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marmot567 · 11 days

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bitter orange — okkotsu yūta [2/3]

pairings. okkotsu yūta + f! reader/original character (main); past!orimito rika + f!reader; past!okkotsu yūta + orimito rika word count. 3.5k previous | next

PART TWO: sour grapes

You visit her grave often.

We’re sorry. She was too young. We knew how much she meant to you. Although you knew they didn’t actually care, because they never liked her in the first place. None of them mattered, none of it mattered. You stay in your room most days, walking home by yourself all the time. Yūta stopped talking to you after a couple weeks, stopped waiting for you at the gates to walk home together. You were fine with that; he’s got the ring, you don’t. Eventually, you stopped seeing him all together—it’s as if he disappeared along with her. Good, you hate him less that way.

In your first year of middle school, you start to see… them: deformed and grotesque, a glimpse of unimaginable nightmares that live among the shadows. They were smaller when you were younger, hiding away in small spots and silent and anxious but watching—always watching. They look bigger now, and, as you learn quickly, are very dangerous. Nobody else sees them, though, so you’ve always chalked it up to hallucinations.

But one day, a mysterious man with white hair visits you, calls himself Gojō Satoru and says he’s a “jujutsu sorcerer,” whatever that is. Cursed spirits, he calls them, born from humanity’s negative emotions. A sorcerer’s job is to “exorcize” them—so like a shaman but not really. What’s even funnier? He says you’re one of them—these sorcerers, that there’s this school who’ll train you to fight them, where you’ll meet others just like yourself.

Sometimes, you think of her whenever they’re around. They’re ugly and loud, always spewing indecipherable sentences and crying in the shadows, and they aren’t pretty, but you think of her anyways. It’s a disservice, you think, to have such thoughts, not when she had been so kind and beautiful, and these curses are so clearly not. They don’t have her long brown hair shining under the sun, don’t have her sparkling brown eyes crinkled in delight. Don’t have her smile either, upturned and sweet, with the little beauty mark on the right. And worst of all, they don’t have her voice, a beautiful melody in comparison to their unpleasant wailing. She wouldn’t have sounded like that.

You visit her grave often, but she’s never there. The ichigo daifuku rot on the cement, then get cleaned up after a day or two.

Okkotsu Yūta looks too close to death.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, hands clutching onto his bag like a sad attempt at a lifeline. When he stands, he visibly slouches, eyebags darker than his unruly hair. His head hangs like he has a noose around his neck, and if you look a little closer, his shadow consumes, almost like a sentient being, an insatiable darkness pooling under his feet. “I’m sorry.”

Funnily enough, it’s comforting.

“I didn’t do it for you,” you say, adjusting the strap of your bag as you walk ahead. He almost stumbles from trying to catch up, but falls within a steady pace a few meters behind.

“... Oh, okay. Um. Still, thanks.”

“I did it because they were being annoying.”

“... Yeah.”

You turn around to face him. “Are you embarrassed?”

He pauses. “What…?”

“Are you embarrassed because you were saved by a girl?”

He blinks, confused, with his wide blue eyes staring back at you. Then, he flushes, a dust of color finally appearing on his pale skin, “N—no! It’s just… we just haven’t talked in a while, so…”

“So, you don’t wanna talk?”

“No… I—... No, I do,” he stammers, as if trying to find his balance in the world. Gone was the energetic Okkotsu Yūta you knew from your childhood, who used to be stricken with adoration for his since-then-dead-fiancée, and now reduced to a gloomy, unsettling, lonely boy who gets bullied in side empty classrooms in his third year of junior high.

He finally catches up with you, having taken advantage of you gradually slowing down. He’s too close, you think, but make no move to push him away. He continues following you to somewhere you don’t even know where, perhaps home, but he follows you regardless. He’s too close, you think, but make no move to push him away. It’s not so bad to only hear your footsteps and the occasional car or two, even if you were making up most of the initial conversation; it’s a scenario that’s comforting, much like the shadow that trails after him. Though you don’t exactly know why it has that effect on you, not when it’s just Okkotsu Yūta—bane of your existence Okkotsu Yūta since you were nine years old. Why one glance at his shadow is like salvation for you is something completely beyond the realm of understanding, but it isn’t as if—

You pause. Oh.

