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Zenin Megumi’s hands were stained with blood. In fact, it could even be said that he was soaked in it. The moment he realized who were responsible for taking everything away from him and that he had the power to pay them back in kind, he had taken the metaphorical bath in literal blood. When his soul shattered, the cries of his dear sister ringing in his ears as he looked into her desperate eyes, any semblance of goodness in him shattered along with it. He had bided his time then, seeking out Gojo Satoru himself to exchange servitude for a promise: vengeance.
His cousins, the Zenin twins Maki and Mai, were willing conspirators. They trained together, went on their first jobs together, and studied the murkier aspects of jujutsu society in preparation for the aftermath. There was going to be an aftermath; they were sure of it. Any outcome other than the total annihilation of the old Zenin clan was preposterous and a scenario they dared not think about.
If they didn’t purify the cursed bloodline, then all the tears, blood, wounds, and lost innocence meant nothing. If they didn’t fulfill their mandate to cleanse the Zenins, their lives thus far would have been meaningless. If they didn’t, if they didn’t, if they didn’t–-
-–then what did Megumi throw away his humanity for, why did he become the very thing he despised? Casual cruelty and spilled blood; sins darker than the shadows he summoned with his own hands.
Itadori Yuuji and Kugisaki Nobara joined the fray when he was sixteen. Gojo Satoru presented the two petty criminals to him: juvenile thieves caught rigging the games in one of Gojo’s casinos, spotted by the Gojo head himself. They were that good, Satoru praised. Only the Six Eyes noticed that something wasn’t right.
The two idiots flashed him the most stupid and flattered grins. Fushiguro Megumi turned away.
How are you two happy? He asked. How could you come from nothing and have only each other and manage to be happy? Orphans who grew up stealing, maiming, and killing. Two kids taken away from their families. They hardly remember them. Yuuji grimaces and insists his family, if he has any left, don’t care about him. Megumi sees the ache in his eyes, and he knows Yuuji yearns. Nobara scoffs and declares she has no family at all. He sees the flame in Nobara’s eyes, and he knows she longs for a place to belong. Their kinship does not dispel the darkness because the three of them have already long dwelled in it. When Megumi offers them a free pass to Hell, the two of them smile and holler in excitement.
On his eighteenth birthday, Zenin Megumi and the Zenin twins pay a homecoming visit, Nobara and Yuuji in tow.
By the time the sun rises, one thousand years’ worth of blood flood the cobbled paths, wooden floors, and green gardens. There’s a makeshift graveyard in the estate’s main grounds: piles of heads and dismembered corpses haphazardly laid atop one another.
Megumi rewrites the inheritance and after a grand fifteen minutes of being Clan Head, he signs away his privileges and gives them to Maki. His only witnesses are two rowdy teenagers arguing over who gets which bloodstained jewelry and one cowering old kinsman who grovels and begs for forgiveness as Megumi presses pen to paper, a little harder than necessary.
“Don’t beg me,” Megumi replies, matter-of-factly. “I’m not the Clan Head. Beg her .”
Zenin Maki celebrates her coronation by beating into a gory pulp the old man who murdered Tsumiki and abused Mai. A hollow shell of a once proud man, rendered to nothing more than a heap of bloody, unidentifiable gore by the family’s misfortunes incarnated.
Megumi doesn’t bother lifting a finger. He feeds the mangled remains to the Divine Dogs.
Gojo Satoru backs their claim to the Zenin clan’s estate and territory. Maki ushers in the dawn of a new age. When outsiders challenge her authority, Maki rips their heads off with her own bare hands and displays them for all to witness.
They soon understand that Maki is neither a sorcerer nor a curse user. She’s the Wrath of Heaven herself, not beholden to Jujutsu conventions and mundane restrictions.
As for the inheritor of the Ten Shadows Technique, the esteemed Zenin inheritance, the people know better than to go looking for him. Megumi disappears into the shadows and for the first time, he lets himself mourn in peace for his departed sister and lost innocence.
As peaceful as it could get with two loud dumbasses, anyway.
“Megumi, buy dinner. You’re the rich boy here,” Nobara wheedled.
“I earn at the same rate as you. I’ve been going on the same jobs as you. I have no money,” Megumi intoned flatly.
“What about the gold bars? And the emeralds?” Yuuji asked through a mouthful of chewed burger and fries.
“Those are for emergencies. I can’t go splurging my share every time you two idiots go broke,” Megumi spat.
Nobara slammed the table with one hand, the other pointing her index finger right up Megumi’s nose. “ Aha! So you did keep your inheritance! C’mon, daddy , please–!”
Yuuji was barely able to hold back Megumi from throttling Nobara’s neck.
