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The cherry blossoms have come into bloom earlier than usual, so Yuuji hasn’t really had the time to prepare himself for it.
Maybe he could have if he’d been following the news, or if he’d even stepped outside of his flat just once in the past week. Then he’d catch sight of the buds before they swell, unfurling into the softest pinks and whites, and know he'd have to avoid going out for a while. No one to blame but himself.
The one in front of him is almost in full flower. It’s an ancient tree, just like the large white Shōwa cherry in their old garden. There’s an air of indifference to it that borders on cruelty and Yuuji immediately hates it, almost recoils at the sight of its branches hovering, condescendingly, like the pale shadow of an angel’s wing over the mouth of the alley.
He turns around, but then remembers it’d be worse to go back to his flat now. He left there for a reason. The sight of Megumi’s moka pot on the stove had been unbearable, as was the haori jacket Yuuji had put on a hanger on his bedroom door. It no longer smells like Megumi. Maybe that’s why he can’t stand it all of a sudden.
So he will go down to the supermarket and get his cardboard boxes, he will put away all of the things that once constituted home. He’s been clinging onto them like they were driftwood in a fast-going river, all these months. But all they’ve done is pull him under.
He can no longer live in the past, eyes closed, pretending the present is just a nightmare he’ll wake up from. Megumi is gone. Megumi is gone forever.
Pulling his hoodie up against the early spring air, he rounds the corner into the street.
The tree might be immortal like him, but a rain will soon lay the flowers to rest on the asphalt. White translucent carcasses, crushed beneath passing boots as if they were no more precious than termite wings.
-
When Megumi first started smelling like an old man, Yuuji had found it hilarious. He teased him endlessly about it – did so because they both knew it made no real difference. It wasn’t like Megumi had anything to be insecure about growing old. His body, fortified by an ever-flowing well of Cursed Energy, by decades of practised discipline, could do much more than simply keep up with Yuuji’s youthful one. His desire, though it came slower as he aged, ran deeper too, and when it took hold it was often powerful enough to consume them both.
Plus, Yuuji liked how he looked then, more than ever. Yuuji remembered thinking of Megumi as “kind of pretty – no, really pretty – for a guy” back when they were teenagers. There were times when he thought he could glimpse the terrifying beauty radiating from the true core of who Megumi was behind the hazy clouds of youth, but those times were rare. Over the years, Megumi had slowly but surely grown into it, becoming more himself as the miasma of inexperience and self-doubt dispersed. He was like a cold, polished stone, with his hair turned white, his eyes sharp, his manners clipped but refined. Yuuji had loved every version of him but this final, distinguished one was his favourite, and Megumi knew that, surely, from the way Yuuji stared at him all day.
The teasing was just to rile Megumi up. And it worked because Megumi knew what Yuuji was doing, he always did.
It was a grey spring afternoon, about a year ago, when they went on their last date.
It was Yuuji’s birthday, though he’d forgotten about it. He’d stopped celebrating his birthdays once he found out he couldn’t physically age, and he hadn’t suspected anything when Megumi, out of the blue, proposed to go to the cinema “for a change”.
They hadn’t been to the cinema in ages. There was only one left in their area, and the price for a single ticket made Yuuji squawk in indignance. Apparently, you had to pay extra for the ticket to be printed out, too.
“We should’ve just stayed at home …” he told Megumi, holding up the ticket in disbelief. The paper shimmered with a subtle holographic sheen, and its design felt too intentional to be an ephemera; more like a souvenir than a simple identification of purchase, which he’d assumed was what tickets were for. His eyes widened even more when he saw the menu displayed above the snack bar. 6,600 yen for a popcorn bucket, a small fee added if you wanted it half-and-half, 7,000 for a cinnamon churro. He didn’t need to be an economist to know that this went beyond inflation.
“It’s fine,” Megumi said. “Just pick something you like.”
Yuuji gnawed at the inside of his cheek. They both had enough savings to live a very comfortable lifestyle, should they wanted to, but they were never reckless with money. Especially not Megumi, who never did things that went against his aesthetic principles. All that was to say they didn’t need this.
