Chapter 10: Midnight Confessions
The afternoon sun baked the black sand, turning it into a griddle underfoot. The easy camaraderie of the volleyball game had dissolved into lazy sprawls on towels and the quiet crunch of people eating shrimp chips from a shared bag. The memory of the beach house, of Gojo’s hands on her hips and his taste still lingering on her lips, thrummed beneath Anne’s skin like a second heartbeat.
She watched him from behind her sunglasses. He was trying to teach Nanami and Haibara a card trick, his long fingers flicking the cards with a magician’s flair. He seemed perfectly normal—the same arrogant, charismatic Gojo. But every few minutes, his eyes would drift to her, a quick, blue flash behind his own glasses, and the air between them would tighten, charged with a secret current.
She caught Shoko’s eye and jerked her head subtly towards the path leading up to the showers. Shoko, ever observant, nodded minutely after a moment.
“Gonna rinse off the salt,” Anne announced, standing and stretching. No one paid much attention.
She waited for Shoko in the concrete-block shower room, the sound of dripping water echoing. When Shoko pushed the door open, Anne couldn’t contain it anymore. She grabbed her friend’s wrist, her face breaking into a wide, irrepressible grin.
“We kissed,” she blurted, her voice a hushed, excited squeal.
Shoko blinked, her expression flat. “Who?”
“Who do you think?” Anne laughed, giving her a playful shake.
“Gojo Satoru.” Shoko stated it like a diagnosis. She leaned back against a sink, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “You’re sure about that? Out of all the eligible, non-insane people in the known universe, you want that idiot?”
“Yes!” Anne hissed, her eyes sparkling. “He’s… listen. He’s arrogant, but it’s because he’s actually that powerful, and there’s a weird honesty to it. He’s ridiculous, but in a way that makes me laugh, really laugh. He doesn’t treat me like glass or a throne, he treats me like… me. And his hands, Shoko, you have no idea—“
Just then, a yelp and a curse filtered in from the beach. Through the open window, they saw Gojo, demonstrating some exaggerated fighting stance to Haibara, lose his footing on the loose sand. He stumbled backwards, arms windmilling. But instead of falling, his Infinity activated instinctually, creating a hollow, curved barrier that redirected the force downwards. A wave of sand exploded outwards from the point of impact, drenching Nanami and Haibara, who had been sitting peacefully nearby, in a gritty shower.
“You absolute moron!” Nanami spat, brushing frantically at his hair.
Gojo righted himself, brushing off his pristine shirt. “A necessary sacrifice for the lesson!”
Shoko and Anne stared through the window, their faces perfectly blank mirrors of exhausted comprehension. Anne turned back to Shoko, rolling her eyes so hard it was a wonder she didn’t strain something. “See? That. That is why he’s definitely the right guy for me.”
Shoko took a long drag of her cigarette, exhaling slowly. “You have fundamentally broken tastes.”
“You can’t tell anyone!” Anne pleaded, though her smile was incandescent. “Not yet. It’s… new. And it’s ours.”
“My silence comes at the price of your future sanity,” Shoko deadpanned, but she was fighting a smile. “Fine. Your funeral.”
Later, as the sun melted into a band of molten gold on the horizon, they walked into the beachfront restaurant for dinner. Anne had changed into an off-the-shoulder dress, a riot of deep blue and crimson flowers printed on silk that draped over one shoulder and hugged her waist before flaring out into a thigh-high slit. A single white hibiscus was tucked behind her ear, its starkness a contrast against her brown hair. She looked less like a person and more like a natural phenomenon—a sunset given human form.
The effect was immediate. The young waiter who came to take their drink orders stuttered over the specials, his eyes glued to her face until Gojo cleared his throat, sharp and loud. The boy flinched, blushed, and practically ran back to the kitchen.
They were seated at a long table. By pure chance, the seating arrangement placed Shoko directly between Anne and Gojo. For the first ten minutes, Shoko endured it with the stoicism of a war reporter in a trench.
