Chapter Text
Fushiguro Megumi's earliest memory is of shadows painted in vague shapes across the wall, and a distinct sense of joy and love.
All he really retained was the impression of his sister's smile, and a wolf's shadow on the wall. Clearer, Megumi remembered learning how to make his own shadow puppets from Tsumiki.
"A wolf is easy," Tsumiki said. "Just put your thumb like this, and keep your fingers straight." The flashlight cast the wolf flat on the wall, unlike the curve the lamp had once given it. Megumi liked this better, it made the shadows look clearer.
He tried to mimic her. Somehow, Tsumiki's wolf was still better. Maybe Tsumiki was just better. Hopefully, Megumi could be that good someday.
"There you go! Just like that!" Tsumiki's wolf bobbed, and its mouth hung open. "Now, what sound does a wolf make?"
Megumi knew. Tsumiki knew. Megumi knew that Tsumiki knew, and he was pretty sure Tsumiki was aware of that too.
Megumi took a deep breath. "AAAWOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
Tsumiki laughed.
Megumi was too young to understand much of anything. By the time he realized his parents weren't coming back, Tsumiki had already accepted they were gone. Tsumiki promised Megumi that she would make sure everything would be okay, and Megumi didn't quite comprehend that there were reasons that it wouldn't be okay.
Mostly, what Megumi understood was that the house got colder. That Tsumiki constantly reminded him to turn the lights off when he left a room. That he couldn't watch TV in the mornings anymore because it had to be unplugged, and then sold. That he stopped getting the good snacks in his school lunches, if he got snacks at all. Tsumiki looked on the verge of tears the one time he complained. He never did it again, he didn't want to see his sister cry.
Megumi crept down the stairs as silently as he could, and poked his head around the corner. A flashlight dangled loosely from one hand— it had run out of batteries again. Megumi had waited for Tsumiki to come upstairs to make him shadow puppets so she could fix it, but she never did.
Tsumiki was sitting on the couch. The lights were off, but the moon gave just enough light to see by. He saw that there was a lot of money laid out on the table, in front of Tsumiki. She had her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook slightly. Was she laughing? What was so funny? A broken-off sound escaped Tsumiki as she curled further into herself. It didn't sound like a laugh to Megumi.
Oh.
"Tsumiki?" Megumi whispered. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, what was wrong, but Tsumiki was trying to be quiet, so Megumi followed her lead.
"Oh, Megumi." Tsumiki's voice was raspy, and it wobbled a bit. "Sorry, I didn't mean for you to see this." Tsumiki gathers all the notes on the table into a pile, and scoops it back into the cardboard box that usually sat in the top of the kitchen cabinets. He hadn't even known there was anything in it.
Megumi felt a bit silly now, holding out the flashlight to Tsumiki. "It's out of batteries." The question was left unspoken. He trusted his sister to solve any problem.
She looked down at it. Looked back up at him. A car rumbled by on the street outside, casting cold white light across the room and leaving them both blinded for a moment while their eyes readjusted.
"Hey Megumi, why don't we try something else tonight?" Tsumiki said. Megumi frowned.
"But I wanted to play shadow puppets," he whined.
"I know, Megumi. I know." Tsumiki gestured to the window. "We can use the moonlight! It'll work just as well, until we can get some more batteries."
She led him back upstairs, and sat next to the window with him. The shadows were cast at an awkward angle on the floor, but it was better than nothing. They were still there. Tsumiki was still there, and she still told him stories and made him feel happier.
That had to be enough. Megumi let himself forget the flashlight, he had to get used to the window. If he understood one thing, it was that things that went away didn't come back.
Megumi had never been sure when it was that Tsumiki started leaving, but slowly that realization had crept in. Tsumiki spent less and less time as his sister , and more as just another person in the house. She made him food, she packed his bag, she walked him to school. But she didn't spend time with him anymore, didn't laugh with him, and barely smiled. She was so worried about something that she didn't want to let Megumi hear about. Worst of all, she stopped having time for shadow puppets.
He had tried, for a while, to bring the shadow puppets to her. She smiled, but it wasn't the same. He pulled back, wondering what he had done wrong.
Time passed. Megumi got a little older. Megumi grew up a lot.
When he was seven, he encountered one of those rare events where change had a distinct turning point. A paradigm shift. Something to mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next.
Halfway down the street to his house, Megumi froze. The ground bucked under him like a silent earthquake, and he stumbled and spun, landing on his backpack. Breath catching, he looked up at the sky that suddenly seemed much clearer than it had before. Pure, unbroken, electric blue. The sun glared from that empty void, and Megumi winced as it hit his eyes.
The sun was blocked out by a silhouette. White hair. Sunglasses.
