Work Text:
There is a garden.
It's a very beautiful garden, with beautiful trees and beautiful flowers. You walk past it often, even every day, to get to the students' dormitories. The whole Jujutsu complex is, in itself, very beautiful with its Japanese architecture, its soothing red toriis and its green alleys. Not to mention the many gardens it is composed of. But this particular garden is different. Perhaps by its warm colors contrasting with the dull ones of the school or the warm aura it gives off.
Every day you walk past the garden. Every day you stop. Every day you look at it for a long time but don't dare to enter. Today is no exception. And, like every day, you look away and continue your way to the dormitories.
You're new, without much importance. Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College was looking for first-year students. You saw the offer, the opportunities it offered, the encounters and experiences that came with it. Who would turn it down? Not you. No, you yearn for discovery, for newness, for becoming someone. You were nobody before, an invisible person, a quiet student, four kanjis in the national register. To be honest, you still are. Your appearance is not worth describing because who you are does not matter. What you see is important and nothing else. Nothing has changed by putting on a black uniform with a swirl button. But you want it to change. This is only the beginning after all, you still have many years to become the being you aspire to be.
The school is not what you expected.
You visualised a impressive modern building, a large student population, renowned teachers and perhaps even an advanced school system. Instead, you find a more than traditional infrastructure — although this is part of the school's charm — maximum five students per year and not per class, haunted-eyed teachers and classes with questionable content. It goes without saying that none of the teachers here really have any kind of teaching degree, they are just adults recycled into teachers whose already frayed ends are starting to fall apart.
They tell you that yours is the youngest, that it's his first year as a teacher. You think he's weird: how can you teach when the only thing you can say is onigiri toppings? You look at the pile of books increasing on your desk. Here, no Japanese, biology or chemistry. The control and application of cursed energy takes precedence, with a few hours of history of exorcism, mathematics, physics and philosophy. It suits you, you were never very scientific anyway. On your timetable, philosophy takes place in fifth hour on Wednesdays, just before lunch and training. It seems more like a feeble attempt to make amends to the curriculum of other schools than anything else.
With your notebooks and uniform purchased, your timetable in your pocket and the principal's approval of your enrolment in your head, you head forward without looking back.
The room you are given is bigger than the one at your parents' house. The dormitory of the first years is practically empty, only four rooms are occupied, counting yours. You fill the wardrobe with your clothes and the shelves with your books. It looks bland, empty, insipid. It will change. It has to, that's why you're here after all.
Your first class starts in an hour.
Strangely enough, attending classes is not as difficult as it seemed. You assimilate the subjects at the same speed as your classmates, two girls and a boy. Before the practice of cursed energy comes the theory and the muscle training. You find yourself talented in sprinting and memorizing. History becomes child's play but physics remains complicated. Inumaki makes you all run twice a day for twenty minutes and then follows with a fitness session to build up your muscles. Later on comes the simulated combat training in pairs. You often lose but get up again each time, which earns you an enthusiastic salmon! from your teacher.
The practice of cursed energy is the most difficult. You can see it, touch it, feel it. However, using it requires more effort. You spend sleepless nights flexing your fists in the hope that it will appear. You learn in your textbooks that this energy is generated from negative emotions. What is more negative than the frustration and bitterness of a teenager?
A girl in your class has a complex cursed technique. It consists in delimiting a certain surface of ground going up to ten square meters in a chessboard of sixty-four squares. The opponent is then trapped in a game of chess whose attacks he cannot avoid unless he is the one who attacks first. You experience this technique during training under the supervision of Inumaki. It is clear that a simple pawn can hurt a lot, not to mention a knight.
Obviously, you lose, but not without noticing that, although this technique is ingenious, it respects way too much the rules of chess. You just have to position yourself intelligently on certain squares to be out of the reach of the pieces. A rook at D5 cannot go to F6. The more you dodged, the faster the pieces repositioned themselves. Defeat was inevitable.
Inumaki congratulates your classmate with a long speech consisting of nothing but condiments before patting you on the head for your thoughtfulness throughout the fight. This doesn't stop you from feeling bitter.
You buy a book on chess rules the next time you go out on the town.
Muscles aching from the evening's training, you drag your tired body back to the first-year dorms. The cool breeze of early May brings you the characteristic floral smell of spring. But this one seems denser, more concentrated in pollen. You turn your head in the direction of the wind and see a trail of petals washed up on the ground, all coming from the large garden on the outskirts of the complex, right next to the athletics track.
