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“They were right,” Yuji says, his voice raspy, as if the words were struggling to break free from his throat. His voice is filled with confidence that Megumi hasn’t heard in a while, although, if he thinks about it, Yuji hasn’t really spoken much after everything that has happened.
Megumi looks up from where he is sitting, pretends that he suddenly needs to rub his eyes. He is getting all teary-eyed, but he still doesn’t want Yuji to see him crying, for some reason. Does he even have the right to cry now, after… after everything that’s happened? Yuji hasn’t been himself after the fight, and who would be, after they had to scour the field looking for remains of their dead friends; after assistants had to trace remnants of cursed energy to identify which body part belonged in which grave?
“Who?” he finally asks, even surprised himself by how bleary and tight his own voice sounds. Yuji pauses and seems to think about it. He lifts his hand in front of his face – it’s shaking, uncharacteristically so – and starts bending his fingers one by one. His lips move, just a bit, but Megumi can hear. It’s names and places, and then Yuji bends another finger. “Choso,” Yuji whispers at some point, and Megumi remembers that he, too, died on that battlefield.
Megumi sighs. Whatever Yuji is feeling deeply resonates with him; it reminds him of what he felt when Sukuna took over his body. He had to watch, as if in a horror movie or in a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, as Sukuna slowly destroyed everything that was dear to him. He remembers people Sukuna was hunting down, the panicking look on their faces, the hope when Sukuna for some reason played with them, asked if they wanted to live, before he – before Sukuna-he – took their lives. He shudders. They still haven’t found that small village next to Tokyo where Sukuna has… He stops himself from remembering it; the taste in his throat vile.
“The higher-ups,” Yuji finally responds. He seems to succumb to his emotions after all; tears begin swelling in his eyes, heavy and thick, until he finally curls in on himself and gives in to sobbing. Megumi can’t help but think that it’s ugly—the way Yuji cries, how his face swells almost immediately, reddening to a deep shade of pink, and his listless, barely audible sobs make it all even worse. It’s ugly and endearing in a way, yet he cannot remember the last time he felt anything close to being endeared. Being possessed by Sukuna—no, watching what Sukuna did while possessing his body—left a giant black hole where whatever little positive emotions he ever felt used to be. He closes his eyes, determined not to look at Yuji at all.
Gojo would probably have loved the fact that there was someone crying right before his funeral. He was enough of a drama queen to likely pout at the idea that there were people who weren’t. He remembers a different funeral, on December 24th the year just before he joined Jujutsu High as a student. He hasn’t even attended it, but he still thinks of it from time to time.
He spent an entire day on school grounds, in his apartment, instructed by Gojo not to leave—like ever—until Gojo came back. Shortly before that, a guy—a funny-looking guy in an old-fashioned kimono that had been so outdated that it hadn’t even looked cool—had declared a war on the entire Jujutsu world. Megumi didn’t really care; he spent his day on his console, trying to finally reach that secret Mario level, and then fell asleep despite the fighting that was evidently happening outside. He knew Gojo could handle it. And he did, just like always.
But then, that night, Gojo woke him up looking even paler than usual, sad even. “It’s okay to go outside,” he said. “It’s all fine.” Megumi just nodded, not that he was planning on going anywhere that night. But then something even more unusual happened because Gojo started blabbering about a funeral that no one attended, of his ‘one and only,’ and how impossibly lonely that was. Gojo looked weirdly tired, with bags under his eyes, and Megumi chided him for not using his reversed cursed technique. But Gojo continued, insisting on listing all the people who should have come to that funeral. “Shoko,” he said, “Shoko should have forgiven him.” Hasn’t his friend – ‘Suguru’ – suffered enough? Yaga should have come; they were his only special-grade students, and he should have—that would have been respectful. That must have been the only time Gojo even said the word “respectful” in his life. Yuki should have come; she understood him like no one ever did. “And Megumi,” Gojo said, “stop beating up kids at school, or you’ll end up alone too, and that’s the worst feeling ever.”
And then Gojo lied, since he told him that Megumi wouldn’t ever be alone.
Because he was working on that curse; his investigation was going nowhere for now, but he was on the right track. Tsumiki would be all right.
And there was Gojo, the strongest, and he’d be there for Megumi too. Always.
But don’t beat up these kids anyway, just because. Just don’t.
He snaps out of his thoughts when the door of their room swings wide with a loud thud.
