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Yuuji has known grief his entire life, even before conception. He was a product of it—born a descendant of mourning, the tapestry that made him having been woven intrinsically with thread of a grief that birthed him, nursed him, held him close. He had known it in the death of the mother that did not make him, had known it when it was his father that he vaguely remembers. Had seen it when it was his grandfather, his teacher, his comrades, his friends. There was more death to his existence than life, statistically speaking, though Yuuji barely spoke in statistics. Megumi often did, though.
He had wondered, especially during his student days at Jujutsu High all those years ago: do I even feel grief anymore, or is it just who I am? He had thought of it as his default, with how much of it he had to endure—it’s a question that plagued his mind back when he thought those would be the only graves he would be visiting, before the bodies started piling up even more, as sorcery stays an incessant thief of youth, the life of a Jujutsu sorcerer spent with one foot out the door and into the sweet release of death.
But then, before he even had the chance to turn thirty, it was time for his Megumi to be grieved, and Yuuji had realized then that grief had become him. He might as well have been a vessel for it, if he wasn't already. Even with how much Yuuji’s soul had grown accustomed to grief, had sat beside it till grief had become an emotion felt in passing, had been forced to sport it like it was nothing but a chip on his shoulder, it rejected Megumi’s death like trying to force water and oil to harmoniously blend. An act so impossible the chemical compounds could not come together to form it; even his grave looked wrong, holding Megumi’s ashes as if it had any right to him, as if the urn knew how to best hold him, as if the dirt that would eventually become of him could ever live up to Yuuji—Yuuji, who had known him so intimately, who had sworn to always keep him safe, preserve his life and prolong it. It was all just wrong. Yuuji could not compute it, would stare at the characters engraved on his tombstone like they would one day unscramble, form a different name, hold a different body.
It had been Nobara who stepped in and pried Yuuji off of Megumi’s grave, eventually. He started falling asleep there. Couldn’t remember the last time he had brushed his teeth or showered, at this point. Meals were a distant thing.
“Yuuji, we—we’re all worried. You have to go home. You can come back to mine, if you’d like, but you can’t just stay here,” Nobara said, crouching down to meet Yuuji at eye level, voice stern but her good eye looked at him softly, maybe pitifully. But the grief had taken a hold of her, too, evident in the abundance of white hairs on her scalp, the dark purple under her eye, the hollowness to her cheekbones. Yuuji could barely stand to look, his own grief too much to face.
Yuuji sat on of the foot of the grave, the only distance he was willing to make. A bit more than this and he’d hurl. “I can’t. I can’t go back there,” Yuuji replied, voice hardly recognizable. He fumbled with his hands, rubbed the stub of his left ring finger over and over. He couldn’t tell if it calmed him down or made him feel worse, but he did it anyway.
“You don’t have to, Yuuji. I told you, you’re always welcome to stay with me. You always have been.”
It would be the logical, healthy thing to do, Yuuji knows. Stay at Nobara’s to recuperate, build up the courage to go back to his and Megumi’s apartment that they shared for over a decade. There’s still milk cartons in the fridge, and Megumi’s unfinished book probably still lies dormant on his bedside table. Their bed is most likely still unmade from the last time they shared it, which would be the morning of Megumi’s death, and Yuuji would find their cups left un-coastered on the coffee table leaving rings on the wooden surface from the breakfast they had that day. Yuuji remembers that Megumi had done the laundry but hadn’t folded it yet, left abandoned in the dryer, and he distantly wonders if the heater is still on. Megumi usually liked it on.
Yuuji shook his head, shook the images of their apartment away. “But how, Nobara? How—“ his voice cracked with each syllable, every word cutting his tongue red. It felt so physically exhausting to speak when it wasn’t whispers directed towards Megumi’s grave.
“How what, Yuuji?”
How am I supposed to keep living? Yuuji wanted to ask, desperately wanting Nobara to have the answer, because he will have to, in the most literal sense—he had recently come to the conclusion that he cannot age. Maybe he had known it for a while, but shoved it deep down into a corner of his brain that Megumi knew how to quiet, only there was no Megumi to do that now. If Yuuji is going to live for centuries, couldn’t he just spend them all there, by Megumi’s side? Who was it hurting? If it’s himself, well—he knows what it’s like to hurt, and it cannot kill him, unfortunately.
“I don’t know how to keep going,” Yuuji mumbled, voice still shaky like he’s unsure how to use it. He glanced to his right, eyes hovering over Megumi’s grave, let his fingers graze over it, the roughness of it as familiar to Yuuji as his own skin now. The coarseness of the granite, the wet of the dirt and the grass, the clothes on his skin, his greasy hair—they were the only things Yuuji had felt in days, or weeks. Time became immeasurable. He wondered how much worse that would get the ‘older’ he grows.
