Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The moment Itadori swallows the finger and that emo kid, Fushiguro, starts yelling all muffled and skewed through the skin of the curse-thing that he’s gonna execute him by decree of “Jujutsu regulation” or whatever, he realizes he maybe… shouldn’t have eaten it. This feeling is doubled by the intense pressure in his gut and what feels like a sudden swelling of his heart.

The boy keels over in the curse’s maw, gasping for breath and desperately attempting not to be swallowed while his chest rips open from the inside out. Water leaks from his eyes and his mouth as his back hunches further until he loses his footing and slips onto the bumpy tongue of the curse. He tries and fails to hold back a gag at the wretched smell of its breath and throat before passing out entirely.

………

Yuuji wakes up in the mouth of a curse and lets out a scream he dearly hopes no one is around to hear. His hands practically move out of instinct, pressing his palms together as he wills his blood to congeal in the air around him. Yuuji stands and waits and huffs and puffs and nothing happens.

He pulls his hands apart from one another and stares at them, red eyes full of utter confusion. “What…?” he mutters, and the sound of his voice is just twangy enough–just as chipper and joyful as he remembers it being despite his confusion–to cause him great pause.

Yuuji hasn’t sounded this young before encountering the Cursed Womb.

He rubs his hands over his face, pulling and twisting his skin until it stings. Somewhere far away, he can make out the distant sounds of Megumi’s Divine Dog barking and growling. Yuuji covers his eyes with his hands and screams.

“I just,” he says, trailing off with a whine, trying desperately not to cry. “This is too much. What’s going on?”

After a few more seconds of scratching and growling, Yuuji decides he can’t just sit there and be digested because that would totally suck and Nobara would never let him live it down. He looks around and assumes, since his Blood Manipulation isn’t cooperating, none of his Cursed Techniques are. He climbs to the front of the curse’s mouth and pulls apart its sharp, grit teeth with his bare hands. The cuts heal themselves within seconds, and when its maw opens, he is greeted with a lot less light than he was expecting to be.

The Divine Dog–he pauses, does a double-take, and shakes his head from side-to-side just in case he’s seeing double–scratch that, the Divine Dogs bite into either side of the curse’s face to keep it in place as he exits the beast.

Yuuji falls to his butt on the ground and gapes at the shikigami battling the curse. “What…?” he whispers.

Suddenly, Megumi is beside him. Yuuji lifts his head to examine the other’s face, check if he’s been injured by the curse, and is met with an expression of total focus and turmoil.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Uh, what’s up?”

Megumi gets into some sort of fighting stance Yuuji is sure he hasn’t seen in over a year and the curse disintegrates beside them. The Divine Dogs flank the boy and growl at Yuuji, teeth snapping towards his hair and clothes.

Yuuji blinks slowly.

“You’re no longer human. Under jujutsu regulation, Yuuji Itadori, by law, I will now exorcise you as a curse!” Megumi announces, huffing from the exertion of his previous battle.

Yuuji blinks slowly. “...What?” he whispers. “Uh…”

Megumi crouches lower and black smoke swirls around him.

Yuuji takes a deep breath and steels himself. He makes himself grin, wider than he ever has before, and laughs that laugh he knows and loathes so much. “What a wonderful era to be reawakened!” he crows. “So now, where are all of the– oh, screw it.” His shoulders fall with his grin and Yuuji waves sheepishly. “Hi, Megumi. I’m Yuuji from a future where Actual-Sukuna kills basically everyone. Wanna bother Gojo-sensei to get us some Kikufuku from Kikusuian?”

Megumi tenses, shoulders hunching, and widens his stance. He doesn’t move for a moment, clearly puzzled beyond belief by what is occurring.

Yuuji sighs and lets himself fade into blackness. Unbeknownst to him, the black tattoos of Sukuna fade with him.

………

“What’s the situation?” A man appears behind Megumi, stance loose yet secluded, with a blindfold over both of his eyes.

Itadori shakes himself and smacks the heel of his hand against the side of his head a few times. “I wish I knew,” he says. “I think I passed out or something.”

Megumi furrows his brows as the Divine Dogs keep snapping at the boy on the ground in response to his wariness. “Gojo?” he says, not taking his eyes off of Itadori. “What are you doing here?”

Gojo grins and waves at the two, not that Megumi can see it from his angle. “Hey. I wasn’t planning on showing up, but geez, you got kind of roughed up, kid!” He pulls his phone from his pocket and snaps multiple pictures of his student’s bloodied and winded face. “I’ve gotta show the second-years,” he remarks cheekily.

Megumi tilts his chin down, but his eyes remain glued to Itadori and the weird slits beneath his eyes. Those… probably weren’t there before, right?

Gojo continues, completely unbothered, “I got chewed out by the higher-ups ‘cause that Special-Grade cursed object still hasn’t been located. ‘Thought it wouldn’t hurt to go sight-seeing and stop by while I’m searching for it.” He puts his phone in his pocket and grins. “So, have you found it yet?”

Megumi nods and releases his Dogs. “Yeah.”

Itadori laughs awkwardly and raises his hand, pointing to himself. “Sorry, but I ate that thing,” he says calmly.

Gojo stares at him, face cheerful in that Is-this-idiot-being-for-real?! sort of way his grandpa used to look at him with. “...Really?” he asks, but it sounds more like a statement.

Itadori nods with a hum when Megumi says, “He did.”

Gojo hums, but the over-the-top tilt he does with his torso just makes it look like he’s trying to conceal the fact that he’s about to start laughing at the absurdity of the situation. He approaches the pink-haired boy and sticks his face way too close to his and hums questioningly.

Itadori resists the urge to take a few steps backwards in order to let the guy figure out what he needs to figure out.

Gojo laughs after a while, somehow moving closer. Itadori does lean back this time.

“Dang, it really did combine with you!” he concludes mirthfully. “That’s hilarious.” He steps back and continues, “Anything weird about your body?”

Itadori scrunches up his nose. “Nah? ‘Seems okay, anyway.”

“Can you swap with Sukuna at will?”

Itadori feels the gears in his brain stop turning. “What? Who’s Sukuna?”

Megumi sighs when Gojo almost starts laughing again. “Uh, yeah. The curse you ate?”

Itadori puts his hand on his hip and says, “Oh,” like he knows what that Gojo guy is talking about. “Uh huh. I think I can do that.”

Gojo takes a few steps away from him and bends his knees before doing some stretches Itadori is sure he’s seen athletes do before martial arts tournaments on T.V. “Okay,” Gojo says, “Give us ten seconds; then change back to yourself.”

“Uh,” Itadori says. “But…”

“Don’t worry,” Gojo says with what is probably the slyest smirk Itadori has ever seen in real life. “I’m way too strong for him.” He tosses a bag Itadori didn’t pay much attention to upon the man’s arrival to Megumi. “Hang onto this, will you?”

Megumi catches the bag with a grunt. “So, what is this?”

Itadori looks at the bag a little closer now, noticing that “Kikusuian” is written on the front of the bag. “Ooh, that place is good,” he says.

“It’s kikufuku from Kikusuian,” Gojo tells Megumi. “It’s Sendai’s specialty and uber good. The zunda and cream flavor is my favorite.”

Megumi blinks. “Hold on, didn’t Sukuna say–”

As though being summoned by the name being spoken aloud, black tattoos swirl down Itadori’s back, chest, and arms, and climb up his neck.

Megumi tenses, nearly crushing the bag, while Gojo grins.

“Kikufuku is just the best.”

………

Yuuji blinks rapidly upon the new-old sight of the night sky and Megumi sitting on the roof. 

“I think it’s the cream inside that really makes the difference,” Gojo says, continuing his lament to kikufuku.

Yuuji’s direction is torn to the side, where his dead sensei stands, smirking and smug as all get-out. He lets his mouth fall open and his shoulders droop. “Gojo-sensei?”

“Hm?” Gojo hums. “I’m not surprised you can recognize the Six Eyes, given who you are and all, but isn’t it too soon to be calling me sensei, Sukuna?” he teases.

Yuuji is suddenly unable to see. Everything is blurry and he feels like he’s dreaming. Nothing feels real, and the sudden urge to sink to the bottom of the ocean suddenly encompasses his every thought.

“Wh… I’m Yuuji,” he says, begs, pleads. “My name is Yuuji Itadori. I’m not Sukuna.”

Gojo hums questioningly again and tilts his head to the side. “You’re not? Could’ve fooled me, since you’re possessing that kid and all, and he ate one of your fingers.”

Yuuji crosses his arms instinctually. “One of my… oh.” he says “Oh” again, but with extra oomph, before falling to his knees.

He sees Gojo step forward and Megumi tense across the roof from him out of the corner of his eyes, but can’t bring himself to care what they plan on doing to him.

“I’m not Sukuna,” he says again. “I’m not.”

“I’ve never heard of a curse having identity issues,” Gojo says.

Yuuji sniffles and buries his face in his hands. The marks of Sukuna stare back at him, on his wrists, arms, hands, chest, everywhere he can see. “I’m not a curse,” he says, even though he’s not really sure that’s true anymore.

“Why aren’t you up and fighting me, Sukuna?” Gojo jumps from side to side, his fists up in a ready position. He taunts, “I thought you were called the ‘King of Curses’ for a reason!”

Yuuji clenches his teeth and his eyes shut and shifts his position so that his face can be buried in his knees. His arms tuck his legs closer to himself, but still he refuses to respond.

“Geez,” Gojo breathes out. “Who knew the King of Curses was so moody?”

He sighs and Yuuji pulls his legs even closer to his chest.

“Whatever,” Gojo mutters. He takes in a deep breath and then sighs it out heavily. Then, in a bored, almost-monotone, he says, “Didn’t you call me your ‘sensei’ or something? What’s that all about anyway?”

“I’m Itadori Yuuji,” Yuuji says, voice muffled by his arms. “I was the vessel of Sukuna once, but we”–he pauses to take in a shaky breath–”managed to kill him. In Shinjuku. You died. Nobara and Megumi and I died of old age decades later. Aliens appeared, but I died before that all ended. Now I’m here. I hate this and want to die.”

Gojo hums. “Well, that can certainly be arranged.”

Yuuji lets out a sigh he didn’t know he had been holding. His arms relax around him and reveal his head for the taking. “Go on,” he says. “Say it. ‘Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void’. I’m ready this time.”

He hears Gojo laugh lightly, but doesn’t look up from the ground. His sensei’s shoes are before him. Yuuji closes his eyes and sighs again. Finally, this will all be over. No more running. No more death, no more pain, and no more Yuuji Itadori. No more vessels for Sukuna. No more pain. No more death. No more. “Please, no more.”

Gojo crouches down in front of him and grins. “Well, it sounds to me like you’ve just about made up your mind.”

He taps two fingers on Yuuji’s head, and that’s the end of it. Everything fades to black.

………

Itadori wakes up in a room covered wall-to-wall in paper warding talismans and seals. Countless, hexagonal lamps cover the stone floor, and that Gojo guy is sitting backwards in a wooden chair before him.

Gojo grins at the boy. “Your head’s on the chopping block, but we can get your execution postponed if you work with us, Jujutsu sorcerers!”

“What?! Execution?!” Itadori exclaims. He mutters, “Just ‘cause I ate some stupid finger?”

Gojo laughs shortly. “That ‘stupid finger’ was actually a cursed object. If anyone other than you ate it, they probably would have been dead already.”

Itadori blinks hard. “What? I could have died?!”

Gojo rocks the chair back and forth. “That’s still the plan. You’re being executed, remember?”

“This is all very confusing,” Itadori mutters.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Itadori could swear he hears someone else screaming.

Chapter Text

Yuuji isn’t really sure why he’s in Sukuna’s domain with black lines running around his body like chains, but he would really like to know if he’s in more like a sent-back-in-time scenario or an alternate-dimension one. He reckons it’ll be pretty difficult to determine which it is given he has no idea what the heck is going on. Maybe he could check if Tengen knows anything about it, but how would he even get to her chambers? “Last time” he swallowed Sukuna’s first finger, he didn’t even know who Tengen was. But maybe he could convince Gojo to get them an audience!

…Yeah, that would be a funny sight: the great “Ryuomen Sukuna”, “King of Curses”, “Eater of Babies”, “Supposed-Traveller of Time”, begging the current Six-Eyes for an audience with one of the only forces protecting Jujutsu sorcerers. That wouldn’t be suspicious at all. He definitely wouldn’t accuse “Sukuna, divorcer of fingers” of wanting to kill her.

Yuuji sighs and places his chin on the back of his hand, his elbow resting on the throne of bones beneath him. He recreates a sight too well-known to him for the sake of comfort in the name of uncertainty and confusion, but it still feels unclean to exist so similarly to the creator of so much misfortune that he once had to share a brain and a body with.

Small, red waves crest against the base of the throne, but he finds himself unbothered by the disturbance. This is, he assumes, his innate domain. Well, Sukuna’s. But if he is Sukuna’s replacement or whatever, he can call it his if he wants to. At the very least, he’s earned that much.

Part of Yuuji really, really wants to see if he has access to Sukuna’s innate technique. Another part of Yuuji really, really wants to tear down the throne of skulls and crush every piece of bone beneath his feet. And another part of Yuuji really, really wants to take control of his own body and ask Gojo to just kill him already.

Yuuji sighs again. That is what would be best for everyone in the end, isn’t it? It would probably take Kenjaku a lot of time to create another “perfect” vessel for Sukuna if he just killed himself now, right? They wouldn’t just test if someone else–like Megumi–were a vessel candidate, right?

With that psychopath, it’s hard to decide which option would save the most people, and since that’s what always matters the most, it might take a while to come up with the best way to go about this. Yuuji hums and lets himself get lost in thought.

………

“Don’t worry,” Gojo says, still smiling. “I got your sentence suspended!”

Itadori gawks at him. “What, you mean you’ll just kill me later? How is that supposed to make me feel better?!”

Gojo shrugs. “Well, did you like the taste of that cursed object you ate?”

Itadori grimaces and leans backwards, trying not to fall off his chair in the process. “What? No, that thing tasted like soap. There’s no way I could like the taste of soap, even if it was flavored like the most delicious noodles in the world!” He tilts his head and hums. “Actually…”

“Great!” Gojo says and claps his hands together. “There’s nineteen of them. We’ve got six in custody at the moment.”

“What? There’s fingers and toes? I don’t know about that, man…”

“No,” Gojo says, like he’s explaining to a toddler why not to eat a gluestick, “Sukuna had four arms. They’re all fingers. And they’re indestructible. See?” 

He pulls a finger out of his pocket and throws it in the air before blasting it into a wall of talismans. Itadori stares at the new crater in the wall with wide-blown eyes and his mouth hanging open.

“Probably not very easy to digest, then,” Itadori mutters, gulping nervously.

Gojo laughs. “I would assume not, but I guess you’re just gonna have to find out.”

“Ha-ha. I’m gonna have to find out?”

“Yeah,” says the man. He points at Itadori. “You’ll eat all the fingers and trap Sukuna inside you. Only then will I execute you.”

Itadori grimaces. “I’m gonna die of food poisoning before you get the chance. Can you get food poisoning from eating cursed objects?”

Gojo grins. “I’ve got no idea! Anyway, the higher-ups are cowards and want me to execute you now, but that would be a waste! There’s no way we can let this one-in-a-billion chance just go by, y’know?”

The Six-Eyes narrows in on Itadori’s left cheek. The cursed energy there bounces around like a rabid dog, curling and twisting and creating afterimages like loose balls of string or wads of crumpled paper. The slit there stretches open, forming a strawberry red iris surrounded by the other regular makings of a human eyeball, a round iris like a seed planting itself in the center of the red. A thin mouth appears beneath it, frowning as deep as it probably can.

“No, you should just kill us now.”

Gojo’s eyes widen behind his blindfold as Itadori reaches up towards his cheekbone.

“Jeez, what the heck?” Itadori mutters, rubbing the skin around the eye and mouth. Both articles squint closed when his fingers get too close.

“Woah,” Gojo breathes out. “That shouldn’t be happening here.”

He approaches Itadori and leans down so he’s eye-level with Sukuna’s invasive facial features. “How’d you do that, Sukuna?”

The little mouth frowns deeper. “I’m not Sukuna,” Sukuna says. “I’m Yuuji.”

Gojo looks at Itadori and when the boy just shrugs, he returns the undivided attention of all eight of his eyes on the eye and mouth on Itadori’s cheek.

“Well, I don’t believe that for a minute,” Gojo says, “Because the boy’s body you’re stuck in is also named Yuuji Itadori.”

The red eye rolls. “What, have you never heard of people having the same name before? And what about that theory that there are seven people who look exactly like you in the world? Wouldn’t that mean that a similar case could be made for names?”

Gojo snorts. “What, are you a sci-fi nerd or something? I didn’t even know that genre existed in the Heian Era. Plus, if you believe that junk, you must not really know who I am. No one could come close to being as good-looking and handsome as me, obvi.”

The eye rolls again. “You’re pretty egotistical, sensei.”

“Oh, there’s that sensei thing again. You said you’re from the future or something, Sukuna, but I know that’s not the truth.”

“How would–? Whatever. What can I do to prove it to you?”

Gojo hums. “What can you do, you say? Tell me something that only future-Gojo would know. That shouldn’t be too challenging for you, given how you’re supposedly my student from the future or whatever.”

Sukuna’s mouth drops open. “What? Are you serious? How am I supposed to tell you something that you don’t even know yet? And how am I supposed to know what you did and didn’t know before you became my sensei?”

“I guess I could just seal him,” Gojo says, shifting his attention to Itadori–the one with the actual, physical body–and raising an eyebrow. “‘Put a talisman on your cheeks and see what happens. Maybe he won’t be able to manifest on your face anymore.”

“Wait, wait!” the little mouth cries. “I guess I can try to think of something.”

Gojo grins. “Good call!”

Itadori sighs and leans against the back of the chair. “I just wanna go home already.”

Gojo’s grin tightens.

“Let’s see… uhm… oh! Gojo-sensei’s favorite curse is the Rainbow Dragon.”

Gojo’s grin drops. “That doesn’t prove you’re from the future,” he says slowly, darkly, “In fact, you knowing that only proves that you’ve been spying on me or something more nefarious than that. I think you’re out of chances now.”

Gojo reaches for a talisman, and Yuuji’s eye spins about frantically. “Wait, wait, wait! Hold on! Give me one more chance, man!” He takes a deep breath and then mutters, “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

Gojo holds the seal an inch from Itadori’s face, right in front of Sukuna’s eye. “Go ahead. Just try to impress me. You only get one more shot; better make it count, Curse-Face.”

Itadori makes an offended noise. “Dude,” he says. “That literally only applies to me.”

Gojo shrugs and pushes the seal closer. Sukuna’s eye squints shut and starts shaking like he’s scared or something. Now that is a funny thought: Sukuna being scared. It’s almost laughable.

“Okay, okay, uhm… Oh! I know it!”

Itadori looks down towards his cheek as best as he can from the fixed position of his eyes which, believe it or not, is not optimal for looking down at one’s own cheeks.

“Getou Suguru’s body was taken from its grave and used to become the host of an ancient, parasitic brain that’s been transferring from body to body for eons!”

Gojo blinks. Yuuji swears he can see the glow of Six Eyes through his blindfold.

“You’re really testing my patience, here,” the man says, his voice tense and his grip on the seal tightening more than reasonable under any circumstances, “And I’m usually such a stand-up guy, y’know.” He lets out a sigh. “But, I think it’s your time to shut up and mind your own business.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” Sukuna practically wails. “I did exactly what you asked me to do! That’s something you’ll learn in the future but obviously don’t know about now! I thought we had a deal!”

Gojo’s eye twitches and Yuuji flicks his own away and then back in a split second.

“Listen,” Gojo says. “What you just told me isn’t something that could possibly be true. I killed Suguru. I buried Suguru. I bear all the blame for his mistakes, and you aren’t going to just prance all over his memory–”

“But did you cremate him, though?” Sukuna asks. “Y’know, as jujutsu regulation states that you do?”

Gojo grits his teeth but doesn’t respond. “So you know something else about the past. That still doesn’t prove you’re from the future, and you’re out of chances.”

Sukuna grits his teeth back. “I just want to help you guys!” he exclaims. “Why are you all so dang stubborn? I’m trying to protect thousands of people from dying here!”

“What, because you know that you’ll kill them?”

Yuuji is stunned into silence. That’s right. Gojo doesn’t even know–let alone believe–that he’s Yuuji Itadori from the future and not Sukuna, King of Curses.

Gojo puts a seal on both of Itadori’s cheeks and Yuuji’s mouth and eye sink back into the skin.

………

Yuuji pops back into existence laying back-down in the red water of Sukuna’s innate domain.

He stares up at the cavernous ceiling, looks at nothing, moves not a millimeter, and barely even breathes. Of course they wouldn’t believe anything that he tells them, even if it was true, because no one can prove it and nothing else matters.

…He probably shouldn’t have come out so hard with all the reminders of Gojo-sensei’s confused and unstable late best friend.

Yuuji groans and tosses an arm across his face and hopes Itadori doesn’t do something stupid like he did when he was his age.

………

Gojo hands Itadori the second of the nineteen remaining fingers he has to consume before being executed after the cremation ceremony for his grandpa. The two of them are the only ones in the crematorium, and even though Itadori knows the path he’s being tugged along on is one full of isolation and ending in his premature death, he takes it without much hesitation.

The nail scratches the back of his throat when it goes down, but he swallows it anyway. It still tastes like soap, but Itadori did forget to brush his teeth this morning, so he figures this might as well make up for it. 

None of Sukuna’s black tattoos appear on his face or hands, and nothing out of the ordinary occurs whatsoever aside from the full-on consumption of an ancient and evil artifact. Gojo splays his fingers to stretch out the tension in them and claps slowly for Itadori’s lack of hesitation.

Itadori laughs. “That was disgusting! ‘So gross it’s funny or something.”

Gojo tenses for a moment before shrugging to himself. Aren’t all good Jujutsu sorcerers a little crazy anyway?

“That last request of yours is gonna be a pain and a half to follow, grandpa,” Itadori tells a picture of Wasuke he set up for the ceremony.

Gojo grins wide. “Well, kid, ‘you ready to go through hell and back and then die and take down Sukuna with you? If so, you’ll have to start packing.”

Itadori hums. “‘Guess I better be!” He lifts a brow. “Wait, where am I going?”

Gojo approaches the doors to the exiting corridor and it opens automatically. Fushiguro, with bandages wrapped around the crown of his head and stuck around his face, stands on the other side of the door.

He answers in lieu of Gojo, “Tokyo.”

“Woah!” Itadori exclaims. “Looking good, brother!”

“How is this looking good?” he asks seriously. “Idiot.”

Chapter Text

“Tokyo Jujutsu High School,” Gojo says wistfully. “The place where dreams go to die.”

“I thought it would be curses dying here, at least, based on what you’ve told me about it.” Itadori mumbles, “Which isn’t much, to be honest.”

Gojo laughs. “Sure, those die here too, but that’s just secondary. They also die everywhere else. But have you ever seen a guy massacre an entire village while you try to convince him not to?”

Itadori blinks and then blinks again in rapid succession. He pauses in his step beside Gojo as they travel towards the entrance to the school building. The stairs up to the main courtyard hadn’t been as grueling to climb up as they might have been had they had this conversation before their ascension.

“I’ll take your silence as a no,” Gojo says, raising his hands in a little shrug as he continues on past Itadori.

Itadori jogs to catch up with him. “Uh, I know we’re out in the boonies and all, but aren’t people who aren’t Jujutsu sorcerers pretty likely to just… I dunno, stumble onto the schoolgrounds on their morning jogs or something?”

“Great question,” says Gojo. “We’ve actually told everyone who comes by that isn’t a Jujutsu sorcerer that it’s a private religious school. Most normal people can’t see curses in the first place, so it always looks like we’re just training when we’re fighting.”

“Oh,” Itadori remarks. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Plus, a lot of sorcerers use it as a homebase of sorts after graduating. It’s a real pillar of the Jujutsu community and all. They really help sell the whole ‘we’re-a-normal-school-and-appreciate-our-allums-enough-to-let-them-visit-the-new-kids’ schtick.”

Itadori hums, thinking over the fact that if a giant curse just decided to attack at any time, and someone who can’t see curses happens to pass by, they might see people flying in the air or jumping inhumanely high. He wonders if anyone’s passed out from shock after seeing strange things on the schoolgrounds. And that thought makes him wonder if the school’s ever been sued for causing people’s injuries or head traumas. And that thought makes him wonder how much money the school has, or if it can even afford to pay for any lawsuits. And that thought makes him wonder how the school even gets money in the first place.

“Don’t worry about all that junk for now,” Gojo says, as though reading his mind. “You’re about to have a meeting with the principal, and if he decides you aren’t ‘Jujutsu High material’, you won’t be able to attend the school.”

“What?!” Itadori exclaims. “And then what, you just excommunicate me immediately?!”

“Oh, no, you’d be executed. With a -t-e-d. They’re different words entirely.” He breathes in deeply and then sighs with a smile. “Anyway, we’re here. Get ready to have your socks knocked off! And make sure to make a good impression.” Gojo grins. “His entrance exams are the best.”

Itadori lets out a “huh”? And the doors of the large building close on their own. He blinks owlishly and looks around the entry area for anything that could have closed the doors just now.

A light beams down the corridor at the two of them, and in the center of it sits a man surrounded by plushies and various stuffed animals and stuffed animal-adjacents. “You’re late,” the man says, tinkering with a plushie even as he speaks. “Eight minutes late. You know, they say if you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; and if you’re late, you’re fired.”

Gojo grins from ear-to-ear. “Awh, does that mean I’m free to go, then?”

The man sends him a dead stare. “Not a chance. But fix that habit already. You’re going to get into some real trouble one day because you just can’t stop showing up late to important things, and I’m not referring to the kinds of things you can talk yourself out of.”

Gojo waves his hand dismissively. He turns to Itadori. “Anyway, this is Yaga Masamichi.”

Make a good impression. Make a good impression. Make a good impression. “My name is Itadori Yuuji, and I like girls like Jennifer Lawrence!” Itadori exclaims, bowing at  the waist. “This is an honor, your majesty.”

Yaga pauses in his stitching and sighs. “What are you here for?”

Itadori gasps comically. “Uh, an interview?”

“No, I meant ‘why are you here at Jujutsu High’?” Yaga clarifies.

“To… study jujutsu?”

Yaga levels Gojo with an annoyed stare and the man shrugs with his hands in his pockets. He angles himself slightly more towards Yuuji. “No, I mean beyond that. Once you learn about curses and how to exorcise them, what will you do?”

“I suppose I’ll just collect all of Sukuna’s fingers,” Itadori says, wiggling his fingers. “Isn’t the whole point of me being here that the fingers shouldn’t just be lying around out there anyway? Am I supposed to be here for some other reason?”

“Oh boy,” mutters Gojo.

Itadori startles. He forgot the man was even still in the room with them! He’s so quiet it’s freaky.

“Why can’t the fingers just stay ‘lying around out there’? People die all the time due to non-curse related things. It’s actually more common. It’s natural. But you can’t overlook that death when it’s a curse that causes it?”

“It was someone’s dying request for me to save people. I don’t care about the details; I just want to save them.”

Yaga hums. “Then go become a firefighter or something and quit wasting my time. You say that you want to fight curses because someone else told you to? That’s not enough of a reason to join a world of things you don’t understand and cause trouble for everyone else.”

The principal raises himself off of the ground and lifts his hand. A green plushie stands in tandem with his hand’s motion, and Itadori’s eyes widen in shock.

“Woah!” Itadori exclaims. “That thing’s alive! What the heck is it?!”

“I suppose they’re alive,” says Yaga, “in a way. They’re actually corpses.”

Itadori pulls a face of disgust.

“They’re dolls that I’ve infused with my Cursed Technique,” Yaga continues.

Itadori’s eyes widen as he breathes out an, “Oh…”

The curse jumps in front of him, quick enough to appear as though it teleported across the room. Itadori clenches his teeth and slings the backpack off of his back and holds it in front of himself like a shield. The cursed corpse punches into the bag, but Itadori still grimaces at the pressure of its attack on his chest. The force of it sends him flying into one of the round pillars scattered throughout the room.

“That’s one crazy doll,” Itadori mutters. The doll strikes a series of funny poses and laughs at him. Itadori makes an offended noise.

“A person’s true nature is usually revealed during crises,” Yaga says. “My corpse will keep attacking you until you give me an acceptable answer on why you want to study at Jujutsu High.”

Itadori shudders. “Dude, maybe don’t phrase it like that…”

The cursed corpse jumps up and down like it’s loosening its limbs and Itadori rushes towards it.

“Look, man,” Itadori says while he runs. “It wasn’t just anyone who told me to save people, it was my grandpa on his deathbed. It was his last request. What kind of grandson would I be to go against his wishes?”

He lands a direct cross on the cursed corpse, which goes boinging and bonging around the room, landing against the wall directly beside Yaga. It continues propelling around the room until every candle is blown out and darkness surrounds them.

“Who lights rooms with candles anymore?” Itadori mutters. “Geez.”

Itadori does his best to track his attacker’s movements, but that becomes an even more challenging feat with the lights out. The cursed corpse shoots off of a post across from Itadori like a rocket, barreling into him. Itadori is sent spinning in a backwards summersault through the air until he slams into the outer wall of the building.

He groans upon impact, rubbing his head which had been slammed into the wall.

“Family still counts as ‘someone’.”

Itadori grimaces at Yaga’s words and the cursed corpse starts dancing again. It’s all just so absurd.

“A sorcerer faces death on the daily,” Yaga says as he strikes a match and relights the candle nearest to him. “Their own; their friends’; the deaths of civilians and victims; the deaths of curses. It’s a harsh line of work full of people who desperately want to be here. And nutjobs. But mostly the first one. What chance do you have making it in the world of jujutsu when you only want to join because someone else told you so?”

Itadori grits his teeth.

“It would have been much more believable if you said you wanted to join to postpone your own execution.”

“Screw you!”

Yaga points at him. “Are you going to blame your grandpa when you die fighting a curse?”

Itadori huffs. “Geez, peepaw, you sure do say some mean stuff.”

“I’m a teacher,” he says, stroking his short beard. “I have to help people see and understand the truth.”

“I guess that’s true,” Itadori replies, stroking his own chin, deep in thought.

Wham!

The cursed corpse wails an uppercut into Itadori’s chin, sending him flying yet again. His cheek and chin swell from the impact and aggression of the hits he’s taken.

“It’s not easy to simulate how you’ll feel on the brink of death,” Yaga says, “But with how you’re coming along, you might could curse your own grandpa by working so hard to fulfill his last wish. Jujutsu sorcerers must die without regret.”

Itadori’s eyes widen at the sight of the cursed corpse’s body in front of his face, winding its fist back to hit him with another punch.

“I’ll ask again. Why do you want to join Jujutsu High?” Yaga demands.

Itadori dodges the punch, lunging for the cursed corpse and tackling it, wrestling into an arm hold. He glares at Yaga.

“Eating all of Sukuna’s fingers is something only I can do,” Itadori proclaims. “It’s my responsibility to take care of him so that no one dies because of Sukuna. There’s no way I could just sit back and wonder if he’s out there killing people when I can stop him! I don’t want to regret the way I lived.”

“Satoru, go ahead and show Itadori to his dorm room.” Yaga turns to Itadori, still sitting on the floor and holding the cursed corpse in place. “You’re admitted.”

“See, what’d I tell you?” Gojo says with a smirk. “Aren’t Yaga’s entrance exams just the best?”

Itadori allows himself to relax. He did it! He really gets to go to Jujutsu High and fight to keep Sukuna off the streets!

The cursed corpse punches Itadori right in the face again.

“Oh, whoops, sorry; I forgot to release the curse.”

Chapter Text

Itadori rubs subconsciously at the black markings beneath his eyes. Gojo graciously took the time to touch up the seals into a more permanent format before they left for Morioka Station in Iwate Prefecture, but as soon as he finished scribbling out the seal script, he grimaced. Itadori had asked him what was wrong, why he was making such a face at his own careful work, but Gojo just waved him off and said everything was fine.

With his classmate’s wary eyes on him, Itadori isn’t so confident that everything is fine anymore.

Fushiguro doesn’t say anything about Gojo-sensei’s handwriting on the sides of his face, nor the fact that the ink is dripping down his cheeks and what kanji was once there looks more like leaky, black rectangles below his eyes than actual seal script. Itadori can’t properly see how messed up they look, but the look on Megumi’s face tells him enough.

Self-consciousness swirls about Itadori’s mind as the three of them walk down the sidewalk towards the front of the station. The side streets and main ones bustle with people enjoying their days off of work and school, and the sun beats down like a sky-high radiator beaming down on the earth. Itadori pulls at the lifted collar of his new Jujutsu Tech uniform and sighs.

Gojo hums at his student’s audible admission of discomfort. “I’ll go get us some popsicles,” he says.

Itadori turns back towards him to say he’s actually fine and doesn’t need anything, but by the time he’s twisted far enough around to see his teacher, Gojo’s already disappeared into thin air. Itadori sighs in defeat.

“Don’t bother with him,” Fushiguro says, “Once he’s decided on something, he won’t stop until he’s done it.”

He leads Itadori to a railing lining the sidewalk and leans against it, prompting the other boy to do the same.

“That’s reassuring,” Itadori replies. “It’s good to know he’s so reliable.”

Fushiguro snorts. “I did not say that.”

Neither of them say anything for a moment. “Anyway… How are there only three first-years?” Itadori asks. “That’s practically nobody.”

“Well, how many people have you ever met that can actually see curses?” Fushiguro retorts. “Sorcerers are pretty rare.”

“...But I’m the third first-year, right?”

Fushiguro nods. “The other one was accepted way earlier. Everyone comes to Jujutsu Tech under unique circumstances, y’know.” He sighs. “I don’t get why we had to meet up with her at Harajuku, though. It’s so out of the way.”

“That’s what she requested,” Gojo says.

Fushiguro whips his head to the right, startled. Gojo stands beside him, holding out two ice pops in clear, plastic bags. There’s a grocery bag full of other sweets and treats hanging from the crook of his elbow and a grin on his face that says he jumpscared his ward on purpose.

Itadori “ooh”s and grabs a popsicle. “Thank you.”

Gojo shakes the other one up and down in front of Fushiguro’s face until he grabs it from him roughly. He rips off the wrapper and sticks the icy pop in his mouth and turns away from their teacher.

Gojo’s eyelashes bat beneath his blindfold, but nobody can see them, so no one says anything about it. He realizes this quickly, and leans towards Fushiguro, silently staring at him.

Fushiguro bites through the popsicle and glares at him. “Thank you,” he mutters.

Gojo stands back up to his full height, beaming.

“Oh! Here you go, you guys!” Gojo holds out the bag to his students, still grinning.

Fushiguro rolls his eyes and polishes off his popsicle, but Itadori takes the bag from his teacher and rummages through it. He finds a pair of novelty sunglasses that spell out “rook” and a folded bag of popcorn from a vendor he spotted down the street.

“Woah, how’d you know I wanted to try this?” he asks, astounded.

Gojo grins and pulls a strawberry and banana crepe out of thin air. Itadori quickly eats the rest of his popsicle and takes it from him.

“Thanks so much, Gojo-sensei!” he exclaims, smiling wide.

He puts on the glasses and tosses a few pieces of popcorn in the air, catching them like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s then that something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye.

Itadori watches silently as a girl across the street grabs a guy’s shoulder, says something that causes him to quickly walk away, and grabs the back of his collar, absolutely fuming.

