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Decades have passed far too fast, and Yuji Itadori sees those who he has lost to time wherever they are missing. In quiet nights that used to be filled with laughter, grief chokes him. He cooks meals in too big of portions for him alone, half of it left to spoil if he doesn't give it away to strangers. He can't go shopping or see movies, not when he has no one to share a particularly special incident with. He can't buy gifts for the people that have passed. It's a loneliness he can't quite describe. It feels like they're still there, because the ember of love is still burning within him. It's only incapable of catching flame.
The version of Yuji Itadori that carries a roughness only attainable through immortal means seeks shadow. His broad ever-lasting body molds itself into fitting pieces to street corners and the shade beneath abandoned rusty stairs. He seeks the cool darkness, watches his tan skin drain of color as it's in the caress of the hidden blues.
Often, he finds himself dazing, hazy in his presence as the cold of brick walls seeps into him. He wishes once familiar, now only faintly memorised hands would pull him into the shadows, would caress him with the utter care he has lost ages ago and misses. He cannot remember their touch for the eternities he's cursed to live through.
He can only vaguely remember the sight of them in dreams, can barely remember how they feel against his lips, where his touch is most sensitive. He can remember the bleeding cuticles, the thinness between knobby joints. The way the sinew stretches, where tiny moles have sat hidden among the much larger paleness. He cannot remember how it feels to hold them. As he presses his own fingers between each other they sit ill, too broad and rough. Too calloused. Nowhere near with the same grace. These hands are violent too, but in ways Yuji can't forgive.
He misses the voices. Misses the way they would speak to him, whether it was grating and teasing or if it was gentle and loving. His ears are filled with nothing but the monotone of the city he roams, the curses he keeps at bay. It fails to stir any feeling within him. He can't remember the laughter of his people, even their cries. A last conversation would be all he asks for.
The broken man stands for longer than he figures. He watches the sun pass above him, eyes dull as they graze up and down the same alley. Skittish cats pass by his feet, some rubbing against his legs. Yuji can't find it in himself to move, no matter how loudly they purr or how eagerly they nudge him.
He eventually, despite himself, slides down the uneven wall, sitting with his knees pressed to his chest.
His haunted expression seems no match for the curiosity of one barely walking kitten. Its black fur is spiky and thin, more akin to a fleck of dust, or soot.
It climbs up his clothes, mewling and purring as it clambers into his hood. It seeks his warmth, and only finds the physical of it.
Yuji feels its clumsy movements around his neck, the kitten's tiny head pressing into him. There are tiny pricks to his skin from its claws, which are almost too big for its small paws.
When Yuji tries to pet it, it claws and bites at his index finger. Growling, hissing. Yuji doesn't mind. When the heart suffers enough, physical pain becomes the only reminder of the life within oneself. The shallow scratches the animal leaves on him bring some focus back into his eyes.
"Hey, little one." He coos, pulling his hand forward and bringing the squirmy ball of black fur out from its hiding spot. His voice is rough from his extended vows of silence, the choked back tears of mourning.
He palms the animal to his chest, eyes cast down upon it as it gnaws on his thumb. "I won't hurt you." He tells it, in a tone as gentle as he can muster. A tone that has gathered dust, makes his throat rumble. "I'm big and scary, I know."
The piece of life he holds is short. This kitten will grow in as few a time as weeks, and will roam all the most dangerous corners of this town in hopes of finding food. It will climb and hunt, it will explore. It will be happy and purr, it will mewl in pain.
It might even love. With all the capacity that miniscule heart of it can handle. Until its soul fizzes out, like the light of a candle fading to smoke.
Yuji wonders if the saying about seven lives is true. He would deem it unfair. This kitten might've already lost one, might've escaped death by a hair as its mother protected it, let it run from fatal danger. It might've lost a second one even, to its thinness, to the lack of food around. The lives of a cat are fragile, brittle. They give so easily. One might wish for the same number of lives for themselves.
Yuji, instead, wishes for that said fragility of it. He was given one life alone, but one that is dispensed in a seemingly unending span. He wishes he could live to his fullest, die an honest death. One a human is meant to have.
