Chapter Text
The thing about Sukuna Ryoumen: he was not the kind of guy who listened to idol music.
Like, at all.
He ran a tattoo shop called Malevolent Shrine in the middle of the city, and the playlist that usually played in the background was a rotating cycle of death metal, industrial noise, and occasionally some old-school punk when he was feeling nostalgic. His apprentice, Uraume, had once tried to put on a pop song as a joke and Ryoumen had unplugged the speaker with the kind of deliberate, slow energy that made Uraume very quietly plug it back in and never speak of it again.
He had a reputation. A very specific, very carefully maintained one. Customers who came in for tattoos always said the same things: "He's terrifying," "He barely talks," "His hands are incredibly precise," and "He somehow made me feel like I was being judged the entire time but the tattoo came out incredible so." That last one was his favorite. Not that he'd ever admit it.
So, when the thing with Itadori Yuuji happened, everyone who knew Ryoumen was very confused. Including, honestly, Ryoumen himself.
It started on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays were slow. He had one appointment in the morning—some college kid getting a sleeve started, nothing complex—and then three empty hours before his afternoon slot. He'd sent Uraume out to get food and he was alone in the shop, doing touch-up work on one of his own designs pinned to the wall, when his phone buzzed.
It was from—his friend, which was a term that Ryoumen used loosely. Gojo Satoru who was somehow related to Ryoumen through a series of family events that Ryoumen preferred not to think about, and who used his phone almost exclusively to send memes, unsolicited opinions, and links to videos he described only as "you need to see this."
Satoru: bro. BRO. watch this right now
Below is a link.
Ryoumen stared at his phone for a solid ten seconds. Satoru's taste in entertainment was, to put it diplomatically, all over the place. The last video he'd sent had been a forty-minute documentary about competitive duck herding. Before that, a clip of a cat playing a tiny piano.
He clicked the link anyway. He has nothing to do anyway. The video loaded.
It was a music video. That was immediately obvious. Bright pink and white color scheme, confetti, the whole deal. Very clearly idol pop. Ryoumen was about to close it when the camera cut to the performer and he paused.
The performer was a guy. Probably early twenties, built like someone who spent a lot of time in a gym but somehow still came across as soft, with round brown eyes and the most genuinely cheerful expression Ryoumen had ever seen on a human face. He had short pinkish-brown hair—clearly dyed—and he was wearing something fluffy and white and not what you'd expect someone his size to wear.
And he was dancing.
Not idol-shuffle dancing either. Actually dancing. The guy had coordination, real coordination, and there was something slightly chaotic about the way he moved that suggested he'd adapted a style that was too big and too physical for the delicate choreography usually assigned to idol performers. Like watching someone built for football do ballet—not wrong, just fascinating.
And then he started singing. Ryoumen turned the volume up.
The song was called "Sunshine Punch" based on the title card, which was admittedly a terrible name. But the actual song was catchy. Like, obnoxiously, aggressively catchy. The kind of catchy where you could feel your brain filing it away against your will in the part that stored jingles and birthday songs. The lyrics were simple and bouncy and about something like "being happy even when things are hard" and Ryoumen was going to close the video any second now.
He watched the whole thing.
Then he watched it again because he'd been looking at the visuals the first time and hadn't caught all the lyrics.
The performer's name was, according to the description: Itadori Yuuji — "Sunshine Punch" MV — DEBUT SINGLE OUT NOW!!!
So that was the debut. Ryoumen scrolled down through the comments.
@Not_Choso67: omg he's so adorable im crying THE CHOREO IS SO GOOD literally does not make sense that someone this cute can also be this strong looking like sir i was not ready for how good this was actually??
@KosmoKnot: bro came out SWINGING for a debut
That last comment had forty-seven thousand likes. Ryoumen found himself reluctantly nodding.
He went back up and watched the video a third time.
Okay. Okay so the thing was—and this was purely from a technical perspective, purely professional—the kid had something. Not just the voice, which was warm and surprisingly controlled for a debut single, and not just the dancing, which was genuinely impressive. It was more like... he had presence. The camera liked him in a way that cameras didn't always like performers who technically deserved it. There was something unaffected about him, like he was actually having a good time instead of performing "having a good time," and that was rare enough that Ryoumen recognized it even though he had no business recognizing it.
