Chapter Text
In seven days, his time will be up. There is no otherworldly being that reveals this to him like a prophecy; it's simply something he can feel as his memories pull tight and snap dead in the remnants of his consciousness. The strings of his life, rich with emotion, dripping with conviction, severed one by one by his soul's looming departure from his physical body.
Finally.
He thinks he was ready to pass long, long ago. Death wasn't so scary a thing when you knew it was coming, and he'd known it would the moment he turned his back to the light and walked through the crowded streets of Shinjuku alone. It took ten years for his choices to make their way back to him, but they did, eventually; pre-packaged in the scent of metal and sadness hanging heavy in the air, grimy, stone bricks from that rundown building pressing into his back, and that all-encompassing swarm of white and blue that made his head spin and heart stop all at once.
Death wasn't so scary when you knew it was coming, but it was even less so when you'd already died a few times prior. Once, when you turned away from his disbelieving, shaky eyes and screams so you could try loving yourself. The other, when you realized that in the ten years you hadn't seen him, you were still just as in love as you were the day you left.
It's one final thought—that after this, there would be no more tricks of the hand to help him carve the image of Satoru into the canvas of his soul—that makes him stupid enough to phase through the bridge shielding his severed soul from the sun, hover down the streets of Tokyo, and scale ghostly trails up the mountains of Jujutsu Tech.
He can only exist on this earth for another seven days. And like the fool he is, he decides to spend it stalking the person who took his life.