

“You remember that crappy apartment we had after college?” Gojo asked, voice softer now.

Geto’s mouth curved. “The one with the broken heater?”

“Yeah. And that pink wallpaper.”

“It was orange.”

Gojo laughed. “You’re lying to protect your dignity.”

“Maybe.”

The sound of his laugh - quiet, rich - filled the empty room in a way the cameras never could.

Gojo’s grin softened. “You know, I miss that version of you sometimes.”

Geto raised a brow. “The one who couldn’t pay rent?”

“No,” Gojo said, leaning forward slightly. “The one who didn’t have to.”

For a moment, neither spoke. The pause stretched - not heavy, just full. The kind that hums with things you could say but don’t.

Geto looked down, thumb brushing the chipped edge of his mug. “People change, Satoru.”

Gojo’s tone turned barely above a whisper. “Yeah. But not this, right?”

Geto’s gaze lifted - slow, calculated. The sun caught the line of his jaw, his eyes reflecting that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Not this,” he said quietly.

The air felt different after that - fragile but grounded.

Gojo sank further into the couch, fingers playing with the frayed string of the hoodie. “You think we’ll ever get it back?”

“What?”

“The version of us that wasn’t for everyone else.”

Geto was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Maybe this is it.”

Gojo looked up. “This?”

Geto nodded slightly - toward the half-lit room, the slow dawn, the absence of cameras. “No audience. No script. Just you. Me. Morning.”

Gojo smiled - not the blinding, exaggerated one, but something smaller, softer. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Maybe that’s enough.”

Soon enough, the city began to wake. Light caught the windows like gentle applause, reflecting gold against their faces.

And somewhere far away, in a different room, Utahime watched that same timestamp on her monitor - 05:01 A.M - her cursor hovering over the recording toggle. She didn’t press it.

The feed went dark.

Inside the mansion, Gojo shifted closer, mumbling, “Stay till the sun hits the walls.”
Geto smiled faintly. “Always.”

The light grew. The noise stayed gone.
And for the first time in too long, morning didn’t feel like performance - it felt like mercy.

Chapter Text

Flashback: High School - 10 Years Ago

The world still looked simple in sepia back then.
Nanami Kento sat by the window in his second-year classroom, notebook open, half-filled equations he already knew. The sun caught his hair just right for seventeen.

Across the room, she was laughing. Mei Mei. Not politely, but like she knew she was the loudest thing in the world and didn’t care. Her uniform was perfectly pressed; her eyeliner, not school - appropriate. Everyone gravitated toward her, but her eyes kept landing on him - the quiet boy who didn’t join conversations unless he had to.

When their teacher paired them up for the midterm project, Nanami sighed. She smiled like she’d won something.

“You’re going to do all the work, aren’t you?” she said, voice teasing.

He didn’t look up. “If you stop talking long enough, maybe I’ll let you contribute.”

She leaned closer. “You’re kind of mean.”

“You’re kind of distracting.”

It was the first time anyone had made Mei Mei blush in public.

They finished the project in record time - and by the end of the term, people stopped calling them opposites. They started calling them inevitable.

— — —

No one was surprised when they showed up together to the school dance.
He wore black, neat and simple. She wore silver, glittering under the soft gym lights like the night itself had decided to stand next to him.

He hadn’t planned on dancing. She didn’t care.

When the slow song started - something cheap and romantic from the radio - she took his hand before he could think of a reason to refuse.

“I don’t dance,” he murmured.

“You do tonight,” she said.

It wasn’t perfect - he stepped on her shoe once, she laughed way too loudly - but there was something in that imperfect rhythm that stuck. Something that felt like the start of a promise.

Later that night, under the dim light of vending machines, she leaned against him and whispered, “You know, if you’d asked me, I would’ve said yes sooner.”

He looked down at her, confused. “To what?”

“Whatever this is,” she said, smiling.

— — —

By the time they reached college, the world had stopped being cinematic. Bills arrived faster than dreams did.
Nanami studied finance. Mei Mei chased digital media. Between classes, they met at convenience stores, sharing cheap coffee and half-cooked plans.

They were both broke, brilliant, and terrified of staying invisible.

Then one night, a junior handed Mei Mei a camera and said, ”You’re good at talking. You should film it.”
She did. Nanami edited it.

The first video - a small rant about student debt and job scams - went semi-viral. Comments poured in: ”You two have chemistry,””You should start a podcast,””He’s fine but depressed.”

Mei Mei laughed. Nanami didn’t.

But he stayed.