“Ready, boys?” Nobara’s voice chirps. She’s peeking into their room, but he can see that she’s holding onto the wall to maintain her balance. When she finally emerges in the doorframe, she looks more prepared than the two of them. She is in a luxurious-looking tracksuit — black, the same color as her eyepatch — and rather unfitting high-heel pumps.
She must have sensed his gaze, so she shrugs.
“You know how much easier it has become to find some top-class clothes,” she replies to a question no one asked. “I exchanged the bread for heels from some kid.”
“Weren’t you supposed to distribute it for free?” he drawls.
“Well, it was my lunch,” she says, entering the room on her shaky legs, still carefully holding onto the wall. “But I figured the heels were more important.”
Wasn’t she supposed to be on bed rest instead of attending funerals and distributing bread? He remembers seeing her the other day in a wheelchair, surrounded by hungry kids looking for food. She looked sick and coughed all the time, but she also looked fulfilled in a way. Meanwhile, he spends most of his time here, in this room, allowing time to pass until the funerals are finally over. Yuji is probably too. The funerals are taking too much time, he thinks; although he likes the dulling feeling that it brings, having so many in a row. He doesn’t beat himself up too much over Tsumiki anymore, since the last few days are a blur. He doesn’t remember her funeral that much, and that’s good. He wishes he could bury the rest of his feelings too, just to be able to not feel anything. Ever.
Nobara approaches the couch where Yuji is sitting, all curled into himself, his hands hiding his face.
“It’s okay,” Nobara says, and probably for the first time in her life, she sounds gentle. Caring. That’s when Megumi realizes that Yuji is still silently crying there, all alone in the corner. When she finally reaches the couch, she collapses onto Yuji, wrapping her arms tightly around him. “It’s okay,” she repeats, and Yuji finally starts moving, only to start crying into her shoulder.
They leave in thirty minutes or so after Nobara insists that they need to go. They can’t miss the funeral of Gojo-sensei, she says, even if he was a ‘weirdo’, and he agrees—but he can’t miss any other funerals either. Megumi caused them with his own hands, and he needs to be there to see the aftermath: the tears, people who can’t look at him without panicking, the ashy faces of his classmates, the tacky flowers, and the barren landscape outside, hastily made (and hand-made) tombstones. Children who frequent the funerals just to escape the curses and find something to eat—not that there’s enough even here, at Jujutsu High.
He stumbles to his feet, and when Yuji detaches from Nobara to offer his help, he just shakes his head.
“He’d hate it, you know,” Nobara says then. “Gojo-sensei—he’d hate it that you think the higher-ups were right.”
Oh, so Yuji must have told her why he was crying. Does it really matter at this point?
Were the higher-ups right?
Were they not?
Yuji explains it again, probably for Megumi to hear, his voice broken with sobs, weak and trembling. If Gojo hadn’t saved him from that execution; if they had executed him at any time from when he first ate that finger to the point when Sukuna took over Megumi’s body, it would have been alright. They wouldn’t have had to attend so many funerals one after another. Tokyo wouldn’t be… like this.
Yuji continues blabbering about it when they arrive at their courtyard—the courtyard of Jujutsu High that now serves as a makeshift cemetery (and a makeshift wasteland, ha); and then Yuji’s voice stops, as if stuck in his throat. He coughs.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to,” while clearly trying to stop crying. “Not here,” Yuji says, looking at the solemn procession in front of them.
The woman in front of them is crying too, and her hair is white, eerily similar to Gojo’s. She’s quite old, though—could it be that she just has grey hair? He stops in his tracks because, well, Gojo once mentioned having parents whom he hadn’t met despite them being alive and healthy and living practically in the same area. (“Yeah, you see, I was born with these dope-ass powers, and my parents weren’t, and the bigshots in our clan decided that I was so freaking awesome that they wanted me to learn jujutsu 24/7, and my parents were so on board with this, obviously. So yes, Megumi, this is a light training schedule. Keep up,”) He wonders if the woman might be Gojo’s mother, something starting to tug at his heartstrings—just a little bit. It was a fucked-up and unfair world they lived in, and he—Sukuna—made it so much worse for every single human being.
Their small procession finally closes in on the casket. It’s in the middle of a big hill, right on top of it, and come to think of it, Gojo would have been happy about being buried someplace somewhat special, he decides.