"Sorry there. You need a lift?" The man offered him a hand. Megumi watched it with suspicion, then pushed himself to his feet without taking it.
He met his eyes over the narrow black frames. Blue, bright sky blue, so wide they were unsettling. Something in Megumi shied back, chirped both with recognition and of danger . If any sort of shared understanding passed between the two in that moment, the blue-eyed man did not react.
"Who are you," Megumi asked. And what are you?
"How to put this…" the man hummed. "You can say I was an… acquaintance of your father's." Oh. This was about his father. That ever blurrier figure in Megumi's memory, a distant presence even when he was there. Tsumiki never even talked about him. That was enough for Megumi to make judgement. "And I. uh. About your dad. Well! I might have—"
"I don't care," Megumi said.
"Huh," the blue-eyed man said, mouth hanging open.
"He left a while ago. He took Tsumiki's mom with him. What does it matter to me where he is and what he's doing? It doesn't have anything to do with us." Megumi made to leave, if this guy was just going to sit there and stare. Maybe it was strange that Megumi didn't have a father around, but he didn't really care. What difference did it make if it was a stranger or a classmate that acted all astonished about it?
"Oh. Okay. Hold on, don't leave just yet," he recovered, and reached out to Megumi, who jerked his shoulder back before his hand could land there.
"What do you want ," he snapped, because there had to be a point to all this.
"I really don't have a good explanation for this, so you're just going to have to take my word on it." Megumi raised a very small, very skeptical eyebrow. "I wouldn't say I owe your father. That's just— nope! Nuh-huh. Don't get that idea. But I think I do owe someone , something, so." He paused, hands flitting about as he spoke like he didn't know what to do with them. "You and your sister won't have to worry about money anymore. I'll make sure of it. I bet the old bas— MAN! Old man. Bet he didn't leave you with much, if anything. So, from now on you'll always have enough to get by. Don't worry about the how and why."
Megumi was ten. Suspicious, spurned by the world as he was, he hadn't yet known how to tell the difference between gift and trojan horses. He was still guided by the world around him. The blue-eyed man had no reason to be trusted or distrusted, and Megumi didn't see any potential harm. He could just pass all this off to Tsumiki, who would handle it all fine.
Megumi nodded.
"Great! Mission accomplished Satoru, the kids don't suffer for your actions!" Megumi should probably have been at least a little concerned about that statement. Megumi was still ten. The man fished something out of his pocket. "Oh and give this to your sister, will ya? For emergencies only. And I mean emergencies emergencies. You can't call me in for every little bump in the road. I can't— I can't be around like that." The confident, false-friendly veneer he had stripped away for just a moment, before it returned in full force. "So only in absolute, nigh-apocalyptic, nowhere-else-to-possibly-turn-to situations should you two call this number! Understand?" He dangled a slip of paper between his fingers, and waved it as he spoke, before holding it out to Megumi. Megumi pocketed it with another silent nod.
The man disappeared down the road, shouting "See you never, hopefully!". Megumi turned the card over in his hands, and wondered what to make of this 'Gojo Satoru'.
Really, Megumi got lucky. Gojo Satoru was genuine. He kept his promises. He hadn't seen him since that day, but the lights stayed on, his lunchbag stayed full, and he even had a flashlight again. Tsumiki no longer stayed up late at night counting money in the living room. The weight on her shoulders had lifted, just slightly.
But she never did close the distance. That rift that had formed between them in those days never mended. Things didn't go back. Megumi understood this. He understood when things left, that they couldn't be counted on to return, more often than not they wouldn't. Megumi traded distance for distance. This had solidified it; that Megumi couldn't trust anyone to stay forever. He had to stand on his own, so he would be okay when everyone left.
That was how it went. There was the rest of the world, and on the other side was Megumi. It made sense. That was how it had to be.
Megumi laid on his back, alone. The flashlight sat in the crook of his arm and shone up to the blank plaster ceiling.
Well-practiced shadows formed shapes. Two wolves. Shiro, Kuro.
And now, something else. It appeared between them, and drove them apart like a knife.
"Don't go! Don't go, Shiro!" Kuro cried, Megumi murmured. Kuro hadn't understood what was going on.
"I can't let this hurt you, Kuro." Shiro said. Shiro was the protector of the pair, and Kuro the one in danger. That was the story that Tsumiki told once upon a time, when these things never needed to be named, because they were never real. And now that was a rule Megumi played by, that was how the story went. Shiro the saviour, Kuro the saved. "Now go!"
The thing between them writhed, a mass of shadow.
"I don't want to leave you, Shiro!" Megumi whispered, "I don't want you to leave!"
"Kuro, there's no other way, now go!" Shiro howled. Something cold slipped down Megumi's cheek.
