Chapter Text
- The act of gazing vacantly into the distance without a thought -
The first thing he felt as he sensed the aura of the curse was fear. Fear radiating from the curse and the victims in its partner’s jaws.
Yuuji has felt fear.
This was something still undiscovered by most – all except for the bastard that had taken residence inside him.
Sukuna truly did live up to his name of evil, occasionally whispering within the subconscious of his mind all sort of negative things. Some degrading:
Arent you just pathetic?
Does it feel nice when you get protected up by those peasants you call your friends?
Look at you, whimpering and crying like a little baby.
You call yourself strong? Pathetic.
You’ll never be strong enough, one day you’ll watch you ‘friends’ die right before you.
Those old hags, your friends, that idiot you call a sensei, they only keep you to use you before disposing you like the trash you are.
Weak.
Some were…odd.
I’ve seen your thoughts Yuuji, do you like spreading your legs for that boy?
How dare you let them put your hands on you? Did you like it?
I don’t like to share Yuuji, don’t forget that.
His interest in Fushiguro irked him to no end, him whispering all the destruction he could do using the shikigami user before disposing him like the rest of humanity, all for Yuuji to witness just to torment him. Yuuji hated him.
He hated the thing living inside him. He hated how it made him a walking death sentence. He hated Sukuna and couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Ever since he came back to life after his first death, his first confrontation with the King of Curses, he knew something was a little…off with their ‘bond’. He had no memory of their encounter, but he knew they must had exchanged a few words (or at least fists).
However, every time he tries to conjure up the memory it seemed to come up blank with only the curse laughing at his expense. Not the first time he’s done that but there was something eerie and taunting about it.
Yuuji didn’t like it at all. It made him feel stupider in a way.
As he looked at curse residue radiating from the mine tracks, he couldn’t help but feel empathetic towards the victims who wandered this old path. Thanks to Sukuna’s abilities slightly merging with his senses, he could feel the fear of the victims who had been there before.
*
They had visited their client that morning, seven o’clock sharp with a slightly grumpy Fushiguro and Nobara who complained about waking up in the early hours of the morning. Refreshening up they headed towards a sleek modest studio that happened to be the location of their newest client, a prestigious calligrapher named Sakurayashi Kaoru.
The man himself had seemed to be a stern individual of maybe thirty with gold colored phoenix shaped eyes behind rectangular glasses and long rose-colored hair shaped into a low ponytail. Yuuji absently thought that they shared the same hair color.
Seeing the man dressed in such an elegant maroon colored hakama and a fan decorated with Sakura blossoms made him feel extremely underdressed despite wearing their standard uniform for the meeting. The sleek look of the interior and those criticizing eyes of the client didn’t help either.
“Thank you all for coming here on such short notice. I imagine it must have not been very easy coming all the way here from Tokyo,” Sakurayashi-san had said while placing a tray laden with mugs of tea.
Gojo plastered his usual grin, “Not at all, not at all! It’s part of our job you see,” he waved his hand in a nonchalant gesture before taking a sip of his tea in a polite manner which prompted the others to follow the same. From the corner of his eye Yuuji could tell that both Nobara and Gojo did not like the tea being the huge sweet tooths they were.
“So, Sakurayashi-sama, could you fill us in about the incident?”
The man nods, expression stern and posture rigid and he opened his handfan covering the lower half of his face, “Carla, please load the data base collected on 29th of March to the 15th of April.”
Sensei and students blinked owlishly wondering who this ‘Carla’ was until a smooth female voice spoke, “Very well master.”
Itadori began looking all over the room, wondering where the source of the voice was. Megumi, Nobara and Inumaki seemed curious as well. Noticing their confusion the client added kindly, “Carla is my Artificial Intelligence. She runs all programs and records and handles my schedules. Amongst other things of course.”
“Woah, so its like sort of like Google Assistant or Siri?” Yuuji says out loud. He could almost feel the vein pop on the man’s forehead as he puffs up in indignant pride.
“Carla is much more sophisticated than that. I built her.”
“That’s so cool!” exclaims Yuuji with stars shimmering in his eyes and he spots the blowing purple bangle on the man’s hand. Gojo could see the pride in the man’s eyes for being praised on his AI. Yuuji had that effect on people. The boy had managed to wheedle into the rigid heart of Nanamin afterall.
Soon a holographic screen floats before their eyes showing records of twenty different individuals and their details.