His eyes sting.
The kitten looks at him, the green in its face a rope around Yuji's throat.
Green.
Green is everywhere.
Its hues are ever-present in all of nature. The widest spans of fields, needles and leaves as they grow on colossal trees and fall from them, brittle and reddish brown. Greens are in the algae of water, in the moss atop stones, on the backs of small shiny beetles that roam.
The clothes people wear, the dyes in their fabrics and hair alike. On their nails as polish, in their rings and necklaces as precious stones.
Green reminds Yuji of him. However he's learned the devastating way, that there are too many shades of such a color to count. Green is the color with the broadest spectrum to the human eye.
None of the greens he's seen since his passing match the one he misses most.
Until now.
This kitten alone carries the green he adores. An emerald green, some would say. Some would tone it down to a simple dark green. Yuji has no word for it. To him it is synonymous with Megumi. No regular adjective covers the depth of Megumi's eyes.
In its complex rarity, even this little creature carries it only once. One eye is shut, injured. One single eye stares up at him, and Yuji falls into the shadows.
"Megumi?"
The kitten meows, claws at his jacket and curls up beneath his chin. The striking green in its eye is out of Yuji's focus, but the match it struck within him is still lit.
Nostalgia closes his throat, grief sits heavy within it, clogging it up.
Yuji, out of self-preservation, has forced himself to believe in the cycle of life in these past years.
How energy can never be destroyed or created, as it merely changes its form.
Because believing in a fate where Megumi's energy was erased entirely, a world where everyone from Yuji's grandfather to his most extended friends have vanished entirely, would kill him.
The kitten bites at his throat, growling. Yuji lets it, tears staining his cheeks.
He gets up once the kitten is curled against his neck, in the safety and warmth of his jacket. The sun is fading from the sky, laying to rest and obligated to rise again tomorrow.
Yuji's feet, for the first time in years, walk with true heart's purpose.
He finds a convenience store that closes in ten minutes, buys barely anything for himself but splurges on the small friend laying asleep on his nape. Canned food, a toy, a soft towel. The barest minimum, because he doesn't wish to force the underpaid worker to put up with him past their needed time.
When he walks to his apartment, the weight isn't suffocating. The always present weight, in the hollow of his chest.
It lets him regain his footing.
He bathes the kitten. Promises to take it to the vet tomorrow as he inspects its injured eye with a pitying look in his tired eyes. He feeds it, even allowing a small laugh to tumble past his lips as it growls and scarfs it all down with vigor. He doesn't get mad when it pees on his floor. He cleans it up, and kisses its tiny head.
It sleeps in his bed with him. Curling up beside him, completely still except for the rising and falling of its chest. Yuji watches it almost all night.
The shape of its soul is unclear. A tiny spark alone, one that flies off sparklers one would light on New Year's.
As the kitten grows, so does its soul in clarity.
Yuji is busy with his role in society, tired, shaky hands almost unable to carry the kitten when he goes to bed. He never neglects the animal, always makes sure it is fed. He plays with it until he passes out on the floor with a feather tucked between his fingers, now still.
The kitten - now grown into a cat - licks away his tears, snuggles into him on the coldest nights. It hisses at passing birds and dogs as it looks outside the window. It hides in Yuji's shelves and always, always returns to Yuji's side, no matter how comfortable of a bed he buys for it. The animal is spoiled and arrogant, leaves scratches and bites on Yuji and his furniture that the man observes with purest endearment.
He calls it Megumi, sometimes. When he vomits from grief, when he pulls at his hair endlessly. When he holds himself with sobbing breaths, the cat joins his side. It trills in response to his cries, a twitch and shake in its tail as it greets him. It's green eye watchful, pupil round and welcoming. He would let it curl up wherever it liked. Sometimes it sat on his chest, sometimes it crawled on the crown of his head. Soft slender paws would press against his cheek, against his ribs. Its whiskers and fur tickle him until the tears cease, until his body doesn't feel suspended in air anymore.
