Work Text:
He doesn’t remember how he got here, much like how he was while exorcising curses under Jujutsu Tech. One moment he’s in his dorm, the next he’s in some location for a mission. This moment is nothing different from before, only now he has blood on his hands, and instead of exorcising a cursed spirit, he’s going to kill his mother and father.
Two very different things, but Suguru has blurred the lines ever since what happened in the village.
He steels himself with a breath, then knocks once. And then two. Then that familiar knock that he has long memorized the rhythm of.
The door opens, and Suguru is face to face with his father, all gruff features. His face morphs from boredom to unexplainable glee at the sight of his son, and he calls out to his wife. “Suguru’s home!”
“Wha- Sugu? Our Sugu-chan? ” His mother squeaks out, and her thunderous and quick steps to the doorstep match the rhythm of Suguru’s blood thrumming in his ears.
“Wah! It really is you! Come, come, welcome home!” His mother exclaims, as her crow’s feet crinkle with joy. He steps into the house’s familiar genkan, and sets his shoes tidily, while his mother moves to the kitchen, and his father pats him in the back with a soft, “Welcome home.” of his own.
“Suguru, you should’ve told us you were coming home today! I would’ve prepared your favorite. I have some leftover kikufuku I made with the other housewives in the neighborhood. Speaking of kikufuku, how are Satoru and Shoko? They seemed to really like it when they came over. Give them some, okay? I bet they’ll behave more if you did.” She rambles, as she prepares vegetables and pork. Suguru lets out a small chuckle under his breath, setting himself on the chair he usually sits at, when he used to eat dinner with them regularly. His father sits opposite to him, reading the newspaper and grumbling.
He reaches out to the back of his neck, attention away from whatever mindless town gossip she’s sharing to him, realizing that he’d tied his hair up today. That’s strange. He doesn’t remember tying it up today. He ties his hair instinctively whenever there’s a mission, and- wait.
Is this a mission to him?
Are his parents the cursed spirits he usually exorcises?
If he sees his parents, monkeys, as curses, would this make it a whole lot easier?
“Sugu-chan.”
He snaps out of his trance from the sound of his mother’s voice, and swallows a lump in his throat. “Yes?” He asks. Too hoarse, he thinks to himself. They’re going to know what you had in mind on your visit here.
“You look pale,” His mother muses, and her rough palm touches her son’s cheek. Suguru leans into it, the reminder of how hard his mother works for her family. “Have you been eating well?”
The burn she got from attempting to cook a hard dish in order to congratulate Suguru for getting into Jujutsu Tech, unknowing of the future waiting for him the moment he entered that campus. The roughness of her hands, caused by washing dishes, and clothes manually. The blisters of holding a wooden broom too harshly, and the pricks on her pointer fingers, as she tries to fix up Suguru’s ripped clothes, even with her terrible eyesight. All this, she had done with soft care, no matter how much her husband and child tell her that she doesn’t have to work so hard for them, that they can handle themselves just fine.
“I want to,” his mother asserts, as she takes a rest on the living room couch. It was during one of those moments where her family had gotten worried on how much she did for them, protesting and pleading that she can take it easy. “I do this, because I love you.”
Suguru had always seen his mother as what he should be, with a power like this. That unconditional love for those around her, that willingness to commit good for them, it all stuck with him-
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
And then it didn’t.
Riko was someone he had loved in that same way.
“Yes, I’ve noticed as well.” His father comments, and his voice doesn’t bear that same gentleness as his mother, but Suguru knows that he’s as concerned as her as well, maybe even more.
“Haha, I’m fine, I’m fine. Lessons this season are just getting hard, ‘s all.”
Liar. He thinks to himself, the only lessons you’ve had your entire highschool life was how to not die early.
Which is hard, yes, but not in the way that a normal highschool should be teaching its students. They’re supposed to be teaching them some algebra that fucks with your brain, not how to cease the bleeding of your friend when they’re fatally injured.
Haibara.
His thoughts drift to Haibara and Riko a lot, but they’d dwelled on them even more before the village. It was all he could think about, his thoughts all-encompassing of the smiles in their faces, to the sudden shift of the blank look of their corpses.
“You can always come home, you know?” His father gruffs out, setting his newspaper down to look at Suguru with his eyes, the same eyes that he had inherited. They’re stern, not in the way that Suguru’s have grown to be like from his mother, but they falter, even if it’s for a little bit. He doesn’t know why.
It’s because he knows. He knows that you’ve come to put an end to their lives.