“Yuuji,” Megumi stretched out a hand to flick at his forehead, “I said it’s fine.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Yuuji studied him, saw that he was not surprised at all. Not by the way things were, not least by Yuuji’s reaction. He’d probably planned this, Yuuji thought. But why?
“Okay, I mean – this is very nostalgic. Remember when I dragged you and Kugisaki to watch a rerun of Human Earthworm 5 after that fight with the unwashed-dick-smelling Special Grade? Whoa, that was epic, both mission and movie. You fell asleep on me halfway, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. I’m glad we came, really. I already feel young again. It’s just – I dunno, I feel like we’re not really supposed to time travel like this for recreational purposes. Won’t the Time Police come for us?”
“Then let’s be tourists of our youth just for one afternoon.” Megumi tugged at him. “Before the Time Police finds out – come on, it’s our turn.”
“Hey. Fushiguro.”
Megumi halted. They used to call each other by their surnames when they were younger; not anymore. Yuuji smiled at his reaction, catching his hand. He held it for the tiniest moment before letting go. “Wasn’t that kind of poetic? Tourists of our youth?”
“No it wasn’t,” Megumi said flatly, striding ahead, but the tips of his ears had turned pink.
They were carefree then, blind to the looming shadows of death. How did Yuuji not see it coming? How could he be so stupid, so wasteful? If he knew –
If he knew, he still could’ve done nothing.
March, 2069.
Objectively, that was not so long ago, but it feels like several lifetimes away.
March, 2069 was a time when loving Megumi did not bring him pain. That alone, now, is unthinkable.
-
There'd been a small fight, a few years before Megumi’s death. It feels significant now in a way Yuuji can’t quite put his fingers on. To tell the truth, though, his memory of it is hazy at best, the finer details of the picture long lost to the double exposure of time. There are things he genuinely can’t tell if they had happened as he remembered, or if his mind had altered them in retrospect to shield him from pain. The longer he lives, he imagines, the more this would happen. At what point will his notion of the past become one that is constructed entirely out of falsehood?
It was a fair afternoon nearing the end of winter; that he can be sure of. Megumi had just resurfaced from an attack that left him bedbound for days, but he was recovering well. His appetite had returned somewhat. The earthy, medicinal scent of brewed herbs and roots filled the house, wafting to the veranda through the paper doors. The view outside was a dazzling white.
“Just say if you’re bored.”
“Hmm?” Yuuji shifted lazily in his comfortable position, lying in Megumi’s lap with a brazier glowing warm in front of them. He’d been peering up at Megumi’s profile for a while, but he didn’t feel the need to turn his attention elsewhere yet. Perhaps he never would.
“We could go inside anytime,” Megumi said, though his tone was more of a question. He carded his fingers through Yuuji’s hair, gently smoothing it, and Yuuji yawned in content.
“Nah. Wanna stay here a bit longer,” he mumbled into Megumi’s kimono. “How are you feeling?”
“Nothing special.” He paused, considering Yuuji for a brief second, then added, “You shouldn’t worry, you know. We’ve been through this before. As far as things go, this isn’t even the worst one I’ve had.”
“I know, I’m not worried.”
“And yet you’ve been staring at me like I’m going to vanish into thin air at any moment.”
“I’ve been staring at you because you’re easy on the eyes.”
Megumi’s brows furrowed, and Yuuji laughed, taking his hand and nuzzling into it. His skin still smelled faintly of the medicinal baths he had to take twice a day to stabilise his soul. A low-humming anxiety entered Yuuji then, but he quickly shook it aside.
“There is something I do want to talk about, in any case,” Megumi said, as he began drawing a light thumb across Yuuji’s cheek, over and back, over and back, a soothing rhythm.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I want you to promise me one thing.”
Yuuji didn’t speak. He was hit with a vile sense of deja vu, even though he wasn’t sure why. Use your strength to help others. Why was he thinking of his grandpa’s last words? He had long stopped trying to make sense of the causality of things, the chain of events that unfolded from that one last wish – or Yuuji’s possibly very wrong interpretation of it. Why was he thinking of it now? Megumi wouldn’t do the same thing to Yuuji, would he?
“As long as it’s not going to involve pissing off Kugisaki,” Yuuji managed to joke. “I still can’t believe you made me take the blame that time your shadows killed her tetras –”
“Yuuji,” Megumi interrupted gently. “Listen to me.”
