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The rafters in the room feel taller than before, skyscrapers stretching up into a starless sky. Night fell on the training room hours ago, right around the time Gojo left after knocking him on his ass for the thirtieth time. The look he’d given Megumi on his way out is still scorched on the backs of his eyelids. It’s the reason he keeps staring up into the darkness despite the stinging in his eyes begging him to blink. It hadn't been unkind. No. It would’ve been nicer, Megumi thinks, if Gojo had looked at him judgmentally or with scorn. That would have been easier to swallow down and forget about. But nothing in Megumi’s life has ever been easy.
Biology, stress, or maybe dust, finally forces him to blink. In that red tinted darkness, he sees his teacher gazing at him over black sunglasses, mouth pressed into a flat line. The normal nonchalance and playfulness gone from his features, Gojo actually looks his age for once. He sees eyes the color of the summer sky - shredded cotton clouds and all - framed by thick white lashes, absolutely brimming with understanding. It looked as if he knew exactly the thoughts running on a constant, overwhelming loop in Megumi’s mind. It looked as if he, too, had once questioned a decision that he had made.
Megumi’s eyes fly open. The cicadas fill the night air with crooning cries and humidity sits heavily against Megumi’s skin. He hauls his body off the floor, almost possessed in the way that he moves. His heart is racing faster than his thoughts and his breathing feels labored, the air thick as it enters and exits his lungs. It feels hotter than before, the night sky suddenly pressing in on him from all sides as the noise in his head grows louder, accompanied by a shrill ringing.
Then why did you save me?!
Then why did you save me?!
Then why did yo-
“-guro? Fushiguro?”
A familiar steady voice interrupts his spiraling. Megumi looks up at Nanami with wild eyes.
“Nanami?”
Nanami’s brows furrow as he frowns. “What’s wrong, Fushiguro?”
Megumi inhales to explain that he is fine, that nothing is wrong (everything is wrong) but it sounds more like a sob.
“Let’s go inside, Fushiguro. Then we can discuss.”
Megumi didn’t realize he’d been fisting the suit jacket of the older man until Nanami gently detaches them and leads him inside. Megumi lets his body move on autopilot, grounded by the warm hand on his shoulder as gravel crunches underfoot.
Nanami leads Megumi into the common kitchen and turns on the tea kettle. The only sounds filling the air are the clinking of cups and Megumi’s own breathing. He listens to the near clinical way Nanami measures out the tea leaves before pouring two cups of the steaming liquid. Gentle notes of jasmine fill the air and Megumi takes in a deep breath when a cup is placed in front of him.
Nanami remains standing on the other side of the island with his arms crossed and drink untouched. The silence should’ve been uncomfortable, but Megumi’s thoughts are quiet for the first time in weeks. He takes a small sip of the beverage in front of him and sighs.
“Nanami, have you ever felt strongly about something and then changed your mind?”
Nanami doesn’t ask him why he was wandering campus late at night. Doesn’t ask why he found Megumi in the middle of a panic attack. He doesn’t even look at him at all, instead choosing to gently twist the steaming cup on the counter.
“I have. It was a long time ago. I thought I knew the ways of the world and my own purpose in it. I wasn’t wrong about the world, but it turns out I was lying to myself about the way I wanted to live life.”
Megumi pauses with the cup halfway to his lips.
“Do you think the world would have turned out a lot differently if you hadn’t made that decision back then?”
“Honestly, Fushiguro, I think if I hadn’t made that decision back then I would be dead right now. My emotions were not stable enough to be a proper sorcerer at that time. However, I don’t think you were wandering campus just to hear about my past.”
Megumi huffs out a laugh, the sound devoid of happiness. He clutches the small cup between his hands, focusing on the barest feeling of burning ceramic.