“What the heck?” she exclaims, visibly fuming. “Don’t run, just tell me what you think!”

“Is that her?” Itadori asks around the bite of crepe in his mouth, pointing across the street. Fushiguro joins him in staring while Gojo nods from behind them.

The man tries and fails to run away from her ironclad grip on his collar, and Itadori scrunches his eyebrows together. “That’s embarrassing,” he says.

Fushiguro glances over at him with an annoyed look on his face, lip curled and all. “Yeah? Well, so are you,” he says matter-of-factly.

“We’re over here,” Gojo calls out to her, waving slightly and smiling.

“Gosh dang! What’s up with that blindfold?” she asks from across the street.

She joins them across the street and the four of them head to a wall of storage lockers where she drops off a myriad of shopping bags from various high-end brands. She shuts the door closed and twists the lock before turning towards the boys with a hand on her hip. While she’s working on that, Itadori finishes up his snacks and folds his trash and his sunglasses into his pants’ pockets.

“Kugisaki Nobara,” the girl greets shortly once her items are properly stored and situated. “You should feel honored, boys.”

No one says anything for a moment, so Itadori pipes up, pointing at himself, “I’m Itadori Yuuji. From Sendai!” He smiles.

“What’s up with those ugly markings on your face?” Nobara asks, her voice curled in a tone of disgust and uncertainty. “They look like eye black. ‘You have an American football game to get to or something?”

“They’re seals,” Itadori says dejectedly. He’d been so excited to make a good first impression with his new classmate.

Nobara laughs to herself. “What the heck kind of idiot could mess up seals so badly they look like melting rectangles? You can’t even read the kanji that’s supposed to be there.”

“Excuse you,” Gojo intervenes. “They looked much better before Sukuna tried to break free of them.”

Itadori blinks, turning his attention to their sensei. “Oh, is that why they got all melty?”

Gojo hums in affirmation.

“Fushiguro,” Fushiguro says.

Kugisaki sighs heavily. “What a wonderful bunch of idiots to work with. Just great.”

Itadori feels his eyebrows drop before the disappointment sets in. “She took one look at us and sighed so heavily her soul almost left her body,” he says. “That can’t be healthy.”

Fushiguro turns towards Gojo, his eyes portraying his annoyance in the way their movement never wavers. “Are we goin’ somewhere from here or what?”

Gojo laughs at the boy’s question, the upturn of his lips protruding happily through the sound. “Well, your whole class is all together now. And,” he says, “since two of you kids are from the countryside, that means we’ve got an excuse to go to Tokyo.”

Itadori’s eyes widen as he gasps, and Kugisaki’s eyes practically become sparkles in the way her enthusiasm shines. 

Fushiguro’s face, on the other hand, falls flat. “Huh?” he mutters, but no one else seems to hear it over Itadori and Kugisaki’s gushing.

Itadori jumps up and grabs onto his teacher’s neck, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“TDL! Let’s go to TDL!” Kugisaki exclaims, jumping up and down in front of Gojo.

Itadori jumps down in front of her. “You idiot! Disneyland is in Chiba! Why don’t we hit up Chinatown instead?”

Quick to shoot him down, Kugisaki exclaims, “Chinatown is in Yokohama, dummy!”

“Yokohama is in Tokyo!” Itadori proclaims, laughing. “‘You ever seen a map before?”

“How about I announce our destination?” Gojo says. “But you’ve gotta quiet down.”

Both students zip their lips immediately.

“We’re,” Gojo starts, pausing for dramatic effect, “Going to Roppongi!”

“Roppongi?” Itadori and Kugisaki question in tandem, grinning at each other.

Fushiguro sighs. He knows exactly how this sort of thing pans out when it comes to Gojo and impromptu “adventures”.

Gojo graciously leads his students along, grinning at the hicks’s blatant enthusiasm and his ward’s polar-opposite annoyance. Ah, to be young and youthful again.

“Oh.” Says Fushiguro matter-of-factly upon the group’s arrival at a very dank, very dark, very oozing-with-putrid-cursed-energy building, “There’s a curse here.”

“You tricked us!” Itadori exclaims, tossing his head backwards and covering his face with his hands in a visible expression of his annoyance. “This isn’t Roppongi!”

“Y’know, it’s real mean to mess with us country folk!” Kugisaki shouts, pointing at Gojo’s back with a terrifyingly angry expression on her face.

“Around here somewhere is a big cemetery,” Gojo informs his students, blatantly ignoring their whining. “That cemetery, in addition to this abandoned building, has created a pretty wretched curse.”

“Oh, so do curses turn up more around graves?” Itadori asks.

Fushiguro turns his head in his classmate’s direction. “No. It’s just ‘cause of the fear associated with cemeteries.”

Itadori’s eyebrow twitches. That’s a lot less of an interesting answer than he was expecting.

“Wait, that’s right,” Itadori says. “It’s the same for schools too, right?”

Kugisaki scoffs. “Hold on a second,” she says, directing her attention to her classmates as well. “Checkerboard here didn’t even know that?”

Fushiguro looks to the side. “Well, he did also eat one of Sukuna’s fingers. He’s new here.”

Kugisaki jumps away from them and puts a hand on her nose and mouth, blocking them from a bad smell that only she can smell. “That’s so unsanitary!” she exclaims. “So disgusting I’m gonna hurl! So you are just an idiot, Pumpkin Face!”

Itadori wilts, furrowing his eyebrows. “That’s not nice! Will you please knock it off with the mean nicknames? The seals are there to protect you guys… and everyone else. Not for looks.”

Kugisaki humphs. “No. Sucks to suck.” She crosses her arms. “You shouldn't’ve eaten something so gross and evil that made you have to get them painted in the first place.”

“Either way,” interrupts Gojo, “back to the matter at hand. This is a field test for our newbies, Itadori and Kugisaki. Go exorcise the curse in there and don’t die!” He throws up a thumbs-up just in case his words didn’t get the not dying message across.

“Hold up,” Itadori says, “isn’t it true that only curses can defeat curses? I still haven’t learned any jujutsu, so I’d basically be going in defenseless!”

Gojo laughs a little. “You are technically… about half a curse if you think about it. Even with Sukuna sealed, he could break out if he really tried. You see how your marks are smudged and all. But you’ve still got cursed energy.”

Itadori stares at his teacher like he just told him to hack into a government agency with no experience nor the will nor want to do so.

“Well,” Gojo drawls, “I guess you could use this Slaughter Demon I brought along, y’know, if you wanted to not ‘go in defenseless’, as you said.” He holds out to Itadori a leather sheath in the shape of a butcher’s knife. 

The boy removes the weapon from its sheath, admiring its sharpness and the way its clean metal glints beneath the midday sun. 

“Would you hurry up already?” Kugisaki calls from in front of a garage door at the front of the building.

Itadori jogs to the building while Gojo says to have fun.

He bends down to shimmy his fingers under the door and lifts it upwards with his knees. Kugisaki leads the way inside the building, and Itadori follows close behind.

“This is so dumb,” Kugisaki says as she marches through the halls of the abandoned building, Itadori chasing behind her, trailing the walls instead of walking in the middle of the corridor like she does. “I leave the country for Tokyo and still have to deal with a bunch of stupid curses.”

Itadori scrunches his eyebrows together. “Uh, didn’t you join Jujutsu High to fight curses? Isn’t that the whole point of going there for school?”

Kugisaki pauses in her ascent in a stairwell and turns around. “Let’s split up,” she says.

Itadori stares at her like she’s the most stupid person he’s ever met in his entire life.

“I’ll start at the top floor,” she says, “and you’ll start at the bottom one. We’ll search every floor, find and beat the curse, and get out of here already.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we stay together?” She stomps upstairs, and Itadori watches her go. “Geez,” he mutters.

A sudden, wretched smell wafts down from above him. Itadori catches a glimpse of a sharp, white claw to his sides, so he slashes at one with Slaughter Demon and severs it, jumping away from the curse in one liquid motion.

“Ew,” he mutters upon seeing the whole monster before him. “That thing’s ugly.”

It wiggles and blubbers, the blank eyes of its distorted and twisted face locked onto Itadori. “W-Would you like-a receipt?” it warbles.

Itadori stares at it instead of replying before lunging at its underbelly with his blade. He slides underneath it as he slices, jumping to a stand and aiming for its legs.

The curse doesn’t resist much, which is confusing, but its loud, annoying voice more than makes up for its strangeness.

Itadori jumps up and stabs it in the head, pinning it down until it stops struggling or moving all together. He nods to himself and hums affirmingly. “Hah. Got ‘eem.”

All of a sudden, Itadori hears Kugisaki yelling in frustration from somewhere a few floors above. He hums and looks towards the ceiling before removing his blade from the curse’s head and standing to his feet. They lead him back to the stairwell he and Kugisaki parted at before he can even realize what he’s doing.

Jumping the stairs two-at-a-time isn’t something Itadori usually makes a habit of doing after face-planting on concrete so many times, but when Kugisaki’s frustration is no longer audible, he knows he has to hurry.

He makes it to a room full of boxes and rusted ladders and a few other, more ancient, tools, and stops. There’s a curse on the other side of the wall. Itadori scrunches his eyebrows together.

“Why do I know that?” he mutters to himself before shrugging. He isn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He approaches the wall, stretching out his limbs and rolling his shoulders. He puts one hand on the wall and follows it until he’s sure he’s at the right spot. “Right here?” he asks himself before punching straight through the concrete wall.

His fist breaks through the rock, but doesn’t encounter anything curse-like on the other side. “Aw, what? I missed it?”

He sighs and drags his arm down, carving a Yuuji-heighth hole in the wall. The curse he sees upon stepping through the threshold is only a little less ugly than the one he put down earlier. All hairy and gangly and he just can’t stand to look at it anymore.

And it’s holding a kid. He does a doubletake, his mind steeling. The hand the curse had been using to hold the kid up by his neck is suddenly severed, Slaughter Demon raised high above Itadori’s head. He grabs the kid, kicks the curse, and jumps out of its reach in a matter of seconds.

“Y’alright, little dude?” he asks the kid, grinning softly like he thinks mothers probably should do when regarding other people’s children.

The kid nods. Good enough for him.

Itadori then learns that this curse is another pitiful warbler. It clutches the place where its hand used to be with its other one and turns, part of it disappearing at the action.

What the…? “It’s getting away!” Itadori says.

“Not on my watch,” Kugisaki says. “Itadori! Give me that arm.”

He looks over at the curse’s loose arm with a puzzled expression, but only shrugs before grabbing it and tossing it to her. The curse disappears through the wall and out into the outside world.

Kugisaki grabs a doll made of straw from her pocket and lays it on the curse’s arm. She picks up her nails and hammer from off the floor and infuses them with cursed energy. “Straw doll technique,” she says before roughly slamming the nail into the doll and the curse’s arm with her tool. “Resonance!”

“We beat it,” she says as she stands back to full height, and that’s the end of it.

Itadori stands. “I knew we should have stayed together; this is why we have to be extra careful!”

“You never said it was dangerous to go alone,” she counters, “You just said you thought we should stay together!”

Itadori grits his teeth. “I–” His annoyance falters. “Oh. I didn’t?”

“And, dude!” She points at the hole he punched through the wall. “What the heck have they been feeding you?! You punched through a concrete wall with your bare hands!”

Itadori huffs. “Well, it wasn’t reinforced! So, there!”

Kugisaki scoffs. “Okay, and? Most people couldn’t punch through any type of concrete even after years of training to!”

“You really don’t think so?” Itadori asks, somehow managing to sound dejected.

“No!”

He sighs. “Well, since we’re getting to know each other and all”–Kugisaki makes a confused noise–”why did you want to become a Jujutsu sorcerer?”

Kugisaki exclaims, loud and proud, “Because the countryside sucks! I’ve always wanted to live in Tokyo! Living in the countryside is the worst!”

Itadori gapes at her words, shocked beyond belief. How could– and she– but– what?!

She clasps her hands together. “This is the only way a poor girl like me could afford to move to the city, so I took the opportunity the first moment it was given to me.”

“You’d risk your life just to move to the city,” Itadori says.

“I would,” Kugisaki replies. “If it’s what it takes to be true to myself, it’s always worth it. In the same vein, I’m glad you were here, too.” She leans down and pats the boy on the head. “If I died, the future wouldn’t be too bright.”

Yeah, ‘cause you’d be dead, Itadori thinks.

Kugisaki stands back up again. “So, thanks.”

“Well, ‘guess we’ve all got our own reasons for being here,” he says.

The three of them leave the building to meet up with Fushiguro and Gojo, who cheers at their not-dead arrival. Fushiguro looks at the kid with an indescribable look on his face and tells him they’ll escort him home. The kid just smiles, so they all walk him back together as the sun begins to set.

Kugisaki sits on a neighborhood step a few above Itadori once the kid is off and on his way home. She taps her foot over and over and over and Itadori really wouldn’t be surprised if the noise gives him a headache in a minute or so.

“I get myself into a bad mood when I’m hungry,” she announces unprompted.

Itadori rolls his eyes. “When aren’t you in a bad mood?”

“Well,” says Gojo, “let’s all go get some food, then!”

Itadori’s eyes get all sparkly while his mouth opens, and he could swear Kugisaki starts drooling.

Gojo grins at their enthusiasm and turns to Fushiguro. “Well, ‘you gonna come too, Megumi?”

His ward doesn’t respond, typing furiously on his phone screen. Gojo hums, curiouser than a cat, and peers over his shoulder. He must not like what he sees. Gojo runs back over to Itadori and Kugisaki, gently directing them down the street and away from Fushiguro.

“‘Guess not!” He turns back to Fushiguro. “Bye, Megumi!”

Fushiguro looks up. “Huh?”

“Oh,” Kugisaki groans. “I forgot about my bags! Itadori, go fetch my things.”

He turns to her, visibly irritated. “What? No! Go get them yourself.”

“Aren’t you gonna pay me back for winning the fight earlier with my cursed technique?”

“Heck no,” he replies. “Aren’t you gonna pay me back for saving that kid with my natural strength?”

Kugisaki laughs mockingly. “‘You mean the strength you get from eating cursed crap?”

“Wh–no! I’ll have you know, my strength is all natural! …Pretty much.” He turns around. “Right, Fushiguro?”

The boy doesn’t reply, looking away from Itadori, trailing cracks in a cobblestone wall with his eyes.

“He’s upset ‘cause he didn’t get to fight,” Gojo supplies helpfully.

Itadori and Kugisaki laugh at the pout on Fushiguro’s face, which just makes him frown hard. It’s not much of an expression change. It just makes his classmates laugh harder.

………

Itadori groans, rolling his eyes at the familiar view of a red-water wasteland. “How am I even here?”

“You’re sleeping,” Yuuji says like he knows a thing or two about Itadori’s woes. “This just happens sometimes.”

Itadori scoffs and crosses his arms. “Well, it sucks.”

“Get over it,” Yuuji retorts. “I don’t wanna see you either.”

Itadori rolls his eyes. “Okay, body-snatcher. Pretend like your opinion matters.”

Yuuji feels his hackles rise before his younger-self’s words catch up to him. “I’m not a body-snatcher.”

“That’s what you’re upset about?”

Yuuji rolls his eyes and plops his chin onto his palm. “Whatever. Anyway, what day is it?”

“Hm?” Itadori hums, confused by the sudden shift in conversation tone. “Oh. It’s July 2nd.”

Yuuji snorts out a laugh and turns, simply walking away. “Good luck.”

“What? What does that mean?! Hey! Get back here!”

Chapter Text

Itadori awakes the next morning with a clear mind and an achy back. He twists himself into a seated position on the edge of his bed and stands, stretching his arms high above his head. The pain in his back jumpstarts with the increase in motion and he sighs as his limbs flop back down to his sides.

“‘Guess it’s gonna rain today,” he mutters to himself, changing from his pajamas and into his jujutsu uniform. The dark fabric crinkles around him awkwardly like it’s waiting impatiently for him to grow into it. He adjusts the prune red hood until it lays flat and unassuming on his neck and shoulders. The extra fabric of hoodies always comforts him, even when he’s on the go.

Kugisaki and Fushiguro beat him to the common room, nursing mugs of coffee and tea as they attempt to wake themselves up slowly. They share the couch, sitting as far from one another as they can manage, but look in opposite directions to avoid each other’s gaze.

Itadori sighs. This just won’t do.

“Hey, guys, ‘you want some breakfast?” He laughs through his nose in amusement as twin expressions of hunger and yearning overcome his classmates’ faces.

“Heck yeah,” says Kugisaki with as much gusto as she can muster at six in the morning. 

Fushiguro nods while sipping his coffee.

“How’s we feel about some mackerel with rice and tsukemono?” Itadori inquires, directing himself to the kitchen.

Kugisaki makes a gagging sound from the dining table, having trailed behind him towards the kitchen. Fushiguro sits across from her at the round table and grabs two coasters from a rack at the center of it. He sets one down in front of himself and then another in front of Kugisaki before moving both of their drinks onto them.

“That sounds good,” he says.

Kugisaki sips her drink loudly. “Don’t give me any pickled vegetables,” she says.

Itadori salutes her through the wide window in the kitchen and bends down to open the fridge. Its contents are honestly… kind of sad to look at. A few bundles of half-wilted green onions in a plastic bag, enough pre-cut zucchini to feed a family of six, a single-serving bottle of unopened barley tea, various condiments he’s never heard of before, three eggs in a full carton (what a waste of space, he thinks), a package of moldy cheese, three raw chicken tenders in a ziploc bag, one container of probably-sour kimchi, one container of store-brand pickled onions, and enough protein shakes to make any gymbro jealous.

“Uh, guys?” Itadori calls from the kitchen. “We have a bachelor fridge.”

Kugisaki groans. “Seriously?” she drawls. “‘You got any kitchen magic you can pull? I’m starving.”

Itadori hums and shoves his head back into the fridge. He grabs the eggs, green onions, chicken, pickled onions, and moldy cheese before shutting the door. All of the ingredients make for somewhat of a sorry sight on the counter. He grabs the cheese and tosses it in the garbage bin under the sink.

A knife, cutting board, and frying pan, located by rummaging through kitchen cupboards until he is satisfied, are placed on the counter beside his selected ingredients. He washes the green onions and chicken. Itadori slices the onions into tiny coins before setting them aside and filleting the chicken. He seasons both sides with whatever he can find that sounds like it would taste good together before dropping it on a frying pan with some oil and the whites of the onions.

Itadori searches around the kitchen for a while until he locates a few packets of instant miso soup and a bag of short-grain rice. He washes the rice and pops it in a rice cooker tucked away in its own pull-out drawer-cupboard thing and then locates a small soup pot. He pulls the tap until the pot is full of water before stirring in the instant miso and the rest of the green onions. That pot joins the chicken on the stovetop; he watches both vesicles diligently as they sizzle and bubble, stirring and flipping with a spoon and long, cooking chopsticks as needed.

When he’s confident enough nothing will burn if he steps away from it, Itadori locates three bowls and plates. He places some of the pickled onions onto two of the plates before returning it to its lonesome shelf in the fridge. Somehow, the sight of a lonely container of onions brings tears to his eyes more easily than watching his grandpa fade away for years on that hospital bed had.

He closes the fridge door.

The chicken is done and placed onto each plate in semi-equal quantities. The rice cooker clicks into its “warm” setting and Itadori grabs a smaller bowl from somewhere before scooping fresh rice into it and dumping uniform, indented-hills of grain onto everyone’s plate. Miso soup finds its home in the kids’ bowls, bits of green onion and dehydrated tofu swirling like prophetic tea leaves screaming “run and never look back!”.

Itadori quickly scrambles the few final eggs left in the fridge in the same pan the chicken had been cooked in before, again, dividing it as evenly as he can between the three plates. He brings out their breakfasts before heading back into the kitchen to rinse the dishes he dirtied by cooking for them.

Kugisaki and Fushiguro thank him for cooking and dig into their breakfasts with drowsily shaking hands and hunger-swoolen lips.

“Itadori!” Kugisaki exclaims as he rinses out the final cookware. “This isn’t half bad! I’m impressed you could squeeze this much food out of whatever was in the kitchen.”

Fushiguro nods mutely at her words, lifting a chopstick-full of pickled onions to his mouth.

Itadori smiles at them as he walks to the table, his own breakfast in hand. “Thanks, guys!” he says. “I love cooking for other people, so it makes me happy to hear you like it so much.”

Kugisaki hums as she swallows some miso soup. “Well, you just feel free to cook for us anytime you like, chef boy!”

Itadori slumps into his seat. “No,” he whines. “Not another nickname.”

Kugisaki makes an offended noise. “What’s wrong with ‘chef boy’?” she asks through a mouthful of rice.

“It implies that cookin’s all I’m good for…”

She hums. “Well…”

Fushiguro slaps a hand over his nose and mouth to prevent himself from spitting coffee everywhere.

Itadori whines at their shared amusement. “Guys,” he whines with a frown and pinched eyebrows. “Quit making fun of me-he-he!”

………

“You’ll definitely be going up against a curse womb,” Ijichi, the assistant manager in charge of the trio’s first official mission, says.

The drive to the detention center they find themselves standing in front of was fairly pleasant. Itadori likes his classmate’s company, and they all got to sit in the back seat together. It had felt like he was experiencing what it’s like to have siblings for the first time, and it was an experience he hopes to cherish and remember for the rest of his life.

Ijichi continues, “Our Window verified the presence of a curse womb beforehand, so there’s no doubting it. About ninety percent of the locals were evacuated before the center was sealed off.”

The skin beneath Itadori’s eyes itches.

“Everyone within a 500 meter radius was evacuated too. These are important statistics to remember when it comes to writing your reports or reporting to more experienced sorcerers later on. Do keep them in mind.”

Itadori raises his hand. “Question. What’s a ‘window’?”

“Good question,” praises Ijichi. “It’s an in-house term used to describe the members of Jujutsu High who can see curses but aren’t sorcerers.”

Itadori lowers his hand.

“You’ll be investigating Detainee Block 2,” Ijichi informs. “A reported five detainees remain within the building along with the curse womb. There is a real chance the womb will become a Special Grade if it has the ability to metamorphosize.”

Itadori blinks. “I know it’s probably something that we’ll cover in class later, but I don’t get the grading system for these things,” he says.

Kugisaki scoffs lightly at his admission, but Fushiguro just closes his eyes in preparation to hear an explanation for something he already knows. He’s used to it by now after having spent so much time with one holier-than-thou Gojo Satoru.

“I’ll explain in layman’s terms,” says Ijichi. “If you had a wooden bat, you’d be able to defeat a grade four curse. If you had a handgun, you’d be able to defeat a grade three one easily. It gets a bit more tedious from there on out. A grade two curse might be able to be taken down with the use of a shotgun, but even a tank may be unable to take out a grade one. Does that make sense so far?”

Itadori nods.

“A special grade curse is a special case–a curse that only a handful of jujutsu sorcerers might be able to defeat on their own. A carpet bombing of cluster bombs might help you defeat one, or at least get close.”

Itadori’s eyes widen with shock. “Wow. That is bad.”

Fushiguro turns to him. “In most cases, a sorcerer at equal level with the curse will be dispatched to take care of it. In the case of this curse womb, the one who might have been called in is Gojo.”

“Figures,” says Itadori. “Where is he, anyway? Surely us three aren’t expected to take out a curse at fighting level with Gojo.”

Kugisaki raises an eyebrow. “Have you even seen him fight before? How can you be so sure us three can’t handle some curse that someone at his level can?”

“Gojo is a Special Grade sorcerer,” Ijichi supplies helpfully.

“He’s away on business,” Fushiguro replies to Itadori. 

Rain starts to fall. Itadori’s back aches again.

Ichiji moves so that he is in direct view of the three first-year students. “We’re usually fairly short-handed. You should expect to regularly take on jobs with higher reported rankings than yourselves. This, however, is a special case–one abnormal and extremely urgent. You are not expected to fight, nor are you encouraged to.” His eyes glint like hot steel beneath the light spattering of rain. “If you happen to run into a Special Grade curse, run or be killed. The choice is yours to make. Rely on your fear to help you make the right decision.” He crosses his arms against his chest. “This is a recon and rescue mission. Find any survivors and get them out of there. Leave the dispelling of the curse womb to someone with more experience than you three.”

“Please!” a woman calls from a few yards away, being held back by sorcerers guarding the vicinity. “I need to know if my son, Tadashi, is okay! He was in Block 2!”

Just the sound of her voice, weak and cracking, brings tears to Itadori’s eyes. His mouth wobbles. Ijichi, seemingly sensing his empathy, approaches him to block his view of the woman.

“She’s here on a visit,” he tells Itadori. Then, he directs his attention to the woman. “Please leave the area as soon as you can. There’s been a report of a potential gas leak in the detention center. I’m afraid that’s all I’m able to tell you at this time.”

Itadori tries not to lock eyes with her when she starts crying and crouches to the ground. It’s not in his nature to avoid grief, he realizes there and then. And if someone else is going through something sad and horrible, there has to be a way to help them. Right?

“Ma’am,” he calls over Ijichi’s shoulder, ignoring the incredulous look the man sends his way, “We’re going to save your son.”

She glances up at him with a wobbly smile, tears streaming down her face.

“And if he’s dead,” he tacks on for good measure, “We’ll let you know so you can mourn peacefully.”

Kugisaki elbows him in the ribs. “Of course we’re gonna save him–him and anyone else still in there,” she says.

Fushiguro doesn’t say anything either way.

Ijichi’s face softens at their empathy, but when he leans towards them, his eyes hold a grim remorse akin to the surplus of crying gray in the skies above them. “Your empathy is admirable,” he says. “But you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” He straightens himself. “Be careful in there.”

The trio walks towards the building.

“Emerge from darkness, blacker still. Purify that which is impure.”

A pen ink curtain, sludge-like and smooth, cascades down from the sky like a coating of chocolate on a Valentine’s strawberry.

“Woah,” Itadori says. “It’s like nightfall!”

Fushiguro hums. “It separates us from the surrounding residential areas. They won’t be able to see us or anything that happens within the veil once it’s cast.”

Itadori gapes at the still-falling darkness and Kugisaki rolls her eyes at him.

“Divine Dogs.” Fushiguro slaps his hands together, making a shadow puppet in the shape of a canine. His shadow warps and bends, stretching under the taught influence of his cursed energy, burbling smoke like an explosion. The smoke disappears, and in its place is one very fluffy dog.

Its fur is white as snow, eyes like refined crystal, with a red triangle on its forehead. Itadori’s eyes practically become hearts. He leans down, petting the dog’s neck.

“Aw, good buddy! What a good boy.”

Fushiguro regards him with mild disinterest. “He’ll tell us if the curse gets close.”

Itadori hums while he smiles, still petting the shikigami. “‘Hear that? We’re all counting on you!”

The Divine Dog leads them into the building, twining between the trio like a cat might do. The jujutsu students follow close behind it, unaware of just how dangerous this mission is about to become.

………

Yuuji stares ahead of him, not quite humoring his thoughts of boredom. In his attempt to ignore how lonesome he has become, his boredom grows fiercer. He sighs heavily before propping his cheek back onto the back of his hand like usual.

The view from the top of his throne of bones is only slightly better than the one from the foot of it; at least from up here, he has an entire, gigantic ribcage to peer up into like one would stars in a cloudless night’s sky. Not that he can’t see the ribs from the ground, but being closer to something always makes its image sharper.

He twists his head to the side and sighs again.

“Bones,” he says, eyes drifting from the skulls of his throne to the ribcage and back again. “Bones. Bones, bones, bones. A red floor covered in food-coloring water. It’s not blood.” He sighs again. “Raggedy walls that look like someone’s flayed trachea. Skull bones. Rib bones. A sternum. I think.”

His gaze turns inward. “King of Curses. Not a curse, not really. Definitely a curse, oh, surely. Coward. Vessel. Parasite. Wadding, winding mass of Sukuna’s energy tearing apart what’s left of my own.”

Yuuji blinks and then blink again. He fixes his gaze within himself, and finds himself face-to-face with Sukuna’s afterimage, red and fuzzy and glitching like an old VHS tape.

“Woah,” he says, eyes widening in surprise. “That’s not the actual Sukuna, right?” He laughs at the mere idea of it. “No,” he decides. “That would be crazy.”

The image of Sukuna doesn’t say anything despite being within earshot of him. It just stands there, fraying at the edges. Yuuji examines the weird thing before him and wonders why he only has two eyes.

………

This is bad, Itadori thinks, frantic as he jumps. This is really bad. Holy crap, this is so, uber bad.

Everything is bad. First, they stumble upon the very mangled, very scary looking remains of the detainees from Block 2. Then, Kugisaki gets pulled away by a curse. And then, the dang thing gets the better of him and Fushiguro! And he couldn’t move for a while, and then it cut off his hand, what the heck?! And, on top of all that, he went and broke Slaughter Demon! 

The whole situation is so absurd he almost feels like laughing.

“Go find Kugisaki!” Itadori yells to Fushiguro, the curse dancing like a giddy schoolgirl across the room, seemingly waiting on them to finish talking or something. “I’ll keep this thing busy until you’re all clear!” He directs his gaze back to the curse womb.

“You can’t take that thing on on your own,” Fushiguro protests, eyes frantic. “Especially not with your arm like that!”

Itadori breathes in deeply and releases it, his lungs shaking more than he thought they would. “Fushiguro,” he says calmly, turning to his classmate. “I’ve got this. Trust me.”

Fushiguro visibly detests the idea, his hands clenching in fists over and over until his knuckles turn white. But he knows Itadori can handle this. He isn’t sure why he has so much faith in someone he hardly knows, but, deep down, he’s sure.

He turns tail and runs down a hallway he’s sure he saw had an elevator shaft when he studied up for the case.

The curse giggles like it’s playing and releases itself of the fabric concealing its legs with a grin.

Itadori turns back towards the curse and grits his teeth. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have any control over cursed energy whatsoever. Why is he even here in the first place? What can he hope to accomplish on his own, especially now that Slaughter Demon is broken?

He takes a deep breath and lifts one stump and one fist in front of his face before swallowing his fear.

The curse takes his moment of weakness to swing its fist at him, rocking Itadori to his core. His body slams against a wall at the second level of the detention center, forming a web of craters behind his back.

What a great day to wake up with a backache, he thinks sarcastically. This totally won’t make it worse.

He struggles to lift his head, but when he does, the curse is directly in front of him, upside down and powering up another handful of cursed energy.

Itadori doesn’t even get a moment to stitch up any type of strategy before the blast rockets him through the wall and into the next room, head over heels like a human ferris wheel from Hell.

He groans when he finally hits the ground, blood streaming down his face and his whole body aching, now. “I feel like I just got tumbled on low,” he mutters woozily through the newlyfound haze in his brain.

The curse strides slowly through the giant hole in the wall it made with a Yuuji-shaped hammer, standing tall above the rubble. It giggles again before summoning another immense amount of cursed energy.

Itadori’s eyes widen harshly, the sound of it coming closer sending his fight-or-flight into overdrive. He stands as quickly as he can, holding his hands in front of him and straining to summon any jujutsu magical sorcery crap of his own.

Nothing of the sort happens. The curse’s attack rips and tears at the skin of his remaining hand, obliterating his fingers like a furnace. Itadori can’t help the torrent of tears that stream from his eyes as he strains against the pure force attacking him.

Itadori shouts as his body is slammed against the far wall of the gigantic room, sighing heavily with battered lungs as the curse’s energy lets up.

“I was so… proud of my strength,” he mutters, more delirious than ever, with blood leaking from his mouth like thick paint. “I thought I was strong enough to pick and choose when I died–how I died.”

He looks down at his hand and the flambeed joints where the rest of his fingers used to be. “I’m weak.”

“I don’t want to die,” he says, voice cracking, tears running down his cheeks, mangled limbs coming up to cover his eyes. “I… don’t want to die. I don’t want to–not like this. Please don’t… let it end like this.”

He sighs. His hands fall to his sides. “I never should have… eaten that stupid, stupid… finger.”

A surge of energy–regret, anger, frustration, pain–swirls around his mostly-in-tact fist which he clenches tightly. Around it, the air burns red like blood, curling around itself like snakes made of smoke.

He charges at the curse, feeling weaker than he ever has. His punch doesn’t land. The curse catches his fist with its own, blood-red fingers before it makes contact. Itadori grits his teeth and keens in frustration.

He knows he needs to do something. He can’t just die here, but what is he supposed to do but die when he can’t… do anything?!

Thankfully, Itadori doesn’t need to worry about that any longer.

The curse womb jabs its clawed hand into his chest. 

It pulls out his beating heart. 

Itadori falls and forgets how to breathe; his organs suddenly become amnesiac; his bones become brittle; the curse laughs above him. 

He dies before he hits the ground.

………

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drop. Drip.

“Oh. You’re early.”

Blood red water surrounds him, lapping at his sides like the current of a lazy river. Itadori splays his fingers in front of his face, surprised to see both of his hands full and healthy like usual.

“Am I dead?”

Yuuji waves his hand dismissively. “Eh, been there, done that. No need to give it much thought; ain’t a big deal. Death is normal, y’know. It’s the only thing that everybody does.”

Itadori stands to his feet to face the King of Curses with an indescribable look on his face.

“But do I have to die right now? I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m kind of in the middle of something here,” Itadori snaps, lifting his feet to pace back and forth in the water of Shrine.

Yuuji yawns, covering his mouth with his hand. “That’s a bummer, but I’ve got nothing to do with you dying. No need to get snippy.”

“Well, isn’t there some way you could have something to do with me not dying? Like, help me somehow?” Itadori asks. “You wouldn’t want your precious vessel to die, now would you?” 

Yuuji watches, absolutely mortified, as his own (younger) face makes the most horrid attempt at batting his eyelashes he’s ever seen in his entire life. 

The dauntingly bleak look in his eyes does not go by unnoticed.

“Um,” Yuuji says, leaning away from Itadori while scrunching his eyebrows, “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you’ve only eaten two of the twenty fingers that contain Sukuna–uh, my…?–essence. If you died, my conscience would just transfer to another one until another suitable vessel comes along. I’m pretty sure.”

Itadori sighs. “Oh. That’s a shame.” He steps towards Yuuji and clasps his hands together before bringing them beside his face like Kugisaki did back in Roppongi. He starts batting his eyelashes again, goodness gracious. “But… you would miss me, wouldn’t you?”

Yuuji scrunches up his nose in disgust. “I hardly even know you, dude. You guys sealed me. But I am serious when I say to stop doing that stupid thing with your eyes. You look like you’re having a stroke.”

Itadori bats his eyelashes harder.

“Holy crap, okay, fine! I’ll heal you. Just stop doing that or I’m going to sentence you to the bones,” he threatens, pointing to the throne of skulls behind Itadori.

Itadori whips around, his head comically tilting to find the top of the imposing stack of malicious macrame and decomposition behind him. He tries not to laugh out loud at the absolutely absurd sight of a stack of skulls beneath a ribcage bigger than the jujutsu campus.

“It’s a lot more uncomfortable than it looks,” Yuuji mutters with a ghost of a smile on his face.

Itadori turns back to face him, his face suddenly steely. “How can I convince you to heal me?”

Yuuji thinks for a while, one hand on his hip and the other on his chin. He hums, taps his foot, and walks around in circles for a minute or so. Itadori stares at him the entire time, waiting very impatiently for the curse to come to a conclusion.

Finally, Yuuji stops pacing and turns towards Itadori. He shrugs. “Straight up? Just ask.”

Itadori startles, scrunching his eyebrows together in blatant confusion. “What, don’t you want anything in return? Like, I dunno, my firstborn child or something?”