“What?” Yuji shouts from behind him, his voice peaking up from what it was, all weak and torn with sobs. “What the hell is this?”
For a second, Megumi thinks that it’s another curse he’ll need to deal with, or another danger, and he readies himself in a fighting pose—fighting has been easy the last few days; he’d just walk away and start killing curses just for the sake of it, just to have an excuse not to watch when they lower caskets into the earth, not to feel the finality of it. But it’s not a curse.
Nobara points at the top of the hill, and finally, he sees it too.
A casket.
Not a makeshift one, like the ones Maki and Panda were building from scraps and old wooden furniture at school all these days. Definitely not a makeshift casket.
It’s white, made from what looks like expensive wood. The lid is open, and he can see a lavish blue material inside, glittering a bit like silk or some other expensive textile. But it’s not this that Nobara and Yuji must be surprised about.
It’s the decorations.
He can’t see them very clearly, but there are figurines on the top and sides of the casket. He thinks they must be Gojo clan symbols—lions or eagles, or whatever else people use to show that they are proud and honourable.
He thinks about what it means, that they had a ready casket to bury Gojo. Yuji told him before, when he was still speaking in full sentences right after the fight, that there was an entire month after they freed Gojo. During which Gojo insisted to everyone who ever asked that yes, he’d be fine. He’s the strongest, he’d win, let’s plan a celebratory dinner, yadda yadda yadda, and yet after he died, there was a casket ready for them to bury him.
Maki told him the other day that they found a single note from Gojo, the only thing he left them as they were left behind to pick up the pieces of this broken world.
“Here is the list of the best candy shops in Japan, for my precious students to restore <3,” followed by what Megumi could have only have described as a scroll, so long the list was.
It was as idiotic as they probably should have expected from someone as stupid as Gojo, he decides.
Seeing the casket—no, the body inside it, not that Megumi himself managed to take a look—must have sent Yuji spiraling even further. He doesn’t cry anymore, but he starts talking about how he found the body. Megumi doesn’t want to listen; he saw the world-slicing slash with his own eyes. Gojo, the strongest sorcerer ever, his sensei and guardian, was split in half—the end of the story. But Yuji continues. He found the blood—so much fucking blood; why was there so much blood?—and the body split in two. He tried to collect more of whatever was left after Yuta used Kenjaku’s technique, and then Gojo was killed once again, and the stitches holding the body together had been broken. Yuta survived at least, barely; thanks to sheer luck and another one of Rika's techniques that allowed him to return to his own body, stitches and all. Yuta survived, but Megumi still can’t bring himself to speak to him; and if he has the right to forgive him (he doesn’t, after all Sukuna has done while possessing his body), if he had that right, he wouldn’t forgive Yuta—not even for the desecration of the body of their teacher (although for that too), but for the fact that he had to kill Gojo twice with his own hands.
Megumi doesn’t look up anymore while they walk up to the casket. There are no funeral speeches. He’s not planning on saying anything either; if he spoke, it would probably be something about Gojo being a fucking stupid idiot liar. He said he’d kill Sukuna, so why hasn’t he? Why has he left Megumi there, alone, with the guilt of what Sukuna has done while in his body?
The worst part of it was that he was able to help in the end. He was able to fight, so why couldn’t he have done it earlier? Before Tsumiki. Before Gojo. Before that powerful hit that left Maki with lifelong injuries. Before Yuta was left with only half of his body intact, his reverse cursed technique now needed constantly to heal him. Why couldn’t he have done something earlier? Why did it take Yuji’s last-ditch attack for him to wake up and finally do something?!
Someone tugs at him lightly and then yanks him away, the force of it almost enough to shove him to the ground.
It’s Nobara, and the effort must have been painful. She heaves and starts coughing, taking long, painful inhales every time her cough starts again.
“You look stupid,” she finally says when her cough recedes a bit. Me? he almost asks. “Both of you.”
You look stupid! He wants to respond. With your stupid eyepatch, not guilty of anything; not having destroyed every single person dear to you. You look stupid for still being there, still trying to pull them both from this abyss of feelings they are facing, despite the fact that you are still recovering from that injury. Bed rest. You must be on bed rest, Shoko said!
But he’s too tired to argue. He doesn’t want to make a scene either, more so than they already made. Gojo cared about not being lonely, and he would never have admitted it, but he cared about people caring enough about him not to spoil his funeral with a stupid argument.
