Chapter Text
Yuji isn’t going home. Nope, not doing it. He knows damn well that the moment he walks through that door, Nobara is gonna be standing there with that shit-eating grin on her face. She’s gonna say, “how’d it go?” And Yuji’s gonna get all angry and say, “uh, it went fine actually!” but he’s a bad liar so he’s gonna be sweating and averting his eyes and she’s gonna catch on immediately and be like, “I told you!” in her annoying ass voice.
“I told you, I told you,” Yuji parrots to himself, mimicking her. Then he sighs and wraps his arms around his legs. The tree he’s hiding beneath barely offers any shelter.
Rain is thundering loudly against the ground, riddling it with thin streams of water that criss-cross randomly throughout the village. Wooden boards have been laid out for people to walk on, but Yuji’s sandal still got swallowed by the mud when he tried to make his usual trip down to the well, and he’s been waiting for the downpour to subside so he can go and retrieve it ever since.
If only it wasn’t so cold.
He shivers.
This…
Sucks.
You know what? Screw it, everything about the Heian era sucks! The food, the hard-ass bed he has to sleep on, the roof that keeps leaking, the constant smell of manure — this lousy weather is just the icing on the cake! What he wouldn’t give for a hot shower. He’s been here for around three months now with nothing to show for it, and it’s starting to get to him.
Maybe this was all a waste of time. Maybe Sukuna hasn’t even been born yet. He’s been needling all the ladies for any gossip about cursed freakish children with extra limbs, but still, nothing. Probably made himself look like a creep in the process.
Yuji swore to himself when he began this mission that he’d never give up at any point whatsoever, but he’s starting to wonder if he should just… take a break. At least until the rainy season ends. Because of the rain, everyone’s cooped up in their houses anyway. He’ll have a much easier time finding Sukuna once the sun’s out.
“I told you,” Nobara’s voice echoes in his mind, making him shudder.
No, nope. Not going home.
Yuji stands up and wipes the rainwater off his face. The ladies at the inn are probably wondering where he is right about now, so he continues with one sandal down to the well, wincing at the sensation of water saturating his sock. When he gets there, he tosses his bucket in. The rope whistles as it sails to the bottom.
He reminisces about the day he first arrived at the village. He saw a row of young girls all pulling on the rope together, trying and failing to bring the overladen bucket back up. He sorta joined in without asking and they all screamed and fell down like dominoes, unprepared for how quick the rope would start moving. Call it showing off or whatever, it still got him the job and they were all laughing by the end of it.
He starts hauling it up, hand over hand, barely even feeling the weight. He whistles absentmindedly in the meantime, and when his eyes wander, he spots someone peering at him from within the trees. His last note trails off into silence.
“Aha! I’ve found the culprit!” Nobara says loudly, releasing her tape measure, causing it to snap shut with a loud, important sound. “Yuji, there’s a dent in your fucking head.”
Yuji flushes crimson. “What? No there isn’t.”
“It’s literally ten centimeters wide, I just measured it. Huge! Like a meteor impact!”
He runs his hands over his scalp self-consciously, but he can’t feel anything so she’s definitely messing with him. He scowls and looks at Megumi for support. “Would you tell her to knock it off, please?”
Megumi raises an eyebrow. “Well, you’re clearly suffering from some kind of brain damage if you’re even remotely entertaining the idea of meeting and making contact with Sukuna again. No, not even making contact— you’re practically going to be raising him.”
Well, it won’t be “practically”, it’ll be “literally”. The younger Sukuna is, the easier it’ll be to teach him, so why not catch him as a baby?! Is that so wrong?! Yuji wants to snark, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut because he knows he’ll just be bullied even worse if he says anything.
Nobara repeatedly prods Yuji where the dent supposedly is, each time harder and more insistently. “Speaking of Sukuna, he’s probably the one that gave you this in the first place. You realize how insane you sound, right? Right? Dumbass? Wanting to talk to the guy who did this to you? You should be glad he’s dead."
Yuji smacks her hand away. “Lay off! I don’t have a dent in my head and I’m perfectly mentally sound! This is a good idea!” She tries to grab him, so he jumps out of his seat and skitters away, finding himself cornered between the house plant and the 6ft tall stack of alphabetized DVDs. “It’s not like my plan’s gonna hurt anybody! If it doesn’t work then I’ll just come back and we can carry on like normal!”