"I don't understand! At least let me know why!" Kuro lunged towards Shiro, but was forced back by the strange shadow. It growled, echoing against the ceiling of Megumi's room.
"I can't tell you that, Kuro. Just let me handle it." Kuro tried to reach Shiro again anyways, but Shiro dodged back, and didn't let Kuro hold onto it just a little longer.
"Shiro, we were supposed to stay together!" Megumi's voice strained. "You promised!"
"I have to break that promise, Kuro. That's how the world works." The thing between them roared, the shadows were hungry and wanted more . Megumi shifted and felt the damp fabric brush his face.
"Shiro!" he shouted.
The flashlight clicked off, and plunged his room into darkness.
The balance shifted after that. Megumi felt different. Sharper. More distant from Tsumiki, maybe in the same way that she had pulled away from him. Megumi had stood and waited for her to return to where they were. Now, he was taking the steps back.
A chasm had opened somewhere inside his chest. Perhaps it had been growing all along and only just now split the surface. A great, black, bottomless pit that nothing could seem to fill. Megumi walked through life feeling hollow, went through the motions, and tried to ignore it as everything he was slowly crumbled into those edges.
The only thing that made him feel something, anything , was playing out those same sad stories onto his bedroom ceiling. The only form of escapism Megumi had ever had the luxury of. He became reliant on it, so much so that even that began to lose its effect. It became another hollow routine, yet one Megumi continued with because cutting it out just felt wrong . Like it was some intrinsic aspect of his existence, this pale imitation of something happier, something once born out of love, and it was the last pillar holding up a fragile sense of self. Who was Fushiguro Megumi without his shadow puppets? He didn't want to find out yet.
It was in his early days of high school that a solution finally presented itself. A way to numb the ache. To fill the void.
To feed the shadows.
Megumi didn't understand.
What he understood was that the world was cruel. And in abstract, he understood that there were people who made it so. People who hurt others, people who don't care, people who left . Perhaps this simply was his first time up close and personal with this ugly underbelly to humanity.
His head hit the locker again, the clang of warped metal rang through the empty hallway and yet no one heard . He thought he saw a silhouette flit across the stairway doors, moving quickly on their way.
He still didn't get it. Megumi was not Tsumiki. Megumi was not good like Tsumiki. But Megumi was not cruel either. He kept to himself. Even if his existence helped no one, at least he did not hurt anyone. That had to be the bare minimum. He couldn't possibly deserve this.
His attacker spun him roughly, pinning him to the locker by the shoulder. Blood dripped slowly down Megumi's face, forcing his right eye shut. His blurred gaze locked onto the sadistic smile in front of him.
He didn't understand.
"Why? Wh— why are you doing this? Why me?" He coughed. His whole chest ached with the echo of a kick he had taken earlier.
"Well, a little whelp like you, hanging around the school after hours? Practically asking for trouble, if you ask me." His hand dug a little harder into Megumi's shoulder, and he winced. "Here I thought, 'best make sure he's not up to no good, right? Heh."
Megumi sputtered. Him? He wasn't the one beating up random kids in the hallways unprovoked! He had only been waiting for the sun to sink a little lower, for the light to grow just tolerable enough to brave the outside. Recently, Megumi had found himself unable to stand direct sunlight, every moment outdoors feeling like the sun stripped away pieces of his soul, leaving him bared in his fragile snarling self to all the world. He was just trying to avoid the worst of it, but unfortunately, anyone else still around the school at this hour was there for much less benign reasons.
Megumi tasted copper. He wrenched both eyes open through the stickiness of blood. Something crystalized in one moment of unbroken eye contact with the bully holding him by the shirt. The idea burned itself into Megumi's brain like a brand.
Some people did not have a reason. Some people truly did not care if they were the reason the world was unfair.
From that, two things followed. Firstly, that these people kept the consequences of their cruelty from touching them by being the ones to tip those scales of the world in their favour.
Second, that Megumi himself did not have to be fair either. What was the point in maintaining morality for those who would not return the favour? What was the point in giving anything not returned if it always wound up like this? He had done nothing wrong, here he was, pinned like an insect by the demons of the world.
The lights flickered.
Hands in his shirt slackened. Something had unnerved the boy.
Megumi stared through half-lidded eyes. Silent. Breathing no longer staccato and sharp, now it was an even, slow whistle through a half-broken nose. The lights dimmed, the fluorescent hum cutting in and out.
"K— Kid? Brat, what the fuck are you doing?" Was Megumi doing something? He tilted his head silently. He was finally dropped from the locker, sneakers hitting the floor with a gentle thud that echoed through halls that felt far emptier than before. The lack of an audience now felt like a comfort to Megumi.
