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The sound of Naoya's bones snapping under her fist held a moment of finality. It felt so good to hear; almost euphoric.
She had burnt it all down, cleared the chess board with a single piece.
Clan Zenin was dead, by the sword hanging from her hand, holding the last of Mai's soul.
Maki lifted her head from staring at Naoya's crumpled, bleeding body, taking in the setting sun. Should she feel grief? The Zenin's were gone, besides herself, but so was Mai. The space in her heart, carefully reserved for her sister, now stood hollow and echoing. The feeling tore at her, but no tears fell.
The corner of her lip twitched. She could almost hear Mai's voice in her ear. Hard-ass.
A strained laugh escaped from her, shaking and maniacal, echoing over the empty, bloodied hills. Oh, she had really lost it this time. She felt so tired and broken, but here she was, laughing.
Get a grip.
Before she could go through with that, though, the world was spinning around her, and the breeze flitting through her hair began to smell cloyingly sweet. Alarm bells sounded in her head… or was that just the pounding of her headache?
Was this another one of Naoya's tricks? Did she fail to finish him off?
Maki weakly reached for Mai's sword, but her hand missed by a fraction of an inch, falling uselessly to her side, before she was falling, too, and the sandy ground was rushing to meet her.
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Her vision came back blurry, like trying to stare through condensation on a window.
The sunlight beaming down on her was blinding. Wait, sunlight? Hadn't the sun been setting?
She went to quickly sit up, only to find she already was, almost toppling to her side again. There was wood underneath her. Where…?
"Easy, kid."
She tensed, her vision clearing as she searched for the source, her hand once more reaching for her weapon, just to find it gone. Her hand brushed unfamiliar fabric hanging from her hips. She was wearing a kimono? That couldn't be right.
Her misbehaving eyes finally locked on the large figure seated beside her, and she tamped down the strangled noise that begged to escape her raw throat.
He looked familiar, with flat black hair, the trademark nose that all the Zenin's seem to have, and a deep scar painting his lips. He was dressed similarly to her, in suffocating traditional garb. Power seeped off him in waves, but it wasn't cursed energy. It was something else…something she had felt in herself.
"Who are you?"
Maki was surprised by the steadiness in her own voice. If this was a Zenin she had missed, and this was some strange domain, she would defeat him, too. She promised to kill them all, and she would.
She finally recognized her surroundings, scanning them in the corner of her eye, even as she continued to stare at the strange man. The courtyard of the clan. But…that couldn't be right, either. She had left the flowerbeds soaked in red, the lifeless bodies of her family flung across the walks, and this very wooden bench she was seated on had been obliterated by a flying katana. She may or may not have been the one who threw it.
Now she knew it wasn't just her eyes. The scene was grainy, like the visage of a memory; the light streaming through the trees too golden to be real. This had to be dream of a moment she never could quite remember, or had never lived.
"I wouldn't call it a dream." The man yawned, as if he could read her mind, and was tired of just how boring it was.
Maki turned her head to him, and her loosely tied hair drifted down her back with the movement. Well, that was strange. She wasn't supposed to have that anymore.
She lifted her arms.
The burns from the fire curse were gone, too. A pair of round glasses were perched on the edge of her nose, confirming her suspicions. This was a version of herself she had left behind years ago, just like this very 'memory.'
"Who are you?"
Her voice stayed steady. Maybe this strange man had answers, or this really was just a dream, brought on by her exhaustion.
"…I don't think that's important. We're here to talk about you, kid."
Her eyebrow raised noncommittally. "You look familiar."
"I've got one of those faces."
Maki wasn't so sure about that, but something about his eyes reminded her of a certain junior of hers. Said junior also managed to hold an odd resemblance to a sea urchin, though, so she couldn't really be sure.
She shrugged, closing her eyes against the breeze teasing the folds of her traditional clothing. Her instincts were telling her that there was no danger here. Just a balance she needed to maintain.
"Am I dying?"
The idea didn't scare Maki as much as she thought it would. It actually made sense. She had lost the fight with Naoya, and those last seconds of consciousness had been an illusion to make herself feel better. At least Mai was waiting for her.
Oddly enough, the man barked a laugh.
"Hell no. Quite the opposite, actually. You're being reborn."
She cracked an eye open. "I sure hope you're not trying to give me some motivational speech right now."
"Oh, you're funny. My son could stand to learn from you. 'Angsty little guy, I'll tell ya."
"Your son?" She faked curiosity. Small talk was easy, and it would suffice until she could understand just what was happening right now.
The man sniffed. "Not important, we're gettin' off topic. Tell me, kid, what's your name?"
Maki was about to suspect he was tricking her into a binding vow, but that couldn't be right. He didn't have an ounce of cursed energy in his body.
"Maki."
"No Zenin?"
"Not anymore."
He smiled, which looked strange on him, like he wasn't quite sure how to do it, or it had been a long time since he had done it last.
"Nice. Your sister?"
She turned her head to him again. How did he know she had a sister?
"Mai?"
"Matching names. Ugh, I always found those annoying,"
She bristled, but he continued, unfazed. "Maki, have you ever heard of Heavenly Restriction?"
"Once."
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Maki sat in stunned silence, letting his words sink in.
"You're Toji?"
Leaving out each other's last name seemed to be an unspoken rule between them, now that she knew what happened.