You watch the petals of one of the large trees in the garden come off their branches and twirl in the wind.
You turn away and go on your way.
One day, you and your classmates are looking for a place to have lunch. One of the girls had said that lunch in class was far too boring, to which Inumaki agreed before urging them to eat outside or face his cursed technique. The temple steps were occupied by their seniors and one of the rest areas by the fourth years. One look at the intimidating woman with short, light brown hair dissuaded the group from eating lunch there.
You suggest to sit in the flower garden near the dormitories. Three pairs of puzzled eyes land on you. "Why would you want to eat in a place like that?" the girl with the chess technique asks, her fingers fidgeting with the fabric of her bento box.
"What do you mean?" you reply.
She frowns. "Don't answer my question with another question! I thought at least you were normal." She turns away from you and wraps her arm around the other girl, who's wearing a sheepish expression. "I don't know about you boys, but I refuse to have lunch in a cemetery!" With that, she walks purposefully towards some stairs leading to the west wing of the complex, dragging her classmate with her, her long hair swaying in the action.
You turn to the boy beside you. He shrugs at the girl's sudden outburst. "How 'bout we just eat on those stairs?" You don't see the need to rebut.
Between bites of tuna onigiri, a question forms on the tip of your tongue. You swallow it with the rest of the rice in your mouth. However, it remains stuck in your gullet.
You end up asking. The answer comes in the form of Panda's hoarse whisper. The hair on his muzzle tickles your ear as he leans towards you: "You see, in that lovely garden over there is buried a good friend of mine. A year younger, a big heart, too big perhaps, and a very good sense of humour." A big paw comes to ruffle your head, claws retracted. Panda is your favourite senior. Although he is pretty much the same age as Inumaki, he is affectionate and playful with the younger students. The other second, third and fourth year seniors all have haunted eyes and easy scorn. Not Panda. Maybe because he is, well, a panda.
During training, your gaze unconsciously wanders to the garden, where the tallest tree branches are visible. In May, the cherry blossoms have almost all fallen off in the wind.
You think about going for a walk there. The thought is quickly dismissed by the kick you receive in the shoulder from your sparring partner. She laughs at your lack of concentration.
You like that sound.
She is the oldest of three brothers and one sister. You find yourself hanging out with her more often, much to the chagrin of her friend with the cursed chess technique. She is soft in her words as well as hard in her strokes. You find yourself following her movements during training, the elegant arc she makes with her spear, the somersault that sent her soaring above her opponent, the position of her feet on the muddy ground. In class, you watch the way the sun's rays reflect off her short black hair and the wave-like movements that make it ripple as she stands up to write an answer on the board.
One morning you arrive early to class. She is already sitting at her desk applying lip balm. She looks up at you and greets you. In a cheerful mood, she forces you to apply lip balm too. The fight lasts a few minutes before you give up and resign yourself to your fate. Your lips taste like strawberries all day long. She gives you knowing looks from time to time. You find yourself smiling at her.
The same day, she wakes you up with a slight jolt when you fall asleep in philosophy class, a smile adorning her face.
Soon, the natural floral scent that occupied your mind is replaced by the artificial, chemical smell of strawberries.
A curse decapitates her during your third mission in extra muros. You see her head detach from her neck in a clean cut, cutting in the process the end of her hair that she had decided to let grow. Her expression remains fixed on an open mouth, testifying to a cry never uttered, as her head falls a few meters away with several bounces. Her headless body falls first to her knees and then collapses to the ground. You can see a glimpse of her spine in the cut of her neck. The blood coming out of her lifeless body forms a growing crimson puddle where the hot summer sun reflects off it.
Her hazel eyes are still open.
You stumble to the side and throw up before passing out.
In the infirmary where you wake up, they praise your luck. The nurse (doctor, medical examiner?) tells you it was bad luck. A higher-up officer whose name you don't know comes to offer his condolences. He is old, they all are. You bow as low as you can while he asks you about his intervention. You don't know who he is talking about. He looks nervous, as if he is afraid that your conversation will be overheard by someone. He glances at the doctor, who only glances back with a raised eyebrow.
When he takes his leave, you turn to her. Tall, dark-eyed and with long brown hair, she tells you that you have been saved by the strongest with a shrug before chasing you out of the infirmary.
Of course you know who it is. There's only one Gojo Satoru after all. You remember a brief flash of white streaks, an cursed energy exploding the curse. In the blur of your memory, pale blue eyes look at you with cold indifference.
As for her, her body has been returned to her family with the advice not to open the coffin. You are not invited to the funeral.
