Work Text:
Date
July 2018
Location
West Tokyo City, at the Eishu Juvenile Detention Centre, in the sky above the exercise yard
Event Details
An unnamed apparition of potential special grade was witnessed by multiple non-jujutsu sorcerers. Since it was deemed an emergency, three first-year students were sent to the scene.
Of those three students, one died.
—
Three weeks after their first meeting, Itadori Yuuji dies with a smile in the July rain, softly whispering, “Live a long life, okay?”
Megumi doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s an idiot for stating something so obvious. Especially when, at this moment, Itadori doesn’t have a heart at all.
The sound of Itadori collapsing onto pavement is muffled by the downpour.
—
Two weeks after their first meeting, Nobara wakes up in the hospital and learns that Itadori Yuuji has died.
“What a hypocrite,” she mutters after Fushiguro relays Itadori’s last words, on their way back to the student dorms. She kicks at a small pebble on the side of the road, hands clenched in the pocket of her skirt. “Telling us to live a long life. Maybe he should take his own advice first.”
Nobara exhausts her vocabulary cursing Itadori. Fushiguro stays silent, but makes no move to stop her.
The downpour is too loud. Her freshly-applied mascara is running. But at least she can pretend that the wet trails from her eyes are from the raindrops.
—
Megumi slips quietly into the dorms, and opens the door to his room, a foot away from the now empty room that Itadori Yuuji used to occupy.
He strips off his wet uniform and takes a long, hot shower, so long that his fingers begin to prune.
Megumi switches into his pajamas, tucks himself into bed and stares at the ceiling. Tries not to dwell on the silence he’s wanted for so long before Itadori’s death, when he would wake up at the crack of dawn to the sound of oil crackling and Itadori’s soft humming as he cooks.
It was annoying being woken up so early. It was annoying to hear Itadori’s muffled, terrible singing through the wall. It was even more annoying when Itadori, who somehow always knew when Megumi was awake, would yell out, “Good morning, Fushiguro!”
It’s annoying that he won’t hear it every again.
Why is it that the world is so unfair? Why is it always the kind people that suffer?
He rolls over on his side and closes his eyes. Maybe he’ll finally be able to sleep in tomorrow.
That’ll be an unwelcome change.
—
His body, Ijichi tells them, cannot be accessed by anyone but specified personnel. After all, the death of Sukuna’s vessel is a valuable source of information.
First-year students were not important enough. So Nobara is denied the chance of even knowing the room where he’s contained, let alone lay eyes on his dead body.
Nobara tries not to yell at Ijichi to his face. The man looks stressed enough already, being abused by Gojo-sensei.
She’ll curse him out when he leaves instead.
—
Gojo-sensei has disappeared, as he’s wont to do from time to time. Fushiguro and Kugisaki have long learned to not be surprised at anything the spontaneous man does.
They’ve been both given a temporary leave, to recuperate. This means no mission for a while, no throwing themselves into work to forget.
So they decide (or rather, Kugisaki forcibly advised) to go out to eat, to maintain at least some semblance of normal in their life.
In the end, they go to a revolving sushi restaurant. The one they’ve visited before, with the bullet train.
Normally, Kugisaki and Itadori would be exclaiming, “Ooh!” and “Ahh!”, over every little thing. Megumi would resign himself to eating with the country bumpkins, and try to look inconspicuous by further tucking himself into his collared uniform, as if saying, I don’t know these people, how did they get here? Gojo-sensei would take pictures of them all, even the unwilling Megumi, with constant camera flashing.
(Megumi would always protest at Kugisaki and Itadori poking at his cheeks while he’s eating, but truthfully, he likes the chaos.)
This time, they eat in relative quiet, only interrupted by Kugisaki’s short, lackluster comments.
“The sushi’s good, huh?”
Megumi nods.
“The bullet train is so cool, isn’t it?”
Megumi nods again.