It was the small things. Anne, asking for the salt, would let her fingers brush Gojo’s as he passed it, a contact that lasted a half-second too long. Gojo, listening to Yaga tell a story, would tap his foot under the table, the rhythm somehow syncing with the idle tracing Anne’s fingers were doing on her own knee, aimed in his direction. They didn’t look at each other excessively, but the space between them vibrated with a silent, stupid understanding.
When Gojo made a joke, Anne laughed, and it was a different sound than her usual laugh—softer, warmer, directed. Shoko saw his shoulders relax a fraction at the sound.
Finally, as the main courses arrived, Shoko stood up. “I’m switching seats. The psychic feedback over here is giving me a headache.” She moved down to sit next to Geto, who looked puzzled but scooted over.
No one else seemed to notice the reason. The table was loud, chaotic. But the second Shoko’s chair scraped back, Gojo’s hand slid across the empty space under the table. Anne’s hand was already there, waiting. Their fingers laced together, palm to palm, a secret anchor in the noisy room. His thumb stroked over her knuckles, a slow, deliberate rhythm that said everything he couldn’t say out loud.
When Anne got up to visit the lavish dessert buffet, the tension of the hidden contact still thrumming in her veins, she was momentarily alone by the tiers of mango sticky rice and coconut cakes. A man approached—older, handsome in a polished way, with a confident smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, his voice smooth. “But I had to ask. Are you here alone? Or… single?”
Anne froze, a small porcelain plate in her hand. The question felt alien, dislocating. For a dizzying second, the weight of her title, her destiny, the spirit inside her, all of it crashed back. Single felt like such a human, such a simple word. Was she? Technically, yes. In every way that mattered after a kiss that had rewritten her internal sky, no. She opened her mouth, unsure what truth would come out.
“Babe, let’s get going.”
Gojo’s voice, casual and close, cut through her paralysis. He was suddenly there, his arm slipping around her waist, his touch firm and possessive. He didn’t even glance at the other man. He simply plucked the empty plate from Anne’s fingers, set it down, and began steering her gently but inexorably back towards the table. “You’ve had enough sugar. You’ll bounce off the walls.”
The other man blinked, muttered an apology, and melted away.
Back at the table, Gojo’s arm stayed around her for a beat longer than necessary, a silent statement heard by everyone. No one commented. But Shoko, watching from across the table, took a long, deliberate sip of her water, her expression unreadable.
The night deepened, the group eventually dissipating back to their own rooms in the beach house complex. The paper-thin walls promised no real privacy, only the illusion of it. Anne’s room was at the end of a veranda overlooking the moonlit shore. She slid the door open, letting the sound of the waves fill the space, and changed into soft sleep shorts and a tank top. She was brushing out her hair, staring at her own reflection—a girl who had kissed the strongest sorcerer and told him she wanted to renounce the stars—when a soft knock sounded, not on her door, but on the wooden frame of the open veranda.
He was leaning against the side of the opening, backlit by the moon, shirtless again and wearing only loose linen pants. The silver light carved the planes of his chest and abdomen into sharp relief. He didn’t smile. His usual smirk was absent. He just looked at her, his blue eyes stark and serious in the dim light.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
“Hey,” she echoed, setting the brush down.
He pushed off the frame and stepped inside, closing the sliding door behind him with a soft shush. The room was plunged into near-darkness, lit only by the moonglow filtering through the paper screens. The regular crash and sigh of the ocean became the only sound.
He didn’t move to touch her immediately. He just stood there, a silhouette looking at her. “That guy at the buffet,” he finally said.
“What about him?”
“Nothing.” He took a step closer. “Just didn’t like the way he looked at you.”
Another step. She could feel the heat radiating from him now, could smell the clean scent of soap and the lingering salt air on his skin. “You don’t own how people look at me.”
“No,” he agreed, his voice dropping lower. “But I know how I want to look at you.”