“As you can see,” Sakurayashi begins, “all these individuals have been, over the span of seventeen days, mysteriously disappeared during 10.30 p.m. to 12 midnight. All of they are ages varying between fourteen to mid-twenties, the last two being just eighteen years old.”
The man seemed to be heavily burdened by this, Yuuji could tell. The frown lines on his face seemed deeper. Gojo himself seemed somber as he looked (?) at the twenty people, all very young, some even younger than himself or as old as Megumi, vanished without a trace. His heart throbbed in sympathy.
‘Weaklings’, Sukuna says in a bored tone. Yuuji felt his veins burst in annoyance.
Shut up, don’t you have better things to do? He scolds the curse who merely grunts, ‘I would have better things to had I not been imprisoned inside your body brat.’
Yes, Yuuji hated the curse with a burning passion.
Ignoring the King of Curses, he focuses on the case before him as the Gojo now spoke up,
“-these events taken place Sakurayashi-sama?”
Sakurayashi adjusts his glasses, “At the old mining grounds nearby. It used to be a common ground for young people to go skateboarding there during the late hours. The place had been shut down by the owners who ran the skating affairs due to the various mysterious injuries sustained by the people over the last few months. Of course, following that came these…disappearances.”
Before the curse woke up and grew its appetite. This is left unsaid by the jujutsu sorcerers.
Each curse was unique, usually manifested through man’s darkest emotions and desires that births these malevolent beings that begin to prey on humans to sate their greed. Curses can be found almost anywhere actually, especially with how society has held itself and expanded today.
You could find several minor curses in abandoned subways, schools, graveyards – just about anywhere that collects these negative emotions.
This particular curse decided to host itself at the old mining grounds where people frequented at the privacy of the night. Filled with secrets that fed the monster that was born there.
Yuuji could feel a shiver run down his spine.
‘Hehe, I can feel it. how delightful’, Sukuna croons. This makes Yuuji raise an eyebrow, feeling the warning bells ring inside his head.
I said shut up. Do you have to be this annoying?
‘Oh Yuuji, it’s cute to think that you still believe that you have any sort of control of over. Remember your place’, the curse coos menacingly. Yuuji does not like the feeling at all.
Unknowingly this makes his countenance change rather dramatically which drew concern from their host, “Everything alright, Itadori-san?”
Yuuji blinks, his eyes hoping from his sensei who bore a small smirk, Nobara who looked at him weird, to Toge senpai who seemed concerned and finally locking eyes with Megumi who’s brows were pinched in deep worry and an unspoken message written on them.
Are you ok?
Great, now he burdened everyone by drawing attention to himself. Silently berating himself he plasters his smile, “Oh no, I was just thinking of the victims Sakurayashi-sama.”
Funnily enough, no one in the room seemed to believe him.
The irony, however, was that he didn’t believe himself either…
*
“This curse seemed like a greedy fellow indeed,” Gojo comments as they halt at a bend on the racetrack that was worn with the intense racing that occurred within the premise. There were a few scraps of litter here and there of soda cans, food wrappers and an item or two that Yuuji wouldn’t mind forgetting it ever existed.
He looks at his sensei, “What makes you say that Gojo sensei?”
The said man points a finger upwards in a lecturing manner, “this wasn’t the first place it had visited.”
Yuuji’s eyes widened at this, a small gasp leaving his lips.
The curse moved. It was intelligent.
He could feel Sukuna’s snort of laughter vibrating inside his skull.
“It has a level of intelligence and is mobile,” Fushiguro says with a stern look, voicing Yuuji’s thoughts. He absently thinks that moonlight reflects his silhouette quite nicely.
“Juppon!” cries Gojo dramatically making them wince in the memory of the little competition he held last time. “This slippery curse has been reported from three different locations, originally spotted in a school in Murokawa. Very interesting tastes in has, don’t you think?”
Nobara snorts, “Yeah, very interesting.”
“Okaka,” Inumaki senpai says seriously.
The more Yuuji hears of this curse, the more he decides he does not like it. He looks at Fushiguro who seemed composed as ever with a serious look on his face, but Yuuji could tell that he too felt nervous about dealing with this unidentified curse from the tense lines in his jaw and shoulders.
The shikigami user looks at him as well, eyes searching his face. He seemed to be looking for something, clearly the prevoius incident with the client was unforgotten. Yuuji simply gives him a small grin as if to say, I’m ok. The man seemed too stubborn to believe him.