Yuuji crinkles up his nose and tries not to wonder how much the action makes him look like the Sukuna he knew when he’d be fuming. “I just want to help you.”

“...Don’t you eat babies? The Heian Era was a really long time ago. …Aren’t you hungry?”

Yuuji gags. Thankfully, Sukuna’s evilness didn’t transcend whatever made it so that he took his place or whatever happened. “That’s revolting. Cured spirits don’t even get hungry anyway.”

“Oh.” Itadori mutters, “Dang, I was really hoping that would work.”

This kid is hopeless.

“Hey, that’s not very nice!” Itadori exclaims, puffing out his cheeks and crossing his arms. “I’m not a kid!”

“Coulda fooled me,” Yuuji says, mimicking his body-double’s pose. “It’s good to know you can hear my thoughts when we’re in my innate domain, though, even with the seals.”

“Now that you mention it, isn’t that pretty weird?” Itadori says. “Shouldn’t I not be able to be here with the seals in place?”

“At least try not to sound so stupid, idiot vessel.” Yuuji huffs. “Now that I think about it, you look really stupid, too, sports fanatic.”

“Hey!” Itadori grumbles, openly staring at Yuuji’s scarred face, free from the embarrassment of permanent eyeblack.

“Relax,” says Yuuji. “Staring’s not kind, you know. And the seals are there to keep me in here, not you out there.”

“Oh, yeah? Well,” Itadori stutters, trying very hard to come up with a good comeback. “You look like a Zebra with its insides outside. Black and white and red all over.”

There’s a joke in there somewhere. Read and red. Black and white; newspapers and zebras.

Yuuji doesn’t outwardly respond to his vessel’s juvenile sense of humor. He’s above that. Obviously. “Good one,” he says monotonously, fighting a grin. “That’s a comeback for the history books for sure.”

“Why are you so mean?” Itadori asks honestly.

Yuuji feels his eyebrow twitch. He gestures to himself. “I’m just playing the part.”

Itadori clicks his tongue. “Well, okay. You don’t want my firstborn child.” He squints at Yuuji. “What do you want?”

Yuuji sighs. “Nothing.”

“Just tell me what you want, already! I don’t have all day, you know.”

“I don’t want anything, you dunderhead!”

“Oh, come on, you’re Sukuna for cripe’s sake! You’ve gotta want something!”

“No, nothing!”

“What about… a new place to live?” Itadori offers. “This place stinks.”

Yuuji crosses his arms. “Now that’s just rude,” he says. “And I like it… fine enough, thank you!”

“Well, how about a book to read or something? It’s so boring here.”

Yuuji takes a deep breath in his nose. “I already said it. But you’re stupid, so I’ll say it again. I don’t want anything!”

“You say that now,” Itadori says, “but what happens if you change your mind later and I have to reap the consequences?”

Yuuji drops to his knees in the water of Sukuna–no, his–domain. “Bro, please just let me help you! I promise I don’t want anything.”

Itadori’s face scrunches up, his eyebrows pinching and his lip curling. “Nah, what the heck? Gojo-sensei said you’re literally evil. Of course you want something–probably something nefarious and maybe also illegal.”

The urge to throw a tantrum must be ignored. The urge to throw a tantrum must be ignored. The urge to throw a tantrum must be ignored.

“Plus, how do I know I can trust anything you tell me anyway?”

Yuuji springs back to his feet and lunges at Itadori. “Why won’t you just let me help you?!” he shrieks. “What the heck is wrong with you?!”

Itadori dodges Yuuji’s hands as they reach out for his shoulders, jumping in a back-left oblique, and throws up his hands in fists in front of his face. “You’re literally attacking me right now!”

Yuuji yells wordlessly to express his frustration. He jumps up and down and shakes his hands to let out some of his anger without lunging at Itadori again. The other boy tenses in preparation for the curse’s next move.

Yuuji takes a deep, deep breath in his nose and lets it out of his mouth after holding it in for a few seconds. “Listen, brat,” he starts, “I literally just want to help you and your friends get out of here alive. Do you want to die here or something? Permanently?”

“...How do you know about my classmates being with me? You have seals drawn over your eyes on my cheeks.”

Yuuji stares at him for a moment, just breathing. “I’m you from the future.”

“I don’t believe that for a second! Future-me definitely wouldn’t have so many scars on his face.” Itadori sinks lower into an amateur fighting stance. Yuuji picks it apart in his brain in an instant.

“I–! Are you joking with me right now?! How dense are you?! I’m from the future! Anything can happen in the world of Jujutsu sorcery and the only thing you’re fixating on is the fact that I’m not who people say I am! I am you! You are me! Why is that so dang hard for you to get through your head?!” Yuuji yells.

“Tell me something only future-me would know, then,” Itadori demands.

“I’m not doing this again.” Yuuji stares at him again and takes in a very, very deep breath before releasing it twice as slowly. “You know what, now that I think about it, I am still in favor of the both of us just… dying right now.” He sits on the ground, crosses his legs apple-sauce style, and props his chin on the back of his hand. “Just go ahead and face the music and accept your death already.”

Itadori’s eyes widen. “Wait!” he exclaims. “I don’t want to die yet! I still need to eat the rest of your fingers!”

Yuuji rolls his eyes. “I really don’t care anymore. My innate domain should start crumbling soon, since you just got pummeled by that curse anyway.” He sighs and closes his eyes. “Sweet release.”

“Okay, okay, I get it! I’ll make a deal with you–give you something you really want!”

“...You’re a really bad listener.”

Itadori huffs, annoyed, and lets himself flop into a sitting stance matching Yuuji’s on the floor of Shrine. “I’m serious. I can’t die yet.”

Yuuji’s right eye peeks open. In front of him, Itadori is staring straight at him. He isn’t blinking. His left knee is bouncing up and down like he’s butterfly-ing, sending waves of water cresting against Yuuji’s knees.

Yuuji stares back at him and then pops open his other set of eyes. The sudden alteration in his target of staring causes Itadori to blink, and Yuuji snorts out a laugh.

“I won,” he says.

Itadori clicks his tongue. “I still refuse to die here.”

“Uh,” Yuuji says smartly. “You do realize that you don’t really have a say here? We’re in my domain. Your body is getting ready to go all rigor mortis-y. What could you possibly have that could entice me, your future self who has lived through basically everything you have and more, to strike a Binding Vow with you?”

Itadori puts his cheek on the back of his hand in lieu of making a confused expression. “What’s a Binding Vow?”

“You are very stupid, you know that? Don’t you ever pay attention in class? Good grief.”

“Uh, don’t you keep saying you’re me? Why would you insult yourself like that? Are you okay mentally?” Itadori asks, fighting back a grin. “And cut me some slack! It’s literally my first week with all of this Jujutsu stuff.”

“I am you,” Yuuji says matter-of-factly. “I’m you with some extra mileage. Of course I’m not okay mentally.” He gestures to himself with both hands and pauses for dramatic effect. “I mean, have you seen me?”

Itadori sighs. “I don’t mean to interrupt our therapy session, but our time here is about up.”

Yuuji hums. “I couldn’t agree more,” he says, slowly lowering himself onto his back in the water, stretching out his legs until they’re as flat against the ground as they can get. He sighs heavily and crosses his arms on his chest, his hands resting on his shoulders. “Goodbye, fellow cogs. I will now die peacefully. Kill the Jujutsu-corporate machine in my honor.”

Itadori stands before walking over to Yuuji. He towers over him, being at his full height and all, and crosses his arms. Yuuji peeks at his body double through his lashes and sighs at the stern expression on his face.

“Fine,” Yuuji drawls. “You want me to heal you that badly? Then I’m gonna need you to let me switch out with you whenever I please.”

“No way!” Itadori exclaims. “You’ll just kill everybody!”

Yuuji’s eyebrow twitches. “You’re such a dunderhead. Why can’t you get it through your thick skull that I want to help you? Willingly?”

Itadori taps his foot, lapping water onto Yuuji’s legs. “You say you want to help me, but you haven’t done anything to prove it.”

“I can explain that quite simply. It’s ‘cause you won’t let me.”

Itadori hums. “What if you help me this once, unconditionally, and then next time we’ll discuss your compensation.”

“‘You saying you’re planning on being in multiple life-or-death situations?” Yuuji opens his fists so his arms make more of an ‘X’ across his chest than the pose of a corpse in a pine box. “No dice. I need my compensation now, or I won’t be able to help you fight off the curse womb that killed you.”

“...I never said anything about needing your help killing that thing.”

Yuuji raises a brow. “But you do. I’ll heal and help you win this fight if you just let me switch with you whenever I want to.”

Itadori shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I still don’t think that’s a good idea, even if you promise not to kill anyone,” he says tentatively. “Maybe I could just get Gojo to unseal your eyes or whatever?”

“How about this,” Yuuji says shortly, “You let me switch with you whenever I want, you can keep my eyes sealed, and I’ll swear not to harm anyone who’s your ally in the slightest.”

Itadori’s eyes widen. “That sounds… like a pretty good deal to me. It’s too good to be true. Why would you want to switch with me so badly if you aren’t even gonna be able to hurt the people around me? And what’s stopping you from hurting them anyway?”

“We’re making a Binding Vow, kid,” Yuuji says. “Nobody should take those things lightly. Disobeying it just means I’d be putting myself in unnecessary pain, and I’ve had quite enough of that already, thank you.”

Itadori stares at him, waiting for him to continue. He doesn’t. “And… why do you want to be able to switch out with me whenever?”

Yuuji scrunches up his nose and squints his eyes closed, breathing in very deeply. He blows out the breath like he just got punched in the gut. “I just really, really want to chew out Gojo whenever I feel like it.”

“Couldn’t you just do that if you were unsealed?” Itadori asks, brows furrowed.

“It means more when I can lunge for his neck, too.”

Itadori gasps. “But you said the Binding Vow would keep you from hurting anyone allied with me!”

“Yeah, I did say that,” Yuuji affirms. “I couldn’t hurt Gojo even if he let me. I mean, have you trained with that guy yet? He’s a monster.”

“Don’t call my teacher a monster, you… you monster!”

Yuuji shrugs in the water. “Ouch,” he says mockingly. “I’m not disrespecting your teacher. He would agree with me. Don’t get so butt-hurt about it, geez.”

Itadori glares at him.

“Well?” Yuuji prompts, red eyes like red dwarves, burning frigidly in a starry night sky. “Do we have a deal?”

Itadori stretches out his hand between them, and Yuuji takes it without pause. His body double helps him stand to his feet, and Yuuji grins when their eyes meet, both steely and determined to get their way.

“I, Yuuji Itadori, swear to never harm any of your allies so long as you allow me to switch with you any time I choose to and, in return, I will heal your fatal wounds now and in the future until you are able to do so yourself.”

Itadori’s eyes widen at his words. That hadn’t been part of the deal.

Yuuji smirks. “I know, but I’m just such a nice guy, you see.”

“Well,” Itadori says, “I, Itadori Yuuji, swear to let Sukuna–”

Yuuji glares at him.

“Uh… I swear to let the other Yuuji take over my body at any point. And,” he adds, “he can use my ears to listen in on what I can hear to help him decide when he wants to switch out.” A cocky grin stretches across his face. “Because I’m such a nice guy and all.”

Yuuji laughs shortly, shaking their hands and sealing the vow. “Oh,” he says, “I like you, kid.”

Itadori shakes his hand vigorously. “Please don’t say disgusting things like that. ‘Makin’ my skin crawl.”

Yuuji grins.

Chapter Text

Sukuna’s markings come to life upon his skin, curving like cuffs around his wrists and spreading down his back like wingless scars. The hole in his chest stitches itself back together, cells regenerating, vital structures being rebuilt out of the bubbling cursed energy of an ancient menace, until all that remains is a scar on his chest the size of an apple.

Yuuji gasps like a dead man rising to life as the final few chains appear across his vessel’s skin, a snake curling tightly around its prey.

“Woah,” he says, breathless and shaking. “I do not remember switching with Sukuna being as taxing as this.”

“It’s probably because of the seals,” Fushiguro supplies helpfully from behind him.

Yuuji yelps and jumps, quickly spinning to face him. “Geez!” he exclaims. “You scared the crap outta me, man!”

Fushiguro eyes him carefully, squinting and with his lips in a thin, distrusting line.

Yuuji squints back at him, brushing his hand where his heart used to not be absentmindedly. “Why are you here, anyway?” He peers around the room with his hand above his eyes like a sailor. “And where’d that bloomin’ curse womb go?”

“Divine Dogs.”

Uh-oh, Yuuji thinks. 

One fluffy, black dog stretches itself out of Fushiguro’s shadow and shakes itself before peering at Yuuji with sharp, amber eyes. He growls low in his throat in reflection of Fushiguro’s wariness. The boy drops into a fighting stance.

Yuuji sighs. “Listen,” he says, four eyes glued to the shikigami despite Fushiguro’s swelling cursed energy. “I know you’re all ‘oh no! It’s Sukuna! I need to stop him from carrying out his evil plans I know nothing about!’ and all, but I’m only here to heal my vessel and beat a curse womb into next week.”

Fushiguro just stares at him, glowering. The Divine Dog’s tail swishes apprehensively.

“If you know where the curse is, just tell me so we can get a move on already.” Yuuji stretches his arms and back casually. “I’d much rather not have to deal with more trouble than I have to. ‘Rather keep the crops growing, but not pray for a flood, y’know?”

Fushiguro does not know. He’s never heard anyone say anything remotely close to that ever. He searches Yuuji’s face and his extra set of eyes which–shouldn’t they be sealed away? whatever–glimmer like dusty rubies beneath the rubble of a cave-in, but doesn’t see anything that pokes or prods at his inherent distrust.

“I don’t know where it is,” he answers honestly, “but I’ll help you look.”

Yuuji opens his mouth to protest.

“Shut up. As long as you’re keeping my classmate hostage, I’ll be acting as your parole officer or something.” He glares at Yuuji again. “I won’t just let you roam around freely because you tricked Itadori into switching with you.”

Yuuji grumbles, “I didn’t even say anything. What gives? And he asked me to help him, not the other way around. Stupid emo Megumi and his stupid distrusting face, meh, meh, meh.”

Fushiguro bristles when the King of Curses says his name, but doesn’t question his words. He bites the bullet and takes a deep breath, saying “Let’s go” before walking past Yuuji towards the room where they first encountered the curse womb.

Yuuji trails behind him like a lost dog, matching pace with the shikigami one. Or, maybe the dog keeps pace with Yuuji. It’s hard to tell.

He examines the ragged edges of the hole Itadori had been blasted through as the three of them pass through it, trailing each jagged piece of stone and exposed, mangled piece of pipeworking with steady eyes. Fushiguro bristles from in front of him but doesn’t turn around.

Even without Gojo’s Six Eyes, Fushiguro’s own knowledge on cursed energy and the way Yuuji walks steadily behind him tells him that the King of Curses is pissed.

“So,” Yuuji says slowly. “Where’s Nobara?”

Fushiguro glares at him over his shoulder, grabbing onto the second-story railing to keep himself from falling too many feet to the ground. “She’s outside,” he says. “‘Left her with Ijichi.”

Yuuji hums. “Oh, okay. That was a good idea.”

Fushiguro returns his attention fully to the path in front of and below him. The Divine Dog sneezes. The space around them stinks of raw cursed energy, but the curse womb isn’t anywhere to be seen. Fushiguro sighs as he considers jumping off the ledge or climbing clumsily over to the mangled stairs.

Yuuji picks him up without warning. Fushiguro flounders, arms slapping together and hands in the shape of a shadow puppet out of pure instinct. His eyes become pinpricks as the King of Curses lifts him onto his shoulder like a plank of wood before jumping to the level of the detention center below them.

They land back in the room where this all started with a thundering of two feet sinking into concrete, proposing little craters multiple inches into the ground. Yuuji sets Fushiguro steadily on his feet before removing his own from the ground. He stretches high above his head again and hums while observing the room around them, spinning in a few slow, deliberate circles.

“It’s not here,” he says simply, shrugging his shoulders minutely.

Fushiguro’s eye twitches and the Divine Dog magically appears next to him. It got to avoid the whole being-picked-up-by-the-King-of-Curses-like-a-construction-material debacle. Lucky. “I have eyes.”

“Uh, no, that’s not what I meant,” Yuuji says before humming. “It’s not… here. In this block of the detention center.”

“What? How can you tell?” Fushiguro asks with furrowed brows.

“We’re not in its domain anymore,” Itadori’s mouth moves to say. “I don’t know what happened, but that womb definitely didn’t stick to one place after leaving Itadori heartless on the ground. It might be in a different block, but it’d have to be really stupid to not keep its domain open with me here.” He snorts in amusement, like he’s laughing at a joke Fushiguro didn’t hear anyone tell.

“You should switch back, then.”

Yuuji scratches his cheek and winces when the claws he forgot he has draw blood. “Yeah, that would be nice, but part of the bidding vow was that I choose when I’m out here for, and I’m choosing to defeat the curse womb. It’s still around here somewhere… I just don’t know where.”

Fushiguro's eyebrow twitches. He crosses his arms and leans on his back leg to tap his other foot. “Well, that’s great,” he says. “I’m stuck babysitting Ryomen Sukuna, the curse womb is gone, and my dog died. Today sucks.”

Yuuji blinks rapidly before looking down at the Divine Dog. 

The lone black dog sniffs the air and then stares at Yuuji, wagging his tail slowly and lowly. Who is the supposed-King of Curses to refuse the gentle kindness of a weaker being?

He beckons the shikigami-dog towards him, crouching at the knees. He trots over to Yuuji like nothing is wrong, and his nerve is rewarded with chin scratches from purple-clawed fingers. 

“Oh, who’s a good shikigami? Who’s a good shikigami-dog?”

The dog barks at him, pleased by the attention, his tail wagging faster than before. It swishes against the dog’s own legs in his excitement. Fushiguro gapes at the scene unfolding before him with the expression of a dad who didn’t want a dog, but now that it’s here it’s his dog, but it likes his daughter’s boyfriend better than him, and how is that fair, that he gets to take his daughter and his best friend, what the heck, man.

“You lost your buddy, huh?” Yuuji asks, petting the dog’s ears flat and watching them bounce back up. “I’m sorry. I’ll be your buddy, buddy! …Kuro? Or Tot… wait, have you assimilated yet?”

Fushiguro whistles and the dog licks Yuuji’s hand before returning to his master. Yuuji pouts, but stands without missing a beat. 

“Fine. Let’s find the slippery bugger, hm?”

Yuuji leads their crew across the room and to a hallway left otherwise unexplored. Rubble from the curse’s barrage of attacks scoops up a bit of light in the hall, still smoking with dust and residual heat. Yuuji jumps over it and turns around to wait for Fushiguro and Kuro to do the same. The duo jumps the threshold as easily as he had, and Yuuji nods before continuing down the hall. 

The detention center is quieter than the dorms in the dead of night. Quieter than the desolate sky view from Malevolent Shrine above a red-basked Shibuya. Quieter than the world after the World-Splitting Cleave tore Gojo-sensei in two. Quieter than the crest of snowfall in early March. 

It’s an eerie silence that swallows the clacking of their footsteps and claw-taps; an abyss of white noise like a whale call or T.V. static. Yuuji walks a little faster. 

They turn a corner; follow the wall beneath busted ceiling lights and stumble over sudden lips in the ground like babies learning to walk. Turning around a few more busted corners to desolate and wrecked hallways is all it takes. 

Kuro starts growling the second they step foot into Block 4 of the detention center. Fushiguro and Yuuji crouch as they both peek around the corner between the entrance to Block 4 and what looks like the largest cafeteria on this side of Japan.

The curse womb sits at a table, facing away from them. It hunches over the tabletop like an eldritch monster, gangly and obviously alien in its placement despite the familiarity of its pose. 

If Yuuji could stretch a human’s flesh over it, taught and lopsided, he wonders if it would look like a person usually does. Or more human than curse, like Eso or Chousou or any of the incarnated sorcerers from the Culling Games. Or if it could pass as a dying sorcerer and infiltrate their ranks while being medically tended to before slaughtering everyone on campus. 

Yuuji pulls a puzzled face, disturbed by his own thoughts. What the heck? he thinks before shaking his head and casting out his thoughts in Jesus’ name. 

“Oh, I forgot,” Yuuji says softly upon seeing the curse womb for the first time in this skin. His tone conveys pity in a way that Fushiguro hadn’t been expecting. “It’s a finger-bearer.”

Fushiguro bristles, his eyes widening in shock. “What? You mean one of your fingers is in that thing?”

Yuuji snorts. “Don’t say it like that. That’s nasty. It ate one of Sukuna’s fingers, so it’s a finger-bearing curse. Hence, a ‘finger-bearer’.”

“Do you make it a habit of talking about yourself in the third-person?” Fushiguro asks. “Because that’s gonna get old real fast.”

Yuuji furrows his brows and crosses his arms. “I’m not Sukuna, you brat. When are you idiots ever gonna get it through your thick skulls that I’m Itadori from the future? I keep telling you the truth, but I guess it is generally stranger than fiction…”

“I’ll believe you when you start making sense,” Fushiguro says. He gazes down at Kuro’s bristling fur and haunched shoulders and bared fangs and breathes in shakily. In a moment, the Divine Dog disappears into his master’s shadow. He turns to Yuuji. “If you go take care of that curse and don’t do anything suspicious, I might consider believing you.”

Yuuji does a little fist-pump and jumps around the corner to the cafeteria. The curse must sense him, as it turns towards the hall with a cracking, bending spine. Yuuji’s eyes widen before he dives to the ground, caging himself beneath a round table.

The curse womb stares at the spot where Yuuji once stood, peering around the corner at it, but doesn’t make any move aside from scratching its chin with a long, sharp claw. Yuuji gulps and army crawls his way to a table to the right, a bit closer to the curse, and grabs onto a curved, metal beam holding a bench seat to the tabletop.

He closes his right eyes and puts his left hand in the air. His left eyes focus on the curse’s neck like a scope, his left index finger drawing an invisible line across the curse womb’s neck. He sticks out his tongue, practicing stability as he moves his hand, and lets it drop to the floor before he speaks.

“Dismantle.”

The curse’s head falls to the floor in an undignified heap. Yuuji clambers out from under the table, opens his right eyes, and grins like mad at the gory sight. His next movements seem mindless; he moves with a veracity Fushiguro hadn’t yet witnessed from the King of Curses, vaulting himself over tables and running across the room with strides wide like a giraffe’s.

He reaches the curse’s fallen body, standing over it like an oddly patient predator examining its prey for the most succulent piece of meat. Yuuji’s hand buries itself within the curse’s chest before he can help it. Out he pulls a long, clawed finger, mummified and covered nail-to-joint in grotesque violet.

It fits in his mouth like a permanent retainer, like it was shaped to be swallowed by him and him alone.

“Ha!” he exclaims triumphantly, wiping residual curse blood from his chin. “‘Told you you’d need my help, stupid vessel!” 

Yuuji grins ear-to-ear, standing tall above the crumbled form of the curse womb, his hand now slick with purple curse blood and the rings of Sukuna’s cursed technique pulsing against his skin like the weight of a dead man’s final goodbyes.

“Uh,” he mutters, “Hello? Stupid brat?” Yuuji taps the side of his head a few times before holding his chin with his not blood-soaked hand. “Oh. I forgot about this part.”

Fushiguro scrunches his eyebrows together as he jogs over to him. “What part did you forget about, huh?”

Yuuji turns towards him. “Do you have any idea how traumatizing it is to have your heart ripped from your chest?” he asks with a smile.

Fushiguro’s eyes widen, but he can’t locate the right words to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

“He’s just resting,” Yuuji says softly. “Let him sleep for a while.”

Fushiguro’s expression softens ever so slightly, but doesn’t say anything. It’s probably better that way.

………

The drive back to the Tokyo campus is more tense than a home-phone cable at a birthday girl’s sleepover party. Ijichi routinely checks the rearview mirror to check on Sukuna and Fushiguro in the back, both with faces in differing levels of boredom, before glancing to the sleeping Kugisaki in the passenger seat.

He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white and prays that Gojo will be back from his trip by the time they arrive at campus.

Rain spatters the windshield like a torrent of icicles, and Yuuji stares at his reflection in the foggy window until his brain feels like it might as well melt away. The face he sees is his own, yet his eyes are red; both pairs. And his face is softer than he remembers it being, without marring scars scattered like glass shards across his skin.

It doesn’t look like him at all. But, at the same time, he knows it's him. It’s weird.

“So, Megumi–”

“I won’t talk to you any more than I have to,” the teen replies harshly, voice brittle from yelling, before muttering, “You’re giving me reasons to trust you, but I still can’t believe we have the actual King of Curses just… just in the back seat! That’s crazy. This whole thing is crazy. It’s not right.”

It’s weird, Yuuji thinks to himself, finishing up Fushiguro’s monologue for him. I know it is. Sorry.

The silence in the car is suffocating. Fushiguro can feel it every time Ijichi glances back at him and Sukna, and the sense of wariness surrounding all of them is more than a little irritating.

He sighs heavily and swallows his weariness before turning to Sukuna. “I saved you that night at the school because I couldn’t see a good person die,” he says, voice low and loose. “It was purely for selfish reasons. So don’t go dying now, after all the trouble you’ve put us through.” He smiles with closed lips like he’s gritting his teeth.

The chains recede. Yuuji smiles at the side of Fushiguro’s head and closes his eyes.

“Y’know, you’re a pretty good guy, Fushiguro,” Itadori says, staring at him with his two light brown eyes and a face free from Sukuna’s temporary tattoos. “Even if you’re kind of moody.”

Fushiguro scoffs and turns back out the window, leaving Itadori to laugh at his expense. He feels Ijichi’s eyes leave him, and Kugisaki’s breathing even out. It appears, for now, that everything is going to be A-OK.

………

Gojo is sitting at the round dining table by the time the class has piled out of Ijichi’s car, bid him adieu, and marched soggily into the dorm building.

Fushiguro walks right past him and in the general direction of the wing of the building that houses their living quarters. Gojo pouts as his ward rushes by without so much as a “hello”, but doesn’t say anything to call him back. 

Kugisaki is a similar story, heading directly to the showers. She scolds Gojo for not showing up at their job site as she walks past the table, but doesn’t give him time to respond other than to flip his pout into a grimace before rushing off. 

Itadori flops down in a seat beside his teacher and sighs heavily. “Phew!” he exclaims. “Today was tough.”

Gojo laughs at the comical exhaustion on his face. “I’ll bet it was,” he says. “Going to deal with a Grade 2 curse for the first time is a big deal for any novice!”

Itadori blinks rapidly. His eyes widen as he stares at Gojo, his mouth open in disbelief. “That thing was a Grade 2?” he questions, voice breathy with astonishment. “I had to switch with Sukuna for a Grade 2?” He slaps his own forehead. “Man, how weak am I?!”

Gojo blinks behind his blindfold. “You summoned Sukuna… how exactly?” He grins weakly and laces his fingers together atop the table. “And please don’t tell me you made a binding vow with the King of Curses.”

Itadori laughs shakily. “If I said that, I.. uh… would be lying?”

Gojo breathes in between his teeth and clenches them closer together. The intertwining of his fingers appears painful the way his knuckles turn white and the whites of his pinky nails bend against the table. “What did you make the binding vow about?” he questions firmly, calmly, through his grit teeth. 

Itadori leans back in his chair. “Oh, don’t worry. I said he could come out anytime he wants and can hear through my ears! That’s all. He’ll still have his eyes and mouth sealed… however that works… and he said he’d heal any fatal wounds I receive! Oh, and that when he switches out with me, he won’t harm any of my allies in any way.”

Gojo blinks. 

Itadori blinks. Then, he sighs.

“If you wanted to talk to me that badly, you could have just said so,” speaks Itadori’s mouth, tone calmer and deeper than before, as Sukuna’s marks wrap around his skin.

“Who said anything about me wanting to talk to you?” Gojo asks. “Plus, a little birdie told me that you’re on a good streak! What fun is there talking to the infamous King of Cursed when he can’t up and decide to maim me on a whim?”

Yuuji checks his nails and scrapes out crusted dirt and purple blood from their underbellies. “‘You find yourself talking to birds very often, Six Eyes? I find they usually tend to fare better in pairs. And with stones.” He looks up at him. 

“And I assume I’m one of those birds in your example?” Gojo asks, his voice like cactus spines and desert honeysuckle. A double-edged sword.

Yuuji tries his best to run on the blunt edge. 

He rolls his eyes. “Obviously. I’m the one throwing the stone. Itadori is the other bird. The future is the stone itself.” He does a little jazz hands, short and sweet. “So, let’s talk already, before I decide this conversation is over before you’re satisfied.”

Gojo hums. “Fair enough. Death to placid conversation!” He returns Yuuji’s jazz hands. The parasite in his student’s body regards him with the disgust of a toddler given greens. “Alright,” Gojo says, returning to his regularly scheduled program of Debby-downer-ing, “Enough goofing around. I want you to tell me how you threatened my dear student, Yuuji, into giving up control of his own body any time you decide to bother the world outside his half-empty head.”

Yuuji scrunches up his nose. “Do you like Itadori or not? Make up your mind, dude.”

“It’s you I don’t like,” Gojo clarifies. 

“Now you’ve insulted both of us in mere moments,” Yuuji says, visibly ticked off. He crosses his arms and closes his eyes as he grins toothlessly. “Why do you want to know how I convinced Itadori to make a binding vow with me? That’s quite the personal answer you’re after, dear sorcerer.”

“How you tricked him, you mean.”

Yuuji stares at him. In his mind he pictures grabbing Gojo by the neck and shaking him side-to-side. His hostility seems to suddenly melt away. In his domain, Itadori starts screaming at him to “calm down” and “not do something stupid” or something. He isn’t really listening.

“Let me tell you a story,” Yuuji says in lieu of answering Gojo’s direct question. “It’s a story about a vessel named ‘Yuuji’ and his journey to the end of the world.”

Gojo crosses, uncrosses, and recrosses his legs, leaning back in his chair like he’s in detention. “If this is a story about your woes to try and get me to believe you’re the future-version of my student, I’ll smack you back into Yuuji’s head myself.”

Yuuji’s tense grin falls off of his face, and he stares at Gojo with a tasteful level of annoyance glinting in his eyes. “…Alright,” he says. “If that’s not what you want to hear, Princess Insufferable, then I’ll tell you one that might interest you a bit more.”

Gojo rolls his eyes but motions with a wave of his hand for the King of Curses to continue speaking. 

Yuuji clears his throat and readjusts himself on the chair. “This is a story of heartbreak and family ties. It’s about ancient evils and plans hatched more vile than the creator’s initial intentions.” He glares across the table. “This is a story about a sorcerer who can take over the bodies of loved ones’ corpses and wear them as his skin.”

Gojo feels his breath catch in his throat. 

“Have you ever heard of anyone by the name of ‘Kenjaku’?”

Gojo hums and leans his head back to stare at the ceiling. “No,” he says.

“Well, have you heard about the ‘stain on the Kamo Clan’s legacy’?” Yuuji asks, his eyebrow twitching in irritation.

“Oh, you’ve got me there,” says Gojo. “Kamo Noritoshi.” He leans forward, lacing his fingers back together to stare into Sukuna’s soul. “Now why would you need to bring up a millenia-old sorcerer when talking about a supposed body-snatcher?”

“I’m getting to that,” Yuuji says. “Anyway, Kamo created ten cursed wombs called the Death Paintings. You’ve heard of them. You know their story. What you don’t know is that Kamo Noritoshi never actually had anything to do with their creation.”

Gojo snorts. “Tell that to their DNA tests.”

“Kenjaku is the name of an ancient sorcerer–one potentially from the Heian Era–that learned to put their cursed energy to interesting use. They found a way to secure their conscience into their brain. This brain can now inhabit any person who has died by extracting their remaining gray matter–if any remains–and placing themself in its place. It stitches itself up,” he says, making a sewing motion with his hands, “and then lives as a different person. The stitches on its vessel’s forehead are a dead giveaway on who it’s inhabiting at any given time.”

Gojo stares at him for a good, long while. He doesn’t say anything, but Six Eyes bleeds a glowing glacier blue from beneath his blindfold like tears streaking down his cheeks and drifting away. “I… see,” he says after a long while of looking. “You believe there’s an ancient curse out there taking over the bodies of dead people and living their lives.”

Yuuji nods. “It’s the most efficient form of identity theft you’ve ever heard of.”

Gojo nods. “That’s…true.”

The kitchen clock ticks and ticks and ticks the seconds of their silence away like a thread of water dripping out of a leaky faucet; sand in an hourglass. The light above them hums like a radiator in Winter and flickers just enough to let Yuuji notice an elder beetle meandering across the wall behind Gojo’s head.

“Was there anything else to the story?” Gojo asks.

Yuuji hums. “Of course there is,” he says. “I’m just not sure you’re ready to hear it.”

Gojo stares at him again, but Six Eyes doesn’t streak down his face like before.

“Well,” says Yuuji slowly, “do you remember what I said back in the isolation chamber?”

He sees the moment everything clicks into place in Gojo's head. Six Eyes does act up at his realization, although Yuuji is 98% sure it’s against its user’s will.

“Oh,” Gojo says.

Yuuji shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Is there anything I can feasibly… do about this right now?”

Yuuji hums. “Well, you could go searching for Kenjaku, but I can’t help you there. I don’t know where he is.”

Gojo wilts minutely in his seat. Even his blindfold crinkles above his eyebrows.

“There’s a possibility I might be able to initiate contact with him earlier, but the circumstances leading to that aren’t going to happen for a little while.” Yuuji grips his chin in thought. “Although… there is something you can do for me that could help hurry things along.”

Gojo straightens up in his seat. Six Eyes settles beneath his blindfold. “What is it?”

“Convince the other first years that I killed Itadori.”

Gojo curls his lip at the idea.

“Don’t give me that look,” Yuuji says disapprovingly. “Once they’re convinced Itadori’s dead, hide him in your basement and train him to properly use his cursed energy.” He grimaces at his own words. “He’ll need all the training he can get if he wants to rewrite even a fraction of the mess I come from.”

“You say that like you’re the one who created all that mess,” Gojo says.

“I had a big hand in it, I’ll tell you that.” Yuuji sighs. “I’d like to avoid as much of the bad parts as we can,” he says, “but your training definitely wasn’t one of them. It needs to happen.” He averts his gaze from Gojo’s face. “I know it’ll hurt Megumi and Nobara, but it needs to be done. We don’t have enough time to take things any slower.”

Gojo hums and simply sits there for a while. “Can I at least get Yuuji’s input on all this?”

“He says it’s fine,” Yuuji says immediately, looking back at him. 

“You definitely didn’t ask him.”

“He says it’s fine,” he echoes himself. “Please. You’ve got to do as I say if you want to save your friend’s corpse.”

Gojo’s eyes darken. Yuuji doesn’t break his gaze.

Gojo sighs. “Fine,” he says. “But if we’re gonna do this, we’ve really got to sell it. I’m all for some theatrics, y’know, but faking the death of one-third of a whole class of jujutsu sorcerers is a pretty traumatic event.”

Yuuji squints his eyes to glare at the fading afterimage of the ghost of his former teacher. “Fine,” he says. “What do I have to do for you to take me seriously?”

“Rip out your own heart,” Gojo says plainly. “Throw it on the floor. Make a big scene of it. Scream if you have the breath to. Make your betrayal of your own vessel a big enough deal that you don’t have to fake dying. My dear student Yuuji graciously informed me that you agreed to heal him of any life-threatening injuries he encounters until he can heal himself.”