He closed the final distance. This time, there was no playful challenge, no teasing preamble. His hands came up to cup her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. His gaze was intense, searching. “Are you real?” he murmured, the question startling in its vulnerability.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He kissed her then, and it was nothing like the first time. That had been spark and explosion. This was a deep, claiming hunger. It was an answer to the question he’d asked, a confirmation of the reality of her. His mouth was desperate, his hands sliding from her face into her hair, tilting her head to deepen the angle. She met him with equal fervor, her own hands exploring the defined muscles of his back, feeling the power coiled there, a live wire under her fingertips.
He walked her backwards until her knees hit the edge of the low futon. They sank down together in a tangle of limbs, the fall broken by his arm around her waist. The kiss broke only for gasps of air, each one shared in the scant space between their mouths. His lips trailed down her neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin where her shoulder met her throat, eliciting a shuddering gasp from her.
Her own hands grew bold, sliding over the hard planes of his stomach, feeling the jump of muscle under her touch. She tugged at the waistband of his pants, a silent, urgent question.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his breath coming fast. In the moonlight, his eyes were almost black, the pupil swallowing the blue. “Anne,” he said, her name a ragged prayer.
“I’m here,” she whispered, pulling him back down to her. “I’m right here.”
His hands slid down from her waist, tracing the curve of her ribs through the thin cotton of her tank top. They journeyed upwards, his palms warm and heavy, coming to rest over the soft swell of her breasts. She arched into the touch, a low, shuddering moan escaping her lips as his thumbs brushed over the sensitive peaks.
The sound was raw, unfiltered.
Then, abruptly, her own hand came up, covering his. She didn’t push him away, but she stopped him. Her breath hitched, the heat in the room shifting from purely physical to something more charged. She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face in the moonglow, a new kind of uncertainty clouding the desire there.
He froze, his entire body going still. “Everything okay?” he whispered, his voice rough.
“It’s more than okay,” she said, her own voice husky. She swallowed, her brow furrowing. “That’s the problem. I… I need to know what this is, Satoru. What we are. Do you want to be with me?”
He stared down at her. For a full minute, he was completely, utterly silent, his expression one of pure, blank astonishment.
Then he barked out a laugh, a sharp, disbelieving sound that seemed to startle even him. He rolled onto his back beside her, one arm flung over his eyes as his shoulders shook with quiet laughter.
Anne propped herself up on an elbow, staring at him. “Are you… are you laughing?”
He peeled his arm away, wiping at his eye. “You’re asking me,” he said, between residual chuckles, “the world’s most beautiful, terrifying, literally celestial woman, if I want to be with you?” He turned his head to look at her, the laughter fading into something softer, more awestruck. “Anne. Look at you. Look at what you can do. You looked at the blueprint of your soul and told it ‘no.’ Who wouldn’t want to be with you?”
He shifted, facing her fully now. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I thought it was obvious.” He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Will you be my girlfriend? Officially. Like, tell-Shoko-and-watch-her-sigh-in-exhaustion official.”
A slow, radiant smirk spread across her lips. “Well,” she said, tilting her head. “If you’re asking this nicely… sure.”
The hungry, urgent mood from moments before had evaporated, replaced by a giddy, sprawling warmth. They spent the next few hours just talking, their voices low murmurs in the dark. They talked about everything and nothing. She asked him what it was like, growing up knowing you were the strongest.
“Lonely,” he said, after a long pause. The word was simple, stark. “It’s just… lonely. Until it wasn’t.”
He asked her what it felt like, to have a universe inside you.
“It’s not a universe,” she corrected softly. “It’s a pattern. A song. Here.” She sat up, cross-legged, and gestured for him to do the same. She placed her palms gently on either side of his face. “Close your eyes. Don’t resist it.”
He did. For a second, there was only the sound of the waves and their shared breath. Then, a thread of warmth, pure and golden, seeped from her hands into his skin. It wasn’t an attack or an intrusion. It was an invitation.
It felt like listening to music from inside the instrument. He felt the vast, quiet hum of cosmic distance, the precise, terrifying mathematics of orbital grace, and beneath it all, a melody so ancient and sad it made his throat tighten. It was beauty and duty intertwined, a crushing, magnificent weight. Just as quickly, it was gone.
