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Snow is everywhere. The sky is full of it, coated from horizon to horizon in an endless cloud of ivory blankness that drifts down upon the earth in lazy spirals. Flurries counter the spotless image every so often, hurrying with the wind as they might, flakes of snow a frozen whirlpool above the ground.
Such coldness is common in the land overlooked by the one malevolently titled “Ryomen Sukuna”, a constant phenomena even in the Summer months as of late. The lord’s servant is undoubtedly the source of such bitter cold even when the Ryomen is the one thanked for it, the one praised for it. The blame is cast on their master all the same.
The people of the nameless villages which create the unofficial border of Ryomen Sukuna’s domain treat the snow with kindness when the sun beats down upon them, making the harvest a much less bitter task, but the dissonance of their tune is present in the ways they curse behind his back. Because fresh powder means fresh water, and an overabundance of water—of anything, really—is never a good thing, particularly for sprouting or unharvested crops. And, because even the coolest of temperatures may become as tremulous as they may become aiding, their cursing is loud.
Their cursing is verbal, although not as attention-grabbing as it once was. Only so many villagers can go days without their tongues, minutes with blood pooling in their mouths and limbs twitching, attempting uselessly to run away despite the deadness of their brains, before one starts to get the picture.
Luckily for one headstrong boy, Itadori Yuuji has never been afraid enough of the cold to wish to cast it away. The winter weather brings with it a sense of homeliness he, despite his best efforts, is unable to ignore. Despite the weather’s bitterness, the melancholy that it brings, his smile is one to be expected.
And although the people of the villages still curse out their lord when their backs are turned, he simply cannot dream of leaving them to rot and die when there is something he can do to prevent the decay of their lands, the final resting of freezing children and elders. So, with all the might of a fifteen-year-old boy who has been fifteen more times than he can count, Itadori Yuuji chops trees, hauls wood, stokes fires, ladles soup, serves bread, rolls snowmen, and hangs clothes.
The men of the villages are always anxious upon his arrival. They beg and plead with him to marry their widows and take care of their daughters, but he’s only been taught one way to “take care of” individuals in this lifetime, and the last time he set a head on a spike, they immediately rescinded their offers.
The women approach him with a similar sense of urgency, cradling crying babies with heads red as jam and skin hot as embers, so he grinds them herbs and makes notes on precious paper and shows them how to correctly dry the herbs they have collected and where to burn up the ones with no business in their homes, let alone in their medicine cabinets.
The people of the village usually appreciate his assistance in realigning their lives.
Today, however, he leaves the estate with a fire burning in his chest so hot the snow melts to puddles beneath his feet, freezing boy-sized footprints into ice on the ground. Uraume’s constant output of Cursed Energy swims around his ankles as it builds up a level powdering of snow everywhere the sun shines upon. It’s a semblance of familiarity he’s quite used to, but the cool flash of miasma against his skin is only another reminder of the mess he left back at home.
He isn’t sure if “home” is the right word to title Ryomen Sukuna’s estate, but it’s the closest thing he has to a real and actual place of belonging in this era he is so unused to that calling it a “home” feels only natural. But “homes” aren’t supposed to be that violent, and “homes” aren’t supposed to be that quiet. So, maybe the estate really isn’t his home, and maybe he’s putting too much thought into this, but what else is there to think about when one trudges through the snow with no end in sight, no goal in mind?
Nursing a few broken fingers, a few cracked ribs, an eye swollen shut, and a limp in one knee, Itadori Yuuji walks.
They had been training, of course (because what else is an empty, transmigrated vessel in the ancient Heian Era, the Golden Age of Jujutsu, good for aside from becoming a punching bag?), just as they are most days, when Malevolent Shrine opened up in a gaping maw of silence around them.
In a feat never before witnessed, the great Ryomen Sukuna, Conqueror of Lands and Terrorizer of the Masses, had attained a power-up. A domain expansion. Apparently, he hadn’t been strong enough, with four inhuman arms and four even more peculiar eyes, nor monstrous enough in power simply with Cleave, Dismantle, and Divine Flame.
