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You’ve been wandering the wreckage of Shibuya for days. It looks like the set of a post-apocalyptic movie, like you’ve stumbled onto the remake of War of the Worlds. But all of it’s real.
Even now, you’re still reeling at how quickly everything went south. Less than a week ago, your biggest concern was making sure you actually had coverage for your Halloween night shift. Begging and pleading with your manager hadn’t worked, as everyone else also wanted the night off to party. Your saving grace had been a recently dumped coworker, who was free and miserable enough to actually want to work. At the time, you’d felt guilty for taking advantage of her sadness. Now, a different guilt weighs upon you. She lived in Ikebukuro. If she hadn’t taken your shift, she wouldn’t have gotten caught—as did your other coworkers, your friends, and yourself—in Sukuna’s Malevolent Shrine.
As far as you can tell, you’re the only survivor. Whether that’s up to muscle memory, constantly cycling reverse cursed energy to heal yourself from the cuts and slices, or whether he deliberately chose not to hit you in that massive radius is anyone’s guess.
It would’ve been nice if one of your sorcerer friends had given you a heads up. Both Nobara and Fushiguro had your number. Yuji, of course, did as well. If even one of them had said, “Hey, something bad’s gonna happen in Shibuya on Halloween,” then you would’ve dragged your friends to Ginza or Roppongi with the excuse of watching the parade. Instead, the six of you stayed in the area, and now you’re the only one left. You watched them get diced into pieces.
But it’s hardly fair to blame sorcerers who, ultimately, were high schoolers just like you. Knowing what you did about jujutsu society, they were probably out there fighting and bleeding while you and your friends hid. That Inumaki boy you’d seen was another casualty, and he hadn’t been much older.
In truth, you have no idea where you’re going.
The last couple of days, you’d sort of been ambling around aimlessly. You scourged for food and replaced your shredded costume with something that could actually withstand the cold. But other than survival, you really hadn’t any future plans. You should go home. Make sure your family knows you’re okay. Make sure that they’re okay.
You come across the cursed spirit first.
He’d been squatting as he kept watch, shooting up at your approach into a ready stance. He claps his hands together, all ten fingers pointed at you. “Don’t come any closer!” he barks.
“I mean you no harm!” you call back after raising your hands in surrender. In this body, you have no innate technique, but you remember how to fight from your past lives. Once upon a time, you’d held the record for the most consecutive black flashes at three strikes. Someone’s probably beaten you by now, but a hit’s a hit. You pool cursed energy into your fists. “I’m just passing through.”
“Then you better keep moving,” the cursed spirit growls, the line drawn across the bridge of his nose distorted by the ferocity of his glare. “It’s not safe here.”
“Choso, what are you doing?”
A familiar head of pink hair steps into view, and you go weak in the knees. You whisper Yuji’s name, a sound so soft it’s carried off by the wind. Before you know it, you’re sprinting for him. The cursed spirit shouts in alarm, and you only just manage to bat away his attack before you launch yourself into Yuji’s arms.
He catches you, warm and solid. “No way…,” he mutters. His voice cracks when he says your name, and his eyes are disbelieving as he pulls back to get a good look at you. Yuji’s face falls, to your alarm, when he confirms it’s you, and his warm, comforting hands morph into claws around your biceps. “If she was here when Sukuna attacked, then she’s… whatever you are, you better not be—be wearing her skin or something like that. I’ll—”
“No one told you?” you blurt, shaking free of his aggressive grip. “Not Fushiguro-kun or Nobara?” At the mention of the latter’s name, Yuji flinches and your breath catches in your throat. Casualties. Right. “I’m—I’m a sorcerer too. Sort of.”
The word sounds wrong on this body’s tongue. You were a normal girl up until a few months ago, ignorant of the world of curses and jujutsu. If you had never crossed paths with Yuji, you would never have known. And it’s never really come up between you two. You just figured his friends would have informed him of something this major. But then again, maybe they had expected you to explain. You should have, but you’d only seen each other a couple of times since his apparent return from the dead. He hadn’t exactly told you about that, either, so you were even.
He believes you a little too easily. “‘Sort of’ doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” Yuji hisses. “It’s dangerous here, especially around me. You’ve got to get somewhere safe.”
“No.” The word pushes past your lips without permission, but you don’t find yourself disagreeing with the sentiment. “Something… something drew me here. At first I thought I’d just picked a direction and started walking, but now I get it. There was a beacon calling out to me, and it led me to you. I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
You hadn’t been actively tracking his residuals, searching for Yuji (or his hitchhiker) in particular, but… well, in a world like this, is it so wrong to believe in something like fate? Of all the boys in the world, you’d found Ryomen Sukuna’s vessel. He even looked like Sukuna a little, back when he was Yuji’s age. Some things never change, it seems. Lady Otagi’s heart used to beat a little faster when she saw him, too.
And of course, in these times of forced, traumatic solitude, you thought of revenge. You’re a fifteen year-old, hardly the most mature person you know, and the face of the man who murdered your best friends and countless others was burned into your retinas. Except that wasn’t really true, was it? The image you conjured up was from the memory of a Heian noblewoman a thousand years ago. What Sukuna actually looks like today is Itadori Yuji. And with that alteration, vengeance dies in your throat, replaced by pity. You want to free Yuji about as much as you want to punch Sukuna in his stupid, handsome face.
Yuji, who is also quite handsome and equally stupid, takes a completely different meaning from your words. “People around me get hurt or drop dead,” he protests. “And, really, we barely know each other. We haven’t even been on a single date, besides that time I dragged you along to meet my friends and this girl I knew in junior high—”
“What,” interjects the cursed spirit Yuji called Choso.
Heat floods your cheeks as you lift a hand to stop him. “I like you a lot, Yuji, but God, I did not mean it that way.” This is mortifying. You can hardly look him in the eye. “One, I can take care of myself, so I won’t let you or anyone else hurt me. And two, before you give me this whole spiel about not being you that you’re afraid of, he won’t hurt me either. Or else he already would’ve, when I was smack dab in the middle of his Domain Expansion.”
Yuji’s chin drops to his sternum when you press your palm flat against the center of his chest. When he looks back up at you, there’s a deep, intense pain in his eyes. Nobody your age should ever have to bear it. He squeezes your fingers when you move your hand to weave through his. It almost hurts, but it’s the most human contact you’ve had in ages. You have a feeling it grounds him as much as it does you. “But…”
“Please. This is—it’s my fault too. Or the me from a thousand years ago, anyway.” Yuji makes a noise of puzzlement, and you stroke the back of his hand with your thumb. Chuckling sadly, you sigh. “It’s… kind of a long story. But I know Sukuna pretty well. I don’t think it would be too conceited of me to say I’m part of the reason he is the way he is. So it’s my fault. Give me—give me the chance to make this right.”
He doesn’t fully get it, but he doesn’t stay hung up on the confusion. Making it right is something he wants for himself, too, it seems. He was always so bright and sunny, yet now his shoulders slump with the weight of the world. Sukuna did this to him. The monster wouldn’t stop ruining everything he touched until he was gone. You know what you have to do.
It wasn’t by chance that Lady Otagi’s soul dwelled on this earth for a millennium. She had been waiting for something. Waiting for you, and waiting for him, to end this once and for all.
You take Yuji into your arms, squeezing him tight against you. You feel his nose press into your crown, and you shut your eyes, inhaling his scent. It’s hardly pleasant, ash and rubble and sweat, but you feel safe nevertheless.
“Yuji?” asks Choso uncertainly. “Little brother?”
Yuji lifts his head from yours, not breaking his hold on you. “She’s coming with us.”
And that’s that.