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Megumi woke to the familiar sound of his alarm, but he didn’t get up. The alluring, weightless sensation of sleep still clung to him stubbornly, holding him down with the physical weight of a warm and cozy futon. It would be so easy to just slip back into unconsciousness without moving a single muscle…If not for the monotonous buzzing that continued relentlessly.
Finally, reluctantly, he blindly stretched out an arm and, relying on pure muscle memory alone, swiftly killed the alarm.
Blissful silence descended. A slight chill entered his futon when he retracted his arm, but he was too eager to surrender to the welcoming darkness to care. He didn’t know why he was so tired, but it felt like he hadn’t slept so well in a very, very long time.
Unfortunately, the moment of peace was short-lived.
Barely a few heartbeats later, a new presence barged abruptly into his room and large, strong hands peeled him out from the warm cocoon of his futon. Displeased with the disturbance and shivering slightly from the cold, Megumi opened his eyes by a slit to peer at his assailant.
It was a man with his face, but older and sharper and meaner, with a scar across his lips and a constant twinkle of insolence in his eyes -- His father.
Megumi let his eyes fall shut again; pliantly allowing the man to fish him up and plant him firmly on his feet.
“Hey brat, don’t keep your mother waiting. She’s been up since six,” his father grumbled, making sure he was standing upright on his own before turning to open the curtains, letting in a fresh chill. There was light outside but it was dim and watery. The winter sun, like Megumi, was clearly also reluctant to rise.
This was the season for hibernation, after all.
Megumi stood meditatively in place, eyes closed, determined to chase the last tendrils of sleep while his father fussed about the room. He didn’t need to see to know that the man was grabbing out a clean towel and fresh set of uniform from his closet. Once done, his father scooped him up, as easily as a cat picked up its kitten, and carried him over to the bathroom down the corridor.
The bathroom was already heated and warm condensation hit his face the moment his father opened the door.
“Hurry up,” his father scolded as he shoved Megumi in unceremoniously. “I’ll whoop your ass if you’re not done within 15 minutes.”
Instead of turning to leave after he’d hung Megumi’s towel and uniform up on the rack against the wall, the man grabbed him by the back of his neck and gave him a noogie that was almost hard enough to bruise. Megumi punched him hard in the arm and his father let go with a bark of laughter, as if it tickled. With a quick, final ruffle of his hair, the man headed off without bothering to close the bathroom door, leaving Megumi to slam it shut behind him.
Megumi only really felt awake when the near-scalding heat of the shower washed over him, exorcising the last, lingering effects of this strange winter lethargy.
It was his birthday today, he suddenly realised.
His mother always got up early to make an elaborate breakfast on their birthdays. Most important meal of the day, as Tsumiki always said.
No wonder his father had made the effort to come wake him up at this hour. The man was a nocturnal creature who was more likely to crawl out of bed at dinnertime than at breakfast. Come to think of it, Megumi couldn’t remember when was the last time he’d been woken up by his father. On his last birthday, perhaps.
He faced himself in the mirror and saw a pale, expressionless face looking back at him. Fifteen years old -- right in the flush of youth. Just about to enter the canyon of adolescence and head on towards the new continent of adulthood.
Maybe I should get myself something for a change, he mused while pushing his cheeks up to lift his lips into the semblance of a smile. It felt oddly foreign on his face. A new set of headphones, a skateboard, maybe a puppy. He swept a glance across the tiny bathroom that could barely fit a half-body tub. There was definitely no space in this house for a dog.
Well, maybe in another life.
.
His mother had really pulled out all the stops today. It wasn’t so much a breakfast as a feast. There was barely enough space on their modest dining table to accommodate all the food.
“Happy birthday, darling,” she greeted him with kisses and a smothering hug. He’d outgrown her at some point during his growth spurt and she had to tiptoe to smear kisses over the tip of his nose and eyelids. “My baby boy, all grown up.”
“Happy birthday, Megumi,” Tsumiki happily joined in the hug, never one to miss an opportunity to lavish him with affection.
He caught his father’s teasing gaze over their shoulders, squished in a sandwich between the most important women in his life.
“Feeling popular, brat?” the man asked with a smirk, “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Right, you, get off your ass and come here now,” his mother ordered, turning around to hook a commanding finger at her husband, “Family hug time!”
“Fine, fine,” his father stood up begrudgingly. He slotted himself behind Megumi, tucking his chin over his head, then enveloped them all with his lean, strong arms and squeezed them tight.