“Stop this,” Nobara says then, almost begging.
“What ‘this’?” he asks mockingly, annoyance seeping into his voice. If he could have stopped it, he would have the second Sukuna took over his body. He resents Yuji now for convincing him to stay, for having to deal with all of this. With the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Japan that they inherited. Hundreds of new curse users, and barely anyone else besides the two of them—Yuji and him—strong enough to create a semblance of order in this dying world.
She can at least give him more time to mourn everyone, including one particular idiot—sensei-guardian.
“You know that they were fucking wrong,” Nobara insists on continuing this half-argument of theirs. “The higher-ups were fucking wrong, and you two know it! Stop brooding so fucking much!” she cries out.
“WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW?” he yells in response, his voice breaking. It must have been too loud since someone stumbles into him—an older jujutsu sorcerer with a small bouquet of wildflowers that he probably picked up in the wasteland nearby. What would she know about what his own hands have done? She, who has not hurt a single person in her entire life? What would she know about having killed your own sister, your own teacher and guardian, and countless others? About not being able to look in the mirror anymore? About the nightmares—all the same ones—where he takes someone’s life, but he likes it, and he laughs, and he enjoys the power that he has. And then to see Yuji going through the same shit, wasting away in front of his eyes. Yuji must have held it together during that final battle, must have not given in to despair because everyone needed him—just like they needed Megumi now, their new ‘strongest’—but now it eats away at him, the fact that he had that pact with Sukuna. That he couldn’t control him in Shibuya and then during the Culling Games. He hasn’t seen Yuji eat or sleep even once since they won (was it really a victory?), and he and Nobara probably both feel it: they are losing their friend, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
Weren’t the higher-ups right? Gojo saved Yuji at the expense of Sukuna returning, and now Yuji was so depressed and sad all the time that he couldn’t find it in himself to say that it was worth it—to preserve this existence of guilt and regret for both of them.
The old sorcerer stumbles to the ground. He’s missing a leg down to his knee, and it must have been him, Megumi, too.
He gives way, walking around the casket, with Yuji and Nobara following him. (He’d prefer they just leave him alone.)
He realizes that he still hasn’t looked, neither at the casket nor at the body inside. He can’t really look at the body; he just can’t. He still looks up, takes it all in.
The funeral procession—a woman and a man crying, with white hair—and they resemble Gojo so much that he knows now it’s the parents. This must be a rather rare occurrence for them, to be able to see their son. Too bad Megumi killed him. He sees Yuta, breathing heavily, with his eyes closed, with Inumaki at his side. Panda is there, a bit in between Inumaki and Maki, and there seems to be something like an aura of disappointment radiating from Maki—an invisible wall between them. And why wouldn’t there be, since she definitely didn’t approve of taking their teacher’s body either? There are other sorcerers—truly lots of them, many more than he expected to see. Some must have traveled a long way, judging by the dirt on their clothes, although given how apocalyptic their world was, maybe they just fought curses outside of Jujutsu High. Todo is there too; he smiles at Yuji. “BROTHER!” he shouts, only receiving a weak smile in response.
He looks at the casket then, and it takes him a moment to recognize what the figurines are.
There are three of them, and they are a perfect rendition of three things.
A chibi image of one Gojo Satoru—round face, blue eyes, white hair—very similar to Gojo’s signature. Yes, he reminds himself: Gojo did adopt a chibi image of himself as a signature at some point. Sometimes Megumi wondered if the guy just forgot how to write his own name and started using a drawing instead, since he was idiot enough to manage to do it after all. He chooses not to think too much about it. About how the image looks like all the small notes Gojo left him—on his fridge, in his homework, or for Tsumiki to pass to him. “I am attending parent-teacher conferences, and I do know about the math test,” or “Mario Karts. Tonight. No excuses,” or “Your cool guardian is saving the world tonight; don’t wait for me,” all in scrawly childish handwriting (he had Six-Eyes; why couldn’t he learn to write a bit better than a five-year-old?), signed with those stupid chibi images.
He sighs and looks to the left, to a dragon-looking thing that’s stuck to the side.
That one looks okay, he thinks—sufficiently orderly and stuff. It’s dark brown, with wings proudly stretching to the sides. Must be a Gojo clan emblem or something, although the woman in front of him, the one with white hair, looks suspiciously pale at seeing it.
