Chapter Text
More than fifty years have passed since the death of his husband.
Megumi left one night like any other.
A night in which the book he was reading never reached its end. The bookmark remained still between the worn pages of an old edition of Sōseki Natsume, an author Yuuji could never forget because Megumi always said his characters thought too much and lived too little.
He remembers the goodnight kiss. Holding him in his arms the way he always did: Megumi a little lower than his chin, their legs intertwined beneath the warm sheets. He remembers perfectly the grocery list his husband left on the dining table, written in that small, orderly handwriting Megumi had since they were students.
Bread. Eggs. Milk. Yogurt and good butter—he had underlined that word. His favorite sweets were written there too, the ones Megumi never forgot to buy for him.
The ingredients for the cake they would bake together for Kugisaki’s birthday were there as well, even though she would complain about them not buying her something more expensive. But he also remembers Megumi arriving one afternoon with the seasonal handbag Kugisaki had practically demanded, pretending to be annoyed while Yuuji could already imagine how she would scream with excitement.
He remembers the expression lines on his husband’s face as he reached middle age. Small changes that appeared little by little at the corners of his eyes and that Yuuji never cared about.
He remembers the absurd skincare routine Kugisaki had forced him to adopt, one that cost a fortune and that Megumi accepted with ease. In the mornings, Megumi would stand in front of the bathroom mirror applying lotions Yuuji didn’t understand: first an essence, then a light cream, then a thicker one.
Megumi followed each step as if he were completing an endless list. Yuuji would simply watch him from the doorway, half asleep, wondering how anyone could have the patience for so many little bottles.
It was routine, calm, and other times chaotic. Especially when Yuuji dragged them both into a shared shower.
But those times belonged to them, and that made them more valuable than anything else.
Yuuji remembers turning off the light on his nightstand and covering his husband with that gray blanket Megumi loved so much and that Yuuji hated because it always slipped onto the floor.
He remembers telling him that the next morning he would go for a run before making them breakfast. Megumi wanted Western food again. Yuuji said he would stop by the small bakery on the corner for bread, the one that opened before dawn and always smelled like warm butter.
He remembers the small diamond of his wedding ring shining in the light filtering through the curtains while he stroked his husband’s unruly hair.
He remembers telling Megumi not to drink so much coffee in the morning. Lately the doses of caffeine had been getting higher, and the coffee stronger as well. Yuuji loved him so much.
He remembers his husband’s last laugh. The steady rhythm of his breathing in the quiet of the night. The warmth of his skin and the way his hands would slip beneath Yuuji’s shirt, always searching for the same place over his chest. He remembers the simple happiness of having him close, of feeling his warm weight against his body, of knowing that, in his arms, Megumi was both home and refuge at once.
Yuuji remembers waking up with his husband still in his arms and the simple happiness of having him beside him. He remembers speaking to him softly, trying to wake him with a bit of playful bargaining, promising to make French toast if he opened his eyes.
But Megumi didn’t move.
He remembers touching his face, gently at first, still half asleep, still convinced he was only sleeping deeply. He remembers calling him again, shaking his shoulder with a nervous laugh that didn’t quite belong to him.
Megumi didn’t respond. The cold of his skin came too quickly.
Yuuji remembers trying first the only thing he knew to defy death. His hands trembled as he tried to channel reverse cursed energy the way he had seen it done so many times. He tried to recall every detail of Ieiri’s explanations, every movement, every breath.
But the energy did not respond the way it should have.
The fear began to grow with every passing second.
He remembers taking the phone with clumsy hands and calling Ieiri. He remembers his voice breaking as he tried to explain what was happening.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Then Ieiri’s firm voice, trying to give him instructions.
“Yuuji, stop that. Start compressions now. I’m on my way.”
He remembers pulling Megumi off the bed almost by force, tangling in the sheets as he tried to move his body without letting go of the phone.
The weight of his husband surprised him; he had to hold him as best he could, awkwardly sliding him to the edge of the mattress before letting him fall to the floor, the desperation visible in his movements. The phone slipped from his hand and fell beside him as he knelt next to Megumi, adjusting his head with trembling fingers before placing his hands on his chest to begin the compressions.
And then pressing.
Once.
Another.
Another.
Counting out loud as if each number could force Megumi’s heart to start beating again.
But the chest did not move. And the silence in the room kept growing.
He remembers screaming, asking for help, begging for a miracle.