It’s Rika, isn’t it?

“... Your knuckles are bleeding,” Yūta comments quietly, looking down at your hand. You both come to a stop, observing the scratch and cuts on your knuckles before he takes it in his grasp, inspecting it further. “I’m sorry,” he says, annoyingly guilty.

“Don’t apologize,” you say.

“Sorry—...”

He keeps his mouth shut.

You sort of understand now, why he has avoided everyone since then, why he doesn’t fight back even when it hurts, why he always looks like a dead man on the last thread of survival, eyes hollow and skin cold and pale, with darkness following him and darkness consuming him. Whether it be from divine punishment or an unfortunate mishap, at the wrong place at the wrong time, it is clear that Okkotsu Yūta is being haunted by a vengeful cursed spirit, because of course he is.

Of course he turns your first love into a curse.

He drops your hands, adjusts the straps of his bag, and continues walking, unknowing of your revelation. You watch him for a moment, your eyes dropping to the heavy shadow that encompasses him. That heavy, familiar shadow of his—

… And you go with the impossible.

You take his hand in yours.

There’s a pause after that, a sudden change in the air that makes the hairs on your necks stand up, a chill go down your spines, and you think you hear a low growl in the distance, a warning you do not obey. Yūta doesn’t look at you, as if he’s afraid something entirely out of his control will happen, a scene he’s seen countless times already, and yet he doesn’t let go. He grips your hand tightly, instead—afraid and unsure. For you, maybe? You don’t exactly know.

But a few moments pass, and nothing happens. So he relaxes just a bit, heaving out a shaky exhale and then he’s finally looking at you, tired eyes meeting your firm gaze.

Something clicks, then. Like the last piece of a puzzle is found.

And for the first time since Rika’s death, you walk home with Okkotsu Yūta.

It becomes a routine. You’d meet by the gates of your school, say nothing to each other, and start walking. After you cross the first street, you’d grab his hand and continue on without a word.

He adapts to it quickly, doesn’t even flinch or pull away. He hasn’t said anything about it, and neither have you. It feels incessant to do so, not when it feels… right. Like a gap has been filled somewhere in your heart, so close to making you whole, but so far it hasn’t really been enough; like you need more, but you’re also fine with this, whatever it is. Rika has been silent this whole time, an anvil of obsession resting on his shoulders that it's almost a good thing; she’s always been a jealous girl, so it’s nothing short of a miracle that she hasn’t even ripped you to shreds just yet. She knows you know she’s there, watching you—she has all the power to take you away from him, and you’d let her. You’d let her do anything to you if it comes down to it, really.

Yūta reeks of death, still, but you don’t mind anymore. It’s Rika, and that’s all that matters. You know it’s her because who else can it be? If Yūta’s being haunted by a cursed spirit then you would’ve long since exorcized it the moment you saw him—but who was the one who saw her get hit by a truck right in front of him, saw her bleed to death as she called out his name in her last breath? Who was the one who screamed out her name, begging for her to come back, to not leave him and was traumatized to hell and back at the sight of her small body crushed to nothing, the sound of her bones cracking underneath the pressure?

Who was the one who turned her into a curse?

You hate him for it, sometimes, for keeping her away from you, for not telling you. She’s a cursed spirit—but does he even know that? Does he know that there are people in this world capable of eradicating her? Does he hate it? To have her attached to him like a conjoined twin, so inseparable it makes you drown in your own envy, the green-eyed monster who has risen from the depths of your heart now that she is here. Is he afraid of her? Of what she has become? Of what he has made of her?

You aren’t. You love her, after all.

But he’s the one she haunts, because she loves Okkotsu Yūta. He wears the ring even now, buried deep under his shirt, and connected to his heart. You’re close enough to rip it away from him, leave him bleeding with nothing to hold onto the memory of her. But you don’t do it, even though you still hate him just a little bit without really ever doing anything about it; your heart is not so fickle to forget what he had stolen from you.

“What highschool are you going to?”

You slow down. “Why are you asking?”