“I-… I made a selfish decision to ask Gojo to save Itadori. He was the first year that-,” Megumi pauses, still feeling that weird void whenever the subject of his dead classmate comes up - the tightness in his chest and the flashing image of his comatose sister. He shakes his head, staring at the floating leaves in his cup. “Anyway, we got into an argument at the detention center over saving people. Itadori is—was one of those painfully good people. You know the type: selfless and the embodiment of empathy - annoying, if we’re being honest. The people that believe everyone in this life is worth saving.”
“You don’t believe that, Fushiguro?”
This time when he laughs, it sounds strained.
“No. I don’t. This life is unfair. The only thing doled out evenly in life is how unfair it is to everyone. Most of the people in that center deserved to be there. I don’t know that anyone deserves to die the way they did, but I can’t say the world would benefit from them living more than me.”
“I would agree with that assessment. What followed the argument?”
Megumi blinks in surprise, not used to having an adult act…well, like an adult. Calm, quiet, patient, steady.
“He was furious with me. I asked him, ‘What will you do if someone you save kills someone in the future?’ and he asked me, ‘Then why did you save me?’ And honestly? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.” Megumi huffs, “We didn’t even get to talk about it. Immediately after, Kugisaki got dropped into a different part of the incomplete domain and a special grade curse showed up. Itadori sacrificed himself so Kugisaki and I could get away. And then…something happened after he switched with Sukuna and he couldn’t switch back right away. I watched-,” he stops, feeling his stomach twist violently at the memory of tearing flesh and crunching bones, at the memory of the sound he could’ve gone his entire life without hearing: the wet plop of a human heart on rain laden grass.
Nanami doesn’t round the corner to comfort him. He doesn’t offer words of consolation. He simply waits until Megumi is ready to continue. Minutes that feel like hours pass before he can breathe again without the fear of vomiting.
“Sukuna ripped out his heart to stop Itadori from switching back. But right as I was probably about to make a huge mistake, he switched back anyway. And he had the nerve to say something selfless right before he died too. He told me he respected my opinion about not saving everyone, even if he disagreed. He told me to live a long life, if you can believe it.”
Megumi finally looks up at the older man and is met with an unidentifiable emotion on the normally stoic sorcerer's face.
“Do you wish that you hadn’t saved him?” Nanami asks after a few quiet moments.
Megumi opens his mouth to say yes and quickly closes it. He looks at the bobbing leaves in his cooling cup.
“I’m wondering if I ever really saved him at all. Nanami, what is salvation in this world? Is there such a thing?”
Nanami takes off his glasses and pockets them. He levels Megumi with a surprisingly tired look.
“I used to wonder the same thing, Fushiguro. We all lose people, whether to natural causes or curses, it’s simply the nature of living. I used to think that if the world was shit and work was shit, then it didn’t matter what I was doing because it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. And the world is shit, however, jujutsu sorcerers have the unique ability to make it less so. We will never rid the world of curses, not in this lifetime.”
Nanami pauses then, frowning at the cup in his hands, lost in thought. Megumi allows him the same processing time as he had been given, swirling the cold remnants of tea in his cup. After several quiet moments, Nanami continues.
“I believe that while this organization is corrupt, the work that we as sorcerers do is ostensibly needed in this world. There exists innocence in people, in children such as yourself, that deserves protection in which to grow into a responsible member of society. So while I do not agree with everything this school teaches, I understand that abilities like ours are in short supply and high demand. I understand that in order to save the many, there will be sacrifices by the few.
“It’s not something I like, but it’s the reality that we live in. I used to know someone who acted like Itadori sounds - happy, wide eyed, saw the best in people sometimes when there explicitly was nothing good left to see. He died on a mission we were on together. But because he sacrificed himself, I was able to live. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could have done if I’d just been stronger, smarter, faster. But the truth is that we were both children wielding matches as torches on a bridge with rotted planks and no rails. It’s amazing we lasted as long as we did.”
“How did you let that go, Nanami? How long did it take to stop eating you alive?”
