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Megumi looks at the hole in Itadori's chest. It pulses slowly as Sukuna talks.
Life isn't fair. Tsumiki's face appears in his mind, the well-worn path he walks when he thinks of the balance of the world. Tsumiki is pale and curse-splotched in a hospital, and he's sitting at her bedside and brushing her hair. Tsumiki was cloyingly gentle and he is cold and removed. Tsumiki forgave, and the world grinds on. It's not fair.
He brings cursed energy to his fists and readies himself into a fighting stance anyway.
And then Sukuna laughs.
"Oh, that's it? Look at you move. That's why you denied yourself back in there. You're just a—" and he uses a word Megumi doesn't recognize. Sukuna sneers. "Humans in this era have lost that word, hm? What a pain. You're a ---" He spits out a few more of what must have been archaic terms and ends in, "You're effeminate, womanly."
Megumi sets his jaw, hoping it is minute enough that Sukuna doesn't notice. He's conditioned himself to not react after years of other boys jeering at him that he's a sissy, that his pretty name and pretty eyes and pretty mouth are all girly-soft. No show of emotion. Only fists when they got too close. (Tsumiki told him to wait until they got too close. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise, since he was too strong, she said.) He just wanted–wants–to be left alone.
Sukuna laughs. "You're just like those pathetic men who go to the bars and watch the --- longingly all night.” He taps a sharp nail against his lower lip mockingly. “And then they go home to their wives and become sad little curses when they die. The life within your reach is something you're too weak to actually grasp in your fists.” He takes a step closer, and Megumi doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t. “Scared of your own shadow. Boring!"
Megumi can't let himself be distracted. He knows what his role is. He was sold into it. He will die here to delay Sukuna. What does it matter whether he becomes a curse doing so? What does it matter what the rest of his life was? Life isn't fair. He begins the chant to summon Mahoraga.
And then it's Itadori back in his body looking back at him, and the rain comes down around them as he tells Megumi to live a good life and crumples.
He's in bed that night staring blankly at the ceiling, barely having remembered any of the time in between. Sukuna’s razor grin echoes in his head. Life isn't fair. If it was, he would have died in Itadori's place. If it was, Tsumiki would be living out in the world and he would be in the hospital bed. His hands folded gently on his chest. His eyelashes twitching. His long black hair splayed across the pillow. If life was fair, he'd be--
Megumi grasps shadows within fists and sobs.
In the morning, she flexes her hands into no shapes in particular and looks at them as if for the first time.