A light press against the side of her neck, quick and gentle, and she felt nothing at all.
She folded. Gojo caught the small body before it hit anything and eased her down onto the foam board, handling her the way a person handles something irreplaceable.
"So what's the plan?"
Sumire had stepped up beside him. She'd watched his hands and drawn her own conclusion already: he meant to repeat whatever he'd done for Enju Aihara, using whatever he was to mend the girl's eyes.
And that was exactly what happened. Once Aika went under, white light gathered at his fingertips, the glow of Reverse Cursed Technique, warm and soft on the surface with something enormous folded inside it.
Eyes meant working next to the brain. One slip and the damage went somewhere nothing could reach.
But precision wasn't a concern for him. His command of Reverse Cursed Technique had long since crossed into territory where every thread of power went exactly where he sent it, not a fraction more.
His fingers settled over her eyes. The light sank in, coaxing the two dead orbs free, drawing them out with a surgeon's economy and no pain reaching her at all.
Then, while she still lay unconscious, he worked fast: nerves rebuilt, eyes reformed from nothing, lead lifted out particle by particle, function restored piece by piece.
It moved too quickly for either woman to follow. He'd begun the restoration in the same breath the ruined tissue came loose, sparing her whatever he could.
Compared to a Gastrea Virus woven into a person's genes, a little lead and some wrecked tissue barely registered as a problem.
Even lead that had seeped into blood and organs could be teased out with the same technique. Finer control, heavier drain on Cursed Energy, nothing more.
Cursed Energy had never been a limit for him. If it bought this child her sight, if it pulled her out from under all that weight, he'd spend as much as it took.
Sumire stood rooted, eyes fixed on his hands, something close to awe working through her. She'd known his power ran deep. She hadn't known healing extended to rebuilding eyes that had died years ago.
Betty kept her usual composure, though her fists stayed clenched and her gaze never wavered. She wanted this for the girl too, the light, the wish, the escape.
The glow at his fingertips thinned. Sweat beaded along his forehead. Rebuilding eyes and stripping lead out of a body had cost him.
When it was finished he let the technique go and released a slow breath. Exhaustion showed, and the smile stayed anyway. He touched her cheek to bring her back.
"Aii. Aii."
His voice barely disturbed the air, feather-light against her ear.
She surfaced groggy, head heavy, no memory of anything that had happened.
"Sorry, I think I fell asleep..."
An apology first thing, because she assumed she'd nodded off and wasted his time. An embarrassed little smile came with it.
Halfway through the sentence she realized the endless dark had gone. In its place sat a face, striking, smiling down at her with an affection and a grief she didn't know what to do with.
More than that: after years she couldn't count, light had come back. Everything in front of her was sharp and solid and undeniably there.
The filth of the alley. Garbage on the ground. Stains crawling up the brickwork. She could see all of it, so clearly it frightened her.
"I... my eyes..."
She reached up to touch them, to prove this wasn't a dream.
Then stopped, hand hanging in the air, afraid that touching would break it and drop her back into the dark. Her head turned instead, taking everything in.
She saw him, the warmth in his smile, the pale blue of his eyes, the sweat along his brow.
She saw Sumire, the worry and the pity, the softness underneath.
She saw Betty, that calm face, the quiet hope sitting in her expression.
She saw the narrow alley, her own pitiful shelter, the trash and standing water, and far off a thin blade of sunlight cutting through a gap between buildings.
Real. All of it. Not sound in a void, not shapes she had to guess at, but the world itself, the thing she'd wanted back longer than she could stand to admit.
"How does it feel?" He watched her sit there stunned, and his voice came out gentle. "You should be able to see now. Everything you wanted to see."
Sound pulled her out of it. Not a dream, then. The light was hers again, and the smiling man in front of her had performed his magic trick after all.
Her eyes went red. Tears came loose all at once and struck the ground with a soft patter.
Then she broke, wailing, everything she'd bottled up for years tearing open, and threw herself against his chest sobbing.
Joy and grievance and disbelief and gratitude poured out together, along with every ounce of suffering she'd carried in silence for so long.
