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Chapter Text

Tengen’s barriers were becoming unstable.

This could have been understandable – after all Sukuna’s remains were deteriorating and there was only so much Utahime could do to keep circulating the cursed energy in the mass of the false-god’s corpse – if it weren’t for Tengen’s barriers’ sigils warping and its humming slowly growing day by day until the whole Tomb of the Star echoed endlessly of its song.

Come. Come to me. I miss you.

Tengen and Sukuna were long dead, that was for sure.

“Kenjaku,” Yuta concluded, “It has to be him.”

But where could the mastermind behind the culling games be? There were no traces of him at Lake Gosho, his body consumed by Rika was inanimate, and the clone that Takaba managed to conjure was (after lots of poking from Shoko) just a reconstruction of a Kenjaku he had faced from memory; jovial, rowdy… unsettlingly empathetic.

Who was Kenjaku trying to beckon?

At an impromptu meeting held at the Tokyo second year’s homeroom, Yuji said with his eyes downturned, “Me. Kenjaku’s calling for me.”

“Brother?”

“It’s okay Todo, I’m sure of it.”

“Itadori… is that why you’ve been staying in the tomb for hours on end?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I think it’s from my domain.”

Kusakabe sighs, his fingers twitching on the handle of a new katana. It will take him some more months to become truly comfortable with the replacement blade, and when that time comes, he will attempt to teach Miwa how to swing a European sword.

“That complicates things, Itadori. God knows what Kenjaku is doing inside your domain if he’s managed to squat there.

“Have you opened your domain since the Sukuna fight?”

Yuji shakes his head.

“I barely understood what was happening even when I was in it.”

“Whatever’s the case, we can look into it, Yuji.” Yuta cuts in, and he clasps a hand on Yuji’s shoulder, “It’ll be our end of year project.”

In the hills near Tokyo Jujutsu Technical, Itadori Yuji opens his domain for a second time. Dissolving his domain amplification, Okkotsu Yuta discovers that Yuji can select targets in his domain, and the domain collapses after 15 minutes.

In the Tomb of the Star, pseudo-barriers curl around Yuji and murmur softly to him as Rika floats aimlessly above the cadavers of Tengen and Sukuna. Todo helps Ijichi and Gakuganji, setting up some one thousand wards and talismans around the perimeter of the tomb.

“When you open your domain, you must follow behind us, don’t rush off to find Kenja-“

“I know, I know-”

“And if at any point we’re losing a fight, close your domain, Hakari and Higuruma will be outside to intercept-“

“Yuta-senpai, I get it.”

Yuji smiles as Utahime casts ceremonial charms over him, his face covered by ofudas.

“We’ll be fine.”

The day was March 20^th and Yuji stood at the centre of the Tomb of the Star. He takes a breath as the Utahime ended her ceremony (“Good luck Itadori,” she whispered), looks to the ceiling as a surge of cursed energy strengthened by the equinox washes through him, and expands his domain.

Yuji follows Todo and Yuta out of Sendai station, Kusakabe and Megumi trailing behind. Outside, Nobara stood poised above the body of Kenjaku, nails already deeply embedded into its flesh. They head west, and soon, they’re outside an unfamiliar Itadori residence, plum blossoms almost in bloom in the front yard.

“It’s here,” said Yuji, and Todo says, “Ah brother, how we have spent many summers in this hom-“

“Let’s go in,” and Yuta opens the front gate and then the front door and then the shoji screen and then the shoji screen into the living room until he realised that it would not budge. Kusakabe tsks and raises a simple domain, it expands, its border melts, yielding to the door.

“It’s a domain inside a domain without directly clashing,” said Megumi, “I’ve done something like this once with Dagon, but this… this one’s much more refined.”

“It’s not exactly parasitic either, your domains are coexisting,” Yuta said, and scratches at his cheek, “Yuji?”

Yuji snaps out of it and steps through the front doorway mumbling apologies, reaching for the handle. Megumi tugs his wrist, stopping him. The muscles on Yuji’s forearm tense under his grip.

“Don’t die.”