He texted Satoru back: ok
Satoru responded in approximately four milliseconds: RIGHT???? isnt he so cute
Ryoumen: the song is technically competent
Satoru: oh my god you're obsessed with him already
Ryoumen: I watched it once
Satoru: you literally took seven minutes to respond and the video is three minutes long
Ryoumen: ...
Satoru: HAHAHAHAHA
Satoru: also he has an instagram already i'll send it
Ryoumen: I don't need—
The Instagram handle arrived before he could finish the sentence.
He did not immediately open it. He put his phone down and went back to working on his design. He was a professional. He had standards. He had a reputation.
He opened it eleven minutes later.
Itadori Yuuji's Instagram was exactly what you'd expect from someone whose debut single was called "Sunshine Punch." Every post was aggressively cheerful—selfies with the biggest smile, behind-the-scenes shots from recording sessions where he always looked excited in a way that suggested he was genuinely excited and not performing it, group photos with what appeared to be his creative team where everyone else also looked genuinely happy in the way that only happened around certain people.
His most recent post was from two days ago, which meant "Sunshine Punch" had dropped two days ago. The post was a selfie of him in the studio, sweaty and clearly exhausted, holding up a peace sign, with the caption: we did it!!! debut day!!! i can't believe this is real, thank you so much to everyone who listened ❤ i made this song because i wanted to give people the same feeling that music gives me, so i hope it worked!! also mom if you're seeing this i know you're gonna cry please don't cry (cry)
Yuuji's mom had in fact commented aseries of crying emojis.
Ryoumen stared at this for a long time. Then he went back to his designs.
He did not, he told himself firmly, follow his Instagram. He was a grown man. He had tattoos to do. He had a reputation. He was not going to become a fan of some kid whose debut song was called—
He followed the Instagram.
He turned off notifications immediately after, knowing that Satoru was not going to let this go if he finds out.
★ ★ ★
The thing was that the song kept coming back. It was in his head for the rest of that Tuesday, which he found extremely annoying, and it was still there Wednesday morning when he opened the shop and started setting up for his first appointment. It had lodged itself somewhere in the filing system of his brain right between the Metallica tracks he'd known since high school, and it absolutely did not belong there, and yet.
He made a playlist. Just to get it out of his head. Just to have it organized somewhere rather than rattling around in his brain. He called the playlist "reference music" and if anyone saw it—which they wouldn't, because his Spotify was private—they would see one (1) bright pop song surrounded by seventy songs about death and chaos, and they might have questions.
Uraume came in at ten, took one look at him, and said, "You seem weird today."
"I'm always weird."
"Different weird. Good weird? Bad weird? Should I be concerned?"
"You should be concerned about setting up for the eleven o'clock client."
Uraume went to set up. But they paused at the supply cabinet and said, without turning around: "Satoru-san texted me."
"He texts everyone. He has no boundaries."
"He said you watched a music video eleven times."
Ryoumen's pen stopped moving. "He is a liar and I watched it three times."
"...so, you did watch it."
"Set up for the client, Uraume."
"Yes, boss."
The eleven o'clock was a regular—a guy named Nanami who worked in finance and had been coming in for over a year to complete a massive backpiece. He was quiet and precise, and Ryoumen appreciated him because he never tried to make small talk during the sessions that really hurt.
Today, though, as Ryoumen was getting started, Nanami said, without looking up from the magazine he'd brought: "Is that idol music?"
Ryoumen looked at the speaker on the counter. At some point—he genuinely could not tell you when—his shop playlist had been shuffled and "Sunshine Punch" was coming out of it.
"It's reference music," Ryoumen said.
"Right," Nanami said, in a tone that communicated clearly that he did not believe this. "Do you want to change it."
"Not particularly. It's surprisingly non-irritating."
They continued in silence for a while. Ryoumen worked on the shading on Nanami's left shoulder. The song played through once and looped. Ryoumen did not turn it off.
"It's a debut single," Ryoumen said eventually, not sure why he was saying this. "Mm."
"The guy—the performer. It's apparently his first release. But he's technically quite good. Voice control, stage presence. It's—it's unusual for a debut to be this polished."
Nanami was quiet for a moment. Then: "Are you a fan?"
"No," Ryoumen said immediately.
"Okay."
