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Cold and frustration were all Choso knew for 150 years.
Time passed, he could tell, because sometimes the room grew colder or less so. Occasionally, a weak ray of sunlight would sneak through a tiny window, as faint as a sigh. Yet, his eyes were too accustomed to the absence of light, turning that little gift into a torment, not from pain but from the impossibility of seeing them, no matter how hard he strained his sight.
Fifteen decades passed of being forgotten by the world. One hundred fifty years went by, during which Choso learned to live with a singular wish: to embrace his brothers.
He knew bodies were warm. A landscape of plains and mountains with a rumbling warmth he longed for in his sleep. He desired a body only to wrap his arms around his brothers and say three words, and three words alone: he loved them.
The cold was as familiar as his soul and mastery of Blood Manipulation. Still, his love for them was the only warmth he needed. Whenever he heard Kechizu cry from the cold or Eso repeatedly ask if he was still there, Choso would speak. About everything. About nothing. Their replies were the most beautiful melody, their sobs the most alarming sound.
The first time Choso felt warmth was from a hand holding the test tube that cruelly swaddled him instead of a cradle. The second was a damp space that boiled his oversensitive skin, and the third was when he found himself in a body with long arms pinned against a wall and equally long legs dangling, toes nearly touching the floor.
At last, he could touch his brothers. Even as memories of someone he had never known invaded his mind, Choso could not wait a second longer for them. The first time he truly opened his eyes was to witness Kechizu’s broad smile and the tears falling down Eso’s eyes, irises as violet as their mother’s. But it was also the first time Choso realized that humans would never be ready for beings like them.
It wasn’t so bad. Who needs society when your brothers are all you need? Choso didn’t need a body to know that the three of them were one.
* * * * *
It was a mistake. The second time Choso embraced Eso and Kechizu, their bodies were cold, seated on grass, backs against rocks, covered in blood and tears. It was almost as if, even in death, their suffering did not cease.
They were alone. Eso’s biggest fear —waking up one day to realize his brothers weren’t there— turned into Choso’s reality. His brothers had died only in each other’s company while he was off discovering how boringly mundane board games could be.
That day, Choso learned that human bodies can be warmer than they already are because rage ignited the blood running down his veins. This colourful, luminous world turned a crushing crimson —a shade Mahito called a ‘need for revenge.’
* * * * *
If Choso had to choose between humans and curses, he would always choose his brothers’ side.
He had only been alive for a few days when he discovered that love was the antithesis of hate. The way he despised Itadori Yuuji was just a prelude to how he would come to love him unconditionally, above all else.
To the world, he was just a Cursed Womb, a Death Painting, a mix of human and curse, and the epitome of Blood Manipulation. Yet, he always felt he was more than that, that he could be more.
Human, curse; above all that, he was an older brother defined by love, devotion, and the desire to protect and see his younger siblings thrive. Choso learned to see mistakes as opportunities for his little brothers to learn something from his pain.
It wasn’t only in one way. He learned so much from them as well.
When he felt Yuuji’s soul as he had felt his brothers’ for 150 years, Choso realized that forgiveness is intrinsic, bigger than a force of habit, to older brothers. Even though he forgave Yuuji, he knew he could never forgive himself for taking the easy path and deciding for them, blinded by the need to protect rather than acknowledge their strength.
But Choso had another brother, almost as if it were a lesson or a second chance from the universe. A brother with scars on his face and wounds on his soul, who, even when surrounded by dozens, was utterly alone, just like them. Maybe that’s what made them relatives, not the man with the stitches on his forehead, but instead being doomed by an unshakable feeling of loneliness.
Yuuji was a different kind of brother, but his brother nonetheless. He didn’t always follow his words and looked up at him, at least at first. He ignored his nonsense but never his needs. He eventually learned to stop asking how and why, simply to let Choso be close to him, but he always complained when he tried to boss him around.
Still, the first time Yuuji referred to him as his brother, whether by accident or intentionally, reduced him to tears. For the first time, these tears were not out of anger, sadness, or grief. These tears were of happiness.
* * * * *
It’s unfair to think of a world where things could be different. A world where he could walk the since abandones streets of Tokyo with Yuuji, fighting side by side.