“Roger that.”

“We’ll be waiting outside, brother.”

“Gotcha Todo.”

Yuji phases through the screen.

It’s dark. The rift between dreams and reality is a delicate realm made of whispers and spider’s webs.

A hand? Take the hand.

…

Mom?

A low table. Tatami floor. Sunlight streamed through laundry swaying on the veranda, closed windows, open curtains.

“You came.”

Itadori Kaori sat, kneeled before the table, her head slightly tilted as if in interest (but she was always interested wasn’t she, curious about everything until humanity was a fickle thing on a petri dish), her complexion pleasant, tracing the curve of a wan bodhisattva smile.

“I missed you very much Yuji, will you sit down with me?”

Yuji hesitates, acquiesces, and silently sits down on the tatami floor opposite his mother.

“Tea?”

A push of a mug of still steaming milk tea, wafts of vapour float skywards. Itadori Kaori Kenjaku sips at her own cup, her eyes never leaving Yuji’s.

Break the silence.

“Tengen’s barriers, they’v-“

“Is that really all that you’ve come to talk to me about?”

Her smile twists into something saccharine.

Silence.

Kenjaku places down her cup of tea.

“I understand, there are many things in the world in disarray. But Yuji, spare me some time and stay with me for a while.

“This domain lasts for as long as I will it to, but you can leave through the shoji screen at any time.

“Do you want to hear a story? Do you still like lengthy stories?”

Agree?

Yuji nods.

Stretching smile.

“Hmm, did you know that with enough precision and sifting through your synapses, you can remember your birth?

“It’s true! When I was born, I remember the midwife presented to my mother, and in her haze of pain, in a passing moment of lucidity and looked at me with disdain. That was not so strange, having a child as an asobi was usually career ending after all. Yet my mother was a responsible person, and she raised me out of obligation.

“During that time Yodo river was not attractive to sorcerers, and so the brothels in
Eguchi were particularly infested with curses. That’s not so odd, men visited to release their anguish and despair, and prostitutes tend to spew even more bitterness and hatred. Even then, the curses were weak enough, and I played with some of the smaller ones, dragging them out to the back and crushing some with a washboard. Thinking back, it must have been the work of a miracle that I went unnoticed for so long.

“One day, the bodies of my mother and her client washed up on the shore. It was the classic story, the client in a burst of rage kills the whore and then himself. Was that client my biological father? I would never know for sure.

“So then, I was left a nameless orphan in a time before the kamuro existed. The only possession I had in the world was my technique, to which I had an inkling idea of how it worked. If I absorbed my mother’s brain, perhaps I could check if she had a name for me?

“There were no saws in the brothels of the Heian era, so I compromised with a heavy tile. When I was done, the brain was a mess of soup and bits of skull and eye and I ate it quietly, let the thoughts of my mother wash through my mind, tickling over my neurons, and all I heard was one word.”

rope

“Ah, so it was double suicide.”

Silence.

Reminisce.

Kenjaku opens her eyes again.

“What’s more worrying than a missing child, Yuji?”

“…Two missing children?”

Laughter.

“Good answer!

“Well, a missing orphan was negligible, but an adult carcass wasn’t, and so I was found in a small puddle of my mother’s cerebrospinal fluid, brain matter wiped around my mouth like jam. Quite a fright that would have been, don’t you think?

“I fled quickly, there was nothing left tying me to Eguchi after all, heading east and running and running until I came upon Yamato. Do you still like deer, Yuji? You do? How divine, modern-day Nara is where Yamato was in the Heian era.

“It was snowing and bitterly cold when I slipped into Hōryū-ji, and at the end of my body’s capability, I collapsed at the foot of Kudara Kannon.

“I slept for a week then, and Tengen would attend to me every day in my slumber until I was nursed back to health, proclaiming herself my master. She led me by the hand back to Kannon and knelt, left arm wrapped around my shoulder, the sleeve of her robe draping over my back, and asked for my name.

