1: fate is fickle ; gojo satoru
summary when satoru breaks off your engagement, you understand and accept it. but when he marries someone else, you don't understand because he didn't want to be tied down.
warnings not much tbh,, just swearing, satoru being an ass, mention of family death, family drama, bad parents, and breakups, not proofread
a/n made a new account because the gojo brainrot is so deep i wanted to start a multichap, mega-angst fic lol
You stood under the silver luminescence of a crescent moon on your balcony, fingers curled around the neck of a wine glass that’s contents were dissolving into your bloodstream a lot slower than you wished. You didn’t expect anyone to walk through the looming windows behind you and condemn you for disappearing from the meeting because—in your mind—you’d done everything that was expected of you: sit there, look pretty, and occasionally nod your head whenever your mother speaks and voices her opinion.
It was rather funny, though, because your mother had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. When your father decided to kick the bucket seven months ago, he’d left your mother dealing with the remnants of his problems he wasn’t able to solve in his lifetime. Yesterday, your mother had to finally meet with the stockbroker as her grieving period was officially over and today, your father’s advisor advised her to have the meeting with the Gojo family your father set up before his death.
You had assumed it was niceties, a sense of normalcy after losing a bigshot businessman between two powerful families. You were wrong. Twenty-seven minutes into the dinner, Gojo Takayashi throws his wine glass against the wall, staining the clean sheen of white paint a horrifying shade of crimson that looked like what the walls would truly be painted with were this dinner not to go the man’s way.
“I need this company back,” he’d said, a lilt of rage coating his voice as he did his very best to not do something that would warrant him being kicked out. His wife, Aya, merely looked down to scan her manicured nails and took a large gulp of her wine, then sneakily took a sip from her flask (that obviously contained something much stronger) you’d caught a glimpse of.
You’d pursed your lips, a melancholic sigh leaving your lips as you inspected the damage on the wall. Knowing your mother, she’d have somebody come in by tonight to fix it.
“And you can have it back, as I told you.” Your mother evidently rolled her eyes as she replied to the man, jaw gritted.
“I am not emptying my entire wallet to buy my own company!”
Your mother, much to the eldest Gojo's ire, let his statement simmer and marinate in the inexplicably thick air of tension and continued chewing down the last bit of her food.
Nobody dared to talk, even your grandmother who stuck to clicking her heels against the linoleum floors. You’d decided to skip out on dessert, creating some measly excuse of a stomach ache that nobody believed but didn’t deign to respond to. You didn’t think you could get away with both families not noticing the tension between you and the Gojo’s youngest, but the elders truly gave you a run for your money because you went almost the entirety of dinner without having to speak to Satoru. Keyword being almost.
You couldn’t be childish and spill the red wine over his obnoxious, perfect-fitting white shirt like his father spilled over your walls because that would most likely start the next war were his family to see such blatant disrespect. But, when you felt his presence behind you in the balcony, you knew you had free reign and you could, in fact, be childish.
“Hey.” His voice was soft, so soft that you almost forgot how the last time he’d spoken to you his voice had run through and sliced your chest like a knife. “Dinner’s over so—”
You cut him off and said, “Then go home, Gojo.”
Not Satoru. Not ‘Toru. Just Gojo. You were sure he couldn’t be the tiniest bit affected by the subtle (glaringly obvious) jab, but it felt good for more than a millisecond to reclaim some thin shreds of your dignity. You wanted to crane your neck to gaze at his reaction, to see if there was a reaction in the first place but you knew if you looked back, he’d be the one seeing a crochet of emotions weaving over yours.
“You look good, Y/N,” he said, completely ignoring your disinterest in the conversation. Of course, you looked good. You knew that. But why did he have to say it?
“Can’t say the same for you.” Lie. You intended to have more bite in the words, but they came out almost emotionless.
You looked down at your waist as you heard him shuffle behind you and his hands reached out to clutch at the metal railing in front of you, arms almost brushing against your waist. His fingers curled, and it gave you a chance to see the ring on his finger. You took in a shuddered breath as the sandalwood and slightly musky scent of his cologne snaked their way to your nostrils, entirely taking you back to the times when you fell asleep to that scent and had it floating around you nearly all the time. You hated him. You hated him because the way he let out a small, barely audible chuckle at your inhale, you knew that he knew exactly what was going through your mind.
“I just—I want to talk about everything, Y/N.”
When Gojo Satoru broke up with you, it wasn’t poetic nor was it something for the movies.
When Gojo Satoru broke up with you, you couldn’t respond with prettily crafted words to make him reconsider or, in fact, respond at all. Your friends always told you that you had a way with words, and you believed you did, too, because you were hardly ever afraid of speaking your mind. However, when Gojo Satoru broke up with you, your mind most likely short-circuited because all you did was stare at the deep sea you were sure resided within his eyes.