— — —

By the time they graduated, the economy had already fallen apart. Jobs were vanishing, offers delayed indefinitely. Nanami tried interviews - one after another - only to hear the same line: ”You’re qualified, but not the right fit.”

It was Mei Mei who said it first:
“Maybe we make our own fit.”

They went to Kyoto for a brand partnership - a small gig filming travel content for a start-up that never paid on time. The storm came that night. Power went out. They were stuck in a cheap hotel room with a half-dead camera battery and once candle flickering between them.

Nanami sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop open, editing the day’s footage. Mei Mei leaned on the balcony rail, barefoot, her hair damp from the storm.

“Do you ever think,” she said, “we’ll make something that isn’t about surviving?”

He looked up. “What else is there?”

She smiled - sharp, tired. “Winning.”

He sighed, closing the laptop. “We’re not even close.”

She had laughed, pouring two glasses of champagne she ordered from room service.
“We can pretend we’re rich for a night.”

He smiled - rare, soft. “We’re rich enough.”

“Liar,” she said. “You hate this.”

“I hate being useless,” he admitted.

She leaned in, kissed him before he could finish.
“Then stop being humble. Start being marketable.”

That night, they filmed something different - not the city or the storm, but themselves.
The way her laughter filled the cracks between thunder. The way his voice steadied hers. The kind of footage meant to stay private.

It didn’t.

When the file leaked - accident or ambition, no one ever knew - their channel exploded overnight. Sponsorships followed. So did offers. Interviews. Money. A new apartment. Every headline used that same fucking phrase: ”The couple that sold honesty.”

At first, it felt like a success.
Then slowly, it began to feel like surveillance.

He’d start editing at dawn, eyes red from exhaustion. She’d scroll through comments about their chemistry, memorizing which angles people liked best. Their love soon became algorithmic - every argument postponed for brand deals, every apology turned into content.

By the time the storm cleared, they’d already stopped being two people in Kyoto. They were Mei Mei & Nanami - curated, monetized, and perfect.

From that moment on, Mei Mei learned how to turn sincerity into strategy.
Nanami learned how to stay quiet when he didn’t like it.

She’d kiss him before live streams - perfect angle, perfect smile and whisper, “Be softer. They like you softer.”

He’d do it for her. For her. For the money. For the promise of security that always felt one step away.

But at night, when the cameras went off, she’d scroll through analytics instead of looking at him.

“You’re good at this,” he’d say once.

“I’m good at surviving,” she’d reply.

— — —

It wasn’t one fight. It was a series of small fractures.
Missed dinners. Rewritten captions. Secrets disguised as business decisions.

The final argument came on a night that looked almost like Kyoto - rain against glass, a candle burning low. Nanami ahd found the leaked drafts - invoices addressed to brands he’d never agreed to promote. His face. Her name.

“You used my name for this?”

“It’s our brand, Kento.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s yours. I’m just the credibility.”

She looked at him for a long time - then said, almost gently, “Then maybe you should start acting like it’s worth selling.”

He left that night. Took nothing but his notebooks and the hard drive. The next morning, she posted a smiling photo caption ”Sometimes love grows up. And that’s okay.”

The comments were full of hearts.
He didn’t reply.

For weeks after, Nanami drifted - between freelance editing gigs, cold coffee, and rented rooms that smelled like dust and resignation.
Every scroll on his feed was haunted by her face: sponsorship reels, interviews about “creative independence,” hashtags about “self-worth.”

Everywhere he looked, she’d already rewritten the narrative. In her version, they ended gracefully. In his, they just ended.

He stopped checking his notifications after that. Stopped writing poems. Stopped filming.

Until one night, a producer messaged him out of nowhere - a “new social experiment,” they said. “A collaboration between industry names and rising creators. Authenticity meets entertainment.”

He almost ignored it. But the tagline caught him.

”Reclaim your story.”

He read it three times before replying.

By morning, the contract was in his inbox.
He didn’t even flinch at the nondisclosure clause, or the salary that was half of what Mei Mei used to negotiate for him.

He just signed.

Because maybe, for once, he wanted to be seen without being filtered through her lens. He wanted to prove that his words - his work - could stand alone.
That the man behind the brand still existed somewhere beneath the wreckage.

When he walked into the mansion for the first time, the cameras hadn’t started rolling yet.

The lights were too bright, the air too clean.
He stood in the doorway for a long moment, notebook in hand, wondering if this was reinvention or punishment.

Then someone - Gojo, of course - called from the kitchen, “You the new guy with the financial trauma?”