“Yes, yes I know. I always know.” A lie again. Those come easy to him, easier than it was before Riko. Suguru didn’t think about coming to his parents at all before his epiphany in the village. He was a man who acted like a cog in a machine; to exorcise, absorb, and get stronger.
But he ponders on the thought a little. What would’ve happened if he had taken a short break to his home? Would he have changed if he had gone here earlier? Would his parents comfort him as he cried and cried, instead of those cold and lonely hours he spends in the communal showers, his tears mixing in with the harsh thundering of freezing shower water drops? If he had taken a short break from absorbing those curses, dwelling on how he wasn’t strong enough to save Riko, Kuroi, Haibara and for only a moment (but a moment nonetheless), Satoru?
“Dinner’s ready!” His mother chimes up, and he’s pulled once again out of his thoughts. “Smells wonderful, dear.” His father compliments with a small content smile, and gets up to put his arms around her waist. She giggles, and they look so happy.
When was he that happy? Was he ever happy, entering the world of sorcery? Was he happy during his time in Jujutsu High?
His unhelpful mind provides him flashes of those moments he spent with his friends, goofing around and doing normal things that normal teenagers do. Arcades, fast food restaurants, the park, dorm sleepovers, the beach. Satoru. Satoru. Those small moments where their fingers brush together, the big loopy smile he has when they get to act their age, the lingering stares. Suguru felt his age the most with Satoru, that was a fact treasured by his stupid little heart. In a world like jujutsu’s, in which teenagehood is prematurely killed, he was able to steal for him a few moments of that spring-time adolescence.
However, there is no escaping the death and grief that brings these moments down. He cannot turn a blind eye to how people his age have died, and will die. He cannot ignore the bloody path that awaits him as a Jujutsu sorcerer, from which is the blood of his friends.
There’s a bowl of rice in front of him, and he can distinctly feel his mother’s eyes on him. She’s sitting next to his father, so he can’t look at her straight, but it doesn’t lessen the sweat gained by his hands. He sees it at the edge of his eye, her eyes deducting whatever he can’t hide to her. Which is almost everything , because he can hide a lot of things to other people, but not to his mother. Never to his mother.
He hopes he doesn’t look as distraught as he feels.
“Sugu-chan,” his mother says in that same soft voice of hers, only that it underlies a tone of steel. Suguru knows this tone, it’s something he’s inherited from her to use on Satoru, to guide him to be a better man. Satoru. Oh god, what will Satoru even feel when he gets the news? He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and all thoughts of Satoru fade. The sweat in his palms only linger. “Yes, okasan?”
She looks at him with a small smile, looks at her own bowl of rice, and murmurs, almost absently, “We love you so much, you know that right?”
Suguru sits there for a little, frozen. He knows his mother is deeply affectionate, says she loves him all the time, but there’s something in her tone that’s different. Almost finalizing. “That’s so sudden, okasan, why do you feel the need to tell me? I already know that.” He says with a small artificial chuckle. That comes easy to him now, after he killed the people in that village.
“Hehe, I don’t know. I just feel something impeding. Haah , that makes me sound kind of loony, no? But I feel something, and it, well , it scares me.”
Suguru keeps the smile on his face, even though he’s started to grip the wood underneath the table with his fingernails, and his blood turns cold. “Of me?” He asks, as light and easygoing as he can, everything that he isn’t at this moment.
“No, I would never be scared of my sweet Suguru.” She closes her eyes serenely, as she shakes her head lightly, like he had just told her the sky was green. Suguru’s tender heart pangs. “No, dear, for you.”
He gapes at that, and the affection he wanted to keep buried, lest it will pour over and he decides to spare them, spills. It gushes, and it’s hard to scoop back up to that empty heart of his. It’s relentless, flooding over, and it materializes through the small tears pricking his eyes.
“There’s no need to worry about me, okasan.” He aims for reassurance, but it sounds fragile, especially with the slight crack in his voice. “I’m strong. One of the strongest.”
Riko bleeding on the floor. Haibara’s dead body on the cold tray of the morgue. Nanami hiding his tears with the towel. Satoru holding her body, as empty as he’s seen him, while those monkeys clap in joy. Shoko, overworked and spending most of her time among people at death’s door than outside amidst those who’re currently living, they all flash into his mind.
Liar. I’m a big, fucking liar.
“But you’re also that baby I held into my arms all those years ago.” Her eyes crinkle with that same motherly affection, so warm and so unlike what Suguru had gone through these past months.