Truth be told, he also wished for a world where they didn’t have to fight, where they could just wake up, play, and get to know each other as brothers instead of simply comrades. A world in which Yuuji called him brother not by chance but because his soul vibrated with those words. A world where hearing Choso’s full name in his voice sounded strange because he was so used to hearing at least six different variations of the word ‘brother’ or his own name, as Eso and Kechizu usually did.
He also wished for a world where he could ask Yuuji if it was normal that sometimes, being in front of someone made him tongue-tied. Choso knew little about what was normal for humans, but he doubted that whatever he felt in his stomach when Tsukumo Yuki so much as glanced his way was it.
Whenever Tsukumo laughed, she would throw her head back, crinkle her nose, and reveal a bit of her gums. The skin around her eyes would etch itself with a couple of fine lines that didn’t always follow the same trace. Every time she did, Choso missed Yuuji more than he usually did because he ached to ask him if it was normal for humans, for someone like him, to find another person this pretty.
Her beauty wasn’t like the first time he saw the clouds and summer flowers touched by morning dew. Neither was it as comforting as when he realized that Yuuji’s light brown eyes with flecks of gold and green were the same shade as his.
Tsukumo Yuki was pretty like a bright starry night sky away from the city lights, and warm like the rays of daylight against his skin. A stranger who, for some reason, felt familiar to be around.
The only other woman Choso had ever found this painstakingly beautiful was his own mother —or at least the memory of her. Contrary to her, however, Tsukumo was loudly unapologetic and boisterous, whereas his mother only spoke in quiet formalities and sad gazes.
Choso had never taken the time to consider his appearance until Tsukumo stumbled into his long yet paradoxically short life. Save for the marking on his nose and the deep dark circles around his eyes, he knew he mostly looked like a human. However, when the Special Grade sorcerer called him ‘handsome,’ a part of him couldn’t help but wonder if she really meant it.
But just like his mother, like his brothers, Tsukumo was out of reach. By the time he escaped the rubble of the Tomb of the Star, she was nothing but a memory.
He never got to ask Yuuji if he had ever felt such a thing imploding in his chest and burning down his throat with all the feelings he never managed to put into words.
* * * * *
Time and time again, the life of a human —yes, the one Tsukumo wished for him with her last words— reminded him that he was born at the epicentre of a war. In this world of humans and curses, where Yuuji saw himself as nothing but a cog in a machine, Choso knew he was more of a weapon made of flesh, bones, and cursed energy.
However, in war, the most valuable asset is not one side’s artillery but time. Life, time, and the course of a river; all flow mercilessly. Time, just like life, will forever pass, even when no one is around to see it.
Time is spelled with a ‘t’ for training because everyone knew this was no ordinary enemy. Even when Gojo Satoru, all cocky smiles and fake cheerfulness aside, claimed over and over that he would defeat him, everyone, including himself, harboured doubts about whether December 24th of 2018 would be the first time he wouldn’t emerge victorious from a fight. Time is also written with a capital ‘T’ for trying, for attempting to use the nimble excuse of training to show Yuuji that, though he knew very little of life as more than a concept, Choso had a thing or two to teach him.
Yet, time was also marked by the absence of every person who should have been in that room with them. There was no moment to ask Yuuji why he stared into the void because there really was no need. Choso knew that Yuuji’s silences bore the full names of Fushiguro Megumi, Nanami Kento, and Kugisaki Nobara, but above all, the requiem of Ryomen Sukuna. In a way, he understood the feeling. His own were spelled with the names of his eight blood brothers, his mother, and the sorcerer who, in just a few days, helped him realize that there were things, people, he wanted only for himself.
* * * * *
“What will you do if we enter the battlefield?”
“I’ll take care of you, of course.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me. I need you to stay with me.”
Throughout that month, Yuuji never expressed desires or needs beyond saving Fushiguro Megumi and killing the King of Curses. However, Choso knew better. While every glance, smile, and touch from Tsukumo, even from Yuuji himself, humanized him, every battle, every loss, and every death dehumanized his little brother.
“I need you to live, Choso.”