Nanami almost smiled.
Almost.

Chapter Text

The mansion woke up to war.

Nanami’s phone buzzed before dawn.
By the time he opened his eyes, his name was trending.

#Exposed
#NanamiDMs
TruthHurtsButContentPays

The first thing he saw wasn’t the hashtags - it was a screenshot of his own words. A late-night message to Mei Mei from three years ago:

”I don’t want fame, I want to be useful.”
“Then let fame be currency,” she’d replied.

He scrolled further.
Drafts. Fragments of poems he never posted. Lines he’d written in the mile of breakdowns - things meant for her eyes only.

”Some people deserve silence more than apology.”
“I think I’ve forgotten how to be real when no one’s watching.”
“I miss when my honesty and integrity wasn’t monetized.”

Now each one was captioned, dissected, screenshotted with glossy commentary:
”Pretentious.”
“Fake deep.”
“Gaslighting his audience.”
“Emotional manipulation disguised as vulnerability.”

His handwriting - the one she called beautiful - was trending.
People were analyzing it like crime scene evidence.

Nanami scrolled until his hands started shaking. His own voice echoed in the back of his head, hollow and misplaced.

He threw the phone onto the bed, but it kept buzzing, like the world was laughing through the vibration.

He sat there for a long time, breathing shallow, eyes fixed on nothing.
The window glowed gold with early light - the same color it used to be when he and Mei Mei filmed their first video together.

The same light that once felt like beginning.
Now it felt surgical.

The world outside didn’t care that his life was unravelling - it just kept getting brighter.

He pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes, forcing down the ache, the confusion, the quiet kind of rage that doesn’t even know who to aim itself at.

Because part of him already knew.

She’d promised once - ”What’s ours stays ours.”

Now everyone owned it.

Downstairs, someone screamed Gojo’s name. Another voice - Geto’s - told him to shut up.
The house had woken up.
Chaos had begun.

And Nanami, still sitting on the edge of the bed, realized something brutal and simple:
He wasn’t a person anymore.
He was content.

— — —

Downstairs, there was already a storm.

Cameras half-packed, ring lights on standby, the living room littered with empty bottles and glowing screens.
Someone had turned on the big monitor - Nanami’s name filled it, thread after thread scrolling too fast to read.

Gojo was the loudest thing in the room.

“Okay, okay, everyone breathe-” he said, voice an octave too high. “It’s fine. It’s just text. We spin it. Sad-boy poetry arc. He’s misunderstood. We’ve done worse!”

Geto stood behind the couch, arms crossed, eyes cold. “You can’t meme pain, Satoru.”

“Watch me,” Gojo shot back, too quick, too sharp.

His sunglasses were gone. His eyes - the kind that could blind you - looked too awake, too wild. He was already pacing, fingers twitching toward his phone, toward control.

Riko sat on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, scrolling through trending hashtags. Her breath came uneven. “They’re saying he - he plagiarized his own captions-? What does that even mean?”

“Riko,” Shoko said softly from across the room, “put the phone down.”

“I can’t,” she whispered, voice cracking. “They’re tagging the channel account - this affects all of us -”

Geto moved toward her, crouching beside the couch. “Hey. Look at me. Breathe.”

Gojo was still talking - mostly to himself now. “If we post something fast, before it gets worse, maybe it turns -”

“Have you not learned Satoru?” Geto said without looking up. “Not everything’s content.”

That stopped him for half a heartbeat.
Something flickered in Gojo’s face - not anger, not guilt. Something older. The kind of fear that comes from watching everything you built collapse once before.

He laughed it off - the sound sharp, manic. “You’re right…though you sound like Nanami. What’s next, therapy?”

“Maybe,” Geto said, standing. “Might be the first honest thing we’ve done.”

Gojo’s grin faltered, but he didn’t stop moving. He couldn’t.
He reached for a camera, half-laughing, half-daring the world to call his bluff.
“Fine. If they want a confession, I’ll give them one. We do an apology skit-”

“Stop,” Geto said quietly.

Gojo froze - for once, actually froze.

That single world landed like an echo from somewhere else.
Maybe a different night. A different camera.
A different loss he still hadn’t forgiven himself for.

The silence after stretched too long.

Riko’s breathing hitched again.
Shoko set down her coffee.
The whole house seemed to hold its breath.

Finally, Gojo exhaled - the sound breaking into a laugh that didn’t sound like laughter at all. “You guys really don’t get it do you? If you don’t own the story, someone else will.”