Yuuji’s hackles rise with every word this Gojo speaks. The ghost of his former teacher fades to wisps and then shreds itself apart from the holes out. Before him is simply a stranger, now. A cold-hearted stranger who has only faced a death he could come back from. A cold-hearted stranger who would let his student’s body come to harm to cast anguish upon an “ancient evil” that’s done nothing but offer his aid to these idiots.

Gojo raises an eyebrow. “Well?” He says, “You made it sound like you’d do just about anything to get me to take you seriously.” He lifts up his blindfold. Six Eyes blares into Yuuji’s retinas like a high-beam flashlight. “‘You willing enough to kill yourself? Only temporarily, of course.”

Yuuji glares at him and bears his teeth. Gojo stares at his canines and briefly questions whether they were that long when Itadori was in control, too.

That annoyingly quiet clock ticks away the silence once again, and Yuuji has half a mind to cleave it in two.

Gojo stares at him, waiting very impatiently for Sukuna’s next move.

A mental block slides up from behind Yuuji’s eyes, steel and reinforced as all get-out, barricading Itadori from the sight beyond his eyes. He raises a hand in front of his own face and regards his claws with careful precision. The purple shade of them appears almost black through the fury in his eyes.

He drags them down his own throat until they become a horrific mimicry of the curse womb’s own clawed hand, gray and veiny and pulsing with energy. His own hand appears feeble in comparison, the way it trembles at the cusp of his own flesh.

Yuuji takes a deep breath and shoves his hand into his own chest. Pulls out his bleeding heart. The blood that drips is red, not purple. Gojo isn’t looking at him. Hasn’t been since he started staring at his hand, he assumes.

Darkness doesn’t set in. He stares at the organ in his hand and realizes, suddenly, that Gojo hadn’t been aware of the truly sickening part of all of this.

He squeezes it harshly, hardly squinting at the tense feeling in his empty chest, simply grunting in pain before crushing his own heart.

He’d like to think that Gojo caught him on the way to the floor, that the man had at least enough human decency to not allow himself to watch as his oldest first-year student collapses to the floor in a bloody heap, but he loses all feeling before he gets the chance to find out for himself.

Chapter Text

This is death, he thinks, but he knows that’s not exactly right. It’s death, sure, but a temporary one for a powerful curse that won’t go down so easily. That’s all.

His eyelashes press like twenty pound dumbbells against his cheeks.

It’s not really death he’s experiencing, as his body goes numb from the tips of his fingers and toes to the emptiness between his ribs. The pain isn’t permanent. It never is. Nobody needs to mourn him like his friends did once when he himself was a living, breathing vessel. In this world, isn’t he just a good-for-nothing curse to everybody anyway?

Of course that’s how it is. It’s just his luck. After a lifetime of fighting for others, it must have been too much to ask that someone might fight for him, too.

But he was growing on Megumi, wasn’t he? The boy said it himself: he was gaining his trust, little by little. And don’t get him started on Itadori. That boy is far too trusting; he always has been. Yuuji knows this fact like a long-time friend. He’s lived it. He’s died for the sake of his own trusting nature; watched others die for it in return.

He’s cold.

His ears are under water, and Yuuji ponders that for a moment. Far-off splashing sounds through his eardrums like the deep clean of cotton-ended Q-tips. Water crests against his hairline, drawing rivets of down feathers through pink locks. His back hurts from pressing so heavily against the harsh stone of his innate domain.

The darkness behind Yuuji’s eyes bends and twists to welcome a fading vision of the Sukuna he once knew. Like last time, the visage says nothing, just fraying and folding at the edges. He still has his two, simple, human eyes. Unlike last time, however, this image of Sukuna only has two arms.

Yuuji doesn’t wonder much about the vision’s changes this time around, instead opting to force his eyes open and raise his arms high above himself.

He languidly examines his hands with fluttering eyelids.

All four of them wave when he beckons them to.

………

Itadori is at a loss for words. First, Sukuna–the other Yuuji–whatever–traps him within his own head. How is it that the King of Curses is even able to do that? Itadori wonders if he can get him to teach him about it some time.

Secondly, it’s cold in here. There’s water everywhere, and climbing up the bone throne just exposes him to more still air than standing in the water does. He clambers up the throne anyway, hoping to spot something to help him cure his own boredom or escape from here. All he finds is the knowledge that the other Yuuji hadn’t been lying the other day.

“Dang,” Itadori mutters, “this throne is uncomfortable.”

He lays himself onto the high seat anyway. He plays king for a while, beckoning invisible subjects on the ground this way and that, and playing trumpets with his fingers and bugles in his hands like seashells, announcing his own fictional entrance to a grand masquerade or banquet hall.

There isn’t much to do in the expanse of water and silence than play like an only child or take a walk. Once Itadori grows tired of playing make believe, he slides down to the foot of the throne. His worn sneakers hit the floor with a splash that hits his knees and the relaxed palms of his hands, but it’s only water, so he doesn’t make any effort to wipe it away.

It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway, what with the liquid covering the entire ground of the innate domain. Itadori sighs and stretches out his muscles, tense from sitting uncomfortably.

Behind the throne is more water. Lots more, stretching into an abyss of murky darkness he can’t see any light at the end of. Its color darkens the further he walks until it actually does look like blood swirling around his ankles. His eyes draw themselves up, up, up to the ceiling, and widen involuntarily at the remembrance of a giant’s ribcage. Itadori gapes at the sight and spins as he walks, examining the thick ivory with a sick sense of giddiness in his veins.

It reminds him, strangely, of the first time he ever watched Human Earthworm. He rented it from a video shop in middle school one weekend, and even convinced one of his friends at the time to suffer through it to give him company. Obviously, Itadori is aware the genre of body horror love stories isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but the other boy’s gagging during the transformation scene was a bit overkill in his opinion.

He wonders if Fushiguro or Kugisaki would watch Human Earthworm 4 with him. It’s supposed to come out in a week or so; he’s the most excited he’s been for a film in quite a while–probably since before his grandpa permanently transferred to the hospital for full-time care.

He wonders if Not-Sukuna would watch it with him, too. Or, at the very least, listen in with him. It would suck if the King of Curses decided to switch out with him to actually watch the movie when Itadori’s been looking forward to it for so long, but if he really wanted to see it, Itadori could probably make it to the theater again at some other time.

Itadori wonders if Not-Sukuna’s ever even seen a movie before. He really doubts they had moving pictures in the Heian Era. Maybe they could take the time to discuss forms of entertainment that they like someday. Itadori hopes Not-Sukuna’s idea of a fun time isn’t, like, pillaging villages or… commiting genocide, or something. That would make for a pretty short conversation, and there’s no fun in a too-short conversation, you see. The true essence of conversation comes from stupid disagreements and discussions that last a long time and take even longer to stop laughing about.

Those are Itadori’s favorite kinds of conversations–the ones where nobody wants to stop talking and listening and their laughter echoes late into the night. And by the time everyone realizes what time it is, they all go for snacks at the konbini and sit on park swings and benches for a while, or maybe even those springy animal-shaped things.

Something human and ugly beneath his skin wonders if he and Not-Sukuna could ever laugh and share joy like that.

Itadori stops in place when the water at his feet becomes darker than the serene sight of a new moon in Autumn–how the rainbow of fallen leaves glows like a billboard beneath his feet over rain puddles even with the blatant lack of a silver glow.

The air around him feels heavy. He peels his eyes from the darkness in front of him to examine the cavernous walls to his sides and the ways in which they’ve been cut and gouged deep like the cut of a chainsaw or a sharp, kitchen knife. But, then again, Itadori knows what knife cuts look like from his time spent in the kitchen, teaching himself all of the culinary basics, like how to julienne and fillet.

These cuts come from something sharper, longer. And those, the ones more like starbursts than slices, look organic in some way he isn’t familiar with. It’s as if someone’s blood and bone has been used to create a scene of abstract wall-carving art in the back of their pharynx.

Itadori swallows thickly and steps into the darkness. Well, he tries to. Some invisible force–a wall not unlike the steel one which blocked him from seeing out of his own eyes–blocks him in his step. Maybe that isn’t the best description, because he’s still moving, per se, but it feels like he’s walking through a wide vat of molasses he can’t see.

He pulls back from the invisible barrier and peers into the darkness with his hands across his browline, as if if he blocks the magical light from the invisible sun above him he’ll be able to see into the blackness clearly.

It doesn’t work. The world before him remains a mystery. Itadori huffs and squints, not ready to give up so easily. He leans forward, pushing his hands and face against the invisible barrier, and squints harder against the darkness.

The outline of a tall, looming building comes to life in response to all of the effort he has put into discovering what’s on the other side of the invisible wall, but nothing else reveals itself at his insistence.

Itadori sighs and maneuvers himself out of the sticky silence, backing away and putting his hands on his hips out of annoyance. He huffs and stares at the loose visage of the building and rolls his eyes to look at the ceiling. The blackness in front of him is covered in thousands of artificial stars, embedded within the fleshy ceiling like the backs of many piercings.

He stares in awe at the dim lights and how they twinkle in the darkness.

An absurdly loud splash sounds far behind him, surprising him out of his trance. Itadori’s eyes widen as he whips his head behind him. He turns and runs away from the invisible wall faster than he thought his feet could carry him, all the way past the throne of bones and back to where he started from.

Yuuji lies on the ground, silent and on his back, a few yards from the foot of his own hollow throne. Itadori jogs to a stop beside him and the four raised arms waving down at himself.

He taps on the King of Curse’s shoulder and tilts his head to the side when four wild, bewildered, ruby eyes lock onto his being immediately. The sudden influx of attention makes him feel oddly seen, like Gojo himself is staring into his reserve of cursed energy.

“‘You okay?” he asks plainly, furrowing his eyebrows and pulling his hand back to himself.

Yuuji’s eyes drag themselves back to the view of his own four hands. “I…” his breath betrays him, leaking out of grit teeth and the wheeze of a dying man.

Itadori allows his own eyes to roam the firm-posted curse’s trembling form as he lies there, silently shaking. They widen like camera lenses upon the sight of the gaping hole in his chest, slowly stitching itself back together.

“Gnarly…” Itadori asks, “What happened?”

Yuuji turns his head away from his vessel, water dragging itself from his now-exposed ear like a leaky faucet. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.

Itadori doesn’t believe that for a second. “How can that not matter? I can now say that getting your heart ripped out fricking hurts; I’m not an idiot who can’t understand when someone is in pain and doesn’t want to bother people about it.” He furrows his brows in annoyance. “So, are you going to tell me what happened or not?”

Yuuji blows air out of his mouth. Water leaks in through the gap, so he tilts his head back up a bit to spit it out. “No. It doesn’t matter.”

“Have you never had someone that cares enough to listen to your woes? Is that why you’re so dang stubborn on this?”

Yuuji thinks of Chousou and fire and Nanamin and a body covered in burns and Megumi–his Megumi–and Nobara–his Nobara–and his Gojo-sensei and a body cut in half.

“Of course I have,” he grumbles. “I still won’t tell you. It still doesn’t matter. Talking about it won’t change the fact that it happened, we’re healing, and everything is fine.”

Itadori flops onto the ground beside him, crossing his legs criss-cross, applesauce-style. He props an elbow on his knee and shoves his cheek into his hand, and Yuuji grimaces at the familiarity of his vessel’s pose.

“Let’s talk about something else, then.”

Yuuji furrows his brows and pushes himself into a seated position with four arms, the fresh, bottom two trembling from their recent production. “About what?” he asks softly.

“Tell me about yourself,” says Itadori. He grimaces and looks to the side. “I’ll… actually listen this time.”

Yuuji closes his eyes and breathes in deep from his lungs and wills his organs to stay within his flesh. He pools scarlet cursed energy into the gap where his heart used to be and feels Itadori’s awe-struck eyes on him when the organ reproduces itself and the rest of the hole swells before sticking together.

He opens his eyes, and his chest looks like nothing even happened aside from the five, deep puncture marks in an almost-circle on his chest.

“Woah,” Itadori remarks. “Is that how you stitched my chest back together?”

Yuuji nods stiffly. “Let's try not to have a repeat of that. At least, not for a while. Please.” He sighs softly. “Healing a broken heart takes up way too much cursed energy.”

Itadori snorts. “I’ll try my best. ‘Didn’t know you were such a poet, Sukuna.”

Yuuji glares at his vessel. “If we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna start with the fact that I’m not Sukuna.”

“Oh, right,” Itadori says, blinking owlishly. “You’re me from the future, right? Sorry, I forgot about that.”

Yuuji is surprised by the total lack of humor in his voice. “You mean to say you… believe me?”

Itadori grins. “Sure, I do. Why shouldn’t I? I doubt the real Sukuna, King of Curses, Eater of Babies, Conqueror of Nations, Killer of Kings would have given me such a good deal of a Binding Vow… ever.”

Yuuji nods sagely. “That’s completely correct,” he says, “the real Sukuna is a scumbag and a terror on society.”

Itadori nods, mimicking him. “Wouldn’t he be your Sukuna, so to speak? Y’know, since… You’re technically Sukuna, now.”

Yuuji grimaces. “Oh, I guess that makes sense…” He remarks, “Either way, being called his name is down right insulting.” He sighs. “I know it’s hard to explain since I’ve taken his place or something, but the history books in the Tokyo campus’s library should be able to tell you all about the original Sukuna if you’re curious about ‘im.”

“Oh, cool,” Itadori says. “Oh! And, what should I call you if not ‘Sukuna’?” He holds his chin in his hand questioningly. “Since you are technically another version of me, I could call you ‘Yuuji’ or ‘Itadori’... but that could get pretty confusing if I have to talk to the others about you…”

Yuuji hums and mirrors Itadori’s pose. “What about ‘Sukuji’?” he offers with a shrug. “It’s close enough to ‘Sukuna’ that it won’t be too confusing to other people, but it’s also close enough to ‘Yuuji’ that I’d be comfortable responding to it.”

Itadori nods vigorously. “That sounds great to me! I’m fine with whatever makes you feel the most comfortable, honestly.”

“Oh,” Sukuji whispers. The brightness of Itadori’s unadulterated joy is deafening in the ambiance of otherwise-silence within his innate domain. He wonders if he was ever this bright, back when their roles were reversed and Sukuna was a genocidal, callous mastermind of great proportion. “I think I would… kill for you.”

Itadori blinks. “What?” He laughs a little. “Why would you need to do that?”

Sukuji huffs out a laugh. “You’d be surprised.”

“I won’t ask,” Itadori says, blinking owlishly again.

“What else are we going to talk about?” Sukuji asks, putting two hands on his hips and scratching his cheek with one of the higher ones.

“Woah!” Itadori exclaims, leaning backwards out of shock. “You… have four arms.”

Sukuji says nothing, but crosses all four. “You just noticed that?” he asks incredulously. “I literally just got them. They’ve been attached to me the whole time you’ve been here.”

Itadori pouts. “Yeah, and you also had an oozing, gaping hole in your chest. I was a bit distracted, sorry.” He rolls his eyes and raises his arms to wave subtle jazz hands.

Sukuji huffs out a laugh and looks the other way, smiling softly. “Fine, then. Be your own, little, oblivious self.”

Itadori makes an offended noise and reaches down into the water of the innate domain. He flicks his hand towards Sukuji, splashing his crossed arms and his already covered-in-water form with a fresh spritzing of it.

Sukuji sputters water out of his mouth as it slides down his face, and Itadori laughs out loud at the deadpan expression on his face.

“I take it you don’t like getting splashed with water?”

Sukuji’s eye twitches. “Does anyone like getting splashed with water?”

Itadori hums and raises a hand, wiggling it side to side in a so-so motion. “Well, I mean, if it’s hot outside, it could be pretty refreshing!”

“...Does it look like we’re outside to you?”

Itadori tries and fails to stifle his giggles. “Well, no.”

“And does it look like it’s hot in here?” Sukuji asks with his lips in an amused uptick, gesturing widely at all of the water around them.

“No,” Itadori replies, still giggling. “Not… exactly.”

Sukuji tries his best to stare at his vessel blankly, but the cheery look in Itadori’s eyes is too contagious to ignore. He stares at him as blankly as he can before he, too, ends up laughing.

“Okay, okay,” says Itadori before breathing in and out deeply to regain his breath. “What should–hehe–we talk about?”

Sukuji breathes in through his nose and sighs out a final chuckle. “Uh, I’m not too sure…” He lists on his fingers, “We already discussed what to call me, we had a good laugh, we addressed that I have four arms… what else even is there?”

Itadori claps his hands together. “What’s your favorite color?” he asks with pearly whites.

Sukuji snorts. “It’s red,” he says. “‘Yours?”

“Yellow!”

“Oh.” Sukuji smiles softly. “My favorite color used to be yellow, too.”

“Really?” Itadori asks, a joyful tilt in his voice that beckons him to elaborate further.

Sukuji shrugs. “What else is there to say? People change.”

He deflates, a displeased pout on his face. “You don’t have some reason for your favorite color changing?” Itadori questions. “That’s a pretty pivotal part of yourself to just… let go of. If you ask me.”

Sukuji examines his face for a while. His eyes glue themselves to the spots where his scars are involuntarily, searching around for wounds from battles that haven’t happened yet. He wants to keep this Yuuji, this version of himself, free from stares of pity and words of consolation from strangers he can’t remember the faces of. He wants to protect him from the horrors that he went through.

Itadori tilts his head to the side. “Well…? What’s the story, morning glory?”

I’ll take on all the pain again if it means protecting myself from feeling it for the first time all over again.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says.

Itadori leans closer, excitement glimmering in his eyes. They’re brown and warm and glow like copper in their immensely red surroundings.

“It’s brown.”

Itadori leans back and crosses his arms. “Brown?” he repeats disbelievingly. “Like… like a stick?”

Sukuji lets his head tilt to the side just a little; feels his quartet of eyes blink in perfect unison; twiddles all four of his thumbs and imagines tying a toddler’s shoelaces when his grandpa can’t bend over too far and walking a lonesome elementary student to school when no one else is available to.

“Something like that.”

Itadori disappears from before him in the blink of four eyes. Sukuji stares at the space where his vessel once sat before him for a while before sighing as heavily as he can manage without breaking for a fresh breath of air. He stands and brushes invisible dirt from his knees before meandering to his throne. He stares up to the top of it before closing his eyes and imagining it shrinking, shrinking, shrinking down into the rickety form of his grandpa’s old, wooden rocking chair–the one he kept on the back deck of their apartment and pulled inside when it rained.

When red blinks open to red, the bones have disappeared. That rocking chair sits in the water, taking their place. Sukuji sits in it and puts one pair of arms on the arms of the chair, his other two lacing behind his head in the form of a makeshift pillow.

He closes his eyes once again and reaches out, stretching his cursed energy taught like a rubber band about to snap. Directing it mentally is an easy feat when he sits within the realm of his own innate domain, and its motion only slows to a stop when he reaches his vessel’s ears.

“Welcome to my basement!” he picks up through what his vessel hears.

The exclamation is followed by a low, low groan and the squelch of someone rubbing their eyelids too deeply. “Why… am I in your basement, Gojo-sensei?” he hears Itadori question.

“You’re here ‘cause everyone else thinks that you’re dead!”

“What?! Why would they think that?” He pauses before muttering, “Wait… does this somehow explain why Sukuji had that hole in his chest earlier?”

Gojo hums. “Oh? Sukuna, you mean?”

Sukuji assumes Itadori shakes his head by the sound of rustling hair-on-fabric.

“No, I meant ‘Sukuji’,” he says. “We talked a lot in his innate domain.”

“Oh, did you, now?” Gojo calls, voice cheery with a grin he can’t see, light like a little kid waiting outside for a playdate at his best friend’s house, “Suku…-ji?” 

Sukuji cups his hands around his mouth and shouts to the ceiling of his innate domain, “I won’t talk to that stupid Gojo scum!”

Itadori shakes his head. “He says he doesn’t want to talk to you.” He tilts his head for a moment, listening to a one-sided conversation Gojo isn’t a part of. 

“I don’t talk to suicide-baiters,” Sukuji mutters.

“He also said he doesn’t speak to suicide-baiters.” He furrows his brows. “What’d you do to deserve that title?”

In his head, Sukuji goes silent. He grimaces. I… didn’t think he’d be able to hear me if I talked that quietly. Oops? 

Gojo doesn’t say a word to answer, and the silence is deafening. That was a pretty serious accusation, but nobody aside from Itadori seems to have enough sense to wonder about it. Gojo claps his hands together instead. “So, Yuuji!” He says, voice short and tense. “‘You like movies?”

Chapter Text

Itadori nearly makes it through the entire film production of Mean Girls before Tsukamoto, Principle Yaga’s own Sleeping Cursed Corpse, punches the living daylights out of him.

“Ouch,” Sukuji remarks dully from his head upon hearing the sharp thwack! of his vessel being punched in the face.

Itadori holds his cheek, glaring at the television screen with tears in his eyes. “She finally learned to accept herself!” He sniffles and resumes pouring a constant, level stream of cursed energy into the cursed corpse he readjusts to hold like a pillow against his chest. “Long live character growth! I love this movie.”

“Long live burn books,” Sukuji says in an attempt at mimicking Itadori’s enthusiasm. “I should make one of those.”

Itadori sniffles again before wiping his nose on the long sleeve of his shirt. “Don’t write me in it,” he mumbles.

Sukuji hums in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything. Tsukamoto snores so loudly, rumbling like a purring cat as he sleeps, that Itadori has to pinch himself to stay awake.

“Can’t we switch for a while, just a little bit?” he asks his parasite, batting his eyelashes even though he knows Sukuji isn’t able to see it. “Please?”

Sukuji clicks his tongue. “No way, brat. You need to learn the basics now, while nothing horrible is going on.” He sighs. “This peace won’t last.”

Itadori rolls his eyes and makes a puppet with his hand to mock Sukuji as he speaks. He groans. “Fine, fine! I get it! I need to master the fundamentals. Whatever.”

Sukuji sighs. “No, this is not ‘whatever’. This is a skill you need to master if you don’t want to die again. Do you have so little self-preservation you’d rather be killed than work hard?” He crosses his arms. “Perhaps we’re more different than I first thought.”

Itadori huffs through his nose and stands when the credits start to roll to pursue through Gojo’s catalogue of DVDs. He lifts two cases and hums. “Die Hard or Beverly Hills Cop? Hmm… I haven’t seen Beverly Hills Cop yet, but… Bruce Willis…”

“Action comedy is the best,” remarks Sukuji. “You should try out Beverly Hills and then go to the other. I wonder if Gojo has the sequels…”

Itadori “ooh”s at the notion of getting to watch a self-imposed movie marathon. He cracks open the case for Beverly Hills Cop and removes the disc. Mean Girls slides out from the DVD player when he hits the eject button, and he places the disc on the coffee table to put back in the case later. It’s a little difficult concentrating on switching the movies around while still incorporating his cursed energy into Tsukamoto, but Itadori makes do.

When the DVD player is empty between movies, he stares at the blank screen for a while, just breathing and taking a moment to relax his brain from “movie-overload”. Sukuji hums absentmindedly in the silence.

Itadori cocks his head to the side and puts in the new disc. “Are you humming Crazy Frog?”

Sukuji makes a noise that sounds like sputtering–like he’s spitting out water or something that tastes foul. “What? I’m humming Axel F. It’s… from the movie you’re about to watch.”

“Isn’t the Crazy Frog song called that too?”

“It’s a remix,” Sukuji says with a sigh. “You’ve really never seen this movie, have you?”

Itadori huffs and closes the player before waltzing back to the couch. “No, I really haven’t. You have?”

“Of course I have.” Sukuji sounds proud of the fact. Itadori imagines him puffing out his chest; eyes closed; two arms on his hips and the others crossed in front of his chest. “I’m a movie buff. I even dabbled in writing reviews online after the aftermath of Shinjuku cooled down.”

Itadori shifts around until he’s sitting comfortably with Tsukamoto snoozing on his lap. He reaches over to the couch-side table and grabs a half-drank can of soda before guzzling it down. “What happened in Shinjuku?” he asks languidly.

“Oh,” says Sukuji. “Uh… that’s where we killed my Sukuna.”

Itadori hums. “So this is definitely some dimension-travel situation. Not a time-travel one?”

“That’s the most likely scenario, yes,” Sukuji replies. “I would be really concerned if Sukuna was this nice to me and I just forgot it ever happened.”

Itadori snorts out a laugh and glues his eyes to the screen as the movie starts. “I get that,” he says. “If I forgot something crazy that happened in my life, like… uh… my mom being a supervillain or something, since we’re on the topic of movies and all, I’d probably feel pretty nutty myself.” He laughs.

Sukuji doesn’t.

“So… Shinjuku is where your final battle went down, huh?” Itadori asks in response to the King of Curse’s silence. “What time of year was it? Was it pretty green out, or were you more in the city…?”

He hears Sukuji clear his throat. “Uh… it was Christmas Eve. Pretty cold aside from… anyway, we were more so in the city. A pretty, uhm… unpopulated area.”

“Your tone scares me,” Itadori says. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Sukuji sighs. “A lot. The whole thing is crazy. I’ll… tell you about it some other time.”

Itadori shrugs. “Aight.”

Itadori watches the movie, and Tsukamoto sleeps soundly. Sukuji listens in most of the time; he likes this movie, but he wouldn’t take away Itadori’s first stream of it for anything. He wants every version of himself to have the hope action heroes gave to him back when his opinions on the life he led still mattered.

Reality warps around them. Itadori drops the cursed corpse. Sukuji feels like he’s being tossed around in a blender; all around him are sounds. Sounds of wind rushing; cave rocks tumbling down; dogs yelping; and he feels like he’s being chopped up and tossed around in a blender of cacophony. He jams his fingers in his ears as though he’d be able to block external noise without control over Itadori’s body.

Itadori blinks, and the next time he opens his eyes, he’s being held by the neck of his shirt over a crystal clear pond. Or a lake? It’s probably a lake.

He shakes in the air. “Hey! What the heck’s going on?! How did I get here? Where are we? Hey!”

“To observe our little spat, I’ve brought Itadori Yuuji.”

Sukuji’s eye twitches. “Gojo, when I catch you, Gojo…”

Itadori twists his head up so quickly he sees stars. “Gojo-Sensei! What the heck? Where are we? What’s going on?” Upon getting no answer, he turns back to front. The sight before him shocks him. It shocks him deeply. Itadori’s eyes go wider than saucers as he points at the thing before him. “Mount Fuji!” he screeches. “Why’s his head Mount Fuji?! How’s that even possible?! What the heck is going on?!”

“Chill, man,” Sukuji mutters. “Geez. I do not remember being this shocked seeing Jogo the first time. Geez.”

“We’re gonna learn about domain expansions!” Gojo supplies cheerfully. He pokes Itadori’s back with his thumb. “It’s your very first field trip as a student of jujutsu! Congratulations.”

He sets the boy down, and Itadori flounders at the idea of being drenched in water so suddenly. Red sneakers simply set themselves upon the wake like they’ve been set on the surface of a really hard-topped water bed.

“Woah!” Itadori stomps his foot on the water a few times to test his stability. “How come I’m not sinking? This is crazy cool.” He turns towards his teacher with squinty eyes. “How’d we get here, anyway? We were just at the school…”

Gojo grins, staring out at the personification of Mt. Fuji with an easy smile. “‘Warped us,” he says.

…He’s not gonna explain that at all, is he? Itadori wonders.

Sukuji snorts and laces his fingers behind his head. “No, why would he?”

“What’s he supposed to be, your shield, Mr. Infinity?” asks Mt. Fuji. Smoke curls out from the gap in his head like a residual campfire is laid to rest within his skull. Itadori wonders off-handedly if the heat could have melted his brain.

“A shield?” Gojo questions in disbelief. “That’s funny. Like I would use my dear, dear student as a shield.” He turns to Itadori. “Can you believe this guy?” He turns back. “He’s here on a field trip, just to watch. Just forget he’s even here and let’s juke it out.”

Itadori’s eyes bug out of his head. Okay, am I reading too far into this, or is my being here a huge liability? Like, I’ve heard jujutsu sorcerer’s projected lifespans are considerably shorter than not-jujutsu sorcerers’, but like, how many of these sorcerers die because their teachers are overconfident in themselves?

“I don’t know,” says Sukuji. “I just got here.”

Itadori stifles a laugh. Wait, but you’re me, so you’ve been through all this before.

“Yes, true. Continue.”

Didn’t you ever learn, like, statistics pertaining to the job you were given?

Sukuji shrugs even though he knows Itadori can’t see him. It’s a conversational motion that he’s too used to making to just stop now. “Nah. There’s not a big need for that sort of knowledge. The statistical knowledge you do need is more along the lines of if-I-kill-ten-curses-in-an-x-mile-wide-radius, how-many-will-be-remaining-by-the-time-I’ve-travelled-thirty-minutes-back-to-the-designated-meet-zone. Stuff that’s helpful practically, y’know.”

Oh. I guess that makes sense. What’s the answer to your example question?

“Depends on what time of day it is, what time of year it is, where you’re located, how many people you’re in a team with, who your captain is, what people have currently reported to be the most afraid of, how long you’ve been hunting already, how much longer you have until you’re done, how far home base is, who’s on your team, etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera.” Sukuji sighs. “Just focus on Jogo and Gojo for now.”

Itadori nods to himself. Aight, chief.

“You look like an idiot draggin’ that kid along. Ain’t he just gonna get in your way? What a fool you are,” Mt. Fuji–Jogo, as Sukuji called him–says to Gojo. Ha, ha. Gojo and Jogo. Jogo and Gojo. Jogo–

Sukuji splashes his feet in the water of his innate domain and hopes Itadori can hear it. “Pay attention, doofus.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t go on worrying about me, now,” Gojo replies with a smirk. “You’ve still got yourself to worry about, don’tcha?”

Itadori looks between Jogo and Gojo as they taunt each other.

“I mean, come on.” Gojo laughs a little. “You’re pretty weak.”

Lava explodes out Mt. Fuji’s ears. And his head, too. Itadori has to keep himself from laughing ‘cause he’s seen that happen with smoke in so many cartoons before, but in real, unanimated life it looks totally ridiculous!

“You dare insult me? ME? You insolent cretin,” Jogo shouts, black teeth grit so hard it makes Itadori wonder if they’re made of pumice and if they are when they’ll crumble under the pressure. “I’m going to tear that smug face from your skull and wear it like a face mask! You’ve got really smooth skin!”

Sukuji has to pinch his nose to stop himself from laughing. That’s a really weird insult, and Jogo definitely didn’t say that last time. Oh, boy. Time to stop laughing. C’mon, now. Get yourself together, boy.

Itadori stares at the fire and heat shooting out from the mountain-curse’s face and gawks. Water rushes towards him and Gojo from the pressure, but it simply rolls on and doesn’t disturb them in the slightest.

Woah, Itadori gawks. It didn’t even touch me! 

“Gojo’s Infinity is basically just the definition of atoms-don’t-touch-so-you-can’t-say-I’m-touching-you but actually visible,” says Sukuji helpfully. “I know you don’t have siblings, but I’ll simulate the annoyance of it later if you want.”

Itadori laughs through his nose. Don’t we both not have siblings?

Sukuji laughs him off again. Itadori doesn’t get why it’s funny, but he finds himself looking forward to figuring it out one day anyway!

He directs his attention back to Mt. Fuji. “In what world is a guy like that considered weak?”

Gojo hums and pats him on the head. “Mine.”

The air around them becomes shrouded in a void of darkness. The curse is saying something probably important, but Itadori can’t hear it over the adrenaline rushing in his ears. Jagged rock appears beneath Itadori’s feet, rupturing and cracking, and magma shoots between the gaps. The rock encircles them in a cave gloomier than Sukuji’s minimalist blood pit, spitting lava and crashing fire at their feet.

“What is this?” Itadori asks, whipping around to examine his new surroundings.

“Coffin of the Iron Mountain,” Jogo replies helpfully.

Itadori feels like he’s been airlifted into the inner workings of a volcano.

“‘Pretty accurate description,” Sukuji mutters against the heel of his palm.

“This is a domain expansion,” Gojo says, voice bright and projected like a teacher’s ought to be. “Innate domains are made up of cursed energy. You’ve been to Sukun–uh, Sukuji’s, correct?”

Itadori nods. Lava sparks up at his hand and nicks the side of it. He screams and waves it up and down and blows on it, but it hurts! But the skin isn’t discolored and he can’t see a burn or even a blister forming… what the what?

Gojo continues on like nothing happened, “When you imbue an innate domain with a cursed technique, you create a domain. Each one is unique, and each one has different requirements. The domain from the detention center you and your classmates got trapped in was an incomplete domain since there wasn’t a technique imbued to hold it steady. It takes lots of energy to keep a domain wide and open for long, but you get a major stats boost in your own domain.”

“Like an environmental buff!”

Gojo hums. “Another benefit is that whatever technique is used to make a domain a proper one and not an incomplete one is a sure-to-hit ability. It’s a guarantee.”

Itadori hums in understanding. “That sucks though!”

“It does,” Gojo replies cheerfully. “But you can use a stronger technique to stop it from hitting…”

He demonstrates by shattering a pillar of stone heading towards the pair in a million tiny pieces. Jogo’s mouth goes agape and he starts shouting nonsense, but Itadori’s too busy paying attention to his field trip-instructor to listen to anyone’s griping.

“...Or, although I wouldn’t recommend it, you could try to break out of the domain. It’s a pretty big risk to take, and it’s not a common practice for obvious reasons, but hey, you’re a lucky guy, Yuuji! It just might work for you.”

Will it? Itadori asks his own little, personal, live-in oracle, Will it really?

Sukuji hums noncommittally. “Yes.”

“If I find a way to disable your Infinity with one of my techniques, then the sure-hit technique of my domain will hit you,” Jogo asks from across the cavern, like a patient student in class.

“Obviously,” Gojo, the ever-tactile teacher replies, “Any attack would. ‘Wouldn’t have to be your sure-hit one. Just sayin’.”

Itadori whips to face him. The comical expression on his face almost makes Gojo laugh out loud. “Why would you tell him that?!”

Gojo shrugs. “I like to play with my food before I eat it.” He grins, and his teeth appear sharp in the stark lighting of the volcano’s interior. “I bet your little buddy knows what I’m talking about. Right, Su-ku-ji?”

Sukuji crosses his legs in his rocking chair and puts his cheek on his fist. “Your face makes me sick.”

“He said ‘your face makes me sick’.”

Gojo pouts jokingly and turns back to Jogo. “Sucks. Anyway, the most effective way to deal with a domain is to put up your own. The more refined one always wins the clash.” He pulls down his blindfold. “‘Bet your life mine comes out on top this time.”

Itadori hears Sukuji yelling, but the words feel far away. His sensei is just so cool!

“I’ll only leave behind your ashes, Satoru Gojo!” Jogo yells, firing a wave of magma and rock at the duo.

Sukuji grips the arms of his chair in preparation for what’s coming next.

“Domain expansion.”

The blindfold’s all the way off now. Itadori cowers behind his arms at the sight of fire and stone coming towards him. Gojo picks up his student round the middle like a deadweight calf.

“Infinite Void.”

Jogo’s domain disappears. White washes around them; nothing. And then: everything. Nothing. Everything. Nothing. Everything. Everything. Everything.

A hand lands on the top of his volcano head.

“This is limitless,” Gojo says. “Every act in life, infinitely repeating. When you’ve been given everything, all you can do is nothing. Ironic, innit?”

Jogo lets out a noise like he’s choking on what he sees. Like infinity is being shoved down his throat in a braid of a million puzzle pieces strung together, none fitting just right, probably none from the same box, come to think of it.

