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i.
Death is introduced to Nanami Kento when he is seventeen. He is pale and on his knees. His face is disfigured by tears. He utters no words, but human emotions have a way of making themselves known to Death. Don't die is a bloodied wish splattered on the floor; It's my fault is stamped in big bold letters on the boy's blond hair.
Death regards the young man and his wilting hair of faded yellow; eyes devoid of life. The thick scent of regret keeps the boy from standing as Death picks up his friend’s body from the floor.
Collecting children is not foreign to Death’s list of tasks. This young man that the blond calls Haibara is not the first teenager that it cradles to the afterlife. But his demise is one of the few that makes Death feel, as humans would describe it, an aching pain in the chest, a sting if you will.
The cause is not Haibara. No, Haibara is light on Death’s arms. There is no weight to him. His friend though —
Too young , Death concludes, halfway forgetting to scold itself for glancing the blond's way. There is no need for attachments now.
Death swiftly takes care of Haibara and follows the blond.
-
Contrary to popular belief, Death is not a bringer of bad fortune, nor is it a bringer of good. It is a neutral presence that follows and observes. In Nanami Kento's life, after Haibara’s death, it found a big shadow to blend into.
“Can’t we just leave all the missions to Gojo from now on?”
Jujutsu Sorcerers, of course . Most of the humans it remembers are sorcerers. Human souls are a mesh of different colorful emotions that it takes effort to recognize them; and numerous unnecessary brushes with Death for it to remember them. Death pities this group of humans it considers its friends.
Every few hundred years or so of its mundane, solitary, and unending existence, a jujutsu sorcerer piques its interest. A person who, in the sea of swirly colors, Death makes an effort to get to know. Its work is loneliness exemplified, but these little field encounters have taught Death many things.
For instance, the way people handle grief are varied, but somehow always the same. Humans fall to the same patterns - emptiness is shrugged off through walks, sitting and staring into space, all cooped up until a breakthrough happens.
Death knows it. All it takes is one window of chance, just one sunbeam to break through the deep darkness and the fight to move forward begins.
It only takes time.
For the blond, the sunbeam comes three weeks later. From a woman, a few years older, a few years wiser, dressed in priestess’ robes. Her facade shows no surprise; she knows the cruelty of the Jujutsu world. On her shoulders, she carries the memory of a close friend who is long gone.
“It’s unfair, isn’t it? He shouldn’t have died.” She says one day, her knees bent, tending to the neglected garden across one of Jujutsu High’s many shrines.
The blond’s gaze lingers on the flowers. He’d watched the sun pass every afternoon from the bench where he sat, but none of its heat bathed him nor his company.
“The higher ups should’ve prevented it.” There, living in the blond’s shadow, Death feels him latch onto her words as if it were a chain to an anchor. “They should’ve prioritized your safety...”
Death is surprised to find the blond give no response other than an obligatory hn to show that he has heard.
Jujutsu Society runs on a currency of sacrificial lambs; children are sent to battle Curses. Curses are defeated, non-sorcerers, saved; and the children, left with purged lives or crippled happiness.
The next day, at the same time, in the same place, the blond finds her again.
“He also died as a second year...” she tells him. He didn't ask, but the boy is enveloped in common decency: he listens to his senior.
And listen he does. About a friend, slain by Curses; caught in the crossfires of a battle that had started long before he was even born.
In all its years, Death has never known the world to be fair.
Death follows the blond’s eyes as it observes the color of grief on the miko’s shoulders, how it had camouflaged to the tips of her hair; barely recognizable, if not for the way she caresses the young and fragile.
“I’ve never met someone as obsessed with seafood as he was.” She digs the shovel into the deep ground and slowly inhales, gathering courage from the air around her. “I have a theory that if you grew up by the sea, you can’t live long without seafood.”
When the blond makes no response, she turns and addresses him directly. “Do you know anyone who has a seaside hometown?”
She continues to share stories after that. Again and again. Day after day.