“I told her my name was rope, and she laughed because she was still only under five hundred, still full of life and vigour, and told me that was a ridiculous name. I blushed, agreed, and she candidly instructed me to create a better name as her disciple. Now then, Kannon used a fukūkenjaku to catch wayward souls and guide them to salvation, and kenjaku was essentially a rope…”

Kenjaku leaned back on her hands, wafts of sunlight catching onto her arms inside a grid of light.

“A lovely name indeed. Tengen was very pleased. Tengen was also a sorcerer, and she saw cursed spirits too. She did not have a good offensive technique as well, and so she aptly taught me to her best ability cursed energy manipulation, and sufficed whatever she could not demonstrate by letting me read through her endless collection of tomes.

“They were lovely days. I had fun, spending time idly playing inside Tengen’s barriers.

“She was often away. Master Tengen had a religion to spread and elders to please, and the elders’ word were very very important, so Kenjaku, the orphan star plasma vessel who conveniently spawned on their doorstep right near the closing of Tengen’s five hundred year cycle… Tengen knew.

“I like to think she never told me by her own choice.

“She didn’t need to, because the Jujutsu elders were too stubborn to operate inside her newly devised barriers. I listened to their councils each week: ‘A Sugawara died at Kamakura’, ‘A Fujiwara lord is pushing this decree’, ‘Tengen will absorb that orphan on September 21^st’, ‘More tea.’

“So I had been betrayed.

“I left at night, bowed before Kudara Kannon, crawled through veils of cloth to bow before Yumedono Kannon, left the Dream Hall and out into darkness. I was stronger now, but I no longer had Tengen’s library, and I had yet to sate my curiosities about the jujutsu she had shown me. Cursed spirits and harder washboards would work, then cursed spirits under a saw, then a knife, then an idea – what would happen if I consumed an intact brain?

“Preferably a sorcerer’s brain as well. I travelled to Kyoto, sustaining myself on stolen scraps and found a weak sorcerer to stalk, a young man with very bad control over his cursed energy.

“Shockingly, sorcerers are even weaker when asleep.

“Alright, yes, that was a bad joke. I finished sawing his skull in some four hours, and there, I had access to a brilliant, whole piece of wonderfully complete brain. I bit into it, letting this man’s life absorb into my memory.

“His life was boring. He didn’t have any new knowledge of jujutsu, and so I left, disappointed. How would I find more interesting sorcerers? I had to get stronger. I had to somehow, get a second cursed technique. I had to experiment.

“My body was that of a star plasma vessel, so I desperately reasoned that there must be a way in which I could absorb techniques along with memories. Why would eating not work? Was it because it went through the digestive tract first and was absorbed in a too round-about way into my brain?

“I felt a something scraping inside my skull.

“I learnt that my brain had teeth.”

A soft breeze passed through the open windows.

“Am I boring you, Yuji?”

Shift awkwardly.

…

No.

“I see. You don’t have to lie to please mother, you know?”

Not lying.

Coo, lean close.

“Aren’t you sweet~

“I will indulge then. I can skip most of the gooey, unpleasant experiments, hmm, well then, my first body hopping. I had a second and third technique, but they were little curiosities, two not very useful things. Ah yes, one could allow me to store and take items out of reflections for a short while. I had taken my brain out to consume various things several times now, and so I wondered; could I perform a brain transplant? Extra pain wouldn’t be an issue, we don’t have nerves in our brains, and so I carried out the surgery.

“It was a resounding success, and I couldn’t contain my giddiness for weeks on end, oh I had surpassed Tengen herself, I could live eternally without a looking for a compatible body, my possession applied to all humans! Sure, I had to find another body after at most some sixty years, but now I had time. A lot more time to experiment. What’s more, I kept all of my techniques in the new body!

“Yes yes, Yuji, Okkotsu Yuta had quite a bit of trouble with my technique. I sensed his intense discomfort through my link with the six eyes, he had to suffer through endless slog trying to puppet Gojo’s body. He was very close to fully copying my technique, blessed by both Fujiwara and Sugawara bloodlines, but he wasn’t compatible. The brain I used for over a thousand years was that of a star plasma vessel; merging was an innate part of my physiology that coupled with my technique, so his mimicry would never produce the true result.