His gaze glances over to Yuji, who still looks like the entire world has fallen on his shoulders, like he alone is responsible for the apocalyptic Mad Max-style world they’ve inherited. So he returns to investigating the weird casket that Gojo had ordered for himself in his final month.
The next figurine is simply of a cake, sitting awkwardly on top of the casket like a handle to the lid. He rubs his eyes because he must not be seeing it right. Because... come to think of it, the entire casket is in the form of a cake.
Right, a cake.
He almost gasps at the audacity of it; his eyes start twitching, but he can see it now—a cake. The lid has that foamy texture to it, airy and velvety. The sides of the casket are also white, but there is a texture to them, and now it all makes sense, since the texture is that of confetti, with slightly different colors—a bit of blue—but it’s still unmistakably confetti.
“The hell?” he asks, stretching his hand to the casket, touching the texture (still confetti), his eyes darting to the inside, where, yup, it’s Gojo’s body, but he’s too distracted by the confetti-cake-chibi-Gojo discovery that he doesn’t even think about it.
Yuji in front of him must have come to the same realization, his mouth open wide, gasping for air.
“A cake?” Yuji cries out, his voice finally (finally!) sounding a bit more like his.
“What did you expect?” Maki’s voice says behind him. He looks back to see her with her arms crossed, smiling (come to think of it, has he ever seen her smile? Ever?). “Gojo ordered it himself.”
“But…” Megumi starts, trying to explain the stupidity of it all, despite the fact that this is the first time he’s even spoken to Maki or in front of people other than Yuji. Or that it’s the first time he has actually managed to see a body at these funerals without the panic and guilt consuming him whole, making it difficult to breathe, the images of how they died swirling like a kaleidoscope in his mind’s eye.
It’s fucking unbelievably fucking stupid, he wants to say. We are your students, for God’s sake! There should be—what was it—order? Some fucking respect? Who would respect a guy who wanted to be buried in a casket that looks like a fucking cake?
He looks around, catching Yuta’s gaze, only for Yuta to hide it. But that brief glance is enough for him to feel that Yuta also doubts that decision; that he doesn’t understand why on earth Gojo would have wanted to be buried in a casket that looks like this.
But then Yuta was the one who… who took the body of their dying sensei, used Kenjaku’s cursed technique on it. He was the one responsible for the stitches on top of Gojo’s head, even now visible on the body. He… he…
“Have you seen the Pokémon?” Maki says then, in the uneasy quiet that’s settled.
“The Pokémon?” Megumi starts stupidly, looking around. “A Pokémon?” he repeats uselessly until his gaze catches on the figurine of the dragon again.
Except it wasn’t really a dragon, was it?
“A Charizard!” Yuji exclaims, and then before Megumi gets a chance to process it, his face contorts into a wide, bright smile—looking so much like the Yuji he knew before Shibuya, that he wants to hug him right then and there, a warmer feeling finally growing inside of him.
“It’s just,” Yuji laughs, a cackling short laugh, “it’s just we played Pokémon while I learned to control my cursed technique. Level II, after the movies.”
“Right,” Nobara smiles too. “I played him once, and it was my first time, but wasn’t he like super bad at it or something?”
“I’ve collected all the water Pokémons since he was using his Charizard all the time,” Yuji smiles, explaining how he beat Gojo’s lineup consisting of only Charizards using ‘water gun,’ ‘aqua jet,’ and ‘max geyser.’
The tight feeling tugging on his chest returns to him again when Megumi remembers the late nights spent playing—usually during weekends, or even before school, right in between Gojo’s missions. He wasn’t using Charizard all the time then, though; he was quite a competent (and competitive) player, and Megumi had to google strategies before the games and look up Gojo’s lineup to build up his strategy in advance.
Tsumiki, though, was bad at it. She mostly relied on the strongest Pokémon she had, including one Charizard—her favorite one. She called it her ‘Chari’ and was so proud of it. It was shiny and all, but at the time, Megumi thought that she was making their games boring by insisting on bringing it everywhere.
The Charizard on the side of the casket is not even an image or a photo; no—someone went all out and carved it out of the wood. With wings, claws, and even jewels used for the eyes (but somehow not for Chibi Gojo's eyes, right?). But its color is not the usual Charizard color.
