Chapter Text
Itadori Yuuji was standing behind the door of his room.
From a small opening in the door he peered at the walls of his old house, disbelieving what he saw.
Initially he believed that the scene was the cruel fruit of some curse or jujutsu technique, however there were no traces of cursed energy in the environment to confirm this possibility. He didn't know how or why this was happening, but if what he was seeing wasn't the result of a hallucination, then he had somehow been teleported to the past.
Being teleported from one place to another wasn't unrealistic for wizards, but time travel certainly was. Or at least Yuuji never heard of that possibility.
Unaware of the internal crisis that his future adult version was facing, the child version of Yuuji begins to move in bed in his sleep. The time traveler completely freezes as he watches that strange scene, the shock of how absurd the situation around him was had made him forget about his little roommate and Yuuji looks at him as if this bizarre reality was going to shatter from him.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, this does not happen.
Instead, the child falls back into a deep sleep.
The adult sighs with relief and relaxes as the tension of the situation drops and goes back to trying to think about how the hell he got there.
Thirty minutes ago Yuuji was walking through the remains of a neighborhood that he was only able to identify as belonging to Sendai thanks to the remains of a half-readable metal sign in his path. He had been sent there for supplies, and hopefully some survivors.
All he could find were expired food and a pack of gum that was valid for up to five years.
With this search mission proving useless, the desperate situation in which the Jujutsu Tech base found itself only worsened further, Yuuji didn't need to wait for another meeting to find out about this. Resources such as food and medicine were increasingly rare to the point that they increasingly reduced the number of people responsible for security to increase the number of people helping with collections and even so, most searches were fruitless.
The situation became increasingly worse, people felt more and more fear, anxiety and sadness, generating an endless cycle of curses generating more curses, in fact the damage spread everywhere.
Even after managing to prevent Kenjaku from performing the fusion with Tengen, great damage had already been done, thousands of civilians and hundreds of sorcerers had died. The foreign invasion coupled with the discovery of Jujutsu techniques generated a political crisis that was a gigantic problem in itself, and the absence of Tengen's barriers meant that the school was constantly under threat of attacks and invasions 24 hours a day.
The truth was that in that equation they had taken Kenjaku out but in the end the result would still be the death of all of them, if not due to the curses then due to the lack of medicine and food.
The prospect of that end after everything he and all the other survivors had been through drained Yuuji's mental strength, and even in the midst of that scenario he couldn't afford to stop. He continued wandering through the remains of houses and commercial buildings and apartments, rummaging through trash and rubble like an animal, repeatedly invading houses that the owners no longer cared about until he stopped at one that was different from the others, even though it was so similar in structure or features. remains of the structures to be exact.
He recognized her anyway.
There it was, his old house, the one he used to live in years ago with his grandfather, it was as dilapidated as the others. With the few walls that remained standing stained with dirt and grime, making them practically unrecognizable. But that's okay, Yuuji remembered the layout of the house perfectly.
There it was, his old house, the one he used to live in years ago with his grandfather, it was as dilapidated as the others. With the few walls that remained standing stained with dirt and grime, making them practically unrecognizable. But that's okay, Yuuji remembered the layout of the house perfectly.
There is no door he needs to open to enter, but he still automatically leaves his shoes at the entrance. Perhaps a ghost of a repetitive habit, perhaps subconsciously seeking to reconstruct in that gesture the security and peace that prevailed at the time when he took off his shoes every day to enter that house. The truth is that whatever the answer was, Yuuji didn't need and, most importantly, didn't want to know.
If someone occupied the property during the time Yuuji was at Jujutsu Tech then that person left no signs of their stay in the house.There weren't even any remains of the most basic furniture in the house, it was as if he had recently vacated it.
He passes straight through his grandfather's old room without leaving room for moments of weakness and goes to the room he occupied in the house.
The room seemed smaller than he remembered, probably due to the change in perspective of the room he had due to his aging. The shelves his grandfather had placed when he was a child, designed to be above head height, now barely reached his shoulders. The bed he had left behind now seemed unable to comfortably house his body and would most likely sag under Yuuji's weight.
That thought brought a small genuine smile as he recalled the memories he had of coming home from school and throwing himself on the bed only to bounce up and down on the bedsprings.
He did this for years and only stopped when the wood of the bed began to creak on impact, his grandfather complained in his usual surly tone that he was already too big for this. He remembers mentioning this to Wasuke, the memory was fuzzy and very faded but he's sure he was bragging to his grandfather about growing up, insinuating that in a few years he would legally be an adult.
