Chapter Text
You should’ve known he wouldn’t stay.
Toji Fushiguro wasn’t the kind of man you build a future with. He didn’t come with a blueprint or a promise. He came like smoke—uninvited, curling under your doorframe, slipping into your lungs before you could remember to stop breathing him in. He was danger that felt like safety in the moment. A storm disguised as stillness.
And still, you loved him. Fiercely. Quietly. Stupidly.
The night he began to disappear for good, the air was too gentle for what was about to break.
You were folding baby clothes on the edge of the bed in slow, methodical movements. A soft lullaby playing somewhere from your phone, half-buried under a pile of clean laundry. You smoothed your hands over each piece before setting it aside. A pale blue onesie with clouds on the front. The tiny brown pants Toji joked about how they made Megumi look like an old man. A pair of socks so small they felt imaginary.
Outside, the window was cracked just enough to let in the warm night. Crickets were singing. The world was soft. Calm. Indifferent to your unraveling.
Behind you, Toji stood silent. The duffel bag on the floor was gaping open, half-stuffed with the things he kept separate. Things that didn’t belong to this apartment, to you, to the life you were trying to hold together with fraying thread. His shoulders were tense, back half-turned toward the door, like even standing still was costing him something.
His voice cut through the quiet like a splinter.
“What if I didn’t come back this time?”
You didn’t answer right away. Your hands didn’t even stop moving. You folded a onesie down the middle, then over again, as if your entire heart wasn’t pulsing between your fingers. As if you hadn’t just felt something in your chest shift, crack, maybe even break. Behind you, silence. Waiting.
Your throat was tight when you finally answered.
“You’re already gone, Toji.”
That silenced him. You couldn’t see his face, but you could feel it—that moment he froze. Like he hadn’t expected you to say it. Like he wanted you to argue. To beg. Maybe even cry.
But you didn’t give him that. You just kept folding. Kept breathing. Kept trying not to fall apart in the middle of your own bedroom.
It had been five months since Megumi was born. Five months since you’d looked at Toji with new eyes—father’s eyes. And even then, something had flickered behind them. A restlessness. A distance. Like love had become too heavy for him to carry. Like responsibility was a weight he never intended to pick up.
He spoke again. Quieter this time.
“It’s not because of you.”
And maybe that was the cruelest part.
You turned then. Looked at him fully. Those unreadable, messy green eyes. That familiar scar curving near his lip. The man you had once memorized like scripture and now barely recognized in the half-dark of your bedroom.
You smiled—small, tired. The kind of smile you give to endings you’ve seen coming but still hoped might turn around.
“I know,” you said. “That’s the worst part.”
Because if it had been you, if you’d done something wrong, you could’ve fixed it. Changed. Fought.
But it wasn’t.
It was him. And the ghosts he couldn’t let go of. The shadows that had followed him long before he ever found you. He didn’t say anything after that.
Didn’t kiss you goodbye. Didn’t hold Megumi. Didn’t look back.
When you woke in the morning, the duffel bag was gone. The silence left in its place was louder than anything he could’ve said. The only trace of him was the faint scent on your pillow—sweat, cologne, and something colder, like the steel edge of regret. You fed Megumi that morning in silence. He blinked up at you with Toji’s eyes. You whispered to him softly as you rocked him back to sleep, a promise trembling on your lips.
“I won’t hate him.”
But you did.
In small, sharp ways. In the way you flinched when someone mentioned his name. In the way your chest ached when you saw other fathers cradle their babies like something sacred.
And worse?
You missed him anyway. You missed the weight of his hand on your lower back. The sound of his laugh, low and unexpected. The nights he stayed up late with you, watching Megumi sleep like the world had finally offered him something worth staying for.
You missed the version of him you thought was real. The one who might’ve stayed, if only the world had been gentler. If only he had been someone else.
But he wasn’t.
And now you had to learn to live in the space he left behind.