You see, Megumi starts explaining to Maki, Yuji, Nobara, Inumaki, Panda, and even Yuta—who should know the man whose body he was using, know him better, and care for him enough not to have done it (stop thinking about it, Megumi!). A regular Charizard is normally orange, the color of Fanta. That’s why Megumi looked at the figurine, which was recognizably a Pokémon from a game he must have played a thousand times in his childhood, and thought it was a family coat of arms or something. So yes, normally Charizards are orange, but this one is the only thing on this entire casket that’s not white or light blue; it’s the dark brown color of a shiny Charizard.
“That’s why he must have played it so much—it was shiny!” Yuji exclaims, satisfied with the explanation. “I know it’s not easy to catch a shiny, right?”
“Right,” Megumi shrugs. It’s not easy; it’s luck-based and all—you’d catch a thousand Pokémon only for one of them to turn out shiny. His sister was immensely proud and teased them both about it, about having a beautiful shiny Pokémon when they both didn’t. So it turns out Gojo must have caught a shiny Charizard of his own, either by sheer luck or because he played a lot after she was consumed by a curse and then used it for all his games. Just like Tsumiki.
“And the cake on the lid is exactly like the one he ordered for Yuta, remember?” Panda starts, looking awkwardly at Yuta.
Yuta looks overwhelmed at having been addressed; he looks like he didn’t want to be noticed in that shadowy corner where he was standing next to Inumaki. He seems ready to run away at any second.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it looks almost instinctive, the way he fires these words immediately after being addressed. The bags under his eyes look heavier and darker, like he hasn’t been getting much sleep these days either. Inumaki moves in front of him protectively.
“Salmon roll,” he says.
Megumi can’t decipher what it means, until Maki curls her hands into fists, responding with her usual agitation.
“Well, no, it’s not silent treatment! I’ve already told Yuta everything there was to tell!” she says, her words hissing with anger.
“Guys,” Yuji starts, only to be interrupted by Inumaki again.
He fires off a list of sushi ingredients in what seems like the longest tirade Megumi has ever heard from him. “Fried mackerel, caviar! Bonito flakes, squid, sashimi, salmon roll.” He pauses and adds, “Tuna.”
This time, Yuta peeks up, looking as if he is about to disagree; Maki, though, seems at a loss.
Since all three of them—he, Yuji, and Nobara—don’t understand it either, Panda helpfully chimes in.
“Well, if he ordered this casket, it doesn’t really mean he didn’t care about his body after death, Inumaki,” Panda says, the usual voice of reason in these arguments. “He clearly cared enough to order a custom-made one.”
Megumi gets distracted from the ensuing argument to take in the form of the entire casket, the thing Gojo wanted to be buried in for eternity.
The ‘cake’ form is uneven, with ‘foamy’ parts spread on top thinly, as if someone took a fork and…
He remembers now. The cake he and Tsumiki baked for Gojo’s birthday. Was it his 26th? 25th? He remembers counting the candles, carefully placing them on top of the cake, not to disturb the cream that was shakily clinging to that terribly tasting dough the two of them had made after school. It was not sweet, and definitely not sweet enough for Gojo, as they realized when they finally tasted it. The cream was good, though; he beat it up himself with a fork and used the same fork to cover the cake, and he was so proud of himself and Tsumiki, who had come up with the whole idea. And he remembers how afraid he felt when they presented it to Gojo—not for how it would taste or anything, but for how Gojo would react. Since, well, his idiot of a father had left him, and he never cared for what Megumi did at school or for his first crappy-looking Father’s Day present he crafted in kindergarten. He half-expected Gojo to react the same way, to laugh at how crappy the cake looked, how obviously it was hand-made by two children who had never baked in their lives; and that would have broken Tsumiki’s heart, since she was trying so hard, looking for the recipe, buying the ingredients and all…
That day, Gojo arrived later than usual, tired and somewhat in a bad mood.
Not at them, Gojo reassured them immediately. He had a meeting with higher-ups, and it must have gone badly; apparently someone died on a mission Gojo had been assigned to but couldn’t reach because he was sent on multiple missions that day, and he was running late. Judging from the bloody gash on his forehead, he was injured too—almost concussed. Gojo explained how his reverse cursed technique wasn’t fully working for some reason, maybe the artifact or poison… And that he, Megumi, had to be strong in the future, not to end up like that poor sorcerer who died on a mission Gojo couldn’t go to in time to save him.