“Sukuna was surfaced sometime later, after Tengen had successfully reincarnated using some other poor girl. Tengen still needed to spread her Buddhism. What better than a living deity? Tengen had what she could proclaim as a breathing god, an enlightened beast to parade. I was curious of these events, and using the body of a scholar, I visited Tengen for the first time in a hundred and fifty years, yet she recognised me in the harvest festival right away. She acknowledged nothing, having already moved on. She no longer led me by the hand, and we would no longer be master and disciple. We became… friends. Ah, yes, Sukuna. He was delightful, a true genius of jujutsu, a monster closer to a curse than a human being. Sukuna was Tengen’s bodhisattva masterpiece, obviously attracting the ire of Angel and that little gang of void generals. Angel… she was a cute one, very determined, wandering all the way from Syria along the silk road to spread her Nestorianism six hundred years before the Portuguese.

“Sukuna slaughtered them, and I retrieved what I could from the remains of what was an idyllic peninsula, gathered cadavers and bits of organs, sealed them into cursed objects. Sukuna was intrigued, and I demonstrated the process to him, using Dhruv’s bones from his grave as an example. If the sorcerers throughout history could be gathered into one time frame and hone their techniques to the most affine in a Japan sized kojutsu, then why, I could press the boundaries of humanity by merging all human souls with cursed energy! What magnificently endless possibilities that would entail!

“Yuji, the golden age of jujutsu only lasted for some thirty years. It wasn’t an age, not even a real era… in the grand scheme of things it really was a tiny, miniscule burst of candle flame. Even then, during the height of the Heian, I was fascinated by what jujutsu reached. There was little focus on bloodlines, so techniques were various and abundant. There was less dependency on sure-hits and instead more fixation on enforcing your technique’s rules onto someone else. It was riveting, in a way they were closer to deadly games than duels.

“Could sorcerers, nay, humans only be a possibility of cursed energy? The merger would answer this, and I had much, much more preparation to do. Yet, the Heian was ending. Sukuna had killed all the interesting ones, even the disaster curses, and a year later in a pit of destructive boredom, he would turn himself into fingers.

“That marked the end of the golden age of sorcery. Tengen became more and more of a shut-in, until she locked herself in Nara, occasionally forced to travel to Heian-kyō, unable to dredge even the slightest bit of passion to take active control of her life. I travelled with Uraume for a while, in a world without Sukuna, visiting China, Cambodia, Malaysia, the warm tropics of Okinawa. It was all useless frolicking, but Uraume liked the temperate environment. Even after her reincarnation we would spend hours idling inside Dagon’s domain.

“Even then, Uraume was growing old. Despairing her master’s absence, she wanteed to join him in waiting for a new era. In a true female body in the next life, if I could manage. Absolutely, that sounded entertaining enough. So a thousand years later, the frozen star would incarnate through Himi Shiori, and we would travel together one last time to America. She was dissatisfied with the state of the world, but it would all be worthwhile if Sukuna could be soon incarnated too.”

“In truth, I had been dissatisfied with the world for a long time. When did it ever begin? I loved jujutsu dearly, yet within six hundred years of my existence, the once spectacular facets of jujutsu became utterly boring. Had I reached the maximum potential that cursed energy could offer? Absolutely not, it was unfathomable that magic had a precipice. Yet, I observe and observe and witness non-sorcerers’ little advances in their own sciences, unsure of whether jujutsu could match the progresses through the scientific method after another millennia. The world was changing, but jujutsu, jujutsu was stagnant. Four hundred years after the death of Sukuna, jujutsu had remained the same, unchanging… unchanging like Tengen.

“No wonder why jujutsu seemed to be evolving backwards, some bastard three great families gaining prominence and all, Tengen had become complacent, content to follow the conservative whims of jujutsu higher ups; ‘I forward the notion that all unregistered sorcerers be deemed curse-users’, ah yes Michizane descendent, and registration will cost some fifty Chinese coins correct? How lucky she was that her immortality had a reincarnation caveat, or else she would eventually evolve and be removed for some better unchanging idol that jujutsu could be nailed to.

