Chapter Text
Yuuji stirred awake. At first, he thought he was naturally roused because of the morning sunlight streaming past the shoji screen. His silent questioning led his gaze to wander and to eventually land on a lump sitting at the corner. Yuuji rubbed his sleepy eyes.
There was a purple toad with a dotted back and bright yellow eyes staring at him. Its skin was a mix between transparent and murky of similar quality to that of imported stained glass that decorated Nishimiya-san’s house.
Yuuji knew that it belonged to a flock of other purple toads. He had seen it hopping around the castle’s garden with its friends. But for some reason it liked to linger in Yuuji’s bedroom, not even doing anything other than staring at him like what it was doing now. Yuuji didn’t even know how the toad managed to slip into his room at night. Was it able to open doors? He supposed it didn’t matter, it didn’t seem that the toad had any malicious intent.
No matter how many times this had happened to him it was still quite eerie, how the Curse remained so still like a statue, unblinking marble eyes fixed on him.
Yuuji rose to a sitting position, the fluffy Ume-patterned blanket that was quickly becoming his favourite fabric rolling down his chest. “Morning. Slept well?”
The toad let loose a deep croak that sounded very much like an old man’s groan. Yuuji cracked out a smile, then let the motions of an involuntary yawn washed over his body. To be able to exchange morning greetings and acknowledge each other amicably like this was something he didn’t know that he had missed. After presenting, Yuuji were used to receiving curt nods or no responses at all.
After that first night spent in Sukuna’s bedroom the next day Yuuji was assigned to his own. At first, his blood had run cold, taking it as a sign of rejection and what eventually would lead to banishment.
“A growing omega needs his own bedroom.” Was Sukuna’s simple statement as he slid the shoji door open.
The room was enormous, only slightly smaller than Sukuna’s own, complete with a wardrobe and other amenities that Yuuji’s mind was now far too sucked in barely repressed panic to have the capacity to identify. The sides of his head started to throb and his eyes stung as if having braved through a tempestuous thunderstorm. It was almost laughable. Of course a useless omega like him had already managed to find a way to displease the master of the house in just a single night. Would he be kicked out of the castle? Or delivered back to his village? Yuuji thought he’d rather be killed by the Curses roaming in Satsurikuyama wilderness than returning back to the village that absolutely loathed his existence.
Yuuji was snapped out of his crippling train of thoughts by Sukuna’s deep voice. “There’s no need to be scared.”
He turned towards Sukuna, dazed and damned by a skittish heart. Sukuna’s normal eyes were still directed frontward, surveying the room in detached apathy, while the lower two were locked on him.
“My room is just a few rooms over from yours. Nothing that means you harm can slip past my detection. In the unlikely case they do, scream and I shall be here.”
Somewhere, a dreamy distance away from where he stood, the tyrant brandishing an arsenal of thunderclaps was tamed and the sky cleared out from gloomy gray to rose-coloured blue.
Odd… the maelstrom of emotions that have been raging inside him dissipate almost immediately after hearing those words. How odd. Yuuji didn’t quite know how to call this feeling, this bone-deep assurance that everything would be as Sukuna said.
The King of Curses certainly was an odd being.
It was almost alarming how fast Yuuji adjusted to life here, in a castle filled with Curses when just a few weeks ago he had never even encountered one before. There were only a select few that he interacted with regularly (Yuuji suspected the individuals were of Sukuna’s choosing because what Curse wanted to babysit a human child on their own accord) and those who didn’t never went out of their way to harass him.
Yuuji liked Hanami.
The first time Yuuji heard Hanami talk it was certainly a shock. Hanami didn’t talk using the conventional way of pushing air out of one’s mouth and producing a string of sounds to form intelligible words, what came out of Hanami’s mouth were garbled and essentially meaningless. Yet somehow those sounds were translated perfectly in his brain so that Yuuji understood every word. Yuuji just chalked it up as one of Hanami’s uniqueness that he had started to grow fond of.
“Can you feel that?” Hanami’s soothing voice rumbled in Yuuji’s mind.