Not too long ago, it had been Megumi’s lips on his own, or Megumi’s silky soft hair and the warmth of his skin that Yuuji would be feeling. Megumi’s body, down to his teeth, his tongue, his spit. Yuuji had touched his soul, the walls of it, had had Megumi at an arm’s length consistently since childhood, and he’s so afraid to forget it, more so now that he knows for a fact that he has all the time in the world to forget. He has the photos and the videos to see his face, to hear his voice and his laughter and to prove that Megumi was indeed alive at some point, knows his cologne and body wash to try and emulate his scent but how will he ever feel him again? How will he ever feel anything again?
He knows, everybody will die and Yuuji will have to live, and it will only be left to him to keep their memory alive, to speak of them in the way that they deserve—with love, with dignity. With humanity. It’s why he can’t help but think that their memories deserve better than to live in his brain, which he cannot even fully classify as human. He still got up off of Megumi’s grave, though, with time. For Nobara. Went back to exorcizing curses, for the civilians. He has a role, so he will fulfill it, but he knows, that when Megumi died, that was the point in which he stopped seeing himself as a human being. Maybe it was because it always Megumi that reminded him that he was one—had made a few attempts to convince Yuuji to leave sorcery behind, to run away, to not be a weapon. If only Yuuji had listened.
He visits Megumi on a daily basis, so long as he is in Tokyo, where he is buried next to Tsumiki and Gojo. The Jujutsu graveyard never gets smaller, so Yuuji’s visits towards all his friends are frequent. Yuuji had been born with that grief and from it, so maybe that is why everything that becomes of him the older he gets feels so lifeless. He does his duties as a sorcerer, and only gets stronger, which does not help him in feeling more human and less curse. Megumi would remind you, though. He would always remind you. He gambles most of his earnings away, because there will always be more the next day—the lack of sorcerers that match his level of skill grows with time, so he takes on more missions than a person probably should. He looks at himself in the mirror at 80 years old and barely looks a day over 25. He struggles to find a person staring back at him.
When Yuuji subtracts the only human acts he still really does, which would be eating and shitting, he’s left with the pattern of exorcize, gamble, graveyard, exorcize, gamble, graveyard, exorcize, gamble, graveyard. Sure, gambling and visiting dead friends is very much human but after about 200 years it loses that tie, because no one on Earth has ever grieved as long as Yuuji has, and that can be statistically proven. He’s got the entire world beat in that area. Yuuji still gets ID’ed at almost every pachinko parlor and that kinda strips away any humanness he felt towards gambling. It just becomes a place to throw away his money, because he has no use for it.
He travels when he has to, for work, and he does it enough times to know the world does not interest him. Maybe it could’ve, in another life, where he would have died a normal death at 80 years old and be buried next to Megumi. Maybe they could’ve both lived to 80, a foolish dream of his back when he was a student with an incessant crush, picturing them getting married at the altar, building a simple life, growing old together. He’s around 200 years old and still wears Megumi’s clothes. They’re worn out as all hell but he takes better care of them than anything else he owns, sews them up if they ever need it. They unfortunately discontinued the line of body wash Megumi used but the cologne is still there, though Yuuji has used it so much his mind doesn’t really associate it with Megumi anymore, at least not subconsciously. He’s read every book Megumi had ever loved more than once—a human act. Even in Megumi’s death, he’s still the only one that tethers Yuuji to Earth, still the one that reminds him of his humanity, or at least what’s left of it.
Yuuji was stupid for ever doubting just how permanent Megumi remain in his mind. Maybe it’s the lack of a replacement, or just people in his life in general, but Megumi’s laugh echos in his brain just as loud and crisp as if it was still 2018. Maybe his superhuman body gave him a superhuman memory, too, because nothing about Megumi has been forgettable. Yuuji is sure he’d able to replicate Megumi’s fingerprints if he needed to, would draw each line perfectly. It’s a funny thing, really, just how much he remembers Megumi. Yuuji at least thinks Megumi would find it funny, like, it’s been 170-ish years after my death you still think about me every time you smell ginger?
Yuuji does that a lot, has conversations out loud with an imaginary Megumi or Nobara or sometimes Gojo who do not exist. At first, it started as just an internal dialogue, but he’s grown old enough to not give a fuck, just speaks out loud into the air surrounding him as if they are right in front of him, undeterred by the judgey stares he gets from the surrounding people. He’ll outlive them all anyway. The Tokyo that Megumi, Nobara, and Gojo had known is a lot different than the one he sees, their favorite restaurants and arcades all gone, Jujutsu High getting refurbished—but their graves stay the same, always. Yuuji will scrub them down when they need a good cleaning, will still leave flowers.