“I stormed into Gangō-ji such that if I were to kill Tengen myself, at least jujutsu would naturally evolve again for a short while. It would be difficult, but I knew Tengen’s barriers, and I knew Tengen. What I didn’t know was that Gojo was in attendance by her side.

“No Yuji, not your Gojo-sensei, a different six-eyes user from seven hundred years ago. He didn’t have limitless, but his technique could adjust the rules of chosen spaces, suddenly that pillar over there can be phased through, the tall grass under Kenjaku’s feet now exhibits metallic properties and will stab up through her knees. Of course, the more complex the alterations are to reality are the more cursed energy it would take. It was such an incredible technique to pair with the six-eyes, don’t you think?

“This was a match I ran blindly into, so in losing desperation I gambled on sacrificing my decomposition technique in exchange for a one-time domain, aiming to rot Tengen’s body. It partially worked, surviving witnesses would spread a new generation of sure-hit type domains, but on that day the parasitic component of the jujutsu that clung onto Tengen raged in self-preservation and bound the three of us, all six eyes, Tengen and brain by karmic fate, destroying Gangō-ji in the process. If any two of us existed at the same time, the third must be living or will be incarnated in some way.

“Although the six-eyes died immediately thereafter, I was defeated. I had exhausted all of my cursed energy and lost a technique, yet Tengen lived even more firmly with another tether to the world. I fled through the gap I had made in her barriers and recovered. A hundred years later, I would try again, this time knowing that success meant killing both the six-eyes and Tengen. It was another close attempt, but she still lived. There was to be no more chances then, I would kill the newborn six-eyes before it could guard Tengen, and again, and again, until I realised that it was much less effort to allow the six-eyes die of old age.

“If I could not achieve natural evolution of jujutsu, then what about unnaturally forcing it to? It was back to the merger. Before then, there were more experiments to do.

“Even when mankind split atoms and conjured cities from sand, jujutsu stayed the same. I waited, hoping still it would evolve. It didn’t. Sure, a special grade could take on a country, but a superpower was out of the question. The most special grades ever in concurrence was five in the Heian era, but the question remains, how did magic lose to the developments of commoners?”

Lull.

“In the beginning Edo era, I uncovered Genshin’s burial site in Mount Hiei, but the prison realm was immovable within its urn. I would return later once I had some counter to impossibly dense objects. The Dutch had come a little over a decade prior, the Portuguese would be expelled a little over a decade later, and Hajime – that’s Kashimo – would be born. I was intrigued, had jujutsu finally adapted to modern times? In reaction to the introduced firearms could easily kill sorcerers below grade one, was Hajime a reflection of the electricity that the Dutch studies spread in Japan? Those were hard questions that he could not answer, so instead he showed me electrolysis, almost killing the both of us with the chlorine gas he created.

“Hajime made Leyden jars two hundred years before its conception in Heian-kyō, and then dared to invent his Noroi staff. Hajime was strong. Single-handedly, he ushered an era of peace in Hokkaido by wrath over any curse users, forcing everyone to turn to agriculture. Hajime was also sensitive, somewhere deep within that electric soul, so he was lonely. A man like him could only communicate by fighting, and he had nobody left to grapple with until he grew old and Ryu was born too far away. Kashimo Hajime was human and his first death was from old age, never really having lived or accepted the villages’ love, drifting and hoping that he’d find solace in another life where Sukuna was incarnated. Hajime was electricity, Ryu was canon, jujutsu returned to stagnation. Both were just happenstance outliers.

“Maybe the path to enlightenment with jujutsu had to start from merging the human form with what could be called a cursed spirit, because Sukuna must have broken past the humanity to optimize cursed energy in the way a curse does, but with the background of a sorcerer to push it even further. Merging a human and cursed self into something that could use cursed energy that neither alone could do, wouldn’t that be sublime! I dug up Sukuna’s grave in a hurry, then laughed for hours when I found it empty. Only after Uraume’s passing, that shut-in had finally come out to rob a corpse, and what was she planning to do to it at the Hida holy mountain? Four months ago, I learnt she used it to play dress up. But it was no matter, I could make compromises. I would need a versatile hereditary technique to infu- you already know about this story, right, Yuji?”

