Trapped Behind Words: InuOkko

Chapter 16: Books

The silver-haired man hadn't thought of that. Maybe time was reset by something or someone for a different reason? It could have been an accident. Some secret lab somewhere that caused a ripple in space. Or, it could not have been a time reset at all. Maybe he shifted realities to a new one where things were almost exactly the same but not exactly.

"You're being kind of a space case today, aren't you, Inu?" Fushiguro said, resting his hands on the steering wheel of the parked car.

"A lot on my mind," Toge signed.

Fushiguro exhaled through his teeth, "Yeah. Me too. This is a lot for me."

Toge parted his lips, letting out a quiet call, "Meh."

The emerald eyes next to him seared a hole into the side of Toge's consciousness. He didn't know what else to do. Okkotsu didn't trust him enough to be able to talk about how crazy things were. No one else was really around to listen. It was just Toge and Fushiguro, or rather Toge and Meh.

"You remember that?" Toge signed.

"How could I not? But I haven't heard your voice in over a decade. It's a little weird," Fushiguro said.

Toge nodded.

"Hey, so what made you ask me to hang out anyway?" Fushiguro asked.

Toge thought about possibly explaining the situation, but he didn't exactly know how. "I just felt like it was unnecessary that we stopped in the first place. We have been in the group together for a while and knew each other way before that."

"I understand. I agree," Fushiguro said.

"Can I ask you something weird?" Toge signed.

Fushiguro's arms became visibly tense. "Uh, sure."

"In high school, did you ever meet a guy who punched a hole through a wall?" Toge asked.

Fushiguro let out a groan; whether it was of relief or not was unclear. "Yeah, I remember that. But how did you know? You had graduated."

"I just heard about it on one of the Twitter pages for high school drama," Toge lied.

"It was kind of ridiculous. I was put in charge of club room maintenance last year. It was a weird time. Most of them were just trashed or had kids getting freaky in them. But between that and some other guys getting beat up by a fully grown man on campus, I think the hole through the concrete wall takes the cake for weird," Fushiguro said.

"Fully grown man?" Toge asked.

"Yeah, a group of delinquents claimed someone put a hit out on them. Didn't take a genius to realize they had just gotten into trouble and didn't want to admit it. Though, there was an incident after that I recall hearing the details of, but it wasn't on school property," Fushiguro said.

"Incident?" Toge asked.

"A student died, stabbed to death. He had a rough time that year, so I'm pretty sure everyone just assumed he fell in with a bad crowd. But now that I think about it, I think there was another kid who got stabbed too," Fushiguro narrowed his eyes on the windshield.

"Sorry for bringing up a lot of the past. We haven't really talked about you at all," Toge attempted to change the subject to something less gruesome.

"How about we go to the bookstore?" Fushiguro brushed off the comment.

Toge slowly nodded.

Must have been true that Fushiguro was having issues at work. Toge remembered that it wasn't long after Itadori appeared in the group that Fushiguro moved into Okkotsu's apartment complex. It was one of Gojo's offices, which meant the white-haired man must have been keeping an eye on Fushiguro.