She pulled her hands back, her eyes wide. “You felt that?”
He opened his eyes. The blue of them seemed deeper, as if stained by starlight. “Yeah,” he breathed. “It’s… heavy.”
“It is,” she whispered.
Exhaustion, emotional and physical, finally draped over them. The conversation dwindled into comfortable silence, then into the slow, even rhythm of sleep. They drifted off still facing each other, his arm slung over her waist, her head tucked under his chin, tangled together on the single futon.
The first grey light of dawn painted the paper screens when Anne’s eyes flickered open. She was momentarily disoriented by the weight and warmth pressed against her back, by the arm possessively curled around her stomach. Then she remembered.
Panic, sweet and sharp, lanced through her. She could hear the faint sounds of others stirring in the beach house.
She twisted gently in his embrace. “Satoru,” she whispered, nudging him. “Satoru, wake up.”
He groaned, his arm tightening. “Five more minutes.”
“No. Now. You have to go.” She squirmed free and sat up, pushing at his shoulder. “If anyone finds you here, Yaga will have an aneurysm. Get up.”
He blinked awake, his white hair a chaotic mess, his face softened by sleep. He looked heartbreakingly young. “Your concern for my reputation is touching,” he grumbled, but he sat up.
She shoved his linen pants and shirt into his arms and literally pushed him towards the veranda door. He went, fumbling with his clothes, a sleepy smile on his face. Just as he slid the door open to slip out into the cool, misty morning, she caught his wrist.
He turned, a question in his eyes.
She pulled him down and kissed him. It wasn’t a gentle good-morning kiss. It was deep, hungry, a reclaiming of the heat from the night before, a promise. He made a soft, startled sound against her mouth and kissed her back, his hands coming up to frame her face.
She broke away as suddenly as she’d begun, her own breathing slightly ragged. “Go,” she whispered, her voice firm.
He stumbled back a step onto the veranda, fully dressed now, looking utterly bewildered. He opened his mouth, closed it, then just shook his head with a dazed, delighted smile. He pointed at her, as if marking the moment, then turned and padded silently down the wooden walkway towards his own room.
Anne watched him go, her lips still tingling, before she softly shut the door. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood, a slow, incredulous smile spreading across her face.
She leaned her forehead against the cool wood, a slow, incredulous smile spreading across her face. Her body hummed with a residual energy, part celestial, part purely, blindingly human. The memory of his hands, his mouth, his laughter pressed against her in the dark felt more real than any royal decree.
A floorboard creaked somewhere down the veranda. The spell broke.
She scrambled, straightening the futon, fluffing the pillow that still smelled faintly of him. She opened the screen wide, letting the salty morning air purge the room of their secret. In the mirror, her reflection was a stranger—eyes too bright, lips slightly swollen, hair a wild cascade from his fingers. She looked thoroughly kissed. She looked happy.
She dressed quickly into a feminine off shoulder white dress that stopped at her thighs. The single white hibiscus from last night, now wilted, lay on her nightstand. She picked it up, twirling the brown-edged petals between her fingers before tucking it into the pocket of her dress.
The main living area of the beach house was chaos. Haibara was frantically buttering toast. Nanami meticulously measured coffee grounds. Yaga was on the phone, his voice a low rumble about updated mission parameters. Suguru was slicing fruit with a frightening degree of focus.
And Gojo.
He was already at the table, sunglasses perched on his head, shoveling a mountain of scrambled eggs into his mouth. He looked perfectly ordinary, annoyingly well-rested. He caught her eye as she entered. No smirk, no wink. Just a slow, deliberate blink, a private echo of the night that sent a fresh wave of heat up her neck.
“You look well,” Shoko stated, materializing beside Anne with a cup of black coffee. Her voice was flat, but her eyes were sharp, missing nothing.
“I slept well,” Anne said, her voice a little too high.
“I bet,” Shoko murmured, then walked away.
Anne loaded a plate with fruit, her movements careful. She could feel his gaze on the back of her neck like a physical touch. The normalcy of the scene—the clatter of dishes, the mundane complaints about orange juice pulp—clashed violently with the seismic shift inside her. She had kissed him. He had asked her a question. She had said yes.