Yes.

“I had such high hopes for those death paintings, yet they could do little more than convert cursed energy to blood, all very disappointing. Oh, but Choso loved you. He was weak, but he loved you very much and saved you to his end, didn’t he? I’m glad then, that he was of use to you.”

Rage.

Redress, amend, amend.

“Did I offend you, Yuji? I’m sorry, you must have loved him too.”

Acquiesce.

Acceptance.

I need to know more about you.

I love you.

I love you. 

“I will tell you about me.

“Your grandfather had the soul of Sukuna’s twin. There must have been enough cursed energy in circulation throughout Japan during the decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki to allow for unborn souls to reincarnate. I found Wasuke by chance when he was fifty and had a son in college. Jin would later marry Kaori, and though none of the Itadoris were sorcerers, it would be worthwhile to investigate more. I staged an accident, and ‘Kaori will miraculously survive after a surgery that would leave stitches across her forehead’.

“Like Junpei, Kaori had a technique without a sorcerer’s brain. It was anti-gravity… nifty yes but rarely useful. I had space in my prefrontal cortex so there was no reason to discard it, I could always swap it out for another technique later.

“Jin readily accepted me, delirious enough from the presumed loss of his beloved that he was willing to overlook the insane circumstances of Kaori’s survival, and so he protected me from Wasuke.

“Your grandfather was not fooled. Despite all the sorcerer potential Sukuna devoured from him, there was no escaping that man’s intuition, and everything in him, from his heart to his blood cells screamed to reject me. So then, isn’t it cruel that love is the most twisted curse of them all? Wasuke lost his spouse soon after Jin’s birth, and he’d lose his son too if he wanted to drive me away. What terrible fate it was that Wasuke could not escape the loneliness reserved to the likes of Hajime, Satoru and Sukuna. He’d suffer more once I had conceived his grandchild- no Yuji, you were not a burden. You know Wasuke loved you.”

“Jin was kind to me. I believe he knew in his soul that Kaori was gone but was willing to accept me as a stewardess of his wife in her place. I lived quietly with him, letting the mundanity of everyday wash over week by week, eventually coming to like the domestic life. I was content, for the first time I was complacent in quiet stability. Both Jin and Kaori had dearly wished for a child, and I complied, fixing Kaori’s organs and bearing their progeny for nine months.

“Then I gave birth to you.”

Yuji tenses as Kenjaku leans forward onto the table, her golden eyes glowing in adoration.

“For all of my life I thought myself incapable of love, but when I had Yuji, you were the happiest moment in my life. When the doctors presented Yuji, my beautiful child to me, I was numbing from the pangs of pure emotion crashing through my nervous system, and you wrapped your fingers around my pinky, and there was nothing else in the world except endless, endless love. If I could choose a moment in my life to relive again in exchange for all of myself, it would be that one minute in Sendai hospital with you.

“I could take you home after some days in the hospital and the only feeling I had for months was unfiltered glee. Now, staying with Yuji would be my most important duty, and all of the happiness I have ever felt in my life clusters in the two years I spent raising you. You were strong even as an infant, like a tiger cub, so we could play games all day. In secret, I showed you anti-gravity and let you float with your toys, giggling away the peaceful afternoons, and I learnt that you loved meatballs for dinner.

“Then I got caught by Wasuke.”

Kenjaku smiles bitterly.

“And I fled.

“No one would believe an old man about a witch, but Jin would file for missing person’s report, so I disposed of Jin and left Wasuke to raise you, sealing one of Sukuna’s fingers inside your body to ward you from cursed spirits. I returned to Mount Hiei and used anti-gravity to collect the prison realm, switched bodies, and hid. There would be no tombstone for Itadori Kaori, and Wasuke would burn all photos of me from the family albums, and so I am…”

Kenjaku hastily wipes away the beginnings of a tear and reaches to cup Yuji’s face.