He remembers Ieiri’s face when she arrived, accompanied by Ijichi. He remembers how she didn’t say anything at first, how she pressed two fingers to Megumi’s neck and then withdrew her hand too quickly, as if the body were colder than she had expected.
He remembers the way she avoided looking at him when she told him what Yuuji already knew.
He remembers the unmoving weight of Megumi’s body when he tried to hold him again. He remembers how he held him too tightly, as if his own warmth could give some life back to him.
He remembers speaking to him in a low voice, telling him so many promises and plans for that day, as if he could still hear him.
How holding his face and the affection in his hair might be enough to wake him from that stubborn sleep that refused to bring him back to the present.
He remembers that someone tried to separate them.
Yuuji didn’t allow it at first. He clung to him with a desperation he didn’t even know he could feel, hiding his face in his cold neck, refusing to let go while he cried without stopping.
They had to pull him away by force much later.
He remembers the hands pulling at his arms, the voices asking him to let him go.
But the only thing Yuuji could think was that Megumi was still there, cold despite having covered his body with his own. That if he let go, then yes… he would lose him forever, and Yuuji was not ready for that.
He remembers Kugisaki holding him while he screamed until he lost his voice. He remembers how she supported him when he could no longer stand, how she forced him to sit, to drink water, to swallow food that tasted like nothing.
He remembers how she endured his anger. The harsh treatment and the words he should never have said to his friend. She had lost him too.
He remembers the open casket before the cremation. His husband’s still face, too peaceful, as if he were only sleeping and someone had forgotten to tell him when to wake up.
He also remembers the argument about the autopsy. The higher-ups of the school insisted; they said it was necessary to understand what had happened. But Yuuji did not allow it. He was not going to let anyone else touch Megumi’s body.
Sukuna had already done enough in the past, had taken his body and used it for things no human being should have to endure. Yuuji would not allow them to open him now, not after everything that had happened. There was resistance, more than he expected, but in the end they respected his decision. Megumi was cremated without anyone ever knowing what had stopped his heart that morning.
He remembers the strange smell of the funeral flowers, one he could never forget. The hands of so many acquaintances squeezing his shoulder. The words no one knew how to say and that Yuuji barely heard.
He remembers the gravestone.
Megumi’s name carved in stone, beside his sister’s… and Gojo-sensei’s.
A family with a tragic ending and too many wounds that never fully healed.
Yuuji knew it better than anyone. His husband had spent years mourning two people who had left in a cruel way, without goodbye, leaving behind a silence that never truly went away.
He remembers the nights when Megumi woke up startled, his breathing unsteady and his fingers trembling against the sheets. Sometimes he screamed; other times he simply sat in the darkness of the bedroom, staring at the wall as if he could still see something there.
It was not physical pain.
It was memory.
There were days when Sukuna’s ghost returned to torment him. Not as a real presence, but as fragments of memories forcing their way into his mind: images of death, of blood, of screams that were not his but had once passed through his body.
Megumi blamed himself most of the time.
He said his weakness had allowed someone else to do so many terrible things using his body. He said his sister and his father figure had gone because of him, because he hadn’t been strong enough to resist, because of that desire to disappear that had once followed him everywhere.
Those were the worst days.
Megumi wouldn’t let him enter that kind of pain. He was stubborn even about that, raising a silent wall every time Yuuji tried to get too close to those wounds.
It was difficult to learn not to insist.
But with time, Yuuji understood that he could help in other ways.
In a warm meal waiting on the table when Megumi returned late from a mission. In the quiet music filling the apartment on silent nights. In the sweets he bought on his way home because he knew that, even if Megumi pretended indifference, he always ended up eating them.
In the long embraces that asked for no explanations.
There were good days too. Most of them were.
Simple days, almost forgettable for anyone else.
Shared laughter while preparing dinner. Silly arguments about what movie to watch when neither of them had the energy to decide. The sound of Megumi moving around the apartment early in the morning, opening the windows to let the cold air in while the smell of coffee began to fill the kitchen.
The brush of their hands when they passed too close in the hallway, and how Megumi would drag him shortly after into an empty room to ruin him the way only he knew how. The small notes Megumi sometimes left on the table when he left earlier. The plants they always forgot to water until Kugisaki came to visit and complained about what terrible parents they were to their Monsteras, which were supposed to be so easy to take care of.