"I just have a professional appreciation for—"
"It's fine, Ryoumen-san," Nanami said, with the gentle patience of someone who dealt with things he did not understand daily. "I won't tell anyone."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Of course."
Ryoumen went back to the tattoo. The song looped again. He did not turn it off.
★ ★ ★
By Friday, Ryoumen had listened to "Sunshine Punch" approximately forty-three times, which he knew because the Spotify play counter told him so and he was beginning to feel betrayed by data. He had also discovered that Itadori Yuuji had released a b-side called "Peach Fizz" along with the single and it was—
It was even more annoying. In the sense that it was even catchier and even more sincere and there was a little key change in the bridge that did something to the listening experience that Ryoumen was not emotionally equipped to deal with.
He listened to "Peach Fizz" seventeen times before the day was over. He also, and this is the part he was least proud of, found a fan forum.
He was not a forum guy. He had never been a forum guy. Forums were for enthusiastic people, for people who wanted to discuss their feelings about things with strangers, for people who had a lot of free time.
Ryoumen had a business to run. He had designs to complete. He had standards.
The forum thread he found was titled: "Itadori Yuuji appreciation thread — debut era content compilation."
He read seven pages of it.
Most of it was fan reactions and translated snippets from a radio interview Yuuji had apparently done on release day. In the interview, when asked how he'd describe his music to people who hadn't heard it yet, he'd said: "I just want people to feel like— okay, you know that feeling when you've had a really rough day and then something small happens, like someone smiles at you on the street or you find money in an old jacket pocket, and your whole chest just kind of opens up? I want to make music that feels like that. Like a small happy thing. I don't know if that makes sense but—"
The radio host had said it made total sense.
Ryoumen sat in his chair in the empty shop after closing time, his phone in his hand, and thought about a small happy thing that made your whole chest open up.
Then he turned his phone off, locked up the shop, and went home. He added "Peach Fizz" to the playlist.
He named the playlist "Sunshine Punch and Other Irritants." He went to sleep.
He dreamed about the key change in the bridge.
The following week, Itadori Yuuji announced his first mini-album, and Ryoumen pre-ordered it at two in the morning, which was the moment he accepted, quietly and with very little grace, that he had become a fan.
He texted Satoru: if you tell anyone about this, I will end you
Satoru, who was awake at two in the morning for reasons Ryoumen did not want to know: too late bestie I screenshotted your Spotify
Ryoumen: I'm going to block you
Satoru: you won't
He refreshed the pre-order confirmation page three times to make sure it had gone through. It had. He was so embarrassed.
★ ★ ★
The mini-album came out six weeks after the debut single, and it was called "Golden Hour," which Ryoumen found aggressively thematically appropriate in a way he preferred not to examine too closely. It had eight tracks. He listened to all of them on the day of release, which was a Saturday, which meant the shop was actually pretty busy, which meant he was tattooing people while listening to it, which meant multiple clients got to witness him going slightly still during track five ("Tangerine Sky") and then continuing as if nothing had happened.
The client he'd been tattooing during "Tangerine Sky"—a woman named Mei Mei who came in for delicate fine-line work—looked at him over her shoulder and said, "You just made a face."
"I did not."
"You did. Your jaw went weird."
"My jaw is fine."
"Was that song—is that Itadori Yuuji? That new idol?" Ryoumen paused. "It's reference music."
"Okay," Mei Mei said, in exactly the same tone Nanami had used, and Ryoumen was beginning to notice a pattern.
He told Uraume not to comment on the playlist. Uraume said "of course" with the barely-suppressed smile of someone who was absolutely going to comment on it to Satoru later.
The thing about working in a tattoo shop was that you had a lot of time to think. Sessions could go for hours—Nanami's back piece alone was a project that had been running for over a year—and during the detailed work especially, Ryoumen's hands were doing something his body had trained for so long that his brain was mostly free. He did his best thinking during long sessions. And increasingly, his thoughts kept circling back to the same place.
It wasn't that he was obsessed. Obsessed was a strong word. He was—engaged. He was invested in the artistic development of a performer he found technically interesting. That was a normal thing to be.