Nobara looms over him. “Except you’re going to mess up our normal! In the highly unlikely scenario that you even find Sukuna at all, you’re going to put some kind of idea in his head that he’ll use against us and then before you know it, all of this will be gone!”
She gestures. Yuji looks around for what she might be talking about and the first thing that draws his attention is the mountain of dishes overloading the sink because they can’t reach an agreement on whose job is to wash them, (and it’s definitely not Yuji’s, because he’s the one that cooked!)
“The dishes?” he asks hopefully.
She slams a hand down on the wall by his head, rattling the DVDs and causing them to tumble.
Yuji complains, “aw, Nobara, do you know how long it took to—”
“The apartment, dumbass!” She snaps. “Our lives! The peace! Everything! You know what? I’ve got an idea. Let’s jam a plunger onto your head and buff that dent out so you stop talking bullshit. Megumi, hold him down!”
She snaps her fingers and Megumi advances on Yuji threateningly.
“No!” Yuji cries, because he knows exactly how filthy that plunger is. “Just give me a chance! I swear I won’t mess anything up! If— if I come back without any good news then I promise I’ll throw in the towel right then and there! We can celebrate Sukuna’s death anniversary like we always do. You know, twenty shots?”
“Twenty shots,” Nobara sighs, placated.
Megumi’s nose wrinkles. “Twenty shots.”
They celebrate their victory every year by sharing twenty shots between themselves. Yuji takes most of them since his genetics make him nearly impervious to alcohol, but somehow he always wakes up in the morning with his head in a toilet. It’s what Gojo would’ve wanted. (For Yuji to be enjoying his youth, that is. Not necessarily for him to be blackout drunk.)
Nobara scrutinizes him very carefully before relenting. “Alright, fine.” She continues before Yuji can celebrate, jabbing her finger at him threateningly. “One strike and you’re out, you hear me?”
Yuji nods rapidly. “I hear you!”
The roaring sound of rain fades into the background and suddenly the world is eerily silent.
Yuji has locked eyes with a very small and compact version of Sukuna, who’s peering out from behind a tree with a distrustful scowl. His hair is overgrown, raked carelessly out of his face and left to mat down his back. It’s in desperate need of some TLC. His clothes swamp him, making him look like a miserable wet cat.
Despite the fact that he only comes up to Yuji’s waist, he’s still kinda intimidating. It’s still him, after all. Still Sukuna. His eyes are sharp and intelligent. Maybe he already knows his cursed technique? Yuji’s palms begin to sweat and all the lines he rehearsed slip out of his brain.
Perhaps coaxed by the silence, Sukuna begins to approach. Yuji reacts instinctively, sucking in a breath and taking an abrupt step back in case he needs to defend himself. The rope slides in his grip and he has to jump to catch it. And Sukuna has already retreated by the time Yuji returns his attention to him, having fully obscured himself behind the tree.
…Yuji feels stupid. The whole reason he came here in the first place was to help Sukuna, right? Granted, he thought he’d be picking up a baby and not a walking talking school-aged child who’s fully capable of talking back, but still! He can’t let his stupid instincts take control of him! The kid on the other side of that tree isn’t evil (yet) (presumably) so Yuji can’t go treating him like he is!
“Hey,” Yuji says softly, “sorry, you snuck up on me. You’re so quiet!”
It takes some time for Sukuna to steel himself and step fully out into the open again. He stands rooted to the spot, his stance solid and defensive. The pattering rain creates a hazy silhouette around him.
Aw, he’s so skinny! Still broader than your average kid, thanks to the extra arms and the robust frame needed to support them, but he looks like a plushie with all the stuffing sucked out! His face is a little sunken too and Yuji can just barely see the contours of his skull. It makes his heart twinge.
“What’s your name?” Yuji asks, even though he already knows it.
Sukuna is scowling dangerously. He doesn’t say anything.
Yuji turns to face him fully, since that’s polite, and the rope digs into his shoulder. “My name’s Yuji. It’s nice to meet you.”
No response. The scowl deepens.