“I still have some things I need to ask you,” Gojo says. “I’ll let you off the hook this time.”

Jogo’s head comes clean off his neck. Sukuji shudders at the sound.

Infinite Void smashes into an infinite river of molten, glass shards that banish themselves to the wind and disappear into nothing. Or everything. Maybe both.

Itadori’s head hurts, but not as much as Jogo’s probably does, so he sucks it up and stays silent. Gojo tosses the curse’s head across the rocky field beside the lake before landing in the grass, setting Yuuji down and stomping onto the side of Jogo’s head like he’s a soccer ball prepped and ready to score.

“Now,” he says slowly, peeking at the head from beneath his blindfold, “who sent you?”

Wow, Itadori thinks, he really is the strongest, huh? He’d make a killer Human Earthworm head.

“No comment,” says Sukuji.

…You’re definitely explaining that one later.

“Rats.”

Gojo rolls the head back and forth beneath his heel. “You don’t really seem like the type that’d get on with someone giving you orders. ‘You got some sort of reward lined up for killing me? Ah, who cares about all that.” He pushes his foot down harder. “All I need is a name. You’ll give one to me. The right one.”

“Like I’d tell you, ya punk,” Jogo spits.

Now Itadori really wonders if Mt. Fuji’s teeth are gonna crumble.

“Such a bad attitude for a guy in such a bad position,” Gojo comments. “I’ll exorcise you if you don’t tell me.”

A giant flower shoots down from the heavens, roots tangled like a spike. It smashes into the ground where Gojo’d just been standing, physically separating him from Jogo. From the base of the weapon-thing, a Spring meadow of flowers time-lapses into bloom.

“Aw.” Gojo smiles despite himself.

Itadori grins right along with him. “It’s so pretty!”

“Flowers!” Gojo laughs and then smacks himself in the face. His face sets into a flat expression as he contemplates the flowers.

Itadori screams, and Gojo whips his head to see his student being yanked through the sky by a root longer than the train line from Koto to Ginza.

“Ah!” Itadori stops his screaming when he notices a giant… thing…? grab Jogo’s head and run away. “Leave me! Go after them, Gojo! You got this! I’ll be fine!”

The vine smacks him against the ground and grows a mouth. Wait, what?!

“Wait! Wait! Gojo, I need help! AaAaaAAH!”

The teeth fall off the root, and the wood holding Itadori’s ankle drops to the ground. So does he.

Itadori falls to his knees at Gojo’s back and extends an open palm to express his apology for letting the curses get away in poetry form. Gojo isn’t even looking at him, and definitely doesn’t care about getting an apology, but Itadori feels deep within his heart that this is the right thing to do.

“I’m sorry about that. They managed to escape because of me. Though, you’re the one who brought me here, right?”

Sukuji snorts in his innate domain. “I’ll come out to punch you. Satoru Gojo, the foolish teacher. In stone will your failures lay to rest.”

“Yuuji,” Gojo says as he turns around. “I think you and your classmates should get strong enough to beat a curse like that.” He grins and throws up a thumbs-up like that’ll make the challenge feel a little lighter. “You’ve got this!”

“Me? Beat that thing?” Itadori breathes out in disbelief. “This guy’s crazy.”

“‘Good to have a concrete goal before moving forward, yeah? Geez, I’m so glad I brought you along today. T’was a great learning experience.” Gojo strokes his own ego, “Go me!”

Is he for serious?

“He’s for serious,” Sukuji affirms.

“For the next month, you’re gonna keep watching movies,” Gojo says.

Yay.

He punches his fist against his palm. “And you’ll also get to fight against me!”

Itadori crosses his arms. “I’m totally gonna die. Are you insane?” He sighs. “Don’t answer that. I’ll just ask someone who knows you better.”

“Yes,” Sukuji answers before being asked.

Itadori sighs again, with feeling. 

“Then comes combat training!” Gojo exclaims chipperly. “You’ll get to go on even more dangerous missions. You’re gonna have tons of fun and get stronger! It’ll be great!”

It sounds like he’s planning a lesson plan in real time, out loud, right in front of my face.

Sukuji snorts. “Just wait for the exchange event. You’ll get used to it.”

“Wait!” Itadori exclaims. He throws up his hand like a good student ought to. Gojo points at him to call him to speak. “What’s an ‘exchange event’?”

Gojo purses his lips and puts his hand down. “Did Sukuji tell you about that?”

Itadori nods.

“And he can hear me right now, right?”

Itadori nods.

Gojo holds his chin. “And he’s you from the future, right?”

Itadori nods. Wait, what?

“And he’s able to take over your body whenever he wants to, right?”

Itadori nods, slower this time.

Gojo clears his throat and approaches his student. He pinches the boy’s earlobe and leans into his ear and grins. “Don’t take Yuuji’s learning experiences from him!” he exclaims slowly, like he’s speaking to someone who can’t hear very well. Itadori winces at the volume. His voice bounces around the innate domain like a racketball, and Sukuji slaps his hands over his own ears. “He needs to learn! There’s a lot he doesn’t know about jujutsu yet, and he won’t learn everything he needs to if you take over every time something bad happens! I know about your binding vow, and I’d hate for him to die for you to help, so feel free to step in then, alright?”

Itadori grabs Gojo’s wrist and yanks it away from his ear. “You don’t need to yell!! I can hear you just fine!!”

Gojo laughs and pulls his hand away roughly. “Wow! Has the great Sukuji graced me with his presence? What a welcome surprise!” He examines the angry expression taking over his student’s face and “oh”s. “Wow!” he says again. “If I were anyone else, I would think I’m still talking to Yuuji!” He grins. “Creepy!”

“Oh, I’ll show you creepy, you space-invading freak of–”

“Yuuji!” Gojo calls around Sukuji’s cursing. “Get your dog on a tight leash or you’ll never be able to defeat Mt. Fuji with your own power!”

Sukuji reaches out and flicks Gojo on the forehead.

Gojo smacks his hands onto his hairline and juts out his lip. “Ow! Be nicer to your sensei, Sukuji!”

Sukuji huffs and crosses his arms. “Don’t even joke about that. Invalid.”

“Oh, you know you tolerate me!” Gojo cheers. “Admit it! I’m your sensei! Say it: sensei!”

Sukuji's full body shudders. He turns away from Gojo. “Gee oh em dee.”

Gojo makes an offended noise. “I miss the nice Yuuji.” He sighs.

Sukuji sighs too, before he lets his arms fall to his sides and his shoulders slump down. He straightens back up with a jump, whipping back around to Gojo.

“So!” Itadori grins sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck. “What’s this about an ‘exchange event’ again?”

Chapter Text

It’s been a few weeks since Gojo started training Itadori to not suck at everything jujutsu-related and concluded his movie-watching training-montage. A pretty good cycle started up during this time: wake up, get dressed, say “itadakimasu”, get pulled away from breakfast early, get tossed through a couple trees, eat dinner without getting interrupted, and fall asleep before his head hits the pillow. Rinse and repeat. All in all, it’s been a very good chance to see just how incapable Itadori really is.

It makes sense, really, given the fact that he’s not Sukuji, from a future where he’s been through all of this already, and actually has things to learn from people physically weaker than him.

Itadori puts on his shoes and ties the laces with bunny rabbit ears. Sukuji tied them like that, too, when he had shoes to tie. It’s good to hold onto what you can of your childhood throughout your life, especially when it gets epilogued prematurely. “What do you think we’re gonna learn about today?”

Sukuji hums and taps his nails against the table. That’s right: his domain has a table now. It’s wooden and totally water-logged at the feet, and is dark wood and doesn’t match his rocking chair at all, but it’s short enough that he can build a house of cards on it without leaving his chair. So, suck it. Or whatever. It’s Sukuji’s domain, and he can do whatever he pleases with it. He can even ignore the ominous darkness past where his throne used to be and the mental images of Shibuya laid out there, carved into his bones and his throat and laid out in a life-size portrait of his biggest regrets if he wants to.

“Probably how to not suck at everything.”

Itadori purses his lips and blows air out his nose while putting on his other sneaker. “What’s got you so pissy today? You’re not usually this… Sukuna-y.”

Sukuji puts a queen of hearts on his tower of cards and squints. “It’s October. What is there to be un-pissy about?” His cards fall to the table and to the water, fluttering down like Autumn leaves. He holds his head in his hands and groans. “This sucks.”

Itadori jumps to his feet and grabs his backpack. Sukuji isn’t sure what’s in there, but here’s to hoping it’s not just full of manga and recyclable water bottles. That’s totally how he would have filled it at this age, but he knows there’s lots of other things he could take instead, now. Like sunscreen. Or his phone charger, like, hello? How many times does a kid need to leave it behind before it becomes a fixture in his hoodie pocket? Too many, that’s how many.

“You suck,” his vessel replies easily, stretching in Gojo’s genkan. “October is cool. It’s got the harvest moon–how pretty!–and all of the trees change color–pretty, again!–and cold soba goes on sale–score!–and I mean, what’s there not to like?”

Sukuji sighs. “Not much, I guess, but…”

“Oh!” Itadori bumps his fist onto his palm like he’s stamping his own death certificate. “And Halloween!”

Sukuji slumps into his chair. “Oh, joy. How could I forget? This is only the month of one of the worst days of my life. I’m so excited to live it over.”

Itadori’s pretty sure he’s not actually excited. He blinks. “Oh… Shibuya, right?”

“Yeah,” Sukuji replies, sighing and slumping further into his chair. He waves his hand and the table disappears so he can slump down further. “Dang stupid Mahito and his stupid freaking face, that stitched-up freak of freaking nature and his stupid, blue-da-ba-dee-da-ba-da-lookin’ butt.”

Itadori snorts out a laugh. “You really don’t like that guy, do you?”

“You won’t be laughing in a couple weeks if I can’t fix things, brat. Shut your mouth.”

Sukuji peels his ears from Itadori’s cochlea and puts his cheek in his palm. Maybe he should reconsider this rocking chair. It’s kind of hard to feel all depressed when he’s being rocked back-and-forth like a baby.

………

Sukuji is shocked into silence by the voice he hears. After a few hours of time spent collecting himself and debating whether or not to bring back that stupid skull throne (‘cause what else would he make a giant throne out of anyway, soda cans? No thanks), he decides to check in on the world around him through Itadori’s ears.

“It’s a gruesome sight.” The voice is calm and strong and upon hearing it, Sukuji automatically feels like crying. “Can you see that path of footprints right there? It’s a show of residual cursed energy.”

“I don’t see anything,” Itadori responds.

Sukuji stands from his chair and crouches down until he’s holding his knees to his chest with arms snaked around them. His face buries itself against his top set of arms, and the pressure of the draping fabric of his garb scratches uncomfortably against his inhuman number of eyes.

That’s Nanamin. He doesn’t need to question Itadori or inquire whom he’s speaking to. He knows that voice–Itadori,… you take it from here–like the back of his hand.

“You’re not trying to see it,” Nanami tells his younger, mostly unblemished self, and Sukuji feels like either throwing up or crying. Or both. Probably both.

It’s not fair, he finds himself thinking, even though that thought in and of itself isn’t too “fair” either. His younger self should get to know all of the people who made Sukuji who he is today; even if he can’t save them (although he’s going to try his best to this time around), couldn’t have saved them initially, everyone he knew and loved and learned from and became like family to him made him stronger. Itadori should get that chance to grow and love and be loved, too.

He hopes, in the future, that those people who were so important to him then can learn to see him for who he is now and not just for whose shoes he’s filling.

But sometimes Sukuji feels like he’s just walking a wind-ragged tightrope between who he was, as Itadori Yuuji, and who he is–as Ryomen Sukuna–supposed to be. He’s terrified of what might happen if he loses his balance or glances straight down.

Interacting with the people he loves probably isn’t worth it. It’s not like they remember him, the him he used to be anyhow, and by way of one Gojo Satoru, he’s been made well aware these aren’t the same people he knew and loved until they died either. …Maybe he could restrike-up a friendship with Megumi. He, at least, seemed to hear him out when given the chance to back at the detention center. Some healthy interactions aside from those with his own, alternate-self would probably do him some good. If he’s lucky, he’ll grow on Nobara. If he’s luckier, Gojo will put an ice cube in his pocket and sit still long enough for him to give him insight on the battles to come.

The least Sukuji can do for now is listen and wait and help out where he can. There’s really no other point to him being here, now, is there?

“Seeing curses is like riding a bike,” Nanami says, a light tilt in his voice that tells Sukuji he’s enjoying explaining this to him–uh–Itadori. “But cursed techniques always leave behind a residual splatter that you have to put the training wheels back on to see clearly. They’re a lot fainter than cursed spirits are, given they don’t manifest in physical, autonomous form. ‘Get it?”

Itadori cups his hands around the sides of his eyes to direct his attention directly at the ground of the theater path in front of him and not get distracted by the rows and rows of cherry red seats, just waiting to be kicked back on, or the blank movie screen with residual light from whatever movie just played splayed in faint outlines of people and film-captured memories, or the smell of popcorn which, wow, smells really good. Maybe he’s just hungry.

Imagine: light butter and a spicy seasoning tossed around in a red-and-white bucket with roasted corn kernels popped to light and airy perfection mixed in with nutty, chocolatey, peanut M&Ms that burst sweetness into your mouth like a really, really bad-for-you grape divided by the salty spiciness of the popcorn seasoning and–

“Itadori, if you don’t shut up and get focused, I’m going to take over and embarrass you in front of Nanamin. Mortifyingly.”

Got it. Shutting up now.

“Oh! I see it!” he exclaims suddenly, and Sukuji hears Nanami let out a pleased sound. “Footprints!”

“Of course you can see them,” Nanami says plainly. “Any good sorcerer can sense them even before seeing them. Maybe you’ll get there one day, if you don’t die an early death.”

Itadori thinks of his pending execution and scrunches up his face, his fists in balls, and grits his teeth and growls in annoyance.

Sukuji has seated himself back onto the rocking chair by now, and has all his arms crossed against his chest. He snaps four fingers and a foot stool matching the chair appears at his feet. He pulls it closer, toes under the brim, before kicking back to relax and enjoy the book-on-tape-listening he’s subjected himself to a life of.

“What, no praise?” Itadori asks, following Nanami into the hallway behind the theater. “Not even a word of encouragement?”

Nanami stops in the hallway respectfully in order to talk to his student without worry or rushing. “I don’t praise anything. I don’t disparage anything. I’m just not that kind of guy. I hear facts and judge based on them alone. That’s how I operate.” He lifts his chin. “I was stupid enough to believe society worked on that same axis, but I was sorely mistaken.”

Itadori sighs but doesn’t argue.

“Let’s follow the footsteps.”

Itadori punches his own palm with his fist. “Yeah. Let’s go all-out.”

“No,” Nanami says shortly. “Budget your energy. Hardly any is required in this case.”

Itadori lets out a sound of surprise. He’s gotten so used to observing immense shows of strength and cursed energy control that he forgot he’s still working on learning the basics. 

He freezes in shock, but Nanami keeps walking. “Let’s go.”

Sukuji snorts. “Go on, brat, follow ‘im.”

Itadori follows him.

“Nothing out of the ordinary showed up on the surveillance cameras from the theater’s security office, right?” Itadori questions, trailing behind Nanami around a corner in the hall.

“Yes, that’s correct,” Nanami says, ascending the stairwell to the rooftop of the movie theater. “The only one aside from the victims that showed up on video was a young boy.”

“Oh… Junpei.” Junpei’s misguidedness and premature death really put a dent in Sukuji’s mental fortitude back in the day, but Mahito was the one who made the deepest impression. Sad as it is, he just never got to spend enough time with Junpei to think of him past his fury. Not to say he didn’t enjoy the boy’s company–because he did, and anyone who assumed otherwise was wrong and also probably dead anyway–but so much happened all right within that same timeframe that he wasn’t able to… mourn him properly, or something.

His chest aches just thinking about the boy.

Itadori furrows his brows. “Junpei?” he says aloud.

Nanami hums questioningly. “What was that?”

Itadori grabs the railing and starts climbing. “Oh, nothing. Sorry. Just talking to myself.”

“It most likely was a cursed spirit that killed our victims,” Nanami says, reaching into a tall bucket and pulling out two transparent umbrellas, one tinted blue and one tinted green. He hands Itadori the blue one and pushes open the door to the roof, motioning for the boy to go through. The both of them situate their umbrellas under the little square of overhang above the door. “But there is a possibility that the boy killed them, slight as it may be.”

Itadori nods and follows Nanami into the rain. 

A sudden scuttle to the side, like a giant, green, humanoid spider crawls from the top of the overhang to a bench around the corner of the roof, covered off by another overhang.

“For-f-for—forgot your l…unchbox.”

The thing is green and ugly and its ribs are showing and its physique reminds Itadori of European models and sick girls in baggy hoodies from his high school. It has hair that’s dark and ratty and the sad, sad sight of it makes Itadori think suddenly of the only picture grandpa ever showed him of his late mother. 

In the back of his skull, Sukuji laughs so hard at the thought he starts choking. 

Itadori screws up his face in determination, umbrella fallen to the ground, his hands in fists, and his feet shoulder-width apart. 

“No,” says Nanami, holding out a hand to dissuade him from rushing at the curse. “I’ll take care of it.”

The curse twists its head abnormally and its teeth chatter like it’s cold from the rain. “Your lu—n…ch,” she tells Itadori, “for-forgot… forgot it.”

He feels sick, and in his bones, he knows. This was somebody’s mother, mangled and sick and bloodless and weepy in remorse for her kid’s lunch that they forgot at home. Itadori questions whether this is even a curse in the first place. He thinks of Wasuke and home-cooked meals and rubs his sleeves against his eyes when they get misty. 

When his face is clear, Nanami has turned towards him and is pointing at another curse past the door they came out there through, peeking around the bricks like a toddler after being caught making a mistake. “You can handle that one,” Nanami says. “Or just try. If you need me, I’ll be here, but attempt to dispatch this one on your own. That being said, call out if you need me.” He unfastens the button on his jacket and pulls at his tie. “I’m the adult here. You’re the child. Got it?”

He’s telling me I’m incapable.

“He doesn’t see you as a sorcerer yet, is all.” Sukuji adds offhandedly, “Or maybe he’s worried about me.”

Itadori jumps towards the curse and it asks him where it can find the best deal on liquid detergent. “I know he doesn’t see me as a sorcerer. Yet.” He punches the curse’s teeth in its vertical mouth. “He said that earlier.”

“Oh,” replies Sukuji, rolling a group of dice on the table which has reappeared in his headspace. The rocking chair is gone and has been replaced by a matching chair more suited to playing tabletop games. He rolls five fives and cheers to himself. “Yatzee! …Oh. Uh, ahem. ‘Must’ve not been listening in. Or out? Whatever.”

“Yeah,” Itadori says with a grunt, rolling his eyes. “Must have.”

The curse lashes out at him, smacking towards his face, but Itadori holds his arms up to shield himself, and there isn’t enough power behind its attack to knock him down. It spins and kicks a very human-corpse-looking foot into his face. Itadori pulls back his arms with a wince before locking hands with the curse, wrestling it back. His shoes threaten to slip him to his butt from the rain, but he holds his ground.

“Seven-to-three,” Nanami says distantly from across the roof. “That’s my cu— nique. It creates a weak p—”

Lightning crashes a little too close for comfort. 

Dang, it is hard as rocks to hear what Nanami’s saying!!

“—a line across the length of my enemy’s body, and it— even against something strong… than me. And if their cursed—”

Thunder rumbles just to spite him, it seems. 

“—slice them in two. Even with a bl… blade.” He hears it loud and clear when Nanami sighs from across the roof. “Are you listening to me, Itadori?”

Itadori pushes back against the curse harder. It’s difficult to hear his mentor’s words above all of the grunting and splashing and rainfall, but he’s trying, okay?!

“‘Kinda hard to hear you, sir!” The curse asks him about laundry detergent again and shrieks in his face when he doesn’t answer right away. “Also, I’m a bit busy!”

The curse takes his moment of distraction to grab him by the wrists and toss him against the net around the roof—huh?! There’s a baseball trainin’ spot up here?!—and Itadori crashes back down to the roof with a painful-sounding “oof!”.

“Home run!” cries Sukuji from his seat. The table in front of him is covered in colorful, magnetic tiles and at least three broken Jacob’s ladders. He fake cheers like the crowd of a sports stadium. “And the crowd goes wild! Ahhh! Itadori-saaan, we loooove you!”

Shut up, man!!!

Itadori sits up from his impromptu face-planting and holds his cheeks with both hands, rubbing his palms in circles to mitigate the sting of smacking into concrete. “Should you really be revealing how your technique works?” he asks Nanami. “Won’t that just give your opponent the upper hand?”

“No,” Nanami replies. “In fact, it can actually be of great benefit to re—”

Thunder again. 

“It’s like gambling; when you reveal your cursed technique, your attacks can become more effective, even if the enemy now knows of your skills.”

Oh! Itadori thinks. I should do that, then!

Sukuji clears his throat. “Alright, kid, repeat after me.”

Itadori settles into his fighting stance and stares down the curse. 

“Domain expansion: rip and tear.”

Itadori’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “What? That’s from Doom!” He exclaims exasperatedly, “I’m not saying that, that’s embarrassing!"

“Aw, c’mon! Just give it a shot!” Sukuji grins impishly. 

“I’m not saying that,” Itadori repeats. 

“I’ll show you how it’s done.” Nanami pulls back his blade—

Uhh, why is the sheath still on that thing?

“Didn’t you hear him say ‘If their cursed energy is weaker than mine, I can cut them in two, even with a blunt blade’?”

No?!

—and lunges at the green curse. His own cursed energy flares around his weapon like fire the color of a beat-up face, all black and blue and intermittent like gaps where the knuckles didn’t land. 

The curse gallops towards Nanami on all fours, groaning and warbling and ohh Itadori forgot just how annoying that sound is. His mentor cuts his sheathed blade through the air when the curse is still a few yards away, and its arms and legs fall off at the joints. It crumples to a bloody heap, catching rainwater in its mouth, gaping like a drowned fish.

Nanami flicks the blood from his weapon like he’s getting ready to sheath a broadsword. “All that force came from me,” he says. 

Itadoro gapes at him, looking just about like a drowned fish himself. Aw man, not only did he leave his weapon covered, but he used the back to cut into the curse? Geez! How strong is this guy?

Sukuji hums and grins and opens his mouth to respond and—I’ve been here the whole time. Shall we chat for a bit, since we go way back and all?—shuts it. Grits his teeth. Stop thinking. 

Nanami regards his student, “Behind you, Itadori.”

“Huh?” He spins around just in time to cup his hands to take the brunt force of the curse’s punch instead of his poor back. Itadori slips and slides in the rooftop rainwater until he smacks back into the netting around the area.

Sukuji snorts.

“You shouldn’t be turning your back on an opponent,” Nanami chides with a sigh.

“You’re the one who keeps yapping my ear off,” Itadori retorts through grit teeth because dang that hurt!!

The curse shrieks and growls and all of the annoyance of the situation weighs down on Itadori like a balloon full of water just condensing, and condensing, and condensing in his palms until… pop!

Cursed energy alights around his palms, blue and fiery like Nanami’s. Itadori’s eyes track the curse like a scope, face pinched in that kind of concentration found seldomly. A flow state.

He rears his fist back and grits his teeth and slams into the curse’s gut like a… like a punch. ‘Cause he punched it.

Cursed energy blows through the white, oblong body in a “second wind” behind the impact of his knuckles, hole-punching the thing straight through. Red blood spurts in a grim sprinkler from its back, showering down with the rain.

Itadori relaxes slightly when the curse falls to the ground and smirks. Oh, yeah, he thinks I rule.

Sukuji claps slowly from his innate domain. “Give it up for the King of Idiots, y’all.”

You don’t see me calling you an idiot after every move I make.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re not a liar like me.”

The curse writhes on the ground, tears leaking from its eyes as it grips at the hole in its core, and Itadori wilts at the sorry sight. He pulls back his fist to deliver a killing blow.

“Wait, Itadori,” Nanami calls.

Itadori turns to him, cursed energy flailing around his fist, head tilted to show he’s listening and listening well.

“Don’t kill it yet. Let me take a picture of this thing’s watch.”

Itadori tilts his head some more. I’ve never heard of a curse needing to tell the time.

“Have you ever heard of a person needing to tell the time?” Sukuji asks redundantly.

Wh–of course I have. What do you take me for?

“An idiot.”

Quit acting so mean!

Sukuji shrugs. “I’m just trying to act the part.”

The part of the colossal donkey?

He hums. “Maybe.”

“Look at this.” Nanami waves Itadori over to him across the roof, and the boy jogs over joyfully.

He lets the cursed energy fade back to himself as he approaches his mentor, leaning on his toes to peer at the man’s phone screen. “Huh? I thought curses didn’t show up on camera.”

“They don’t,” Sukuji says.

“They don’t,” Nanami says at the same time. “Hold your breath and listen to me.”

Itadori gasps in air and stares at his mentor with eyes wide in concern.

“I–okay, whatever.” Nanami looks into his eyes. “They were human.”

The world stops spinning.

Itadori shuts himself away, and Sukuji suddenly springs to life in the waking world. Even with the sun behind the clouds, the world outside is much brighter than the ribcage-ceiling, red-water-floored, soon-to-be-decorated-hopefully innate domain in which Sukuji spends most of his living-waking-dozing-dissociating hours. He blinks Itadori’s eyelids furiously against the light and grabs out to stabilize himself.

“Are you quite alright, Itadori?”

Nanamin. Oh. 

Sukuji’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline despite his eyes remaining mostly closed against the remnants of sun filtering like crystal windchimes through the rain. He grabs onto Nanami’s sleeve with his other hand too, just to make sure the man is actually standing and living and breathing right before his unseeing eyes.

“Itadori, you worry me.”

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry, Nanamin. Trying. Hold on.”

Darkness covers his eyes, and his blinking slows until he can open them to see clearly what obscures the light. It’s a pair of Gojo’s ugly blackout sunglasses. What the heck?

“You would think me a fool not to keep any spare sunglasses on my person,” Nanami says, as though his tear-brimming eyes are shouting out his utter confusion. “Gojo is clumsier with his personal possessions than anyone else I know.”

Sukuji sniffs. “‘Probably ‘cause he knows he can afford to replace ‘em.”

Nanami puts his phone away and sets his hand on the ones Sukuji’s left on his arm. He leads the boy to the bench the green curse landed on earlier, steadying him to sit down.

“I’ll be right back.”

Sukuji whines when Nanami’s arm and hand leave his grasp, but his grief weighs him down enough that he can’t muster up enough strength to stand back up. He watches with disinterested eyes as the veteran sorcerer quickly dispatches the remaining fight from the curses before tucking away his cleaver.

He returns to the bench not long after. Nanami sits to his left with a groan and pulls his phone from his pocket once again.

“‘Just making a call to Ieiri,” he says.

Sukuji doesn’t really care what Nanami’s doing. All he cares about is the fact that the man sitting beside him is breathing and not dead and isn’t burned half-over and actually has an upper body. He takes in a shaky breath and tries not to cringe at the whine that pushes itself up from his throat when he breathes it out.

“We’ve got a situation.”

And Mahito is going to be showing up soon, isn’t he? Sukuji doesn’t remember what his smile looked like anymore. The only image he can see of the horrible curse when he closes his eyes is the fear and the snow and the mud and the fear and the fear and the fear of him, not Sukuna. If the worst monster of all is more afraid of him, him, than the king of monsters in whole, what does that say about Yuuji, huh? That he’s worse? That he’s just this boogie monster’s “natural enemy”? And who gives a crap about any of that “natural enemy” stuff, anyway, besides the curse with a jaw built for breaking?

Sukuji breathes in deeply again. The air whistles between his teeth.

“–once human. That’s how it looks. ‘Probably a good idea to perform a–yes, I know you’re not stupid, Ieiri, what sort of fool do you take me for–?”

None of that matters, at least not now, because Nanami’s still breathing beside him, and isn’t this what Yuuji always hoped and wished and prayed for? For another chance. A final goodbye. A moment, just the two of them, to say thank you for everything.

It doesn’t feel right, planning a funeral speech while playing kid in his own, unblemished skin. These feelings of hopelessness, of grieving, of hiraeth, make him sick.

Sukuji turns to the right and vomits.

Nanami tells Iriei to “hold on” and pats at the space between his shoulders, drawing circles between bones that aren’t his.

The comfort of the motion doesn’t evade him, but the action makes him feel more sick regardless. He brushes Nanami’s hand away. Dismissing him hurts, but he can’t accept any kindness right now, not when he’s mourning someone who isn’t even dead anymore and wishing he could just untie his sinking raft and drown.

Nanami pulls back his hand and breathes in through his nose and breathes out heavier than he probably means to. “He’s okay, for now. Just processing everything. …Sure, I’ll let him know. Alright. Thanks. Bye.”

He clicks the call to an end and puts his phone back in his pocket. Nanami turns towards Itadori; the boy’s head is between his knees and he’s breathing like he’s just finished a half-marathon.

“Itadori,” he says softly. “Let’s go.”

The boy doesn’t say anything, but Nanami hadn’t been expecting him to, not after the whole ordeal he just put him through. Nanami picks up both of their umbrellas from the drenched ground and shakes them like that’ll do a lick of good when rain still pours down from the heavens.

He steps out from under the overhang and extends a hand to Itadori, sitting and staring and not really seeing, not seeing what Nanami sees, anyway. He steps in front of the boy to block his view of the corpses (some unfortunate Window from the Tokyo campus will come load them into the bed of a pickup sometime this evening, and there’s nothing he can really do about them until then anyway), but his shadow just seems to make the boy flinch harder.

“Let’s go,” he repeats.

Sukuji stands without taking his hand and trails the bricks with his knuckles until they reach the door to the stairs together. Nanami shakes the umbrellas again before spinning them round and velcroing them shut, placing them back in the bucket thereafter. Sukuji is half-way down the stairs by the time Nanami shuts the door behind them.

“Itadori, listen to me.”

Sukuji stops, hand white-knuckling the railing. He doesn’t turn around, but the fact that he responded at all must be enough for Nanami, because he keeps talking.

“Even if the curses were human, which we aren’t even one-hundred percent sure of–”

“...They were,” he interrupts meekly.

“–they–Did Sukuna tell you that?”

Sukuji shrugs and grips the railing tighter.

“You don’t need to listen to a thing that curse says,” Nanami replies easily, like he didn’t just crush Sukuji’s heart in his own two hands. He continues down the stairwell until he’s side-by-side with the boy. “If he gives you trouble, just tell someone. Heck, tell me. You’ve got support; you don’t need to take all his badgering on alone. Do you hear me, Itadori?”

Sukuji tries not to be sick again. He grits his teeth and balls his fist in his pocket, grips the railing tighter somehow, and curls and uncurls his toes in his shoes repeatedly.

“Yeah,” he whispers hoarsely. “Heard.”

Nanami pats him on the shoulder and Sukuji sees stars. He tries not to smudge up Gojo’s glasses like his life depends on it, but his vision goes blurry and that’s the end of that.

“Good,” Nanami says, and gosh, he’s not dead. But he doesn’t know who he’s talking about–who he’s talking to–and his words hurt, dang it. “Are you up for anything: a snack or a treat? Or do you just want to go back to campus?”

Sukuji feels tired. His unclenches his fist and finishes walking down the stairs with a sigh. “I wanna go home,” he says.

Nanami doesn’t miss the grief in his voice, but he doesn’t say anything about it, instead nodding and following him out of the theater. “A rest does sound good about now,” he says instead of asking how Itadori knows the way out of the theater without passing through the movie-screening rooms. “I’ll make us tea when we get back,” he offers.

Sukuji whispers “okay” and steps into the backseat of the car they took to get there, and Nanami circles to the driver’s seat and starts the engine. He’s a control-freak like that, taking a Window out of their job and driving himself to all of his missions, only calling in for help when he can’t keep his eyes open enough to see the road.

Sukuji buckles his seatbelt and closes his eyes and pushes against Itadori’s shaking cursed energy. Itadori. No reply. Itadori, he repeats. The boy’s energy shakes like a tree waiting to fall, curling around the top of his spine. Sukuji pokes and prods at the boy and sighs when he doesn’t move at all.

He lets his head sink to his shoulder, banging on the window, and pushes his way into his innate domain. Or, he tries to. Something cold and metal and oh-so familiar blocks his path. Sukuji shoots back to consciousness and shakes the static out of his sleeping hands.

Oh, he thinks, I’ve been locked out of my own innate domain. The idea is insane enough it makes him laugh, but the sound is so soft the rumbling engine drowns out the noise.

Nanami curls the car around a bend like a pro, and before Sukuji knows it, they’re back at the Tokyo campus. Nanami parallel-parks the car on a patch of gravel between the heads and butts of a dozen other, identical vehicles and puts it in park before cranking the emergency brake.

He turns around to tell the boy they’ve arrived, appearing surprised at the sight of a not-sleeping Itadori in the backseat. “We’re here,” he says anyway before turning back around and twisting the keys out of the ignition.

Sukuji huffs and undoes his seatbelt and exits the car with shaky knees.

He follows Nanami up the stairs to the campus, only pausing every once and a while to stare up at the cloudy sky and pretend rain is falling down upon him. It really would’ve added to the vibe.

Nanami waits for him, a few steps ahead, every time he stops. The kindness in his eyes makes Sukuji gladder and gladder still for Gojo’s ugly sense in eyewear.

Speak of the devil. Gojo pops into existence before them the moment Nanami steps foot onto the flat path leading from the top of the stairs to the campus doors. He waves cheerily, fingers splayed, and jumps up and down when his student’s head crests the bottom of his vision.

“Yuuji!” he cries out, jumping towards Sukuji in jubilation.

If he’d felt any less emotionally drained, Sukuji probably would have jumped up and down with a deadpan expression just to humor the man. As he is now, he can’t even manage faking enthusiasm.

Gojo stops himself from hugging him half a foot from Sukuji’s face, teetering on his toes to stop his inertia. “Woah, it’s Sukuji!”

Nanami’s head whips towards him so quickly Sukuji has half a mind to ask him if he needs a hot compress. “What…?”

Now realizing who’s approaching, Gojo ditches his attempt at a hug in favor of slinging an arm across Sukuji’s shoulders irritatingly. “The King of Curses! Supposedly.” He turns to Sukuji and winks. “‘Bet you wanna keep up appearances, huh? That’s why you didn’t tell Nanamin it was you and not Yuuji he was talking to, right? C’mon, tell me I’m right.”

Sukuji slumps and keeps walking. Gojo, taller than the average human, struggles to keep himself attached to him with the sudden change in height.

“You’re not… Itadori,” Nanami states flatly from behind them.

Sukuji scrunches his eyes and presses his nails into the palms of his hands in his pockets. “Yeah,” he whispers.

He doesn’t turn around, but he hears it when Nanami walks away without a ‘goodbye’.

“Oh, don’t let him get to you,” Gojo says, flapping a hand up and down to his side. “Nanamin’s always been a total buzz-kill.” He sighs. “Once a party pooper, always a party pooper.”

Sukuji tries and fails to shove the sorcerer off of him, and Gojo laughs at his weak effort.

“Just–Get off of me, man. I’m sick of this. Just…” Sukuji sighs when Gojo doesn’t budge. “Never mind. Just don’t get in my way.”

Gojo’s eyes light up in interest as he stares at the side of his head.

“I’m going to make tea.”

