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Heavenly Restriction is a funny thing.
From the exact moment a person with a Heavenly Restriction is born, something is taken from them. What’s taken may be physical, such as the use of one’s legs, or perhaps one of five senses. In other cases, it’s something a little more human—for example, a complete and total inability to feel empathy for others, or perhaps an inability to dream at night. That’s the Restriction part.
In exchange for what is lost, that person is gifted in some equivalent way. Someone born with no sense of smell may be able to see across vast distances in great detail. A person who can never know the joys and terrors of dreaming might feel emotions much more strongly than anyone else. A person without the use of their legs may be gifted with an immense amount of cursed energy. A gift from the Heavens.
The Zen’in Clan was a known family of great sorcerers. Nearly everyone with Zen’in blood in their veins was blessed with immense amounts of cursed energy and a powerful innate cursed technique. Any powerful jujutsu sorcerer in the clan was held in high regard, generally thought of as just a higher human being in general.
As with any instance of Heavenly Restriction, Toji did not ask for this. He was never presented with a choice. Biology is a bitch, though, and some sort of mutation in his genetic makeup robbed him of any amount of cursed energy whatsoever. His Restriction was so extreme that his Heavenly Gift of unmatched physicality was beyond anything the world of Jujutsu Sorcery had ever seen before.
“What set of lungs on this kid!” the doctor had remarked upon Toji’s birth, as he screamed louder than any baby she had delivered. He scored a perfect 10/10 on the APGAR test—an evaluation of a baby’s health and responsiveness performed 1 minute after birth, and again 5 minutes after birth—which is something only seen in about one in every hundred babies.
Growing up he could always run faster, jump higher, hold his breath for longer than any of the other kids. His strength was at a superhuman level. He had far beyond 20/20 vision, the sharpest ears and nose around, and a discriminating palate. He never got sick. No allergies of any kind whatsoever. His brain processed things faster, his liver processed alcohol fast enough that he’d never get drunk, he could hold in a piss all day, and he was never constipated or had diarrhea, all because he had the healthiest and most efficient organs that doctors had ever seen. He could win a gold medal in any Olympic sport if he wanted to.
None of that mattered.
The Zen’in clan held firm in their belief that one’s ability as a jujutsu sorcerer was the greatest measure of their worth as a human being. Sorcerers perceived cursed spirits through cursed energy, but Toji could physically see and hear them with his elevated senses, and with his physical prowess he could easily take down any curse if you gave him a cursed tool to use as a weapon, but Toji had no cursed energy, thus he would never be a true sorcerer. Even with all of his Gifts, in the eyes of the clan he was nothing.
They made sure he was aware of that, too. From the time he was born the mindset that sorcerers were above everyone else was ingrained in his brain just as deeply as everyone else in the clan, so he thought of himself as lesser, too. It was no secret that he was unwanted.
He had always wondered if his parents would have aborted him if they knew ahead of time that he was going to be born as he was. In general, his clan, being as traditionalist as it was, did not believe in abortion, but his father was head of the clan, after all, so a son like Toji was an embarrassment to the main family. If they’d known they probably would have had the procedure done in secret and told people that his mother had miscarried. It still would have been shameful, but much less so than having a child with no potential as a sorcerer.
One time, Toji’s brother hit him, so of course he hit back. Both brothers were punished. Jinichi was punished for crying as a boy, so he went to bed without dinner that night. Toji, on the other hand, was thrown into the Disciplinary Pit—a basement warehouse filled to the brim with cursed spirits ranked grade 2 and under. He was 7 years old.
There was never any doubt in Toji’s mind that nobody expected him to make it out of that pit alive. Making his brother cry was the excuse his family had been looking for to throw him in there to die. With no cursed energy he could not exorcize cursed spirits on his own. The only reason he survived is because one of the weaker curses in the pit had an ability that let it store things within itself, and it had spit up a cursed sword for him to use. They had expected him to get eaten alive but he managed to crawl his way back out with nothing but one nasty little a scar on his face.