“Haibara was really sweet.” She’s sitting with him today. “Weren’t you just in Osaka last year?” A light chuckle escapes her. “He told me he spent hours looking for omiyage and he still couldn’t decide on one, so he gave me two.”
Fighting grief is not scaling a wall. It is swimming the deep ocean, continuously pushing against every wave of memory. The waves are intermittent, crowding you from all sides, at the times you least expect it. But if there is even one light you can follow, you can swim towards the shore.
“They’re probably laughing at us, right now.” No, they are not. Death knows this is impossible, but the miko presses on. Her head leans closer to the boy’s shoulders. “Haibara’s probably poking your cheeks.” She gives him a sideways glance, contemplating. “He’s probably saying — ”
“— Senpai, Haibara doesn’t poke my cheeks.”
Utahime only laughs.
Eventually, she pulls him towards the shore.
"So what was Yu’s favorite food?" She had a bento open this time. “We should eat all the food they would've wanted to eat."
Before the blond knew it, he was basked in the light.
“We don’t have to stay like this, Nanami-san.” She sits with him again in the garden, a gift in hand. The stone bench was supposed to be cold.
“We can quit.” She hands him a potted flower —one she had picked from the barren ground a few months before. “Leave. Maybe we’ll find a better place to grow.”
Another path lights up, a possibility that he eventually makes come true a year later. He quits; finds work elsewhere. He finds life elsewhere.
Following the sunbeam leads him to the sun.
“So you’re quitting? I’m happy for you, Nanami.” Her smile is sincere and radiant. She is the sunbeam, but for a moment, he wonders if she is the very sun.
“Are you... not quitting?”
“No." He realizes he'd rather hear otherwise. He wants to be close to the warmth. "I’ll stay right where I am.”
The sun is no miracle, it's a big ball of gas, like all other stars in the universe. If you feed it the right elements, it can only burn brighter and brighter.
The encounters in the garden become a habit. It becomes friendly dinners after a day’s work, lunch on the weekends; constant and initiated.
“Don’t act so formally, you can call me Utahime.” The miko tells him as she sips on her iced coffee —a treat, a thank you.
He makes no reply. He had only asked her out here, again, because, he insists, he feels gratitude. It's only proper. After all, he had the courage to quit because of her. Gratitude.
Death knows it's something else; it has followed enough humans to know how susceptible they are to each other’s warmth.
“Utahime…"
The blond tries the feel of her name on his lips, later, when he is alone.
"Utahime."
Every reiteration, more certain than the one before. Like steps, leaps of courage...
"Call me Kento.” He finally tells her, seven months into seeing each other, a back and forth of let me treat you .
“Okay, then. Kento.” She leans into him and pokes his cheek. "That took you long enough."
The young man can only blush, slight irritation on his facade, as he always shows when she teases him.
Why does Death pay attention to them? The blond and the miko. One working in a tall office building, the other fighting Curses. Two cogs of different machines who meet up every Sunday and Wednesday for what modern humans call a date. Even Death likes to see people happy.
When humans feed on love, they are happy. They burn brighter and brighter.
More discoveries are made. He is a heavy drinker, she is not; she, like him, was roped into the Jujutsu world through a technique randomly granted to them at birth (she still calls it a gift, he argues it can only be a curse); she likes to sing karaoke and, though he believes in no God, he believes her voice is nothing but divine.
Much later, he also learns that beer is much better enjoyed alongside the taste of her lips; that her touch can be more tender than her words or her voice. And that she —everything that she is, is an ocean he’d be willing to dive and drown in.
Love is a wonderful thing to observe for the untethered being. Silly, but magnificent in the way it burns. And Death follows this warm lighted path. Unashamedly.
-
Until one day, it chances upon bright blue eyes, a pair of eyes it hasn't seen in 500 years. His smile is wide and dim as he greets the couple. He cracks his knuckles as if each sound is a peek of pent up emotions.
"Have your date elsewhere. I'm on the job and will eliminate all Cursed beings from here."
Death is imagining it, it knows. The Six Eyes has always given it an uncanny feeling, as if it was under a telescope. How long has he been watching?