“…Heh, do I look a little weird? That’s because I lost my other sandal in the mud a little while back. I’m so stupid. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Yuji presses his finger to his lips with a grin. When this doesn’t earn him a laugh, he glances at the well and realizes. “Oh! Do you need water? Is that what you’re waiting for? The rainwater’s okay to drink if you treat it, but maybe you don’t know how to do that.”
“Stupid,” Sukuna mutters.
“Huh? What’s stupid? Me?”
Sukuna writhes. “I can drink anything, unlike you stupid villagers. I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.”
Hearing him speak a full sentence draws Yuji’s attention to how thin his voice is, scraping out of a painfully dry throat. This, combined with the thought of Sukuna drinking out of puddles or a sediment-filled river, makes Yuji wince in sympathy. “Oh, really? Well, wouldn’t you prefer to drink clean water anyway? Bet it tastes nicer.”
Sukuna tries to hide his curiosity by turning away from him, but his traitorous eyes keep glancing back. “Tastes nicer?”
Ah, well, to be completely honest, Yuji drinks his own water in secret. The well water is clean by Heian standards, but Yuji’s modern palate is used to finer stuff, so he’s been smuggling it bottled. Whenever he goes back to pick up a new batch, he gets incredibly anxious about bumping into Nobara at the store. Can’t really tell Sukuna about that without giving up the whole time travel thing though.
“Yeah! Nothing beats good old water. Want some? You can have some of mine! There’s plenty,” Yuji says.
Sukuna still looks uncomfortable. No, that’s not the word. He looks shifty. Maybe he had been planning to steal, but now that he's been caught he doesn’t know what to do? It seems unlikely that he’d be too weak to lift his own bucket, but he definitely looks dehydrated. And hungry. And like he has several vitamin deficiencies.
Yuji wonders if he’d accept food from a stranger. He brought a couple self-heating bentos from his own time period to use on especially cold days and honestly they’re the only thing keeping him sane, but he’d be happy to share with someone who needs it more. Everyone deserves warm food every now and then.
“Okay. Well, you didn’t say no, so I’ll take that as a yes.” Yuji finally continues pulling up the bucket.
For a moment Sukuna looks strangely panicked, but then a shell of anger encases him, hiding this vulnerability. “I don’t want water. I’m going to kill you and drink your blood instead.” He says this in utter seriousness.
What the hell? “Hey, what did I do? C’mon, didn’t I just say water’s the best? My blood probably tastes gross anyway.”
Sukuna is getting worked up for some reason. He advances threateningly, but never actually comes within range. Always at a safe distance. “I’m a demon and I’m going to kill you. If you’re scared, you should run.”
“Why?”
Sukuna squints. “What? Stop acting confused. You’re scared of me, don’t try to hide it.”
“Uh, but I’m not, really. Scared of you, I mean.”
Sukuna looks furious. “I’m a curse, idiot.”
“You just said you were a demon.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Huh? No it’s not.”
Sukuna glances down at himself, maybe to check whether his body has spontaneously morphed into an ordinary human’s. When he sees that he still has his unusual markings and stomach-mouth and insectoid limbs, he spreads his arms wide, showing off the fact that he has four of them. “You should be scared. I’ll make you scared.”
He looks like a stick bug doing a threat posture. A small part of Yuji — that mean sorcerer part — wants to rise to the challenge, but the bigger part just can’t find it within himself to take Sukuna seriously. Not when he’s in such bad shape. He looks half-starved. Whatever he’s trying to accomplish, Yuji hopes it can wait until after he’s eaten something.
“Look,” Yuji says amicably, “let’s just take it down a notch. You can drink all the water you want, okay? You don’t have to fight me for it.”
The bucket hits the beam secured over the top of the well. The sound makes Sukuna’s pupils contract and his arms snap up to his chest defensively. His cursed technique severs the rope and Yuji fails to catch the bucket before it plummets all the way back to the bottom, completely irretrievable.
Yuji leans over the edge, watching the water glint in the darkness in small flashes of light. Aw, man, now what’s he going to bring back to the inn?!
“Ha!” Sukuna barks. There’s still an edge of panic in his tone and his expression. “Now you’re going to die of thirst! I told you to run, but you didn’t heed my warning! You're going to die slowly and painfully!” After this grand declaration, he disappears into the trees, leaving Yuji standing there alone in the rain looking like an idiot.
It’s... cute, in an annoying kind of way.