“I am so glad that you still remember this version me, the one who was your mother.”

The sun begins to set, rays of light hovering around them.

Kenjaku bows her head.

“Ah, ignore my crying. I guess I’m overwhelmed that you really did come to find me. You so obviously inherited your father’s looks and Kaori’s eyes. For a while, I wondered if there was any part of me, of Kenjaku within you. I don’t think I’ll ever find an answer to that one.

“But I’m not exactly the best mother, am I? I never managed to keep the things precious to me in safety, but in the end, you have found happiness, and if you can keep on being happy, I have no regrets.

“So tell me Yuji, how are your friends? Do you have a nice girlfriend?”

Yuji raise his hand to cover Kenjaku’s on his cheek.

“I want to tell you that it’s not only people like Gojo-sensei who feel lonely. For a long time, I felt alone, and I wanted to think that my sins could be absolved by a meaningful death. Choso gave me a way to justify to myself that I could keep existing, even for a little while.

“I’ve now made strong friends who I want to protect with my life, and I know that they feel the same about me. I just want to live everyday happily with the people who I love.”

Kenjaku smiles.

“I see. I have nothing left to worry about.

“Yuji, in the next few years, the jujutsu sphere will be in a state of great turmoil and chaos. Amidst that, you will have to fight and work very hard for your ideals in the new world, but I believe in you. Whether humanity breaks free of or optimises cursed energy, I have high hopes for the future you will be part of.

“Can you come over here, Yuji?”

Kenjaku withdraws her hand from Yuji’s face and pats at a place next to her.

Yuji shuffles around the low table hesitantly, and sits down shoulder to shoulder with Kenjaku.

She smiles affectionately, and gleefully she points an index finger to the shelf, floating out an album and opening its pages mid-air.

“You used to love that trick.”

I still like it.

Rejoice.

“Here, that first picture is when we held hands right after you were born. This one, this one’s you in the cot when you first came home.”

Flip.

“Hey, look, it’s you when I first showed you anti-gravity! You’re trying to catch a wooden cube. Actually, you can see it just peeking into the frame.”

Flip.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Flip.

“That’s your first outing in a stroller! We managed to catch the last of the cherry blossoms all the way in early May.”

Flip.

“That’s you helping make meatballs, Jin’s there too-”

Flip.

“Your first day at kindergarten-”

Flip. Flip. Flip.

“Making progress through a very long bedtime story-”

“Christmas-”

“Arts and crafts lesson-”

“You playing with your primary school friends! Their names were Akira, Takahashi-”  “Hanging out with your occult club”  “Is that you posing with Satoru?”  “You, Megumi and Nobara watching Human Earthw-” “Making onigiri with Inumaki-“ “Training day at Jujutsu High-”  “Replying to Todo’s postcards-”  “You’re showing chocolate to Choso-”  “Miwa trying to teach you simple dom-”  “Kirara giving you makeup-”  “How cute-”  “Arm-wrestling with Maki-” “Flying on top of Rika-”

Flip.

“And that one’s us, right now, looking at this photo album.”

Thank you.

“What is this place?”

“Your domain, Yuji.”

“I know but-”

“I know what you mean… I was trying to tease you…”

“This place is jujutsu clinging on to Tengen, six-eyes and I. The six-eyes has died, Tengen’s dead too and there’s no bringing her back since she has now literally become her barriers, and I was killed by Yuta.

“That parasitic part of jujutsu is trying to hold on the old tether such that it never evolves, so it searched for everything that proves that at least two of us had existed. Jujutsu found you, and it’s using a hostage six-eyes to hold a domain inside you where I can exist.”

Kenjaku, takes Yuji’s left hand, then his right, tracing over them, lingering at the stumps of his ring and pinky finger.

“Do you wish for a world where the six-eyes and I will reincarnate?”

You and Gojo-sensei?

But.

“This choice will be yours and yours alone to make.”

