Chapter Text
"Meow Meow." Hey, Sukuna. What exactly did you do to Yuji after I died?
The white kitten batted the red one’s head in irritation, all while keeping an eye on Yuji, who was busy prepping their food bowls.
"Grrrr Meow." You want to go another round? Eager to get neutered? Sukuna honestly couldn't believe he had actually been shaken by that brat's threat.
Becoming a weak, defenseless creature who couldn't even lift a paw against the brat was downright humiliating.
"Meow." Heh, total coward. Yuji isn't that cruel, I trust him. Gojo was absolutely certain he knew his student a lot better than Sukuna did.
The red cat let out what sounded like a heavy sigh. "Meow!" You utter fool! He’s not your student anymore. Just look at him. The brat has changed.
The boy Sukuna once knew, the one who would leap to save anyone and wore his heart on his sleeve, was gone, replaced by someone completely unpredictable. So yeah, that threat might actually be real, not just some empty bluff.
Besides, the way the kid looked at them now made Sukuna deeply uncomfortable. It was as if Yuji viewed them as mere entertainment. It was a gaze all too familiar to Sukuna, the exact same look he used to give when trampling over the lives of weaker beings.
Ultimately, both cats were forced to accept their current reality to avoid triggering a domestic war. They watched as Yuji set down two small cat bowls, spooning out some wet cat food.
"Meow." Damn it, am I seriously supposed to eat this garbage?! Sukuna looked visibly repulsed.
"Meow Meow." Actually, it smells pretty good. I’ve always been kind of curious about what cat food tastes like.
Ever the optimist, Gojo scrambled forward, beating Sukuna to the punch. "Meow." Yuji! Gojo began weaving circles around Yuji's ankles, rubbing his head affectionately against his hand.
"Alright, hold on a second. You must be starving," Yuji said gently. "The clerk said this is the best brand, so hopefully it's true." He finished serving and pushed a small dish toward each of them. "There you go, eat up."
Gojo leaned in, took a sniff, and immediately wrinkled his nose. Okay, Sukuna was right, this stuff was objectively gross to human standards. But there was no way he was going to disappoint Yuji, so he tentatively took a lap. “Meow?” Oh, wait, is this actually good?
Maybe it was just his feline taste buds kicking in. Once he realized it didn't taste half bad, Gojo began inhaling the food, his stomach having rumbled one too many times.
Reincarnating into a cat had definitely messed with his old human instincts and perceptions.
Sukuna watched Gojo with a mix of curiosity and skepticism before finally taking a small bite himself, his empty stomach overriding his pride. He was entirely at the mercy of this weak body's biological system.
Yuji watched the two adorable creatures eat obediently. Nodding in satisfaction, he left them to their meal so he could head to the kitchen and whip up something for himself.
Even though he didn't technically need to eat anymore now that he was essentially a half-curse, he still forced himself to maintain these human habits. It was his own little way of keeping the crushing loneliness at bay.
Right then, a massive spike of cursed energy flared through the air. It was a phenomenon that happened every now and then, a volatile side effect of the ritual of harmony.
A horde of curse spirits would suddenly spill out from a portal leading to the realm of resting souls, and it was Yuji’s job to exorcise them, erasing them completely to cleanse them from the reincarnation cycle.
"Meow!" Sensing the immediate danger, both kittens let out sharp cries and leaped onto a small table near the window.
"Meow meow?" The blue-eyed white kitten looked utterly bewildered, while the red one fell completely silent, his gaze locking onto Yuji.
Yuji calmly stroked their backs to soothe them. "Wait here for a bit. I'll go clear them out."
This was his daily routine now, a burden he had to carry simply because there was no one else left to do it.
He pulled his hood up over his face. Instead of heading for the door, he unlatched the window right next to where the two kittens were perched.
"Meow!" A tiny white paw hooked into the sleeve of his hoodie, as if trying to yank him back.
Yuji gently patted Toru's paw and smiled. "It's not dangerous, Toru. Don't worry. Just stay here."
With that, he leaped straight out of the fifth-floor window. Utilizing his sheer physical reflexes, he navigated the descent with seamless, fluid parkour.
Vaulting across structural ledges, he made it to the rooftop of the opposite building in a matter of seconds.
In the distance, a massive, gaping portal had manifested, unleashing countless cursed spirits into the sky.