Gojo rolls his eyes. “‘Course you are. You and Nanami; same, same, same. Boring. Ugh.” He stands up straight and pats Sukuji on the head as they enter the common room. “Don’t stay up too late,” he says before vanishing from thin air.

Sukuji bites his thumb nail and walks into the kitchen alone.

………

They don’t return to the movie theater or anywhere related to the job for a day or two to give Ieiri time to examine the foreign corpses.

By the time they come back, Itadori is Itadori and Sukuji has never been quieter.

Chapter Text

Mahito isn’t really sure what Getou has planned for Sukuna’s vessel, but he would really like to find out what it is. Or what his deal is. Or what’s so special about this cage holding Sukuna temporarily that he’s not been explicitly allowed to kill him yet. There’s that human thing that eats at him acting up yet again: curiosity. Getou said it’s a cat-killer, and that that should matter to him somehow, but Mahito’s only a cat when he wants to be, and he’s not stupid enough to get killed by looking for answers he’d probably regret getting later down the road anyway. 

He’s not an idiot.

…He goes looking anyway. 

Can you blame him? There’s only so much havoc one can wreak before swinging on the swingsets get too boring and the mangled corpses start burning a hole in your pocket and blah, blah, blah; if this isn’t the most dull mission Getou’s ever sent him on, then it’s the last one. And he knows it’s not the last one. 

Mahito does his best to stay in the region Getou told him to stay in, all you should wait and see what the vessel does when you stir up trouble and aren’t you the one who said you wanted to get out of the base in the first place? but sitting, wishing, waiting around for the vessel to actually do anything besides throw a few punches, vomit everywhere, and look utterly pathetic is too boring. 

So, he follows the vessel home like a good, stray cat ought to, paws soft for the tickling and temperament regal enough to pass for a real feline’s unbothered saunter. 

The shimmer of nails on his back at the base of the stairs is enough to cause him pause, but not enough to cause him trouble, so he shimmies past the treeline and bounds up the grassy hills beside the stone until he reaches flat ground. The moon is so high up in the sky by the time he gets to the front door, he’s half-tempted to find a tree to curl up and snooze in and snoop around tomorrow instead of tonight.

That’s boring too. 

He mrowls like a weary sigh and tip-tap-taps in through a conveniently left-open door. Whoever went through here must’ve been too preoccupied to care about letting in a draft—or whatever sad, ugly little thing could slither in—during the night. 

Mahito donkey kicks the door shut and saunters through the entryway like he owns the place. He might as well, with how quiet and empty it is. It’s a little unnerving to be so close to so much raw, untapped cursed energy that he can taste it, but Getou’s whole stitched-up-head-with-a-body-cold-like-a-corpse schtick is a lot weirder. 

And Mahito knows weird. He’s the king of weird. It’s his brand: being weird. Call him a brain freeze and be on your way already, ‘cause he’s weird and he’s proud of it and holy cow. Someone’s brewing tea and it smells like a cheerful Spring morning, and even though Mahito’s never really experienced one of those before, he’s heard enough of Jogo and Hanami’s stories of the beauty of fresh flowers and sunshowers above rainbows that cut through the sky to last him a couple lifetimes over. 

His nose twitches at the smell, and before he knows it, Mahito’s standing at the cusp of a room with an annoyingly buzzing light and an annoyingly ticking clock and an annoyingly humming radiator and an annoyingly sipping kid sitting at an annoyingly round table and half of those things don’t even get on Mahito’s nerves, but he’s always been such a sucker for symmetry. 

The kid’s got two blocks of ink under his eyes. The blackness is dripping and smudged like a tattoo healed wrong; his tears slide over the ink in a murky river or something inconsequential to the black, and add a sentimental view to the messes on his cheeks that Mahito can appreciate. That’s another human aspect rising up and out of him, isn’t it? Sympathy, or something twisted just the same. 

They look like they’re the same length, same width, and if he took a meat cleaver down the center of his skull, he’s pretty sure he’d pull apart identical halves (thank you for that mental image, Getou’s mysterious digital copy of the musical Heathers).

Mahito immediately likes this kid. He’s weird. 

He’s even his right brand of weird, leaking tears into his mug and not fighting the heat from the radiator, letting it wash over him even when the temperature gets a little unbearable and his face turns red. 

Mahito already has more answers than he was honestly expecting to find here, and he hasn’t even waltzed over and introduced himself yet! Gah, where are his manners?

………

After Gojo up and flutters away or however he describes teleporting to people that actually care, Sukuji makes that tea he’d been looking forward to Nanami brewing for him. Getting a drink after a job well done is nothing new to him, even if the liquid turned from burning hot to burning in a different way as he got older.

But today wasn’t a “job well done” sort of day; it was hardly even “a job” one. He showed up, watched a younger version of himself get beat up, had a panic attack or something, basically got told to ef off, and then got left alone, in the dark, with no one to turn to and nowhere else besides a grown man’s basement to go, and right now, that’s tied with his own clammy skin for the place-he’d-least-like-to-be. So, no, today was absolutely not a “job well done” kind of day. But he wanted his tea, dang it, and he was gonna get it even if he did have to make it for himself, by himself, in the dark… all alone…

He sighs and chucks a green mug full of tap water in the microwave. Who cares if the electric kettle is right there and if he used it his drink would taste that much better? He sure doesn’t, and no one else is around to judge him, so he’ll do as he pleases. Thank you very much. 

When his tea bag breaks into the hot water as he’s opening up the sleeve and the milk that magically appeared between now and when he died is already rancid in the fridge, he doesn’t hide his annoyance. He groans and grits his teeth and removes Gojo’s glasses and scrubs at his eyes when they itch with unshed tears. 

He pours out the milk down the drain and rinses out the jug. He knows Itadori’s supposed to be playing dead and all, but he’s so unbothered by everything that being in the dorm kitchen causing a ruckus feels only like the natural thing to do. 

He knows Megumi goes to bed early enough that his midnight snacking and sipping never bothered him before, and he also knows that Nobara insists on getting her beauty sleep even when she wakes up looking worse than she did before bed, so there’s no chance he’ll wake anyone. He’ll just… make his stupid tea, sip it ‘til it’s cold, and sit heavy in his feelings until he feels dead enough to pass as his own corpse and meander back to Gojo’s basement and go back to being the perfect little King of Curses they all want him to be. (It’s easier to believe he’s something—someone—he’s not when the truth is more farfetched than the untruth.)

No harm, no foul. 

The front door clicks shut, and Sukuji freezes in place at the dining table. Gojo’s glasses lie, folded, in front of his steaming mug, hands wrapped around the ceramic, his tears freely dripping into the drink now that he feels the need to stay still and listen for whoever just walked right through the door. 

He gets a clipped meow for his worries and a fuzzy, black tail against his chin. There are cat paws on his thighs, and Sukuji almost screams out of surprise. Its fur is black and there are rings of robin-egg blue curled around its ankles. It’s a weird accessory for God to give a cat—such an unnatural piece of fur jewelry—but Sukuji’s not one to judge. For the most part. 

“What the heck happened to you, huh?” he asks the cat, sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes with the sleeves of his uniform. “What’s with the bangles?”

The cat meows like it can understand him and bumps its ears against his awkwardly tear-wetted hands. Sukuji sniffs again and pets it begrudgingly. 

“I’m fine.” He means it when he says it, but the moment after the words part from his lips, Sukuji’s eyebrows curl and his lip shudders unintentionally. “Okay,” he mutters softly. “Maybe not ‘fine’, but ‘fine enough’.”

The cat flattens him with an unimpressed expression. Sukuji almost laughs. He didn’t know cats could make faces like that.

He sniffles again. “How’d you even get in here anyway? Maybe I left the door open…”

The cat nods. 

The—what? The cat nods?

Sukuji barks out a laugh for real this time, petting its back with a depression-heavy hand. “Not the weirdest thing I’ve encountered by far, but still weird.”

The cat seems to brighten at the back-handed compliment, mewling and sitting back to put its front paws on the boy’s chest. Sukuji holds the cat steady with one hand and pets at its nose with the other.

“But why’d you come here? Why come to me?” He boops the cat on the nose. “Don’t you know I’m nothing but trouble?” Sukuji grins with all his teeth. “Can’t you sense just how bad I am? Isn’t that a cat thing, sensing people’s intentions?”

The cat doesn’t really seem to care how little Sukuji cares for himself. It flops onto its back on his knees and meows and curls in a half-moon and bats its paws at him. 

“What, you want tummy scratches? You’re weird, cat,” Sukuji mutters. He scratches the cat anyway. “What am I even doing here? And you can’t… you can’t stay here either, cat.”

He grabs the cat gently and stands abruptly, slipping on Gojo’s sunglasses out of sentimentality more than necessity. He doubts he’d even be able to see clear enough to walk two steps forward if he kept them on outside, but he’s not planning on going outside, so it’s fine. Probably. 

The cat protests loudly when he stands, scratching at his sleeves and meowing like it got its tail cut off. 

“Shut up,” Sukuji mumbles while rolling his eyes. “So dramatic. Geez.”

The cat doesn’t “shut up”, but Sukuji really doesn’t have the will to care anymore. He grabs his mug and brings it to the kitchen, pouring salty tea down the drain, before loading it in the dishwasher and walking away. The cat keeps clawing at him, slicing through the black of his uniform. 

Sukuji opens the door to the dorms and sets the cat on the porch. It tries to run back inside, but he blocks it with his sock-clad foot. 

“No,” he says, “bad. Go back home.” Sukuji sighs heavily. “Yeah, right. You probably don’t even have a home, do you?” He sighs again. “Join the club.”

The cat meows again. 

“No. I mean it. ‘Can’t take care of you right now. Get outta here.” He waves the cat away with both hands. 

Sukuji thanks God the cat seems to understand him, turning its tail and sauntering away beneath the three-quarter moon in the sky. He shuts the door and sighs again and walks down the hall past the kitchen until he reaches a room with an ugly, green couch and a mini fridge full of soda cans and chocolate bars. 

Gojo’s sitting on the right end of the couch, tapping on his phone, and the sight makes Sukuji wonder if he used to sit here with Getou back in their student days and if that’s why he didn’t sit on the center cushion despite being the only person lounging there. He looks up at Sukuji when he enters and clicks his phone screen to black. 

“Yuuji?” he tests. 

Sukuji shakes his head. 

“Ah, okay. No biggie.” He puts his phone in his pocket and stands and puts one hand on his hip and extends the other one to the cursed spirit piloting his student’s body. “Ready?”

Sukuji bites his cheek and takes the man’s hand. By the time he blinks, he’s back in Gojo’s basement. 

Gojo clears his throat and holds out his hand in front of him again. Sukuji raises an eyebrow in question but doesn’t say anything. 

“Does it seem a little darker in here to you?”

Sukuji’s ears redden. Oh. The sunglasses. He reaches up and pulls the glasses off and hands them over to Gojo. 

The man takes them with a grin and folds the arms. He walks over to the lounge and lays them on the coffee table beside the arm Yuuji usually sits against. “Don’t break ‘em!” he says cheerfully. 

Sukuji stares at Gojo’s face and blinks. “Uh… thanks,” he says, honestly taken aback by seemingly the one-eighty of the man’s opinion on him.

He can’t handle the suspense anymore. Screw it. “Don’t you hate me?”

Gojo makes a questioning noise and walks behind the blacktop bar at the side of the room nearest to the door to the stairs or… more basement. Sukuji isn’t really sure what it leads to. He’s only ever needed to be in Gojo’s house to train in this long room.

“Why are you wondering?” Gojo asks instead of answering, reaching under the bar for some ice to put in a glass he grabbed when Sukuji was too lost in thought to notice. “‘Cause I told you to kill yourself?”

The casual tone of his words involuntarily make Sukuji’s face twist up sourly. “…Yeah, let’s go with that.”

Gojo hums. “Do you remember what I said then?”

“Yeah.” Sukuji crosses his arms. “‘Rip out your own heart. Throw it on the floor. Make a big scene of it. Scream if you have the breath to. Make your betrayal of your own vessel a big enough deal that you don’t have to fake dying’. Sound familiar?”

Gojo sputters, “Well—yeah.” He deflates and sets his cup down. “I am very sorry about that. I didn’t really think you’d do it, though! I had to look away; it was so gross!”

Sukuji’s eyebrow twitches. “If you’re trying to apologize, you’re doing a bang-up job of it.”

Gojo sighs heavily. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. Really, I am. I didn’t think you’d actually… kill yourself just ‘cause I said to.”

Sukuji hums. “Better.”

“I guess your Gojo really meant a lot to you, huh? For you to have so much faith in me, someone you just met… I mean, it’s either that or you really are stupid.”

“You’re regressing.”

Gojo waves his hand. “Sorry, sorry. It’s a bad habit. You probably knew that already though, right?”

Sukuji makes a so-so motion with his hand. “Did you have a point you were trying to get to, or are you just talking to talk?”

“Oh, right.” Gojo closes a fridge behind the bar and there’s two cups of orange juice on the rocks on the counter. He tips the spout of a bottle into one and then looks up at Sukuji with squinted eyes, seemingly thinking to himself, before lightly shaking his head and putting the bottle away. “Do you also remember what you asked me before I said that?”

Sukuji pulls back a barstool and takes a seat on it, not bothering to pull himself closer to the counter. Gojo slides him the virgin glass of orange juice before sipping his own gin and juice, leaning on the counter. “No. Enlighten me.”

“‘What do I have to do for you to take me seriously?’,” Gojo quotes. “And, now, I take you seriously!” He grins. “So, I’m all ears. Say, how old did you get before being sent here?”

Sukuji hums and sips his juice, staring at the ceiling like it holds all of life’s answers. “I think about fifty-two…? I don’t exactly remember.”

“Wow,” Gojo says with a laugh. “You sure don’t act it.”

“I think it’s this body’s influence,” Sukuji says, fiddling with the hole in the sleeve of his uniform that the cat left him with. “I don’t feel that old, either. I feel like a kid again.”

Gojo hums. “You are a kid. Again.”

Sukuji bites his cheek. “I guess…”

“Has the influence of you being transmigrated also impacted your behavior in terms of Sukuna’s?”

“I’m not sure if it’s ‘transmigration’ so to speak,” Sukuji says. He sips his drink. “I don’t remember what happened right before I got here at all. One moment I’m doing something… talking to someone maybe? And the next, I’m in a curse’s mouth.”

“Shocking!”

“Very.” Sukuji sighs. “But to answer your question: maybe? I sure don’t remember feeling this depressed the first time I lived this life, but I don’t exactly recall my Sukuna being depressed either. He was just a jerk twenty-four seven. …I guess I have been extra pissy lately.”

The ice in Gojo’s glass clinks together as he finishes off his drink. “I wonder… no, nevermind.”

“What do you wonder?”

“Promise you won’t bite my head off first.”

Sukuji glares at him. Gojo sets his glass on the back counter and breathes in deeply when his back is to the boy. 

He spins back around. “What if you’re actually Sukuna and Yuuji’s memories are overlapping with yours and being here is causing you to come into realignment with your real self and all the characteristics that you’re slipping into are the ones you’re meant to have in the first place?” Gojo asks without breathing. 

Sukuji blinks hard. “I don’t… oh. Oh. Uhm. If that’s true, I’m definitely going to kill myself.”

Gojo’s eyebrows shoot up past his blindfold. 

The boy waves his hands side-to-side. “Wait, wait, wait. Okay, wait. That’s… definitely a… theory, but what if I am who I say I am, but by replacing Sukuna here, I’m becoming him? Wouldn’t that make the most sense anyway, especially given the fact that I remember so many things your Itadori hasn’t even been through yet?”

Gojo holds his chin. “Y’know what? You’re probably right…”

Sukuji slumps in his seat. He presses his elbows onto the bar and puts his head in his hands. “Oh, thank God.”

“Isn’t that also bad news though?”

Sukuji sighs and deliberately doesn’t look up at him. 

“I mean… not to be a downer or anything, but wouldn’t that mean you’re becoming your own worst enemy day by day? What happens when you become more Sukuna than Yuuji?”

“Great question. I don’t know.” Sukuji sighs. “Can’t I sort all that crap out later? It’s terribly dull to consider, wouldn’t you say?”

Gojo points at him aggressively. “There, right there! You’re not acting like Yuuji anymore!”

Sukuji clicks his tongue and shoves his cheek into his palm. “Great. What am I supposed to do now, then?”

Gojo chuckles awkwardly. “Let Yuuji back out…?”

“I can’t. He blocked me out.”

Gojo snorts. “He locked you out of your own innate domain?”

Sukuji shrugs. 

“…Wanna watch a movie?”

“I would like a scotch straight up.”

Gojo appears behind him and puts his hands on his shoulders, twisting the spinny seat of the barstool towards the T.V. at the back of the room. Sukuji’s eyes soften at the absence of Infinity between them. They open wide again when the man lifts him up by the shoulders and sets him on his feet before pushing him forward. 

Sukuji digs his heels into the ground on instinct. 

“Have you ever seen the film adaptation of Hans Andersen’s version of The Little Mermaid? The protagonist’s annoying, but she dies spectacularly in the end!”

“Spoilers, sensei!”

Gojo just laughs. 

………

Bullying is a common occurrence. You know it; I know it; everybody knows it. There will always be people in the world who deem themselves “strong” and bestow upon themselves the right to pick on the “weak”. Not taking “no” for an answer is an important skill to keep in mind when someone is doing something wrong, but it’s something that comes in handy for those who pick on others, too.

The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of fondness is hate. Does this mean, then, that the opposite of infatuation is repulsion?

The largest human Yoshino Junpei has ever seen is seventeen feet tall, a royal purple-blue, and stuck beneath the grit-sweltered bricks of a time-old sewer system beneath Kanagawa Prefecture.

“I created this human to see just how big I could make one.” A tactless smile. “The one in your hand I created to see just how small I could make one.”

The knowledge he is holding the shriveled remains of a person–someone who was once living and breathing and human and loved or hated–in his hand should cause Yoshino pause. But all he can see is the rock in his hand as something someone would find on the side of the road; a hard and unassuming lump of death that rests heavy in the heart of one person or another, light as a paper boat in the heart of another.

“Do corpses frighten you, Yoshino?”

He isn’t sure. He’s never really seen a human corpse before–aside from the ones on the other side of the screen, of which he has seen many–so the question is one that strikes him oddly. Do corpses frighten him? Why would they? Is there a purpose in being frightened by someone that can no longer hurt or cause harm? What is the use in cowering from something that can’t even move?

“I’m not sure,” he says after a few moments of restless thought. “If this was someone I knew, like my mother, I might dislike you for causing such harm.” He hands the tree-bark corpse to the stitched-up curse beside him. “Without much to expect from other people–nothing but repulsion and things better left unsaid–is there really anything that can frighten you? The corpses of strangers don’t bother me.” He stares at his hand like the lines there will reassure him, tell him everything’s going to be okay.

Mahito hums and examines Yoshino’s blank expression with the interest of a philosopher watching paint dry.

“It’s indifference, that’s what people ought to build their morals around” Yoshino decides suddenly. “The opposite of love is indifference.”

“And yet you seek out revenge.”

Yoshino looks at the curse. “Do you really, truly, understand the difference between love and hate; love and indifference?"

“Do humans have hearts?” Mahito retorts.

“Don’t they?”

“No, of course they don’t.” A grin. “They have souls, far too mechanical to be called ‘hearts’.”

The large curse gurgles high above them.

“Don’t let yourself be trapped by this virtuous idea of indifference,” Mahito says. “Consistency in living is pointless. As you eat when you are hungry, so it is that if you hate someone, you can kill them. I’ll support you completely.”

He crushes the transfigured human corpse in his hand and wipes the dust on his jeans.

………

The indifference on Ijichi’s face is seriously starting to piss Itadori off. He’s sort of starting to get why Gojo-sensei picks on the poor guy so much. Even when he’s working, even when he’s focused (especially when he’s focused), the man’s sunken cheeks and the bags under his eyes stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not something that should cause Itadori such irritation, but that little, irrational part of him tucked far beneath layers and layers of complacency starts to peek through the cracks.

“Where’s his uniform?”

Ijichi grips the steering wheel harder, doing his best to ignore Itadori’s hands on the front seats of the car and the way his voice slams into his head through his ear. “He’s playing hookey. I thought that would be obvious.”

“Oh,” Itadori whispers. “I never thought people actually did that! It’s a pretty big movie trope, y’know?”

“Gojo is rubbing off on you.”

Itadori laughs sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck.

“But I was joking, anyway. He really hasn’t been attending school for some time now.”

Itadori rolls his eyes. “Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?” He smiles sadly and stares at the blank radio screen. “I guess it’s the same for me.”

He feels a warm hand shove on the back of his eyes. It’s Sukuji’s way of nonverbally consoling him. That’s what Itadori’s decided to take it as, anyway.

“How is everyone at school, anyway?”

Ijichi smiles. “I hear they’re doing pretty well. They haven’t been sent on too many missions lately, preparing for the exchange event and all, so I haven’t seen them for a while.”

Itadori smiles at the thought of Kugisaki and Fushiguro attending class and laughing with each other and learning new things from Gojo-sensei. The expression softens when he imagines himself sitting beside them; laughing with them; learning with them.

Sukuji pushes on his eyes again. “Relax, kid.”

Itadori blinks and loosens his now-iron grip on the seats of the car. He leaves behind two hand-shape indents, slowly, slowly puffing back to shape. Oops. 

Ijichi hits the brakes. “Grab that,” he says, looking at a small cage covered in talismans on the passenger seat. “We’re gonna use it.”

Itadori scrunches up his nose. “What? We’re gonna use the curses? …To do what exactly?”

“Well, since fly-heads are such low-level curses, we’ll release ‘em when no one’s around except Yoshino to test if he can see them or not. You’ll save him if he can’t see them or can’t defend himself. If he can defeat them, and by using jujutsu, we’ll detain him and bring him back to headquarters.”

Itadori squints at the side of Ijichi’s head. “How are we gonna detain him?”

Ijichi pushes his glasses up his nose. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission’?”

Itadori nods slowly.

“However, if he has potential to be classified as a grade two-or-above sorcerer, then we’ll retreat and report back to Nanami immediately.”

Itadori nods again. “Right.”

“Let’s walk from here.” Ijichi unbuckles his seatbelt and puts the car in park. He opens his door and steps out. Itadori follows suit.

The duo follows Yoshino as he shuffles down the street of a lackadaisical-feeling neighborhood. Cars don’t rush by, people don’t run with dogs at the ends of their leads, friends don’t walk side-by-side and laugh when the other says a corny joke. It’s a bit eerie, just how silent the place is.

“Yoshino, where were you today?”

Itadori squints at the far-away sight of the boy they’re tailing standing still, being approached by a man with a sweaty face.

Is that a teacher of his? No… or yes…? It’s hard to tell. Why’s he got that pathetic look on his face? Hm…

Ijichi slides behind a light post and Itadori jumps to follow him.

“Alright. This is it, Itadori! Here we go.”

Itadori points harshly down the street. “Wait!” he whisper-yells. “Don’t you see that guy he’s talkin’ to?!”

“Uh–!” Too late. Ijichi has already unclasped the door to the cage and two fly-heads have flown into the sky.

The guy across from Yoshino laughs lightly. “Did your self-imposed isolation fry your brain?”

“I got it, I got it!” Itadori calls back to the assistant manager as he bounds down the street. He jumps into the air, yelling at the curse to stop, before managing to grab it out of the sky. He lets out an accomplished aha! before realizing he’s heading straight towards Yoshino and the other guy in his fall. His eyes widen dramatically.

He twists mid-air, touching and rolling in a backflip that sends him spiraling on unsteady feet, smacking his head into a streetlight across the way. Itadori crouches and grabs his head. “Ow! Ow, that friggin’ hurt! Ow!”

“What? Where’d you come from?” the guy asks Itadori.

Itadori could not give a rat’s ass what that guy has to say. He shoves his nose into Yoshino’s face, and only after he realizes how close their noses were to touching does he agree with Ijichi’s earlier sentiment of Gojo rubbing off on him. “I’ve got some things to ask you about. Wanna hang out?”

“Hey! I was talking to Yoshino, you brat! Don’t be rude.”

Itadori leans back and clears his throat. “It’s… impertinent–”

“Imperative,” Sukuji says.

“...Imperative that I speak to him now. It concerns something of the upmost–”

“Utmost,” Sukuji says.

“...Utmost importance.”

“I don’t care what you have to say,” the man says. His voice is sort of clogged-sounding and irritating and Itadori imagines this is what low-grade curses would sound like if they suddenly gained the ability to talk like Jogo did. “You’re just another stupid kid! What’s up with your uniform? It’s not up to code at all! Are you skipping school too? I’d–”

Itadori pants him. He grabs the pants out from under his feet and runs away.

The man chases after him. “Wait! Come back! What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”

Itadori laughs lightly. “Why do you ask so many stupid questions?”

He keeps running, grinning brightly. This is some of the most fun he’s had in a while! He lets out a whoop! and keeps running. Sukuji laughs a little at the boy’s excitement.

He ditches the man’s pants in a bush half-way around the block and keeps running. Itadori slows to a walk in the final fourth of the block and sighs out his enthusiasm.

“Hey,” he says casually, raising his hand as he approaches Yoshino’s back. “Ready to talk?”

The other boy turns around with eyes blown wide. “What? How’d you get behind me? Did you go around the block already?”

“Yeah.”

“...Y’know, if you wanted to get me away from that conversation so badly, you could’ve just pulled me away.”

Itadori shrugs. “‘Guess I could’ve. But don’t you hate that guy? Just a hunch.”

Yoshino just stares at him.

“Oh. Uh, was I wrong?”

Yoshino breathes a laugh out of his nose. “No.”

“Well, uh, do you wanna keep hangin’ out in front of your house, or can we chat somewhere else? Let’s walk-and-talk.”

“...Okay.”

“My name’s Itadori,” Itadori says. “Itadori Yuuji.” He grins at the boy as they walk side-by-side and leans forward. “Nice to meet you!”

“Yoshino Junpei. Likewise.”

“Oh,” Itadori says, standing back up straight. “You’re Junpei, huh?”

Yoshino fastens his pace to match Itadori’s stride. “Uh–yeah? I just said that, right? I meant to, anyway.”

Itadori grins again. “Oh, yeah! Sorry, I’ve just heard that name before.”

The silence isn’t as awkward as it looks, probably.

They spend the next few hours getting to know each other, not uttering a lick of jujutsu-sorcerery-shop talk, until eventually the sun begins to set, they’ve made it to wide, concrete stairs between Yoshino’s high school and a serene lake, and Itadori’s already forgotten he ditched Ijichi earlier.

It’s not until he and Yoshino are part-way through a conversation about transmedia adaptations and rewrites that anything out of the ordinary happens. The ground rumbles. Itadori’s no stranger to the ground shaking, especially being from and in Japan, but the suddenness and irregularity of it causes him pause. 

“‘You feel that?” asks Yoshino. “Probably category two, right?”

Itadori pulls his phone from his pocket and rings Ijichi. He doesn’t answer. “Figures,” he mutters. “‘Can’t believe that guy. Geez.”

Can I talk to him about jujutsu already? C’mon. I wanted to get the green light from Ijichi, but he’s not answering! Ugh. …Ugh!

“Just talk to ‘im already, you dunderhead.”

He turns towards Yoshino. “You were there when those kids got killed at the theater, right?”

Sukuji sighs heavily. “...A little more tactfully, maybe?”

Oops. Wait–hey! Maybe mention that sooner next time?!

“Don’t pin your mistakes on me,” he replies with a snort. “...Except maybe this time. This time was my bad.”

Itadori sends him the harshest, mental equivalent of a glare that he can.

“My bad.”

Chapter Text

At this moment, Sukuji recalls a dream he once had. While it may be more accurate to call it a memory in part, it came to him as he slept, and aren’t all meaningful dreams related to the waking world in one way or another in the first place? Something something, latent content. Something, something, Sigmund Freud.

Anyways, it starts like this. 

There is fire instead of rain, cascading from the skies. He sees the world through the back of his skull, floating behind his own head of hair, high enough in the sky to witness the way rubble spits and flies with every explosion and fiery impact upon the people of Shibuya, the flattening of skin and the splatters of blood in blistering craters, and the way people run and scream but never evade wistful potshots of decay that swallow the streets indiscriminately. 

He turns to see Jogo’s face, the curse holding a ball of rolling fire between hands too-blue to even be mistaken for human skin, and sees his own hands, puppeted by Sukuna, pulling back the fiery bowstring of a powerful display of Divine Flame. 

“Open,” his mouth, far away and no longer under his own control, commands.

Jogo trembles at the sight of an ability so similar to his own being used against him, and his hands tremble as they command the ball of heat to spiral and still and grow in equal measure.

Sukuji returns to his own skin, and suddenly as the fall of night in the Wintertime, Sukuna’s fiery bow vanishes into thin air. His eyes widen in terror at the prospect of being burned to death by the metaphysical representation of the peoples’ fear of Mt. Fuji’s imminent eruption, and he moves his hands without thinking.

“Convergence,” he says. And then, “Piercing Blood.”

Sukuji cuts a line straight through Jogo’s neck. And then, he opens his eyes.

He’s in his innate domain, lying on his back in the water redder than blood, and the gears of his head just won’t stop turning. Because this is a genuine question now: what will he do if he has to face off against Jogo in Shibuya? Should he kill the curse for all the trouble he’s caused, or convince him to work for him, being “Sukuna” and all? To what benefit would it be, having the Mt. Fuji curse work under him? What if none of his wonderings or musings matter when the time comes, and his rage overtakes him? What will become of him if he loses himself fighting Jogo? Who will come out on the other side of their battle–Yuuji, or Sukuna?

He sighs heavily. This is too much to be thinking about when so many other important things are going on all at the same time.

He contemplates reintroducing Sukuna’s throne of skulls to the scenery of his innate domain for a moment longer than is comfortable. Sukuji makes a sour face at the thought alone and summons a table and a deck of cards with a wave of his hand instead. It’s been far too long since he’s played a good ole game of solitaire.

He sets up the cards, seven columns of ascending length, and flips the final card for each one face-up. He sets down his draw pile and pulls three cards off the top of the stack. The bottom one doesn’t fit onto any face-up card. Drat. He sets the three cards next to the draw pile and moves around the few already face-up cards that he can before sliding three cards into his hand and examining the bottom one again.

Sukuji can practically hear Nobara nagging at him from the right side of his head, a quick “You can set the queen there, idiot” here, a fleeting “Ha! You’re already past my quickest time, slow-poke” there. She might have just been the most competitive person he ever knew, aside from himself, of course. Even Gojo-sensei let him win a few hands of progressive rummy once and a while, not that it mattered by the end of the game, when Yuuji’d be two-hundred in the hole and Gojo would be laughing and scratching his pen in big letters reading “WINNER!!!” under his own score.

Sukuji closes his eyes, and the visage disappears.

He sighs contemplatively, softly, smoothly, and raises his elbow to the table. Snapping, a chair the perfect height for him appears, and he sits on it gently. His chin finds its resting place on the back of his hand, eyes remaining glued to the cards on the table. He flips the draw again.

Megumi’s ghost leans over his left shoulder, pointing at the cards. “Move the seven there,” he whispers, and Sukuji does. His eyes flick to Yuuji’s face and then back to the table. Sukuji sets down his cards and draws again. “Yes,” Megumi cheers softly when all three of the cards he has drawn are playable. “Move that stack–yeah, that one. And then–oh, get the ten first. Nice!” He laughs softly, just a breath of noise, but even the memory of that joy sends shivers down Sukuji’s spine.

He turns his head to the side and Megumi’s face disappears.

Sukuji sighs again and finishes his game in utter silence.

………

Sukuji tries to peer out at the world from between Itadori’s eyes, catching only an inconsequentially blurry sight of a television screen sliding credits towards the ceiling like a never-ending scroll of names left unspoken. He just barely catches one he recognizes through his squint, through the headache testing the boundaries of their binding vow impends upon him, the characters just fuzzy enough he can make them out. 

They had been watching Human Earthworm 2, he realizes, and although this fact changes nothing, it reminds him of what is to come and what he must do to prevent it. My favorite.

He presses his consciousness against his vessel’s eardrums and winces at the sudden feedback before settling into the space like a house built on dirt. He relinquishes his efforts of sight-seeing and closes his eyes to listen. 

“—scripting is pretty bad, but the grandchildren of a whole bunch of the main cast from the first movie all get together and spend the night in the same house from the fifth movie!” Yoshino says, speaking with his hands enthusiastically, “I was going to watch it with my club, but we never… got the chance to.” He glances away. “It’s fine though, I’ve already seen it a couple times.”

“I’d love to watch it with you!” Itadori exclaims excitedly. Sukuji can just imagine how his eyes are shining. “I haven’t seen any of the movies past the third one, so you’ll probably have to catch me up, but if you don’t mind me being a bit of a human-sized brain fart, I’m totally down to join you!”

Yoshino stares at his face, searching for any insincerity in the way Itadori’s eyes shift and the duration of time his smile is on his face. Surprisingly, he can’t find any. This strikes Junpei as especially odd. He’s never met anyone as genuine and friendly as Yuuji; no one’s even come close.

He decides then, that in his pursuit of a world full of indifference, in the core of his own ideals, that Itadori Yuuji deserves a special place to call home. Even if the sky falls and the world comes to hate him like he knows it will, Yoshino will always call Itadori his friend, for as long as he can.

“Okay,” he replies softly, and Itadori’s grin just manages to get wider.

Yuuji stretches his arms above his head and leans backwards to extend his spine. Yoshino watches him, considering in his mind whether or not to break the comfortable silence between them. He stands instead, moving towards the television to take out the disc and shut off the screen.

“Yuuji,” he says softly, “You’re a jujutsu sorcerer, right?”

Itadori turns to him. “Uh, yeah. I am.”

“Have you ever killed anybody?”

Itadori pauses, as if straining his mind to recall any instances of human blood on his fifteen-year-old hands. Sukuji stays uncharacteristically silent.

“No,” he says finally. “I haven’t.”

Junpei sets down the remote and walks back towards the couch, sitting at an adjacent edge of the coffee table. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and rests his chin on the intersection. “What if you have to? There’s evil everywhere, sin everywhere, right? It won’t disappear in the hearts of jujutsu sorcerers just because some of them fight for good, you know. And what then?” He almost crosses his eyes to look up at Yuuji’s contemplative face. “Will you kill them if procuring evil is all a sorcerer is good for?”

Itadori crosses his arms and cocks his head to the side. He hums in thought, tapping his finger on his arm. “No,” he replies with finality. “Not even then.”

“But why?” Junpei presses, “They’re bad people, aren’t they? What’s the point in keeping sorcerers around if all they’re good for is causing harm to other people?”

“I don’t want to force the act of killing into my life,” Yuuji replies, “let alone the option of it. Life is valuable.” He shoots his eyes towards the window and the closed-tight blinds there before turning his attention back to Junpei’s furrowed brow and the way his fingers tap against his arm agitatedly. “Killing creates ambiguity within that value. Morally, killing is wrong because I think it’s wrong. Ethically, it’s wrong because no one who doesn’t choose to die shouldn’t be forced to. Legally, it’s prohibited. So what’s the point in killin’ anyone, sorcerer or not, if it just sings wrong all over?”

Sukuji presses the heels of his palms into his hands.

Itadori continues, “What if I stop caring about the lives of the people I care about? What’s the worth in life if you’re forced to face it all alone?” He sighs. “It’s scary, considering how obsolete people, human life, can become when you simply stop caring.”

People don’t have hearts, Mahito had said. That idea had saved Yoshino, giving him a reason for continuing to think and live and fight.