"What the fuck, what the fuck —" Now, the bully's breath was the one to quicken. Megumi just glared, fury bubbling up inside him bleeding out through his face in some way to scare the boy so much.
The light at one end of the hall shut off completely. Then the next, then the next, then the next —
Something other than numbness and anger and fear worked its way into Megumi's veins. Something akin to adrenaline, maybe satisfaction. He smiled, and he could feel that it wasn't kind, because there was no emotion of the sort behind it.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, I'm out!" the older kid squeaked. He made a sharp turn for the left, and was just in time to see every light down that way flick off rapid-fire. His eyes turned back to Megumi, blown wide with terror, pupils reduced to small black specks.
Megumi paused, then. Something registered: that he could feel something. Something that wasn't gnawing emptiness. The void in his chest had spilled out into his surroundings, and it felt like a physical weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His grin widened.
Someone's back hit a locker, the resounding clang rung like a bell through the empty, empty, halls. There was nowhere else to go: they stood in the light of the last remaining fluorescent. The single dingy yellow bar with its low electric hum cast odd shadows now that it was alone. Darkness walled them in on both sides.
It flickered, for a moment. The boy whimpered. But it stayed on. The shadows needed light to be cast with.
Megumi took a step forward. Raised his hands. An ever-familliar shape was cast on the floor.
From there, everything was lost to a blur of instinct and fear.
Sometimes, Megumi would wish he could say that day was where it all started. Could call it unexpected, and label it as another paradigm shift, like Gojo Satoru. But it hadn't been. Perhaps it was a point of no return, but it had been a marker reached by a hundred smaller steps, a death by a hundred paper cuts that he never noticed until the blood ran into his eyes. He was already on the path. That day, the bridge crumbled behind him before he had thought to look back.
Megumi didn't just become distant from his sister. He actively avoided Tsumiki from then on. Whatever he was, whatever he had done, he refused to let her get caught up in it. He refused to hurt her, like he did others. If Megumi could do anything good anymore, it was this.
His grades suffered. The ceiling lights hurt, the windows with their curtains thrown wide open made him want to hurl and kept him from focusing in class. The sunlight was worse. He'd wake up at the crack of dawn, and throw on hoodies in weather where it was really plain unreasonable, just to have something to block the sun from his face.
Some days were nearly tolerable. Those were the days right after he let the shadows out . That was how he came to think of it, because it was the only way he could swallow it. Megumi himself did nothing. Nothing happened to the other people. It was simply the shadows doing as they did. He tried not to think about collateral, about morality, but also tried to direct himself to people who deserved it. The kind of people who beat up random fourteen-year-olds, for example. Perhaps Megumi was not a fair judge, but the world wasn't fair either. Trying to equalize it was worth more than nothing, right?
Megumi was tied into a bit of a moral knot, these days. The question of what it meant that violence made him feel better , the part of his soul that was fed by suffering, was ignored, though it loomed over his head like a guillotine. He had a sneaking suspicion that when it fell, it was going to strike true.
Tsumiki was worried about him. He ignored her, because he had to.
He had to.
"I'm not even really your brother," Megumi said. It felt like the words came from somewhere outside himself, and left him without his permission. His own voice rang in his ears. He needed Tsumiki to back off, to get out of his face, to give him a little more room to breathe before it all spilled out. "Just leave me alone."
He shut the door as fast as he could, and sunk down against the side of his bedframe. What the hell had he just said? It didn't matter that they technically didn't share their blood, Tsumiki was his sister in every way that mattered and they both knew it. They had always known that. Why had Megumi said that?
The shadows writhed , eager to deal with this like they did all his problems, anything that caused him emotional distress done away with, because it could really be that easy— but not this. No matter how a part of him that grew ever louder insisted he could, Megumi refused to let go of Tsumiki like that.
Maybe he should have left. Just vanished into the night before his self-control finally snapped.
Through the floorboards, he heard Tsumiki's muffled sobs. No, Megumi couldn't bring himself to leave. Maybe it made him brave, or maybe it just meant he was weak. He didn't want to leave his sister like that.
Shiro's shape found its way to the wall. Megumi didn't bother with lights these days. He knew how to make shadows without them.
"Kuro! Kuro, please! Where did you go, Kuro!" she cried.
"Stop looking. Please, stop looking for me, Shiro," Megumi whispered. "It's not safe."
"Everything is fine now, Kuro! You can come back now," she begged. "Please come back, Kuro."
"I can't go back!" he howled.
Kuro's silhouette rippled. He stood taller than Shiro, and had for a long time now. His jaws had teeth. He did not need protecting anymore. And yet, Shiro was still there.
"Kuro!" she growled.