All of that was in the past now. He no longer had any connection to the Zen’in clan. He left jujutsu society behind a long time ago. The only thing he still held onto from that time in his life was the cursed spirit that had helped him in the pit—its ability was just too convenient to let go of, plus he owed his life to that damn worm, after all.
After living his entire life believing that he was lesser, he was just some sort of monkey, that he would never be enough, he was starting to heal. And it was all thanks to Her.
She was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had short black hair that spiked out just the littlest bit but still framed her elegant face in the most perfect way. There was always kindness in her eyes. She smiled so much that Toji wondered if she’d get wrinkles next to those gorgeous eyes earlier in life than most people would—but that was part of what made her so beautiful. It was a sign that she was happy in life, that she faced the world with optimism, that she laughed a lot. He missed that laugh.
What was most spectacular about her, though, was that she loved him. She loved him for Him. He had never been loved before. She made him feel like he was enough.
She was a blessing to him.
His time with her was the happiest in his life. He was usually tight on money but he still did his best to take her on the nicest dates he could manage, and she still loved him even though he couldn’t take her out to nice dinners or buy her nice things. He’d often pick flowers to make a silly little bouquet for her since he could not afford to buy a nice one from a florist.
Once in a while they would go to a restaurant together and she would be the one to pay for both of their meals. It always made him uncomfortable. He had always seen how the women in his clan were treated and empathized with them, because he was treated like dirt just as they were, but he still had trouble shaking the mindset that he was raised on. He understood logically that there was no reason why the woman couldn’t be the breadwinner, but it was still something to get used to. She helped him shake that mindset and he was grateful to her for that.
Undoubtedly the happiest moment of his entire life was when she agreed to marry him. He had no family to invite to a wedding, and she was separated from her family, too. They didn’t have many friends, so rather than spend money on a wedding, they got hitched in a courthouse. It was still the happiest day of Toji’s life. His friend Shiu had acted as the witness for the marriage, as was required in courthouse marriage.
They had scraped and scrounged and saved and managed to take a short honeymoon in Okinawa. On their budget, it felt like the epitome of extravagance. It was the first time Toji had ever been on an airplane. They didn’t even have to get any bags checked because they had packed everything inside of the inventory curse. The couple still had to survive off of mostly just instant noodles the whole time there, but they did manage to budget for one nice dinner during their time on the island, and of course being on the beach was fun.
Life went back to normal pretty quickly after they got back. He had taken her last name, Fushiguro, finally severing his last tie to the Zen’in clan. Plus he knew they’d hate the idea that a man took his wife’s last name, so he chuckled about that to himself. By that time Toji’s time with his clan just felt like a bad dream. He was blessed. God, he was so blessed.
Things just kept getting better, too. He didn’t quite process her words at first when she initially gave him the news. He stared at the little red plus sign on the little white stick that his wife held in front of his face.
A…baby?
A baby.
…
A baby!
He had picked her up in a bear hug and swung her around in circles, showering her with kisses. They were having a baby. He was going to be a father. He felt nothing but pure euphoria. Another blessing.
The very next day, he started job hunting. Up until that point, she had been the main breadwinner, with Toji handling the bulk of the housework like cooking and cleaning. He picked up odd jobs here and there, like cleaning gutters for the elderly neighbor, or short-term seasonal gigs like a cashier over the holidays or an extra hand at a garden center during the spring, but he’d need a full-time job. He couldn’t let her work while carrying their child.
It was…difficult. Nobody was hiring. But, that was okay—he still kept his positive outlook on life. That was something about his wife that had rubbed off on him over time. She kept working as long as she could and he never gave up on his job hunt.
He did everything he could to keep her as comfortable as possible during her pregnancy. His plan was to shoulder as much of the burden of childrearing as he possibly could after the baby came. Nothing could truly repay her for carrying their little shared blessing, for the toll it would take on her body, for the things he was not able to help with, but he would do as much as he possibly could. He was excited to start a family with the love of his life. He was excited to meet his child. He was excited.