He turned, walking toward the kitchen - fast, uneven steps.

Geto didn’t follow.

The camera on the counter caught it all: the tremor in Gojo’s hand as he reached for a glass, the way his jaw clenched like he was swallowing back something heavier than anger.

Outside, the dawn kept climbing. The light was unforgiving.

— — —

The mansion had finally gone quiet again.
Not peaceful - just emptied, like sound itself was tired.

Nanami sat in the study with his laptop open, screen brightness turned too low, unread notifications blinking at the corner.
Every few seconds, another email arrived - sponsorships “pausing collaboration,” management “reassessing partnerships,” journalists “requesting statements.”

His hands hovered above the keyboard, useless.
He’d written thousands of words in his life, but none for this.

A knock at the door.
Soft. Then: “It’s me.”

Shoko stepped in. She didn’t say sorry. She just handed him a mug.

“Tea,” she said. “You look like you’ve been living on dejection and black coffee.”

He managed a tired breath that almost became a laugh. “Appropriate diet for the canceled.”

She sat across from him, eyes flicking toward the laptop. “You started your statement yet?”

He shook his head. “Everything I write sounds like PR.”

“Then stop writing like you’re still on camera,” she said simply.

That shut him up.

He stared at her for a long second, then leaned back, exhaling. “You think people will believe anything I say now?”

“Maybe not,” she said, tone even. “But they’ll believe how you say it.”

He frowned slightly. “That’s not very reassuring.”

Shoko took a sip of her own drink, grimacing. “Neither is this tea. Still works.”

The silence between them settled - not awkward, just dense with what didn’t need to be said.

Finally, Nanami spoke, voice low:
“She leaked my poems.”

Shoko didn’t ask who “she” was. Everyone had seen the headlines by now.
He went on anyway. “Not the romantic ones. The ones I wrote when I was trying to make sense of her.”

“That’s worse,” Shoko said softly.

He nodded. “I keep thinking - if they’d been about anyone else, would it hurt less?”

“Probably,” she said. “But then they wouldn’t have been worth writing.”

He looked up at her, something like surprise crossing his face. “You sound like someone who’s been here before.”

She hesitated, thumb brushing the rim of her mug. “I have.”

Nanami waited.

“When my mom got sick,” Shoko began, eyes fixed on the window, “I faked three sponsorships. Medical brands. ‘Promoting awareness.’ It wasn’t awareness. It was for rent.”

He didn’t interrupt.

“I thought it would make me feel better. Paying the bills. Helping. But every time I looked at the posts, I hated myself a little more. Because it worked.”

She met his eyes finally. “The clicks paid for her chemo.”

Nanami didn’t know what to say. “You did what you had to.”

She shook her head. “That’s what everyone says when they mean they’d do the same thing.”

He exhaled through his nose - slow, controlled. “Then maybe it’s true.”

“Maybe.”

The laptop chimed again. Another email.
Shoko reached over and closed it. “You don’t need a statement tonight. You need a sentence.”

He frowned. “What’s the difference?”

“One defends. The other confesses.”

She slid a pen toward him, the kind she always carried for signing hospital forms and scripts. He stared at it for a moment, then took it.

“Write one thing you still mean,” she said.

He thought for a long time, then wrote in small, steady letters:

I’m sorry I believed honesty could be owned.

Shoko read it once, then nodded. “That’s enough.”

Outside, thunder started to roll again - faint, like an echo of Kyoto.

She stood, pausing at the door. “You’ll get through it, Nanami.”

He gave her a small, hollow smile. “How do you know?”

She looked back, tired eyes soft. “Because you still ask how.”

Then she left him in the half-dark room, the sentence still glowing on the screen - the first thing that didn’t feel performative.

— — —

The walls of his room felt too small.
The air too still.
Every few seconds, his phone lit up again - new headlines, new betrayals, the same words rearranged to hurt differently.

He couldn’t sit there anymore.

So he got up. Walked barefoot down the hall, past the faint hum of sleeping cameras, toward the kitchen. The lights were dim - that muted yellow that made everything look slightly unreal.

He poured himself a cup of coffee. No sugar, no milk. Just the bitter kind that tasted like control - or at least, something close to it.

Steam curled against his face. For a second, the motion of it - the small, steady ritual - gave him something like focus. A trick his mind still believed in.

He sat at the counter, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the mug cooling between his hands. His phone lay face down beside him, screen flashing again and again with new notifications.