The next day, Panda comes to see you in the morning to give you four awkward pats on the head. You see behind his massive body a green-haired woman wearing glasses waiting for him. In class, Inumaki can't look you in the eye. There are only three first years left.
You can't sleep. Summer is in full swing so that even the nights are not chilly. Your perspiration sticks to your skin and clings to your lower back. Even though it is dark, the cicadas do not stop their unpleasant concert that weighs heavily on your mind. You had opened the windows before you went to bed in the hope of getting some kind of breeze. The only things that enter your room are flies and mosquitoes. After tossing and turning in your bed, you decide to take a walk at night to clear your head, for lack of anything else to do.
Wearing a simple t-shirt and shorts, you tiptoe out of the dorms. First years are housed on the second floor, second years on the ground floor, third years on the first floor and fourth years on the third floor. Once outside, you let your feet guide you aimlessly. Your sandals mow the gravel beneath your feet nonchalantly as you tilt your head back to admire a cloudless, starless sky. A miraculous wind dries the perspiration on your skin to a cold sweat. A shiver runs through you and just as you are about to turn back, a scent reaches your nostrils. Flowers.
You take a long look at the silhouette of the garden in the distance and the shadow of long, intertwined limbs it casts on the ground. One step at a time, you make your way to that part of the Jujutsu complex you never dared to set foot in. The walk seems ridiculously short. Once in front of it, you find yourself facing a gate, several meters wide, painted white. The paint looks new, as if someone has just repainted the steel. With a reckless impulse, you push the gate, which opens without difficulty, and enter the garden. In this cloudless night, the moon has no trouble illuminating the surroundings with a thin layer of silver.
The structure of the garden is simple: a straight path with vegetation on both sides. As you walk along, you notice that the vegetation is actually arranged in a rather haphazard way. Trees that bloom in summer are placed with others that bloom in winter, the roots of some shrubs overlap for lack of space, and flowerbeds seem to be fighting for territory with each other. Not to mention the smell: a heavy mixture of far too many pollen of different species. An allergic person would die on the spot in this place. It's as if someone had desperately rushed to gather as many flowers as possible and, not knowing what to take, just took everything to make sure it would please. Please who? You wonder.
You make your way along the path before arriving at a large cherry tree planted on a small island bounded by water. You step over the small bridge that leads to it. There is no pathway here, just green grass covered with pink petals, most of them already wilted by the heat. The cherry tree is naked, but that's not what attracts your attention. At the foot of the cherry tree lies a large tombstone. Curious, you approach it with hesitant steps. The grave is surrounded by a number of offerings: bouquets of flowers, many bouquets, as if building a whole garden wasn't enough, of all colours, sweets ranging from simple mochis to famous bakery cakes and more discreet offerings; a bowl of rice, a discount ticket to a beauty salon, a recipe. There are so many of these that they spill out onto the grass. You see yellow — yellow columbine — , blue — blue delphinius — , purple — carnations — , pink — zinnia — , red — dianthus — , orange — marigold — , and white — scabiosa — as far as the eye can see.
Your eyes, taken over by this myriad of colours, almost miss the inscriptions engraved on the tombstone. Itadori Yuuji, that said. You stand there stupidly staring at those four kanji until they are branded with a hot iron on your retina, until the moon has had time to cross the sky and gently swap places with the sun. At the sight of the sky turning warm shades of pink and orange, you decide to return to the dormitory, taking with you a stench of flowers.
You have two hours before classes start. You fall asleep the moment your head hits your pillow. How ironic, you think, that the dead are more loved than the living.
The ceiling seems oppressive.
In exorcism history class, there is a chapter on "The Golden Age of Curses". You flick through your textbook without much interest, your feet dangling under your desk to the rhythm of Inumaki's chalk scraping on the board. Your gaze stops on the name Ryomen Sukuna. S-class curse, king of curses. Sealed centuries ago and reappeared three years ago. You read further down and find a familiar name. Itadori Yuuji, male, fifteen years old, from Sendai, vessel of Ryomen Sukuna.
Executed a year and a half ago after ingesting the twentieth finger of the curse.
Inumaki skips this chapter.
One morning, as you walk to the athletics track, you see Gojo Satoru enter the garden. On his arms hang two bags from the artisanal chocolate factory near Shibuya station. You've been there, the prices are too high for a student like you. Gojo doesn't come out until noon, empty-handed.
That same day, you overhear a whispered conversation between two superiors with tense faces, the signs of age etched into their skin. "I can't believe that this atrocity has stained the soil of this place..."