The years it stays by his side Yuji has a net of safety beneath him. No matter how hard he falls again, the mute companion is by his side. A source of solace, a tether tying him to some form of normalcy. A routine, a being he can give his love to.
But the tiny being ages, as Yuji doesn't. Its excited hops and clumsy sprints turn to slow headnods and slouching walks. The age it reaches is rare. Two decades pass, and the cat continues living.
But not without struggle.
It barely moves during the day, most of the time sleeping. The movements are slow, laboured. Certain areas cause it to hiss when pet. Yuji watches it bump into his furniture as its eyesight diminishes slowly and covers the sharp edges with pillows and blister foil. He sees it struggle to clean itself and so he gives it warmth baths, brushing its fur before bed every night. The fur that grows continuously coarser, thinner, greyed. Yuji has sleepless nights where it won't stop meowing, mewling even as he holds it in his arms, its voice growly and rough. He tries his best to make sure it eats enough, but the weight continues to drop as well.
One sunny morning, the cat is nowhere to be found when Yuji wakes.
He looks all around the house, mind scattered. He is close to thinking that it ran away somehow, until he hears its call. A yowl, pained, weak.
The cat is hiding beneath his couch, mouth open and breathing laboured. It looks ashamed to be found. Yuji realises then that it's time.
His hands grasp its malnourished body, gently supporting the head as he pulls it from beneath the couch. He carries it back to their bedroom, where the bedding is softest.
"You won't die alone." Yuji tells it, hoping its declining hearing will still let his words come through. Flashes of hospital beds come to his mind. Of a cold wrinkly hand, unmoving. He never was able to tell his last words to the one he loved. He had been too late. He hopes he knows how to still say goodbye to someone after all these years.
"I'm here." Yuji whispers, pulling the animal close to him. The once black fur is scruffy and greasy. It's scrawny, still, limbs shaking in pain. "You're okay." He feels his voice get unsteady, feels his agony grow with each heartbeat.
Its soul is clear as day, now. It's larger than life, the visual of souls Yuji can see. There isn't a clear picture for it, isn't a comparison that does the vibrancy or warmth justice. To describe it as having a shape isn't truthful, but the best word that Yuji can find for it.
And this cat which he has known since it has been a stray kitten has a soul he knows. It has a soul he would've recognised all past years, and all years to come. It's now grown large enough for him to see.
"Megumi, it's okay. You can go." He tells the dying animal. The soul he knows by heart. The person he lost.
He blinks away tears, watches the greying green eye blink slowly. "Thank you for finding me." He tells it.
Its rumbling voice is quiet, but it meows.
"Shh..." He caresses its head, stroking behind its ears just how the cat has always loved it. "You lived so long, despite the pain. Thank you for giving me a purpose in these years." He sobs softly, the cat bumping its head into his face. The cat's ears twitch against his eye lashes. "But you can go now. You don't have to keep going." He murmurs into the fur. It smells of home, familiar.
The cat meows again, pained. Yuji doesn't know what he can do, except hold the animal in his warm palms, wrap it in the disintegrating fibers of the first blanket he ever bought for it.
"Find me again, in your next life. I'll be here, waiting for you." He whispers. The cat's paw lands on the high of his cheek. He feels its fading strength.
"I love you, Megumi."
The cat makes one last noise, its breath growing weak and fading into silence. Yuji feels part of him die with it.
Yuji holds it in his arms for hours. He doesn't cry after it passes, only watches it with solemn gazes. The green eye was shut by his careful fingertips, never to open again. Yuji wishes the creature left one last scratch on him, but knows it was too weak to hurt him. It loved him too much, it seems. Wanted to only give him a body to mourn, not the healing of wounds as well. Making it easier.
Yuji buries it in a nearby forest. In the softest earth he finds, leaving its blanket and toy with it. The matted down fur is cold as he gently puts the body into the hole he dug. He groomed it one last time, would hate for it to be worried about knots and mats as it passed on to the afterlife.
He plants flowers on it. Hydrangeas. Its blooms stay vibrant and delicate each passing year.
