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“Insolent brat. You’re a goddamn fool if you think you’ll rid yourself of me like that.”
Yuji Itadori was standing at the bathroom mirror with a razor blade in his hands. He was concentrating very hard on the mouth that had manifested itself on the side of his cheek. He had no idea what he was going to do. He had no plan. He just knew that he was desperate, and he needed to do something.
The truth was, Itadori hadn’t slept much in the past couple days. It was hard to rest when there was a voice in your head reminding you that you’re a murderer. There were bags under his eyes as he focused in on his second face. That ugly mouth of his just grinned. “What will you do now? Kill yourself?”
The mouth belonged to the curse hiding inside of Itadori’s body. Well, calling it “the curse” was kind of an understatement. He was the King of Curses, after all; Ryomen Sukuna, the bane of Itadori’s existence.
“You won’t kill yourself, idiot. You’re too much of a coward to do anything with that blade,” Sukuna laughed mockingly.
Itadori growled in frustration and squeezed the blade into a tightly balled fist. With his free hand, he slapped himself across the face. Sukuna practically snarled at him, and it made him snap back to reality. It was easy to remember your place in the world when the literal devil is, quite literally, staring you in the face.
“Watch it!” Sukuna warned. “I’ll rip that hand of yours off next time, then maybe you’ll understand your place, fool.”
Itadori breathed out an exasperated sigh and released his clenched fist. Blood rushed from a fresh wound he’d caused on his own, without any help from that stupid curse in his head. He ran his palm under warm water and tried for a smile.
“Wow, you really are all bark and no bite in there,” he said with a chuckle.
Sukuna’s single eye narrowed on Itadori’s cheek. He grinned widely, baring his fangs. It was an evil grin that filled Itadori with dread.
“All bark, am I? If I were all bark, you’d be soundly asleep. If I had no bite, you wouldn’t be bleeding. You fail to remember just who I am, brat. Your control is a ticking bomb, and the time is ticking down. When that number hits zero, it’ll be me out and about and you’ll have no choice but to watch the destruction that you create. You have blood on your hands, Yuji Itadori. You’re as much of a murderer as I am.” Sukuna chuckled darkly. “I can feel you slipping. You’re losing control. Not to worry. I’ll be here to pick up where you leave off.”
Itadori didn’t know what to say to that. He stared at himself in the mirror as one word bounced around in his brain: Murderer. Was that all that he was? It was hard to feel otherwise, when he’d been responsible for so much destruction. It didn’t matter that it was Sukuna who truly caused it, when he was the vessel for the curse meant to literally raise hell.
Itadori pulled some bandages from a shelf and started to wrap his hand. He watched it intently as fresh blood soaked through. He chewed the inside of his cheek and defiantly mumbled, “You’re the one who’s stuck in there, while I’m out here. You get no say in what I do, or who I am.” Itadori resisted the urge to swear at the curse. He was pretty impulsive, but he didn’t think it was a good idea. He knew what Sukuna was capable of, and as much as he hated to admit it, he did fear him a little bit. His powers were otherworldly. The last thing he needed was his bomb’s clock to tick down faster than anticipated.
Sukuna clicked his tongue a bit tauntingly. “Everything is a matter of time.”
Itadori just wanted to lay down. It was three in the morning and he felt like he was losing his mind. He cleaned up his bathroom and went to sit on his bed, putting his head in his hands. After a few long moments with no further comments from his cheek, he decided he could turn out the light and lay down again. Even still, he couldn’t sleep, and he likely wouldn’t for the rest of the night. He stared up at the ceiling through the darkness with one word bouncing around in his head on loop.
Murderer.
Murderer.
Murderer.