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Gouged buildings stand before him. They’re disrupted, only bones left. No, it’s—people. Not so far distant from him, there is a column of flesh and bodies with ripped scalps piled up on the ground. He needs to—get up. To help—to remember. His mind is foggy. He can’t. His temples throb.
Yuji feels cold. The tarmac beneath his right cheek is clammy. Pebbles are piercing his skin. It’s—what time is it?
A sky the colour of a prune’s skin is heavy with clouds. Will it—
Severe pain cuts through Yuji’s head. It—his brain will tear if—
Get up, someone whispers.
It’s in—the person—
It’s controlling his brain. Or is it outside, and he’s—
Breath catches in Yuji’s throat, and he chokes on his saliva. He now remembers: it’s that curse. His curse. The thing inside him, which is devouring his organs—his sanity—since he has memory of it. “Sukuna,” Yuji mutters, moving his lips around vowels and consonants as if he’s tasting a bitter syrup.
Don’t call, the entity answers. Observe, Sukuna orders.
Yuji sits on the tarmac. It’s not easy—the world spins around him like a—his head hurts. Pebbles scratches his knees. He looks at his hands. They’re—they’re red. So it is—
Blood of innocents, Sukuna laughs. His cruel sneer reverberates in his brain.
Yuji widens his eyes. “A massacre,” he mutters. “You—”
“No. You,” Sukuna cuts him off. His voice is loud and clear in the eerie silence Shibuya has plunged into. Like he’s—
Yuji gulps a sob. The curse—Sukuna—he’s standing before him. A huge figure overbearing him, a cruel grin twisting his sharp mouth. Yuji shifts back—he doesn’t even have the strength to stand up, how should he—
“Leave,” he sobs, but not startled. He’s more angry than fearful. He hates Sukuna – he’s Yuji, and Yuji is him.
Sukuna drops his grin. “Shibuya is my last stop,” he says, watching the boy back off like a startled cub. “I have nowhere else to go. You don’t, either.” He stretches a hand forward.
Yuji flinches, ready to attack. But nothing happens. The king of curses laughs.
“Stand up. You have to take a look,” Sukuna says.
Yuji hesitates, then accepts the hand. “At what?” He asks, pushing himself up on his feet.
“At the carnage you painted on Shibuya’s canvas.”
Another sob pours pain into Yuji’s heart. He looks behind Sukuna, where the tower of humans sits on tarmac. It oozes blood. If he listens closely, he can still hear agonising laments escaping dying bodies.
* * *
Sukuna brings him to the tower of dying innocents. Yuji pukes. He cries; he hates Sukuna. But he can’t fight him. He’s too tired.
The reverb of Sukuna’s hateful laugh hits the back of Yuji’s brain. He wants—violence. No. He misses his grandpa. His friends. His—
Where are they? Where—
“Dead.” Sukuna’s voice slices the rancid air in fragments of pure hatred and cruelness.
Yuji rushes away from the rotten tower and reaches another gouged building. This is made of cementum—not flesh. Thank God. He rests a hand on a mangled wall and pukes again. Sukuna is always behind him, like a shadow. How did he—he escaped. But he can—he can still read the boy’s mind, as if they’re a unique, sole entity.
“Where’s—”
“That depressed brat: dead. That bratty woman: dead. Your precious sensei: dead. Everyone is dead,” Sukuna spits, his words like venom, “because of you. It’s your fault. Only yours.”
Yuji cries. He pukes again, then rests his hands on his knees and takes deep breaths. It feels like his heart can pop in his chest at any momentum—he will die. He wishes to. He’s losing his strength—not the physical one. That, he has already lost it. He’s losing the strength that has kept him lucid for so long—his mind is breaking. It’s bending beneath the lurid words of an enemy that it’s his perfect opposite—his evil reflection. He swallows his saliva like it’s bitter syrup, then cries, “I need – I need to—”
“You can’t escape it, Itadori. This is your work.” Sukuna smiles, “You can leave Shibuya, but Shibuya will never leave you. Carnage is impressed in the crevasses of your brain. Close your eyes, and you will see it happen again, and again and—”
Yuji snaps. He lunges forward with a last crumb of strength left in his body. He grabs Sukuna’s collar—the Tokyo Jujutsu High uniform – so similar to his—and—
The face of the curse before him warps, and Yuji—he feels like he’s looking at himself in the mirror—
“Why?” Yuji cries, shaking his evil counterpart. “Why – why are you…this? What benefits does it bring to you?”
Sukuna’s mouth curls downward. He waits for silence to sliver between them before answering the boy. “Because I’m no human. I don’t—”
Yuji shoves him back, and Sukuna stumbles. The boy’s push is still strong enough to shake a curse—he is now weaker, though. He’s not the magnificent, nearly inhuman student who had so much potential before him. He can’t be a vessel anymore. He’s always been a rough option, anyway. Too bratty—of a too strong willingness, which has been capable of annihilating Sukuna’s possession.
“That’s not enough, I want—” Yuji’s head spins. His grip loosens around Sukuna’s arms. He’s too—
Weak.
He doesn’t want to fight any more. He—Sukuna—the curse’s body trembles like hot air up a scorching road.
Sukuna is not real. It’s—his imagination.
Sukuna is what is keeping him sane. He’s the only friend (enemy) left keeping him company. It’s a hallucination. Has he—he dissipated? He doesn’t exist in his mind any more. Or is it? He stands before Yuji again. He’s—not solid. Sukuna stares at the boy. He slaps his face, sending him onto the tarmac.
