₊˚.༄ Eternal Exodus
CHAPTER SEVEN:
( a mutt's apology is spoken through a carcass. )

Chaike shifted uncomfortably between both feet in front of the door, turning and leaving the entrance a few times before finding herself returning like a mutt. She fidgeted with the VHS tape concealed in a pictured box, finding the text on the back of it far more interesting than she had in the last three weeks. She only ever recalls such a predicament one other time, and it did not end favorably for her, and she remembers vowing to never return to such a stance – and yet here she stands.

It had been three weeks (almost a month) since she had seen Saturo Gojo. Her mind completely consumed by their interaction on the stormy night, and how he had left her room in annoyance. He had completely disappeared, like a ghost, and Chaike feared she had imagined him entirely (it wouldn't have been the first time, and it certainly wouldn't be the last) and some pathetic part of her went searching like a mutt for the boy. She was still under house arrest and made sure to keep an eye out for anyone who might rat her out for leaving her doghouse.

Chaike turned to leave, dubbing this whole fiasco as a failure entirely, but as she made her way back to her room the prodigies' door swung open, revealing the white-haired god. Their eyes met briefly, and Chaike noted the shock that scattered across the boys' limitless irises like lightning striking the sky. She bowed quickly, looking more like a dog than she may have ever seen before. The type of dog who had been scolded one too many times, and hoped and prayed their punishment could be delayed by the simple interaction. She pushed the VHS tape towards Gojo, and he eyed the box in amusement as he grabbed it from her hands, and when Chaike rose to look at the boy she noted the smile turning the corners of his lips.

"What's so funny," Chaike questioned him with a slight annoyance.

"I figured you'd be bringing this back," Gojo told her, his smile deepening at the girl's question, "Thank you."

Chaike huffed out an annoyed sigh at the boys' comment, she assumed that this was his plan all along, and she mentally scolded herself for falling into such an obvious game. She didn't care for others using the same tactics as her, it made her feel small and seeable, and she much preferred to stay in the shadows where everything was concealed to the naked eye. She quickly drew her hands back underneath her cloak, and Gojo finally had taken notice of her attire. Chaike was draped in a dark black cloak, the type he'd seen in too many movies, and the fabric looked weird in the flesh. She had always worn odd attire that Saturo couldn't help but relate back to movies he had seen before, long robes, and torn fabric that revealed too much skin for the boyish gaze not to wonder to lustful fantasies. He recalls a time when an older gentleman had come to the school grounds (Gojo had never seen him before, and never saw him after) and eyed the raven-haired girl as if she were a piece of meat for anyone to dig their teeth into. Saturo could only imagine the disgusting thoughts the pervert could conjure up, and for a moment Gojo wanted to scoop the man's eyes out and serve them up to the wolf on a silver platter.

"I'm not good with apologies," the obsidian haired girl told the snow haired boy and he watched with a quizzical gaze as she rummaged for something concealed in her cloak, "The last time I did I dropped a dead deer on the doorstep of a man's doorway." The girl pulled out a replica of her black cloak, handing it off to Gojo. "You can imagine his disgust. I suppose your right; I do put on a show."

"What is this for," Gojo asked, ignoring the retelling of her last apology, thanking whatever gods were watching over him that she had decided a different approach to her defense.

"I have somewhere I want to take you, but I'm still on house arrest, so I can't exactly go out in the broad of daylight," Chaike told him, motioning for him to hurry up and put the attire on, "I was once told by a boyish prodigy that the best apology is told through food."

At the mention of food Gojo's stomach instantly made a growl making him recall his previous mission to the mess hall before his path became blocked by the Hound of Hell. He quickly threw the cloak on and followed after the girl as she darted towards an exit. His gaze stays trained on her feet as she maneuvered through the countless hallways of the school, and before he knew it both were running through the tree lines scattered on the outskirts of the school grounds. Gojo felt unnerved by his willingness to the wolf's proposition of an "adventure", and he feared what the consequences would be if either one of them got caught. What would they do if they saw a prodigy and a mutt mingling?

Gojo finally broke his gaze away from the ebony wolf to look at the limitless sky, his gaze turned into longing as his irises focused on the bright stars that scattered across the vast universe. The self-proclaimed God of the sorcery world could not help but reach his hands up in hopes of taking ahold of the constellations dusting the night sky, and wondered if he touched the dying light would he reach the true nature of Godhood. Would he truly become limitless in all his possibilities? As his gaze fell back to the girl, he pondered on his question to her a few weeks prior. He wondered if a mutt could reach Godhood, could a mutt achieve absolution, or did such a creature give up on such an ideology. Did absolution have anything to offer the wolf before him or was humanity and morals simply nonexistent to her.