They were sitting on a flower field that stretched as far as his human eyes could see. All in full bloom, the display of colourful petals glazed by a sheen of dew under morning sun. The air bore a biting-cold edge to it but Yuuji was warm underneath his fur haori that he took from his wardrobe. The Curses that had mouse-like heads and dressed in peculiar frilly kimono informed him shortly after his move that everything in the bedroom was his and therefore free for him to use.
Yuuji was watching a drop of dew making its slow descent across the yellow petal when the question came.
“Feel what?” Yuuji shifted his gaze to Hanami, curiosity tickling in his belly.
Hanami was sat among the cluster of flowers, somehow managing to not squash a single one even with his gigantic body. At ease with his surroundings, he was a natural addition of this flourishing patch of nature.
“The flowers’ breathing.”
Yuuji huffed out a small laugh. “You’re so silly Hanami. Flowers don’t breathe.”
Hanami turned towards him. When it came to emotions, Hanami’s face was a blank canvas, the barks jutting out his eye sockets and the hard-wooden lines of his mouth were the epitome of visual silence.
Yet Hanami had a way to apprehend your attention, akin to the twining vines of a honeysuckle, just with his presence and the inflection of his otherworldly voice alone. He extended one of his big hands and cradled the small petals delicately.
“Of course they do, flowers are alive after all. All the things that you see here surrounding us are alive. Trees, the plants, the wild bushes, even the grass at our feet,” Hanami murmured and Yuuji listened. The breeze blew and coolness tickled Yuuji’s skin, bare feet cushioned by slightly soggy soil and grass sprouting in close clusters. “They all coexist with us in this world of the living. They have as much right as any other creature to live just by the virtue of being alive, and should be given the respect as such.”
Awashed with something like wonder, Yuuji gazed down at the pretty flowers in renewed light. They spoke in a language undecipherable to Yuuji’s own, they lived rooted in soil, filtering nutrients and bathing in the light of a magnanimous sun. Yuuji thought they were precious. Strong entities, living lives worth living.
“Yes you’re right,” he said, “I’m sure everyone agrees with you, Hanami.”
“Oh I wish.” Hanami sounded wistful, the whisper bearing the strength of a mere hope. “I wish.”
Yuuji fell quiet. The rising sunlight pouring into Hanami’s broad back casted shadows across his face and bare-chested body, and the countless flowers spanning behind him a sea of glimmering contrast.
A few minutes of companionable silence passed before Hanami spoke again, “Have you had breakfast?”
Yuuji nodded. “Yes. With Hane and Kinuyo.”
Among the Curses that took interest in him were Hane and Kinuyo. They were young compared to the others that were centuries old, probably one of the reasons why they had decided to recruit him as their playmates. The only person in his life that he could call a friend was Momo, the bright-eyed girl with an even brighter smile that lit up his bleak existence.
Momo…
Yuuji held his head down, lost in thought of his dear friend. He sent a silent prayer in his heart for her safety and happiness, comforted by the fact that his disappearance wouldn’t cause her as much grief as what he was feeling. Momo would be fine, she was surrounded by tons of people that loved her. There was a twinge of guilt when the memory of what had befallen the fate of Nishimiya, her sire, and the other three men crossed his mind.
“Good. Did you drink the herbal tea that I had prepared for you?”
Hanami’s next question took him by surprise that he didn’t quite manage to stifle his honest reaction in time. One that Hanami didn’t miss. In Yuuji’s defense, the tea wasn’t kind to his taste buds at all, the bitter tang was a downright oral assault that brought tears leaking out of his eyes unbidden.
“Naughty, naughty human child,” Hanami chided, tipping his face down to peer into Yuuji’s nervous one, “Do you know what naughty human children get?”
“...a reprimand?”
“Much better than that. A punishment, little Yuuji.” The chuckle was practically tinged with evil as Hanami moved an arm in a small arc.
Flowers suddenly grew at a rapid rate under him. Yuuji stayed frozen, wide-eyed, as he was lifted off his feet by the blossoming mass. The shape lengthened until it resembled that of a massive flower serpentine.