No, he had wanted—needed—more. More strength (to cut down his enemies); more power (to do so quickly); more endurance (to carve through battalions and armies without pause); and more reason (to take his anger out on Yuuji). Every failure along the way and every setback upon his path towards success provide opportunity after opportunity to dig his vassal’s face into the ground.
“Get up,” he would spit when Yuuji lay there bleeding, “or I will make you.”
Yuuji kicks a rock through the fresh powder at his feet, now calmed down enough to see straight and not melt the cold beneath his feet. Snow pills around the stone in a constant renewal of layers on layers, expanding its diameter exponentially as long as he keeps kicking.
It isn’t as though he isn’t used to the abuse commonly arising from one Ryomen Sukuna’s hand, nor is it that he isn’t aware of a method or thirty for tending his own wounds. The constant sting is a reminder of his ability to continuously draw breath despite the inherently peculiar era he finds himself in. But the heavy press of Sukuna’s fists against his face and chest and gut are just heavy blows he isn’t able to recuperate from without rest and relaxation that is seldom gifted to him, and being left in his silence for too long clearly isn’t good for his health.
He scoffs at the mere thought, that a day without “training”, if one could call it that (which he could, since the learning experiences of those hours are intended for Sukuna anyway, and a training dummy isn’t meant to have opinions on whether abuse is something personal or predestined), should be regarded as a gift rather than a requirement. Given the fact that Ryomen Sukuna is his glorified landlord, however, this really shouldn’t come as a surprising realization.
Yuuji rests his palm on a stretch of moss-covered bark to his left, taking a moment just to breathe. It’s barely August, and still, it snows. If Sukuna holds no ill regard towards the people of his land, he has a pretty funny way of showing it.
He sighs and leans against the wood heavily. The sight of a denser forest before him piques his interest; it isn’t as though the villagers nearby would be interested in tending to his wounds as he is now, especially since aiding him could come across as a spiteful disagreement of their lord’s ability to care for “his people”. They’d probably be killed, and Yuuji would have to stand in for the straw bag once again. Nobody wants that.
So, he trudges forth into the denser woods. It isn’t like walking through harsh weather is something he isn’t used to, but doing it alone, while injured, just as a way to spite the wounds’ inflictor, brings about a fresh sort of pride that he just can’t bear to part with. Yuuji sighs and steps over an absurdly obtrusive tree root peeking through the snow. Maybe, in another life, he’ll get to be a normal kid for a little while longer than two days.
The longer he walks, the colder it gets. It could just be his imagination, but cursed energy seems to chain itself around his ankles, and Sukuna’s orders to freeze him out could be the reason why. Yuuji wraps his arms around himself, wincing with every step through the frigid air. Uraume is nothing but a loyal servant, and they would freeze him and every other person within Sukuna’s domain to death if their lord asked it of them. It’s fine. There isn’t much that would make Yuuji feel so inclined to return to the estate, anyway. A death of his choosing might win over the humiliation of dragging himself, half-dead, all the way back home just to end up in the same sorry state by this time tomorrow.
A stoney ridge appears out of the foot of snow on the ground, and Yuuji rounds the perimeter, peering down into the darkness between the rocks. It’s a well, long lost and long forgotten, buried deep within the woods and full three-quarters of the way with melted snow. Further powder pillows upon the wavering surface of the liquid, and Yuuji has half a mind to ask Uraume why they didn’t just freeze the water fully. That is, if he ever gets the chance to. For all he knows, he could be walking towards his death, or towards a land free of Ryomen Sukuna’s heavy hand and watchful eyes. He can’t properly discern which of the two is the best case scenario.
Yuuji leans back from the inground well so as not to fall face-first into it, rubbing at his tender ribs lightly. He sighs heavily and walks past the well.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, he thinks sullenly. How far will I have to keep…
A branch snaps to his right, and Yuuji whips his head to the side. Far off, between a treeline just past the well, lurks a fog-puffing wolf. Dark and scraggly fur lumbers with its skin-and-bone limbs as it stalks slowly towards him. Despite the ultimately helpless position he finds himself in, Yuuji can’t help but smile because the wolf just looks so much like Fushiguro’s Divine Dog: Totality. He misses the mutt like he misses the sweltering warmth of a Summer gale.