Death observes the tall figure loom over the couple, it does its best to assure itself that this time, it is not his empty existence being watched.
The miko’s mood spikes and she argues with the Six Eyes.
Death slowly backs away. It has overstayed its welcome.
ii.
The Six Eyes of this era is an interesting character.
Death realizes this as it observes the tall stick of a man taunt the Curse that killed seven children; the one in his arms supposedly the eighth, if not for him swiftly removing the child from its arms.
Death was right to be wary of this man, at least initially. There is subdued anger in his stride. His smile is playful but unforgiving. The obliteration of the Curse takes a few seconds slower than how it should’ve been. It is a cruel death, even for a Curse.
“That was close.” The Six Eyes looks down momentarily at what could only be treasure in his arms, an uncharacteristic look for a pair of eyes that hold so much power. “It’s a good thing I was quick! The great sorcerer Gojo Sato-”
"Keep it down!" A grumpy voice comes from behind him. Death recognizes it.
The miko. The blond's miko.
"But I killed the boss, Utahime. I won the bet." He whistles and flitters a pout her way.
"Yeah, but you forgot the cursed tool." She says and raises her hand, a silver spear, stained with blood.
He blinks and processes the information presented to him. A second goes and all that registers for him is the beauty of the moment, and for Death, the idiocy of the Six Eyes of this generation. It adds reckless to its overgrowing list of his qualities.
“Also, stop calling it the boss. This isn’t a game.” She approaches him to check on the child in his arms. “Is she okay?”
“Unconscious, but breathing.”
“Injuries?” She doesn’t wait for him, raises the girl’s arm gently, checks for wounds and lacerations all over her young frame.
The Six Eyes' sudden soft smile does not escape Death’s notice. That and the way he held his breath when she drew nearer to dote on the child. Idiot , Death thinks, as foolish to love as the one before him.
The miko sighs in relief after her inspection. Their eyes meet, momentarily. A silence that recognizes the deaths they couldn't prevent. One. They saved one.
“Well, that’s done,” he says, putting a lid on their grief.
They argue all the way back to the car, where a window waits to take the miko and the girl to the nearest hospital.
“When are you going to stop crashing my missions?” Her eyes and the spear are both sharp and pointed in his direction. “Is Kento making you do this?”
“He’s got nothing to do with—” Death wonders how a human can show immediate irritation and then bliss the next. His two hands are already up in the air. His oncoming smile, Death can only attribute to the attention granted to him. “Can’t I just miss my senpai and want to do some duo missions?”
She sighs and her breath spells out idiot and liar . Death sees a new shadow on both of them, larger on the Six Eyes. “You know, if you were feeling lonely, you could just say so…”
The Infinity is useless against words. It affects him. His grief intensifies, but he is used to casting it aside. He grins, "What do you mean? I can't be lonely. I'm the strongest."
The girl stirs and she lets the matter go, ushering them towards the window and hastily planting herself on the car seat.
“I’m the strongest,” He mumbles, standing alone once they have left and adds, "the only one."
Death learns two things after this encounter (and the others that come after). One, the Six Eyes is beholden to the miko.
"Utahime~" He plays with her name like jelly on his tongue, his favorite sweet. Humans are slaves to love, but the Six-Eye holders, Death believes, a hundredfold more.
His affection is swatted away like an annoying bug. "Stop calling me Utahime!"
"Why? Nanamin doesn't mind—"
"Well, I mind!" She storms off. Her footsteps are resounding drums of don’t-follow.
He exhales and envy comes out. "It's not like you call me Satoru anyway."
Two, the miko, not so much.
She is tying her hair into a ponytail, disheveled from the fight against the Curse, walking briskly to the building’s exit. "Kento will be worried. I’m going ahead."
"Relax,” he says as he saunters beside her. With time, he has learned to temper his emotions. He now holds it like his wrath, contained but hot when touched. “Nanamin won't be able to refuse you anyway."
"What— Just because—” She can only be livid at what he insinuates. “—That doesn't mean I can abuse it!"