Toji loved the name Megumi. It meant Blessings. He had decided long before his wife had even become pregnant that if he had a child with her, he’d want to use that name. It was fitting because his life with her away from the Zen’ins was more of a blessing than anything he could have asked for. He suggested it to her, and she loved it, too, so they decided that that would be the name they would use. Toji had been hoping for a girl, admittedly in part because Megumi was generally used as a girl’s name, but if it ended up being a boy, then he’d simply be a boy with a feminine name, and they had decided there was nothing wrong with that! Consider it another silly little rebellion against the toxic masculinity of the Zen’in clan.
Then, it happened. December 22, 2002. Screaming and crying, after over nine months of anticipation, one Megumi Fushiguro—a beautiful baby boy—had entered the world.
Then, it happened.
She was gone.
She was gone.
She was gone.
It didn’t feel real. He couldn’t even begin to process it.
At first, he kept living the same way he had been. Muscle memory. Out of habit he still cooked enough food for the both of them, as if she’d be getting home from work any minute now and he could greet her at the door with a hug and a kiss and tell her that dinner is ready. He kept to his side of the bed, as if she was just staying up to watch a show in the other room, or to get something done, and she’d be coming to bed in a little while.
Mornings were the hardest. He had always woken up facing away from her, and he’d shift onto his side in bed to wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her close for warmth, inhaling the scent of her hair. He wasn’t used to waking up alone.
Not that he’d been sleeping much, that is. Infants have to eat often. It doesn’t take long for food to travel though their little bodies and they needed extra nutrients to help them grow. He had to feed Megumi about once every hour or so. Over night it was maybe every 3 hours, since he would sleep a bit.
Shiu was a godsend. Toji had no idea how to take care of a baby, but Shiu seemed to know what he was doing. God only knows how many nights he’d spent on Toji’s couch so he could help him take care of Megumi.
Toji loved his son. He really, truly did. After all, he was the physical manifestation of the love he shared with his wife. They had created him together, and he was all he had left of her. Megumi meant the world to him.
It was so hard to look at him sometimes, though. He reminded him too much of her. He hated that. He hated more than anything that it hurt so much to look at his own son. He should feel nothing but pure joy looking at his child. He was his child.
A small part of Toji resented Megumi. Everything was fine before he was born. Then, she was gone. It was such a cruel coincidence. There was an evil little voice in his head telling him that she had died because Megumi was born. He knew logically that that wasn’t true, though. Really, it was a blessing that they were able to have a child together before she passed away. In reality, Megumi came just in time. If they’d waited any longer he may not have been born, and then Toji would just be a guy with a dead wife, rather than Megumi’s father.
Megumi was living proof that Toji had loved his wife. Megumi was living proof that Toji had been loved by someone, despite everything he was brought up to believe about himself by those Zen’in fuckers.
He owed everything to that child.
He would keep living because of that child.
Time passed. Toji began to pick up the pieces. He provided for his son. He even met someone.
She wasn’t Her. He’d never love anybody the way he loved Her.
He really liked this woman, though. She was pretty enough, and she was sweet. She had a daughter—Tsumiki—who was about a year older than Megumi.
He got comfortable with her. She had some baggage of her own, so they understood each other. Both of them had been unable to have a family with their child’s other parent, so that was something they bonded over, although they never actually said it. Plus the kids got along pretty well.
Toji still wanted a family. He thought Megumi deserved a family.
They had a fall wedding before Megumi’s first birthday. It was a small ceremony, but a nice one. It was sort of rushed, as they’d only been dating for a few months, but they had an unspoken understanding about how it was more about how they each wanted a family, and needed a partner, and didn’t see themselves ever falling madly in love ever again after their first partners but damn it they had each other and that counted for something.