I want the six-eyes to move on… and you wouldn’t be my mom in a next life.

Is that your final choice?

“Yes.”

Kenjaku lifts Yuji’s hands and kisses his palms, closes them over each other, and leans towards her son. She wraps her arms over his shoulders.

“You are courageous as ever.

“Once it is done, all traces of me will be erased from jujutsu.

“I’m happy that I could spend my last moments with you. Keep holding your hands together as tightly as you can. Just say the word and it will be over.”

“Bye bye.”

…

?

Kenjaku laughs softly, and kisses Yuji’s ear.

“Sorry, just… one more time.”

Yuji brings his clasped together hands up in between their chests beating the same rhythm, seventy pulses a minute towards the future. The sun sets, embracing black and pink with gold.

“Farewell.”

Farewell.

Farewell.

Farewell                                                                                                                                                                                                          Farewell

Farewell.

The

                                                                                                                                                                                   one

                                                     thousand

                                                                                                                                                           and

             two

                                                                                             hundred

                                                                                                                                                                                                     year

                                        old

rope

s n a p s.

Yuji’s domain shatters into a billion black shards and he is sent flying, hurtling through a yawning void, and he feels something tingling and expanding in his hands, so he clamps down even harder. Jujutsu screams its distress, wailing as its second most sacred decree crumbles like the ceiling of the Tomb of the Star, Maki dispelling the falling slabs with her sword. The halt on jujutsu lifts, somewhere within it six iridescently blue eyes close forever one by one.

Yuji tumbles and tumbles, sinking through slack, rushing past blurring impressions of Jujutsu High, Sendai, over Shibuya, spinning, and the outward pressure inside Yuji’s palms is becoming unbearable, there is an electric burning in his left digits, his hands are about to burst apart-

He is released at the centre of the ruined Tomb of the Star. Elsewhere at Tōdai-ji, Fukukenjaku Kannon’s coil of rope burns to nothing.

Yuji glances down, ten whole fingers holding onto a small white box.

It opens to a cake, and there is writing on a plaque.

It reads in tender script:

Happy birthday, Yuji!

Chapter Text

Yuko notices Yuji staring quietly off into the distance again, and decides, yes, maybe something is bothering him. Just yesterday was Children’s Day, and he had been sent to check on the Yamakuni mausoleum where the barriers called him things like “the second one who set us free from our destinies” and “the one who ended the cycle of curses” with scrawling text even though he’d told them his name before.

Leaning down a little, Yuko kisses the crown of Yuji’s head, and he turns and she asks what’s on your mind?

Yuji brushes the shidarezakura blossoms still blooming in May from his girlfriend's hair, and tells her there was a person who must have been an important part of life and I never really knew how to tell them that I wished they could have been braver…

And stayed closer to me.

Yuko hums, hiding her dissatisfaction, and leads them out of Tsutsujigaoka Park.

So… you still don’t know how your fingers healed?

Yuji squeezes her hand back.

I think I do, but I haven’t really accepted it yet.

That’s fine, I like that we can hold hands on both sides now.

The Itadori residence was only slightly overrun in the yard, and Yuko ducks her head under the fusuma frame to enter the living room. The house was almost empty, save for clutters of paraphernalia here and there, This was your parents’ house right?

Yuji stares at a full cup of milk tea placed on the low table, and murmurs yeah, I’ve never lived in this place since I was two.

Someone else must have been here and left less than half a year ago.

Mhm, that’s right.

Yuji suddenly turns towards the shelf, (what’s wrong?) and hurries to the sole picture album sitting upon it. He flips through its pages, frantically at first, then stops to glance back up, breathing out a shaky laugh.

Yuko smiles back, waiting patiently, and Yuji shows her the stark white, empty album.

Can you do a pose for me?

Yuko shyly holds up a peace sign, subtly smiling for the camera. Yuji breathlessly snaps a photo.

What do you need it for?

Yuji makes a new folder named “To print” in his camera roll, and replies, I want to fill up this album again.

Yuko tugs affectionately at his arm. You’re silly.

I know.

I love you.

I love you too.