“It’s up to you, Yuuji. I won’t if you don’t.”
“Living for those we love is the greatest act of humanity, not dying for them, y’know?”
* * * * *
The first time Yuuji held him in his arms, he had two gaping wounds on his torso that made the taste of iron rise from his esophagus to his tongue. It seemed as if Yuuji, with his superhuman strength, tried to prevent his life from slipping away with a simple hug. And yes, truth be told, anyone else in the path of an attack faster than Piercing Blood would not have lived to tell the tale.
Time, time, that goddamned time. A resource that goes and flies, but like monarchs traversing a continent, it doesn’t always reach its destination. But sorcerers don’t fall like butterflies whose lives are extinguished along the way to be sown on earth as part of a cycle that finds in each loss the seed for a new beginning. No, sorcerers end up splattered on the ground, split into two or a hundred pieces.
While life may have seemed like an art in itself, there was nothing poetic about death. It was not the lowering of a curtain or the end of a melody; to die is merely to cease to live.
The ruins of Shinjuku stood as the tomb of the sorcerers and the playground of the King of Curses. As if it were a kitchen, the recipe was always the same: one of them entered the fight, Sukuna pointed out loud at all their potential, and after entertaining himself enough, he quickly discarded them. They all had something interesting. All but Yuuji, but Choso. Still, the few blows he managed to land on him felt like glory.
Euphoria is a fleeting thing. The true catch about happiness is that it is ephemeral. There is no rise that lasts forever nor a fall that is not transient. When flames replaced the last standing buildings in Shinjuku, Choso knew what he had to do.
Even if the curse in him murdered more than just a few people to plead innocence, Choso found himself wishing for a miracle to happen because the human in him couldn’t help but dream, mourn, love. Although he wished his smile would come off as genuine and his last words as sincere, the grief in Yuuji’s eyes was nearly palpable under the crumbling ashes of his palms. The sight made his heart ache.
And so, as if it were a metaphor for his existence, the oxymoron of a life that was as long as it was awfully short-lived, just as the cold welcomed him to the world of humans, the heat bid him farewell.
* * * * *
The next time Choso opens his eyes, it’s because there is a warm palm caressing the wetness falling down his cheeks. He has no idea what to call these tears. Maybe it’s anger at the fact that he could have done more —not for the sorcerers or humanity, but for the boy whom, in the end, he thanked for becoming his little brother.
There’s a mop of blonde hair nestled under his jaw that smells like bergamot, like summer, and what he believes is the scent of a first love. One of his arms aches from the weight of cradling a body softly against him, his other palm caressed with a softness that can only be performed by someone who was born from hatred but rebuilt with kindness.
Eyes as brilliant as amethysts gaze at him with a sweetness that seems foreign to everything he remembers about the woman who is the embodiment of beauty. Were it not for Tsukumo, he wouldn’t know that sometimes the warmth of a stranger is worth welcoming. Yet, she is not an unfamiliar image but someone whose touch he is only just discovering. Like him, she silently weeps as her lavender-coloured eyes trace every feature that, the more he studies her face, the more it seems similar to his.
‘Mom.’ A word he never dared to think of even before having a body.
‘Ma.’ The syllable now stuck in his chest beneath the rumble of Tsukumo’s almost inaudible sobs as she curls up against him with increasing intensity. Tsukumo… of course, he still owes her an apology.
Before he can say anything else, a small green hand with pointy fingers rests on his chest. At that moment, Choso realizes that if his heart still beats in his chest, it is because he is finally fitting together the pieces that were snatched away by the whim and cruelty of a being who lived longer than it should.
The first kiss that Choso feels in his life —or wherever he is now— ignites his soul in a way that dulls the sensation of the flames of Furnace scorching his flesh.
Following the meeting of Eso’s small smile against his knuckles is one from Tsukumo on his cheek, dangerously close to the corner of his lips, preceded by the ringing of Kechizu’s characteristic giggles before he tightens his hold on the fabric of his clothes. The last kiss is from his mother, who, before resting her lips against his forehead, combs his hair back so it won’t obstruct the second gesture of affection he receives from the woman who he could have sworn hated him.
“You did well, Choso. Now rest.”