“Welcome to your fifteenth year of existence, boy. Kinda unbelievable that you’ve made it this far. Honestly thought we wouldn’t even see the day you turn six.”
“Be! Nice!” He could feel his mother kicking his father in the shins, unbalancing them all since they were still tangled up like spaghetti. Megumi tried helplessly to stand his ground while Tsumiki let out a startled squeal.
“I was being nice!” His father retorted insincerely, but he held them all steady without so much as a grunt.
Megumi could feel his father’s chest vibrating with suppressed laughter from where it was pressed against his back. He couldn’t see his mother’s face, but could feel her answering laughter against his chest. Tsumiki’s hair tickled his ear as she giggled beside him.
Everything was perfect. He just didn’t know why he suddenly felt like crying.
.
“So what are your plans for after school?” Tsumiki asked at the road juncture where they usually separated before heading off to their respective high schools.
Megumi tried briefly to remember but his mind came up with a blank, so he shook his head mutely.
“Oh!” She perked up, “I thought you’d have made plans with your friends. Well, if you don’t have anything planned, come find me. Your big sis will treat you to something nice!”
...Friends? The thought gave him pause. Oh, that’s right. He had friends.
“I’ll let you know later,” he said hesitantly, “I think there’ll be club activities.”
“I see…” she deflated again, “That occult research club of yours? Well then, text me later. I don’t mind being the one to come see you for once.”
He nodded and waved goodbye as she walked away. Were their schools very far apart? He suddenly couldn’t recall.
He headed off by himself in the other direction. Abstractly, he knew the way, but the scenery looked somehow foreign and unfamiliar.
Perhaps it was just the winter palette to blame. The trees had shed their leaves and the sky was a bland, frosted white. It was like the world had been seeped of its colours, stripped down to a faded and washed-out shadow of its former self. It didn’t really snow in Tokyo, not in December at any rate, so all they were left with was the steel and concrete skeleton of the city.
Mid-way to school, along a non-descript stairway between two gated communities, Megumi noticed a dark figure standing at the top of the stairs. It was still and unmoving, as if frozen in place or waiting for something.
As he approached, he could make out the form of a young man clad in traditional kimono, his hands tucked leisurely into wide sleeves, looking as if he was admiring a painting in an art museum rather than randomly blocking a stairway in the middle of nowhere.
Megumi edged to the side of the path in preparation to side-step the man, politely averting his eyes when they neared each other, but it seemed the stranger had other plans.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Fushiguro Megumi?” The stranger asked mellowly when they were just a step apart.
Megumi lifted his face at the sound of his name and met the stranger’s eyes for the first time.
Two pairs of blood red eyes looked down at him, causing him to freeze in place as a flood of peculiar emotions surged up within him.
Fear intertwined with an uncanny sense of familiarity -- not so much a sense of déjà vu as an unsettling lack of it. Like encountering a blank space in his mind where there should have been an important memory.
The fear he could still understand -- it was almost an expected response when confronted by the sight of a stranger with four eyes, albeit perhaps not quite to this degree. But the familiarity...Where did that come from?
“Do I know you?” Megumi asked cautiously, staying calm as best as he could, somehow finding a precarious balance between the twin precipices of fear and curiosity.
“Not in this world,” the stranger answered patiently. He looked around them again, contemplatively, the way he did when Megumi first noticed him, like a thoughtful critic considering an artwork. “It seems I don’t exist here.”
“...You’re standing in front of me, aren’t you?” Megumi asked, a little emboldened by his apparent good humour.
The stranger smiled, his four eyes shifting back to focus on Megumi.
“That’s right. So the question is -- Do you want to know me?”
He wasn’t making any threats and his behavior didn’t seem malicious-- at least, not that Megumi could detect-- but there was a discomforting darkness swirling in the depths of his eyes.
Megumi was no Red Riding Hood. He could tell when he was speaking to a wolf that they were not to be trusted. The fear he’d felt rushing through his veins the moment their eyes met was neither blind nor impulsive. It was something deeper, more primal.
The instinctual, biologically-coded fear of prey when in the presence of its natural predator.
“Excuse me,” he said shortly, dodging to step around the stranger without further thought, “I have to go now, or I’ll be late for school.”
“Want me to walk you there?” The stranger offered from behind him, as if amused by his brusque escape.
“I can find my own way,” Megumi hurriedly rejected, speeding up his footsteps.
He didn’t look back and the four-eyed stranger didn’t follow.