“That hick.” Kugisaki gives a forced laugh, bitter and dark. “He’s an idiot, dying so easily. How can you eat food this good when you’re dead? Sucks to be him.”
Megumi doesn’t bother objecting to her tearing into Itadori. Not when he can see her shaking chopsticks.
They eat the rest of the meal in silence.
(They split the cost. It’s a strange feeling when Kugisaki doesn’t even attempt to get him to pay for the whole bill.)
—
Nobara asks (note: demands) Fushiguro to go shopping with her.
She forcibly links her arm with his and drags him to her favourite boutiques. Acts like everything’s okay. Tries to fill the invisible space between them, like it’s perfectly normal for two pairs of brown shoes to be stepping next to each other. Like the red shoes that should be walking between them never existed at all.
(It’s hard, trying to fill the emptiness between them, trying to match the combined exuberance of her and Itadori, with just herself.)
Nobara buys and buys, but she’s not in the mood. She ends up with only half of what her shopping trips usually yields, and doesn’t even ask Fushiguro to carry any of the bags.
If Itadori was there, she wouldn’t feel bad making him hold everything, because he’s so frustratingly considerate. Because even if Nobara didn’t dump all the bags on the protesting Itadori, he would have grumbled about her bad shopping habits and taken some of them on purpose anyway.
With Fushiguro, he’s not one to be pushed around. (Not that Nobara will ever stop trying.) He’s also so disgustingly skinny and weak looking that if Nobara made him hold all her shopping bags, he’d probably snap like a twig. So out of consideration for his lanky body, Nobara (ever so gracious, in her opinion) had always allowed him to carry just one or two of her bags.
Today, she doesn’t have the energy to bully Fushiguro. It’s tiring to bully someone alone.
Especially when said victim has dark circles under eyes, so big that they make him look like a panda. His stupidly long lashes seem even more downtrodden than usual, so sad that Nobara doesn’t even want to pull them out like she normally threatens to do.
They walk together, side-by-side, closer than they would normally be, without Itadori. Without his red hood and red shoes.
But there’s still an invisible barrier between them. It seems that, even after death, Itadori makes his intrusion known.
(In the end, Fushiguro reaches out his hand and hijacks half the bags anyway. The insensitive jerk. Can’t he see that she’s feeling considerate today?
But Nobara acquiesces without a word. It’s tiring to call Fushiguro names, especially without someone to back her up.)
—
On a hot July day, in the month of Itadori’s death, they sit on the stairs of the school building, listening to the buzzing of the cicadas.
“He told us to live a long life, right?”
“Hn.”
“Tch. What use is he dead?”
“Yeah.”
“I hope he gets dissected like an insect,” she seethes. “I hope his balls get chopped off in the dissection. The fucking idiot. Always so self-sacrificing, just because of his stupid grandpa. And now he’s dead. I hope he’s fucking happy. I hope he meets a Jennifer Lawrence doppelganger in the afterlife, so she can dump him. Stupid Itadori!”
Her hands slam on the ground.
Megumi winces in Itadori’s stead. Itadori better hope Kugisaki lives a long life, because otherwise, Kugisaki will probably castrate him in the afterlife.
“Hey…” Kugisaki, after calming down, finally says, “This the first time a friend of yours has died?”
Megumi stares at his hands and thinks of Tsumiki, sleeping like the dead. He pauses, before deciding on the right answer. “A classmate, yeah…”
Perhaps his words are too careful, because Kugisaki glances at him, a knowing look in her eyes, but she does not challenge his half-truth. “Really? But you seem fine,” she says simply.
“Look who’s talking.”
In the end they’re both acting, because she replies, “Of course. I’ve only known him for two weeks. I’m not the kind of girl—” She pauses. “…who cries over a guy like that,” she finishes lamely.
Megumi looks at Kugisaki’s quivering lips and does not call out her lie, because aren’t they the same? Lying to themselves, trying to ignore the invisible space of Itadori Yuuji.