The wolf, probably sensing his absurdly misplaced fondness, approaches him quickly. As if to make good on a silent promise, it sinks plaqued and sharpened teeth into the boy’s arm, and Yuuji lets it happen. Maybe a more life-threatening injury will entice Ryomen Sukuna to heal him.
Yuuji sighs when the wolf tugs him forward, teeth dug into his flesh, playing a bloody game of tug-of-war with his limb. Sukuna wouldn’t care if I just dropped dead right here, he thinks.
The wolf tugs harder, nearly making the boy lose his balance. He thinks, under the guiding hand of the pain running up his arm; his abdomen; his everything; of striking, green eyes and a fierce expression flickering dark and then light by the far-off glow of a sparking fire. Start by saving me.
I can’t die here, Yuuji thinks suddenly, pulling his arm back towards himself. The wolf growls impatiently, tugging sharply with a head jerk or two. I can’t just give up.
He stands up suddenly, retching the wolf’s paws from the ground to shake it back and forth with a vicious vigor unbecoming of his torn-up state. “Let go!” he shouts, shaking harder, whipping his whole body round and round to get the beast to drop his arm. “Drop it!”
When the wolf does anything but, digging its teeth deeper still into his arm, Yuuji grits his teeth and kicks at its stomach with his toes. The wolf yips at the pain, but growls thereafter. Yuuji grabs the back of the wolf’s neck with his hand, wincing when his broken fingers splinter further, and bunches them into a fist around fur and skin.
The maw releases him then, the wolf frantic in his movements to be released from the boy’s fierce grip. Yuuji hups and tosses the wolf a few feet away from him. It runs off quickly, yelping loudly as it bolts.
Yuuji dusts his hands together and winces. “Okay,” he tells himself, “Probably shouldn’t’ve let that happen.”
Blood drips sluggishly from the teeth wounds on his arm, blooming flowery beats of red in the ice-coated snow beneath his feet. Yuuji wraps his hand around the worst of the wound and paces back and forth for a while. If he heads back “home” now, Sukuna will be furious. If he sticks around in the snow long enough to lose his way, he’ll die. If he wanders further, becomes worse off for wear, and then goes back to the estate, he’ll wish he’d died.
Yuuji sighs heavily and his lip trembles in reply. He furrows his brow and raises his hands in front of his face slowly. His arms tremble all the way up, and his eyes widen marginally at the sight of off-colored skin that greets him. The discoloration starts at his fingertips, seemingly crawling its way up the back of his hand, and Yuuji blows hot air onto the flesh for a while before stepping back towards whence he came.
Well. I don’t have much of a choice anymore, do I?
The trek back to Ryomen Sukuna’s estate is much more grueling than the hot-headed rush away from it. But, aside from the trail of blood he leaves behind, the light and dazing fuzziness in his head, and the fact that nothing in his field of view appears as clear as it probably ought to, he makes it back okay. Worse for wear, sure, but that was due to no fault of his own, really. Or, maybe it was. Yuuji doesn’t really care if it was his own fault he got into such bad shape. In fact, at the moment, he couldn’t care less that Sukuna is the one who got the whole “nearly too injured to stand now” ball rolling.
Yuuji approaches the entryway slowly, legs shaking from exertion, breath coming out in hot, misty bursts in front of his face. His eyes nearly glue themselves to his cheeks with every blink, and he has to dig his fingers into the bite marks just to keep himself awake and standing.
The door opens before he gets the chance to knock or pray or prepare himself. Ryomen Sukuna stares down at him, four arms crossed in disappointment, and a certain look in his eyes that tells Yuuji just how screwed he is. “Finally back for scraps like the mutt you are? I scratch you behind the ears just a few times and you dare come back begging?”
Yuuji rubs his hands together in the slight warmth of the overhang above the doorway, wincing at the needles that poke into his skin at the motion, the sudden fire in his arms that swims up and down his veins like fish in a river. “Yep,” he says dryly, cold enough not to care what the lord of the land might think of such an informal response. He’s never been one for pleasantries anyway, and he’s made that clear during the duration of his time at the estate. “Woof.”