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the room was bustling with voices once the tall lanky man left through the shoji, the rolls rattling on the wood as it was being closed again. big scale briefings for missions were unusual, especially if all the first and second years were summoned for it. the apparent danger that was a small out-of-town-village enough to sent even the higher ups into a state of tenseness, to request capable sorcerers to take care of the problem before it could escalate.
yet all yuuji could think about was how nobody in the room wanted to know him — they only wanted him for the things he could give because that’s who he was: a giver.
a giver for sorcerers, the loneliest people he’s ever met because all of them would eventually die, full of regrets and no one by their side. the job came with that, it’s been made more than clear to him a dozen times and he still wasn’t sure if it should scare him.
he grew numb about it, all the noise coming from his classmates and senpais, about how he had to become stronger and more resilient or else he would become like them, too. lonely. he slipped the soundproof over himself, hiding below it at times, silently watching his mind go under because that was his only way to not let them in and give them a chance.
yuuji wanted to prove himself — to himself — with his whole being, and he’d fight for it until the people stabbing his back would notice how much of a bad habit he could be, just waiting to explode. the ticking time bomb he was with sukuna dragging at his thoughts and soul, eating away his sanity day for day, night for night.
he’d been breaking bones just to satisfy an image, something they painted him to be, simply because they wanted to. feeding him with words and lies to shape him according to their picture of the world. the untruths spilling from their mouths, rotting away any passion yuuji ever had, making him give up on his dreams to fly because they did it better than he ever could. he wanted to be up there too and he’d give anything he didn’t even have no more to look down at someone for once; he wished to fly, just for a change, till his dreams would die, crumble beneath him pathetically.
and all that because they wanted something from him, not yuuji himself.
it pissed sukuna off, he’d heard it a grounding amount of times — the voice of the curse seeping through his mind and making his thoughts drip in hatred if he didn’t stop himself from listening to him. sukuna found it miserable how yuuji had that bad habit of looking for the good in rotten things, as if sukuna himself had an ounce of benevolence inside his being (it insulted him, even, the indication).
but now yuuji didn’t care no more, would let them all gladly see the worst of him (inside him, sukuna), because he grew tired of pouring out pieces of who he really was, every day, for the people who didn’t care.