His voice was unwavering, or maybe it wavered and you were simply too gone to notice it, when he said, “I think we moved too fast, Y/N. I don’t think I’m ready to be tied down for life, honestly.”
When he opened with words as hard-hitting as those, how could he have given you any more closure? What could you have asked him to make him stay? He was the one who got down on one knee in the rooftop restaurant he’d rented out for the night and gave you a perfectly mesmerizing speech before he pulled out a maroon velvet box. He was the one who assured you that both your families would be okay with this—that they’d finally accept your relationship as a genuine one instead of as a fling between two twenty-something-year-olds who have nothing better to do with their time.
You thought about how ecstatic your father would’ve been once he realized his little princess was getting married. Your mother would probably squeal in excitement before running herself ragged with the wedding preparations. You weren’t sure about his parents, though. Your families always had a moderately decent relationship, decent enough that Satoru’s father signed over their shared ownership of their company to hers after the Satoru’s began being involved in legal issues that threatened the company’s image. But you did know that despite the companionship, Satoru’s parents were difficult. They were sheltered people that knew nothing of how to treat their kid except what they’d learned from their own parents, and that was why Satoru hardly ever let himself feel too much over their words and demands. It didn’t cut deep for him because he knew they didn’t know any better.
All of that didn’t matter anymore, though, because Satoru had asked for the family heirloom engagement ring back with shaky, hesitating hands. You wanted to laugh and cry because he’d said, “I don’t want my parents to notice it’s missing, just in case they check.
How were you meant to know that after three months, you’d be hearing from Suguru that Satoru was engaged to Kimura Hana and she was wearing that wedding ring?
Suguru didn’t blame you when you got the idea that he broke it off with you because he wanted to marry her—docile, do-no-wrong Hana that you weren’t even aware he’d met—and he let you go along with that idea. You tore apart the rhinestone-studded invitation that your mother handed to you, a sad look gleaming in her eyes when your teeth dug into your lip at the sight. You cleaned up the strayed pink jewels that fell off from the thick paper and threw them in the trash, though you kept finding several of them in every nook and cranny of your room for the next month.
It was a horrid feeling, seeing the heavy cursive inviting you to the wedding of Gojo Satoru and Kimura Hana. Inviting you, your name in just a small font at the top when it should’ve been next to his. In the middle.
You called him a week after receiving the invitation, words you should’ve spoken in the car heavy on your tongue waiting to be let out.
“Hey!” You’d heard the chipper, upbeat voice of a woman through the speaker of your phone and your fingers loosened their grip enough that it fell onto your blanket with a soft thud. “Who is this?”
“Hana?” Him. His voice. It was hardly close enough for you to fully make out it was him speaking, but you’d heard the lilt of his voice you’d memorized over three years and it would’ve been difficult not to recognise it. “Who is it?”
She hummed, as though she forgot you were still on the line. “I don’t know, it’s an unknown number.”
You heard him scramble for the phone, and heard when it pulled away from her ears. “I told you not to pick up calls from—”
The line went dead, and it seemed as though a part of you died with it, too.
Maybe it was silly that what hurt the most out of everything—even hearing the girl who he’d picked’s voice—was the fact that he deleted your number. It wasn’t news that Satoru had found somebody else, but to know that he had erased nearly every fragment of his life from yours when the movie ticket of your first date was hung safely on the corkboard above your desk hurt. You were still finding pieces of his wedding invitation in the parts of your room the housekeeper hadn’t reached, and he didn’t even have any trace of you left on his phone.
When you went on your second date, he showed you the list of his contacts on his phone to prove he only had a small list of twenty-eight numbers saved. He told you he only kept the phone numbers of people who mattered. At that moment, it was funny that he’d said the words, verbatim, “I only keep phone numbers that matter to me.” It was also a warming feeling when you noticed your name amongst them.
Two months into your relationship, he’d told you in the midst of conversation that he saved your best friend, Reina’s number because he felt it was important.
Well, you couldn’t do anything. You felt as though him saying he didn’t want to be tied down was enough closure for you to come to terms with it. It made sense, too, in a twisted way that did hurt you because commitment wasn’t easy for many people and Satoru had fallen prey to that mentality. What you couldn’t come to terms with was how he’d gotten engaged three months after your breakup. And now, she was picking up calls for him and asking you who you were when you were one of the few people that reached his phone.
It hadn’t made sense, not one bit. But you only had the tattered bits of dignity left in you to not make yourself seem weak in front of the person who’d given you the carpet to be vulnerable upon then abruptly snatched it from under your feet. Even if you wanted to.