He looks at the ground. “I don’t know—I just wanna know, I guess. Have you taken any entrance exams yet?”

“I’ve already decided where to go.”

“Oh… to where?”

“Still here, in Tokyo. It’s a religious private school, but it’s all the way up the mountains.”

He pauses. “I didn’t know you were religious.”

“It’s Buddhist.”

He’s silent for a while, thoughtful. And then he looks back at you, dark eyes boring into your own. “Did they give you a scholarship, or something like that?”

“Something like that,” you pick up the pace, and he’s forced to follow.

“Is it related to kendo? I didn’t know that religious private schools offer that kind of scholarship—especially those by the mountain-side… Isn’t that too rural?”

“Why do you think of kendo?”

His eyes flick over to your shoulder, where your cursed weapon usually sits in lieu of your school bag. This time it’s absent, since it’s mostly useless now that you’ve figured out your technique. “You always walk around with this long bag—like it could fit a shinai or something. Isn’t that what it is?”

“I guess so,” you don’t elaborate further, he doesn’t ask anymore questions.

Truthfully, you don’t know what to do. You’re elated at the fact that Rika has always been here, although silent and brooding and definitely now a dangerous entity capable of destroying a whole nation, perhaps even a Special Grade, what with all that cursed energy bursting forth from the seams of Yūta’s shadows that you can now sense from a mile away, but at the same time you find that you don’t really care that a powerful cursed spirit has been plaguing this city for years—not when it’s her.

All you know is that you don’t want to be the one to exorcize her.

You probably won’t be the one to do it anyway.

A month before graduation, Yūta tells you that he doesn’t want to say goodbye. As he speaks, you notice that his grip on your hand feels a little tighter than usual.

“Why not?” you ask calmly, though you think you’re doing a bad job at being nonchalant.

You don’t wanna leave Rika, either. She hasn’t shown herself to you yet, mostly remaining somewhere within Yūta without a single peep or squeak, but you think it’s better that way. You’ve long since resolved that you’re alright with being near her without actually seeing or confirming if she’s really there, not when you can feel her through Yūta anyway. It’s enough for you.

But he’s not looking at you, instead adamant at finding what’s so interesting about the ground. Somehow, he trusts you enough to guide him as you walk, to look out for poles or signs or walls that could hit him. You don’t exactly know how to feel about that information, so you store it away for another time.

“Okkotsu?” you call when he doesn’t reply.

“Yūta,” he’s looking at you now, hair falling over his dark, blue eyes.

“What?”

“You can call me ‘Yūta’,” he clarifies. “Ume-chan.”

You pause, slowing down to a halt. He gets a few extra steps ahead before he’s forced to stop, looking back at you curiously. Since when had he gotten such confidence? Last month he had just been a bumbling, timid boy, so much so that one misdirected glare from you could send him freezing on the spot.

“Okay,” you breathe out. “Yūta.”

He smiles, giddily, but then the atmosphere darkens just a little bit. He quickly falters at this, smile disappearing almost as fast as it appeared. He grips your hand tighter, looking down at the ground once again.

“Are you scared?” you ask.

He shakes his head weakly, looking up. “No…?”

“You’re lying,” you say.

Yūta looks down again. You wait for him, feel the coldness of his skin, and the slight chill of the weather.

“I want to go with you,” he finally admits. “I don’t wanna go somewhere you’re not.”

And you’re quiet, the silence filled in by the sound of people from the playground just a few miles ahead. Yūta gains the courage to look up to you, to see your reaction, hoping you aren’t too angry even though you hold so much hate in your heart for him. He knows that, at least.

(But you’re holding his hand, aren’t you? You fight his bullies, knuckles red and bruised, even though you don’t need to. You stay with him, even though you don’t have to. You make his life a little bit easier, even if you don’t really want to.)

“Why?” you ask, face betraying nothing, just plain curiosity. “Why do you say that?”

Yūta thinks that maybe he is afraid of her sometimes, even if he doesn’t want to be.

So he says, “It’s quieter when you’re around.”

He must have said something wrong for you to suddenly let go of him.