Did Chaike even know what a normal life looked like?

In two hours', time both the prodigy and mutt reached the bottom foothills of Mount Mushiro, and Gojo could feel his stomach turning into knots. The hike had made him even more starved than before, and as he turned to make a snarky remark towards the girl, he noted that her hand was held out and placed in the center of her palm was a Kikufuku. "I know it's your favorite," Chaike told the prodigy as he delicately took the sweet treat. The girl started moving towards the city, and Gojo followed like a dog to its master.

Chaike feels herself taking deep breaths, relishing the feeling of a collar being loose around her neck. She had forgotten what it felt like to have some sense of freedom, and she reminisces on the word. She recalls the angles and curves of time. The angles, the world in between worlds (she often relates it to purgatory, the in between of Heaven and Hell) was a fluid place. You could feel everything and nothing simultaneously, and Chaike thinks it's a similar feeling as floating through the oblivion of space. The curves were like windows in the angles, they were concrete to the fluidity of the angles. She recalls stepping through the curve, grasping at the window, and turning it into a door and falling flat on her ass most of the time. She missed it though; she missed floating in and out of the angles and running wild and free through the curves like a bad omen.

It was another hour, and a half before they reached the city, and Gojo couldn't help but become increasingly paranoid of their surroundings. It wasn't late for the common man and women, and many aged faces walked along the streets, stopping at restaurants, bars, love hotels, and other places for the night. Cars drove mindlessly through the road, and the ones that ignored the speed limit brought a gust between the two teenagers that made Chaike's hair move as if it had a mind of its own. Chaike's hair ran endlessly, stopping just a little past the back of her knees, and Gojo in younger years had a feeling that if they had been in the same class he would have cut it with a pair of children's scissors.

Chaike motioned for the boy to follow her, and he fell in line behind her as they weaved through back alleys and dimly lit streets that became vacant the deeper, they traveled into the city. Gojo noted the homeless they passed by, and the raunchy teenagers shoving their slimy tongues down the others throat. Gojo was never one for public displays of intimacy (granted he recalls a time he was in a similar back alley with his hand in between a girl's legs) the idea of such public display of affection made his skin crawl in disgust and his mouth fill with salvia ready to spill out the contents in his stomach. He wondered if the people around them thought the pair of teenagers were a couple on the hunt for an empty space in between the other lovers of the night.

In no time both teenagers were on the outskirts of the city, empty looking apartments and homes surrounded the pair in an eerie way. Gojo's eyes scanned each in every building with fear palpitating in his veins. rows upon rows of emptiness surrounded the pair, it reminded Gojo of a graveyard, and he waited for the slightest movement to make the dead crawl out of their resting place to drag both the teenagers to their eternal Hell. His eyes finally befell a small street ramen bar. Dim lights hung over the five high top chairs made of varnished wood. The tabletop had the same appearance with red placemats designating the spots. A gentleman sat behind the countertop and wore an inviting smile and waved at the two teenagers, and to Gojo's surprise Chaike returned the gesture. They both took seating in the middle of the counter and the man scurried behind a curtain to grab something. Gojo looked around in a daze, as the girl sat to his left fiddled with her chopsticks absentmindedly and with a bored gaze.

The man returned shortly after with two glasses of a bubbly brown liquid, handing them both a drink before telling them their food would be right out. He disappeared and Gojo eyed the drink suspiciously, "I don't drink alcohol," the prodigy told the mutt and turned to see her downing the pint with loud gulps, "and I don't think you're even old enough to drink."

Chaike let out a disgusting burp before telling the white-haired God, "Well, age can't exactly be applied to me." The girl rummaged in her cloak before pulling out a bottle of water for the boy, and he graciously took the drink from her hands. "Sorry, I forgot you don't drink. It's been a while."

"How old are you really," Gojo asked, and he watched the girl crack a sinister smile that she tried to hide by bowing her head like a dog.

"Traversing through the angles distorts my age a great deal. I haven't physically aged I suppose, but time moves differently in the curves, like in one curve time moved so fast that I had realized 10 years there is only 10 minutes in this curve," Chaike rambles to the boy before taking another long swig of her alcohol.