Megumi thought he was going to spend the rest of his days in relative peace. Go on a few missions every now and then for Gojo; take care of some affairs for Maki when she was too busy. He was even pursuing a degree, taking online courses and diligently earning his credits. He chose to pursue a degree in Japanese Literature with a Minor in Creative Writing. The assholes he now called ‘family’ spent months giving him shit for it, calling him the next ‘Natsume Soseki’. Megumi was petty enough to unleash the Divine Dogs on them. (Nevermind that the dogs recognized them and ended up just rolling on their bellies and nipping playfully at them. Traitors, the lot of them.)
Megumi mused that if he was lucky, maybe he’d grow old and retire in the countryside, only his books and a vegetable garden to keep him company. Maybe the days of peace would persist, and any conflicts that might arrive could be dealt with easily. Maybe all the darkness and nightmares would never go away, but his waking moments could be spent with resigned peace. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe, Megumi dreamed.
Or not, Megumi thought as a scruffy, messy black haired kid dressed in a worn, dirty middle school uniform stood in his doorway, ragged duffle bag slung on one shoulder as he looked up at him.
“Hello, Uncle ‘Gumi,” he drawled, a prominent scar tugging at the corner of his lips.
“...What?” Megumi said.
The young man tilted his head and gleefully declared, “I’m Fushiguro Toji, your nephew. My asshole dad just died, so I’ll be in your care!”
As if on cue, Megumi’s phone pinged just as Toji shouldered past him, bullying his way into Megumi’s apartment and whistling in admiration as he took in the fairly sizable and neat space. Megumi scrambled for his phone. It was a series of messages from Gojo Satoru.
Lmao. He’s legit. 😎👶
[image attached]
[FushiZenResultsGentix.pdf]
[FoundFamilyXResults.docx]
[IeriMD_ZeninFushiguro_BloodlineReport.docx]
[HowtoRaiseaTeenWhenYou’reAlsoaTeen.pdf]
Congrats Daddy Megumi !!! LOOOOLLLL 🥳🍼🍼🍼👨🍼
What the fuck–
His phone was snatched away from him.
“Hey!” Megumi barked, moving to reach out for the device.
Megumi was surprised by the teenager’s strength as he casually pushed Megumi away, keeping him at arm’s length. “Is that creepy sunglasses dude a distant relative?” he asked offhandedly.
Megumi snapped out of it and yanked his phone away from the teen. “I have no nephews or nieces. My sister died–”
“Yeah, yeah, your full blood sister died. But she wasn’t your only sister by blood, ‘ya know?” Toji sneered at Megumi, like Megumi was the idiot for somehow not knowing that.
Megumi grit his teeth and fixed him with a vicious glare. “I know my bastard of a father had plenty of other kids. I don’t give a fuck about them, and I certainly don’t give a fuck about any of their rotten spawn, which includes you .”
Megumi wracked his brain. They killed everyone . Even the ones who weren’t on the estate that day, they painstakingly hunted down each and every Zenin clan member. Man, woman, child, sorcerer, and non-sorcerer.
Megumi was about to rush forward and drag him out until he got a closer look at the younger man’s face. Megumi stopped in his tracks.
A flash of a hazy childhood memory.
A young woman, a couple of years older than Tsumiki. Long black hair, soft green eyes, a gentle smile, their lone playmate–a Zenin child reduced to a servant because she barely possessed a smidge of cursed energy. She ran away when she was about to be married off to one of the Zenin elders, but the clan eventually hunted her down. They had whispered that she left behind a deadbeat husband and a son. The son was taken in because the elders greedily expected a technique to manifest; the ‘father’ easily letting go of the child for a couple hundred thousand yen. By the time they had taken in the kid, Tsumiki was killed and Megumi had already fled the household.
“...You’re Kanae-san’s child?” Megumi whispered in disbelief.
For a moment, Megumi saw a flash of pain in Toji’s green eyes. Megumi sees a glimpse of himself.
“Ya hit the nail on the head,” Toji replied, and his laugh sounded bitter.
Maki sent him a one-word question.
Kill? Megumi’s phone screen displayed.
He only replied, He’s one of us.
A year passed, and Toji officially became Zenin Toji. It felt wrong, somehow, to attach the cursed surname to a child who also fled their hatred and abuse; opting to take his chances under the roof of an alcoholic, negligent father than spend another second in the hallowed, traditional corridors of the Zenin estate. When Megumi asked him if he’s sure he wanted to take on his maternal surname, Toji, in his one and only display of vulnerability thus far, only murmured, “It’s the only thing I have left of her.”
Megumi never envisioned he’d be a reluctant parental figure to a troublesome teen at the ripe age of twenty. Toji celebrated his fifteenth birthday, and Megumi took Yuuji’s ill advice to bake a cake for sentimentality’s sake.
The taste was horrid. Megumi had somehow mixed the sugar with salt. The frosting was watery, and the cake itself lumpy in parts. Toji laughed until his stomach hurt.
Megumi's heart ached at the sight of his smile.
Even after everything, he hadn't completely killed his own soul.