Chapter Text
The airport is quiet when Suguru becomes aware of his surroundings.
The first thing that strikes him is how little comfort is offered by the bench he is sitting on. It’s a metallic gray furniture with inconveniently placed handrests; They are too far apart to naturally lay both arms and too close to sit cross-legged. The raven-haired sorcerer knows instinctively that he hasn’t been here for long. Yet, his muscles feel as stiff as if he has lingered there for hours.
The second thing Suguru notices is the quietness itself.
It’s not a particularly eerie silence either. Rather, it lingers nonchantly atop the large gray tiles covering the floor. Only the faint hum of what vaguely resembles a ventilation system can be perceived through intense concentration. That sound is so discrete that Suguru wonders if he’s imagining it to somewhat compensate for the lack of auditory stimuli.
The bench is oddly placed as well: it stands alone in front of enormous windows that take up the entirety of the wall on both sides of the door. Each glass panel is roughly five feet wide and stretches from the very bottom of the floor to the ceiling.
Through those clear glass panels, the sun shines blindingly and the sky is so incredibly blue it reminds him of Satoru.
Satoru.
Suguru clutches his right arm in disbelief. No blood? How can there is be no blood? The sleeve of Jujutsu Tech’s uniform is intact as well.
The raven-haired cursed user wants nothing more than to rip it off but finds himself unable to do so. He’s not quite sure as to why he’s wearing the damn thing in the first place. He burned the clothes a long ago and he sure as hell didn’t die in them.
Dying.
A broken scream tears itself from the curse user’s petrified lungs. He’s dead. He died. He’s been torn apart and ripped open over the unflinching walls of the academia he once studied in.
I love you.
Satoru’s last words to him before he unleashed his hollow purple.
Suguru’s stomach contracts disgustingly and he bends over the cold tile to retch but nothing, not even bile, comes up. The burning sensation clings impossibly to his throat like the acid he feels churning in his chest wants to escape at all cost. The effort is futile; nothing can get out.
The entire scenario makes for a very lackluster heaven or for quite an unimpressive hell.
‘’Geto!’’ a familiar voice chirps behind Suguru’s back.
It takes a moment fort him to place the familiar cheerfulness. ‘’Haibara?’’ Suguru chokes when he finally realizes.
A sunny smile spreads Haibara’s lips as the younger man crouches beside Suguru. His light brown eyes are squinted in glee.
“It’s been so long! How are you? How is everyone? I mean, you are dead, obviously so maybe you’re not doing that great…" He chuckle nervously. "Sorry about that, it’s just that it’s been a while since-”
“How?” Suguru blurts out. “How are you here?”
Haibara offers a sheepish apologetic smile. "Right, sorry, I got used to it, I think."
“What? How? What are you even…”
Suguru’s mind races desperately to catch up. Alas, it is trapped in a never-ending fury of whirling questions. The curse user desperately wishes he was physically capable of vomiting as the turmoil grows into a churning frenzy in the pit of his stomach.
“It’s OK Geto, breathe. I promise you will get used to it,” Haibara gently hushers in a soothing tone.
“How?” rasps desperately Suguru. “It’s wrong. Everything about this place is wrong.”
A sickening feeling twists the curse user’s insides. He’s not meant to be here. Neither of them are. It’s a certainty etched in his consciousness.
Haibara marks an almost undetectable pause before answering: “It’s because we’re not supposed to stay here for long. The airport is designed for us to go forward." He gestures toward the corridor in front of them. "We have to board one of the planes so not doing that feels unnatural. But, if you ignore that feeling, it becomes more of a, like, mild discomfort with occasional peaks.”
“What planes? What are you even on about?” Suguru snaps.
Haibara flinches at the harsh outburst and recoils slightly.
“I’m sorry…” he mumbles dejectedly.
The raven-haired sorcerer nape grows hot with shame. Haibara is staring at the ground like a remorseful kicked puppy for what crime? Trying to give Suguru an explanation?
An ever-so familiar pang of guilt crashes upon Suguru. “No,” he sighs. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.”