Love is the opposite of indifference, Junpei once said. Now, hearing Itadori’s thoughts on the matter, he isn’t so sure. Maybe the opposite of indifference is empathy, not love. Maybe Itadori Yuuji is the closest thing to an embodiment of empathy in the modern age. Maybe this matters. Maybe it doesn’t.

And maybe, just maybe, Mahito was wrong all along. Maybe.

All of a sudden, Yoshino’s mother leans out of her bedroom and calls through the kitchen. “Junpei, is your friend going to be spending the night?” She turns her eyes to Itadori. “I’ll set up a futon for you, if you’d like.”

Itadori straightens his back respectfully, hands on his knees as he sits on the floor. “No thank you, Ms. Yoshino. I should probably be heading out now.” He turns to Junpei. “Mind if I get your number? We can set up a time to watch the movie and text each other about other comics and stuff we get into!” He presses his palms together and winks. “I promise not to send you any spoilers!”

Junpei smiles pleasantly. “Sure,” he says, and grabs his phone from the coffee table. He taps a few buttons and turns the device around so it faces Itadori. “Here’s my number.”

Yuuji grins and types it into his own phone, under the contact name “Yoshino Junpei”.

Sukuji hears their interaction and sighs softly from his nose. He hopes Itadori won’t be given the chance to feel inclined to delete the boy’s number a few days from now. He hopes even stronger still, that Junpei will be able to join him as a first-year student at Jujutsu Tech. But he tries not to feel too optimistic.

Itadori waves to the mother and her son as he leaves their apartment, humming lightly to himself as he jogs down the stairs of the complex building. Upon reaching the sidewalk, he pulls his phone back out from the pocket of his uniform and opens it to ring Ijichi.

“Hold on a second,” Sukuji prompts from his head.

Itadori stops tapping to listen. What? Why?

“Mahito’s going to sneak into the Yoshinos’ apartment and plant one of Sukuna’s fingers on the kitchen table, and if you don’t get to it before any of the curses around here do, Junpei’s mother will die.”

The blood drains from Itadori’s face. Sukuji can feel it in the way his hands tremble around his phone and the way his breath stutters and shudders in his lungs as they trip over nothing and he gasps, momentarily, like a fish that has jumped itself out of the water.

Itadori’s pale reflection stares back at himself from the now-black screen of his sleeping phone. “She’ll die?”

“The curses will kill her,” Sukuji affirms. “She’ll be murdered by horrific creatures that she can’t even see.”

That’s terrible. Itadori swallows thickly. And what about Junpei?

Sukuji closes his eyes tightly. “You can save him,” he says. “I know you can do it. You can save him. And–” He pauses to breathe. His hands tremble. “–it’s not these curses that kill him. So, just worry about his mom for now. If she dies, he’ll go off the rails. And nobody… nobody wants that.”

Itadori nods. The inertia of his fear, his worry, is absolutely palpable. Little waves break against the legs of the table and chair and Sukuji’s own feet. He grips the table to prevent his own form from shaking with emotion.

“What do I… what can I even say?” Itadori puts his phone in his pocket to prevent himself from crushing it by accident. The last thing he needs right now is to be cut off from the ability to contact anyone from Jujutsu Tech. “‘Sorry, I know I just left, but if I don’t get inside your house right now, your mom’s gonna die’? Like, what? Who’s gonna believe that?”

Sukuji hums. “Maybe you should go back and ask if that offer to spend the night is still on the table.”

“Oh,” Itadori says, bumping his fist onto his palm. That’s a good idea!

Sukuji snorts. “Thanks. I have those sometimes.”

Only sometimes, Itadori chimes cheerfully. 

Sukuji notes the sudden stillness of his hands, the way their conversation seems to zap the anxiety right out from under his skin. “Sure, kid. ‘Only sometimes’.”

Itadori rolls his eyes playfully and texts Ijichi his plan to spend the night in Kanagawa before taking the stairs two at a time back up to Yoshino’s apartment. He knocks on the door once he gets there, grinning through the peephole. 

Junpei opens the door slowly, and peers through the crack in the door, an unadulteratedly confused expression on his face. Upon spotting Itadori, his eyes widen, glinting with hope and intrigue. He shuts the door again to undo every latch before reopening it, wide enough to stretch one arm with the door and hold firm to the doorframe with his other hand. 

“Itadori? What’re you doing here?” Junpei asks with furrowed brows. 

“You can just call me ‘Yuuji’, man,” Itadori says. “And I was wondering if that futon might still be available?” He grins. 

Junpei moves out of the boy’s way and he walks into the apartment, bouncing on the tips of his toes. The door is closed behind him, and Junpei reattaches every latch, twists every lock, meticulously. 

“Sure,” he says when he turns around, smiling softly. “I’ll go grab it. We can get you set up in the living room.” He turns to go before turning back to Itadori quickly, spinning on his heel. “Uh, you wouldn’t mind helping me move the couch, right? Sorry, but my mom went to bed already, and I don’t wanna bother her, so…”

Itadori grins and throws up an arm to flex his bicep. “Sure!” he cheers, using his inside voice. “I can get it cleared up while you grab the bedding if you’d like!”

Junpei furrows his brows, looking unsure, and fiddles with a sleeve of his T-shirt. “…Are you sure you can handle that? Not that I doubt your strength or anything, but…” He flicks his eyes to the living room and then back to his guest. “The couch is pretty heavy.”

“I can lift a car!” Itadori grins. 

Junpei’s shoulders slump, and he lets his hands fall limply to his sides. “Oh, you… uh. Of course. Okay. That’s nothing. No problem. Alright, cool. You do that,” he mutters, shuffling away, through the kitchen and into the depths of his home. 

Itadori blinks before furrowing his own brows, tilting his head in confusion. “What’s his deal?”

“Normal people can’t lift cars,” Sukuji says matter-of-factly. 

Itadori sighs softly and trudges towards the living room. He grabs the bottom of the couch and hefts it over his shoulder with a huff gently, making sure not to bump anything else in the room or mark up the walls, before setting it down gently as close to the dining table as he can without crunching the nearest chair into the table. 

“See?” he mutters to himself, lips pursed childishly. “Easy dub.”

Sukuji rolls his eyes. 

He moves the coffee table next, lifting it and walking a few steps to the side, closer to the window. He dusts his hands together once he’s set the furniture down, an everlasting smile glued to his face. 

Nice. 

Junpei returns as Itadori is setting down the table, and he lets out a soft laugh upon seeing that the couch has been moved without consequence. “Wow,” he says, somehow still surprised even after Itadori’s unbelievably true claim of being able to lift a car, “You did it.”

Itadori hums in agreement and stretches out his hands to take the bundle of cloth and padding Junpei is practically swimming in. The boy whips to the side in a partial rotation, clutching the bedding as close to himself as he can. 

“Nuh-uh,” Junpei says at Itadori’s offended gasp. “The guest never sets up his own bedding.” 

Itadori opens his mouth to argue. 

“Especially the ones that clear the space on their own.”

Itadori crosses his arms and furrows his brows. He tries to speak again, but Junpei interrupts him once more. 

“Don’t give me that face, Sumo-Yuuji. You’ve done your part.” He uses the fabric to gesture for Itadori to move out of the way. 

Itadori throws up his hands in mock surrender and crabwalks out of the way. “Fine, mom,” he jokes. 

Junpei smiles, a tiny little thing, like he’s trying to suppress a laugh. 

Sukuji shudders involuntarily, eyes darkening as he closes them loosely. 

Junpei shows Itadori to the bathroom and hands him a spare toothbrush and points him to the toothpaste and a canister of floss in case he’s planning on not giving his dentist a heart attack next time he goes in for an appointment. Itadori tells him, a hand behind his neck and eyes looking everywhere except the other boy’s face, that he hasn’t been to the dentist since he was a kid. Junpei smacks him across the back of the head and gives him a roughed-up business card for a free, community dental clinic somewhere a few miles away from them in Kanagawa. 

Itadori isn’t really sure if anyone from the school is willing enough to drive him so far away just to get someone to check if he’s been brushing his teeth well enough twice a year, but the gesture is nice. He tucks the card into a pocket of his uniform and apologizes for the trouble. Junpei just smacks his head again. 

By the time he’s all ready for bed, down to a T-shirt and drawstring pants from a very beat up and dusty suitcase from the back of a hall closet past the bathroom, of which he’s sure belonged to Junpei’s father at some point in time, nothing sounds better than snuggling into bed and pulling the sheets up and over his chin. 

Itadori sighs, content, as he slides in between the futon cover and duvet, closing his eyes sleepily. Junpei wishes him a good night and flips off the kitchen light. He hums his “good night” into the darkness from between sleep-pressed lips. 

Sukuji prods at him suddenly, purple nails in his side. Itadori’s eyes shoot open immediately. 

“Hey, what the heck?” He whispers, now wide awake, into the darkness. 

Sukuji flicks the air in front of his face like his vessel is standing before him, and imagines it’s his forehead he’s flicking. “Idiot. Did you forget why we’re here in the first place?”

“Oh,” Itadori says softly, pulling the duvet up to his nose as he recalls their earlier conversation.

“Yeah, ‘oh’. Junpei’s mom needs you to stay alert,” Sukuji says. “In fact, her life depends on you not falling asleep. I don’t know exactly when or where Mahito will come in, nor do I know what he’ll do if he finds you in here.”

Itadori whispers like a settling fog upon the mountainside, “What could he do?”

Sukuji ponders his vessel’s question for a moment. “Well, not much, to be quite honest with you. His cursed technique attacks the soul, so he’ll just enter… my innate domain…”

Oh.

“…Why don’t I just kill him now?” He ponders to himself. 

Itadori bristles. You’d kill him?

“Of course,” Sukuji replies without hesitation. “Whoever he is, wherever he goes. If there is ever a Mahito somewhere I am given the opportunity to end the life of, my fist will cut through his throat before he can utter a single word every time. Always.”

Itadori is stricken into silence. Sukuji’s words portray just how much this “Mahito” person has hurt him and, arguably more importantly, how he’s hurt the people he loved. Itadori can’t help but feel sympathy for the curse’s vehement conviction. 

“I’m sorry,” Itadori whispers. “You’ve been hurting for so long, haven’t you? I’ll try to understand your hatred for him, even though I haven’t met Mahito yet. It’s just… what if this Mahito can change? Don’t even those who have wronged you deserve a second chance to do good, be better?”

Sukuji freezes in his place, and the scowl he didn't notice had overtaken his face slides away silently. Oh. He remembers when he thought that way, still harboring faith in others to “do good” and “be better”. He remembers when life was beautiful and everyone deserved a chance to bloom later and the sun hit his face on a perfect Summer day and he still loved the ocean and joy still sparked from fireworks against the sand. 

A board of wood creaks, and Itadori strains his ears to listen for any footsteps, checking whether Junpei or his mom has gotten out of bed for one reason or another. No such sound resounds. “He’s here.”

“I know,” Sukuji says shortly before taking a deep breath. “Let’s grab the finger, kill that wretch, and get back to bed before Junpei or his mom notices anything’s awry.”

Itadori, half-way off of the futon, slows his movements to lessen the noise. “Right…” he trails off. “I’m not sure how that’ll be… possible.”

Sukuji glares into the back of his eyes. 

“…but I guess I can try?”

“That’s the most I can ask of you, I suppose,” Sukuji replies smoothly, propping his chin onto his hand. Having his elbow on the table causes him to have to lean forward to sit comfortably, which is mildly irritating, but it isn’t anything he can’t handle. But the discomfort makes him wonder if this is why Sukuna always had that bone throne in his innate domain. It had been the perfect height for peering, staring. The perfect height for making Yuuji himself feel that much smaller, for imposing authority. And the arm-rests had worked as arm-rests ought to, and propping his chin had never looked more comfortable.

A small pile of skulls–human ones–bubbles to life behind him. It’s a silent motion, like a southern wind over a short-trimmed field. Sukuji closes his eyes to focus on the things his vessel is just able to hear, unaware of the formation building behind him.

Itadori creeps through the Yoshinos’ living room on the toes of his feet, slinking through the darkness like a thief in the night. He slides through the kitchen as silently as he can, not even making a verbal response when his big toe jams into the final doorframe before the hallway to the rest of the apartment.

“You good?” Sukuji asks.

I’m good. Even Itadori’s thought sounds pained. Sukuji has to muffle his laugh.

The darkness of the night makes it difficult to pick up on any sign of life in the depths of the apartment. Itadori turns his head from the right to the left, searching the corridor for anything amiss. Then he turns his head towards the ceiling, searching for any movement on the ceiling. 

Sukuji presses him onwards, so Yuuji turns left and starts walking. He passes by the closed door of Junpei’s room and hesitates before continuing down the hall. 

At the end of it, on the front side of the building, is a laundry room. The washer and dryer sit silently sleeping, neither rumbling nor tumbling in the dead of night. 

Itadori turns his head to the left to examine the rest of the utility room when he catches the sight of a small, square, sliding window left partially open. Moonlight pools onto the floor, and he trails the sight with brown eyes. 

There’s a cat on the floor. It’s gray and soft-looking and there’s an unnatural ring of blue fur above its paws. It blinks at him slowly before hunching its back and twitching its nose.

Itadori furrows his brows at the sight of it. Huh. Why’s there a cat in here?

“It’s you!” Sukuji exclaims, and Itadori’s hand shoots up unexpectedly, waving and pointing blindly in the general direction of the cat on the floor. “I can’t believe this! Are you freaking kidding me?” In his innate domain, Sukuji grabs at his hair. “I poured my heart out to freaking Mahito!”

Itadori leans down to pet the cat, but it lashes out with a paw, scratching at his hand. He pulls his arm back quickly. “You’re Mahito, huh?” he asks the cat quietly. “You look a lot less… punchable than Sukuji made you out to be.”

The cat swivels its head a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. The fur and thin skin there, along with its neck, is replaced by a pale-fleshed face. Stitches criss-cross around his face, sky blue hair slinking down past his paws and draping the floor like a really tiny, really sad-looking rug.

Hey, he’s got heterochromia! Itadori notes.

“Switch out with me,” Sukuji demands. “No, nevermind. I’m not waiting around for your permission.”

Itadori, fully and suddenly, is tossed into his own head. He bumps against something hard–probably the ground–and water splashes with the ferocity of the motion. “Ow,” he complains. He cranes his neck to see what he hit his head on, and is left breathless for his efforts. “Oh. That’s not…”

Sukuna’s throne. Rather, Sukuji’s throne is made entirely of human skulls. Yuuji doesn’t even attempt to question the physics of that thing, tilting and winding as it is. He only wonders whether these skulls have had faces and names, or whether they will remain unknown to history forever after and a day. Or if they’re even real skulls at all. What even are the constraints on an innate domain’s composition? Are there any?

When Itadori hears foreign screaming, he presses his eyes and ears against Sukuji’s.

Mahito is back to being a full cat. Sukuji follows after him, silent but deadly, jumping from the back of the couch Itadori had moved to the coffee table with directness and stability Itadori himself probably wouldn’t be able to perform with.

“Get back here,” Sukuji seethes quietly. “I am not in the mood to wreck Junpei’s home, so stay still so I can kill you already.”

Mahito sticks out a kitty tongue. “Whaaat?” he exclaims at a louder-than-normal volume. “I dunno. Junpei is my best friend anyway, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I made a bit of a mess, right?”

Sukuji lunges for him, but the cat jumps nimbly out of the way.

“So close!” Mahito taunts. “Not as close as I was to your mother last night, but pretty close!”

Sukuji bites his tongue to keep himself from laughing suddenly, aware of Junpei and his mom sleeping soundly just nearby enough to warrant this caution. “Wow. Okay. You do not understand just how hilarious that is.”

“You’re right!” Mahito grins before leaping onto the kitchen counter and then to the top of the fridge. “I’m blissfully unaware!”

Sukuji crouches in front of the ice box, preparing to jump up to the cat’s level to snatch him from the top of the fridge. As soon as he gets up to Mahito’s eye-level, the cat jumps across the span between the fridge and the top of the cabinets, crouching low and hunching his shoulders like a feline stalking its prey rather than a mangy cat trying not to rub its back against the ceiling of a random-not-random person’s house.

“Say, Sukuna, why is it that you’re so intent on killing me in the first place?” Mahito laughs. “This is our first meeting, after all.”

Sukuji stays silent, but makes a two-handed “shoo”-ing motion with his hands. 

Mahito yerowls mirthfully. “That was you!” He laughs again, patting up dust with his paw. “I watched you leak salt into a mug!”

“That’s the stupidest way to say you saw me crying I’ve ever heard in my life,” Sukuji says before raising his leg to hop onto the kitchen counter, mindful of the edge of the sink to his left and the tile far below him to the right. “Did a dead poet teach you how to speak? It’s the twenty-first century for crying out loud.”

Mahito lies down, crossing his front paws. “Getou does not speak like a dead poet.”

Sukuji purses his lips to suppress a laugh again. “Wow. You’re totally clueless, huh?”

The cat rolls its eyes and stands again. He jumps down to the kitchen floor (Itadori does not freak out about having to watch a cat not land on its feet) before stretching out and back into his humanoid form. “Have you ever wondered if the body or the soul came first?”

Sukuji gets off the counter and pins the curse against the kitchen tile, pressing his shin onto one of his arms and his elbow onto the other in a staple. “I am not discussing the mind-body problem with you.”

Mahito shrugs minutely, staring at Sukuji’s face and the four red eyes there, flicking his gaze from pupil to pupil curiously. “Don’t you miss your old body?”

Sukuji presses firmer onto his limbs and furrows his brows. “What? No. This is my body now.”

“Oh,” Mahito draws out. “You’re not the sentimental type, then?”

“None of that matters,” Sukuji grits quietly. “Are you ready, Mahito? I’m going to kill you now.”

“Huh–?!”

I, Sukuji, in exchange for only Mahito the cursed spirit being drawn into my domain expansion in this singular instance, swear to relinquish two years of my life. I, Sukuji, in exchange for being able to determine the size of my domain expansion indefinitely, on a case-by-case basis, swear to relinquish five years of my life.

“Domain Expansion.” Sukuji grins, all teeth. The expression looks inhuman on Itadori’s face. Blood beads down his chin beneath where a canine catches on his lip. “Malevolent Shrine.”

Darkness blooms from Sukuji’s chest, spreading in an amalgamation of death and fury that covers the Yoshinos’ kitchen in a sea of all-encompassing red. Mahito cowers beneath him, pressing his back as far as he can into the tiles.

Pressure builds. Cursed energy storms around them. Sukuji’s eyes go blank, and every semblance of Malevolent Shrine fades away.

He looks down.

Oh, Sukuji thinks slowly, languidly, like his mind is sand flowing through an hourglass, molasses in a fish tank. This is just like…

His torso slides off of his hips like a stick of butter cut clean through.

………

Sukuji opens his eyes. He’s been stitched back together, his Reversed Cursed Technique seemingly amplified by his intense fear of dying again. Or maybe it’s because of the binding vow he made with Itadori. It doesn’t matter.

There’s a scar on him where Sukuna cut Gojo-sensei in half. It’s fitting, probably. It's healing and itchy. It means something, surely.

Sukuji’s brain feels like it’s buzzing.

Morning light beams through the closed shade in the living room, cutting fuzzily through the darkness of the kitchen.

He stands shakily, catching himself from falling with a trembling hand on the counter. Itadori asks him if he’s okay, but his words sound like static in his ears and nothing more. Sukuji moves, slowly, towards the dining table.

No finger. No hope.

He floats through the apartment like a ghost, closing the bedroom door at the right end of the hall after witnessing the aftermath of a gory massacre there. He bows his head and prays.

Junpei’s room is empty. There are cursed energy residuals everywhere.

I’m tired, Sukuji thinks quietly.

Itadori sighs softly from inside his innate domain. Yeah. Me too.

Chapter Text

Sukuji walks down a sunny street towards Junpei’s high school like a man possessed, listlessly wandering, staring at nothing but the pavement in front of his shoes, chasing after his own ghost who has walked this path before. He wonders if Nanamin is in town somewhere, if he’s been keeping Mahito occupied all this time, whether Spirit Manipulation has torn him to shreds or made him pop like a balloon.

Switch with me, he hears Itadori whisper out of his ear. I’ll help, he says through his nose.

“I…” couldn’t give up control if I tried; need to make this right; have a boy to save; am done and want to die, only me. No one else needs to go. Just me.

His own train of melodramatic thoughts reminds him of Shibuya and fire and death and pain and blood on the concrete and eyes full of tears and a mouth full of spit. His mind wanders, but his body keeps moving, as though piloting itself automatically towards the next scene of misfortune he will be forced to encounter.

Itadori shoves his way into his body, but the only response he gets is a hand on Sukuji’s throat. The motion reminds him of the first time they met, on the rooftop of his school back in Sendai, and the itching sense of wrongness that shadowed every ill intention the King of Curses might have had once upon a time.

Sukuji closes his eyes and sighs softly, and his legs keep moving. “Perfect,” he says. His voice vibrates in his throat, against his own hand on his jugular. “If you can strangle me, I can die. Wouldn’t that be lovely? You should do that. Please.”

Itadori jerks his head back in the innate domain, an expression of disbelief on his face, with furrowed brows and curled lips. “I won’t kill you,” he says. He lets his hand fall to Sukuji’s side.

The curse hums an irritated note, deep in his throat and low like a purr. “I know,” he breathes out. He sounds mournful of the fact that his younger, untainted-by-murder self won’t put him out of his misery. Weird.

Sukuji sinks lower, lower, until he feels his skin around him like it’s supposed to be. Icicles prick into his back at the sudden sensation of breathing and living and moving returns to him. He ducks into his innate domain like a tissue being sucked into a vacuum, projecting Itadori back into his own bones suddenly.

The boy stumbles for a moment, catching loose and unnatural footing on steady legs, arms spiraling to prevent himself from falling. He takes in a deep breath and steps onto the sidewalk.

“Where are we going?” he asks the voice in his head aloud. No one’s around to hear him, and what should he care what strangers think of him in the very first place?

“Junpei’s school,” Sukuji whispers. “Satozakura High. You should probably hurry. He’s going to kill his classmates.”

Itadori quickens his pace immediately. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

Sukuji curls his knees to his chest and holds them tightly there. His throne is worse than he imagined having Sukuna’s back would be, given its composition, but he is far too lost in his own misery to care. “I’ll tell you everythin’ if we can just finish this mission in one piece,” he says. “Gojo too. Maybe everybody. Nobody’s life isn’t in danger at this point. Even with Sukuna gone, I…” He takes in a shaky breath. “Itadori, if I ever become like Sukuna, don’t blame yourself for what happens. It’s all on me. And I’m sorry, in advance.”

Itadori digs his chin down in the air and pumps his legs and his arms as he sprints. He jumps over patches of grass and whole yards altogether, rushing as quickly as he can to the building he was told to memorize the location of before being sent off on this mission in the first place. “If you’re so desperate not to be like Sukuna, then just don’t be like him. Just be yourself.”

Sukuji sniffles and presses the knuckles of his fist into his forehead. “You make it sound so much easier than it is,” he says. He moves his arms to stare at his hands. Two of them stay wrapped around his legs. The other two are shaking. “I don’t think I have much of a say in the matter.”

“I’m sorry, man, and that sounds terrible, but can we please focus on one thing at a time? We’re almost to Junpei’s school. Do you know where he should be?”

“In the auditorium,” Sukuji mutters, eyes watering and a gnawing in his stomach that roils and tumbles incessantly. “Or the gym. It’s the same place.”

Itadori breathes in deeply. “Okay,” he says. “We’re here.”

There’s a veil around the school. Itadori skids to a halt in front of it before pressing his hand against the murky surface. “Sukuji, we’ve got a problem.”

The curse hums in question.

“There’s a veil,” the boy explains. “Uh… around the whole school. I can’t get in?”

“Are you asking me or telling me that you can’t enter?”

Itadori rests his other hand against the surface and presses firmly against it, digging his feet into the ground. “I’m telling you,” he says. “I can’t get in.”

Sukuji hums. “Give me a minute to think. I never got to know what restrictions Mahito put on this thing.”

“Okay,” Itadori replies quickly. 

He stands there, waiting as patiently as he can for his future self to come up with an idea smart enough to move them along. He taps his foot. He crosses his arms. He uncrosses them. He sighs and presses his whole body against the veil, but he still can’t get through. The surface of it ripples like a river in the woods he’s dipped his foot into.

Itadori sighs again and reels back his fist. “I’m just gonna punch it.”

“Itadori, wait a second–”

One punch. Another. He attacks the veil again. And then again. It splinters. It splinters further. The pressure of his strikes carves a web of cracks into the surface of the curtain until the entire thing shatters into dark fractals of reality resuming in the mid-day sky.

It was night last time, Sukuji thinks suddenly. And I didn’t have to break the veil to get into the school.

Itadori sprints as fast as he can towards the gymnasium the second the blackness breaks apart enough for him to crash through. He tries not to hold his breath in anticipation as he bursts open the door, eyes readjusting slowly to the lower light-level in the building.

There are kids everywhere. Some of them are about his age, but most of them are older. All of them are wearing button-downs and slacks or skirts, collapsed in rows like soldiers sleeping in formation.

“What are you doing here?” Itadori keys in on the sight of that teacher he pantsed before, knees on the ground, in the process of trying to shake one of the students awake.

He turns away from him and towards the stage at the left of the room. There’s Junpei! His excitement quickly fades into abstract mortification. Because Junpei’s eyes look like marbles, monochromatic and glossy and dead beneath dusty beads of sunlight that shoot through the windows at the top of the auditorium.

And there’s a kid floating in the air before him, held in place by a curse the shape of a jellyfish. That’s probably got a story behind it. Itadori should probably care what it is. He doesn’t.

“Junpei!” Itadori shouts. “What’re you doing, man?”

Yoshino glares at him. “Back off,” he commands sharply, like an owner telling their dog not to bite. “This does not concern you, Yuuji.”

“Of course it does! I’m your friend, aren’t I? I want to help you!” Itadori steps into the gymnasium, stepping around slumbering bodies as he crosses the space between them.

“You can’t help me,” Junpei says shortly. He turns back towards the boy in the air and clenches his fist in his pocket. The jellyfish tightens its grip on the boy.

He’s not listening. Itadori rolls up his sleeves preemptively. He’s not listening! Ugh! What do I do?

“Do what you do best,” Sukuji says softly. “Or keep talking.”

But talking’s not working, Itadori whines.

“Then…”

Itadori focuses intently on the spirit behind Junpei, locking all of his attention on the glowing yellow and blue. “...get punching,” he finishes for the curse.

Yoshino’s eyes widen sharply when Itadori sprints and jumps towards him, avoiding every human-shaped obstacle, until he reaches the stage. He leaps onto the wooden planks from the auditorium floor in one fluid motion, lunging for the jellyfish with a veracity in his eyes Junpei hasn’t gotten to see up close and personal until now.

“Moon Dregs!” the boy shouts, incorrectly assuming Itadori had been aiming for him all along.

The shikigami twists around Junpei’s form like a giant, wiggling “U”. Itadori grins at the close proximity to the cursed spirit that Junpei’s command gave him. He barrels his fist into the gelatinous surface of the jellyfish, cursed energy pounding into its flesh a half a second after his skin makes contact.

Junpei gasps sharply as the curse swallows him in its blue before shooting through the back wall of the auditorium. He stands as quickly as he can thereafter before rushing towards the schoolbuilding as fast as his legs can take him.

“Get him to stay outside,” Sukuji demands suddenly. “Don’t let him in the school building!”

I am not that fast, man! Itadori replies mentally, jumping down through the splintered remains of the back of the stage. He sprints across the grass after Junpei. The sun alights upon his skin momentarily, before the shadow of the school building leeches all the warmth away.

Yoshino jumps through the threshold of the closest outside door to the school two seconds before Itadori reaches it.

“Run!” Sukuji commands. “Help him, Itadori! Please!”

Itadori skids around a corner in the halls before booking it up the stairs that greet him. He hears Junpei cry out angrily higher up in the stairwell and takes the stairs three at a time.

They encounter each other again two stories up. Itadori has half a mind to pull a fire alarm to get any remaining civilians out of the building, but the strangely utter lack of them causes him to lose just enough concern not to do it.

He jumps high, aiming a harsh punch at Moon Dregs the moment he gets close enough to reach it. Cursed energy blasts a second strike behind his fist into the curse, propelling the jellyfish and Junpei skidding down the hall. Moon Dregs removes itself from Yoshino’s person as soon as the boy rights himself, squatting low but breathing evenly enough that it matters.

“Once more, since your ears are clearly plugged or you’ve got brain damage from dying in my kitchen, stay out of my way.” Junpei raises his fists in front of my face. “This is none of your business, Jujutsu sorcerer.”

Itadori’s eyebrow twitches. “Quit telling me what is and isn’t my concern!” Cursed energy alights in sky-blue flames around his fists.

“I’ve been thinking,” Junpei says slowly, raising his hand so that Moon Dregs readies itself to strike on his command, “and I’ve realized something. The value of a life should never be overestimated!”

Oh, no, Itadori thinks dimly. Uh, Sukuji? He… was definitely not this hellbent on life not mattering the last time I saw him. Do you think if I…

Sukuji sighs softly, understanding what his vessel is hoping to accomplish immediately. He did the same thing when he lived out this horribly inhuman scene. “Shoot your shot,” he says. “Maybe he’ll listen, if it’s you.”

Itadori lets the tentacles capture him. His vision is encompassed in light blue, cursed energy pressed against his arms and legs and pinning him in place. There’s nothing he can see but the mammoth swarming of blue, and Itadori wonders fleetingly if this is anything like Gojo-sensei’s Six Eyes, or if the world appears so overwhelming through the sheer lightness of his irises.

“Emotions aren’t everything, although that’s something that people tend to pretend,” Junpei monologues, “And the heart is just what tethers the body to the soul. You’re all delusional, every single one of you. Every single person that lives out their life like anything matters aside from living and being bitter is just living a delusion, a fake version of life that amounts to nothing!” He tilts his brow. “So don’t you dare go forcing me to live in that delusion, too.”

Itadori struggles helplessly in the surplus of light and energy around him. What the heck is he even talking about?! All I’m trying to do is help him not wreck his life!

“You have no right to stop someone from killing someone else. It is a human right to take the life of another, don’t you see? Nothing can take that right away from me or from anyone else.”

Oh, Itadori thinks, rolling his eyes. He’s an utilitarianist. Good to know.

“Go to sleep now, and I’ll be back for you later,” he says. “I’ve got something to finish up before the afternoon is over.”

“And who exactly are you trying to convince here, spouting all this bullcrap, huh?” Itadori exclaims suddenly, tugging on the back of the collar of Junpei’s school blazer. His arm passes through Moon Dregs’ form, but the shikigami clings to the limb, wrapped around the sleeve like magical, nearly transparent vines.

Itadori reels back his fist, but Moon Dregs and Yoshino retreat so suddenly. The shikigami stops in place after a moment, and Itadori attacks it with all the power behind his fists that he can muster. He kicks at the curse next, cringing when his foot hits the suddenly and irritatingly stiff surface of the jellyfish.

He jumps backwards when it lashes out at him before jumping at it again, smacking a fist against Moon Dregs. Cursed energy shoots beneath its skin a moment later, and the shikigami teeters, staggering in the air. It crashes into Junpei, toppling the both of them through and out of a third-story window.

If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you jump off it too? Itadori thinks he remembers his grandpa asking him before smacking him on the back of the head when he had answered with a meek Probably….

Idiot boy! Wasuke had shouted. You’ll get yourself killed, thinking like that.

Sorry, grandpa, Itadori thinks fleetingly, jumping out the window after Junpei. But I’ve got a good reason for it this time. Promise. 

Yoshino crashes against the tin roof of an overhang above a portion of the first floor. He lies on the ridges for a moment, silent and shaking, before pushing himself up with his hands in partial fists. “Why are you so insistent on getting in my way?” he grits through his teeth.

Itadori fires cursed energy around his fists the second he lands on the overhang, slamming them downwards when Moon Dregs lashes out at him with poison spikes.

“Junpei, you really aren’t making any sense,” Itadori says matter-of-factly, straightening up his fighting stance in preparation for another attack. “Stringing together all these random ideals isn’t going to get you anywhere but in a box where you can’t see the light of life at all!”

He rushes towards Junpei suddenly, reeling back his fist. “You’re only trying to convince yourself you’re on the right side, here.” His fist slams into the side of Junpei’s face so harshly he’s propelled through yet another window, crashing into a hallway on the second floor.

Itadori jumps through the hole in the glass after him, hopping from the awning to the windowframe to the glass-covered floor.

“Itadori, you need to get back outside,” Sukuji warns him fretfully. “I’m serious. Please.”

I can’t, Itadori replies shortly. I can’t. He’ll run away.

“That’s a great idea!” Sukuji frantically replies. “Let’s all just run away now! Now, now! Before Mahito gets here, preferably!”

Itadori furrows his brow. Mahito’ll be here?

“They killed my mom!” Yoshino shouts suddenly. “That’s how I know that people don’t have hearts. Did they curse her and I? Is that why all of this is happening?” He rubs his wrists against his eyes, which tears fall from freely. “I must be cursed. Nothing like this ever happened before…”

Itadori’s eyes widen. “Junpei, I’m so sorry for your loss.” He takes a step towards the other boy, but freezes when his shoulders hike up in anticipation. “But can’t people with hearts curse other people too?”

“That’s worse!” Junpei shouts. He pulls his arm towards himself and summons Moon Dregs in a burst of cursed energy from his back. “I don’t even know what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are anymore!”

He points at Itadori. Moon Dregs shoots a venomous spike towards his chest, and Yuuji lets the attack hit. 

Junpei’s face falls into one of utter mortification. “Yuuji!”

Itadori grits his teeth against the pain as blood drips down the front of his uniform. He locks and unlocks his knees as Sukuna’s Reversed Curse Technique takes its sweet, sweet time closing the gap.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuji says, taking slow, heavy steps towards Yoshino. “I know I don’t understand everything that’s going on. And I’m sorry that you have to deal with any of it in the first place.” Blood trails behind his every step, but the wound is half-way healed by the time he crouches in front of his friend. “Tell me what happened. I swear to make things right, as right as I can. Please, Junpei.”

Yoshino stares at Yuuji’s face and, once more, cannot find a single misstep in his eyes or anywhere on his face. Sincerity is all he finds. Junpei feels foolish all of a sudden, for ever doubting his friend’s intentions. He always meant well.

He tells him everything. About being bullied, harassed, abused, and about meeting Mahito. What happened to the kids at the theater. Waking up and smelling blood and crying into his mother’s cold arms. Mahito, injecting himself into the equation again, sitting by his side and explaining about Sukuna’s finger. Being overcome with rage, and then falling into an unnerving calm. Attacking his classmates. The confliction he felt the second Yuuji’s face broke through the dismal scene of slumbering bodies on the floor, the weariness that overtook him so suddenly.

“I’m so sorry,” Itadori says, because what else can he really say? “I’m so sorry.”

He holds Junpei’s hands in his own and tries not to cry empathetically. Tears well up in his ducts despite his best efforts. The sound of Sukuji muffling his own sobs in his head probably doesn’t help either.

“Junpei,” Itadori says surely, “Join me at Jujutsu High. You’ll learn how to control these powers you have now. And it’s full of a ton of fun and interesting people!” He beams a teary grin. “You’ll never have another dull day. Excitement is around every corner! You’ll have good and reliable friends and teachers that really, actually care about you. Together, we can get revenge on the one who cursed your mom. C’mon. Say you will. Let’s fight together!”