Throughout the hours they had been here, the light never changed. She didn't get tired, or hungry. She just listened to him…her estranged, dead cousin; speak. He told her about his own abuse that he'd suffered in this clan. The binding vow that made him weak in their eyes, and how that hadn't been the case at all. The distance of the bench between them became more comfortable, and the earlier charge left the air. He gave, while she took.
"Yeah." He leaned back, sighing, as if his reputation exhausted him.
He looked almost confused when Maki suddenly laughed, turning his head with a squint.
"Naoya was scared shitless of you. He thought you were the boogeyman."
Toji smirked. "That's good to hear. That little sucker always pissed me off."
The two chuckled, and the abusrdity of the moment crashing down hard on Maki. A dead man and a mass-murderer, laughing inside a long-lost memory. She must've been horribly concussed in that fight.
"Say, Maki, are you close to anyone?"
"Hm?"
His voice had taken a softer tone when he asked, and Maki was pleasantly surprised. Instead of answering her hum, he tilted his head, as if to say, 'well?'
"Well…," She tipped her head to the side, fixing her eyes on a waving branch. If only the Zenin clan had been as peaceful as this vision made it look.
"I have friends. Toge, Panda…Yuta."
"Did you just say Pand-… ya know what? Never mind. You like this…'Yuta' boy, right?"
Maki jolted. "Excuse me?"
This man had some nerve to say that so brazenly.
Toji waved his finger in a circle by his temple. "Remember, I can see in your mind, kid."
"Tch." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Rude."
Did he have no understanding of privacy?
His laugh was becoming a familiar sound now, and this time he clapped a hand on her shoulder, before his features flattened, and he leaned in like he was about to tell a secret. Maki leaned away, half expecting his breath to smell rancid.
Surprisingly, it didn't.
"Hang on to that boy. I lost my anchor, and it was the end of me."
With the way his tone lilted, Maki could tell he was trying to put a humourus tone to it, but was failing pretty spectacularly.
"Your anchor?"
"You ask a lot of questions."
"It's a good quality to have."
He huffed. "Right you are. She was my wife. That's where my son came from."
Maki was getting a bad suspicion of who this 'son' was.
"Listen, kid. She…saved me in a way, so…" He grimaced. "Ugh, I hate talking about this emotional shit."
"Take your time, Toji. I've only been here for a couple hours now." Her sarcasm wasn't harsh, just teasing.
"Oh, fuck you, kid."
Maki stuck her tongue out at him.
He made a similar face back before continuing.
"When she died, I didn't…I…well, to put it simply, lost my marbles. And when someone has Heavenly Restriction like ours, keeping track of all your marbles is kinda important. I mean," He cast a hand out to gesture at the peaceful courtyard in front of them. "Look what you did after Mai kicked the bucket."
The scene was missing the chaos he was meaning to point out, but Maki didn't bother to comment on that, passively listening to him speak.
"Good job on killing them all, by the way. That was fucking awesome."
She snorted.
Toji finally stood, their shared bench creaking under the loss of his weight. Maki raised her eyebrows. Damn, he was even taller than he looked.
"well, I guess it's been fun, but I've gotta run soon." He said it so casually, like they were out at brunch or something, and he had to catch the train home.
"Got a lot of errands in the afterlife?" Maki offered, standing also.
He smirked. "You have no idea."
An awkward silence loomed between them, and they both tried to break it at the same time.
"I-"
"H-"
Maki coughed loudly, and Toji sighed like this was the worst day of his…not-life.
"You first, kid."
"I meant to say 'thank you.' But now, that I know you almost killed my really annoying teacher, I would like to willingly pledge my life to you."
"Gojo's a teacher now? Jesus christ." Toji looked so disgusted by the idea that Maki couldn't stifle her chuckle.
"-Anyway," He frowned. "Thanks for doing what I didn't. That clan deserved to die…I'm sorry about what happened to Mai though."
Maki groaned. "What did I say about the dramatics?"
Toji waggled his eyebrows, as if he had personally taken it upon himself to piss her off. "Hey, she sounds nice."
"First of all, I didn't tell you enough about her for you to know that, second, she was an absolute bitch, and third, you two would have gotten along very well." She jabbed a finger at him, a grin cracking across her mask of fake anger.
Toji reached over and roughly ruffled her hair. "I'm sure of that."
He looked into the distance, like he was seeing something she couldn't, and it was easy to tell their time had come to an end.
Maki slapped his hand away like it was an annoying pest.
"Goodbye, Toji. Take care of her for me." She wasn't sure if that was how the afterlife worked, but it was worth a try.
"…Yeah. Do you know a person called 'Fushiguro', by any chance?" He looked slightly troubled.
Maki groaned, waving him off. "Yeah, yeah, I'll take care of your son. Now fuck off, would ya?"
"Ugh."
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Maki shot up from the sandy ground with a start, coughing.
Her head was pounding more than before, and her hair felt a little messier than before, but for the most part, she was in one piece.
The surroundings were, mercifully, the same as when she had passed out, and the sun was hardly any lower in the sky. At least Toji didn't waste as much of her time as she thought he did.
She frowned. Was any of that real? Did it really matter if it was or not?
Maki stood on shaky legs, sweeping up her sword with one last glance at the Zenin Clan building. Whenever they managed to unseal Gojo, she'd have to ask if he knew a man by that name. Until then, Megumi and Yuta were her main priority.