"All you do is complain about it, I haven't seen you object back then."
The voice rises. "You think I didn't try! We all thought so but no one joined me." Then lower. "Nobody wanted to end up like the old ones..."
A hiss. "Watch your mouth. I don't want to see another bloodbath. Six Eyes is never too far."
The fourth years, which are only two, come to teach you in Inumaki's stead, who has gone abroad to support the famous Okkotsu Yuuta. Kugisaki Nobara helps you manage your cursed energy flow, your balance and your flexibility. A nail barely misses you, she doesn't apologize and tells you to concentrate better. At her side, Fushiguro Megumi observes your movements before giving advice for each one. This continues for a good hour until Kugisaki complains about the heat and orders a break. Your classmates, having overcome their shyness, chat animatedly with her in the shade while you sit on the opposite steps, an empty water bottle in your hand.
The air is dry, the concrete is hot. The trees offer what little shade their green leaves can provide. In the distance, a chain of ants trudges between the blades of grass.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Fushiguro Megumi returning from the vending machines with three drinks in her arms: two bottles of water and a lychee ramune. The black of his exorcist's uniform absorbs the rays of the June sun, making it heavier than it looks. In the large outdoor training field, he is a black spot amidst the grey concrete and green grass. Fushiguro stops about ten metres from you. His back is to you, he doesn't see you. Two bottles under his elbow, he opens the third one to drink it greedily until he empties its contents, his throat undulating to the rhythm of his gulps. On the floor, his shadow darkens, grows, until it becomes a puddle of viscous ink beneath his feet.
Fushiguro slides the bottle of ramune into his shadow. The bottom of the bottle turns black as the shadow engulfs it in a process of phagocytosis. It disappears as if it had never existed.
He didn't see you. But you did see him.
You hear noises at night coming from the ceiling.
Soft little footsteps, at first shy, almost silent, then more playful, more impatient as the night grows longer.
They disappear as suddenly as they appear, all without you ever hearing a door open, evidence of someone entering or leaving.
The day after one of these now habitual nights, you ask the housekeeper, a middle-aged man not paid enough for the hard work he does, who owns the room above yours.
Fushiguro Megumi, he tells you. He apologizes in his stead if you ever hear noise at night, his shikigamis are often agitated once the sun sets, when the shadows of the day lengthen the most. You don't think about it any more, only a slight hazy thought in the back of your mind, until after class, when the walk back to the dorms inevitably makes you walk past the garden. A minute, two minutes pass before you decide to go in for no particular reason, on a whim.
Nothing has changed since your last visit, except that some of the flowers have faded to make way for others that are larger, more imposing in volume and colour. You let your feet carry you to the grave, only to stop just in front of the bridge that connects the dirt path to the little island where the big cherry tree lies.
There is a child.
Quite small, though it was hard to tell from his sitting position, and blending in so perfectly with the landscape that it was eerie. In the warm colour palette that was the garden — pink, mauve, blue as far as the eye could see, endlessly, as if these square meters of land were a dazzling breach in the gray canvas of the Jujutsu complex — the child could barely be seen. His pink hair put the bare cherry tree behind him to shame, the strands might as well be made of petals themselves. The outfit in no way helped distinguish the boy from his surroundings: a kimono of light orange hues, so light it looked pink, the same colour as the sunset, a red obi with golden leaf patterns and a haori as bright as a spring sun.
You can see the silk rippling across his skin, cascading down with his movements, a corner of your mind can't help but wonder how much it must have cost. You watch him for a moment before realising with growing horror that the child is not only sitting right in front of the grave but eating the offerings as if they were his afternoon snack.
Your mouth opens as your foot moves forward, a scolding on the tip of it, but everything dies inside you as a twig breaks under the weight of your foot. The boy, startled by the sound, turns his head in your direction and finally meets your eyes.
Two golden pearls look at you with a mixture of confusion and surprise, eyes so large they seem to pop out of their sockets. He is, indeed, small, you realise. A piece of chocolate cake in his left hand, a handful of sweets in his right, his knees covered in chocolate bar wrappers. His mouth, which has been actively chewing a mouthful of cake, stops in surprise. Streaks of chocolate stain his round cheeks and, in the moment, it's the perfect representation of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. You can even see the unease and guilt starting to show on that youthful face. And that's okay, it's totally okay, because every kid has snuck into the kitchen at least once in their life, without their parents knowing, to raid the cupboards for sugar and eat it until their stomach hurts, until they promise themselves they will never eat it again.