"Shiro! Just go away, please." Megumi's voice broke. "I don't want to hurt you…"
"I don't understand, Kuro! I don't understand…" Nothing stood between them this time, yet Shiro shrunk back from Kuro. As she should, as she would have to in order to be safe.
Kuro snarled, and Megumi's teeth caught and cut on the inside of his cheeks.
Sometimes, he wasn't sure which of them inhabited a real body, and which was just a shadow on the walls. Megumi had fangs that bit and howled and Kuro threaded hands into black hair and pulled like the sensation would somehow keep everything together.
Maybe he was right. Whoever Megumi was now, he wasn't the boy who was Tsumiki's brother. They couldn't be the same entity.
The shell left in the shape of Fushiguro Megumi curled into himself and sobbed.
It all got worse from there. It started to move too fast to track. Megumi stopped hanging around the school for sunset, waiting like a sitting duck and only turning on those who were rotten enough to pick on seemingly helpless targets. At that point, it barely worked anyways, he'd garnered too much of a reputation. He wandered around in the night. He made enemies, only so he could justify— it was him or them . Every flimsy moral was as hollow and dark as the space between his ribs, but holding onto what little remained instead of letting go had to be better than nothing, right. Right?
Tsumiki was long gone. She acted like he wasn't even there, more often than not. It stung, but the pain all washed down to the pit of shadows in his chest. It ate anything, swallowed all that Megumi was. Some days he swore he could feel darkness dripping out between his teeth, staining the corners of his eyes.
Megumi stalked the streets, not even bothering with any sort of facade of a lost child, or a mundane delinquent. He moved like a predator, hunger driving him forwards, always. The shadows had roiled and strained against the walls of their container, searching for a channel to escape through.
"—specially if we can't find the other Fushiguro brat. Be a shame to waste the whole night." Megumi's head turned sharp enough he swore he heard a crack. He knew that voice, though he failed to think of the name attached to it, just that he definitely had enough reason to hate Megumi.
His instincts bring him to the front of the alley in a blink. Three boys, and— Tsumiki . The speaker held her up by the front of her shirt, her eyes wide and limbs trembling. Guilt stung through Megumi like a knife, he had never meant for her to get caught up in this, he had done everything to avoid it— the shadows swallowed it all. They reared at their leash and Megumi grit his teeth in the effort of keeping them chained just a little longer.
"What do you think you're doing," he ground out, knowing the sound would carry despite the low pitch of his voice. He heard it echo from somewhere outside itself.
Tsumiki met his eyes. He didn't want to think about what he must look like to her.
"Megumi," she whispered, pale with terror.
"Tsumiki." Some internal scale had tipped. Without realizing it, Megumi had decided that these three would die for this.
The one holding up his sister still didn't seem to realize the danger he was in. "Oh, look who it is!" he sneered. "Looks like he does care about big sis after all!" He cast Tsumiki aside like a spent cigarette, and Megumi tasted blood on the back of his tongue.
"Tsumiki, run ." He pleaded. He didn't want to hurt her. And he didn't want her to see this.
""Aw, the brat's trying to save his sister? How touching!" The idiot pulled out a blade, as it would save him. Megumi saw Tsumiki's eyes widen at it. She was still so worried about him. Didn't she see it yet?
" Not from you. " Megumi was the danger to her now. He could protect her, but only if she let him, only if she went now before he couldn't hold himself in anymore. Silently he pleaded for her to leave, but he wasn't sure if she could even see his face through the dark.
Somewhere outside himself, his hands raised like an executioner's axe, shaking with the effort to force them down, to wait just a few minutes longer, to spare Tsumiki this, please please please—
Kuro howled. Finally, that bastard looked scared of Megumi, like he should. He bared his fangs. The last remaining threads of self control snapped, and forward rushed a tide of claws and teeth and ink. Heady euphoria flooded his veins in the place of darkness as it all spilled out. And he could think of nothing but fear and hunger and happiness.
Megumi laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
. . .
There was blood in his mouth. It had never tasted so sweet. Finally, the void was gone .
Was this all it would have taken? Megumi was no longer hollow, no longer weighed down. It was incredible. For the first time in years , he felt like himself .
. . .
Megumi settled into his own body again, cleared headed than he had been in ages. A grin still stretched its way across his face without his input. He should care about what he had just done, he knew, and yet— he didn't. The concept of morals themselves felt muted and distant from his mind, let alone why they would matter to him.
Tsumiki.
Tsumiki .
Megumi's breath caught in his lungs.
She stared at him, still pressed up against the wall, eyes wide in terror. Even the way the shadows preened at seeing her fear couldn't drown out the wave of self hatred that crashed over Megumi. Had he hurt her? What had he done?
Just as he started to step towards her, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped forwards.