He had, in the six weeks between debut and mini-album, done the following:
- Listened to "Sunshine Punch" approximately 200 more times (he'd stopped counting after this) - Watched every video on Yuuji's official channel, including two making-of documentaries about the "Sunshine Punch" MV where Yuuji talked very earnestly about color theory and the emotional intention of each shot - Read every interview he could find, in Japanese and translated
- Found and lurked extensively on three separate fan forums without posting anything because he wasn't a posting kind of person - Followed the account of Yuuji's manager, who occasionally posted behind-the-scenes content that wasn't on Yuuji's own accounts
- Purchased a signed photocard of Yuuji through an online shop, which he told himself was an investment and not whatever it actually was. The signed photocard was currently face-down in his desk drawer. He was not ready to think about what it being there meant.
What he had also done, in those six weeks, was start incorporating a very subtle motif into some of his designs. Not anything anyone would recognize—he wasn't that far gone. But there were flowers he'd been drawing that had a little more warmth in them than usual, and a few of his abstract pieces had taken on a quality that his longtime clients had commented on, saying things like "you seem different lately" and "did something good happen to you?" and "this is so soft, Ryoumen-san, are you okay?"
He was fine. He was completely fine. He was just—inspired by the emotional sincerity of an artist he respected.
"You're in love with an idol," Satoru texted him one Wednesday, apropos of nothing, while Ryoumen was eating lunch.
Ryoumen: I'm going to block you for real this time
Satoru: the signed photocard arrived at your place right? since you used your real address and I AM your emergency contact so technically I have your mail updates
Ryoumen: how do you have my mail updates
Satoru: i set it up when you went to Osaka for that convention last year remember?? you asked me to check your mail
Ryoumen: I did not ask you to have PERMANENT access to my mail Satoru: you said "check my mail" and I interpreted it liberally
Ryoumen: I hate you
Satoru: anyway signed photocards are very intense fandom behavior for someone who claims to only have "professional appreciation" for the man
Ryoumen put his phone in his pocket and did not respond for the rest of the day.
★ ★ ★
The thing was, Satoru wasn't entirely wrong.
Ryoumen had been doing tattoo art for twelve years. He'd started at eighteen, apprenticing under a guy named Kamo who ran a shop in an area of the city that was roughly the opposite of what you'd call glamorous, and he'd been tattooing professionally since he was twenty-two. He'd built Malevolent Shrine from nothing—just a lease on a small space and a reputation that spread through word of mouth because he didn't advertise, he didn't do social media, he didn't need to, because his work spoke for itself.
His aesthetic was very specific. He liked bold lines and patterns that referenced traditional Japanese designs but pushed them into something stranger, more personal. His signature was the mouths—he had a thing about mouths in design; about the way they could express something unsettling if you placed them in unexpected ways. His flash designs were legendary in certain circles. He'd been featured in three tattoo industry magazines without asking to be.
And what he thought about, when he was working, was feeling. Not sentiment, exactly, but the physical sensation that a piece of art could create. That was what made a tattoo different from a painting or a drawing—it was in someone's skin, permanent, and it had to carry weight because people would live with it forever.
He thought Itadori Yuuji understood this. Not about tattoos, obviously, but about weight. About making something that was supposed to go into someone's body—metaphorically, in his case—and stay there.
That was why he was interested. Professionally. Artistically. He took the photocard out of the desk drawer.
It was a standard idol photo format—Yuuji in a bright yellow jacket, grinning, with a handwritten signature across the corner in black marker. The signature was messy in a way that suggested he'd signed a lot of them quickly, but there was still something in it—he'd put a little sun next to his name. A small doodled circle with rays coming off it.
Ryoumen stared at the doodled sun for an embarrassingly long time. He put the photocard back in the desk drawer, face-up this time.
★ ★ ★
The mini-album came with a limited edition physical copy that included a photo booklet, and Ryoumen had pre-ordered the limited edition because he had completely lost his mind, and it arrived two days after the digital release in a box that was pink. Just. The whole outer box was pink. He had to sign for it at his shop and the delivery guy's face did a complicated thing that Ryoumen chose not to acknowledge.
Uraume, who had been reorganizing the supply cabinet in the back room, emerged to see Ryoumen setting the pink box on the counter with the particular energy of someone who was deeply aware that they were making a choice.
They both stood there for a second. "I'm not saying anything," Uraume said.
"Good."
"But I do want you to know that I am processing several feelings right now."