Having an actual ceremony kinda made Toji regret not having had a real wedding with Megumi’s mother, but he’d been trying his damnedest to focus more on the future than the past. There was no point dwelling on the past because he knew he’d never be as happy as he was with his first wife and literally everything else about his past was painful. He kept that shining optimism that had rubbed off on him from his first wife and looked to the future with a smile.
There was no honeymoon, because that kind of thing is hard when there are children already in the picture, but that was okay. One of the first things they did after getting married was start the legal work for Toji to adopt Tsumiki. This way they’d all have the same last name.
Toji really did care for his wife and step daughter. He loved his new little family. He was happy.
He was starting to feel blessed again.
Heavenly Restriction is a funny thing.
Toji’s unmatched physicality made him a threat. He could win any fight. If you gave him a cursed tool, he could exorcize any curse. That wasn’t his life, though.
He was a dad. He used his Heavenly Gift for mundane, domestic things. When Tsumiki’s ball rolled underneath the car, he tilted the car up off of the ground so that she could safely retrieve it. When his wife threw a frizbee that ended up on the roof, he’d scale the side of the house to grab it real quick. He could tell when Megumi needed a diaper change the minute he soiled himself because he could smell it right away. Things like that.
He still had his worm, too. The inventory curse that had saved his life in the disciplinary pit was also a massive help to him as a family man. He used it like a diaper bag when he was out with his baby. He hid birthday gifts in it. It was useful for moving, and packing for family vacations.
He was happy with his life. He chuckled to himself when he thought about how this Heavenly Restriction, which had caused him so much pain for most of his life, was now a tool he used to be a better father and husband, which was one of the things that made his new life away from the Zen’in clan so enjoyable.
His Restriction was the reason why he wasn’t “blessed” like the sorcerers of his family but it had eventually led him to a life full of other kinds of blessings.
He still missed his first wife, of course, but he was doing okay now. He was happy to have ever had her in his life at all. Things may not have turned out exactly as planned but he thought he had done pretty well with the hand he was dealt.
A foul smell shook him from his musings. He could smell a dirty diaper in the next room. Megumi needed a change.
“Hey big guy,” he said, picking his son up out of the crib, giving him a kiss on the forehead. He couldn’t believe how much he had grown. The child’s hair had started to spike out just like his mother’s had, but he had Toji’s bright green eyes. In one month’s time, Megumi would be a year old. “Let’s get you all cleaned up, huh?”
He laid the tiny tot down on the changing table and smiled down at his son. Megumi smiled back up at him. Toji really did love this child more than anything in the world.
“Da.”
Toji froze.
No way.
No way, no way, no way.
“Did…did you just say ‘da’?”
The baby simply laughed at his father.
“Can…can you say that again? Say ‘da-da’?”
“Da!”
“Oh my god,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. He pushed his hair back out of his face and let out a happy sigh before picking his son back up and kissing his head again. “You said Da!”
“Da,” the baby said once more, before farting.
“Oh, right, right, dirty diaper. Dirty diaper. You said Da.” Toji shook his head and inhaled deeply, which he immediately regretted because he had forgotten about the smell. “Alright, okay, right.”
He set the baby back down and discarded the dirty diaper. He reached to grab a clean diaper, to find that there were none on hand.
“Hey, worm,” he called. The inventory curse, who was never far away, crawled into the room. “Diaper,” he said, holding out one hand. The worm promptly deposited one diaper into its master’s hand.
Toji began to put the fresh diaper on his son, a dumb smile still plastered on his face after hearing the kid’s first words. By the time he was done, the worm had crawled up his leg and onto his torso, making its way to Toji’s shoulder.
The baby giggled at his father as he shifted his gaze to the side and reached his hand out. He was looking at something.
Toji furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before following his child’s gaze to the curse sitting on his shoulder. The smile fell from his face when he realized just what Megumi was looking at.
Oh.
Oh no.
No no no.
He looked back to his son in horror. It felt like there was a cinder block in his stomach.
“Can…can you see it?”
Toji grabbed the worm’s head and shifted it to his other shoulder. The child’s gaze followed.
