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Yuuji knelt before the stone, and the cold welcomed him like an old habit. It slipped through the thin barrier of fabric and skin and sank straight into his joints, settling there with the patience of something that knew it would not be asked to leave. The earth beneath him was damp, compacted by years of rain and footfall, but the grave itself stood slightly apart from the ground—as if it had once tried to rise and then thought better of it. The marker’s edges had softened over time, corners rounded into something almost gentle, the way voices grow kinder when there is no longer anyone left to argue with.
Hiragana curved across its face—Fushiguro—carved carefully by hands that had trembled once and then steadied themselves. Each stroke had been intentional. Each line had known exactly what it was meant to say. Now the rain had chipped at them, eroded their certainty, blurred their sharpness until the characters seemed less written than remembered. Yuuji traced them again and again with his eyes—not reading, never reading—but following them the way one follows the outline of an old scar: familiar, intimate, incapable of surprising him anymore.
Fondly, one might have said, if they were careless with language. But fondness implied warmth, something alive, something that might look back at you. What sat in Yuuji’s gaze was thinner than that. The stone gave him nothing in return. No reflection. No acknowledgment. No sign that anyone else came here to remember. No hands to scrub away the moss or straighten offerings tipped sideways by wind or rain. The grave existed in a state of quiet neglect, half-reclaimed by the soil, as if the world itself had already begun the slow, unceremonious work of forgetting.
Yuuji didn’t know why he kept coming back.
The thought arrived every time with the dull inevitability of gravity: You shouldn’t be here. It had no heat to it anymore, no real conviction—just the residue of a rule learned long ago and never questioned closely enough to be dismantled. And yet his body ignored it. His knees bent. His weight lowered. He arranged himself before the grave with the obedience of someone answering a summons they didn’t remember agreeing to, but felt compelled to honor anyway.
It’s just… it’ll be lonely without you around, Fushiguro.
The words lived entirely inside his head. Saying them aloud again would have felt obscene, like confessing to something he’d already been forgiven for without ever admitting to. He folded his arms over his knees and rested his chin against the hard curve of bone, shoulders rounding inward as if he could make himself smaller, less noticeable—even here, alone. His fingers worried at the cuff of his sleeve, pinching, releasing, pinching again, a nervous rhythm that never quite resolved into stillness.
Above him, the sky was a washed-out blue smeared thin with grey, color diluted to the point of indecision. Even the weather seemed unwilling to commit.
A ladybug crept along the edge of a nearby leaf, its shell an almost vulgar red against the graveyard’s muted palette. It paused, antennae flicking as if tasting the air, wings shuddering open and shut without lifting it from the surface. A bead of rain clung to the leaf’s tip, trembling under the weight of itself. The insect stepped forward—and the droplet swallowed it whole.
The water fell.
It struck the stone with a soft, dull sound, spreading briefly before narrowing into a thin line as gravity pulled it downward. The ladybug thrashed once, legs scrabbling against nothing, its brightness smearing into the grey of the marker before disappearing into the soil below.
Yuuji watched the entire thing without blinking.
Mourning, he wondered distantly. Is that what this is meant to be?
The question hovered unanswered, suspended between inhale and exhale. It didn’t fit. It never had. Fushiguro Megumi had been gone for decades now. The sharpness of loss should have dulled by this point, worn smooth by repetition and time until it became manageable, distant—something you carried without thinking about the weight of it. Grief was supposed to have an expiration date. At least, that was what people said. At least, that was what Yuuji had told himself when he realized he was still coming here long after it had become socially acceptable to stop.
Grieving, then?
That didn’t sit right either. Megumi had died well, as far as sorcerers went. Peacefully. Surrounded by voices that loved him. Yuuji had been there—close enough to feel the warmth leave his hand, close enough to hear the steady certainty in Megumi’s final breath. There had been no unfinished business. No last-minute confessions clawing their way out. No dramatic regrets demanding absolution.
His ending had been complete.
Yuuji’s fingers curled faintly against his sleeve.
Something warm flickered through his chest—too brief to settle, too indistinct to name properly. Jealousy, perhaps. Not the sharp, ugly kind that burned the throat and poisoned the tongue. This was quieter. Thinner. Like standing outside a room and realizing someone else had been allowed to close the door from the inside.
“Sorry, Fushiguro.” His voice was lower this time, roughened by disuse. He leaned forward, knuckles brushing the stone before his palm followed, flattening against its cool surface. He dragged his hand along the carved grooves, dirt collecting beneath his nails, moss giving way with soft, damp resistance. He didn’t clean it. He didn’t try to restore anything. He only traced—disturbed, altered—leaving behind the faint evidence of touch.