"Now, now, dear. You might embarrass our Sugu. Besides, he's got it all figured it out. I know he can take care of himself. Have some faith in him." His father interjects, and his mother pouts at that.
It hurts. Suguru doesn’t want to do this. But, in order to live his ideal, he has to.
He has to.
Reaching out to the artillery of curses he has under his technique feels like second nature to him now, but he gives himself a moment to think on what will kill his mother and father.
Suguru does not want a manifestation of some debauched negativity to touch his parents. They’re too pure for that, too good. He wants them to die the way that they are, unlike the monkeys he plans to kill in the future.
So, he reaches out to the purest curse he can find. A curse of a young orphan boy, who looks for his dead parents at his last dying breath. He can feel the frustration of being given the short end of the stick by the child, the never ending “I miss you”s directed to his parents, and the unwillingness to let go to his happiest memory with them, pulsing underneath his hands, as the curse floats over his parents, who sense nothing.
The curse is small, but lethal, the way a distraught child’s tantrum would be like if it could kill. It doesn’t look much, with its closed eyes and small blob-like body, but he knows how powerful a child’s yearning for their parents could be.
He gets up from his chair, and finds his place in the middle of his parents. It looks just like their family pictures together, and he swears that it’s just behind him, a mockery of what he’s trying to replicate. He gently puts his arms around their necks together, bringing them closer to him. That brings out a questioning breath from both his parents, but they don’t say anything, waiting in that same patient way for their son to explain his actions.
“Okasan, otosan,” He says in the lightest voice he can manage, and the most genuine smile he can muster with the way he is now, dancing on his lips, “Thank you.”
And with that, Suguru activates the curse.
Blood splurges out of their head, and he’s made sure to command the curse to make them not feel that they even died. Their blood and brain matter drops onto his face, and into his white shirt, but Suguru doesn’t mind the mess.
They’re my parents, after all.
He doesn’t grant himself the luxury to cry. He knew his ideals, and what it entailed. He knew that by killing them, he doesn’t deserve crying for them. He carries the weight of being a bad child, throwing away all his parents gave to him and spitting on it.
But his heart remains heavy.
He walks back to his chair, dismissing the cursed spirit, and picks up the chopsticks his mother had set for him.
Katsudon.
His mother had prepared them katsudon.
The pork is still steaming hot, the egg drooping over it, and the caramelized onions are cut into different sizes. His mother had always been rather clumsy when it came to cutting vegetables, even with how much she had practiced. After he gives thanks, he takes a bite of the juicy pork, and like every other food, it doesn’t feel as good as it should be. He wants to appreciate his mother’s hard work, he really does, but the pungent taste of curses stay at the back of his tongue, and he hates himself for it.
What an insolent child, he is.
However, he yearns to please his mother, so he gives her decapitated body a small smile, imagining in a way what it would taste like if he was a monkey like they were. “It’s delicious, okasan. Your cooking’s the best. ”
The dining room is eerily silent, save for the clinking of chopsticks to the porcelain bowl, and his tiny noises of approval that fall to no one’s ears but him.
As he finishes, he ends with a joyful, “I’m stuffed!”, even though he feels like everything he had eaten will be coming for a reappearance when the gravity of this entire situation dawns on him. He doesn’t dwell on it, he doesn’t want to, so he gets his bowl, walks up to the sink, and cleans it there. He looks at the cooling dishes of both his parents. Thankfully it remains untouched by the blood and the broken pieces of human skull and brain.
Mimiko and Nanako will love okasan’s cooking.
With that, he takes out tupperware, and packs the remaining food. He takes out the kikufuku his mother had told him about earlier as well, considering it a snack for the two girls under his care.
He takes off the shirt he’s wearing, folds it, and puts it on the hamper. His mother hates clothes scattering around in their home.
Suguru looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, and it feels like his hands are moving by themselves as they clean him out from the results of his act of parricide. He takes a new shirt from his wardrobe in his old bedroom, and changes himself.
Walking from his bedroom to the genkan, grabbing the paper bag from the counter in which he put the tupperware and the kikufuku, seeing his parents’ lifeless bodies in the dinner table, feels like an out-of-body experience, but Suguru’s had a lot of those by now, so he doesn’t feel as bothered. He fixes his shoes to his feet, and give his parents one last look.
Suguru can swear that he can feel their heads come back to them, staring at him with shock, then that joy they had reserved for him when he came back home earlier. He tries not to flinch.
“I’ll get going now, see you later.” He chirps cheerfully, reminiscent of how he used to do it before, and he can only trick himself into thinking that they’ve said it back, with the same amount of cheer.