The curse user absent-mindedly runs a hand through his hair. It’s shorter than it should and a silky thread catches him off-guard. Satoru’s hair tie. Suguru’s next words get caught in his throat.
Haibara seems to mistake the raven-haired sorcerer’s pained expression as being his fault somehow and hurries another apology before Suguru can interrupt him.
“No, no!” the younger man pleads. “I understand! It’s confusing, being here I mean. I’ll try to explain this place to the best of my knowledge, OK?”
“...Please do,” Suguru relents.
Haibara gestures his arm in a large circular motion towards the massive wall adorned with windows. “You don’t see them? The planes? To be fair, they’re pretty far,” The younger man jumps on his feet. “It’s easier to see them closer to the windows.”
Hesitantly, Suguru gets up and follows Haibara towards the glass panels. By all accounts, only a few steps separate them from the windows. Nonetheless, it takes almost a full minute for the duo to reach them.
It’s unnerving. None of the dimensions or space make sense. As if to add insult to injury, the nausea wells up again.
“It feels weird because you’re not walking directly towards your gate. Time and distance are only huh…normal…when you go in that specific direction. Otherwise they both kind of stretch. I don’t know how else to put it,” Haibara says contritely.
Suguru pivots his head toward the metallic door again and notices a bright, neon-blue '18N' inscribed upon a black metal board hanging from the ceiling. “My gate?”
“Yes, it’s yours. I can’t leave through it. Nobody but you can, I think.”
“Where is yours then?”
Haibara bites his lower lip. “That’s a bit harder to explain but I’ll try anyway. I’m not here per say. I’m in my own terminal. The me you’re seeing right now is more of a…hmm…projection?” The younger man twitches nervously. “I’m here because we both wanted to see each other and we’re both…well… dead but I’m not physically here, see?”
He inches closer and motions to touch Suguru’s shoulder with his hand but there is no contact. It’s not like Limitless: no infinity separates the two men. Instead, the shape of Haibara’s fingers faze into nothingness and Suguru balks at the sheer strangeness of the sight.
“I know. It’s weird,” Haibara admits while taking a few steps back.
“Everything about this place is weird,” Suguru states blankly. At least, he got a little bit more used to the unsettling churn in his stomach. It’s not entirely unlike the feeling he used to get after ingesting curses, minus the terrible taste.
“True,” Haibara chuckles awkwarly. “I’m pretty sure we’re somewhere between life and whatever comes next. I mean.” He hesitates: “It’s obvious that the planes are the next step but after that, I have no clue.”
Suguru wouldn’t exactly call it obvious. In fact, the raven-haired sorcerer has seen quite a few anomalies and oddities in his mortal life yet nothing comes close to the mind-bending quality of the afterlife he seems to be trapped in.
“Do you see them now?”
The curse user gazes into the window. There isn’t a cloud in sight. Strangely, although the sky is a flawless cyan, the glass panel feels cold to the touch when Suguru presses a hand against it. In the distance, he can vaguely discern the condensation trails of what appears to be distant airplanes. The ground is nowhere in sight. Only an eternity of maddening blue spreads as far as the eye can see. The curse user presses his cheek to the glass to get a view of the airport wall and is met with disappointingly anodyne brick. Again, there is no sign of the ground.
“I see them.”
“It’s funny, I kind of expected you to have a rainy sky, like me." Haibara smiles slightly. “I loved the autumn rain and I always thought Gojo was the one who dreamed of an eternal summer.”
The taste of ashes fills Suguru’s mouth and he gazes soundlessly into the unforgiving azure.
Where had it all gone wrong?
“You can take your time, you know. The food isn’t terrible and the vending machines don’t take money. You just have to press on an icon to specify what you want. It’s the same for the drinks. And even if you forget to eat or drink you won’t feel hunger or thirst. I think it’s mostly there to pass the time. The lights are always on as well and you won’t feel tired. Or sick…apart from the nausea.”
Shaken from his melancholy, Suguru manages to utter: "You said it was my gate. Where is yours?”
Haibara shifts slightly. “Not here.”
The raven-haired sorcerer rips his eyes from the absolute blue to glance at the younger man.