He moves on, feelings tucked under his sleeves, eyes straight ahead. He knows his place, and the place (or non-place) of his affections in the dream he wants to achieve. "Has he not decided to come back yet?"
"Leave him alone."
She leaves and Death watches the Six Eyes etch her every stride to heart.
-
Death discovers one more thing. The Six Eyes keeps his friends close. This one, particularly so.
It is most apparent on the day Death was supposed to take her.
Death remembers the blond as it approaches the miko. It's a shame what a strong and proud soul does to the human body. She has exorcised a Curse at the cost of her dwindling life. Death follows her as she stumbles and does her best to reach for her phone, thrown askew by her battle. The screen is cracked.
Death knows it will see the blond again. Especially after he collects her. There will be bloodied wishes, a great looming shadow. These are not things Death looks forward to.
None of it happens.
The Six Eyes gets to her first and brings her to safety. Death does not have feelings, but in that moment, there is calm and serenity, as blue as the sea that greets people home from war.
Death sits with the Six Eyes outside the hospital room. He is waiting. Tears, each one heavy with regret, damps the fabric that covers his eyes.
Love is a gift and a curse.
They have been there a whole hour by the time the blond arrives. He gives the Six Eyes a curt nod and goes in. His breathing is heavy, his work ID still hangs around his neck.
Hours later, the Doctor steps out and announces the miko is okay. The Six Eyes leaves at the same time Death does.
Both unneeded.
iii.
Death is collecting souls in the morgue when the two of them step in.
“You almost died.” The blond stares at the scar on her face, his stare only registers it as a grim reminder of the inevitable, of her brush with death, of a scraped off future. “Again.”
“Almost.” It is her argument, a poor one, Death thinks. But she is firm and proud.
Death eyes the phrases that threaten to leave the blond’s chest: you say that as if your life means nothing, as if your death wouldn’t suck the air out of my lungs, as if you wouldn’t be sending me alone into the future . The phrases threaten to leave his fingertips. He admires her and loathes her. But at this moment, he loathes her more. Her willingness to stay and risk her life. Her willingness to be a tether to the society she once told him he could quit.
Death easily invades the shadow between them.
Stars die. It is a fact of life. Numerous humans have studied this phenomenon. They can point to the how but never the why . Why does something so bright and magnificent have to shrivel and explode into nothingness?
“Sorry, the mission took longer than expected.” Her call comes hours later than the expected time. Their shared apartment is empty. He is out working, trying to forget that his girlfriend is out on a mission from which she may never return.
Death understands, work beyond the necessary hours is disdainful for many reasons. He escaped Jujutsu society to avoid death, to rid himself of its shadow. But any source of light can cause a shadow. Even the miko, as bright as the sun.
Her voice reaches his ears, once a divine blessing, now a cruel punishment. Some days, he'd release a sigh of relief, at least you’re safe. Now, Death can observe pain: Is this it? His life, a continued prolonged waiting. Why? Why would she risk leaving him behind?
“Why won’t you quit?” It is a week after her close brush with Death. He’s just stepped out of the shower; a towel wrapped around his waist. She’s lounging on the sofa, watching a baseball game, beer in one hand. He loves her. He wants this. It is a day off for both of them.
But he asks her the question anyway, a question once resolved in the first years of their relationship.
She recognizes the magnitude of the query; already aware of its cause. The TV is turned off, the beer can deposited to the coffee table. The normalcy of the day is put on hold; the curtain falls; it is a discussion overdue.
“I can help people as a sorcerer.” He sits down beside her; hugs her from behind. Her answer has not changed, but his has.
Even Death laments when humans change their minds.
"You can help elsewhere.” He smells the lavender in her hair, plants kisses on her neck. “In a job where you won’t need to die.”
“Is that what you want?” She faces him. He doesn’t give a reply. Neither of them are ready to acknowledge this. They put the curtains back on, save the conversation for another day, and hold each other through the night; two wet matches desperate to light a flame.
