Satoru Gojo

The trip had been booked in February.

You and Satoru had broken up in March. Six weeks later, he texted you to say the reservation was non-refundable, and it would be a waste to cancel, and you didn't have to spend any time together (if you didn't want to), and he could sleep on the couch, and it was a good hotel.

The parenthesis was included.

You had looked at the message for a while.

Satoru had never, in the time you had been together, expressed concern about wasting money. Not once. He booked this trip on a whim, on a random afternoon, simply because you mentioned the destination once. He had simply made it happen, the way he made things happen, without asking what the budget was because ‘budget’ was not a concept he applied to things he wanted to do, and especially not the things he wanted to do for you.

The idea of him calling the hotel, explaining the situation, asking about cancellation fees… The image of it was so inconsistent with every piece of knowledge you had about him that it barely assembled itself.

So you went.

---

He was at the airport before you.

Of course he was. Satoru was standing near the check-in with both hands in his jacket pockets and his hair down, trying to look like he hadn't been watching the entrance for the full duration of the time he had spent there. He noticed you immediately. His eyes went to the suitcase in your hand and something moved across his face, brief, controlled, and then gone, and he didn't reach for it.

You could notice him not reaching for it.

Satoru had always taken your bags. The entire time, before and during your relationship, without discussion, it had simply been the arrangement. His hand would find the handle before you'd properly registered putting it down, the transfer smooth enough that you'd stopped noticing it.

He was noticing it now. The set of his jaw suggested he was noticing it quite a lot.

He said hello. You said hello. You walked to check-in together and he let you handle your own bag and said nothing about it, and the restraint of it was so visible it was almost loud.

---

The flight was four hours.

You had the window. He had the middle.

You put your earphones in. He put his in.

The plane took off and you looked out the window and he looked at whatever he was looking at on his phone and every twenty minutes or so you glanced sideways without meaning to and found him already looking at you or looking away from you, like you had actually caught him staring.

The non-verbal agreement materialized somewhere over the water. You had both established it without a word, no, we are not going to talk about this, not here, not now, possibly not ever, and you both settled back into your respective performances of being fine.

Satoru fell asleep an hour before landing. His head tipped toward you by degrees and then stopped, held by some unconscious effort of maintaining appropriate distance even in sleep. You watched this happen and looked back out the window.

---

The hotel room had one bed, because neither of you had confirmed the reservation details with the front desk.

Neither of you had asked whether a two-bed room might be available.

He put his bag down on the side he had always slept on, and then appeared to notice he had done this, and left it there anyway.

He took the couch, as offered and agreed upon. The couch was… The couch. It was just fine. It would have to do.

Satorus clothes were in the closet in the bedroom because he needed to hang his shirts or they would wrinkle. This was the reason he offered, and the shirts now hung next to yours and he came in at least twice a day to retrieve or return things. Each time, he would act like he was operating on a strict mission and had no time for peripheral observations.

---

The first two days were an act carefully navigated, The kind of civility you might extend to a stranger on an elevator. Polite hellos. Ships-passing arrangements. You went off somewhere, he went somewhere else, and later, you reconvened in the hotel room. The awkwardness was palpable, and yet it wasn’t, and even though you weren’t technically together it still felt close enough. Maybe too close.

Satoru made coffee in the mornings, pouring you a cup without asking, leaving it on the counter. It was prepared exactly how you liked it, because he would not pretend to have forgotten how you liked it. You ate breakfast on opposite ends of the table.

In the afternoons, you explored separately. He sent you a text once, there's a market two blocks over. good fruit, and when you went, the vendor greeted you by name.

On the third morning, you came back from lunch to find your suitcase moved from the floor to the luggage rack, which you had not used yourself, and your shoes lined up near the door instead of scattered where you'd left them. Satoru was not in the room. There was no note. These two things had simply been done, without any notice, in whatever window of time he'd had between you leaving and him leaving.

It was the exact same thing he would do while you lived together, you realized. Satoru had always noticed the small disorder of your immediate environment, and he had always silently corrected it.

You stood in the doorway for a moment longer than was necessary.

You put your bag down. Went to the window.

The city was busy in the afternoon. It was exactly as good as the photos had suggested, and you had planned to be here with him when you booked it in February and you were here with him now and the distinction between those two versions of the trip was either enormous or very small and you couldn't tell which it really was.

The closet door was open. His shirts were next to yours.

---

Satoru came back at seven.

Knocked on the bedroom door before opening it. His hair was down. He had caught the sun, slightly, at the temples. He had a white, linen shirt on, appropriate for the weather, and matching pants. Not casual, but not exactly fancy either.

"There's a place near the water," he said. "If you’re hungry."

He was looking at a point slightly past you.

The offer was framed as information rather than invitation.

Technically.