Even If It Breaks Me

Chapter 3

The night had washed the campus clean.

Moonlight stretched itself across the courtyard roofs, slipping into the cracks of old tiles, catching on the thin prayer tags hanging from the gingko branches. The air was crisp, thin enough to taste. Somewhere behind the main hall, a wind chime turned softly, a single note repeating like a thought that wouldn't leave.

Gojo didn't sleep easily on quiet nights. The hum of cursed energy under the floorboards, the whisper of distant spirits at the edge of his senses — it was like trying to rest with an orchestra tuning just behind a curtain. He'd given up trying an hour ago and wandered out, the collar of his navy uniform pulled high, hands shoved deep into the pockets. His sunglasses caught the moonlight and dulled it to a faint gray sheen.

He liked the campus best like this: half-dreaming, half-forgotten. The world was simple when no one else was awake to want something from him.

When he turned the corner toward the back garden, he saw someone already sitting on the grass.

Suguru Geto.

He was leaned back on his palms, knees bent, eyes turned up toward the night. His hair — usually tight and perfect — was loose now, strands falling across his shoulders in a way that made him look a little younger, a little softer. The moonlight threaded itself through the dark, and his violet eyes glimmered like amethyst caught in milk glass.

Gojo hesitated in the shadow for a beat, watching him. There was something disarming about the way Geto looked at the sky — not with wonder, but with familiarity, like he was looking at a place he'd been before.

"Can't sleep either?" Gojo said finally, his voice low enough not to wake the night.

Geto didn't startle. He turned just enough to glance over his shoulder, a faint smile ghosting across his mouth. "I could ask you the same."

Gojo wandered closer, dropping onto the grass beside him with all the ceremony of a falling leaf. "I'm on patrol," he said. "Making sure the stars behave."

"That sounds exhausting," Geto said dryly.

"You have no idea." Gojo tipped his head back, watching the sky spread out above them like spilled ink. "But they seem cooperative tonight."

The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It had texture — the kind of quiet that had room for breathing and thinking. Crickets stitched sound into the edges of it. The air smelled faintly of wet leaves and cedar.

Gojo slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, letting the cool night touch his eyes. The stars sharpened immediately, each one a needlepoint flare. His Six Eyes adjusted like a lens — everything suddenly too bright, too alive, cursed energy humming faintly through the trees and stones.

He winced a little.

Geto noticed. "You never take those off," he said softly. "Not unless you're fighting. Why wear them now?"

Gojo tilted his head toward him, smiling. "Curious, are we?"

"You could say that," Geto said, his tone light but his gaze steady.

For a moment, Gojo didn't answer. He reached up and took the sunglasses off completely, setting them down in the grass beside him. The moon caught in his crystal-blue eyes, the way light catches in still water — pure, sharp, almost inhuman. Geto looked at him fully, and Gojo could feel it — that quiet, unflinching way he saw people. It was both terrifying and grounding.

"The eyes are... heavy," Gojo said finally. "Six Eyes. Part of the Gojo Clan's gift, or curse, depending on how you look at it."

He leaned back on his elbows, gaze still on the stars. "I see everything. Cursed energy moves like smoke through the air, through people, through everything alive. I can see where it starts and where it ends. Sometimes it's beautiful — like light through glass. But sometimes..." He paused, the words thinning in his throat. "Sometimes it's like watching a wound that never closes."