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 combini 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?”