Warm love in a constant presence. In knowing that someone was there beside him. In the sound of familiar footsteps moving through the house.
Simple days. Days that would not continue now.
But whose memories, Yuuji knew, had no expiration date.
His husband left in silence. Like those quiet mornings when the world seemed to move a little more slowly.
Not in a heroic death or with a cursed wound.
He simply left in peace, held in Yuuji’s arms, with plans yet to be fulfilled, books yet to be read, and a breakfast waiting to be made.
He left after a little more than two decades of marriage.
After thousands of small days that had seemed insignificant at the time, but that Yuuji now kept as if they were treasures.
And with a surname Yuuji had sworn he would never abandon.
[...]
Sᴇɴᴅᴀɪ, Mɪʏᴀɢɪ.
2118
Yuuji spent more than fifty years without his husband.
They were years carrying a marriage that had ended more than half a century ago, like a story that time refused to close completely.
Between the end of cursed energy and no new sorcerers left in the world, the world had changed more than anyone could have imagined. Yuuji had to move forward anyway. With plans for the future. With responsibilities. With guilt and sins he knew he would carry for many more years.
It had been a drastic change.
Even Kugisaki forgave him with time, after practically disappearing from his life for several years.
Megumi’s death had been the trigger for everything.
Yuuji didn’t want to lose anyone else again. But he also knew it was a useless battle. Life always found new ways to keep moving forward, even when someone would rather stay behind.
Kugisaki also passed away a few years later. The death of his friend had been just as difficult.
But loneliness was not new to him. Only now it was a little different.
With time he realized he had to find a purpose. Something to hold on to while he waited for a death that would probably take centuries to find him.
The dojo had been a decision made calmly.
Thought about for years.
It was also a quiet tribute to the teacher who had shaped him: Gojo.
The financial side had never been a problem. Megumi had left him a fortune.
Yuuji still didn’t know when his husband had prepared all the necessary documents for that. But when he died, the lawyers appeared with folders, signatures, and transfers that seemed far too organized for someone who always claimed to hate paperwork.
Most of it came from what remained of the old Zenin clan.
After its fall, the properties had been divided, sold, or absorbed by other families. Megumi, as the last legitimate heir, had ended up with more money than he had ever wanted to admit out loud.
He had never cared about it.
But he did care about what it could be used for.
Yuuji suspected that was why he had prepared everything so far in advance. Now he carried a bank account capable of sustaining a quiet life for decades… perhaps centuries.
Sometimes he wondered if Megumi would have agreed with what he had done. With these plans. With the plans that now helped ordinary civilians. With that place where he taught a form of combat that no longer had anything to do with curses.
A small dojo. Modest. But full of life and memories that brought him a little peace.
Yuuji loved his students. He taught karate and self-defense to small children, teenagers, and a few adults who came looking for discipline or simply a way to exhaust their bodies after a long day.
With time he had hired certified instructors. Good people, patient with the younger students and firm with the older ones. None of them knew that the owner of the dojo was still, in secret, a sorcerer.
Yuuji didn’t mind keeping that secret. But it was necessary.
The dojo was a good distraction… but it was also more than that.
A way to feel that time still had a purpose, and a glimpse back at the past.
[...]
That day —the day the axis of his world quietly shifted back into place— was particularly cold. One of those unpredictable days when the weather in Sendai changed abruptly and the sky seemed unable to decide whether it wanted rain or wind.
In the past, Yuuji would not have carried an umbrella.
But Megumi had taught him to be more careful, more cautious. So now he carried one with him. Sometimes he wondered if his husband would be proud of those small changes, wherever he might be.
He was taking the ring from the chain he wore beneath his shirt to place it on his finger when he noticed that one of his students was still waiting outside.
Suzu.
The girl sat on the edge of the dojo entrance, patiently swinging her legs. She was still wearing her training uniform: black grappling pants and a sweatshirt far too large for her size.
Yuuji walked over to keep her company.
“Fushiguro-sensei, you don’t have to worry about me,” she said with a confidence that didn’t seem to belong to an eight-year-old. “If someone comes, I can defend myself.”
Yuuji smiled. She was right.
Suzu was quick. Observant. She wasn’t the strongest in the group, but she had something Yuuji recognized well: instinct.
Students like that always went farther.
Megumi would have said it was because they knew how to listen to their bodies before their pride. Many people failed at that last part.