He didn’t look.
He’d already memorized them:
INFLUENCER LEAK: NANAMI’S PRIVATE WRITINGS EXPOSED.
LOVE LETTERS OR LIES? THE DM STORY EVERYONE’S READING.

And worst of all - her post.

Sometimes transparency hurts, but honesty heals.” - Mei Mei

He laughed once, dry and humorless. Honesty?
The DMs she leaked weren’t even cruel. Just… real.
Messages that sounded like a man trying to make sense of himself. Lines like -

You can sell the world anything except sincerity.
I hate how truth feels disposable when you package it right.
Some people deserve silence more than apology

Now strangers quoted him in threads like gospel, debating whether he’d meant her, meant frame, meant nothing at all.

The coffee in his cup had gone cold hours ago.
He stared at it anyway - the reflection looked steadier than he felt.

Footsteps echoed faintly from the hall.
Toji’s. Bare, slow, deliberate.

He stopped in the doorway, one hand still on the frame.
“You planning to sleep anytime this decade?”

Nanami didn’t look up. “Sleep is for people who can log out.”

Toji grunted - not amused, not pitying. Just present.
He crossed the room, opened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of water, and set it next to Nanami’s elbow.

“I saw the headlines,” he said.

Nanami’s jaw tightened. “You and everyone else.”

“I didn’t read them,” Toji said. “Didn’t need to.”

That made Nanami glance up - brief, tired.
“Why not?”

“Because I already know what you are,” Toji said. “And it’s not what they’re saying.”

Nanami huffed softly, something between disbelief and relief. “You’re too old for this industry. You talk like people still care who’s right.”

Toji shrugged. “Maybe I just care who’s left.”

That hit harder than expected.
For a second, the sound of rain filled everything - a slow, steady rhythm that almost resembled peace.

Toji leaned back against the counter, arms folded.
“She sold you out. You can’t fix that. But you can still say something that’s yours.”

“Words won’t change what people think.”

“They’re all you’ve got,” Toji said. “You still have your words. Use them.”

Nanami looked down at the table again, fingers tightening around his notebook - the one that had somehow survived the leaks.
Inside, his handwriting looked unsteady. Real. Still his.

He exhaled slowly. “You ever get tired of fighting?”

Toji smiled faintly, a ghost of something younger. “Every day. Doesn’t mean I stop.”

He turned to leave, paused at the door.
“Get some air before you drown in this noise.”

When he was gone, Nanami opened his notebook.
The last line from weeks ago stared back at him:

 

Love isn’t always a lie. Sometimes it just changes jobs.

He stared at it, then flipped to a new page.
The pen hesitated - then moved.
A new line, sharp and quiet:

If truth is a weapon, let me aim it myself.

The rain outside slowed to a whisper.
And somewhere, in another part of the city, Utahime’s monitor flickered recording the same timestamp.

A new file appeared on her hidden drive:
Failsafe_Truth_0002

— — —

The hum of servers filled the room - low, mechanical, endless.
Utahime sat alone in the glow of her monitors, every screen showing chaos: trend charts spiking, comment feeds refreshing faster than the system could process.

#EXPOSED.
#TRUTHHURTSBUTCONTENTPAYS.
#NANAMIPOETRY.

Her title in the corner of the dashboard blinked faintly:
Audience Integrity Lead Producer - Utahime Iori

She was supposed to analyze the sentiment.
Instead, she just stared.

The system’s emotion-mapping AI had flagged the scandal under ”High Engagement, Moderate Outrage.”
A note beneath it read automatically:

“Recommend escalation for retention.”

She clicked it open, scrolled past the recommendation, and found the raw engagement graph - a perfect, heartless mountain of public attention.
Every peak was another piece of him being consumed.

Utahime swallowed hard.

She clicked into the original footage - the unedited archive she’d saved months ago.
Nanami, off-camera, defending Riko after her panic during a shoot.

”She’s not a brand,” he’d said then. ”She’s a person. You don’t edit panic into entertainment.”

Back then the room had gone quiet. Even Gojo had shut up for once.
But the footage never aired. The producer’s note said:

”Cut. Doesn’t test well with target demographics.”

Now, watching it again, Utahime’s throat tightened.

The cursor hovered over the “Delete” icon.
Her superior’s voice came through her headset - sharp, cold.

“Utahime? Flag the Nanami segment as unstable. We’re recontextualizing it for emotional continuity. Make him tragic, not sympathetic. The numbers like tragic.”

She didn’t answer.
Her hand trembled once, then steadied. She opened a hidden window - the one she’d created months ago.

Folder name:Failsafe_Truth

She dragged the clip into it.