Yuji blinks. He can’t feel pain. But now, Sukuna is solid again. What is keeping him anchored to the tangible realm? What—
Sukuna grins. Yuji looks up. Everything blackens around him, and he can see—teeth. Eyes. And then guts pouring out of Sukuna’s abdomen—no—it’s not possible.
In fact, it is not real. Yuji blinks again, and Sukuna is normal, alive, cruel again. He’s wearing a white kimono (Yuji assumes it’s one—what he learned about the Heian Period at school is now cloudy in his mind), edged with thick borders the colour of ripe prunes. Four arms. An odd scab on the right side of his face. Black tattoos. It’s—Sukuna’s true form.
Yuji thinks, I’m going to die, too?
He hopes. He closes his eyes, waiting for pain to come. But it doesn’t come. Sukuna stares at him, severe—cold. It’s not the Sukuna everyone knows. Not the cruel curse many generations told eerie stories about.
Yuji wants to plead with him – to kill him so his suffering would end. But—he has to suffer.
“If it’s not enough,” Sukuna says with a sneer, “I can bring you to your dearest friend.”
Fushiguro, Yuji’s mind lights up. There’s a beam in his eyes, hope sparkling in his chest, then—
“But I told you. He’s dead.” Sukuna’s laugh bounces in the air as if Shibuya were in a glass box.
Yuji sniffs. He pushes up from the ground and stands before the curse. “Bring me to him. I – I want to see him with my eyes,” he murmurs.
* * *
He’s there—Megumi is right in front of his eyes, slouched against a shut garage gate, his head hanging limp from his neck.
Yuji sits beside him. He rests his head on his friend’s chest and tries to catch a beat. There is—no—it’s Yuji’s pulsing ears. He wraps his arm around Megumi’s waist and shifts his head to his shoulder. He locks his left leg with his friend’s. He needs just—just a single, last hug.
Sukuna scrunches his face in disgust. “I told you. He’s dead. Forever. No curse technique—”
Yuji shuts his eyes. Sukuna’s voice glitches like a broken record until it dissipates. His face aches. His whole body is a pulsing lump of pain. He wants to sleep. It’s—he can’t remember the last time he slept. Perhaps, paradise will find him if he—
A ragged breath. Yuji snaps his eyes open. He looks at his friend, but—no. Megumi is dead. The ragged breath it’s—Yuji can’t breathe properly. Something clogs his lungs—it’s blood.
Yuji pulls away from Megumi and vomits blood. Sukuna is gone again, he’s—
There.
The curse is inside him again, but how—
Tired, Yuji bursts into a cry. He can’t tell what is real and what is not anymore. He wants his friends back—his sensei Gojo back—he wants to wake up in his bed at the Jujutsu High’s dorms and—
Pain pierces Yuji’s lungs. He vomits blood again: they must be damaged. He’s careful enough not to take deep breaths. Trembling cold and tired, he shifts on the tarmac and rests his head on Megumi’s lap. “Just – let me until I’m dead too,” he whispers. “Then we—” A sob shakes him violently. “Then we’ll reach Paradise together. We’ll reunite with Kugisaki again, and nothing will hurt or take you away from me. I – I promise,” Yuji cries.
No answer.
“I’m sorry for being such a weepy brat,” Yuji blubbers. “Bear with me a little bit more.”
But Megumi doesn’t answer—just silence, clammy and thick like ooze.
Can paradise find them in their sleep? Yuji falls asleep with this ludicrous hope of never waking up again.
* * *
Yuji doesn’t reach paradise. When he wakes up, Megumi’s body is gone, and he fears he has hallucinated even that. But a pool of dry blood stains the tarmac: this is the only proof he has of his friend.
Hope sparks in Yuji’s chest. Maybe Megumi is still alive. But then, if so, why didn’t he wake him up?
It doesn’t matter.
Yuji carries on under the orangish light of the dawn. His lungs healed; his temples don’t pulse anymore. Of course he’s still alive—Sukuna still needs him. So he won’t die. Not until Sukuna wants to. Not until he kills himself with a cursed technique, which would be the right thing to do now.
Yuji brushes off that thought. First—he needs to ascertain Megumi is still alive. And perhaps Nobara, but—Mahito. That childish curse with the brain of a psycho. They have killed her right before his eyes—no chances left. So he needs to carry on. Just a little more. Just for his friends. Just for what Nanami told him before dying.
Yuji stands in front of a mirror. He has found an empty house in a disrupted building. His hands are gloved by clotted blood—he needs to wash it away. The flow of water splashing against the ceramic is the only sound that blankets him. Shibuya is so silent.
His mind is so silent. Sukuna doesn’t—he’s—
Yuji looks at himself in the mirror. Sukuna is there. A shadow of himself—eyes hidden in the cavity of his skull, black shadow highlighting the redness of their pupils—warped grin, hunched shoulders. He’s ugly. Creepy. A curse in its very aspect, except it’s mixed with the features of a human—
Yuji sighs and looks down at the sink. Blood takes a lot to wash away.
Perhaps it’ll forever stain his hands, like snippets of gory memories will forever slither in the crevasses of his brain—embedded in the flesh in sort of a punishment.
He has been cursed from the very beginning, after all. A foetus shaped around vicious matter when growing in a poisoned womb.