His hands shook as he tried to lift her. What he hated most was that he couldn't tell if it was fear yet, or just the last dregs of adrenaline. It was disgustingly easy to actually get her off the ground, Megumi felt stronger than he ever had before. He should have been worried about that. There were far too many things that Megumi should have realized, before it had been too late.
What was to be done about it now?
Numb to the world, Megumi carried his unconscious sister's body through the streets toward their house.
Megumi hid himself upstairs the moment he had laid Tsumiki on the couch. As it were, he felt the best thing to do was get himself away from her. He didn't want to know how she would look at him when she woke. Didn't want to see the denial in her eyes, but most damning of all, he didn't want to enjoy her fear.
He dashed up the stairs without looking back, and slammed the door behind him.
. . .
Fushiguro Tsumiki woke up.
.
.
.
In the end, Megumi never did have to see how she would have looked at him.
Megumi was curled into the corner of his room, just under the windowsill. The very darkest corner, where no moonlight could reach.
He sobbed into his knees. The shadows blanketed his shoulders, yet his body remained empty, his chest remained clear. Megumi remained himself, in all his lucidity.
What Megumi wanted was punishment . He practically begged to be drowned, to return to the agony of self-denial, for his ribs to crack carrying the weight of what he had done. It would only be fair. But he couldn't even do that much. The shadows were still full, languid and quite satisfied with Megumi's actions, and he wasn't sure where he ended and they began.
Megumi was truly a monster. He had hurt his own sister.
Without warning, the floor gave out from under him.
He fell and fell and fell. His first thought was relief. If not the shadows, then something else would get him, he could suffer in some other way. Wind whistled past his face in a black that wasn't truly darkness: Megumi knew shadow, and this wasn't it. It was an absence of light not because something blocked it, but because it was too far away to reach him .
Fear flooded him. It was penance, he believed, and he welcomed it. If what Tsumiki felt was even a fraction as bad, then Megumi deserved all of it and more.
"Hm, not even trying to escape?" Megumi didn't see the source of the voice, not close enough, he presumed, yet he heard anyway. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Not that you could, I mean, it's me . I was still expecting at least a little effort."
He felt nothing moving past him anymore, yet his stomach still didn't settle. What did happen was that tiny pinpricks of light broke up the void, painting an endless starlit sky around him.
Across from him was a man in black, with a white shock of hair. Ah, Megumi recognized him now, he was that blue eyed man who had saved him and Tsumiki those years ago, Gojo Satoru. He didn't even look all that different, aside from the fact that his eyes were covered with bandages. Had something happened?
"Remember me, Megumi?" Gojo smiled, as if he were completely at home in the space they were in. He was upside down from how Megumi saw it, slowly drifting around to face him. Several things clicked in Megumi's mind. If— if Gojo was capable of something like this, that explained a lot about their first meeting, about things Megumi hadn't put much thought into since.
"Why are you here?" The grin dropped off of Gojo's face.
"Your sister called me. Emergencies only, and well," Gojo winced, "this sure does qualify as one."
Megumi started, trying to reach and finding he couldn't actually move in the void. "Tsumiki woke up? She's okay, right? I didn't— please, tell me I didn't—"
Gojo was silent. Megumi couldn't meet his eyes through those bandages. He didn't need to. His heart sank right out of his chest, and left him hollow in a way that was terrifyingly mundane. No shadows to fill it, just an emptiness where there should have been something that Megumi hadn't even known he could lack.
"I'm sorry. This sort of thing never ends well." Gojo was suddenly much closer now, though Megumi wasn't sure how he had moved, and he laid a hand on Megumi's shoulder.
The stars dropped away, and Megumi was once again in the corner of his room, Gojo now crouched next to him. Shadows drew close around Megumi, filled his head and mouth and lungs, twined in his hair and nestled in the spaces between him and the rest of the world. He noted, with dim fascination, that they kept away from Gojo, the only dark that touched him was a completely mundane kind.
Gojo whisted. "Well, you certainly got yourself deep in this one, Fushiguro."
"What did you mean, 'this sort of thing'?" Megumi said, voice hoarse. "What are you? What am I? Why do they— why did I— what the fuck is wrong with me? "
Moving from a squat to sitting flat against the floor and wall, Gojo spoke, "Well, the simplest way to explain it is that it's all about fear . But you probably figured that out already, right? You seem like a smart kid, and you got this far and stayed more or less intact, so you worked out the trick to it, intentionally or not."
Megumi nodded. It all came down to how much people were afraid of him, that was what kept the shadows happy enough not to eat him alive.