Beside him lay the bouquet: wildflowers bound together with twine, stems uneven, petals mismatched. He’d picked them himself from the park down the road—the one with the crooked benches and the pond that always smelled faintly of algae. The same park where laughter had once come easily. Where Megumi had stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, expression permanently unimpressed, complaining about pollen and shedding blossoms as if beauty were a personal inconvenience.
“Ne, Fushiguro? You’re kind of a pessimist, aren’t you?”
Yuuji had said it lightly, voice balanced between curiosity and mischief, rolling a daisy stem between his fingers. The flower bent but didn’t break. He knit his brows in exaggerated concern, lips pulling down just enough to sell the performance. Sunlight caught in his lashes, turned his eyes painfully bright.
“Are you okay?” he added, head tilting. “It seems, like… extremely miserable to live like that.” The sarcasm arrived late, tacked on like an afterthought.
“Oh, shut it, Itadori.”
Megumi’s hand came down on Yuuji’s head harder than necessary. The sound—knuckles meeting pink hair—was sharp enough to make him wince after the fact. Annoyance flared on instinct, rehearsed and familiar. But beneath it, something else stirred. Something he refused to look at directly.
“Ow—ow! Okay!” Yuuji laughed, loud and unguarded, ducking into the daisies and bringing his hands up to shield his head. His shoulders shook like the blow had truly hurt, though the grin splitting his face betrayed him completely. “I get it, I get it! …You’re aurafarming, I know.”
“Tsk.” Megumi clicked his tongue, irritation automatic. His hand lingered where it had landed, fingers sinking briefly into Yuuji’s hair. It was warm. Softer than expected. The strands slid easily between his fingers, catching just enough to invite the faintest curl of his hand—an unconscious tightening that sent heat crawling up his arm.
Too aware, suddenly, he pulled back. The withdrawal was sharp, instinctive, like touching something hot without realizing it was burning. His fingers curled into his own palm, nails biting down hard enough to ground him.
Too close, something unspoken warned. Not like that. Not between friends.
Yuuji hadn’t noticed. Or if he had, he didn’t give it the weight it deserved.
The day itself seemed oblivious to the tension it cradled so carelessly. The sky was unbroken blue, shadows crisp, colors too vivid to ignore. Somewhere uphill, Nobara’s laughter rang out—bright, sharp as bells. She lounged beside Gojo, the two of them sharing gossip and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Yuta had dropped them off earlier, smiling politely, saying, “I coincidentally had these freshly made!” as if coincidence were something you could manufacture on purpose.
Megumi looked back at them. Nobara caught the light easily—confident, effortless. That was what he was supposed to want. The script was simple. A girl like her. A future that moved in straight lines.
He looked back down.
Yuuji sat cross-legged now, threading broken flower stems together with clumsy determination. Petals littered the grass around him like fallen feathers. His tongue peeked out slightly as he concentrated, brow furrowed, hands careful in a way Megumi rarely saw during fights.
When Yuuji finally looked up, he lifted the crooked flower crown like a triumph.
The smile he wore then—wide, open, aimed directly at Megumi—hit harder than any curse. It lodged beneath his ribs, stole the air from his lungs for one treacherous moment. His chest tightened. His pulse stuttered. Warmth spread where it absolutely should not have.
Megumi huffed, schooling his face into indifference, shoving his hands into his pockets as if they’d betrayed him. Yuuji only laughed, sunlight clinging to him like a second skin. A ladybug curled on the flowers in his hands.
The ladybug sat dead on the concrete.
Yuuji lifted the flowers and set them at the base of the grave, adjusting them once, then again, until they leaned just right. Even now, he thought faintly, you’d hate these.
His hand lingered for a moment longer than necessary, fingers flexing as if reluctant to let go. Then he pulled back, leaving the stone cold and unchanged—just as it had been when he arrived, just as it would be long after he left.
“Aren’t you Itadori Yuuji?” The voice reached him from behind, careful and professional, shaped by years of speaking softly among the dead. It belonged to one of the caretakers—one of the people hired to tend to graves that no longer had hands to return to them. The sound of it disturbed the air the way a pebble disturbs the surface of water: briefly, almost apologetically, but enough to leave ripples.
Yuuji didn’t turn. His eyes stayed on the stone. On the softened grooves of hiragana. On the lichen creeping patiently across the name that had never been his to say out loud. The question hovered behind him, waiting to be answered, but it felt oddly distant—as though it had been asked of someone else, someone who still fit neatly inside the shape of that name.
Itadori Yuuji.
It sounded unfamiliar now. Like a word repeated too many times until it lost meaning, until it became nothing but sound and memory. A name that belonged to laughter that rang too loud, to a boy who moved forward without asking permission, who believed—stubbornly—in the idea that love was something you could give freely without consequence.
That boy felt very far away.
“It’s Fushiguro now,” Yuuji said at last.