And then having your illusions about becoming an “adult” crushed before they even fully developed.
And the person responsible for this was Wasuke, who wasted no time in mumbling his answer in a calm and grumpy tone with such certainty that even Yuuji couldn't contradict him even to defend himself.
“Don’t try to fool me, boy. You could be the size of a gorilla and you would still be the same brat who would continue to jump on the bed like it was a trampoline forever if you could.”
And it was true, as much as he wanted to say it wasn't, Wasuke was right. Because Yuuji liked being a kid, and he's sure his grandfather knew that at the time too.
Yuuji liked talking nonsense with his classmates, he liked running away from the school team coach to join stupid clubs and do stupid things. Even when he intervened in small fights between schools just because he could. He liked those little things that made him feel like a child, which was why he never seriously commented on wanting to be an adult again. He wanted to enjoy it as much as he could.
Even when he entered the jujutsu world and had to face the unpleasant parts of a sorcerer's life, even though there were people like Gojo-sensei and Nanamin, who tried to delay the students' maturation as long as they could.
Literally fighting until the end of their lives for this.
An unpleasant lump forms in Yuuji's throat at the thoughts. He looks around and slowly returns to the present, as much as he wants to he can't stay here much longer, he still needs to return to Jujutsu Tech and help where he can, especially now that his expedition was a failure.
And when he crosses the threshold it is as if he has once again fallen into a reverie deep in his memories, the vividness of the scenery makes him think he is hallucinating for a moment.
That was it, he finally lost control over his own mind and went crazy.
This is how he saw himself twenty years ago.
There were no more roasted and rotten walls and his bed now housed a small, young body of his own. A young man who was happily sleeping soundly.
He leaves that ghost room and walks as if the floor were made of eggshells, touching the walls as if they were made of paper.
In the corner of the hallway that led to the kitchen, he stops when he hears the footsteps of someone light but louder than him.
The wheezing of the lungs gives away the person's identity and for the first time in many years Yuuji feels that lump in his throat dominate him and tears accumulate at the edges of his eyes. The lump grows from his throat to his chest and he has to control his breathing mechanically.
That was cruel, he didn't know if he should beg for it to be an illusion or not, because if it was, it would be very cruel to give him these false hopes.
So many times Yuuji dreamed of going back in time, so many times Yuuji thought about the little details that if he had known, that if he had realized could have saved hundreds of lives. That would make a huge difference in the world.
The footsteps moved away from him slowly.
That was very cruel, unforgivable. If there really was someone playing with him like this, Yuuji wouldn't be able to show mercy for using his past memories to torture him like this. He wouldn't dare allow the memories of people so dear to him to be tarnished.
It was literally the last piece of the people most dear to him.
He needs to confirm his suspicions and clear everything up as quickly as possible. The traveler left that house with soundless footsteps, as if he were the ghost of the past there. The exterior scenery was as distorted from Yuuji's reality as the interior of the house. Outside, the night was peaceful, people were collected inside their houses, perfectly maintained and safe. The streets had perfectly delimited and recognizable shapes, no curses roaming no matter how much Yuuji searched, not even the smallest trace of cursed energy.
As the chase for an imperfection or slip-up stretched on, Yuuji became more and more frantic, his head turning towards every alley and corner without disguising his intentions. The few civilians he met on the way gathered and looked at his suspicious attitude and shabby clothes with fear and suspicion, but he didn't care.
Houses, businesses, hospitals, the place where your grandfather was supposed to be buried…
The thing gets to the point where when he realizes the sun is already rising over the horizon. When this happens, Yuuji was at his old school holding a small wooden box in the palm of his hand. A chill and numbness runs down his spine as he confirms that familiar energy escaping through the weakened seals of his mummified finger.
Now he had no way of denying what was happening.
As the former vessel of Sukuna he was intimately familiar with the miasma that was the cursed energy of the King of Curses. No matter how well a technique could copy or create that world, Yuuji knew that the moment he found that finger he would know if it was real or not, it was a more intimate question, it was how to recognize something that was once so intimate, so close to the purest essence of the sorcerer's self.
A deeply unfortunate experience, but very useful now.
And for the first time of all the times that Yuuji found Sukuna's fingers he allowed himself to fall to his knees and cry like a newborn, a painful cry one would expect from an animal being slaughtered.
Yuuji for the first time could properly mourn his dead, but he also needed to mourn all the living who remained in that forgotten time that he would not allow to happen. Because now that they didn't exist, they also died to Yuuji.