"Well, how are you able to get alcohol then, because from that explanation it would mean in this 'curve' you're still fourteen," Gojo prodded as he took small sips from the bottle of water.

"I slept with the guy behind the counter and black mailed him for sleeping with an underaged girl," Chaike bluntly tells him, and Gojo quivers in disgust at her frankness with him on her sexual exploits.

As if on que the man walked out and set two large bowls of ramen in front of the two of them and bowed before them before turning to return to whatever he was doing prior to the kids coming to his little shop. Gojo eyed the ramen suspiciously, the fiery red broth making the boy's stomach turn in fear of the spices soon to touch his tongue. He glanced at the girl beside him and noticed her devouring the meal set before her in a sloppy way, making loud noises that would drive a misophonia insane, and spilling some of the broth on herself but not giving a care in the world to the mess she was creating.

"You said you damned yourself with the foresight of the future," Gojo starts, he's been meaning to ask her about it, but the opportunity never presented itself until now, "What did you mean by that?"

"The angles and curves of the future are much like a distorted picture," Chaike told him, looking over at the boy as he ate quietly so he would be able to grasp every detail given to him, "The future is always changing, a simple rock getting moved could alter the whole entire timeline. The future evolves at a rapid speed, like a super virus, faces blurred or contorted, the landscape breaking and rearranging just as quickly, the conversations held within the future overlapping with thousands of other possible dialogues. The future is constant noise."

"So, it's a lot for the human mind to process?"

"Ha," Chaike huffs out before pondering on how to explain it to Gojo, "When you look into the future you yourself become distorted. It's constant deconstruction and reconstruction. The future has claws for fingers, and in some way, its digging it's claws into the seers' brain and ripping it apart and putting it back together in a different format to show another possible reality." Chaike takes Gojo's pint of beer and takes a massive swig from the beverage before finishing her explanation, "It's a huge sensory overload."

"How far have you gone," Gojo ask and from the look Chaike gives him he sees he needs to be more specific, "How far into the future have you looked?"

"I've gone as far as the end of time itself," Chaike tells the prodigy, and she sees a glimpse of intrigue scatter through his piercing irises.

"Why'd you come back to the present," Gojo prods.

"At the end of time there stands a singular figure, and it was odd," Chaike starts to explain, stopping on how to continue with the right wording. Gojo instantly turned his attention to the girl, he couldn't grasp the idea of something coming off weird to the mutt of time. "Whatever or whoever it was could see me."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know how to explain it, I can interact with the future, although it's somewhat tricky, I can do it, but this just felt off. It was like it could see that I didn't belong there, that I was traversing through the angles and curves."

"So, how does that interaction make you come back here," Gojo wonders loudly.

"Because I want to find the rock that's been moved to cause such an anomaly to exist in the first place," Chaike cracks a wicked smile, and if Gojo weren't so anxious about the girl he would have poked and prodded for more, but he decided it best not to dig deeper than he already has.

"How many techniques do you even have," Gojo questions the girl, and she looks up with a quizzical look as to think of how many she truly has.

"I have three, but I intend to get rid of the third one here in a year and three months, if the future hasn't been distorted drastically," she reveals to the boy.

"And what technique will the big bad wolf swallow then," Gojo asked with a mischief gaze.

"That would defeat the purpose of not knowing the future, Saturo," Chaike says with a playful smile and for once Gojo likes the way his name rolls off the girl's tongue. It's doused in honey, and not the usual blood lust that all her words are laced with, and for a moment Gojo has this sense a familiarity as if he's heard her voice before.

A peaceful lull falls over the two as they eat. Gojo relishes the tranquil atmosphere that has rested over the two, he compares the night outing to his meals shared with Geto and Shoko. He loves Geto and Shoko, more than the word itself can describe, but at times he finds the continues interactions tiring. They had become repetitive at times, and Gojo finds the noise over the adventures to be too much for him. Chaike bathes in the silence that has befallen both of them, going through her mind trying to compare this moment to another, but she draws a blank. She can't evoke a time where she ever shared a meal with someone her age and talked over a normal topic - granted, the topic wasn't exactly normal in its own right - and thus she tries to will her mind to recall a past so far away that the memories are just black pictures in her mind. Even in Chaike's youth she can't recall ever being normal, only a sinister smile painted in blood smiling down at the girl and a cruel hand ready to strike the raven-haired peasant at any time.