It's alright, it really is, if only his pupils weren't two long black slits, if only his eyes weren't bathed in a dark abyss instead of the usual, normal white, if only long canines weren't protruding from his little mouth and arabesques weren't decorating the outline of his eyes. If only his nails digging into the cake didn't look more like claws.
If only that little body didn't give off so much cursed energy.
You are equally surprised by each other and, for several seconds, no one moves except the leaves on the trees. The only sound reaching your ears is the frantic beating of your heart, going at a speed never before experienced even when you were running on the athletics track, even when you first saw a curse, even when she put her lip balm on your lips.
The spell is broken by a voice that, for some reason, freezes your blood.
"Itadori! I told you to eat properly, do you know how much that kimono costs?"
The moment is broken, the world continues to spin where it left off as the child - the boy, the curse - turns away from you to face Fushiguro Megumi emerging from behind the cherry tree trunk. What about you? You walk away as quickly as you can, your feet shuffling in a quick but silent walk towards the garden exit without a backward glance.
You don't need to check to know that the boy entered Fushiguro's shadow as you walked away.
You avoid Fushiguro the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that and all the others that follow. You avoid him like the plague, shun him like leprosy and fear him like scabies. You avoid him as much as you question yourself. Why was he carrying a curse with him at all times? Was he cursed, like Okkotsu Yuuta? Was he a shikigami born from his shadow? More than that, why had he called him Itadori, the teenager who had died two years ago, carrying a fearsome curse into his eternal, if premature, sleep. There was no greater outrage for an exorcist than to sympathise with a curse, so why?
Why?
Curiosity eventually gets the better of fear, leading you to approach Fushiguro at the end of class. He is almost invisible in the little light of the rising moon, his black hair barely standing out on the dark sky. Leaning against a massive torii at the top of the stairs, he hasn't noticed you yet. With your heart pounding, you put one foot in front of the other, your gait hesitant, but take care to make your steps noisy to signal your presence. Fushiguro looks up, meets your eyes. A silent question shimmers in his forest green eyes.
You open your mouth. Closes it. Open it again. Nothing comes out, your throat is dry and the words get stuck, clashing together like badly oiled cogs, rust eating away at the edges. You end up lowering your head in a gesture of politeness before muttering a trembling good night, your cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Fushiguro observes you for a few more moments then walks past you without another look.
"Why are you carrying a curse with you?"
There, you said it. You have your back to him, don't see his reaction, but nevertheless hear the sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs stop. You are aware of the rudeness of your question, of the sudden exclamation wich should have been a little lower, but, above all, of the heavy silence that sets in. Only the sound of leaves falling to the ground under the weight of the wind can be heard, although even it seems to have calmed down at the question.
Regret settles in your stomach, as heavy as lead. It was intrusive, you shouldn't have asked, no matter how much it gnawed at your mind, so much so that you became more aware of footsteps at night. Of brief, fleeting glimpses of pink hair as Fushiguro draws a weapon from his shadow. Of the abundant food that constantly disappears in the garden. Of the featherweight of honey-like eyes, as light as a caress, on your shoulders. You want to know, you want to know so badly that it eats you up inside.
You feel the impact more than you see it.
A machete at least twenty centimeters long and five centimeters wide hits you on the left side of your torso in a fast and powerful swing. The cold metal first cracks several ribs before sinking deeper into your flesh until it hits your heart, all within seconds. You collapse on your side, propelled by the impact and pulled to the ground by the loss of balance. Your body lands hard on the stone slabs, taking your breath away before you even realise you're struggling to breathe. The fall could have been ten metres high and it would have the same effect: an echo of pain rippling through your nerves.
The blood coming out of your chest paints the grey ground with broad brushstrokes, inducing the canvas with angry purple, crimson, vermilion. The grey gives way to red, which seeps everywhere; first bursting from your chest, winding its way between the folds of your uniform to spread on the rough, cold concrete, between the slitters, reaching the green grass to hug it in a scarlet embrace.
A wet cough makes you cough up blood. Your head is spinning, your body heavy, your fingers cold, contrasting with the warm liquid that caresses your ribs in an almost affectionate way. Fushiguro meets your gaze, the bloody machete in his hand. You look for an explanation in his cold, indifferent eyes. You find nothing, or maybe you do, maybe the answer to your question has always been etched in the boy's eyes, as clear as day, an answer you have decided to foolishly ignore.
You feel dumb for asking.
It hurts.
You die.