"There are these things, most people like to think of them as entities that feed on fear. Fears of the dark—" he pointed at Megumi "—fears of heights and falling, more or less—" he gestured vaguely toward himself " —and a whole ton of other things. Personally, I don't think saying they 'feed' on it is quite right, if you ask me. It's more that they are fear, they are the thing that is feared, and the more it is feared, the more coherent, the stronger, whatever, the entity is. And it wants to exist, I mean, just about any form of life wants to exist more than anything else.”
"Even to say they can 'want' oversells it a bit though. They aren't quite sentient, these things, that's where people like you and me come in. When these things latch onto a person like this, they either get all they can from them until that person breaks, or that person ends up becoming a sort of extension of them.
"There's a lot of words for it, but in general, we call them 'Avatars'. Those beloved by fear." Gojo sounded very far away as he spoke.
"And I— I'm beloved by one of these entities?" Megumi choked out. The weight of the dark inside him was suffocating.
"Bingo!" Megumi nearly flinched at the sudden change of tone. "Looks like you got a nasty one too, something about the dark, though, I don't think it's Night in the sense of—"
Megumi cut him off. "Shadows. It's Shadows." He knew, bone deep, that was what it was.
"Sounds about right." Gojo shrugged. "These things can be a little hard to define sometimes, and they're a bit different for everyone, though naming it helps make sense of it, sometimes. Mine's called Infinity." It felt like an olive branch. Somewhere under all that nonchalance was an undertone of I understand, you aren't alone .
"How do I get rid of it then? Or at least stop it?"
"Ah. You can't. Sorry!" Gojo rubbed the back of his neck.
"What?! I can't just— I can't keep going like this though! I hurt my own sister, I'm a monster, I—" Megumi's breath was coming in quicker, he had trouble getting enough air around the mass in his lungs.
Gojo's hands came up to his shoulders. "Hey, hey, easy there Megumi. I never said you had to stay like this. Actually. You won't, either way, I can't just let you go like that." Megumi looked up at him.
"Listen up! There are two 'types' of Avatars running around Japan. The first one, like you, we call 'Curse Users'. Most of them just don't really understand what they are, and are just trying to survive, pushed into causing terror by their fear entity. There's a handful that do it on purpose too, but you definitely aren't one of those, not on that scale."
"But I— I wanted to. I wanted to hurt those people, I wanted to make them afraid of me." Megumi whispered.
"Of course you did. That's how it works. There's a difference between following your instincts and going out of your way to really lean into them. You didn't want to make Tsumiki afraid of you, not really, right? You just got carried away."
Megumi nodded, eyes burning.
"Exactly. You didn't abandon your humanity willingly, you just got swept up in the rush of it. Happens to the best of us." He didn't understand how Gojo could talk so lightly about all of this, as if Megumi's whole world wasn't being exposed down to the foundations.
"Gojo... am I still human?" Megumi hadn't felt particularly human in quite a while.
"Human is a state of mind more than anything else, when you think about it." Gojo waved a hand. "But well. No. Not really. I'm not either, if that helps?" It didn't, really. Megumi sighed. At least that was just confirmation to what he already knew.
"Hey, cheer up, it's not all bad!" Megumi levelled Gojo with a glare. "I'm serious. That's not your only option. You could always do what I do, and become a Sorcerer!" The jazz-hands accompanying the last word did absolutely nothing to make Megumi feel any better. Yet, he was still intrigued.
"A Sorcerer?"
"Yep! Put your powers to good use, hunting down Curse Users who are too far gone, and Curses. As a student, you're just assigned Curses, don't worry about having to hurt people any time soon, not ever if you aren't up to it. Curses are monsters, they're manifestations of fear that were never people, aren't really that sentient and exist purely for fear, so on and so forth." Gojo yawned exaggeratedly. Megumi didn't think this was that boring. "There's more around than you'd think, just they tend to avoid Avatars when they can, so you probably haven't seen them. After all, they are just sentient enough to be afraid of us." Gojo smiled. It wasn't kind.
"I can do that? I don't have to hurt anyone anymore?" Megumi knew it wouldn't be that simple, couldn't be as easy as Gojo made it sound, the world just wasn't that kind. But Megumi would take the chance no matter what the reality of it turned out to be, just anything other than this .
"Yep! There's a specialist school for training and everything, 'cause the main catch is that if you're too far gone it's hard to live as a Sorcerer, you're used to having more and it's hard to cut back. So it's usually teens who are sitting right at or just below the line, which is a little messed up, I know but—" Gojo shrugged " — can't do anything about it, not yet."
That was it. There was the catch: he'd forever have to watch himself, to make sure he stayed below that 'line' but— that really wasn't so bad, was it? Maybe for someone else, it would've been. But for Megumi, really, he deserved far worse.
"I'll do it."