Yuji could hear faint, panicked screams echoing below as cursed energy began to leak back into the world.
He sighed, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. At the end of the day, cursed energy could never be truly eradicated.
Standing on the rooftop, he locked his sights on every single curse within his effective range. He raised a hand and chanted a single word:
"Dismantle."
With a sharp slash of his arm, a colossal wave of cursed energy materialized into an immense, sweeping blade, cleaving through the sky and obliterating every curse in its path toward the portal.
The slash triggered a massive detonation in the atmosphere, yet it didn't clip a single building, directed with absolute, pinpoint precision.
The cursed spirits dissolved into nothingness, their very souls shattered with zero chance of ever reincarnating. The portal finally collapsed, and a heavy quiet settled over the city once more.
Still, Yuji knew there were bound to be casualties from the initial breach. An incident like this would undoubtedly cause the remaining major Jujutsu clans to hunt him down yet again.
He was probably going to have to pack up and leave this city sooner than planned. He had no interest in playing the hero anymore. He was just finishing the job he started when he chose this path. The rest wasn't his problem.
Sinking his cursed energy back beneath the surface, Yuji leapt back across to his apartment building, scaling the wall back up to his fifth-floor window.
When he stepped back inside, he was greeted by the sight of two kittens sitting there with their jaws completely slack.
They're actually kind of cute... Yuji felt a faint glimmer of amusement. These two really behaved as if they possessed higher intelligence, far from ordinary animals.
Fortunately, they had been well-behaved enough not to try leaping out after him, otherwise, he would've had to catch them mid-air. Truthfully, he had been testing them, and their bizarre obedience was quite telling.
It made him wonder... Could they actually be disguised curses?
Yuji closed the window and fixed the two kittens with a sharp, calculating stare. He could definitely detect a trace of cursed energy radiating from them, but the pool was so minuscule it was practically negligible.
Then again, plenty of living creatures had become tainted by cursed energy in this day and age.
It was actually quite rare to find a cat this healthy and active. Most of the animals he ended up saving were deformed, terminal, or in horrific shape.
They certainly weren't like Toru and Kuna, who could run around, scratch each other up, and vocalize so loudly.
"Toru, Kuna... are you two actually curse spirits? You're entirely too smart for normal cats. In this era, ordinary cats are usually deformed or dead," Yuji noted aloud.
He caught the way the red kitten's fur and tail instantly puffed up, looking thoroughly startled.
The white one, however, seemed much cooler under pressure. It simply meowed and began aggressively rubbing its head against Yuji's hand again.
"Meow." The white cat suddenly hopped down and began pacing around the room in frantic circles.
"Toru?" Yuji tilted his head. What is he doing? Does he need to go to the bathroom? Oh, right. I haven't set up a litter box yet.
Realizing he had completely forgotten a crucial step, Yuji turned on his heel to head right back out to the store.
He completely ignored the desperate, agonizing meows of the white cat echoing behind him.
"Meow!!!"
"Meow!!!" Yuji, don't leave!!! Gojo felt incredibly frustrated. He had just been about to figure out a way to communicate with his student!
Even if he was stuck in a cat's body, he still knew human language and could easily write things down.
He had been looking around the room for a piece of paper or anything he could use as a makeshift pen, but Yuji had just up and vanished.
"Meow." Idiot. Sukuna scoffed, delivering his usual mockery before turning back to stare out the window.
Sukuna’s mind was still reeling from the display of power he had just witnessed. The brat had clearly inherited his innate technique, but Yuji's version was vastly more potent than anything Sukuna had ever wielded.
What kind of era is this? Sukuna grew increasingly curious about what had transpired to turn the brat into some kind of rogue fugitive.
If this was the brat he remembered, Yuji should have been surrounded by his friends or other Jujutsu sorcerers, working within a team or an organization. He shouldn't be wandering around solo, hiding his face like a criminal.
His hatred for the brat had honestly waned since their final battle. He had been quietly impressed by how the kid kept pushing through, stubbornly clinging to his ideals of saving others over himself.
Of course, Sukuna still despised that foolish hero complex.
That was exactly why during the Shibuya incident, and even when he killed Gojo Satoru, he had wanted nothing more than to watch the boy break, to force him to abandon his sickeningly righteous path.
Yet, until the very end of his life as the King of Curses, he realized he had never truly understood the brat at all.