Yuuji is around 250 years old and longs to die. His body will never grow tired, he knows, but he feels it like a wild animal held captive and caged—his soul begging to be freed. It wants out, and the monotony of life does not help in hindering its impatience. Even if society does evolve in any form, Yuuji is too detached from it to notice, and the Earth reaps what its people always sow: more destruction than even Yuuji, the most powerful, could ever fix. Does he even want to fix it? Yuuji’s unsure of any wants that go beyond thirst, hunger, and sleep. Everything else is unattainable and pointless—to hear the laughter of his old classmates actually traveling through his ears, to feel the real touch of his one and only love, to smile upon a friend that sees him as Yuuji, the person that he once was, and not the pawn to be played by the Higher Ups that never cease to exist. One thing he is sure of, though, is that when death does come, he will welcome it. Maybe it is in his own death where he will become human again.
Centuries pass, as they do, as Yuuji had predicted they would, time an inevitable flame that cannot be doused. He wonders what will become of his corpse when he eventually dies—he has his own theories about turning into a cursed object, but he has nothing to really support it, though he does accept it if that is his fate in the end, as he has no other choice. Yuuji lived to be 300 years old, a nice even number to end on, he thinks to himself in his very final moments. He’s done this before—that is to say, die—so it’s not an entirely new sensation, the sudden overwhelming sense of peace, the suffocating serenity. It’s strange, how familiar it still feels to him. What comes after death when you are no longer a vessel? Yuuji had never gotten to this checkpoint before. What awaits a soul as old as his? Is a weapon needed there, too? He doesn’t know how much of a fight he has left in him anymore after 300 years, but he dies with his hands curled up into fists just in case, each finger slowly uncurling with each final breath he takes, alone with no one to surround him as he finally succumbs to his injuries, but his soul is free at last. At last.
It’s loud, where he lands, but the sounds filter in and out like he’s recovering from an old ear infection, muffled and ringing, and then a clap! that shudders as he’s thrown on stable ground, like having been launched from a loose cannon. It’s so intensely bright Yuuji fleetingly believes he’s made it to the sun, for whatever reason, but it’s a cold tiled floor that he was thrown up onto, squeaky clean and glistening. It’s not not like being in a dream, but Yuuji’s had 300 years worth of dreams to distinguish the difference: he is relatively conscious. He lifts a hand just to know that he can lift it, squeezes it to know that he can squeeze it. Conscious decision after conscious decision to confirm that he’s not in some weird, hyper-realistic dream.
But it’s not like being alive, either. His body does not seem to carry the score of the 300 years he had lived, suddenly feeling weightless and feather-like as he gets up on his two feet, an easy rise, everything appearing fuzzy around the edges like he’s just put eyedrops in, like he’s seeing for the first time. He moves his eyes and the fuzziness is like dandelion fluff flying in the wind. He knows, he remembers, the pappus in the air as a tuft of white lands on the cheek of the person he loved. Megumi. Fushiguro Megumi. It had fallen on his beautiful face all those years ago and Yuuji was there to pick it up, had told Megumi to make a wish.
“Eyelashes, Yuuji. You only make wishes with fallen eyelashes,” Megumi had said, the sound of the memory now booming all around him.
“Well, these do look like Gojo-sensei’s eyelashes, so…” Yuuji had replied with a grin, holding the dandelion fluff in his hand tightly as to not let even the smallest gust of wind blow Megumi’s wish away.
Megumi did not look convinced, so Yuuji pinched his cheek with his free hand, right where the fluff had initially landed. Blood rushed up to the surface of his skin where Yuuji’s fingers were, and then around it in a subtle blush. “C’mon, Megumi. A wish.”
Yuuji looked into Megumi’s eyes intently, hand cupping Megumi’s face, thumb gently brushing over his skin. The feeling of his skin. Yuuji itches at his own hands now to feel it, feel it, remember it.
Megumi sighed, but it was a sweet and little thing, the one that meant he would be giving in to Yuuji’s idiotic request. He smiled softly. “Fine, fine. I’ll make my wish.”
Megumi took Yuuji’s hand in his, faced the palm keeping the dandelion fluff safe upwards as he brought the hand near his mouth. He closed both of his eyes, and for whatever reason, Yuuji did too, and then he felt Megumi’s small exhale brushing the fluff away, up and back into the air.
He never told Yuuji what that wish was, said it would be bad luck to say it out loud, like birthday wishes. Yuuji smiles at the memory—he lived what had felt like a thousand lifetimes since it occurred, yet it shines so bright in his minds eye as if it had just happened, or is currently happening.