Gojo clapped once, and sprung back to his feet. "That's great! Especially because if you said no, I was supposed to kill you!" Wait, what? "Though I'm sure I could have worked out a third option, so don't think too hard about it. I'm just amazing like that." He gave Megumi what must have been the least reassuring thumbs up he had ever experienced.
Gojo held out a hand. Megumi took it, dragging himself up to standing. The shadows drew themselves around him like a cloak, and wearily, he accepted them. He supposed this had to be his life now. Really, it wasn't that different, he hated to admit, just he did it with a little more awareness of what it meant.
As shadows withdrew from the room and back to him, the doorway cleared, revealing that it had stood open the whole time. On the outside, in the warm yellow light of the hallway, was Tsumiki.
Sprawled across the ground.
Megumi lurched towards her without thinking. He felt sick. Had he— was this his fault too? He hadn't even noticed he had done anything, he hadn't even noticed .
"She's not dead," Gojo said.
"What?"
"She's unconscious. Coma, probably. Not impossible for her to wake up, but, even if she does, she won't be the same. No one ever is." Gojo didn't move as he spoke, no exaggerated gestures accompanied his words. "I'm sorry."
"It's my fault." Megumi felt the shadows ripple. They tried to wrap even closer around him, as though comforting him. He hated that it worked a little. It was sickening, really, that the same thing that hurt his sister should still love him so. He felt dizzy with it.
"No, it wasn't," Gojo sighed. "You didn't know what you were doing, and you didn't do it on purpose. It's my fault, more than it's yours. I should have been there the moment she called, or somehow managed to keep her from trying to save you from well— the shadows.
" I was too late. And I kept my distance from the two of you all this time because I hoped you'd be able to live normal lives, without all of this. But, maybe I would've noticed something before you were too far gone, and it all could have been avoided. So I'm sorry about that too. If you need to blame anyone, blame me, not yourself." His head bowed, just a fraction.
Megumi thought about it. Letting himself just pin all the blame on Gojo. It was tempting, it might have been the only way Megumi would be able to live with himself. He couldn't, though. It had still been his shadows that hurt her, it had been himself that she had seemingly been so desperate to save him from. No matter what Gojo said, it still felt like it should be his fault .
He stood over Tsumiki's body, not daring to touch her, not trusting himself to be any closer than to see her. She looked almost peaceful, if it weren't for the stained black tears from the corners of her eyes and mouth. Megumi was torn between flinging himself as far away from her as possible, or staring until his eyes bled.
"You can't stay here, kid," Gojo said, placing a hand on Megumi's shoulder.
"You're seriously asking me to just move on from what I've done?" Megumi hissed.
"No, I mean literally, you can't stay around here anymore. You killed three people." Oh. Megumi had almost forgotten, and felt a fresh wave of secondhand shame at that. Not because he truly felt bad, but he felt bad that he didn't feel anything, and knew that Tsumiki would have been so disappointed by what he had become.
There were a lot of reasons Tsumiki would've been disappointed by Megumi, if she had seen him.
"We can set up hospital care for her, no problem, mystery comas are pretty common in our line of work." Our line of work, Megumi already included in that. "And we can come back later for your things, but anything super important you'll want to grab now." Megumi shook his head, and then paused.
He went back into his room, and rummaged around for a small swiss army knife, which included a little keychain flashlight dangling from the same clip. The batteries in the thing were long dead, and Megumi didn't know how to replace them. Tsumiki had given it to him, once upon a time. He told himself he was just grabbing the multitool, it couldn't hurt to be prepared.
He waffled back and forth between taking the cash hidden beneath his mattress. Gojo was, indirectly, the only reason he had enough money to be able to hide some away for emergencies in the first place. Presumably he wouldn't need to worry about that when he was with the man himself. He was trusting him with much higher stakes than that, too. Megumi tucked the yen into the pocket of his coat anyways. Better safe than sorry.
He re-emerged from his room, pockets not all that heavier than before.
Tsumiki's body had vanished while he was gone. Megumi stared uncomprehendingly at the spot where she had been.
"I've brought her somewhere to try and help, no questions asked. With a little luck, she'll be fine." Megumi wanted to believe it, he wanted to believe his words so badly . Almost enough that he really could.
The house felt even emptier, without Tsumiki in it. Megumi was ready to leave. There was nothing left to tie him here except misery.
"Can we just go now?" Gojo nodded, and sauntered over to grab Megumi's arm.
"Alright! Jujutsu High, here we come!" Gojo grinned. "Those old bastards are never gonna know what hit 'em when I bring you in."
Megumi didn't know where he was going, or what awaited him.
All he knew was that he had nothing to stay for.
Once more, the house dropped away from under him, and he was gone.
Fushiguro Megumi's last memory of his childhood home was this: the empty space where his sister had been, and the stain of shadows on the floor in her wake.