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First, there was a boy. When the boy turned ten, he created a monster and then at sixteen, he became a monster himself.
Maybe, but that’s not quite right.
Maybe, the monster came first.
Maybe the boy was born a monster, but grew up thinking he was a boy because the world saw only the round chubbiness of his cheeks and none of the frothing darkness beneath his skin. Maybe the monster came to think itself of a boy for too long to remember what it was like to be a monster anymore, even when he became a monster (again).
The monster and boy became inseparable, where the monster ended and the boy began stopped mattering because now there was only Yuuta.
Yuuta, with his wide, dark eyes and glossy black hair. Yuuta, with his sharp, angular face and tired smiles that made people see only the softness of the large, white jacket he wore and not the rough, hardened callouses on his palms that came from holding a blade.
Okkotsu Yuuta, with his reliable strength and his responsible, upperclassman like persona that made others forget the bright gleam of his blade when it is unsheathed and the unflinching ferocity of which he pierces curses with it. Okkotsu Yuuta, the youngest Special Grade sorcerer alive, who valued very little but clutched onto what little he had with the fervor of a man who knew the madness that awaited him if he lost even a single thing that he held dear.
Okkotsu Yuuta, with his haggard, yet gentle smile that makes people forget the single, precise way his eyes focus on Itadori Yuuji, besotted by Sukuna’s Vessel – head over heels in love like a high school boy should be.
Yet –
(His smile is too wide, his teeth too sharp and his grip strong enough that even death itself would be afraid to challenge him.)
Out of everyone, it does not surprise Yuuta that it is Gojo-sensei who understands him the best. Perhaps it had to do with their family ties, distant as they may be but Yuuta decides it doesn’t matter. It only matters that Gojo-sensei understands what Yuuta means when he talks about how their world was already so distorted, what was wrong with holding onto the good things in it that made you happy?
“You have to hold on tight,” Gojo-sensei tells him, with a frivolous gesture and a thin smile. “Tighter than you think you ever should have, or they’ll slip away Yuuta.”
Here, Gojo-sensei clasps his hands together, palms pressed tight together, fingers interwoven almost to the point that Yuuta couldn’t tell where each individual finger was anymore. “Our hands, after all, have a lot of space in them.”
Yuuta tilts his head, looks this way and that way, frowning a little. “But I don’t see any spaces, sensei.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gojo-sensei chirps, with all the lightness of a bird flitting about branches but the tenseness in his arms, the muscles bulging there speak of something else. “You just have to hold it tight.”
Yuuta looks down at his own hands, wrapped around a warm cup of tea. “But what if I break it?” he wonders, thinking he’d rather not have shards of a broken cup cutting into his skin.
Gojo-sensei laughs. “Don’t be silly Yuuta. As if we’d ever hold onto something that would be fragile enough to break.”
Yuuta thinks back about the fragments of stories that Gojo-sensei will sometimes tell him: about another boy who was just as powerful as him, who he fought with about the tiniest things but who he trusted with his whole life. He remembers December 24th of last year, and the week afterwards where Gojo-sensei became sharp and brittle, prone to slicing apart anything that came too close to him.
He realizes, with a clarity that no longer startles him, that Gojo-sensei is speaking from experience.
“I listened to you, sensei,” Yuuta says, the proof that he has taken Gojo-sensei’s words to heart lying in his lap right now.
Fast asleep, Itadori Yuuji looks years younger, even with the scars on his face. Yuuta traces the littlest bits of baby fat that still cling to Itadori’s cheeks, enamored by the softness there. His other hand is twined deeply in Itadori’s hair, fingers weaving through it like a knitter carefully counting all the stiches in their work.
“I made sure to hold on tight.”
Gojo-sensei grins, proud of what Yuuta has become.