A warning flashed.

“Unauthorized archival. Continue?”
She hit Yes.

Then she unmuted her mic.
“File deleted,” she lied.

“Good,” her superior said. “We’ll need a scandal follow-up. Maybe leak a reconciliation arc next week. The audience loves redemption.”

The call cut. Silence returned - except for the sound of her breathing.

Utahime leaned back in her chair.
The reflection in the monitor showed her eyes - tired, glistening, alive.

For a long moment, she just stared at the analytics graph pulsing across the screen. Each data point was a heartbeat - his name turned into metric. It felt obscene.

She clicked the system’s message tab and opened a new, encrypted thread - no sender, no trace.

She typed slowly.

They’re weaponizing your sincerity.

She hesitated, then hit send.

The cursor blinked twice before the message disappeared from her screen. She didn’t know if it would reach him - maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it didn’t need to. Maybe just writing it was enough.

Outside her window, the skyline was washed in dull blue - morning bleeding into the glass.

Utahime rubbed her eyes, took a shaky breath, and then whispered - not to anyone, not even herself, but to the truth sitting quietly on her hard drive.

“You still deserve to be seen right.”

— — —

The sun had climbed higher by the time Riko found herself in the editing room. She wasn’t supposed to be there - technically, this was Nanami’s workspace. But he wasn’t using it anymore.

His chair still held the faint imprint of him, and the desk was covered in things he’d left behind: a coffee mug with the quote ”Stressed, Blessed, and Coffee Obsessed.” printed in fading text, a half-filled notebook, and a camera memory card labeled “spare b-roll.”

Curiosity won.
She loaded the footage.

Most of it was raw, chaotic - Gojo spilling a drink, Geto adjusting the mic, Nanami scolding them both. But halfway through, the camera jolted, and suddenly the image shifted - the lens had been left running.

Shoko was tending to Toji, dabbing antiseptic onto his bruised knuckles. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even look at her. Just sat there, quiet, letting her work. There was no background music, no filters - just the soft scratch of gauze, the sound of her breath, and the way her hand lingered for half a second too long before pulling away.

Riko leaned closer to the screen.

It wasn’t romantic. Not exactly.
But there was something intimate about it - something raw and steady that no algorithm could fake.

She reached for her own camera without thinking, hit record, and whispered into the lens.

“It’s weird. They don’t even say it out loud, but you can tell. Like the way she looks at him could stop him from falling apart.”

Her voice trembled at the end.

Later, she replayed it - froze on the frame where Shoko’s hand brushed Toji’s wrist. The light caught just right, soft and accidental, like humanity in action.

Riko’s throat tightened.
She didn’t have a crush on Shoko. She didn’t know if she admired them or pitied them. Maybe it was both - the ache of wanting to be seen and the fear of what gets revealed when you are. But watching them, she recognized something - the way care could exist even when words didn’t.

The way connection could still survive in places where performance couldn’t.

She sat back, staring at the screen, and whispered to no one,
“Maybe that’s what real looks like.”

— — —

The mansion felt hollow the next morning. Lights off, blinds half-open - like no one wanted to admit daylight still happened.

Gojo stood by the kitchen window, mug in hand, wearing the same shirt from the night before. He hadn’t slept. The caffeine didn’t help, but the act of pouring it - the sound, the heat - gave him something to hold. Something human.

The silence buzzed, heavy. Too familiar.

Shoko walked in first, hair messy, lab coat thrown over a hoodie. She eyed the untouched coffee in front of him.
“Still pretending that helps?”

He didn’t look at her. “Helps me look like I’m doing something.”

She opened the fridge, scanned it, and closed it again. “You should try sleeping instead.”

He smiled faintly. “You could try not diagnosing people over breakfast.”

A beat of quiet passed before Geto entered - phone in hand, voice low. “Nanami locked himself in. Riko’s checking on him every hour.”

Gojo exhaled. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Don’t say that like it’s a PR line,” Geto said. “You don’t believe it.”

Gojo finally turned from the window, the morning light catching the edges of his face - pale, cracked, human under the sunglasses he hadn’t bothered to remove.
I’ll believe he’ll survive,” he said. “Doesn’t mean he’ll be fine.”

Geto folded his arms. “Not everything’s a joke, Satoru.”

“That’s literally my brand,” Gojo said smiling, - sharp, tired, wrong.

“Your brand’s killing you,” Shoko murmured.

Something flickered then - brief but real. His grip on the mug tightened until his knuckles paled. He looked down. “You think silence fixes it? You think if we sit here long enough, the internet just forgets?”