.
He didn’t recall ever telling them, but Itadori and Kugisaki had somehow found out that it was his birthday. Perhaps Kugisaki had heard from Maki-senpai.
They'd apparently chipped in together to get him a birthday gift. He opened it up during lunch break, with the two of them eagerly hanging over his shoulders, waiting for his reaction.
He was expecting some childish gag gift like silly socks or reindeer headbands, but it turned out to be a pair of fluffy indoor slippers in the shape of puppy faces, one white, one black.
“You like it!” Kugisaki crowed triumphantly when she saw his face upon unwrapping the gift. “You might as well drop the cool guy act now. Everyone knows you’re a sucker for cute things.”
“There’s no cool guy act,” Megumi protested weakly while carefully folding the gift back up into its original packaging. “But thank you, I...appreciate it.”
“Come on, say it like you mean it,” she scoffed.
“We’re glad you like it,” Itadori said earnestly, his grin bright and easy. “Sorry we couldn’t get you a real dog.”
Why dogs though, Megumi wondered, looking down at the slippers.
Objectively, he liked them, loved them even. But there was a dissonance between his memories and emotions. His feelings flowed up from a void, unrooted and inexplicable, yet so compelling he could not ignore them.
It reminded him of the four-eyed stranger he met that morning.
“Karaoke later!” Kugisaki declared loudly, cutting short his reverie.
“Ah, but Gojo-sensei called for a club meeting after school today,” Itadori reminded her.
“Club meeting?” Kugisaki snorted derisively, “That man just wants an excuse to eat cake. Trust me, he wouldn’t mind if we hold the meeting in the club room or a karaoke lounge. And if we bring him along, he’ll have to pay for everything, two birds with one stone!”
“Good point,” Itadori agreed, then turned to Megumi, always considerate. “Are you fine with that, Fushiguro? It’s your birthday, after all.”
“I don’t mind,” Megumi shrugged, “But let me check with my sister.”
“Ask her along,” Kugisaki urged. “She knows Maki-senpai, doesn’t she? Since you’re all cousins or something.”
Were they? That unsettling sense of incongruence was back again. He tried to recall if Tsumiki and Maki had ever met, but his mind returned only shadows and broken fragments. He knew they must have, but he was starting to distrust himself.
.
The school’s toilets were unheated, so they were especially unpopular in winter. The water that poured out from the basin taps was freezing cold. Megumi could see the tips of his finger turn red as he scrubbed his hands slowly under the flow.
Even his own hands were starting to look strange to him now. The patterns they made; the way they wrapped around each other.
He felt like he was searching for something in a room full of cabinets, but he opened them up one by one only to keep coming up empty. And all this while, he still didn’t know exactly what he was searching for.
His mind jerked immediately back to the present when he suddenly noticed that the water running over his fingers had turned warm.
“I’m starting to think you like pain,” the four-eyed stranger said from somewhere behind him. Megumi’s head snapped up at the sound, only to meet his inhuman gaze in the mirror.
“Why are you here!”
“You should be asking yourself that,” the stranger answered lazily, his main eyes narrowing in apparent displeasure, but the secondary eyes under them unblinking. “Is it really so fun to play house with a bunch of tedious mortals? Dull lives and little people, you might as well go catch some fireflies in a jar. At least that’s nice to look at for a night or two.”
“You’re not real,” Megumi said, willfully and accusingly, more to convince himself than in response to the other man, “You’re only in my mind.”
“I don’t object to that,” the stranger grinned, “But you’re really not in any position to be determining what is real.”
He stepped up behind Megumi, placing a hand around his neck and pressing him up against the sink.
“Does this feel real to you?” He asked, his breath hot and too-intimate against Megumi’s ear, while his fingers slowly tightened.
Megumi shuddered and swung around violently to push him away, but there was nobody and nothing behind him save for a row of empty cubicles.
“You said you’ll find your own way, Fushiguro Megumi,” the stranger’s voice resounded, chillingly close, as if whispered directly into his ear. “Don’t make me wait too long.”
.
Megumi continued to feel the stranger’s phantom fingers while seated back at his desk in the classroom.
They tightened slowly like a noose around his neck; and the more they tightened, the more his grip on reality loosened.
Tanaka, Katou, Touda . The names of his classmates floated across his mind, breaking down into a meaningless game of shiritori, while their faces seemed to melt and disintegrate along the peripherals of his vision. The teacher at the front of the classroom was speaking, but he couldn’t process a single word.
