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Sometimes Gojo references things that Megumi doesn’t remember. He chalks it up to having a terrible memory; he doesn’t remember meeting the weirdo in the first place, after all.
Some things he can remember. Megumi can remember dissolving into the shadows and then coming out of the void with two dogs.
His father, a blurry face and a missing name, left him with a few words. Megumi doesn’t remember them all, doesn’t think he could even if he tried to. He remembers being told one thing, however: he’s got a strong well of cursed energy, and when the time comes, he should not panic.
Megumi does not care about his father leaving. Megumi does not care for his father.
The aforementioned time comes at around five. Five pm, five years old, it’s all the same. Outside in some similarly unnamed woman’s backyard, the mother of his new sister, he squats down to peer closer at the ground. He pokes at some animal footprints with a stick he found lying on the ground.
What happens is subconscious. The shadow left from his body grows, forming a circle around him. His feet begin to sink into the ground. Absently, he thinks he can hear Tsumiki calling his name.
Wolves howl. Megumi turns in a slow circle, underground. The ceiling is black. The floor is black. The walls are black. It feels, somehow, like home.
Tsumiki used to play with the Divine Dogs, sometimes. She doesn’t anymore.
It’s not an irreparable rift. It’s not a fracture, or a fault, or a fissure, or any of the other million earth-related terms that refer to the splitting and shifting of plates. It’s just drifting. It’s just growing up.
In a cry of silent rebellion, he takes it up himself. He doesn’t talk to the dogs, doesn’t do anything more than summoning them every now and then and surrendering himself to petting their fluffy fur while he does his homework. They seem to enjoy it. They seem happy and loving, and Megumi reminds himself not to attribute characteristics to those who do not truly exist, just like he reminds himself that his parents are living their best lives somewhere where he doesn’t exist. Oh, right, he’s not supposed to do that.
Tsumiki falls asleep. Comatose. Something like that. She’s cursed. His first maybe-friend is gone.
See, Megumi’s hands are painted black: from the dangers of his shadows, from the residue left by the hundreds of nameless bullies on his middle school playground. Really, the black on his hands means he’s the bully. But Tsumiki kept quiet, and so will he.
The count of good people in the world has decreased by one. High school—Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School—is fast approaching, where he’ll take to the skies and begin exorcising. It’s part of a deal Megumi doesn’t remember agreeing to but will fulfill regardless.
That night, Megumi makes a decision. He also realizes he doesn’t know enough to act on his decision.
So he initiates contact with Gojo Satoru for the first time in his life and calls the man.
“How do I summon my next shikigami?” he asks as soon as Gojo picks up, foregoing any sort of proper greeting.
He grows.
In the privacy of his own room, he wonders if anyone knows anything about his family. His question echoes back at him, unanswered. He tells himself he doesn’t care, that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, not really.
Megumi has a handful of shikigami he tries not to summon too often. He’d rather they don’t die. He also tells himself that it doesn’t matter if they do, because it’s not like they’re real. They’re just configurations of his cursed energy, of his lineage, of his shadows, or something. He stops calling out the Divine Dogs for their periodic petting sessions.
Gojo finds out, somehow—maybe he detects the lack of cursed energy traces or something, who knows how his technique works, he never says anything useful, some teacher he is—and tuts. He doesn’t say anything other than, “That’s a step backwards if I’ve ever seen one.”
It’s a flat-handed suggestion, a push, a turn-around sign. U-turns are permitted here. Megumi, independent in all the wrong places, does not heed the warning.
A half-man-half-demon-half-curse-half-blemish on humanity stands before him. Megumi can count his heartbeat: one and two and three and he raises his arms, and the certainty of death lingering in the air ripples across his skin. He grasps hold of the king’s shadow and breathes. There is one way out. Mahoraga. A curse that haunts his dreams nearly as often as his faceless father or the markings on his sister’s forehead.
One of them will die here, he thinks. This is his duty.
Neither of them die.
Gojo intervenes, one hand holding sweets from who-knows-where and a shit-eating grin on his face. With a teenager’s unconscious body slung over his shoulder, Gojo calls for Megumi’s input.
Megumi does not like the pressure in Gojo’s eyes. “Save him,” he says, and does not vocalize the following pleas: do not let me near him; do not make me know him; do not watch me watch another good soul fall.
He does not need to say anything for Gojo to know what he’s thinking. Tsumiki always said his expressions were too easy to read. Gojo stays quiet and instead assigns Itadori the room beside Megumi’s.
Take that, Gojo: your schemes didn't work.
“You’re really holding up pretty well for seeing him die in front of you.”
“It’s the norm in this line of duty. You know this.”
“I know this. It’s still bullshit, though.”
“Is it? We’re all just cogs in the machine, holding up the status quo. I’m happy to have extended the life of a good person for a few weeks, at least.”
“Ha. Yeah, right, that’s what I’m calling bullshit. We’re here to learn how to be strong enough to make the system our bitch, not the other way ‘round. Quit running away from it.”
“Says you, who runs away from Panda every time P.E. starts.”
“I’m just saying, our teacher hasn’t shown up at all yet, so why do I have to get punted thirty feet every day?”
“I’m sure you’d love for Zenin to punt you.”
“Oh, c’mon. If you’re gonna go there, at least make it funny.”
He is three-and-a-half seconds away from death when Megumi finally remembers what everyone’s been trying to tell him and throws his hands up and laughs. Be selfish. There are two good people within a couple hundred meters of him and they can’t die. He’ll add himself to the list, even if he doesn’t count himself as a good person.
He slams his hands together and staggers to his feet. Shadows coalesce across the floor, growing in strength and number. There is no more floor. He’s not strong enough to block out the sun, close off his inner domain, but it’s enough for now. He summons the playground he’s only ever been in once before—when he first met his two Divine Dogs—and drowns the curse standing before him.
Be selfish. Maybe, when he pulls the grotesque finger out of the remains of the equally grotesque curse, he hears raucous laughter.
They come back for him. It's a kind gesture. Well, joining him on this mission was kind in of itself, so he really shouldn't be surprised.
bonus:
He’s pretty good with a sword, if he can say so himself. Not as good as Zenin, even though her specialty is polearm weapons, but pretty good.
The ghostlike killing machine after Megumi blows them both out of the water, though.
A man stabs himself through the temple. Recognition briefly flashes through Megumi’s head before he’s gone, the stranger lifeless against the cold cobblestone and features reverted to that of a plastic store-bought mannequin.
Only halfway through bleeding out but not more than a hundred meters to where Ieiri probably is does he put two and two together. Finds a corner piece for a puzzle he didn't know he was solving. His father, no longer a blurry face but still a missing name, left him with a few words.
Did his father come back for him, or did Megumi just meet him halfway? Does it matter? Be selfish. People are dying. He’s alive. He keeps walking.