‘It really is quite pathetic to see you tell that you’re ok when you’re clearly not,’ Sukuna says absently. Yuuji didn’t like how he seemed awfully talkative today.
Why didn’t curses come with a mute button?
Once again ignoring the curse, he tunes back in with the outside world just in time for him to hear Gojo declare that they would be having a stake out with each divided into groups of two-man teams to each the search.
“These racetracks are pretty long, and these old mines have a lot of area giving our little fugitive very nice spots to hide in. Tonight will be about locating the curse, not exorcism,” weirdly enough Gojo sensei seemed to be looking at him pointedly for a moment. “Once you have found the curse, you and your buddy meet up right here and ring the others up. Copy?”
All he received were dull responses of ‘hai’, spare for Yuuji’s usual summery response. The teams were: Megumi and Inumaki, Nobara and Yuuji and Gojo by himself at the meet up spot as their spare watch (read: emergency weapon). Yuuji noticed Fushiguro’s eye twitch at this point.
“What if it attacks first?” Nobara says, hand on her hip that was cocked to aside in a haughty fashion.
“Why that’s easy!” Gojo says delightedly, “Give it hell before you call off.”
With that, they set off to the night.
Soon Yuuji and Kugisaki found themselves towards the rocky cliffside near the tracks, stretching out to a nosedive to form a canyon of sorts with the rest of the track on the other side. The jagged appearance was probably the work of pickaxes of old and rowdy skateboards. Yuuji couldn’t imagine himself jumping off a cliff like this with just a skateboard – even if he was a jujutsu sorcerer.
Kugisaki lets out a low whistle at the canyon on the other side of the bend, “They actually skateboard on turfs like these? Those wooden planks with tiny wheels? Hard to believe.”
“They must be professionals or something,” Yuuji remarks offhandedly, eyes drinking in the adrenaline induced course. He briefly wonders how it would feel like to give these tracks a try.
Maybe I could start learning skateboarding, he thinks.
“No way, you’d break all your bones in one day,” Kugisaki states matter-of-factly. Not caring he had said it out loud accidently he splutters indignantly. “No way! I can totally do it!”
“A country bumpkin like you won’t even be able to stand on that plank.”
“Neh, arent you from the country too? Besides I was closer to the city than you were so-”
“Are you calling me a country bumpkin’ Yuuji?” a poisonous smile decorated her face while her fingers stroked the head of her hammer. Suddenly, being called a country bumpkin didn’t seem so bad.
“No ma’am,” Yuuji says with a gulp. She smiles evilly in satisfaction huffing ‘men’ under her breath as if it were unbelievable while turning to continue their walk. Yuuji mentally lit a candle for her future husband in sympathy and wishes he would like to at least fifty.
Suddenly, a spot of red catches Yuuji’s eye.
He stops, stooping to sit on his haunches to see a bright red flower blooming cheerfully under the moonlight in the rugged barren soil. It looked beautiful.
“Oi, Kugisaki! Check this flower out!”
She halts, raising and eyebrow at the peach pink haired boy to notice there was indeed a flower blooming on the dry rocky ground. Curious she joins Yuuji, squatting beside him and gawked at the beauty of the little red flower.
“Wow, it really is pretty!” she coos.
“I know!”
Its petals where like crimson spiderwebs delicately woven to create a sweet little flower under the bright moon despite the dry barren ground.
Wait…barren ground?
That’s when Kugisaki finds something odd about their situation. A red flower, particularly this lily, blooming on a baren skateboarding/old mining area and manages to stay healthy even when it’s out of season seems a little odd.
Upon closer inspection she remembers the name of the flower. Her brows furrow at that.
“I wonder what it’s called. Do you know, Kugisaki?” Yuuji continues, fingers hovering near the flower as if he wanted to touch it – he touched to flower.
It felt so mesmerizing, the soft red against the peach of his fingers. He didn’t question it, he just felt drawn to it. A faint whisper filling his ears and a sweet scent clouding his senses, embracing him like a warm hug.
He felt like he was floating, barely registering the Kugisaki’s voice. Or anything at all.
The alarm bells were ringing in his head louder than before, something deep down telling him to run. To get away. But he couldn’t find the will to, his eyelids drooping gradually as exhaustion overcame him like a tidal wave.
Why am I so tired?
His body begins to weigh down on him, ears ringing slightly. The world loses its color, bleeding into black.
He could hear a voice calling out to him from somewhere.
“-ADORI!!!”
The last thing he remembers where the bells that chimed in his ears.