She needed to tell someone or she would combust.
She waited until Shoko was refilling her coffee. Anne nudged her foot under the table. She tilted her head meaningfully towards the sliding doors that led to a small, enclosed garden. Shoko sighed, a long-suffering exhalation, but gave a tiny nod.
“I’m getting some air,” Anne announced to no one in particular.
“Don’t wander far,” Yaga said, not looking up from his phone.
“I’ll keep her company,” Shoko added, her tone implying a chore.
The garden was small, just a rectangle of raked sand around a single, gnarled bonsai pine. The second the glass door slid shut, Anne whirled around. She grabbed Shoko’s shoulders, her words exploding out in a pressurized whisper. “He asked me to be his girlfriend. I said yes. We’re official.”
Shoko took a slow sip of her coffee. “Congratulations. I formally offer my condolences.”
“Stop it!” Anne hissed, shaking her lightly. She was grinning so wide her cheeks hurt. “It’s real. It’s a thing. We’re a thing.” Her voice dropped, conspiratorial and bursting. “And you have no idea, Shoko. Last night, after he left my room, I couldn’t sleep because all I could think about was his hands, and the way he—”
Shoko held up a single finger. It was a gentle but absolute barrier. “Stop. Right there.” Her expression was one of pained tolerance. “I am supportive. Of your happiness. Genuinely. But that?” She gestured vaguely at Anne’s entire animated being. “That is my line. I don’t need the sensory details.”
Anne’s face fell into an exaggerated pout. “But I don’t have anyone else to tell! I can’t exactly send a formal missive to the Celestial Court. ‘Dear Elders, the Star Vessel is now dating a human nuclear deterrent. Please update your charts.’”
“A tragic oversight in your social planning,” Shoko said dryly. She looked past Anne’s shoulder, through the glass, to where Gojo was now demonstrating a complicated handshake to a bewildered Haibara. “Save that energy for him. Verbalize it. Loudly. Maybe if he’s sufficiently… distracted, he’ll be less annoying for the rest of us.”
Anne followed her gaze. Gojo had now somehow produced a second fork and was attempting to eat with both hands simultaneously. Nanami was visibly restraining himself from intervention. A laugh bubbled up in Anne’s chest, light and unfettered.
Shoko bumped her shoulder with her own, a rare gesture of affection. “Go on. Go be disgustingly happy. Just keep the briefing to a minimum.”
Back inside, the atmosphere had shifted. Yaga was standing, his phone call ended, his expression grim. “Pack up. We’re moving out in thirty. A Grade 1 curse has manifested in Naha. Reports indicate unusual spatial distortion.” He looked at Gojo and Geto. “You two are with me. The rest will return to Tokyo.”
The casual morning shattered. The clatter of packing replaced the clatter of plates. Anne moved to her room, her mind reeling from the whiplash. She folded her clothes, the silks feeling frivolous now. The wilted hibiscus in her pocket crumbled slightly under her touch.
As they hauled their bags to the cars, Gojo fell into step beside her. His shoulder brushed hers. “Naha’s not far,” he said, his voice low enough for only her. “This’ll be quick.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, stuffing her bag into the trunk.
“I do.” He said it with such absolute conviction that, for a moment, she believed him. He leaned in, his voice dropping further. “Last night. The thing I felt. That song inside you.” He met her eyes. “Let me hear it again when I get back.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a promise, a hook thrown into the future to ensure he returned to it. To her.
Before she could answer, Yaga called his name. Gojo gave her one last, fleeting look—a look that stripped away the arrogance and showed the simple, stark want beneath—then turned and sauntered towards the other car, his hands in his pockets as if he were heading for a stroll.
Anne watched him go, the lump of the dead flower sharp in her pocket. The engine of his car roared to life. As it pulled away, she saw him lift a hand, not in a wave, but with his fingers splayed. Then he made a fist, as if catching something from the air.
She understood. He was taking the feeling with him.