“That doesn’t help me much.”
“Like I said. This...” Haibara points at his own body. “Isn’t really me. My gate is with my…huh…actual true self. I know it’s a little bit confusing. But the gist of it is that I’m existing in your reality currently so this version of me isn’t real. I will disappear when you want me to leave. Or when I want to leave, whichever comes first.”
“...In short you’re kind of an hallucination. Or a one-way reflection.”
The younger man puts on an embarrassed smile: “Yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it.”
“Who even told you all of that? How do you know all of this?”
“There were pamphlets at my rest area. Also, my little brother stayed back. He died young…. Leukemia. I think a lot of people stay in order to say their farewell, you know? My grandma was there too. Essentially, anyone deceased that you would like to talk to can and will appear eventually. Unless they have already moved on and crossed their gate, of course. Or if they don’t want to speak with you. There’s probably a version of you talking to me right now.”
“Of course,” Suguru grumbles numbly. Nothing about this makes any sense.
Haibara smiles gently. “I know it’s a lot. I’m the first person to visit you, right? There will probably be more!” The younger man’s bright smile falters ever so slightly. “We lost a lot being sorcerers, after all.”
Suguru isn’t quite sure how to tell Haibara he became a curse user. He doubts the younger man would want to further entertain a conversation with him if he knew. Haibara is an idealist, unlike Nanami or the raven-haired sorcerer.
Haibara’s soft brown eyes radiate warmth.
The raven-haired sorcerer averts his gaze and rotates 180 degrees to look behind him. A facsimile of an airport resting room stands opposite to the windows. Its walls are plastered in what appears to be painted over cement. Said walls are white with a cool gray undertone and enclave a seating area littered with what appears to be yet more uncomfortable benches. This time, they are lined in a fashion similar to what one would expect from an actual airport. Some digital screens pepper the cement columns separating the rows of seats but none of them seem to be powered. All over the area, bright yellow and green pamphlets are scattered around. They are the only traces of colors in the large room as everything else is tinted in various shades of gray. Twin escalators move in opposite directions to the far back of the large resting area, seemingly permitting access to another level of the terminal and Suguru is very tempted to drop the subject altogether in favor of exploring.
Haibara’s passing was an integral part of Suguru’s decision to carve a new path for himself and all other sorcerers; one paved with blood and anguish that the raven-haired sorcerer knows for a fact Haibara will never accept. The younger man is a lot like Satoru in that regard although the six-eyes user proved himself to be capable of cold-calculated logic.
What could he have said to avoid their tragic fate?
There is no solace to be found in such questioning.
“You’re right,” he half-heartedly admits. “What made you wait here for a decade?”
The silence lasts a fraction of a second too long for it to be natural and Suguru shifts to look at Haibara only to find no trace of his companion.
“Haibara?”
Only the faint hum of the ventilation system answers him.
“What on Earth…”
Suguru’s heart falls to the pit of his stomach.
He certainly hasn’t wished for the younger man to leave. Therefore, if Haibara has told him the truth, his underclassmen must have elected to leave of his own volition.
Why though?
Had Suguru’s…projected self… revealed the path he had chosen to the real Haibara? That was the only possible explanation Suguru could reason for such an abrupt departure. The younger man certainly wouldn’t be the first to leave Suguru for his nihilistic ideals.
The raven-haired sorcerer sighs deeply and resolves to explore the airport by himself. Perhaps, Haibara will come back eventually. He has always been forgiving to a fault.
Suguru knows better than to hope for Satoru to have the same grace and a searing phantom pain bursts through his shoulder. The raven-haired sorcerer squeezes it tightly.
What could he have done differently in order for Satoru to join his side?
Unbeknownst to Suguru’s knowledge, on the third and last floor of his terminal a single ceiling light flickers briefly. It emits a distressed crackle as a narrow door manifests into existence at the innermost corner of the physics-defying structure. The door is the same as all the other ones, and, for now, it doesn’t open.
However, if all goes according to plan, it soon will.
The light flickers a second time and Suguru shivers despite having no tangible reason to do so, his back turned against the 18N gate.