“I’m sorry—“

But then you take his hand again, not intertwining it, but settling it within yours so he can feel the warmth of your touch, like you never even let go in the first place.

“Don’t apologize,” you command, like you always do.

“… Okay.” And Yūta listens.

You squeeze his hand. He holds on to it tighter, like letting go once again will mean letting you go, and yet he’ll have to do that in a month anyway even if he really wished that isn’t the case.

“You can’t come with me,” you say, like it’s final. “That school… it doesn’t suit you.”

He searches for something in your eyes, and finds nothing. “Why not?”

Because they will kill her, you think. They’ll kill the both of you, and then you’ll be alone forever.

“It just won’t,” you say with finality.

“Okay,” he says, staring at you thoughtfully.

Your available hand reaches out to adjust the scarf around his neck, adjusting it so it hangs more loosely around him instead of tightly like a noose. The teal fabric bunches up in your hand as you move it around, patting it down before you find his dark eyes boring into yours. The spring chill caresses his face gently, softly swaying the unruly spikes of his hair as he watches you tend to him, the way you make him feel like a burden but he doesn’t mind if it's you.

You eventually finish with your work, moving on to continue walking home.

The silence disappears, because Yūta’s heart is too heavy with want.

There’s a few things that happen in your dreams: there’s a bench and a huge cherry blossom tree behind it, petals slowly falling onto the ground and covering it in a mass of light pink. Just a few feet in front of it is a koi pond, filled with differently colored koi that make them seem like a bunch of koinobori instead of the actual thing—black, red, white, yellow, green, and blue koi. You’re sitting on the bench, an unopened box of three ichigo daifuku sitting on your lap as you observe the fish swimming inside the relatively small pond.

It always starts this way when you dream of Rika; things change very little and progress nothing. But you find comfort in it either way, as it remains to be the only way you can see her, deep within your REM sleep where nothing in the world can disrupt it.

She eventually appears from the other side, sitting next to you without a word. When you turn to face her, she’s a bit visually different from the last time you saw her in reality—coming up to your height, her brown hair is just a little bit longer, but instead of her familiar dark blue dress, she wears a normal uniform from a normal high school you hope to get into. In your dreams, Rika has continued growing alongside you, blessed and healthy and happy. In your dreams, Rika is alive.

“You’re so sweet, Ume-chan,” she praises, taking the box of ichigo daifuku you offer her. “You always know what I want!”

Of course you do.

“Anything for you, Rika-chan,” you respond fondly.

She giggles, the soft lilt of her voice like an enchanting melody you’ll never get sick of. You like it. You like this. You like her.

When you take her hand in hers, she doesn’t protest, instead squeezing yours in return as some form of quick reassurance that yes, she’s here, and she’s right next to you. The both of you continue sitting on the bench for who knows how long, staring into the small pond with the colorful koi without uttering a single word—a serene silence that cannot be measured by time passing, every flick of the fish’s tail, the fall of the petals from behind.

Your dreams always start like this, and end like this. It’s not much, but you’ve long since found contentment in what this fantasy can give you, long since convinced yourself that anything is fine as long as you get to see her.

You close your eyes, preparing for the dream to finish up, to miss the warmth of her hand in yours and wake up to another day without her—but it doesn’t end there.

“Ume-chan?” Rika calls, slowly.

Your eyes open. “... Yeah?”

She’s properly facing you now, torso turned to your direction with this impassive expression. You watch her stare at you, mapping out her features, the curve of her nose, the length of her lashes—something, anything that could tell you that this could all be real, that this is not just a dream. That Rika is still alive and not merely a figment of your imagination, stuck behind the bars of your subconsciousness. Because all you are is a liar, and not once were you ever content with just seeing her here.

You just want her back.

Rika brings her palm up to your cheek, caressing your face with her tender touch. “Don’t cry, Ume-chan,” she says in her soft voice.

You didn’t even realize you were.

“I love you, Rika-chan,” you all but practically sob, leaning into her hand. It’s warm, it feels so real. “I love you so much. Please come back to me.”