Sometimes Yuuji found himself thinking about how much Megumi would have enjoyed seeing him teach. He had always had a quiet way of noticing those small things. A small smile appeared at the thought.
“I’ll stay with you anyway,” Yuuji replied softly, sitting down beside her. “Teachers have to practice patience too.”
Suzu let out a very pretty laugh.
His student’s brother arrived about fifteen minutes later, full of apologies. The traffic had been a disaster because of an accident at the intersection of Aoba-dōri and Ichiban-chō, he explained while bowing his head several times.
Yuuji dismissed him calmly, assuring him not to worry.
“I told you I could defend myself,” Suzu protested as she climbed into the car and fastened her seatbelt.
Her brother laughed and promised to arrive earlier next time. Suzu waved goodbye through the window as the vehicle slowly drove away down the street.
Yuuji remained for a moment longer at the entrance of the dojo, watching the car disappear at the next corner.
He liked those small moments.
The goodbyes that would return the next day as an enthusiastic greeting. The laughter. The feeling that, for a few hours each day, he could teach something useful to someone.
Perhaps that was the closest thing to peace he had found in decades.
It had been three years since he opened Jūei Dojo.
A tribute to his husband’s technique. Yuuji felt comfortable with the choice.
At first it had not been easy. Licenses, municipal permits, safety inspections, rental contracts, insurance for the students. Paperwork that seemed never-ending. For a while he even wondered if it was truly worth it.
He had never been good at that kind of thing.
Megumi had been.
But with time the place began to take shape. The first students arrived, then a few more, and later certified instructors. Little by little the dojo stopped being an uncertain idea and became something real.
A space filled with noise, laughter, and worn-out mats.
Yuuji had to learn a different kind of patience: to explain movements again and again, to correct postures, and to wait for each student to find their own rhythm.
To teach them how to fall without hurting themselves. How to breathe before throwing a punch. How to listen to their bodies when something wasn’t right.
He also learned to recognize when the problem wasn’t physical. When their spirits made them feel useless or clumsy, when frustration appeared too quickly and they failed.
In those moments the class would change. Fewer strikes. More conversation, more repetition, simpler exercises until the body remembered that it was capable again.
Yuuji always said that learning how to fight meant nothing if you didn’t first learn how to get back up. He knew that from his own experience.
To remind them that strength was not in hitting harder than the other person, but in keeping your balance when someone tried to bring you down.
Yuuji always repeated the same thing: first the foundation, then speed. First control, then strength.
Sometimes he thought he now understood Gojo a little better. That strange satisfaction of watching someone learn something for the first time.
His thoughts were interrupted when the rain finally began to fall.
First a few scattered drops on the pavement, then a steady murmur against the roofs and sidewalks. Yuuji opened his umbrella almost by reflex and couldn’t help a small smile.
Megumi had been right.
He was about to turn and walk toward his apartment when he heard an argument a few meters away.
At first he didn’t pay much attention. Curiosity had never been one of his weaknesses. But something in those voices—in the rhythm of the words, in the way one of them scolded without real harshness—felt strangely familiar.
Yuuji raises his gaze.
The world stops.
Megumi.
And Gojo.
Gojo is speaking, clearly annoyed about something. His tone sounds like concern disguised as a scolding, something about caution and self-control. Yuuji doesn’t think he has ever heard those two words come out of his mouth together.
But Yuuji barely hears him.
Megumi is there.
His Megumi.
Looking at Gojo with those same dark eyes as always, with that expression that seems to say he would rather be anywhere else… even though Yuuji knows, from experience, that deep down it isn’t true.
Yuuji feels that he cannot lift his feet from the ground. His body remains frozen, as if something inside him has forgotten how to move. He wonders, almost with fear, if this is a cruel dream.
It had been a long time since he had dreamed of his husband; he had wished for it on so many nights that the world seemed to have grown used to denying him even that. That was why the scene before him felt so unreal it almost hurt. If this were a dream, it would be the most vivid one he had had in decades—too clear, too close, so real it was painful to look at.
He closes his eyes for just a few seconds, as if doing so might break the illusion.
But when he opens them again, the image is still there.
Gojo has Megumi by the arm and is dragging him with barely disguised insistence toward the entrance of the dojo, though Yuuji also notices the care in the movement. Megumi allows himself to be guided without much resistance, with that quiet resignation Yuuji knows far too well, as if he understands that arguing with Gojo when he’s angry would be useless.