Yuji’s Domain Expansion had been fascinating, something completely unprecedented, but it was the brat's final words that still grated on him to this day.
In the most nauseatingly casual way, the brat had offered him a second chance, inviting Sukuna to just live out the rest of his days inside him.
What the hell was wrong with that brat?! Ugh, what a sick joke. Sukuna aggressively dragged his claws down the windowpane in irritation.
"Meow!" Hey, Sukuna!
Thwack!
Sukuna was hit by Gojo's paw on the head. "Grrr Meow." Damn you, piss off!
"Meow Meow Meow." If you reincarnated too, that means my student successfully took you down, right? Who did it? Was it Yuji? Gojo was dying to know how the King of Curses had ended up sharing a reincarnation cycle with him.
As a curse, Sukuna shouldn't have been bound by a human lifespan; he could have lived indefinitely unless someone had explicitly exorcised him.
"Meow!" Mind your own business! Sukuna snorted, leaping off the back of the sofa down to the floor.
Flicking his tail, he marched back over to his food bowl. He hadn't actually finished eating earlier before that massive surge of cursed energy had interrupted them.
"Meow...." Hah, no fun at all... Gojo shook his head, finally giving up on forcing an answer out of him. He’d just have to piece the puzzle together himself.
However, his plan to reveal his identity to Yuji was now up in the air. Right now, he was just a powerless kitten.
He couldn't help Yuji with anything other than emitting a few pathetic meows. If he suddenly traced out the words "Gojo Satoru" on the floor, he had a strong suspicion Yuji might just throw him out, writing him off as a disguised curse spirit.
Besides, reincarnating as a cat was inherently too ridiculous to comprehend. If anyone claimed Gojo Satoru had turned into a tiny furball, absolutely no one would believe it, including Yuji.
Fine, I'll just play along and act like a normal cat for now until I find a way to turn back into a human.
Gojo was convinced there had to be a cursed technique or some kind of method out there capable of altering physical forms; he just didn't know where to look in this era.
If he could just get his human body back, even if it meant losing the Six Eyes, he could at least talk to Yuji face-to-face without causing a massive misunderstanding.
He padded over to join Sukuna, quickly finishing off his own food.
The meal immediately left him feeling drowsy. It seemed this frail kitten body was heavily dictating his behavior.
Earlier, he had instinctively licked Yuji's hand; his actual intention had been to offer some comfort, but his physical instincts had completely hijacked the action. Even rubbing his head against Yuji had just been a cat's hardwired urge to seek attention from its owner...
Wait, owner...
Oh no. Is this cat body actually starting to warp my cognitive thinking? This is bad!
Gojo whipped around to Sukuna, aggressively nudging his back. "Meow." Hey, Sukuna. You're definitely being affected by these cat instincts too, aren't you? Admit it, you secretly want Yuji to pet you.
Gojo wasn't about to go down alone; if he was losing his dignity, his rival was going down harder.
The white cat flashed a deeply irritating, smug grin.
"Meow." Hmph, I am nothing like you, moron! Sukuna held his chin high with supreme arrogance. He didn't possess a single instinct that made him want to get cozy with the brat.
Still, Gojo's words planted a fresh seed of anxiety in his mind.
If he truly was at the mercy of this weak creature's instincts, wouldn't he eventually end up doing something utterly humiliating? The fact that he had automatically curled up into a ball at the sound of thunder earlier was already a terrible sign.
For the very first time, the King of Curses and the Strongest shared the exact same existential dread.
Honestly, it might actually be easier if they were curse spirits. At least then we could communicate... Yuji mused over the possibility as he walked back home, carrying a brand-new litter box.
When he unlocked the door, he found both kittens fast asleep right next to their bowls. It looked like they had finally exhausted themselves from all the growling and had just collapsed on the spot.
Aside from the litter box, Yuji had also picked up a DIY cat bed that required assembly, which was why the trip had taken a bit longer.
After putting the bed together and setting up the litter box for Toru and Kuna, Yuji carefully scooped up the sleeping kittens and placed them into their respective beds.
Kugisaki is going to love these two... Yuji noted silently, planning to visit his old friend in the near future.
It looked like he was going to have to adjust his timeline after that portal breach. He needed to relocate immediately, and he was definitely taking the two cats with him.
He had firmly made up his mind to keep them the moment he realized they seemed to comprehend his words.