Four days later, Death follows the miko into a coffee shop. It is her day off and she spends her time searching. Desperation is not fun to witness. But even Death has attachments that are hard to let go. It observes the miko as she finds the very table, the very seat she was in when the blond first calls her by her name. The memory of it immortalized in her head.
She orders the same drink he always buys for her and his favorite bread. Death pities her. The cup is right in her hand, but the elatedness from the memories escapes her.
This is her last stop. She has investigated every nook and cranny, all their closets upturned, tables flipped, drawers emptied; she has sifted through all her memories, looking for that which she once held, the willingness to stay, the energy to work through differences.
"He wants me to quit." The whisper is for no one. Only for her. Only as an acknowledgement to the needs of a loved one. One she can't give.
Love solves many problems. But it can’t stop the collapse of a star. There comes a time, a star loses its battle with gravity and it never recovers.
“I won't quit." She tells him the next morning. "But you can…” She struggles to say everything else- “…quit completely, Kento.”
Nothing, only silence. Even Death finds itself dreading what comes next.
“We don’t have to stay like this, Nanami-san.”
Death leaves, unwilling to witness more pain.
iv.
“How long is she going to stay there?” If Death doesn’t know for a fact, it was undetected to the Six Eyes, it’d think he was talking to it. Useless, it thinks, the way these humans cope with their emotional constipation.
“He hasn’t even touched her coffee.” The Six Eyes has forgotten the stench of death still on him and continues to look towards the cafe from his sorry bench. He didn’t play around and completed his mission in seconds. Death had jogged along with him to see what had caused the uncharacteristic finish, only to be led by his lovesick heart into this.
The miko is looking and not looking at the food on her table. Grieving for a lost love, though not the same as grieving for a lost life, is its own kind of devastating. It is losing something that had once consumed every aspect of your life and being. Breaking a relationship is a choice, a burden she now carries. Its weight only increased by the knowledge that it is the right choice, and yet it pains the person you once held so close.
“What’s gotten you so down?”
Death scoffs at the Six Eyes. He lies. He knows why. The blond had texted him just minutes before, a reply to his usual playful propositions of returning to jujutsu society. No. It’s the usual reply. But there was a follow-up text this time. She's already fighting for your dream.
Why do humans do this to themselves? Death wonders as it watches the mixture of sorrow, remorse, and hope latching to the Six Eyes’ jacket. He’s a mess. Death can't even make out the phrases on his fingertips.
But Death can make out a few other things: he wants to go to her, comfort her, be the one she cries to. The path he needs to take is easy, stand up, walk towards her, and comfort her. Be vulnerable, for once. He knows this. Death can see it plain as day.
He stands up, puts his hands in his pocket.
What stops him is more powerful than infinity. It is a love realized and set aside.
He takes out his phone and calls someone. “Someone needs help. Get Shoko, won’t you?”
-
When the doctor arrives, the Six Eyes slips away, his disappearance only noted by Death.
The doctor finds the miko inside and immediately cradles her in an embrace. The miko feigns a smile, surprised but delighted to find her there. They talk. What are you doing here, Shoko? Oh, you were called? Yeah, must be some prank though. I don’t mind an excuse for a lunch out though.
Nothing about her heartbreak. The miko finally touches her food, eats a quarter of it over a conversation she is happy to have, but she would rather not have.
Death follows the two even on the walk home, when, at the juncture of her usual path home and of her friend’s, she tugs at the doctor’s coat.
Quiet in her request, the miko slowly stands closer to her friend and leans.
The doctor’s coat is clean. Death realizes the doctor has figured it out during lunch and is ready to lay witness to the miko’s pain.
The first breakthrough is here—
The miko vomits her tears, emptying them out from unfathomable depths. The sound comes out both strangled and high as she empties out her heart, her lungs, and her grief on her friend’s fresh white coat. She hangs on to sturdy shoulders as she lets the ground crumble underneath her feet.
Her friend holds her through the ordeal, a warm set of arms amidst the heavy weight of desolation. It is all she needs.
—and the fight to move forward begins.