“Aaaah!!” Yuuji yelped, clinging on for dear life as the serpentine took off into the air.
The ground, filled with flowers, flashed by Yuuji’s eyes that the colours blurred together like paint mixing on canvas. The wind pelted into him and he hastily pulled his haori tight before it could slip off his shoulders.
His stomach somersaulted as it finally registered in his mind that he was flying! On the back of a massive dragon! A legendary creature the likes of which he had only sneaked a peek of from the obscure drawings painted on a scroll belonging to a traveller merchant. It was surreal.
The terrified scream that was initially pulled out of his throat had morphed into joyous laughter as he glided the air on the flowery monster’s back. It felt like he was simultaneously sitting on something solid and empty air. This high up, the flower field seemed to have infinitely expanded in his viewpoint, edged by tall trunks of trees standing like sentinels.
At last the whirling of flowers subsided and he hovered gently downwards. He expected his feet to touch solid ground but it was a warm embrace instead that greeted his senses.
“That was fun!” Yuuji’s mouth was stretched in a wide grin as he looked up into Hanami’s face. Hanami was holding his body close with an arm, and although his face denoted nothing Yuuji could sense the confusion radiating off him.
“Seems like that wasn’t much of a punishment?” Hanami cocked his head to the side.
Yuuji laughed and clung tighter to Hanami, his little arms barely able to curl around Hanami’s sides. He felt small in Hanami’s hold yet his heart was swelling to near bursting. Yuuji’s omega too, felt delirious in this foreign-feeling euphoria that he might as well sprout wings and fly into the carnation pink skies.
“It appears that I have much to learn about humans.”
“Nah you’re good Hanami, exceptionally so.” Yuuji whispered, head pillowed on the Curse’s chest. He was vaguely aware that he was snuggling into Hanami and Hanami was letting him without a hint of complaint. The tender moment calmed his mind and he was drifting off to sleep when he felt fingers probing his body, particularly the area around his ribs. Yuuji made a small questioning sound that escaped the back of his throat inadvertently.
“You’ve been eating well. I am glad.” Hanami’s gentle voice resonated in his mind. His voice truly was as if a chorus of flowers themselves were singing. “When you came to us you were so skinny that I was afraid you would be blown away by wind like dandelion seeds.”
“I won’t.” Yuuji immediately answered, the omega in him wanting to assuage the Curse’s spoken worries.
“Good. The herbal tea that I prepared for you would help cleanse the toxins in your body and promote healthy metabolism. Therefore increasing your appetite. So drink your tea.”
Yuuji groaned but gave an acquiescing nod. A gust of chilly wind prompted him to curl further into Hanami’s warm body, and Hanami seemed content to let him be. From outside eyes watching they certainly made for a peculiar sight. The human boy was barely visible inside the cradle of the huge Curse, revealing only a shoulder and the tuft of pink hair as a hint of his existence to the outside world.
A screech suddenly pierced the calm air they were sharing. “Human there you are!”
The body that Yuuji was resting against tensed and Yuuji flinched in reflex. His eyes flew wide open and sought the source of the noise. A figure clad in green sprinkled with black dotted pattern was trudging his way towards them. His single eye was glaring at them, lit with black fire that furnaced his steps like a wrathful Minotaur.
“Stop lazing around and playing with those damn flowers!” Wisps of smoke wafted out of Jogo’s volcano-like head, a perfect indicator of what primary emotion was currently reigning at the peak of his mind.
Hanami snaked his arm under Yuuji’s armpits and lowered him down gently to the ground. “Go on before he ruins our eardrums.” There was a teasing tone bellying that prompt and Yuuji nodded, smiling up at Hanami.
“It’ll be more than your eardrums if you don’t get over here right this instant!” Jogo screeched, waving his staff threateningly at the both of them.
After bidding goodbye to Hanami, Yuuji quickly made his way towards the fuming Curse.
Today was going to be a good day. The thought flashed in Yuuji’s mind like a sure foothold and a smile blossomed across his face.