"You know," Chaike breaks the peaceful silence, "I'm not the only one being used like a mutt."

"What do you mean," Gojo says, taking the bate the girl had left out for him.

"You, Gojo Saturo, are used the same way I am to the Sorcery world," Chaike turns to the boy, locking eyes with him as to make sure he understands everything she is fixing to say in full force, "The higher ups use you as a weapon, and that's all they see you as. A mutt and a weapon are the same, both fights blindly, with no real cognitive thought except to destroy the prey that is laid out before them." She turns back to the counter, laying cash out on the table, marking that it was time to go.

"We are more alike than you would like to admit," Chaike finishes, standing up and walking away from the ramen shop, and Gojo follows behind her like a dog on a leash whose owner is yanking on the line to direct the mutt somewhere else.

Both teenagers walked back to the school slowly, giving each other looks when they passed by someone who did something funny or cringey to the teenagers self-absorbed ideas. Gojo often took glances at Chaike as her eyes slowly moved from one thing to another in their surroundings, her face wore an expression of content, but her eyes screamed that there was an internal hell brewing inside of the girl. He wondered what the girl before had seen in the future, what kind of Hell existed in a few years to turn a wild mutt who relished in chaos to come running back home.

Gojo stopped in his tracks once his train of vision caught a glimpse of a booth selling odd and ends of tourist trap gifts. He could feel the summer nights brewing around him, just on the cusp of spilling out like an urn filled with ichor of the gods, ready to douse the land in blistering heat. Gojo's feet carried him to the stall, moving in between lovers and young teenagers taking a break from their studies, and Chaike followed lowly behind the prodigy. He stopped at the sunglasses, eyeing them as if his life depended on the decision he was fixing to make. He grabbed at a few turning them over in his hands before he put them back without even trying them on. Chaike paid no mind to the boy as she eyed the postcards, looking at places from the city she had seen before, and recalling what they are now to what they could be in the future.

"What do you think of these," Gojo calls out to the raven-haired girl, and she turns around to be met only a few inches away from the boy. He wears a smile revealing his teeth, and Chaike notes how pure they look unlike hers that have been stained by years of blood thirsty hunger. She can feel his hot breath fan against the girls' pale skin, turning it a faded shade of pink.

She laughs, a genuine smile turning the girls lips upwards, the resting scowl the girl often wears completely disappearing. A light enters the girls' eyes, and Gojo notes that they look like polished silver rather than a steel grey, and wonders what a star can do in the dead of the night. "They definitely suit you, granted no one would be able to see the dazzling blue eyes of the All-Mighty Prodigy."

"You really think they suit me," Gojo ask, ignoring the second part of the girl's question, he looks at himself in a tiny mirror situated on the glass counter of the shop.

"Yeah, for sure," Chaike tells him as she pulls out cash and hands it over to the cashier before giving the petite woman a gesture that tells her to keep the change.

"You know I can buy these myself," Gojo retorts as he tries to stop the girl from buying his summer wear, "I already owe you for the meal that you paid for."

"You can pay me back another time," Chaike informs him as they continue on their path back to the school, "something is bound to catch my eyes at a later date."

The white-haired prodigy for once in his life didn't feel so alone standing on his pedestal, he didn't feel so alone in his Garden of Eden. The prodigy had found another standing high and mighty upon a pedestal, but still there was an off set of height between the two. Saturo, a God destined to bring about a new age of greatness to the people of their world, and a devil destined to rip the very fabric of reality and destroy all order to their world. He didn't care though, for when one feels less alone in damnation, they are more inclined to dismiss the frivolous facts.

Gojo Saturo would welcome the fall from grace if it made him feel less alone, and Kutsuki Chaike would be more hospitable to damnation if she were less alone in Hell.

( WORD COUNT ) 3806
—— unedited

HELLO, MY LOVELY LITTLE SOULS, A SUPER LONG UPDATE FOR YOU GUYS!! As I have slowly figured out how I plan to move through the next three act's I've realized that act one will not have the climax of this story, but instead build slowly but efficiently on the group's friendship, but we are getting closer to the end of this act, and getting closer to the second act, the hound & the prodigy's eternal exodus from damnation. the second act will be a bit confusing to follow along to, but I'll go more into detail when we cross that bridge. I hope you all enjoyed this long chapter; I'm feeling hella conflicted on its writing, but when does a writer not feel some type of way on their writing. I love you all so much, and happy pride month!!