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Haibara’s outline feels like a distant memory or perhaps a dream. Nanami can’t tell if he is seeing him clearly or if his mind is finally drifting into the afterlife where Haibara waits as his guide. The way he stands there in his Jujutsu Tech uniform, idiotically, endearingly smiling, makes Nanami believe they might wander and get lost together before they even reach the end of ths road.
“I can’t, Haibara,” Nanami breathes, or thinks, thought and voice bleed together now, so he can’t be certain. His body is running on the last of its fuel and if he leans forward now, he knows he will fall into that warmth and never return. And a part of him longs for that release because he is tired. Exhausted despite his desire to save Fushiguro.
He’s done enough… hasn’t he?
“Huh?” The patch‑faced cursed spirit’s voice cuts through the haze just as footsteps rush down the stairs and stumbles toward them, followed by the strained trembling “Nanamin…” that echoes across the empty platform and splinters him.
Itadori.
Nanami’s one good hand twitches uselessly around his cleaver. He wants to protect him the same way he wanted to protect Haibara, the same way he has tried to protect every child forced into this world before they even had a chance to be children. But his body is failing, and he has nothing left to give.
Haibara’s smile dwindles and his eyes turn toward the pink‑haired boy limping forward. Cold familiar dread carves itself into Nanami and reluctant acceptance follows when Haibara raises his hand to point gently toward Itadori.
Nanami follows the motion and sees the boy wrecked, his uniform torn, his face dirtied and bloodied, fear and grief dimming the youthful joy that usually graced him.
It’s the same image Nanami saw on that day when Haibara went ahead and Nanami arrived too late to change anything.
And this time he is here. And still… he can’t do more.
“Itadori‑kun,” Nanami manages a soft smile that curls around the charred half of his face, then turns just enough to meet the boy’s eyes. He hopes the smile offers more than the heartache his death will cause. “You take it from here.”
Idle Transfiguration must have activated because a strange feeling follows as his entire being contorts. He’s certain not a second has passed yet it feels painfully slow, like he is being transformed into nothing and plunged into death. He accepts his fate and hopes death will be a reprieve, that it will be kind to him, that he will see his friends again.
He closes his eyes as more of his body grows deformed and that is when he sees it.
The 7:3 fault line slicing through nothing. He doesn’t remember activating it and there’s nothing there to cut.
Then suddenly, vividly, a memory surfaces quietly. Perhaps it’s delirium from death or a moment preserved in time. But he remembers it like it happened just yesterday.
Twelve-years ago. Gojo is on his bed in his room as always, voice insistent and soothing, grin heartachingly bright, the moment he knew he liked boys… Or that he liked Gojo.
“Nanamin, come on, you can do it,” he whines, burrowing closer until their knees bump.
“Gojo‑san, it’s impossible for me to find a weakness in your technique.”
“You only think it’s impossible because you are so rigid, Nanamin. Everything has a weakness and you, my cute kouhai, have a cursed technique designed to find it.”
He had tried that day and failed. Perhaps this is the only time it will work, capabilities instinctively triggered by the clarity of death. So, his charred trembling hand rises and he lets it cut through the ratio line.
For an instant he feels a surge of power unlike anything he’s ever experienced, that fleeting taste of the full potential that always lay beyond his reach. This new wave of cursed energy courses through him only for a moment before his body finally gives way, bursting apart into nothing but blood and ruin.
Then… nothing.
***
Minutes pass, stretching into hours that drag on without end until twilight settles over the station. The news has already spread far and wide.
Itadori Yuji’s execution is reinstated, to be carried out by Okkotsu Yuta. Gojo Satoru is not to be freed from the Prison Realm. Yaga Masamichi, complicit.
It’s all too much to bear, so much that Shoko rescinds her resolution to quit smoking. She pulls out a cigarette, lighting it as she walks across the platform, the low glow of the glistening bud a perfect mirror for the gathering dusk. She sighs, glancing up at the star-laden sky, wondering why she has to be here for the grim business of collecting the Jujutsu dead.
“Shoko‑san… over here,” a frantic voice calls, adding to the already grating chatter and traffic. Shoko turns, exhaling a cloud of smoke before crushing the ember of her cigarette with her heel and stepping forward.
“What is it?” she asks, her hands slipping into the pockets of her white coat as she approaches.
The sorcerer seems at a loss, eyes wide with confusion and terror above the mask covering his nose. His gloved hands fidget at his sides, searching for words that seemingly slip past his thoughts.
Shoko follows his gaze, and beyond the mess of blood and transfigured flesh she sees it… The blunt cleaver wrapped in black and white cloth, the remnants of blue and beige fabric, and when she really looks, she sees a chest elevate and fall with each breath.
She expels a sharp breath of disbelief and moves closer, lowering herself onto one knee. A knot tightens in her throat as her hand reaches forward, brushing back strands of long blond hair that have fallen across a peaceful face. Her eyes drop to the rest of the body and linger on the Jujutsu Tech uniform she has not seen since she graduated high school. Pristine in its pressed lines and perfect fit, the nose sharp as an arrow, the familiar scowl that doesn’t ease even in slumber.
Tears threaten to shatter her usual calm facade and so she blinks them away, stunned into silence before she finally breathes out a soft, trembling…
“Kento‑kun?”