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It’s like an itch.
The onset is abrupt and Yuuji hadn’t even realized it was there until he’s reaching up to scratch the back of his head and he feels it.
It’s like a change in the air pressure, like someone’s suddenly leaning their whole weight against the back of his head, trying to tip him forward but there’s nothing solid there. Yet Yuuji feels it. Feels something there, pinning him in place.
It takes Yuuji several long seconds to realize that it’s not him that’s being pressed but Sukuna. Something is pressing down upon Sukuna, heavy and dense like the humidity right before a thunderstorm, like they’re trying to draw him out. And Sukuna –
Sukuna is wary.
(The King of Curses, the Double-Faced Specter Sukuna has lived for more than a thousand years. He has seen all the evils in this world, has even borne some of that evil into this world and so he has grown to fear nothing for he is unmatched.
Among heaven and earth, there should have been no one capable of opposing him.)
Yuuji spins on his heels, eyes blown wide. His gaze roves across the horizon of people in downtown Tokyo, searching. And, like it's been waiting for him to look, the crowds part just enough so that Yuuji can meet the gaze of the black-haired boy with a bowl cut staring straight back at him.
The boy is unremarkable to look at: a normal-looking child that could be found anywhere in Tokyo, in any suburb of Japan with his school uniform and average appearance. Yet Sukuna is baring his fangs at this child, a monster sizing up another bigger, potentially deadlier monster.
Yuuji stares. The boy steadily matches his gaze as the people around them walk by them like they’re two drops of oil floating on the surface of a river.
Power rolls off the boy like tidal waves, dense and heavy and oppressive. The back of Yuuji’s mouth clogs with the taste of a white fog, a brilliant supernova exploding like a gummy candy being split open against his molars.
“Excuse me,” the boy says, in an average unremarkable sounding voice that suited his average, unremarkable appearance. “But there’s an extremely powerful evil spirit attached to you. Would you let me exorcise it?”