Geto’s voice softened. “Not everything’s meant to be fixed though.”

Gojo’s laugh cracked in the middle. “You say that like being quiet has ever saved anyone.”

He didn’t mean to say it. But the words hung there - bare, heavier than the air around them.

Shoko froze mid-step. Geto’s head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing - not in anger, but recognition.

Gojo looked like he wanted to take it back. Instead, he just said, quieter now: “When it gets quiet… things fall apart faster. People stop checking in. Stop showing up. Stop-”
He stopped.

The coffee had gone cold.

Shoko leaned against the counter beside him. “You talking about Nanami?”

He hesitated. “Sure.”

But his eyes - unfocused, distant - said otherwise.

Geto move closer, voice steady, grounding. “You can’t protect him from this. But you can stop making it worse.”

Gojo nodded once, like a student being scolded - then exhaled.
“I just don’t want him to think he’s alone in it.”

Shoko’s tone softened. “Then tell him that.”

“I can’t,” Gojo said. “He’ll know I mean it.”

That almost made her smile. “God forbid.”

The three of them stood there for a while - not talking, not pretending. Just existing in the aftermath.

Outside, the sky was the color of recovery - that pale, hesitant gold that comes after rain but before warmth.

Gojo finally picked up his mug again. “You ever think we could’ve just been normal?”

Geto smirked faintly. “And deprive the world of your emotional mayhem?”

That earned the smallest laugh from Gojo - tired but real. “Guess not.”

The camera lingered on them - three old friends in quiet defiance of collapse, framed by sunlight that almost looke pitying.

For once, it wasn’t about damage control or survival.
It was just the quiet ache of people who’d already seen what breaking looks like - and were still trying to stand anyway.

— — —

The sunlight had shifted by the time Nanami stirred.
It wasn’t warm - just intrusive, slicing through the blinds like something trying to find proof of life.

His coffee from earlier sat untouched, the surface reflecting a warped version of him - tired, blank-eyed, not ready.

The mansion outside was quieter now. He could hear faint laughter from another room - Riko, maybe, forcing normalcy. The hum of a distant camera charging. And somewhere below, Gojo’s voice, low and tired, joking about breakfast, like nothing had happened.

Nanami closed his laptop, set it aside, and stared at the phone that hadn’t stopped buzzing since dawn. Apologies, accusations, offers from news outlets - every notification the same color, every vibration a new fracture.

He scrolled once.
And stopped.

An encrypted message. No name, No sender. Just a plain line of text.

They’re weaponizing your sincerity.

No punctuation. No branding. No PR tone.
Just… truth.

He read it twice.
Three times.

The words shouldn’t have hurt as much as they did - but they found the right place. The exact spot that still remembered Kyoto, and champagne, and the feeling of being seen before being sold.

His throat tightened.
Not from anger. Not even grief. Just exhaustion - the kind that sits behind your ribs and doesn’t know how to leave.

He set the phone down carefully, like it might break if he held it too long.

On the nightstand sat his notebook - pages half-filled, the rest blank.
He flipped to the last thing he’d written before everything fell apart:

”Even when the audience leaves, you still owe yourself an ending

His pen hovered for a moment, then moved again - slow, calculated, as if writing could still make sense of something.

”And sometimes, endings are just beginnings no one’s brave enough to name.”

He shut the notebook.

For the first time since the leak, he exhaled - really exhaled - and the sound was almost human.

Outside, a faint knock. Riko’s voice. “We’re making breakfast! You coming?”

Nanami looked at the door. Then the phone. Then the sunlight catching the edges of the page he’d just written.

He didn’t answer - not yet.
But his hand brushed the notebook once before he stood, and that was enough.

The camera lingered on the message glowing faintly on his phone screen:

They’re weaponizing your sincerity.

And for the first time all episode - maybe all season - Nanami smiled.
Small. Quiet. Sad.
But alive.

— — —

Nanami was halfway to standing when the door creaked open without warning.

“Knock next time,” he muttered automatically.

Gojo leaned against the frame, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, a mug in hand that said ”World’s Okayest Influencer.”

“Please. Privacy’s a myth in this house.”

Nanami didn’t laugh. He didn’t even look up.
Gojo’s grin faded - not completely, but enough to show the edges underneath.

He stepped inside, set the mug down on the desk beside the untouched coffee.
“I made you something new. It’s basically sugar and caffeine holding hands, but hey - better than depression.”

Nanami sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You shouldn’t joke about this.”