Rika just smiles, wiping away your tears with her thumb. You can’t breathe, vision foggy from your tears and panic rising in your chest when her figure becomes nothing but a blurry mess in front of you. You reach out to her, knowing deep down that you’re just grabbing onto loose threads but—

Then, you wake up.

Yūta looks at you with wide eyes.

“... You’re bleeding!” he stammers, breath quickening as he stumbles away from you in a fit of fright. “Rika—Rika-chan attacked you…!”

He cowers away into the corner of the classroom, head in his hands, begging the world for nothing else to happen, for Rika not to come out and lunge at you again like she did with all his other bullies, like you’re one of them. Idiot, idiot, idiot Yūta! He should have seen this coming, should have known that nothing will stop Rika from endangering anyone, not even you. He can’t lose someone else again, not her, not you—especially you, he just can’t—

But when Yūta gathers enough courage to see how you’re doing, he can’t fight the surprise that crawls up his throat.

Because you’re sitting there in front of him, fingers gently grazing the nasty gash on your cheek, staring back at him quietly—

And you’re smiling.

#jjk okkotsu #okkotsu yuta x reader #okkotsu yuuta #yuta okkotsu #yuuta okkotsu x reader #yuuta okkotsu smut #jjk x reader #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen #jujustu kaisen #gojo satoru #jjk gojo #jjk scenarios #jjk imagines

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marmot567 · 24 days

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bitter orange — okkotsu yūta [1/3]

pairings. okkotsu yūta + f! reader/original character (main); past!orimito rika + f!reader; past!okkotsu yūta + orimito rika warnings/themes. mentions of death, jealousy, hints of obsession and possession. just a lil dark romance practice (which is barely any dark romance tbh who am i kidding) sprinkled with food motifs but i dont know what im doing im just here for the vibes :P mostly sfw with nsfw themes but nothing sexual bc im too scared to go down that dark path (also no use of y/n bc i started writing with an original name and it unfortunately stuck lawl... can be treated as either or it doesnt matter tbh i cant write anything outside of 2nd person anwyay) word count. 2.8k words nothing too crazy xd playlist. knuckle velvet, ethel cain; velvet ring, big thief; pure, cigarettes after sex; only in the dreams, the marias; be my mistake, the 1975; mary, alex g next

it’s been a long time since i have seen my beloved. the moss has grown on that abetachibana tree

PART ONE: ichigo daifuku

Gojō Satoru tells you that love is the most twisted curse of them all.

He had said it in passing after your first solo mission, right as you were entering the car back to Jujutsu Tech before talking your ear off with his lame jokes. The mission had consisted of exorcizing a curse that had persistently haunted an abandoned apartment complex in Omotesandō, assigned to you by the higher-ups in accordance with your newly promoted rank as a Grade 2 sorcerer, having decided that a Grade 1 was doable enough for someone of your caliber. The curse itself wasn’t anything special, though, only repeating gargled confessions of its love to some ‘Chiyo-chan’—whoever she was—the whole time you were dodging its attacks, which was incredibly annoying. You liked your battles in silence, quick and succinct, but curses make that difficult to achieve.

Gojō muses it could have been a past lover, this Chiyo-chan—its love for her having cursed itself. You didn’t really care. If you keep up the good work, complete your required missions and get another recommendation, you could be ranked a Semi-Grade 1 by your second year, then a Grade 1 by your third and nothing else after that because unless you were someone like Gojō Satoru, then you are capped forever at Grade 1.

“So anyway—snacks you like?” said sorcerer asks, finally done with his previous tale. Something about an old coworker. “Mochi, senbei, or taiyaki? Personally, I'm a mochi ice cream type of guy!”

You look at him.

“Why are you here again?”

“... Is your memory that small, Ume? I was proctoring you,” he tuts, mouth turned downwards. “Congrats on the promotion, by the way.”

You shrug. “Ichigo daifuku is good, I guess.”

He smiles, wryly.

“You’re joking, right?”

The building facing your childhood home had been home to Orimito Rika, an unsuspecting property with a decent front yard and the occasional street cat or two often shooed away by her irate grandmother. “Mean granny,” you’d often call her, the insult drowned out by your hushed giggles as you played with your dolls. Rika wouldn’t say anything about it, wouldn’t dare verbally agree with you, but she would always nod her head down, the corners of her lips turned up too high.

