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“Will you spend the rest of your teenage years wishing you could go back to some time in the past, when you’re not sure you can change anything, Megumi?” Satoru says.
megumi doesn’t have the energy to wash himself, but still he’s sitting in the shower. feeling the water fall. noticing its temperature lowering. accepting it’ll not get better. it’s over.
megumi’s soul didn’t have the will to live anymore.
no amount of time with Itadori and Kugisaki will change the way his body, heart, and spirit, feel heavy enough to not fight back.
no amount of Gojo trying to distract him, will make him get out of bed.
no amount of hope for Tsumiki to wake up, will be enough for him to stay a little longer.
He kept saying,
“All’s fine, I just need to rest.”
he started skipping classes,
and eventually stopped showing up for meals.
soon he lost the capacity of getting up to answer the knock on his door, and swiftly, speaking turned out to be a task he felt unable to perform.
‘I’m a failure. Useless.‘
megumi no longer had notion over the time passing. moving to check it out was a waste of it, anyway.
nobody tried to come in and,
do something, anymore.
nobody seemed to understand what was wrong.
or maybe they did. He doesn’t know. he thinks, “maybe they don’t care, like me.”
Sukuna’s words came to him one last time.
“What a waste of talent.”
Indeed.
the day Satoru decided to come into Megumi’s room, something twisted inside him.
his kid looked lifeless, laying in his bed, barely breathing, and his eyes lacked emotion.
For the second time, in ten years, Satoru felt helpless.
he walked across the room, and laid down next to megumi. He hugged him.
While Megumi’s tears streamed out of his eyes and into his ears, Satoru’s wetted his blindfold.
For hours, not a sound came out of their throats.
When Satoru stopped going on missions.
That’s when people started to notice.
Satoru spent his time taking care of Megumi. At least, he would do what his son would let him do to keep him alive.
To see if something could change. If things could go back to the way they were the day Megumi felt a little of humanity.
‘I don’t want him to die.‘
Satoru is glad he (eventually) noticed.
He couldn’t go through losing someone to sadness again.
‘I guess I’m just waiting for my body to give up.‘
Megumi wasn’t very responsive to Satoru’s attempts to get him to drink some water, or fed him, but the times he moved (like he was in automatic), Satoru’s hope grew stronger.
He was trying.
Satoru could only appreciate those moments. He hoped that, whatever he was doing, was helping Megumi get out of the darkness.
sometimes, in Megumi, he would see a flash of someone who was once his hope in humanity.
after all, the capacity of feeling was greater than people thought.
they just don’t bother to look the other way.
life is not only about happiness. it’s the things we go through, and still decide to give life One More Chance. life is freedom, and the way we choose to reach it.
Megumi, during the early days when he started isolating himself, once thought,
‘maybe death is a way of freedom, too. maybe the inevitable will come for me, and take me somewhere else. some place where i’m worth something. worth existing.‘
“Loving is a way of freeing ourselves,” Satoru says, on a random day, while they lay on Megumi’s bed.
the kid lays his head on the other’s shoulder, motionless.
“Love changes the way we see everything.
Changes us. Changes our perception and our way of thinking. Our paths of life.”
There’s a silence, for a minute, where they just breathe at the same time.
“Love makes us do things that we may regret, or not,”
Satoru’s hand goes to Megumi’s hair, ruffling through it.
“Love lets us dream. Lets us hope. Gives us a chance of winning against what seems impossible to beat,”
“Love may be our only option to keep ourselves from falling behind.
Letting people love us, and care for us, will make us vulnerable. And just maybe, it may not be a bad thing.
Being vulnerable with others means that we have the strength to give ourselves one more chance, will prove us worthy of living.
Living, Megumi.
Living is what we do for love. To love is live, and to live is to find a bit of love in everything we see, hear, feel. Is to live a life worth of living, surrounded by love. Hate will always get us nowhere, and a life full of hate, is a slow death.
So, please, let us help you find love in life again. We’ll find a way, together. Trust me, Megumi. You deserve love. So much love.”
Satoru hugs Megumi, as a raw sob gets out of the child’s deepest tear in his soul.
Maybe, just maybe, things might work out. Change. Go in a different direction, where his destiny is a simple life with everyone he ever loved at his reach.
Where he can do mundane things. Cooking with Itadori, letting Kugisaki paint his nails and spending quality time with Satoru.
Where he gets to be selfish more often. Do things for himself. Things from love.
Where being a sorcerer doesn’t cut his life short. Or, otherwise, where being a sorcerer doesn’t stops him from loving.
‘It’s okay.‘ And a reassuring smile.