“...This was the limit, Megs. I can’t keep tolerating such a technical disaster.”
“I beat them.”
“Yes, but they also hit your face. That already ruins the whole speech.”
Gojo leans in a little and, without asking permission, takes Megumi’s chin between his fingers to turn his face toward the light. He examines the scrape that is beginning to darken on his cheek.
“Look at this,” he murmurs, touching the bruise with gentle care. “This is going to turn purple in an hour.”
Megumi pulls his face away with obvious annoyance.
“I won.”
“We’re not talking about winning,” Gojo replies, crossing his arms. “We’re talking about style. If you’re going to get into fights, at least do it without looking like a beginner.”
“Dad…”
“No! Don’t try to soften the situation. This is exactly why I’m enrolling you here.”
Yuuji had only ever heard his husband call him that once.
It had been a particularly bad night, shortly after the anniversary of his death. Megumi had confessed that he had never said it while he was alive and that it ate away at him inside. That he regretted not calling him that when he still had the chance. He had also said that he missed his sister, that he wanted them close again, that he would give anything for a second chance.
Yuuji held him in silence that night. He wiped away his tears carefully and kissed his pain as if it were something fragile. He listened when Megumi wanted to speak and stayed quiet when his husband no longer knew how to.
Now he feels as if the past has dragged him back to the beginning of the twenty-first century. To memories where Shibuya had not yet knocked on their door. For an instant he can almost see them in their old sorcerer uniforms, though now they wear only ordinary clothes.
Gojo isn’t wearing glasses. His hair is still the same dramatic mess as always, rebelling against any attempt at order. He’s dressed surprisingly formally: a well-cut dark coat over a white shirt and dress trousers that seem far too elegant for scolding someone in the middle of the street. Even so, there is something inevitably careless about him, as if the right clothes cannot completely hide the man Yuuji remembers.
Yuuji misses him so much that for a moment he thinks he might cry—out of happiness or out of anger—if this turns out to be nothing more than a dream.
Megumi, on the other hand, is dressed more simply. A gray hoodie without visible logos, dark jeans, and sneakers that have seen too many rainy days. A backpack hangs from one of his shoulders as if he had been dragged out of campus without much ceremony.
There’s an ugly scrape on one of his cheeks, and a greenish shade beginning to appear beneath one of his eyes.
Yuuji felt an immediate and absurd urge to go find the bastards who had left him like that. The thought appeared before he could stop it, as automatic as breathing, as if fifty years had not passed and he still had the right to protect him.
His heart began to beat hard, uneven, striking his chest with an urgency that almost hurt.
Then reality caught up with him. Megumi was there. He was certain it was him.
Young and alive. Standing only a few meters away as if time had never passed.
Yuuji’s pulse turned erratic, too fast, too strong, as if his own body did not know how to react to something that simply should not be possible.
If this was a dream, it would be a cruel one. Yuuji let out a short, ironic laugh, lifting his gaze toward the gray sky and its rain, as if asking for mercy… or as if asking the world that, if it was going to mock him like this, it might at least finish quickly.
Gojo was the first to look at him.
As if he had noticed Yuuji’s presence even before hearing him. His clear eyes settled on Yuuji with immediate curiosity. They were still blue, but different: lighter, more human. Beautiful in a quiet way, without the overwhelming weight of power that had once made them so special.
Megumi.
When Yuuji turned his gaze toward him and their eyes finally met, he felt something break and settle at the same time inside his chest.
Relief and pain. It was as if both had taken each other’s hand.
Megumi looked at him with brief, curious attention, the way one looks at a stranger who has stood too long near someone else’s conversation. There was no recognition in that gaze. No sign of memory, no shadow of the man who had shared his life for more than two decades.
Only those same dark eyes as always.
The same quiet way of observing the world.
Yuuji felt his heart remind him that this was real, because even after fifty years, even in a world where no one remembered sorcerers anymore, Megumi was still exactly the same.
Except that he no longer knew who Yuuji was.
Yuuji felt his life tilt back toward the past.
Toward that disastrous night on the roof of a school, where they had met for the first time exactly one hundred years ago.
The memory pierced him with painful clarity, as if all the years between that moment and now had folded in on themselves.
As if the clock that had stopped his life half a century ago, in his widowhood, had suddenly decided to begin moving again.