And years turn into decades.
Megumi's soul finds Yuji wherever he goes.
Sometimes, his passing is long. It's an oak tree that sprouts a short walk away from Yuji's apartment, with leaves in green that are different from any other tree beside it. That is the green of Yuji's love. Once it grows its rings, decades of standing, Yuji leans against its trunk. He climbs into the arms of it, relaxing into the knobby branches. He memorises the ridges in its bark, watches the leaves grow and fall each year. He keeps a book with pressed leaves of it, marking each year as a new page.
The book becomes as thick as the width of his wrist when foresters come. Yuji doesn't stop them as they mark the tree to be cut down, knowing the time has passed and Megumi's soul will find a new vessel. But he marks his name into the thick bark of Megumi's tree before it falls, and takes a final leaf with him that he presses in its vibrant greens. It's the only leaf that stays in its hues, never spoiling between the dust-gathering papers of the journal. All others eventually crumble, as Yuji has failed to preserve them properly. All but that one.
Sometimes, Megumi's presence is merely a gust of wind. One that is seemingly impossible in the thickest heats of summer, a moment of silence between the buzzing of cicadas. A cool, refreshing breeze, flying under Yuji's clothes, ruffling his hair. It caresses his sweat-slick skin. It's so quick, it doesn't stay long enough to dry Yuji's tears.
It's not the only soul that revisits him, either.
Nobara he has seen in the vivid complexities of a beautiful bouquet, fated to wilt only a few days after Yuji's purchase of it. He keeps a few petals, next to the book of the oak tree. Nobara also shows herself to him as a stubborn crow that pecks at his windows in the morning, cawing at him for food. Its beak is sharp as a nail as it bites at him when he doesn't deliver fast enough. The crow returns week after week, until it suddenly doesn't.
Sometimes, they find each other too late. Yuji reads up on how to pin and preserve butterflies when he finds a broken-winged specimen of a Long-tailed Blue on his doorstep. He dates it to when he finds it and writes Nobara's name beneath it after finding a frame that she would approve of.
Gojo comes as icy winters that force him into even thicker layers of clothing.
Or a particularly over-sweetened dish Yuji cooks as he mixes up salt with sugar.
Even as a white husky a stranger walks down the streets, burning blue eyes staring him down before it excitedly jumps at him. The owner is horrified, though Yuji is overjoyed as he pets the fluffy fur and responds to the loud howls of the animal with soft coos.
Nanami comes to him once, as he gives coffee yet another chance. Bitter but warm, comforting and unreplicatable in it's earthiness. Not even as he revisits the same café. Never does it make him as content ever, never does it leave him as energised. It's left as just hot, barely-tasting. The grounds that are left in the cup only once vaguely resemble a heart.
His grandfather is there too, but his presences remain short. Once Yuji swears that a time he stubs his toe on a particularly grating day is his grandfather trying to get him to focus on more positive aspects of life. When he falls or stumbles, he curses his grandfather under his breath. But sometimes it's exactly those experiences that pull him back on track.
Yuji's eyes are open whenever he's on his feet. He sees the smallest details, reads the shapes of clouds and stars and wonders where the next soul will visit him. The spans of minutes or hours, of days or years, they no longer matter to him. Each experience is kept carefully preserved in some way. As a haphazardly written post-it note where he sprawls down the name and shape of his visitor, or a full-blown book with pictures and words that contain countless instances of a visitor's actions and presence over years. Each is kept in love, kept in well-dusted bookshelves or organised drawers that are filled with folders alike. Each dated, each given a name. A library of people Yuji has loved. Sometimes even those he disliked. Of harsh reminders of grief, of bitter feelings that resurface.
Immortality makes Yuji a curator of a growing museum. A keeper of memories. The memories keep his sights clear and train his senses, giving him a piece of solace wherever he sets his eyes on as a keen observer.
And his love, the content of his works, never fades.
Even as all those papers turn to dust. Never to be seen or deciphered by anyone but him.
One day, he'll join it's death.