You didn’t particularly hate the old woman, but there was a certain kind of satisfaction to saying it behind her back after all the times you’ve caught her looking at her granddaughter in unbridled scorn, your own little form of revenge. You could never understand how her only remaining family could look at her like that, not when Rika was so beautiful and kind; like the cherry blossoms during spring, falling gently along with the wind. Sure, she could be a little cunning at times, and none of the other kids at school liked her because “something’s odd about her, can’t you just hang out with us instead?”—but that’s what makes her interesting, right?

Rika isn’t weird, she’s pretty, and you’re the bee drawn to her. She’s only older than you by a year, ten instead of nine, but she always played with you, taught you how to make flower crowns at the park, and when you walked home from school she’d always hold your hand. Her smile is blindingly bright, the sound of her voice a song you couldn’t stop listening to. Selfishly, you wish it would always be the two of you together; playing with your dolls, walking home with your hands intertwined.

But when she came back from the hospital, so did Okkotsu Yūta.

You could never see what she saw in him; he was short and just a little bit pathetic, always trailing after her like a lost puppy at first. You could push him off the swing and he'd move on with a sniffle, the kind to give up the plastic shovel even though he desperately needed it to finish his sand castle because he didn’t want to fight a girl. He smiled shyly and hid his hands behind his back, looking at you like he was looking for your approval. Of course, you never gave him the time of day, because it felt like he had stolen Rika—your Rika. It was supposed to be just you and her, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Now there was Okkotsu Yūta, who held Rika’s other hand after school, who took away her attention from you so easily.

“He’s so cute, isn’t he?” she asks often, a light blush dusting her face.

“I guess,” is your reply.

“Ne,” she calls, presenting to you a small, black box. You look at it in apprehension, wincing when she eventually opens it. “What do you think of this ring? It was my mom’s. I’m gonna give this to Yūta-kun, do you think he’ll like it?”

The ring was immensely simple, a silver-colored band with a small diamond in front, glinting under the light. Nevermind the fact that it was too big for a child’s fingers to fit in, Rika presented it to you as if it held all the answers to the world. Although her parents were dead, and she had definitely stolen it from her grandmother’s dresser, the ring spoke full of promise. When she takes it out of the box and lets you inspect it, it feels heavy.

“... You really like him, don’t you, Rika-chan?” you ask, quietly.

Rika looks at the stupid piece of jewelry, painfully smitten.

“Mhm,” she affirms. “I really like Yūta-kun. I want to be with him forever! Of course, I like you too, Ume-chan. You and Yūta-kun are my favorite people in the world!”

You close the box, handing it back to her. When Rika looks at you expectantly, you realize then that you could never bring yourself to take that happiness away from her.

The koinobori flies.

“It’s so pretty!” Rika exclaims, eyes wide and staring up at the sky where the huge, windsock carp moves around. It’s bathed in all sorts of colors—from red to blue to white to green—dancing along the azure expanse in commemoration of Children’s Day. The weather is just right, not too hot nor too cold, and the wind caresses your skin gently, the sun not too harsh. It makes the color of Rika’s hair shine in all the right ways, adds more sparkle in her already bright eyes. She’s wearing a yellow sundress, a nice change from her usual blue one. The cream-colored hat you let her borrow covers her face with the shade, but her smile remains bright and blinding. She looks pretty.

She gives you all of her ichigo daifuku, and shares Yūta’s snacks. She doesn’t even like chimaki.

“Are you sure, Rika-chan?” you ask, looking at the two sweets in your hands.

She beams. “You like them, don’t you?”

You keep them with you until the end of the event.

The day passes by incredibly fast, your little trio having exhausted yourselves from running around the park alongside the other children. Yūta chases Rika around the park, and you watch them squeal and laugh at each other and hold hands. You watch them take a nap under the shade, their pinkies intertwined, and you watch as the ugly color of green blinds your eyesight. You leave them be.