“I won’t lie to you, Fushiguro. Some days it still does. I feel like that moment in my life lives in a distant corner of my mind, a wraith clinging to the pain and regret that emerges like a video reel to replay the worst parts on my lowest days. I know there was nothing I could have done in that instance. But, as you’ve mentioned, I wonder sometimes whether he saved me or condemned me to a life with a constant weight on my shoulders. I can attest as the one who was saved as opposed to the one who did the saving that it’s a murky road. I believe that Haibara thought he was saving me. In the basest sense of the word, I am alive, therefore I have been saved. But is that really all saving someone is? What is the future that awaits them? Can any of us really know if it’s much better than the present?”
“I can’t imagine,” Megumi begins, “the feelings Itadori had about housing the most malevolent curse in history within himself. Would it have been better for him to have died before experiencing the pain, the fear, the utter lack of control of his entire being? He was so obsessed with the idea of a ‘proper’ death, as if such a thing even exists. But the way he died…there was nothing proper about it. For him to have lost the battle of wills with Sukuna means that something horrible happened to him in that fight with the special grade.”
“Most likely,” Nanami muses. ”He may have been housing Sukuna, but from what I’ve heard, he only had raw attacking power. And as you know, the only way to beat a curse is with another curse. It’s the perverse cycle of this world - destroying like with like instead of its opposite. There is no goodness, no heroism in our line of work, Fushiguro. Just because we live our lives defeating evil does not negate the fact that we are all tinged with shadows in the first place.”
“He reminded me of my sister,” Megumi admits quietly. It’s the first time he’s ever spoken the words aloud. He can see them when he closes his eyes: two beaming faces, both with eyes closed from the happiness radiating from wide smiles. The fierce determination to do good, to be better, to help others instead of cursing them. “Remember how I said the world was mostly scum? She was one of the rare good ones. So I thought, when he acted so recklessly selfless at the high school to save both me and his senpai - that letting that innate goodness just be killed off was a waste. But there’s so much I never considered. It was just, at that moment, I couldn’t bear the thought of him dying.”
The silence feels heavier this time, not oppressive, simply bogged down with visions of the past and possibilities of the futures that never happened. The scent of jasmine has mellowed into almost nothingness, the air tasting of ozone and the promise of rain.
Nanami’s voice is quiet when he speaks, but the words sound almost reverent.
“Fushiguro, I cannot speak to salvation in this life. I have no silver lining to offer you, not that I think you’d be interested in it. This world that we live in is cruel and punishing. The happinesses we are afforded are few and far in between. From what I’ve been told, Itadori was the sole caretaker of a sick family member. It sounds as if he spent much of his time alone. There is not much we as humans can offer one another in terms of comfort. However, your selfish request led to Itadori gaining friends, or at least teammates. It even led to him gaining a doting teacher, however unrespectable he may be. It is my belief that you gave Itadori a new place to call home and new people to call family when he needed it most. Regardless of how things turned out, that in and of itself certainly sounds like salvation to me.”
Megumi’s teeth grind as he clenches his jaw against the ache in his chest. There’s a prickling of tears in his eyes that he blinks rapidly to clear. His hands tense tightly around the cold cup before him.
Before he can think of a response, Nanami is clasping him on the shoulder with a wry smile.
“Take care, Fushiguro.”
Megumi feels many things at that moment. Relief, joy, fear, self loathing. But he mostly feels like he would rather not be alone right now.
“Nanami!” He calls out in a panic.
The man turns at the kitchen door frame, features soft.
“Yes, Fushiguro?”
Megumi’s eyes focus on the floor.
“What was Gojo like in high school?”
He hears Nanami chuckle lightly, followed by the soft slide of shoes against tile. This time, Nanami sits beside him at the island.
“He was almost more insufferable than he is now.”
Megumi allows Nanami’s steady, monotonous words to wash over him like a soothing balm. He may not have all the answers that he had been looking for, but the ache that he’d been carrying in his chest for weeks is beginning to dull. It seems a fitting resolution for this world dyed in gray.
I’m not a hero. I’m a jujutsu sorcerer. That’s why I’ve never regretted saving you. Not even for a moment.
I see.