"Cut the crap, you berk!"
Satoru faltered. He hesitated for a second, before he shrugged and dropped his act. He straightened his back, losing the hunch of the old man even though he still looked like him. He looked at her with genuine interest now.
"Okay, you got me," Satoru said, his normal voice returning. "What gave it away? I thought the transformation was perfect."
The old woman, Nihility, leaned back and pulled the hand crank which raised the upper side of her bed. "Arthur is a clumsy, noisy fool. Whenever he walks into my room, or any other person's room; he bumbles. And the first thing he does, every single time, is grab my hand like I'm made of glass and kiss my forehead until I get annoyed."
She looked at the lilies in the vase. "And those flowers. He only brings lilies because I told him decades ago that I hate them. He leaves them there just to spite me, waiting for me to complain so he can feel like things are normal."
She let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Then he would whisper in my ear, 'Are you dying yet? Please tell me you are'. He's a wicked old coot, but he only says it because he's terrified of being alone. He usually follows it up by crying like a child about how the world is always out to get us and how he wants to live forever in a cottage out in the quaint side on Hampstead."
She stared hard at Satoru, and he stared back. The silence lasted only a moment.
Satoru leaned against the wall and shrugged. "Guilty. I guess I'm a bad actor then."
"So," Nihility rasped. "Where is he? Did his heart finally stop?"
Satoru went quiet for a second and decided to just tell her honestly. "He got hit by a car outside. I picked up the flowers and figured I'd finish the delivery on a whim."
Nihility closed her eyes for a moment. She didn't cry or scream; she just looked tired.
"A car," she whispered, her voice sounding even thinner than before.
She opened her eyes and looked at Satoru again. "You can change back now, you know. Or, whatever you actually look like under that mask. It's unsettling watching my husband's face talk with a stranger's voice."
Satoru shrugged. "Fair enough."
The air rippled for a fraction of a second, and the elderly man vanished. In his place stood an eleven-year-old boy with startling white hair and sunglasses.
He leaned back against the hospital wall, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Nihility didn't flinch. She didn't gasp or call for a nurse. She just looked him up and down with a tired sort of curiosity.
"Better," she croaked. "Though you're a bit young to be playing God, aren't you?"
"I'm not young as I appeared to be," Satoru chuckled, but then raised an eyebrow. "You're not shocked? Most people would be screaming or at least asking for an explanation."
"I've lived for eighty-eight years, boy," she replied, her voice steady despite her frailty. "For the most part, I spent those years with Arthur, and we've seen things. Much stranger things have happened in this world than a boy performing… magic tricks."
Satoru nodded in understanding. He was still in the process of getting used to living in this world even after eleven years, can't blame him for asking that.
"And Arthur?" Satoru asked, tilting his head. "I just told you he died. You seem... pretty calm for someone who just lost their husband."
Nihility looked at the lilies in the vase, her expression softening into something weary but at peace. "When you get to be my age, and your mind starts to drift like mine does, death isn't a surprise anymore. It's just an old friend who finally decided to knock."
She let out a small sigh. "Arthur and I... we talked about this. We've had our time. We've seen the world change from horse carriages to people flying in metal. If he's gone, he's just waiting for me on the other side of the lane. Probably still holding those dreadful flowers."
Satoru's gaze drifted to the clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed. He scanned the neat, clinical handwriting: Dementia. Irregular Sleep-Wake Rhythm Disorder.
"So, you've got dementia, huh," Satoru said, strolling over to the side of the bed. "I thought patients with that condition forget things, but you seem like someone who knows her memories quite well."
"It's dementia, not full on going off the trolley," Nihility huffed, her lips twitching with a trace of her younger self. "I might forget what century it is, names of my children, or… when was the last time I woke up and what had happened. But the things that matter? The way Arthur smells like rain and old paper? Those accursed lilies? Those are carved into the bone. My life is just… scrambled."
"Scrambled," Satoru repeated, leaning his elbows on the bedrail. He looked down at her with a lopsided grin. "I think I know a thing or two about that, not before, but I sure am feeling 'scrambled' before I arrived here. Just this morning, I spent it trying to force this world to work the way I want it to, but it's like the universe is speaking a language I don't know. It's annoying."
Nihility looked at him and let out a dry, wheezing laugh. "You're a weird kid. You talk like you own the place, but you look like you're still trying to figure out how to walk."
Satoru raised an eyebrow. "Try to figure out how to walk? Please. Back where I'm from, I was the strongest there was at my time. Honestly, I'm probably the strongest person in this world, too."
She wasn't impressed. "The strongest? I don't think so. From where I'm sitting, you look pretty weak."
Satoru's smirk didn't leave, but his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. "Weak? That's a first. I could level this whole hospital in two seconds if I felt like it. Power isn't the problem here, Nihility."
Nihility paused for a moment at that.
"I'm not talking about breaking things, beasty," she eventually said, giving him a nickname that made Satoru's eyebrow twitch. "You may got all those teeth and claws or not, I don't know, but I perhaps know something you don't regarding the title of 'the strongest'. Throughout my whole life, individuals that usually claim to be such, in my opinion, are just trashing around in a cage they themselves built…"
Satoru let out a short laugh. "Beasty? Really? And what cage? I'm the freest person on the planet."