There was something wrong about this classroom, something wrong about the fact that he was seated here at this ordinary, ubiquitous desk, amongst rows of indistinguishable students he could somehow name but did not actually know.
Does this feel real to you? The stranger’s words still echoed in his mind.
“Are you feeling alright, Fushiguro-kun,” The teacher paused mid-lesson to address him with concern, “You seem to have gone pale. Perhaps, you should go to the infirmary.”
Megumi was about to shake his head and refuse, but he lifted his face and saw a blurred smudge of murky beige where the teacher’s face should be. The rest of his classmates were also curiously starting to turn to stare at him as well, all with blank, featureless faces, like mannequins on a factory line.
The fingers were now so tight it felt like they might leave a ring of bruises around his throat.
He fled from the classroom without a further word.
.
The cold winter air flooded his lungs and helped him to re-orientate himself. His feet were on solid ground, the sky above was matte and sunless, the clouds crowding so low it felt like they could be touched from the rooftops.
Reality felt real again and his palpitating heart began to cool. He rubbed his neck roughly and came away with just a palmful of cold sweat. With a sigh, he decided to head over to the infirmary.
Maybe some rest would do him good.
His phone buzzed within his pocket and he took it out to see a new message from Tsumiki.
See you later :)) I’m excited to meet your friends! It read simply, but that sense of incongruity, of there being something that was wrong wrong wrong returned like a tsunami, destroying the final bastions of his composure.
Who are you? He texted back.
?
Is that Megumi?
Is something wrong?
A row of text bubbles popped out in response to his broken, contextless question.
Nothing. He answered, then switched off his phone.
Tsumiki had never met his friends. She’d never sang karaoke with them or celebrated his birthday with them. She’d never texted him to say that she’d come join them after school.
She hadn’t texted him at all in a very long time.
This felt real though.
The ground, the sky, the winter chill, the phone a cold lump of metal in his hand. And Megumi desperately, pathetically wanted this all to be real —the school, the conversations, the early morning breakfast with his family, the shoddily wrapped pair of puppy slippers; and, later, blowing out the candles on a cake in a karaoke room, surrounded by well-wishes and friends.
His dream was mundane and ordinary and insignificant, like fireflies in a jar, so faint and transient they barely mattered. But even then they weren’t real.
He looked back down at the ground and finally realised why that undercurrent of unease had niggled at him throughout the day.
There was no shadow under him.
.
“So, am I still in your mind now?” The four-eyed stranger was waiting for him outside the school gate.
“If you’re not here to kill me, then please stay out of my way,” Megumi said coldly, ignoring him and heading straight towards his destination.
“Such sentimentality,” the stranger chuckled, following behind him at a languid pace, “Little lives made out of clay are bound to be washed away by the rain.”
“I’m not concerned with so many lives, that I cannot keep out a bit of rain,” Megumi said, not looking back.
“Excellent spirit,” the stranger praised, although it was impossible to decipher if he meant it mockingly or sincerely, “But such trivial aspirations. You’re holding back the ocean to preserve some sandcastles on the beach.”
“...There are no sandcastles here.”
“No,” the stranger agreed, “Just the illusion of them. But no matter, both are equally worthless... Still, you like wasting your life on worthless things, don’t you? Fushiguro Megumi.”
Megumi didn’t answer.
They have worth, he would’ve liked to argue. The things that I hold important have worth. But even he wasn’t entirely convinced by that.
It’s not a waste -- that was more accurate, although it wasn’t quite the same concept and not something he was prepared to admit. Not to this man at least.
He still couldn’t quite place his thumb on exactly who this stranger was and what part he played in this twisted world. He’d been the one to put the cracks into this false reality, the one who made Megumi realise that he was trapped within a shadowless dream.
But that didn’t necessarily mean he was not the enemy, or that his intentions were pure.
Megumi’s memories had been altered and there was nothing, not even fragments to go on. Just that strange, contradictory sense of fear and familiarity when he looked into blood-red eyes.
“They may seem precious to you now, your little clay people and sandcastles, but you’ll learn: All that really matters at the end of the day, is that you’ll still have your clay and you’ll still have the beach,” the stranger stopped as Megumi stepped into the subway entrance. “I’ll see you soon. After the rain.”
.
Megumi’s mind didn’t quite know exactly where he was going, but his body and soul knew the way.