“Yeah,” Gojo said quietly. “Probably shouldn’t.”

The silence after that wasn’t awkward - just tense. The kind that comes after the storm, where you can still hear everything that broke.

Nanami finally asked, without looking at him. “Why are you here?”

Gojo’s voice softened, stripped of its usual playfulness.
“Because everyone else is pretending this is fine. And I don’t like pretending right now.”

Nanami looked up - slow, wary. Gojo’s expression didn’t match his words; it was too honest. Almost fragile.

Gojo crossed his arms. “You think you’re the only one who’s ever had the internet chew you up and spit you out? Trust me. You’re not.”

Nanami frowned. “You’re saying you understand?”

Gojo gave a small, humorless laugh. “No one really understands. But I’ve been close enough to know how it ends if you start believing them.”
A pause.
Then - softer - “You’re not alone, Nanami. Not this time.”

Nanami blinked. Once. Twice. He wanted to say thank you, or you don’t have to, or maybe just stay - but none of it came out.

Instead, he just nodded, the smallest movement, enough that Gojo noticed.

Gojo turned toward the door. “Good. Because if you disappear too, I’ll have to start being the responsible one, and nobody wants that.”

Nanami almost smiled. “That’s debatable.”

Gojo stopped in the doorway, looked back over his shoulder.
“You’ll be okay,” he said, simply. “Maybe not today. But you will.”

Then he left, the echo of his footsteps fading down the hall.

Nanami stood there for a long while after - the message on his phone still glowing, Gojo’s mug still steaming faintly beside it.

He reached for the mug finally, took a sip. It was terrible. Too sweet. Too much. But it was something human.

— — —

For a day, the mansion was still - too still.
And when darkness finally came, it felt less like night, more like a consequence.

Upstairs, the last few lights blinked out until only the kitchen glowed - pale and half-awake, the hum of the refrigerator filling the silence.

Toji sat at the counter, elbows on the surface, a cup of cold coffee beside him. He looked like someone who’d been waiting for the noise to end and didn’t quite know what to do now that it had.

Geto walked in quietly, barefoot, sleeves rolled up. He didn’t say anything at first - just opened the cabinet, poured himself a glass of water, and leaned against the opposite counter.

Toji broke the silence. “You’re up late.”

Geto gave a faint smile. “You too.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Toji said. “Too many voices in my head tonight - even when it’s quiet.”

Geto nodded once. “Yeah. Feels like the house keeps breathing after everyone stops talking.”

For a while, neither spoke. The hum of the fridge, the faint static from a monitor left on somewhere down the hall - the kind of background noise that fills the gaps when words run out.

Toji finally said, “You and Gojo’ve known each other a long time, huh?”

“Since college,” Geto replied. “Before all this.”

“Before the cameras,” Toji said. Not a question.

Geto looked down into his glass. “Back when silence wasn’t something we feared.”

That made Toji glance up - studying him, not with curiosity but recognition. He’d seen that tone before, in fighters who talked about old sparring partners, the ones they’d never quite stopped missing.

He said quietly, “You care about him.”

Geto didn’t answer right away. His hand tightened slightly around the glass. “I don’t know what that means anymore,” he said finally. “But yeah. I do.”

Toji leaned back, arms crossed. “Then you already know it’s not about fixing him.”

Geto looked up, surprised by the gentleness in his voice. “No?”

“No,” Toji said. “You just stay. People like him… they don’t need saving. Just someone who doesn’t flinch when they break a little.”

Geto let out a quiet breath - half a laugh, half surrender. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“Maybe once,” Toji said. “Didn’t end well.”

The silence that followed was heavy, but not uncomfortable. It had weight - the kind that came from two men who’d already seen enough of the world to stop pretending.

Toji stood after a while, stretching, ready to leave. “You should get some rest, Suguru.”

“I will,” Geto said, but his voice was distant - eyes flicking toward the faint light still glowing under Gojo’s door down the hall.

Toji paused at the doorway. “For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “he’s lucky. Most people don’t get someone who stays after the storm.”

Geto smiled faintly - small, fatigued, but genuine. “Maybe I’m lucky too.”

Toji gave a slow nod, then walked out, leaving only the sound of his footsteps fading down the hall.

Geto stayed behind, alone in the soft glow of dawn filtering through the blinds. He set his glass down, looked out at the faint reflection of himself in the window.

He whispered, barely audible, “Don’t burn out yet, Satoru.”

The camera lingered on his reflection - calm, weary, honest.
Then it faded to black.