Yuuji looks up ahead of him, finally, and sees wide, floor to ceiling windows in a hallway that stretches for what seems like endless miles, waiting-area seats adorning the vast corridors, blank screens on the columns around him, a plane past the window screens that’s slowly moving, about to take off. An airport? It’s certainly not an airport that Yuuji recognizes, that’s for sure, but perhaps an amalgamation of every airport he’s been in. The plane keeps moving on the tarmac and Yuuji takes a few steps closer to the window, sees the plane up close. The entire plane is evidently empty, even the cockpit, and there’s no traffic control on the ground, but the plane moves nonetheless, soundless and is if holding no weight at all as it lifts up off the ground and begins its ascend, Yuuji’s eyes tracking it as it goes, palm of his hand on the glass now. It’s a weird thing, but Yuuji doesn’t feel the need to question it—how a plane is flying with no pilot, why it’s not carrying any passengers, where it’s going—his soul filters the information like it knows, this makes sense, this here makes sense.
Maybe he stands and looks out that window for hours, but, Yuuji’s perception of time was already slippery enough back on Earth, so it stands no chance getting measured here, where time feels like it does not exist. He does abandon his post and turn eventually, and that same dandelion-fluff-fuzzy-feeling smooths over his vision and unveils a suddenly very busy airport, with an unmistakable, clear-as-day Megumi right in front of him. His Megumi, within arm’s reach.
“Wh—Megumi?” Yuuji gasps, leaping forward towards him, shortening the gap between them and Megumi…reacts? He smiles, he breathes, in front of Yuuji now where Yuuji can just simply extend a hand out and touch him—but he falters. His mind could be tricking him. This could be a curse. How can this be?
“Yuuji,” Megumi says simply, corners of his mouth lifting up like he cannot fight off the smile. He seems real. He’s real. Yuuji’s not imagining it, he’s not making it up, and he knows because he tests it quickly by trying to imagine Megumi, like, suddenly doing a backflip or something equally as asinine to see if it will happen, but it doesn’t. It’s really just Megumi, in the flesh.
“How—what, you’re—“ there are centuries worth of words hanging on the tip of his tongue but he doesn’t get to say them because Megumi hugs him, wraps his arms around him in an embrace that Yuuji had not felt in—well, since Megumi had died. Way too long. It’s all it takes for Yuuji’s eyes to well up with tears, shaky arms going around Megumi to feel him, finally feel him again, nuzzle his head into his shoulder, know that he’s here. He’s here. “Megumi…”
Eventually, they let go of each other, but their fingers stay intertwined as they breathe each other in, Yuuji letting out small giggles in disbelief as Megumi looks at him like he’s waiting for Yuuji to catch up. He looks the exact same as the day he had died all those years ago—still so young. Too young to have died when he did, with barely any wrinkles to his face, just a small, barely-there thing near his eyebrows, and still that unruly black hair that never got the chance to go white.
He knows it’s not a dream, but Yuuji still asks, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
Megumi laughs, a small thing, and shakes his head. Yuuji feels so light. “You’re not dreaming.”
“So this is…” Yuuji starts, and Megumi gives him a sincere look that Yuuji just, understands. He just gets it, even with no explanation. This is where his soul has gone, come to reunite with what it loves, and he doesn’t know yet if there’s an after or what his soul has left to do, but he knows there was a before, and he sees it all around him, in front of him. Everyone his soul has loved and carried over, iridescent and pulsing with vibrations of a love he knows so intricately as it rumbles towards him like the drum of an old song your heart will always recognize. For once, Yuuji is not born out of grief, but out of and into love instead.
Yuuji doesn’t ask how long it’s been, because he understands somehow that it doesn’t work like that—so he asks something else, something fuzzy. “You remember that old wish you made, all those years ago?”
Yuuji gently rubs a thumb over Megumi’s cheek where that dandelion fluff had landed, feels the real heat of his skin. Megumi smiles. “I remember.”
“Still think it would be bad luck to tell me?” Yuuji asks.
Megumi shakes his head, takes that hand of Yuuji’s that was on his face and gives it a kiss. He shrugs, a wistful look in his eyes. “Just wished for you to be happy.”
Yuuji thinks back to the years where he used to celebrate his birthday, back when it mattered, back when Megumi was there to be with him. Back when his age was something to celebrate. He thinks to blowing out the candles, looking at Megumi afterwards who would always be beside him.
“That was always my wish for you, too.”
Maybe it was a wordless exchange made only with the eyes of their souls, or maybe there were words spoken between them in a language only they understand—Yuuji doesn’t know, but he knows a vow was made between them in that in-between place, knows of the contract their souls had signed to be together again, to make each other happy. He knows he will be born out of and into love then, too, and he also knows no timeline will exist from now on where their wishes to and for each other will not be fulfilled, a promise everlasting.