This was a path he’d taken countless times in another world. The real world. He got off automatically when the train entered the intended station and walked without pause to the correct exit, guided only by his basest instincts. St. John’s Private Medical Centre, block C, palliative care department, ward 308.
He didn’t need any maps or signboards, his feet took him where he needed to go.
None of the staff tried to stop him, but two figures stood before the door at the end of his path.
His parents.
“You shouldn’t be here,” His father had his arms folded, chin lifted, and eyes frigid, “Go back to school now, brat.”
“Be a good boy and do as your father says, darling,” his mother urged gently, grasping his sleeve and starting to pull him away.
With a shaky breath, he jerked his arm out of her hold. She looked up at him with a tiny, distressed sound of surprise, but her face was featureless and blank.
“Megumi, darling,” his faceless mother pleaded, reaching desperately out for his hand once again, “Let’s just go home, baby. Let’s go home now.”
He shook her off, only to run into his father’s strong and stifling embrace.
“Just fifteen years old and you don’t want your parents already?” His father’s voice rumbled above him, bittersweet and mocking. “What a heartless child.”
You’re one to talk , Megumi thought as he broke free with a hard push.
The two faceless figures of his parents didn’t make any further efforts to stop him. They stood side by side, silently watching him as he entered the ward.
He thought that maybe Tsumiki would be inside waiting for him -- the final boss for him to fight in order to complete all the levels in this game -- but the ward was empty.
For a brief, fleeting moment, Megumi felt a renewed sense of hope.
Hope that he might have just been hallucinating. That this had all been a bout of temporary insanity. That he’d merely lost his grip on reality for a little while, rather than that this reality was entirely false from the start.
But he only had to look back down at the ground to be reminded of what he was missing.
The hope extinguished itself as quickly as it appeared and he found that it seemed to make no difference at all. His emotions were simply irrelevant by this point; if none of this was real, then none of it mattered.
Fireflies in a jar, pretty for only one night.
He stepped forwards and finally found his shadow spread across the empty patient bed. Slowly, but without hesitation, he laid himself down over it.
Outside the window, it started to rain.
Mist-like at first, silvery streaks that were barely discernible, then heavier and heavier, turning into a thunderous downpour. Murky black streaks of inky rain washed down from the heavens like a rite of cleansing, blocking out all light and casting the world in shadows.
He was alone in the ward, but he could see in his mind’s eye as everything he ever cared about and held dear in his memories melted away around him.
The school, the students, the puppy slippers still wrapped up in his school bag, the faceless figures of his parents standing together just beyond the door, and Tsumiki somewhere out on the streets, frantically trying to find him after he’d switched off his phone. All of them washed away with the rain.
He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, fingers entwining almost as if in prayer.
Chimera Shadow Garden.
He unleashed his domain without any reservations, pushing out every single drop of the cursed energy from his body like the rain that’d just swept away the brief world that he’d lived for fifteen peaceful, ordinary years within his mind.
.
Megumi found himself in a ramshackle shophouse when the battle finally ended. The outcome of the fight had been decided the moment he regained his powers within the enemy’s hypnosis technique, and the release of his domain merely sealed that spirit’s fate.
The interior of the shophouse didn’t look anything like Tsumiki’s ward, but there was also a window from which he could see the winter sky, now clear and cloudless, a deep velvety black sprinkled lightly with stars.
He laid sprawled out on the concrete floor, panting and too wrung out to care about the dirt and grime, just looking out at the sky and absently marveling at the contrast.
His actual memories had returned, but the false memories created by the cursed spirit’s technique still lingered in his mind like a stubborn scent, nebulous and ephemeral, yet utterly inescapable.
It overlaid his actual memories like a veil. An ideal prototype delineating and highlighting all the things that were lacking in his present world.
But there were ways in which that world was lacking and incomplete, too.
Like his divine dogs. Like his identity as a Jujutsu-shi. Like Sukuna (although Sukuna had still found a way in anyway).
“Did you have fun?” A shadow fell over him, blocking out that little window of winter sky.
Four blood-red eyes looked down at him, not so different from when Megumi first saw them at the top of the stairway, blocking his way to school. Except that wasn’t really the first time at all.
“Not as much as you did, clearly,” Megumi sighed, looking away.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You could’ve ended it in a split second, but you just stood by to watch. Do you enjoy seeing me suffer?”
“Not quite,” the curse smiled, bending down to brush his fingers lightly against Megumi’s neck, “I enjoy seeing you in all states. Happy birthday, by the way.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“Ah, but it was, for a little while.”
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