Years of blindness. Years of being pushed around and looked through. Years of scraping by. Nothing in any of it had felt like this.
She'd seemed almost indifferent earlier about the idea of her sight returning.
Only because she'd known better than to hope. Hoping cost too much when it fell through, and she'd learned to stop wanting things that could hurt her twice.
Now the impossible had arrived. She could see. She could go find her mother. She could look at the world.
He wrapped both arms around her and rubbed slow circles across her back, murmuring against her hair.
"Cry it out, Aii. Get it all out. Nobody's going to push you around anymore. You'll never live in the dark again. From now on you use your own eyes to look at whatever you want, and to find whoever you want."
Sumire's eyes stung watching them, and a small smile surfaced. Some of the weight in her chest lifted.
Betty's expression softened too, her mouth curving faintly, the tangle in her gaze giving way to something warmer.
The sobs faded to hiccups. The girl clung to him like the only solid thing left in the world, like a light dropped into a life that had never had one.
Sun found the gap overhead and fell across her face and across his shoulders, bright and warm, burning off the alley's damp chill and something else besides.
For that stretch of minutes the whole cramped space held nothing but warmth, as though every hard year had finally arrived at its ending.
She lifted her head and dragged the back of her hand across her cheeks, and the smile that came out was brighter than anything she'd worn before, sunlight breaking after a long rain, lighting up the whole grim little alley.
"Thank you. Thank you so much, really. You gave me back the light. You gave me a chance to see my mom."
Her voice caught, and every word of it meant something. She bowed low, careful and deeply respectful.
He drew her upright, smile intact, and ruffled her hair. "No need for that, Aii. You won't be alone anymore."
His mind had already settled on it: she was going to Elder Matsuzaki.
She'd get out from under this. She'd have what other children had. Warmth, laughter, somewhere that belonged to her.
Sumire came closer and smiled down at her. "Congratulations. On your sight."
Betty said nothing, prideful as ever.
Looking at all three of them, at the smiles, feeling the goodwill radiating off them, her eyes went red again and the tears came back.
What child wouldn't want her sight returned? The thing she'd hungered for all these years had come true.
He kept patting her back while she hiccupped through it, murmuring comfort.
His palm was broad and warm, the rhythm steady and unhurried, the way a mother settles a child toward sleep, something in it that made the world feel safe.
Sumire hung back and let it happen, watching, the pity in her deepening. She could guess how much this girl had swallowed over the years.
Betty stayed silent, though her gaze had gone soft. Something in the way she looked at the girl ran closer to fellow feeling, maybe a memory of her own long wait.
After a while the crying wound down. She lifted her head, sniffling, eyes swollen to slits, tear tracks drying on her cheeks.
Her gaze drifted, landed on his coat, and she froze.
Dust and grime coated her face and hands, and when she'd thrown herself at him she'd smeared a wide ugly streak across the clean black fabric.
Her face went crimson. Fingers twisted the hem of her shirt, and her voice came out barely audible.
"I'm sorry. I got your clothes dirty."
Guilt weighted every word. She'd have crawled into a crack in the ground if one had opened. He'd done all this for her and she'd repaid it by making a mess.
"Forget it. I climbed out of a sewer this morning."
Her small stricken expression pulled a laugh out of him. He winked, keeping his tone light, brushing the whole thing aside on purpose.
His hand went back to her hair, fingertips grazing the swollen corner of one eye, still careful.
"Come on. Let's go find your mom."
The word lit her up. Guilt and embarrassment vanished, replaced by open, glowing anticipation.
"Living with her again probably isn't realistic. But I can put you somewhere you'll be looked after properly."
He paused, and his voice turned serious. A woman capable of what hers had done wasn't likely to welcome her back now, and he wasn't about to let the girl take that wound twice.
"There'll be someone to take care of you, and plenty of kids your age to study and play with."
He said it cheerfully, already picturing Elder Matsuzaki and the 39th Area. Cursed Children like her, an old man who'd give them everything he had. A good place to land.