Footsteps.

Mahito.

Itadori freezes in place at the sight of blue and gray eyes and skin stitched-together. Woah. He looks a lot bigger when he’s not… uhm… a cat.

“Hello,” Mahito sings cheerfully, pulling up the pieces of his fragmented sleeve, “Sukuna’s vessel.”

The curse’s arm bubbles, suddenly expanding, veins dilating with the motion. The skin shoots out towards Yuuji.

“Mahito, don’t!” Junpei shouts a moment too late (like the curse would listen to him in the first place).

Itadori sticks to a window like a skeeter squished between a fly swatter and a glass pane. And it hurts, suddenly and fully, whatever is happening. It feels like the life is being sucked out from under his skin, the way the large fingers crush into him, hold him in place, squeeze him like a stress ball.

“Junpei,” he grits out, “you need to get out of here! Run, now!”

“It’s okay!” Yoshino shouts as well as he can. “I know Mahito. He’s… not a bad person!”

“Yeah, because he’s not one!”

Junpei’s eyes widen.

“Look out!” Itadori shouts helplessly.

Mahito puts his hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Y’know, you’re a pretty smart kid, Junpei. Smarter than you give yourself credit for.” He grins, all teeth. “But thinking too much will just cause more foolishness than making an impulsive decision. You’ve gotta quit that overthinking habit of yours. It’s making you just as foolish as the fools that you yourself can’t stand.”

Junpei turns blue. And then swells. And then falls to the floor.

And Yuuji falls too, when the hand around himself retracts suddenly.

Yoshino rushes at him, full of fight and brainless in conviction. Itadori feels like crying. If he had just listened! Sukuji has been crying, loud and ugly, for so long that it sounds more like white noise than anything, than the sound of someone mourning for the very first time in their life.

“Stop it, Junpei,” Yuuji says, dodging a punch from the transfigured creature. He grabs onto its neck tightly, like he’s wrangling a crocodile. His voice cracks when he says, “Get a hold of yourself! I can heal you, I promise! Just calm down!”

Yoshino slams his fist into Yuuji’s side once. Then, twice. A third time. A fourth time.

“Sukuji, come on! Heal him!” Itadori yells. “You healed me before, right? Heal Junpei! Please heal Junpei!”

Sukuji sobs. “I can’t! Reversed Curse Technique can’t undo the effects of Idle Transfiguration.”

Yuuji’s frantic expression falls flat, like stone. His eyes widen. His lips part. “What?” he whispers.

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. So, so sorry. I–” Sukuji’s voice cracks “–I can’t! Before, I thought Sukuna was just being horrible, not healing Junpei, but I can’t do it!”

Itadori grits his teeth and squeezes Junpei’s neck tighter. “Just try!”

Mahito laughs. “Oh? Are you and Sukuna disagreeing on something?” He hums. “I’m so very curious as to what that could be.”

Sukuji tugs Itadori back into his innate domain and pours positive energy into Junpei’s amalgamated form. The transmigrated creature tears up. Sukuji tries and tries and pours out more, but nothing happens. Nothing changes. He grits his teeth and tears fall from his own eyes.

“Y-Yuuji,” Junpei-not-Junpei croaks. “Help… me.”

Sukuji balls his hands into fists as Yoshino’s grasp on him loosens. “Itadori, close your eyes,” he whispers.

Brown eyes retract from behind his skin. Only red remains, shining like blood beneath a microscope.

Mahito laughs and taunts and gloats and waves his hand dismissively and speaks and yaps and chortles, but Sukuji can’t hear a single stupid thing that flies out of his mouth. He just launches Itadori’s body at the curse so suddenly he doesn’t have time to dodge. Cursed energy slams into Mahito’s soul, jutting spikes into the side of his face.

Blood gushes from his nose, and Mahito pauses whatever it was he was saying to gape at the boy’s face. “Oh,” he mutters slowly. “Interesting… Are you actually aware of the shape of your soul?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Sukuji seethes.

Inside him, Itadori’s cursed energy rumbles. I WILL kill you, it sings, tone grating and loud, beating against his ribs. I WILL kill you.

The curse laughs heartily. “Didn’t you say that yesterday?”

Sukuji lunges at Mahito with a ferocity he isn’t sure comes purely from himself. Because, despite not being able to see anything that’s happening around them, Yuuji himself thrashes something fierce beneath his skin. It feels like they’ve merged together for this singular moment of revenge twice-scorned. Unanimous fury broils through every inch of their being.

Sukuji crashes against the walls of the school, chasing after his natural enemy, with Yuuji Itadori’s mirror image flushing cursed energy through his veins.

A punch. Another. Then another. Mahito sprouts wings, but they mean nothing when the vessel in front of him won’t give him a second to rest or fly away.

They make it up to another floor of the school and stand face-to-face for a mere instant before Sukuji lunges at Mahito again.

A string of blades like a deadly fishwire shoots out from Mahito’s sleeve, taking the place of his right arm. Sukuji lets the blades cut into him. He’s got enough cursed energy to go around. The wounds heal the second after they’re inflicted, and Sukuji cracks Mahito’s nose with a swift palm to the face.

The curse’s head snaps back, and when he looks back down at the boy, he wonders.

“Sukuna,” Mahito whispers, the sudden realization of who exactly he’s been fighting dawning on him like the chiming of chapel bells in Springtime.

Mahito morphs his arm into a cable and wraps it around Sukuji suddenly. He throws him out the window before watching him spiral towards the ground through the warm, afternoon air. He lands roughly, tumbling a few feet, before standing to his feet with a certain numbness like he felt walking through the tainted remnants of the Yoshinos’ happy home. The thick cord stays wrapped around him, and Sukuji grabs onto it tightly.

I… remember… this one, he thinks muddly, himself and Yuuji Itadori swirling like blood and water in the drain of a bathroom sink beneath his skin. Hold… on…

Spikes shoot through his hands for his efforts, but it's all for the better. He swings to the side, round and round, and Mahito comes flying out into the open like a fish on a line.

“Most people would’ve just let go,” Mahito calls from across the courtyard they’ve found themselves in, crouching in a line of emerald shrubbery. He pulls his arm back into himself and clenches his fist.

Sukuji pounds his fist into the concrete, splitting it all the way to the school’s foundation. Clouds of dust swarm their makeshift, outdoor arena, and Sukuji shoots through the mist and slams his fist into the side of Mahito’s face. He swings around, smacking a back kick into the curse’s side before jumping out of range of that patchwork skin.

Mahito shoots tusk-like spikes out from his torso. Too little, too late.

KILL him, Itadori’s cursed energy demands of him. Sukuji stumbles briefly, catching his breath as the dust and smoke fade to clear, mid-day air once again. KILL him. Now. Now!

Sukuji shoots forward like a rocket, jamming his elbow into the curse’s face. Don’t give him a chance to recover. He punches him, left, right, left, left, right.

Blood spurts into the air from every quarter of Mahito’s face, and Sukuji jumps back to avoid the spray. He freezes in place, suddenly feeling very, very foolish.

“I got caught up in the moment,” he mutters incomprehensibly to himself, the words slurred and nearly silent.

Mahito stumbles, tilting towards the ground. His eyes shift to the air behind Sukuji, and he knows what is to come.

Mahito appears behind him suddenly, hand in the shape of a large, spiked club.

Sukuji turns slowly and darkens his gaze. “Cl–”

Nanami appears between them. Sukuji does a double-take. No! No, no, not now, Nanamin, come on!

The Grade One Sorcerer slices against Mahito’s arm-not-arm and the curse jumps away.

Sukuji bares his teeth, gritting them almost painfully. “Get out of my way,” he seethes. “Nanamin, you need to step aside.”

Nanami turns towards Itadori, his face steely and focused. “I won’t,” he says. “You run away now, or we fight him together.”

Sukuji’s shoulders hunch up to his ears, every muscle in his arms flexing like he’s at a bodybuilding competition. He tilts his chin towards the ground. 

“I’ll lecture you later,” Nanami says, turning back towards the curse.

“Oh, Mr. Seven-to-Three!” Mahito greets cheerfully. “Good to see you’re alright, after earlier and all.”

Itadori’s cursed energy spikes at those words. KILL HIM!

Sukuji shoots towards the curse suddenly, mind blank, limbs moving without his permission. Punch. Kick. Punch. Dodge. Punch. Kick.

Nanami cuts a deep gash into the curse’s skin, but the wound seals up just a moment later.

Kick. Cleave. Punch. Seven-to-Three.

Mahito looks less like a person and more like a meat pretzel with every hit.

KILL HIM.

Seven-to-Three. Punch. Seven-to-Three. Punch. Punch. Punch.

A transmigrated human shoots out from Mahito’s palm, jumping onto Sukuji’s chest like a clingy babe. He jabs his hand through its chest and tosses it off of him to the side. It cries out, green and ugly and screeching with pain, asking to die, but the only thing on his mind is killing the curse in front of him.

Seven-to-Three. Punch. Cleave.

A sudden, nearly silent brush of wind. “Domain Expansion.” Hands in formation in an open, somewhat toothless, bloody mouth. “Self-Embodiment of Perfection.”

Sukuji and Nanami both become trapped in a realm of darkness and inhumanely large hands. 

“No…” Nanami mutters. 

“I’m grateful,” Mahito says softly, lightly, like a boy confessing his first love to the printed picture of his second-grade teacher. “I’m so very grateful.”

Sukuji leaps towards him, arms close in front of him, his entire body in active motion and jetting through the air. His eyes, red like rubies, glint with such murderous intent Mahito’s own eyes widen in surprise.

He presses his hands together, folding his pinkies and his thumbs. “Domain Expansion,” he chants. “Malevolent Shrine!”

The hands disappear, and everything is red. A shrine with gnawing teeth before a gullet of empty space comes to life where Mahito’s crowd of fingers once resided. The air is heavy with glory and gore. 

Nanami cranes his neck to examine the structure, the piles and clusters of human heads around it, and the ribcage that obscures any clear view of the ceiling of the domain. He turns towards Itadori—no, that’s Sukuna, he now knows—and the way he battles the curse not like an ancient sorcerer-turned-curse fighting for dominion over this singular instance of time and space, but like a man who is battle-tested and weary and furious.

Sukuji swipes his hand and a silent and nearly invisible slice of cursed energy cuts through the boundaryless space. Nanami has half a second to throw up a Simple Domain before the sure-hit attack slices him in two. 

Mahito, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky. He’s so unlucky, in fact, that the attack cuts him just the same way as he cut through Sukuji back in Junpei’s kitchen, right at the hip. He falls to a pathetically motionless heap in the red, red, red ground of Malevolent Shrine. 

Sukuji rolls the curse’s hips back and forth like a soccer ball. “Come on,” he says lightly, like a parent waking their child for school. “Up and at ‘em, Mahito.” He presses his heel into the curse’s somewhat-human semblance of a hipbone. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Nanami watches the encounter with teeth grit behind his lips and wonders how he couldn’t tell he had been speaking to Sukuna rather than Itadori the whole time when it seems so obvious now. Because that thing haughtily taunting, berating, the Idle Transfiguration user hardly looks human at all. 

Mahito, in defence of his own life, continues to play dead. Sukuji presses his foot into his hip even harder, but no protest escapes his lips. It is a terribly strange sensation, though, the deep pressure of the King of Curse’s heel against flesh that is no longer connected to his brain, the nervous system that resides all around him, for what is a line of code without its parent software?

Yuuji’s attention suddenly wavers from within him. Junpei, he cries out mournfully. 

Sukuji loses his focus for half a second, but that is all the time Mahito needs to stitch himself back together and leap several yards away from him. 

Sukuji feels his adrenaline seep out through his skin, knees nearly buckling at the sudden sense of calm that washes over him. He presses his nails into the palms of his hands and bites his tongue, drawing blood to regain his focus. 

“It’s been fun, I will say,” Mahito says. “But wouldn’t you agree that we’ve dragged things on long enough?”

“We’re not finished until I say we are.” Sukuji glowers. “Cleave,” he demands. 

Mahito complies as well as he can, being split from spine to shoulder, and this attack somehow hurts worse than the sure-hit one had. The fragile orb of Mahito’s very first domain expansion shatters around them, the red ambiance of Malevolent Shrine fading along with it. 

In a final act of refusal to lie down and die, Mahito swells himself into a morbidly human-shaped balloon. Sukuji stutters in his step, startled by the large target he comes face-to-face with. 

“Are you stupid or something?” Nanami asks Mahito flatly, running towards Sukuji. He stops by his side like a fellow recruit awaiting their sergeant’s orders. “On my count. One.”

Mahito warbles in his inhuman size, mouth swollen like the rest of him. His words are as inconsequential as they are incomprehensible. 

“Two.”

Sukuji drops low into a runner’s starting position, fingertips on the dirt and knees bent in different directions. 

“One.”

Sukuji bolts to Mahito, swinging a heavy punch towards the part of his gut he can reach. His eyes widen when his body starts moving by itself. Itadori rips his way past his conscience, shoving Sukuji back into his innate domain. The King of Curses shouts indigently, but all Itadori can hear is the pounding rush of blood in his ears. 

“Divergent Fist!”

The curse pops like a balloon, disappearing from sight in an instant. Itadori freezes in place, relieved and confused in equal measure. “Huh?”

“The sewer grate!” Sukuji bellows. “Itadori, turn around!”

Mahito shimmies through the bars. Nanami strikes the metal with his still-sheathed blade, splitting the horizontal entrance but missing his mark. “Dang it.”

He yanks his phone from his pocket and explains the situation to Ino, directing his task of scouring the surrounding area for the curse that got away.

Itadori staggers in place, struggling to remain upright after all of the fighting and mauling and being-mauled he just went through. He tips forward suddenly, but stubbornly sticks out his foot to keep himself from falling. 

“Kill,” he mutters, the words sliding nearly silently off of his tongue, swollen and cottony and heavy in his mouth, “‘Swear I’ll… kill you.”

His vision blurs. The sight of Nanami approaching him strikes him as odd because isn’t he supposed to have just one head? Where’d that other, very warbly one come from?

Itadori crashes heavily to the ground before Kento is able to reach him. He breathes in deeply, shuddering out his exhale, and Sukuji blows the cool, cool water of Reversed Curse Technique into the rivers and streams of his blood.

“Itadori!” Nanami exclaims, although no sound reaches the student’s ears.

As his consciousness evades him, Itadori just can’t help but wonder. What even is a proper death? 

Darkness.

Chapter Text

“Gojo-sensei, I’m not sure if this is such a good idea,” Yuuji trails off, eyeing the metal case in front of him with unbridled uncertainty. “It seems pretty mean, no?”

Gojo barks out a laugh. “Oh, it is!” he exclaims cheerfully, slapping his student’s back repeatedly. “They’ll love it!”

“I dunno…”

Gojo grins sharply. “Get in the box.”

Itadori rolls his eyes, climbing into the storage container despite his uncertainty. “Your funeral,” he mutters smartly. 

Sukuji taps against his eyelids. “Your funeral,” he objects, “everybody already knows how stupid Gojo is. You’re gonna make them think you’re a complete jerk if you go through with this. They’re gonna freak out. I’d recommend getting out of here while you still can, brat.”

Itadori taps the side of his head with a flat palm. “I get it, geez. I don’t think it’s a good idea either.”

Gojo grins at him while he closes the lid. “Bye-bye, Yuuji!”

The boy’s hand shoots out without his permission, preventing the top of the box from being properly placed. Gojo raises an eyebrow in question at the motion but pulls it back ever so slightly. 

A mouth full of teeth springs to life below Itadori’s left eye. “Listen to this, Gojo,” the mouth says. “I’ll only say it once.”

Gojo pulls back the lid fully now, gesturing in a continuing motion. “Go on.”

“The Kyoto students will be instructed to try and assassinate my vessel on sight.”

Itadori tenses his shoulders at the words. “Wait, you mean…”

“In addition, the Special Grade curse from before will infiltrate the event.”

Gojo hums, a carefree hand on his hip. “The Mt. Fuji one or the flowery one?” he asks. 

“The… flowery one.” Sukuji rolls his eyes. “Hanami.”

“Nanami?!”

“No—are you hard of hearing? This is a genuine question.” His lips purse in a visible show of the curse’s dwindling patience. 

“No,” Gojo says, laughing lightly. “Just poking a bear with a very long stick.”

He pats his student’s head repeatedly, leading to Itadori swatting his hand away. “Everything’ll be fine,” the teacher says, grinning. “Just leave it to me, okay?”

Sukuji curls his exterior lips. “Saving face in front of your morally wounded student, are you?”

“Hey,” Itadori protests, squinting. 

Gojo’s smile tightens. “Whatever do you mean, Su-ku-ji? Could it not be that I, the great Satoru Gojo, is simply strong enough to be reasonably confident in my own abilities?”

“Unlikely.”

Gojo sighs and tosses his head to the side like he’s projecting him rolling his eyes through a larger motion. “Relax, kid. I’ve got it all under control.” He grins when Sukuji sighs. “You’ll get through this a-okay. The both of you,” he adds, looking into Itadori’s eyes. “Trust me.”

“Oh,” Sukuji says quickly, “and one more thing.”

Gojo raises a brow.

“Your traitor is Mechamaru.”

Gojo hums, staring at the mouth. “So you knew about that too, huh? I think you and me will need to have a very long discussion on when to disclose information soon.”

He closes the box.

As the cart is wheeled along, bumping over uneven spots in the concrete and rumbling over spats of gravel beneath the wheels, Itadori closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. It’s been ages since he’s seen anyone his own age who isn’t dead currently. To say he’s excited to see Kugisaki and Fushiguro again would be a stark understatement.

Nevertheless, he twiddles his thumbs anxiously.

“You’ll be fine,” Sukuji says, now wholly confined to his innate domain, the mouth on his vessel’s cheek only an obscured slit below his eye, “I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun today, meeting new people and overcoming new challenges.”

Itadori hums and rests his head on his own shoulder. “Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” the curse says quietly. “It was a pretty awesome day.”

“Are you gonna, uh,” Itadori clears his throat. “Do you have any plans to take over at the exchange event?”

“No,” Sukuji replies. “I’ll only help out if you need me. I wasn’t lying when I said today will be a good learning experience for you.”

“You never said that.”

“I alluded to it.”

Itadori sighs. “Okay, fine. But just promise me you’ll help out if the others end up being in danger.”

“Sure. I can do that.”

The box suddenly stops moving, and Itadori feels Gojo kick the side of the box with his shoe. He wiggles his fingers and takes in a deep breath.

“That’s my cue,” he says to himself.

Sukuji replies, “Knock ‘em dead.”

“Ta-da! It’s your long dead friend, Yuuji!”

Itadori stands up abruptly, shaking his fingers in jazz hands at his side. “Hey, hey, hey!” he exclaims, grinning brightly from ear to ear, his eyes closed in jubilation.

After a moment of silence, he cracks open his eyes and stops shaking his palms.

Hey, is that a panda?

“Itadori, you dumbass!” Kugisaki exclaims loudly, marching over to him with furrowed brows and a curled lip. “You let us think you died!”

Itadori laughs sheepishly. “But I did, though.”

“Idiot,” Fushiguro remarks unkindly, smacking him up-side the head.

“Ow,” Itadori murmurs, rubbing the back of his skull with his hand. “Not cool, man.”

He hops out of the container and stifles his laugh when Gojo tosses the cart and the box into a bush behind him in one fell swoop. The steel crumples branches and leaves to the ground, digging itself into the dirt enough to make it look like it wasn’t put there on purpose like it was.

“I think you’ve got something to say to us,” Nobara scolds him, voice taught and eyes misty. She nudges Fushiguro harshly. “Right?”

The other boy nods.

“Uh,” Yuuji says, thinking about it. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I’ve been alive… this whole time?”

Kugisaki takes her turn slapping him on the back of the head. “Darn right you are!” She curses again, “Dumbass!”

“Okay, okay! Geez!” Itadori exclaims, hopping away from her. “Why didn’t anybody tell me that it’s Pick-on-Yuuji-Day?”

Sukuji snorts. “I did.”

You don’t count.

“That is rude and untrue.”

“You’re telling me you really didn’t expect this?” the girl from the group of students with the panda asks him. “Did you lose all your sense spending so much time with that idiot Gojo?”

“He’s not an idiot,” he grumbles, crossing his arms.

The girl sighs. “Oh, you did. There’s no hope for you, now.”

He sticks his tongue out at her.

………

Jujutsu Technical High School Tokyo-Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event.

Day One: Wacky Cursed Spirit Exorcism Race!

“Some people might call this… no, this is crazy extreme bullying, you guys,” Itadori wallows, holding an empty, wooden memorial frame in front of his face. “I actually died, you know. It wasn’t all training to catch up and scheming how to make you feel bad about not knowing I wasn’t actually dead. My heart was literally ripped out of my chest.”

Kugisaki crosses her arms heavily and huffs, but doesn’t say anything. Fushiguro won’t even look at him.

“Cut him some slack, you guys,” Panda says sympathetically. “He seems honest enough.”

“Salmon, salmon,” Toge agrees unsurely.

“Salmon… salmon?” Itadori repeats, confusion lacing every syllable.

Toge squints at him, crossing his arms. “Pollack roe.”

“Uh…”

“Inumaki’s cursed technique can let him control how people act, so he has to choose his words carefully,” Fushiguro explains. “To mitigate any confusion, and to protect himself and others, he just speaks in rice ball ingredients.”

“Oh,” Itadori replies, “But that actually… makes me more confused.”

“Bonito flakes,” Inumaki replies dryly.

The conversation lulls.

I thought we were supposed to be planning our strategy for the event today…

“Itadori,” Maki says, walking towards him. “You borrowed Slaughter Demon from Gojo, didn’t you? That blade is mine, and I’d like it back.”

Itadori thinks back. …Like, way back, at least a month back. That’s pretty far back.

He grips his chin. I totally broke that thing, didn’t I?

The Detention Center flashes in his mind.

Yeah… I definitely broke it.

“Gojo has it,” he says as innocently as he can.

“That blindfolded dumbass has it? Great.” She crosses her arms and clicks her tongue in irritation. “If he lost my blade or broke it, I’ll shove any remaining shards of it up his ass.”

Okay. That’s terrifying.

Sukuji laughs unexpectedly, causing Itadori to jolt in place. “If you think she’s terrifying now, just wait until her sister dies.”

What?!

Itadori turns towards Maki slowly, a shaky grin on his face. “Hey, uh, Maki-senpai, you don’t happen to have a sister, do you?”

The girl glares at him, teeth tight behind her cheeks. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Oh, uh,” he stammers, looking away from her. “No particular reason…. She—uh, I mean, that is, if you do have a sister—wouldn’t happen to be sickly, would she? Or, uhm, on death’s… door?”

“Bonito flakes,” Toge says with a sigh.

Maki scoffs. “Forget that.” She turns towards the other members of their group, taking charge of the situation like a good upperclassman ought to. “What’s our new course of action for this event? We’ll have to expand our original plans since Itadori has conveniently risen from the dead.”

“Well, let’s figure this out,” Panda says, turning towards Itadori. “What are your specialties, Itadori?”

“Punching,” he supplies, listing his skillset with his fingers, “kicking, running… uh… Sukuji could help, but he says today will be a ‘good learning experience’ for us or whatever, so he might not come out at all.”

Maki raises an eyebrow. “You’d let the King of Curses loose at a school event?” She closes her eyes and sighs. “No, let me rephrase that. ‘You’d let the King of Curses loose’ at all?”

“He isn’t so bad,” Itadori mutters. “And he could really help us out, y’know.”

“Pollack roe,” Toge predicts. “Caviar, pollack roe.”

“...Either way, we’ve got enough ‘punchers’, ‘kickers’, and ‘runners’,” Panda replies. “If Suku…ji, was it? wants to help us out, I reckon we should give him a shot.”

“No,” Maki says quickly. “We can’t risk him going out of control. Even if Itadori here thinks he can reign in Ryomen Sukuna of all people, our best bet is to assume that to be untrue, if only because of the slight possibility that putting our trust in him could backfire.”

“Salmon,” Inumaki agrees assuredly.

“Our best bet actually is to have a little faith,” Fushiguro retorts coolly. “I met Sukuji back at the Detention Center. He isn’t… so bad. It might be beneficial to us if we agree to let him help out if we need it.”

“Aw, man,” Itadori remarks, curling his lips down, suddenly feeling bashful.

“Plus, on the off chance he does go out of control, there are dozens of high-grade sorcerers on campus that can put him down.”

“Aw, man,” Itadori repeats, his appreciation replaced by irritation in an instant.

“How strong could Sukuji be with just two fingers, anyway?” Fushiguro tacks on for good measure. “A handful of us might be able to take him on if we tried hard enough.”

“Too true,” a mouth on the back of Itadori’s hand agrees. “My current cursed energy is about equal to that of a fourth-grade sorcerer. You’d do fine taking me down. Although… if I use my cursed technique, you might have some trouble.”

Inumaki points at Itadori’s hand, sharply barking, “Don’t move!”

Sukuji laughs breathily. “Nice reflexes, sorcerer. Probably ain’t a good idea to waste so much cursed energy before the day’s even begun, though.”

The second Toge’s cursed technique wears off, Itadori slaps the back of his hand. “Wow!” he exclaims loudly, louder than necessary, a nervous grin on his face. “Sorry about that! He’s usually only this… uh… irritating when Gojo’s around!”

“I am around!” Gojo stands up from behind the bench Panda and Toge had been sitting against, stretching his arms into the air like a cheap imitation of a seastar. “Hiya!”

“Gojo, you blade-stealing bastard,” Maki seethes, not turning her head from Itadori, opting to keep a close eye on his hands, her own clenched into loose fists in front of her neck. Her eyes flick towards the dripping marks on his cheeks and then back to his hands. “Why exactly have you allowed that horrible thing to remain even partially unsealed?”

“What, you mean Sukuji?” he asks lightly, hopping into the air to crouch on the stone bench behind Panda and Toge. Gojo waves his hand dismissively. “He’s cool. You can relax.”

“You seriously cannot–”

“At ease,” he demands. “Are you so unsure of my special skillset that you think I’d fail to take down a curse at one tenth of its full power?”

Maki falters. “Well…”

“I’d win,” Gojo says assuredly.

“World-Cutting Slash,” Sukuji mutters offhandedly from the hand Itadori used to cover his mouth on the other one. “That’s an attack that would ensure my victory.”

Gojo eyes Sukuji’s mouth carefully at his words. Sukuji shuts it in response to his scrutiny.

………

“Are you okay?” Fushiguro asks him, his hand in his pocket. “You know, after your time spent playing dead?”

Itadori nods slowly. “Yeah? Nothing happened,” he replies assuredly, but he can’t help the way his eyebrows tilt.

Fushiguro stares at him, leaning on his back leg. “You’re lying.”

“Wh– you can tell? Uh, I mean, yeah,” he admits quickly, drooping at the shoulders. “Something did happen, but it's only made me more ready to get stronger. We’re gonna win today. I just know it.”

“Good,” Fushiguro replies as he walks past his classmate and towards the rest of their team. “I don’t wanna lose either.”

“Quit chatting about losing, you losers,” Kugisaki gripes. “Just hurry up so we can get started already.”

Maki sighs and shifts her grip on her bo staff. “Where is that idiot Gojo?”

“Up here!” a voice sounds from high above.

Itadori cranes his neck to stare up into the sky, squinting his eyes against the sun. There’s… something up there.

“It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Satoru Gojo!” Gojo himself cheers, swooping down towards the students like Peter Pan. “I’ll be supervising you guys from the skies, obviously! How else could I… uh… keep an eye on your progress without getting in the way?”

“Salmon, kelp, mustard leaf.”

“I know, right?” Panda translates, “There’s no way he can’t get in the way, even at a distance.” He turns to Gojo. “No offense.”

“None detected!”

Maki taps the butt of her weapon against the stones. “Alright, dumbass, if you’re gonna supervise, go supervise. Just do it somewhere else, preferably far, far away from here. We have an event to win.”

Gojo laughs good-heartedly. “You heard the lady! Give it your best, guys!”

Itadori grins. “Aye-aye!”

Gojo flies back towards the clouds, whooping or laughing periodically like he never gets the chance to just play around and relax despite playing around and relaxing by avoiding clan duties on a regular basis. “We’ll be starting the event in T-fifty-nine seconds!” he calls into the forest, hands cupped around his lips like any sound amplification short of a megaphone will have any use in spreading the news. “T-fifty-eight! T-fifty-seven!”

Kugisaki groans. “He’s gonna count down all the way, isn’t he?”

Inumaki concurs, “Pollack roe.”

“T-fifty-three! T-...three, two, one, go!”

The Tokyo team bursts through the gate and into the woods like bats out of hell. Fushiguro summons his Divine Dog and Kuro gallops near the center of the group as they travel towards the center of the event area, assuming the grade 2 curse they’re to exorcise would be released somewhere evenly between the release points for both teams.

Running through the forest, they come across a curse like a giant spider dropping down from the branch of a tree. It's the size of a guitar and redder than a cherry. Maki rushes towards it, bo staff at the ready. Kuro juts his head to the side.

“Maki, wait,” Fushiguro shouts.

The upperclassman stops in her step quickly and the rest of the team follows. A burst of sudden wind breaks branches and dust from their spots on the earth, and a student bulkier than most modern bodybuilders intercedes their path with the interruption.

“Perfect,” the Kyoto student, whom Sukuji tells Itadori is named “Todo”, says lowly. “You’re all here. Go ahead and come at me, all at once!”

“Scatter!” Maki calls, and they do.

Toge, Panda, and Kugisaki to the right. Fushiguro and Maki to the left. Itadori, straight into Todo’s face with a sharp knee to the nose.

Itadori kicks into Aoi’s chest harshly, breaking the contact between them. Todo grins, spitting out blood but not appearing shaken in the slightest.

He keeps his stance loose and low, while Itadori grins nervously. I coulda sworn that landed harder.

“You’ve got speed, I’ll give you that,” Aoi compliments. He stands up sharply and stretches his back. “Act like your life’s at stake. I’m about to repay the favor!”

Itadori’s eyes widen as Todo shoots towards him. The air around them whooshes like a sudden hurricane, and he watches as Todo’s fist stops short to tear apart that spider curse from earlier. The blast from his attack pushes past the curse and shoves Itadori clear across the remaining straight stretch of the path from the Tokyo team’s preparation room, up into the air, and back down against the trunk of a hard-barked tree.

Itadori spits onto the dirt in front of him, coughing at the pressure in his throat. He breathes in shakily. I don’t even wanna think about what would’ve happened to me if that curse hadn’t been in the way.

He looks up just in time to see the bottom of Todo’s shoe heading towards his face.

“Grk–!” Itadori rolls to the side suddenly, breaking the surface of the dirt with the toes of his sneakers as he twists suddenly and brings his arms in front of his face, blocking a side kick to the face.

“Even faster than I thought you were!” Todo exclaims, rushing towards Itadori with a myriad of punches. “You’re not just fast, you’re crazy fast.”

Itadori takes a harsh blow to the shoulder, one that slams him into yet another tree. His right arm twitches at the compression in his joint, fingers spasming intermittently. “Gee, thanks,” he says sarcastically as he stands.

Todo rushes towards him again, but Itadori jumps over his arms to kick out at his head. Todo grabs his ankle before it can make contact, spinning him around twice before launching him into another tree, near a thicker collection of branches than visible from down below. He grabs onto the pine as tightly as he can, only wincing at the needles that poke into his skin.

Sukuji restores his shoulder to full function, redirecting his nociceptors away from the needles’ location so his vessel can hold onto the tree branches for a longer period of time.

“Aw, why so bashful?” Todo asks from the ground. “Come down so I can introduce you to my lovely Takeda. I think the two of you would get along.”

Itadori furrows his brows. “I don’t care about some stupid idol, man!”

Todo repeats slowly, “Stupid… idol.”

“And you’re the one who threw me up here!” he continues to protest.

“Yes,” Aoi confirms, “but how will we be able to continue our great battle of strength when you’re so far away from me?”

“I don’t know,” Itadori retorts. “Maybe you should have thought about that earlier.”

Jackass.

Todo hums. “Well… oh! How about this? You stay up there and scout out your team members, tell me where they are, and I’ll pummel them while you stay up there and cower.”

“No,” Itadori says immediately. “Are you crazy? Just come and fight me up here.”

“Hmm… Come and fight you up there, you say?”

Aoi claps, and the tree Itadori is holding onto disappears into thin air. Itadori flounders before realizing that not only is he falling, but Todo is too. And he’s hugging his opponent. That’s awkward.

“Let me ask you one thing, competent opponent!” Todo exclaims as the two of them are plummeting towards the ground.

“Wait–land first, talk later!”

Todo clicks his tongue. “No, no, this just cannot wait.”

Itadori glances down briefly, regretting it a moment later. The ground is moving way too fast.

Todo claps again, and Itadori is standing on a tree branch. He fumbles with his balance for a moment before grabbing onto the thin and bending pine as it slowly tilts towards another tree. 

In another clap, Aoi himself is beside him. The top of the tree starts to creak, like it’ll snap from its stump soon and send them tumbling through the forest.

“What kind of woman is your type?”

Itadori blinks, and then he blinks again. “Uhm. What? You wanna– Okay, you know what? I like real tall girls with a big ass.”

Sukuji snorts.

Aoi’s eyes widen exponentially, his pupils dilating like he’s just started staring at the sun. His hands fall flat at his sides, and he begins to plummet towards the ground.

Itadori sighs. “This guy,” he says irritatedly.

He jumps off the tree, letting all the branches around him slow his descent enough that landing on the ground isn’t as much of the mammoth task that he thought it would be. Todo keeps falling above him, banging into the bole of half a dozen pines on the way down.

Aoi crashes into the dirt a few yards in front of him and stays there.

“Is he okay?” Itadori asks Sukuji unsurely, approaching his literally downed opponent.

“Uh… sure,” replies his parasite.

“What do you mean ‘uh, sure’?”

Sukuji rolls a marble back and forth on the top of the table he sits at with his finger. “I dunno. This never happened with me.”

“He didn’t go catatonic and unresponsive at the same time?” Itadori asks, crossing his arms as he reaches Todo’s side. “That seems like a pretty important thing to mention.”

“Oh, no, that totally happened,” Sukuji replies. “Strange as it may be, that’s actually a pretty important point in his development. And yours.”

“Right…”

Todo starts crying.

Itadori squints at the sight. He crouches down beside the boy, confused beyond belief. “What the heck is going on right now?”

“You… you never lost anyone in your hometown, huh?”

Itadori blinks owlishly. “Huh?”

“We were meant to be best friends,” he adds deliriously, sniffling. “Just as we are.”

“Huh?”

Itadori’s head ducks to the side without his consent just as a gust of air shoots past his neck. Two more shots follow, one weak clap proceeding the second.

There’s a girl standing in front of him with a gun in his face.

“HUH!?”

Itadori punches her straight in the face on instinct. She stumbles backwards at the surprising contact, tripping heavily over Aoi, still lying on the ground and leaking from the nose and eyes.

Todo claps again, and the girl, dazed and groaning, is replaced by another girl with long, blue hair. She grips her katana shakily, hand trembling on the handle.

Darkness surrounds Itadori all of a sudden, and he jumps as high as he can out of the strange new atmosphere. He backsprings away from the girl and Todo, landing a backflip and then on his feet a yard and a half away.

Up in the trees, an arrow aims for his head. A weird-looking treebark-mech thing powers up a blazing palm in his direction.

Okay, Itadori decides to himself, this is way too weird.