He felt like he was gonna throw up.
Megumi could see cursed spirits.
The room started spinning. Toji was not a sorcerer. Megumi’s mother was not a sorcerer. There was no way.
This had to be a dream. He pinched himself. Not a dream.
A sad smile made its way to Toji’s face. He looked up at the ceiling and as a few tears fell. This had to be some sort of sick and twisted joke.
He turned his back to the changing table and slid down to the floor where he sat for a few minutes in silence. He had done everything in his power to escape from that world, which had treated him so cruelly, and now his own damn son was one of them.
Ever since he left the clan he had been counting his blessings. His first wife and all of his time with her. His second wife, who helped him pick up the pieces. His step daughter, who he cared for as his own. His Heavenly gifts. Even that stupid worm.
His son was supposed to be his biggest blessing of them all. He literally named the kid Blessings, as a reminder of everything good that had happened in his life since he left, as a reminder of Her, as physical evidence that Toji Fushiguro had been loved, that he loved, that he’d keep loving.
But he was not blessed. He was not blessed.
He had been reminded of that now.
Toji was not blessed, but Megumi was. His blessing was blessed. Toji wiped a hand over his whole face and chuckled.
“You’ve gotta be fucking joking,” he said to himself.
“Ma!”
He’s not exactly sure how long he sat there for. It could have been 5 minutes. It could have been an hour.
Eventually he stood up. He picked his son up off of the changing table and sat down on the rocking chair in the corner with him. He gently rocked his baby to sleep as he pondered what to do about this.
He could just do nothing. He could just ignore it. Pretend everything is fine. He could raise his son like a normal human being.
He couldn’t do that.
Sorcerers were special. They were better than normal human beings. Megumi was special.
He could wait and see what happens. Maybe he wouldn’t manifest a cursed technique. And if he did, Toji had some experience hunting curses. He could train the kid himself.
He couldn’t do that.
Megumi was blessed. Megumi had real potential. Toji did not have that. He was just a regular guy. Toji had nothing to offer his son in that regard.
They could help though. They could train him. They would make sure he lived up to his potential as a sorcerer.
They had only treated Toji so coldly because he wasn’t special. Megumi was special. Megumi was blessed. They would treat him right. They had to. Toji’s father had been head of the clan. Even if Megumi’s father was a nobody, he still descended from the main family, so he’d have some amount of privilege, right?
He looked down at his son’s sleepy visage. He was no good for this child.
In the morning, he would make a phone call. It would be the first he contacted his family since he ran off with his first wife. The thought made him physically ill, but it was what he truly believed was best for Megumi.
Over the course of the next month he’d pack his things inside of the inventory curse, and after Megumi’s first birthday he would leave.
He came up with all kinds of excuses for why it was best for him to leave now rather than wait and enjoy raising his son for a few years before he’d join the Zen’in clan. So Megumi wouldn’t get too attached to him. So his own worthlessness wouldn’t rub off on Megumi. So that Megumi’s association with him wouldn’t get him into shit with the clan. He’d never admit to himself that he didn’t want to get too attached, that he knew he’d never be able to let go of his son when the time came unless he cut ties now. It hurt like a bitch, though. It hurt worse than losing Megumi’s mother.
Toji was broken. Toji kept breaking, again and again. There had always been someone to help piece him back together, but this time he was shattered for good. The pieces were too small. He would never be whole.
He was at peace with the fact that he’d never be truly happy again. It’s not like he deserved it anyway. With all of his Heavenly Gifts, he was still just some worthless nobody. No better than a monkey.
Maybe if he lived recklessly enough he’d die soon. That would be fine. His wife was a fine mother, she could handle both children on her own, plus Megumi would be leaving in a few years anyway, so it’s not like anyone was really relying on him.
Toji was parting ways with the only proof in this world that he had been loved and that was okay. He did it for Him.
Megumi would go on to be a great sorcerer. He would do amazing things. He would save people. He would love. He would be loved.
Megumi would live a blessed life.