That was when Megumi felt like he should hide the cake immediately and never show it to Gojo, like ever. His useless father also talked incessantly about ‘strength’ and sometimes even about ‘higher-ups’ who apparently gave him money for some missions he did. Tsumiki didn’t get the message, though, since she took Gojo’s hand in hers and led him into their small kitchen, with that big cake taking up half of their table.
“Happy birthday, Gojo-aniki,” she said, and Megumi’s heart stopped for a second.
If Gojo laughed or started making fun of it, he’d… he’d… He was ready to use his ten shadows—hell, even Mahoraga. He would have fought him with everything he had if Gojo made fun of it.
For a second, that’s exactly what he thought was happening, since Gojo’s face contorted into something he had never seen on that face before.
Before he could react (he was about to call on his demon dogs), Tsumiki smiled and hugged Gojo, infinity lowered, allowing the hug, and Gojo extended his arms to get Megumi to hug him too. Which he did, because, well—Gojo was not making fun of it; apparently, he was so genuinely impressed that he started crying. And hugging them, which was a bit awkward since they had lit all the candles, and it took a bit for them to disentangle from that hug. The melted candle wax made its way onto the top of the cream, which obviously made the cake taste even more awful, but when Gojo tasted it, he said it was the best thing ever. “You didn’t have to,” Gojo whispered, as if almost afraid of these words – after hugging them both again and then lifting Megumi into the air until he asked to be put back on the floor. “But really, you made this day so much better.” Megumi believed him since, for once in his life, Gojo sounded genuine and didn’t make annoying jokes. Well, for an entire minute, at least.
He must have really meant it since he decided to be buried in a casket shaped like a cake that he and his sister baked for him for his 26th or 27th—or 50th—birthday.
Megumi huffs. What a sentimental old man who made so many sentimental choices.
Like saving Yuji.
Or him – from the Zenin clan.
Or Yuta.
Or Maki.
Or Panda.
Practically every student at Jujutsu High, he realises.
Maki and Yuta are still arguing about using the body thing, now with Yuji joining too, telling them about his theory: how he should have been executed a long time ago for all of this shit not to happen.
“Except for,” Megumi intervenes, surprised himself that he decided to speak out. “Gojo-sensei wouldn’t have done it. The execution, I mean.” He inhales a whole lot of air. “And yes, didn’t he agree for you to use his body like that, Yuta?”
Yuta looks up, still looking tired and guilty, as if he could die from guilt alone and disappear this very second. Megumi comes to a realization that that’s not what is supposed to happen. Not like this. Yes, they are left in this bleary, apocalyptic world that they need to pick pieces of, but they are also there because of one person who brought them together, taught them, and was a good fucking teacher-guardian-benefactor-father, however terrible that label sounds.
If it wasn’t for them—for Yuji, Yuta, Maki, Panda, Inumaki, Nobara, and everyone else who joined forces to defeat Sukuna—they wouldn’t have even this apocalyptic wasteland of the world to call home. In a world of higher-ups only, without Gojo, they would either not be sorcerers or simply dead. But the thing is… the thing is, Sukuna and Kenjaku would still have been around.
He probably wouldn’t have been possessed, but he also wouldn’t have done that tiny thing at the end that helped Yuji to make the final blow.
He’d never see Yuji smile again—or cry (not that he wanted to)—he’d never listen to Maki and Inumaki arguing, Panda being as reasonable as he always is. He’d never be there to tell Yuta that…
“He was okay with you doing it, Yuta,” he says. “So we should try to find it in our hearts not to blame you, and that includes you too, Yuta.”
Not that it has an effect, but some of Yuta’s features soften, as if he were afraid of this very moment and is relieved at how it goes, at how Megumi is reacting.
“And no, Yuji, I don’t think that the higher-ups were right,” he says finally, with as much sincerity as he can possibly muster.
“But…” Yuji starts, but Megumi simply hugs him, trying to show how he feels with that hug alone.
Truly, Yuji, he wants to say. You saved all of us, and if it wasn’t for you, if the higher-ups—not Gojo—were the ones deciding how things went, you wouldn’t be able to. So no, they were absolutely fucking wrong, and yes, Gojo made some stupid mistakes too—hell, they all did—but at the end of the day, they did their best, and they managed to preserve at least parts of this world and their humanity…
Yuji softens under his touch, his voice hiccupping. When Megumi opens his eyes and looks at him, Yuji finally smiles and nods.