Nihility looked deeply into Satoru's eyes, like really, really looked. In that one instance, she seemed to see right through his bravado. Even though they had just met, she watched him with the quiet, weary knowing of an old friend who has seen things he hasn't, which made him raise a brow.
He was about to speak, but she spoke the second he opened his mouth.
"You're making a fundamental mistake, beasty," Nihility rasped, her voice cutting through his attempt to interrupt. "You're so focused on the horizon that you've forgotten to look at the dirt under your feet."
Satoru's face twitched, not expecting that. He stayed silent and unconsciously leaned in.
"You call yourself 'the strongest,' but you're having a hard time, aren't you?" She smiled, and it wasn't a kind smile, it was the smile of someone who had survived everything the world could throw at her. "I don't know who you are or what you can do. But, from what I can see in your eyes, you're looking at this world through a lens that doesn't fit anymore. You're trying to force the stars to align with a map that belongs to a different sky."
Satoru's fingers tightened on the bedrail. The way she described it, using a map for a different sky, hit exactly where his frustration had been festering for years.
"The truly strong don't need to force anything," Nihility continued, her voice growing thin as she drifted toward the edge of her wakefulness. "They don't stand above the world, fighting to keep it at arm's length. They let the world in. The strong struggled because they're too busy being an 'exception' to realize that they're part of the 'rule' too."
She reached a shaky hand toward the lilies, her fingers brushing the petals. "My Arthur... he was the strongest man I knew. Not because he could break things. But because when the world changed, he changed with it. He didn't fight the wind; he learned how to breathe it."
She looked him dead in the eye one last time. "Stop trying to translate the world Beasty, if you hadn't already. Just listen to it. You can't see what's right in front of you if you're too busy looking for what's missing."
Satoru stood frozen.
The ambient noise of the hospital, the distant hum of a generator, the squeak of a nurse's shoes outside the door, the vibration of the oxygen pipes, it all suddenly felt... different.
He had been looking for 'Cursed Energy' in a world made of something else.
His Six Eyes flared behind his glasses. For the first time, he stopped trying to categorize the energy as 'foreign' and just let it hit his brain raw.
"Let the world in," Satoru whispered to himself, his lopsided grin returning, but this time, it was filled with a realization that made his skin crawl with excitement.
Nihility's eyes closed, her breathing evening out into that irregular, deep sleep.
"Thanks for the lecture, Nihility," Satoru murmured. He reached out and rested his hands over hers as a sign of respect and gratitude. "I think I finally figured out why the view was so blurry."
"I'm gonna visit you often from now on…"
It's going to take time for him to fully digest what he just learned about himself today. While it didn't directly concern his Sling Ring problem, it does help indirectly and more in an aspect about himself too.
…
[ London Sanctum ]
Sol Rama and Wong stood in the main foyer, surrounded by towering bookshelves and ancient relics. They were deep in conversation, their faces grim as they discussed a series of spiritual disturbances reported near the Hong Kong Sanctum.
"The seal in Hong Kong is holding for now," Wong said, crossing his arms. "But if these unexplained surge continues, we'll need to send reinforcements from—"
He stopped mid-sentence as the heavy doors of the Sanctum creaked open. Satoru walked in, his head tilted down as he stared intently at the floor, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He seemed to be counting his steps, his expression uncharacteristically distant.
"Where have you been, Master Gojo?" Sol Rama asked, adjusting his robes as he watched the eleven-year-old approach. "You missed the midday briefing."
"The hospital," Satoru replied absentmindedly, not even looking up.
Wong's brow furrowed in genuine concern. "The hospital? Why did you go there? Are you injured?"
Satoru stopped walking. He stood still for a heartbeat before snapping out of his thoughts. He looked up, his signature cheeky grin spreading across his face as he adjusted his sunglasses.
"Oh, that? I just went to get a check-up," Satoru chirped, his voice full of its usual energy. "And apparently, I've got a condition. You guys curious what it is?"
Wong and Sol Rama exchanged a quick worried glance before looking back at him.
"What is it?" they asked in unison.
"Well," Satoru said, leaning forward with an air of mock-seriousness. "Apparently, I have a chronic condition where the more I age, the more handsome I become. It's quite serious."
"..."
Both sorcerers stared deadpan at Satoru, the silence in the hall stretching into a long, painful moment of disbelief.
Satoru's grin only widened.
"Don't worry," he added, waving a hand dismissively. "It isn't contagious."
He strolled past them toward the library to do some things, leaving behind Wong and Sol Rama standing there silently on the foyer of the Sanctum for a good few minutes.
Wong let out a long, weary sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"I was really hoping for a severe case of brain damage," Wong muttered, his voice flat. "At least that would explain the nonsense that comes out of his mouth."
Sol Rama nodded slowly, his gaze still fixed on the empty hallway where Satoru had been. "Or perhaps a temporary vow of silence. One can only dream, Master Wong."
With a final, shared look of exasperation, the two masters turned back to their discussion.
…
[Author's Notes]: Made a fixed schedule on chapter releases:
Daily chapter drop (One each): Monday → Sunday.
Powerstone Goal (When including the DCD and this goal is met, there'll be two chapters released when Sunday arrives): 1,000 Powerstones