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Dear son,
This is your story: a little bit of hope, a grain of love and a handful of tragic events.
How you came to be is nothing like those love stories in movies, nothing like the tragedy of a loving couple who got killed in an accident. You were what we hoped for – what I hoped for. You were the light on the roadside where every single sign pointed in one miserable direction.
My partner, your other father, looked so sad. He had received devastating news that day. His lips hat formed to a smile, the black tattoo-like marks almost reaching his ears, but it hadn’t been a genuine one. His fingers formed the sign for “I’m happy”, yet his eyes didn’t reflect the same feeling. He had embraced me. His Alpha instincts trying to keep the raging storm inside his mind at bay and taking care of his pregnant partner, despite his own health issues.
You inherit none of his facial expressions, not even his abilities. Only his kind nature. Your father was an Alpha from the Inumaki Clan, born into a family side branch, but with an ability that could have possible overthrown the main branch in battle. His twin brother had inherited the same technique: the cursed speech. Not able to communicate, our first meeting had been a disaster. I chased him through the gardens and kept yelling at him for how he had greeted me at the entrance and in front of my family. A kiss on the side of my cheeks. What a disrespectful little shit he had been, even back then.
The visit to their Clan’s resident had ended in an attempt to separate us. We weren’t meant to be. The head of the Zenin Clan looked at us, as if we just had committed an unforgivable crime. Later on, I learned that only an Alpha of the same Clan, if their blood relation isn’t that close, are allowed to be together. My crimes, my son, are yours too now. We had met each other many years later at the Tokyo Jujutsu High School and the rest is history. We wanted you, but not like that. Not so fast and not at that time.
I left the Zenin Clan shortly before we got the news. You’ll probably never hear from me from our relatives. My stories are buried with the family name many feet under the surface of the earth where nothing, but darkness awaits the curious ones. I worked on the other spectrum of the jujutsu world, filled with too much corruption and blood-soaked money. Where a few words could determine the very existence of a single individual. Without a single drop of curse energy running through my veins, I was pushed into a corner, I never even knew existed.
He was there with me. His own family had kicked him out, disowned him and even after everything they had demanded what he should do to preserve the family honor despite being together with an Alpha from the Zenin Clan, they pressured him to break up our relationship. An Alpha-Alpha-relationship isn’t common, is nothing to joke about and nothing to brag about in front of the whole jujutsu world. He wanted to hide it, to keep everything as low-key as possible. My son, people change. I pushed a ring onto his ring finger and when he gave it back, I gave him a necklace with the same ring, which he had denied at the beginning. And for the first time, he said something. A few words, nothing really to hurt anyone. The curse didn’t activate at that time. I was stunned at the sound of his voice. I only ever heard it in the middle of a battle. His words had stirred something in me. A dark sinister side, I only allowed my enemies to see. He proposed, just like that. In his own unique way, he had captured my whole being and had bound me forever in the same world, I had started to despise so much. Our blood kept as prisoners in a small cage, far to dirty to bring up a child.
I had a plan to break us free. I worked so hard to make the dream a beautiful reality. Your procreation was the last step into a land far away from what we had experienced so far. But life isn’t forged of a straight path into the promised land. It’s graced with dark branches rotting away at the base of a hundred-year-old tree which throws a shadow so dark and broad that nothing but weed grows there. Your father wasn’t graced with a long-life expectancy. The many generations of inbreeding tend to leave deep cuts and scars. As he was waiting for me to put you into his slim arms, I continued to earn money by living the same way, the Zenin Clan had pushed me onto. Not even once, his family had visited him in the hospital. The marks of the curse speech fated slowly. The curse energy seeped out and attracted all sorts of monsters. The Gojo Clan, humans and special grade curses. Not a day passed without someone trapping his mind in all sort of lies. They ripped his status from him. A dying shaman has no use for a jujutsu rank, they had said. The apartment, the money he had worked so hard to earn in the human society, almost everything had been snatched out of his hands. In the end, I was left with nothing but his ashes.
And you.
Those dark blue eyes watching the blood of our enemies running over my body. Your angelic gaze following the drops of sweat hanging at the scar on my mouth, only to finally gather themselves at my chin. Your silent nature forced the scream dying on the tip of your tongue. You lifted your small body of the mattress to get a better look at me.
“I’m fine. Nona, is fine, Megumi”, I assured you.
Your name left my lips in a silent attempted to get used to it. Why have I named you after him? A spur of the moment. A very sad moment. A second where I was overwhelmed by the feelings, I believed being buried with my partner’s body. I don’t even know. Your gaze never leaves me, even when I decide to turn my back on you. I sell you to the devil. My handwriting betrays me and gives away the feelings I’m trying to hide.
You will have a better life here.
I’ll repeat the same sentence for years to come. They try to lower the price. I negotiate with them. One million yen on top of the amount of money they offer for your blood, if you turn out to be an Alpha. Three more if you show an inherited technique at the age of four or five. They don’t care if your ability resembles your father’s. Not mine, his alone.
I’ll meet your father’s cousin when you are three. She has a daughter, no father in the picture. Our memories of your father and the hatred for the jujutsu world bring us together in an attempted to get rid of all the people who wronged us. She is a good fighter. A decent jujutsu sorcerer. Nothing like me. I marry her to cut all ties with the Zenin Clan. She dies in a mission, one that was supposed to be for the Zenin Clan to take on. The picture of her disfigured body is still burning in my mind. My visits aren’t frequent. Tsumiki takes on the role of a mother. She is a good kid. You inherit the shadow-technique.
What a curse. What a blessing. Which one?
A year later I take my last breath. I’m eye-to-eye with your fate – a silver-haired boy. Gojo Satoru. The honored one. The only one who had ever noticed me for the monster and the non-shaman, I’m. I hand out your destiny as if it’s cheap money.
“Do whatever you want with him.”
He takes it like an offered apple at the market. My lungs aren’t filled with air anymore. Those eyes rest on my pitiful form. The scent of sandalwood meets my nose. The idea that he could possible be here to walk the path into the afterlife with me, soothes me. I knew that I would have never gotten the chance to see you grow up. Gazing at those eyes once more, I catch myself not minding much. That boy will grant me my wish.
You’ll have a better life. You’re talented.
Your name is the testimony of my miserable life combined with the only one who was able to see past my Zenin bloodline.
Megumi Inumaki.
Dear son, I wish I could have left you more than just my blood behind.