𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬, Inumaki Toge

XI, christmases when you were mine.

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EVENTUALLY, INUMAKI FINDS THE strength and will drag himself to his desk, slumping in the high-backed chair like a pile of bones with nothing to hold himself up.

His right hand finds its way towards his phone automatically, the motion familiar to him. He grasps it, and turns on his phone since what happened last night.

He thinks it's her influence. She still holds his life in her palm, even if she doesn't know it. Everything he does, every single movement of his body, is completed with her in mind. In the end, he was just a marionette, and she a puppeteer, stringing him along until she cuts his strings and allowed him to crumple to the ground without any support. And now, without his strings, he doesn't know where to go, what to do — he doesn't know if he could.

He opens up Snapchat tiredly, despite having done nothing but lag in bed all day. The prospect of facing his phone again just drains him in a way, all his strength seeping out of him in a river. But he knows that he has to do this eventually, and he doesn't want to keep postponing his painful reckoning any longer, and he should just let the flag fall and allow his friends to jump on him and start pelting questions at his mediocrity.

His eyes catch on Panda and Maki, in a call in their Group GC. Their bitmoji blink at him as his finger hovers over the glowing green 'Join Call' symbol.

Should he join? Should he not?

Hatingly, he clicks on it, and the familiar ringing notification connects with his ears with the earphones he's hastily put on. He notices his hair is sticking up in places and his sunken eyes make it look like he hasn't slept in weeks despite having slept for week, but he honestly couldn't care less. People can see him like this for all he cares. Let them know he's also human.

"INUMAKI!" Maki and Panda explode in his ears the moment he enters.

"Hi, guys," Inumaki says timidly, his voice raspy from lack of use.

"Oh, my God, you asshole!" Panda fumes. "You disappeared off the face of the Earth for weeks, and you come back here now and you say hi?"

"Well, what else am i supposed to say?" Inumaki asks defensively. "What's up? How are you doing?"

"...He has a point," Maki points out.

"Yeah, but where were you?" Panda questions.
"You couldn't have answered a single message?"

"Neither of you are busy, right?" Inumaki asks, the question suddenly popping into his head, heralded by a wave of panic at the prospect of interrupting them when he clearly has no intention of doing that. He should've asked before he joined the call — it was so stupid of him to do so.

"Nope," Maki replies. "So we would like a goddamn explanation."

"Yeah, dude, I called your family and they said you hadn't talked to them in a while, and then I called your girlfriend, and she—"

"She broke up with me," Inumaki says quietly.

There is a pause.

"She what?"

"During Christmas?" Maki demands. "What kind of dick move is that?"

Inumaki is silent, for a moment. Quite some time has passed since she broke up with him, but saying it out loud like this just takes another hit to him. It's like twisting a knife in his already weak chest, leeching all the life out of him as the truth that she's not and will never be coming back, the truth that their relationship is over for good, finally sets in like a dust settling on yellow pages of an ancient volume.

Panda and Maki and everything else falls away as the truth brings with it another painful realization. It's just him, and his achingly empty apartment, and the hastily put up Christmas tree in the living room, and a whispered sadness that escapes his lips quietly.

"We were supposed to string up the Christmas lights together,"

And then it all come crashing down on him, and he just wants to shut off his phone and go back to bed.

"Inumaki, I—"

"Screw her, dude," Maki immediately says hotly.

"Yeah, dude," Panda agrees. "She left you, her loss."

But why does Inumaki feel like it's his?

"Yeah," he says halfheartedly. "I've just been... self-reflecting."

He's thankful towards Gojo — if he hadn't been so harsh on Inumaki, he would never have gotten himself out of bed. Gojo had... opened his eyes, at least. He makes a mental note to thank Gojo the next time he sees the man — quite possible during Christmas.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," Maki suddenly says haltingly, his words cut unevenly. Inumaki's brow creases slightly, wondering where he's heard that before, but Panda gets to it before he can.

"Maki, did you just quote Doctor Seuss?"

"Did you search that up?" Inumaki teases.

If Maki's camera was on, Inumaki is sure that he would see the woman's cheek burning red. He can practically feel it radiating through his screen — he doesn't know how much he missed this: just talking to his friends, no cameras, no outside world, just him, Panda and Maki.

"Look, I was looking for stuff to comfort Inumaki, okay?" Maki says defensively. "There was an attempt."

"Yeah, an attempt," Panda says, and Inumaki can practically hear his eye roll.

"I'm sure Panda just rolled his eyes so far back he saw his brain — or lack therof," he quips, a dizzying lightness filling him as he grins for the first time in weeks, his cheeks lifting into a smile to show his teeth despite having no cameras on him.

"Oh, come on, now," Panda says, sounding amused.

Maki gasps. "He said the thing!"

And they talk. Long into the night, until Inumaki decides that he's tired once more, and he goes to bed, feeling better than he has in weeks.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE,,

guys we're nearing the end but im so so sorry for being so slow in completing this fanfic.

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