Sometimes, you wish you’re the colorful koinobori flying in the sky. You’d let Rika hold on to you, let her fly and hear her amused laugh as the wind tickles her skin. Sometimes, you wish Yūta slapped the ring away from her hands when she handed it to him. Wish he stomped it on the ground and at the same time stomped on her heart. Wish he didn’t take it with a huge smile and agree that he’d marry her when they get older; he’s not the one who’d wait long lines just to get her the best ichigo daifuku, not the one who’d jump at the other kids when they so much as think of insulting her, and he won’t be the one who’d choose to stay with her when she’s all gray and old cause he’s a boy, and boys would never do that.

Sometimes, you wish he never liked her at all—because he never deserved her in the first place.

Okkotsu Yūta could never love Orimito Rika like you.

He sits beside you at lunch.

Rika’s been bedridden for the whole week, which subsequently ruins your week. Yūta doesn’t seem to mind her absence all that much since he doesn’t see her a lot during classes anyway, but they’re supposed to be engaged. He should always be thinking of her, should be acting as miserable as you even at the unripe age of nine. He looks too okay with her absence when he shouldn’t be.

“What’s this?” you ask, pointing at the small bag of snacks he had placed on the cover of your bento.

“Hm?” he looks up. “Oh, it’s norimaki senbei.”

“... And?” you prod.

He tilts his head. “You don’t want it?”

“... I don’t want it.”

He looks at you thoughtfully.

“But you like them, don’t you?” he asks though he’s acting like he already knows, like you’ll take it regardless of what you say. It’s annoying.

You look at the seaweed-wrapped rice crackers—the stupid norimaki senbei—in mild contempt. “Why are you giving it to me?”

Yūta’s smile is small, knowing. “Because you don’t like sweets.”

You frown.

She’s a sweet girl.

You think of Orimoto Rika like that because it’s true—she smiles sweetly, she speaks sweetly, and she likes sweet things. She tells you that her favorite snack is ichigo daifuku, the very same confection you always begged your parents to buy for you just so you could share them with her. It pays off all the time because then she’d look as sweet as the daifuku itself, her cheeks as red as the fruit within it. She also likes hanami dango, but she doesn’t like the green part because she doesn’t really like the subtle taste of yomogi, so you eat the rest for her because she doesn’t want to waste it. She likes cold tea instead of hot, sweet instead of savory, like yuzu iced tea or bubbly ramune in comparison to the nutty taste of hōjicha. When you go to the store, she always gets the kompeitō with some random anime character on the packaging because those were the “cutest kind of kompeitō,” and Rika likes cute things.

She also likes the color pink, but when you ask her what her favorite color is she’d say it’s blue. It’s blue not because she wears that blue dress all the time, but blue because it’s the color of Okkotsu Yūta’s eyes, bright and round and always looking at her. Rika likes it that way—she likes how Okkotsu Yūta is always looking at her with his blue eyes, unwavering and full of adoration for her and her only.

You think Orimito Rika is a sweet girl, but sometimes she’s more than that. Sometimes, when the other kids get brave enough to drag you away from her, tell you to stop hanging out with her, they say it’s because Rika doesn’t like anyone else but Okkotsu Yūta.

Sometimes, when they tell you that, you wonder if Rika liked you at all, way before Okkotsu Yūta came into the picture.

But most of the time, you don’t really care. Even if Rika didn’t like you, you’d still like her. Even if she’d only have her eyes set on Okkotsu Yūta with his stupid blue eyes and his stupid norimaki senbei and stupid chimaki that he shared with her on the fifth of May, you’d still like her because she’s Rika—beautiful, kind, and wonderful Rika.

She has things she doesn’t like, too, such as other people but never Yūta-kun or Ume-chan! She likes it when people compliment her and praise her looks and give her free stuff like ramune or ichigo daifuku or Sailor Moon-themed kompeitō from the store, but sometimes she tells you that she dislikes this certain group of girls from Yūta’s class, dislikes the boy assigned as your seatmate, her homeroom teacher, the “weird” guy who works at the konbini a street over, and dislikes it even more when her grandmother looks at her and tells her she killed her own father without even saying anything at all.