"You're not getting paid to process feelings."
"I mean financially no but as a human person who cares about you—"
"Uraume."
"Not saying anything. Totally not saying anything."
Ryoumen took the box to his office in the back. He opened it there, alone, with a cup of black coffee and the dignity of a man who had made peace with his choices.
The photo booklet was—okay, well. It was a photo booklet. There were pictures of Yuuji in different settings—some studio, some outdoor, some clearly staged and some that looked more candid—and the whole thing had the warm gold-and-pink color scheme of the album art. The photos were genuinely good, compositionally, which Ryoumen noticed because he had an eye for that kind of thing.
There was one photo where Yuuji was sitting in what looked like a garden, leaning back on his hands, looking up at something off-camera, and the light was catching him at this angle that made him look—
Ryoumen closed the booklet.
He opened it again to a different page. Yuuji at the microphone in the recording booth, headphones on, eyes closed, face completely relaxed and concentrated.
That was the one. That one was technically interesting. That was him studying craft. He put the booklet very carefully in the desk drawer with the photocard.
His afternoon appointment arrived—a guy named Todo who came in every few months for additions to an elaborate piece that covered most of his left arm. Todo was loud and enthusiastic about everything and Ryoumen usually found him exhausting, but he was a good client in the sense that he sat still and tipped well.
"You seem different today," Todo announced, settling into the chair with the energy of someone who had never been told to calm down in his life.
"I don't."
"You do! You're—you look like you're thinking about something nice. Hey, do you have a girlfriend?"
"No."
"Boyfriend?" "No."
"Then what is it? You never look like this. Usually you look like you're about to sentence someone to death."
"Thank you, Todo."
"It's not a compliment! It's very professional. You just usually don't look—happy. Are you happy right now?”
Ryoumen was setting up the machine with more focus than was strictly necessary. "I pre-ordered a limited edition album and it came in the mail."
Todo processed this. "You like music? What kind? I love music. My absolute favorite type of woman—and man, honestly, I don't discriminate—is someone who's passionate about music."
"It's an idol album," Ryoumen said, because he was apparently a person who had given up on lying today.
Todo stared at him. "An idol—like, pop idol? Like—"
"Are you going to do the thing where you pretend to be surprised?"
"I'm not pretending! This is genuine! Ryoumen-san!" Todo looked delighted in the way that was slightly threatening. "Which one? Who is it?"
"None of your business."
"Oh come ON—"
"I am about to tattoo you. You should really not irritate the person about to tattoo you."
Todo wisely let it go. But he spent the first twenty minutes of his session humming various idol songs under his breath in an extremely pointed way, and when "Tangerine Sky" came on the shop playlist and Ryoumen made the jaw-going-weird face again, Todo absolutely noticed. "WAIT," Todo said.
"I will leave a mark."
"Is it Itadori Yuuji?? My buddy Okkotsu is obsessed with him—"
"Todo."
"The new guy! He just debuted! Oh my god, Ryoumen-san, I didn't take you for—"
"Todo," Ryoumen said, very quietly, "I need you to be still and I need you to be quiet or I will make your left arm look like abstract art."
Todo was quiet for approximately four minutes. Then: "Can I see the mini-album when we're done?" Ryoumen did not say yes. But he also did not say no.
Todo left with a picture of the photo booklet on his phone, sent to presumably everyone he knew, and Ryoumen stood in his empty shop at closing time and thought that this was what he got for having feelings.
"Peach Fizz" started playing on the shop speaker. He turned the volume up.
Okay. Fine. Yes. He was a fan. He was a full, genuine, unapologetic fan of Itadori Yuuji's music, and it had happened in approximately six weeks through no fault of his own, and he was going to have to live with that.
He opened Instagram.
Yuuji's most recent post was a selfie from what looked like a practice room, sweaty again, holding a water bottle, with the caption: day 47 of golden hour era!! i feel like i'm learning so much every day and i can't wait to perform these songs for you all properly when the time comes also i tried to do a backflip in the choreo and fell directly on my face.
Then he liked it.
Then he immediately panicked, checked if his account name was recognizable (it was just "ms.tatt" and his icon was a photo of his own right hand, so: no), and then left it.
The like stayed.
He went home and listened to "Golden Hour" three more times and felt no shame whatsoever.