You were sure the wedding was a gorgeous, over-the-top, once in a lifetime procession. That was one of the many reasons that you didn’t go: it was once in a lifetime. And although people remarry very often around the world, they only have one first wedding. One first kiss as a wedded person. One first night of married bliss. You didn’t want to think that Satoru and Hana would separate because that was, in every way, a devilish thing for someone to even imagine but you were assured by your friends that it was completely valid for you to want him to hurt after what he did.
You didn’t grow the guts to tell them it was because you wished it would be you who he remarried.
If you couldn’t be his first, you weren’t sure you wouldn’t settle for being his second.
Satoru’s father went to prison not long after the wedding and that, finally, cut off nearly every form of companionship between your family and theirs. Your father had begun talking down on his father’s name after that, and you weren’t sure why and you didn’t ask because you couldn’t stomach speaking of anybody related to Satoru. Every trace of Satoru’s name vanished from your household, and you believed that was destiny’s way of offering you a chance to start anew because Satoru had. With Hana.
“We should meet Suguru soon,” Reina had said, and you knew she was right. You’d cut off contact with Suguru, albeit slowly and subtly enough that he forlornly caught onto the hints and crept out the door of your life completely. But that didn’t mean it was closed; neither of you held bad blood for one another, and you knew that he understood.
You declined, wanting to live in the prolonged moment of life that had nothing to do with Satoru.
The next, and only time, you’d seen Satoru in person was a completely miscalculated and chance encounter even the most highly-regarded fortune teller couldn’t have predicted. You had been in the bathroom of the club you, Reina, and your other friends went to nearly every weekend, when you heard a small squeal of recognition coming from the door next to the sinks. You didn’t need to do anything and were merely waiting for Reina to finish using the bathroom while you reapplied your lipgloss.
“I know you! You’re Y/N from the… L/N family? My husband’s father works with yours.”
You craned your neck to the side, and were met with a delightfully sweet smile coming from one of the largest banes of your existence.
You gave her a short, curt, once-over before you met her eyes and forced yourself to reply. “Yeah, and you are?”
She looked a bit shaken at your indifference and lack of recognition. You could only imagine how awkward she felt after deigning you with a bubbly greeting. “I’m—well, I’m Gojo Hana now, I guess.” She giggled, though the humor was hardly there behind it. It seemed as though she was scraping any and every corner to lessen the tension of the interaction. You didn’t care, though, because your mind was reeling at the idea that his wife didn’t even know you and Satoru dated for three years.
“Are you fucking—are you serious?” Reina appeared next to you, and you hadn’t even noticed the click of her heels as she’d walked out of the stall. You reached out a hand and placed it on her forearm to stop her from asking the question that was lingering in your mind, too. “Your husband only tell you that their fathers work together?”
You gritted your teeth. “They don’t work together, actually, since Mr. Takayashi is…”
In prison, the words went unsaid but were still communicated through the neon haze of the bathroom lights.
“Well, that’s all I know. I’m sorry?” You almost felt bad for Hana because she was clearly clueless. A part of you wanted to mock her, say that he was mine first. But she could instantly rebut that by saying, he’s mine now. And you would lose that pissing contest. So, you kept your mouth shut.
“Alright, sweetie,” Reina responded, giving her a wide berth, catching a hint of your thoughts and turning around to wash her hands.
You blinked. “It was nice meeting you,” you said with no sweetness and kindness she offered you.
Hana took that as her cue and mumbled it back before she scurried off to leave, completely forgetting why she had to go to the bathroom in the first place.
“Man, she’s something.” Reina whistled through her teeth once the sound of the door shutting reverberated off the walls.
“Isn’t that right,” you murmured, attempting to hold yourself from letting your thoughts drift into ones that could get your mind racing at 200 miles per hour. “Never thought I’d have to see her, though.”
When you and Reina walked out of the bathroom and sat down at the table with some of your friends—the others presumably on the dance floor—you couldn’t help but let your eyes wander to find Hana in the crowd. And you immediately regretted it when you did, because she was at the bar, tucked between a pair of jean-clad thighs you knew all too well. She seemed to be speaking to Satoru, and a hand reached back to the nape of his neck as he hung onto every word she spoke and you felt your stomach twist into small, ugly knots at the sight. His neck turned around instantly, and his eyes immediately found yours, and you attempted to look away. You really, really wanted to. But that was the first time he’d looked at you in a year and three months.
Your throat clogged up, and though he was far away under the dimmed red lights shining from the large, obnoxious signs near the bottles, you itched to speak to him. His shiny white hair was a soft shade of crimson under the lights—you’d always point it out to him, how his hair looked exactly a solid color whenever he was underneath a shaded light.
His lips curled slightly when he looked at you and his nose scrunched up into what you assumed was anger for treating his wife with such animosity. But the small moment of staring at what once could’ve been—at what once was—ended when he blinked and turned to meet her eyes again, and a healed fragment of your heart cracked again.