You know all those things because you know Orimito Rika. You like her even if she holds intense dislike for the people outside her circle, people who tick her off just a little for you to see her smile crack at the edges and go stiff, the little twitch of her brown eyes, and most importantly, you still like her when all she wants in the world is the attention of the boy who wears her deceased mother’s ring.

You’ll always want sweet girls like her.

“Where’s Rika-chan?”

“Her grandma won’t let her go out today,” Yūta says, sitting next to you on the bench. “So it’s just you and me.”

He says it dejectedly, but it’s not enough for you. If he was really sad, then he’d be as sad as you are, so you start packing your belongings. “I’m leaving, then.”

He startles, standing up. “Huh? W–wait! Don’t leave just yet!”

“But Rika-chan’s not here,” you frown. “There’s no point in hanging out today.”

He falters, looking down at the ground.

“Even if she isn’t here, we can still play together…” he offers, looking up at you timidly. “We’re friends, too, aren’t we?”

The green-eyed monster stares at the silver chain wrapped around his neck, the ring acting as its pendant tucked underneath his shirt—like an unattainable treasure trapped inside a chest with the key thrown away somewhere you cannot find it. We’re not friends, the monster says with a snarl, stay away from me.

If there is one thing you know, then it’s that you have never wanted to be friends with Okkotsu Yūta, not after he took everything from you. He can butter you up by sticking to you during class and sitting next to you at lunch and even offering you some of his not-ichigo daifuku, not-yuzu iced tea, and not-colorful anime-themed kompeitō but you will and have never liked him for the green-eyed monster will always sit on your shoulder so long as he wears that ring on his person, a physical manifestation of his promise with Rika. Your Rika, even if that’s not really the case.

You will never like Okkotsu Yūta, because—because he—

“... What’re we even gonna do?” you ask, slowly.

He immediately brightens up.

“… Wanna get ice cream?” he offers. “There’s a new flavor I wanna try!”

His suggestion does not entice you at all, but when he stands there with an outstretched hand waiting for you to take it, like it’ll matter if you reject him, you find yourself at a crossroads. But you make your decision soon enough. Like it’ll matter, like the green-eyed monster isn’t there, staring.

“Okay,” you say, moving past him to start walking. He blinks incredulously at the blatant rejection before gathering himself and following after you, a prep to his step regardless of your actions.

You try to ignore the warmth of his body next to yours.

He’s too close.

“Yūta-kun’s birthday is in a few days,” Rika announces, lying on your spare futon. “Did you get him anything?”

You didn’t. “... Yeah.”

“Really? What is it?” she cranes her neck to face you. “What’d you get him?”

She doesn’t want your gift being better than hers, it checks out. “Um… just a toy. A garbage truck.”

“Oh, okay,” she turns back to face the ceiling. “I made him a scrapbook with photos of us. I worked really hard on it… do you think he’ll like it?”

“He’ll like anything you give him.”

She’s already given him a ring—what else could compare to that?

Rika smiles. “I guess… you’re right.”

Soon enough, she goes to sleep, breathing softly beside you as your fan fills the silence of the night. You continue staring at the ceiling, making out the little dents despite the lack of light. You squeeze the hand that holds your under the cover, before closing your eyes.

You hear her softly breathe on a steady beat alongside the fan whirring in the corner, and you close your eyes, squeezing her hand tighter underneath the covers of your too-close futon.

You’ll have to ask your parents for some money tomorrow.

“Rika-chan isn’t here again,” Yūta says dejectedly. “Her granny’s too strict.”

“She hates her,” you say quietly.

Yūta looks at you, confused. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing. Your birthday’s coming up soon, what are you doing that day?”

“Uwah—you remember?”

“Rika-chan told me.”

“Oh, well,” he smiles sheepishly, “we have school that day, but after that I’ll be celebrating at my house. I’m thinking of just inviting Rika-chan and you over… um, so, will you come?”

“I’ll go if Rika-chan is going.”

He blinks, before a smile blooms on his face. “Okay! I’ll see you, then.”

It happens when you aren't there.

It never should have happened at all.

Orimito Rika is pronounced dead at the age of eleven, her body unrecognizable under the heavy weight of a blue truck.

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