—
When Maki-senpai asks if they’ll participate in the Goodwill Event, the two first-years look at each other.
They both nod.
And both think, I will become stronger. I’ll do anything it takes.
Because they’re both chasing after Itadori’s shadow.
—
Bonus:
“Gotcha!”
When he pops out of the box, Yuuji is greeted not by surprise, but instead faces of disgust.
“Ehe…” He scratches his cheek. “Surprise?”
Both Fushiguro and Kugisaki continue to stare at him with disgust, as if he was the dog poop they’ve accidentally stepped on.
And then Kugisaki springs into action. “Hey.” She kicks the box and gives him a glare. “Get out.”
Fushiguro looks at her, a nervous look in his eyes.
This doesn’t look good for him right now, Yuuji thinks, but he hesitantly steps out of the box, and awkwardly holds out his arms. “Sorry I didn’t tell ya, about being alive and all. Should…Should we hug or something? You guys are freaking me out a little—”
But before he could continue, Kugisaki shoots a well-aimed kick with her knee, so quick he didn’t have time to react—
Right between his knees.
“You absolute fucking moron,” she screams, as Yuuji collapses to the ground, hands trying to—futilely—protect his family jewels.
“Hey!” he whines. Where was the touching reunion he imagined? “What did I do? Ouch, Kugisaki, stop it! I still want kids in the future!”
“What did you do?” Fushiguro says, still looking at him with furrowed eyebrows in equal disbelief and annoyance, as Kugisaki continued to beat him up. “For one, you didn’t think to tell us you were alive? For weeks?”
“I. Am. Going to. Murder. You!” Kugisaki cackles, as she aims another kick at Yuuji’s stomach. “I’ll castrate you so that you become a eunuch. Say goodbye to your future children, bastard!”
At this point, Yuuji is in the fetal position, curled up while Kugisaki is attacking him. Fushiguro merely looks on with disinterest, face with no intent of helping Yuuji escape from Kugisaki’s massacre.
—
After he explains the reason behind his faked death, Kugisaki drags Yuuji by his ears like a nagging mother, into his room. She points at the altar they’ve set up, at the framed photo of him, and glares.
Everything else in the room remains the same as he remembers. The altar is actually very well-made. The photo definitely captured his good side. Yuuji kinda wants to keep it.
“Woah! It’s so…” Yuuji struggles to find the right words, so Kugisaki won’t beat him up a second time. “Nice.”
Nice was a pretty safe word, right? Inoffensive, neutral.
“Can I keep the photo?” Yuuji eagerly asks.
Kugisaki scowls even harder. “If I had the energy, you’d die a second time. And Fushiguro would make sure you stay dead.”
“Hey!” Yuuji squawks in protest. “Fushiguro wouldn’t do that, right?”
Fushiguro shakes his head. “No, she’s absolutely right. I would.”
Kugisaki takes the photo out of the black frame, and shreds it into little pieces with manicured nails.
“What the hell?!” Yuuji cries, as he tries to catch the paper snowflake drifting down from her hands. “That shot of me looked pretty good, too!”
She bats the paper pieces away in his hand and shoves the frame at him. “Put your face in this frame. Now.” Her tone brooks no disobedience. “Right now, you’re still dead to us.”
Yuuji turns his puppy eyes onto Fushiguro, who pointedly looks away. “Better do as she says.”
Fushiguro is a traitor! Yuuji thinks. He wants to cry. Resigned, he takes the frame and places it in front of his face.
“Now follow,” Kugisaki says. “And while we talk to the senpais about the plan, you sit there and shut up. If I hear even a word…” she trails off, and then makes a cutting motion with her thumb against her neck.
Yuuji whimpers. Gojo-sensei is a liar! This was not a happy reunion at all.
(While Yuuji follows them with the face of a kicked puppy, Nobara and Megumi secretly share a look of relief. He’s alive.)