Yuuji sat up, his knees drawn close to his chest. At once he wished he hadn’t moved; the absence of Megumi’s touch on his skin was keenly felt in the cold. But he didn’t want to listen, whatever it was Megumi wanted to tell him –
“When that day comes, I want you to promise you won’t try to follow me over.”
“That’s impossible,” Yuuji said immediately, with a harsh, startled laugh. “Why are you saying this? I thought you just told me not to worry.”
“These are two completely separate issues,” Megumi said with a quizzical frown. “I might be fine now, but I am mortal. We both know that. I will die one day.”
“And I won’t stop loving you then!”
They were both startled by the loud noise. Yuuji had knocked the brazier off the ledge in his agitation. Ash and charcoal tumbled out into the snow, smouldering, as tiny stars of fire leapt and hissed before sinking down into their burial ground.
“I know,” Megumi said quietly, after a while. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t have to be gruesome,” Yuuji tried. “If I find a way –”
"You will do no such thing." Megumi stood up as well, catching Yuuji's face in between his palms. "Don't you even think about it. Do you hear me?"
Yuuji’s mouth twisted. Megumi was always like this. Once he’d made up his mind about what's right and what's wrong, there was no changing it. Even though sometimes it made no sense at all.
“But why?” he pleaded. “Don’t you want this anymore?”
“I do.” Megumi’s eyes were clear and steady in the winter light. “But I want you to live, too. I would never forgive myself otherwise.” He sighs. “You're so – you're so good, Yuuji, there's a world beyond me waiting to love you, I just know that.”
He doesn’t understand, Yuuji thought, there is nothing there. He was not cursed like Yuuji was, alone from the moment he came into being and destined to be so with no end in sight – Megumi had been his one and only reprieve.
"… You ask too much," Yuuji croaked, turning away. If Megumi had been more selfish, had said, don't you ever let me go, it would be so much easier.
Megumi grabbed him by the shoulder, forcing him to hold his gaze. “I just want you to live. How is that too much?”
Yuuji ignored him. He closed his eyes and tried to bury his face into Megumi’s neck, but Megumi wouldn't let him, holding him at arm's length.
“Please … why do we have to talk about this now? You're healthy– you're not that old yet!” Yuuji forced out a short laugh. “Wasn't Maki-san just saying the other day, Zenins are known for having either unnaturally long or unnaturally short lives? I think we can rule out one of those possibilities for you already, no?”
Megumi was looking at him. There was a fleeting something – Fear? Pity? – in his expression that was gone too fast for Yuuji to decipher.
At least he didn't try to restart the horrible topic. He let Yuuji snuggle into him, holding him tight until nightfall.
-
Two slices of white toast, the kind that comes in packaged loaves from the konbini, the kind that never goes bad. More plastic than bread, certainly. Eaten plain.
Two eggs, scooped up from the boiling water. Shelled. Salted.
Bottled tea to wash it all down.
Fodder for a machine.
Breakfast, Yuuji thinks, is a luxury meant for two. Fresh steamed rice, grilled fish, sweet-sour pickled things and miso soup; that was breakfast, the way Megumi liked it, the way they’d been having it almost every morning since they moved in together, fifty years ago. Sometimes they’d bring their coffee out to the veranda afterwards, if the weather was good.
He has no more use for a ritual like that. Or to be precise, he can no longer find the energy to maintain it. It was for the same reason he had to sell their house in Nagano. Its maintenance required too much time and energy, and it fell into swift decay when it received only half-hearted care. An infestation followed. He would’ve let the worms have him, he would’ve let the Curses with their amnesic teeth eat through his flesh, if he’d been left to his own devices. But Kugisaki found him. It was unfair to her, having to care for him when she was grieving herself. He knows that. So he tries to stay functionable. Three meals a day. He sleeps, he trains, he calls her every week so she won’t have to worry.
Mornings are the foulest time. Once in a while, he wakes up thinking Megumi is still around.
And then the wall, his hand would slam into it in its familiar course to Megumi’s side of the bed. (There is no such side on his bed now. In his new flat he sleeps in a single bed, propped against an undecorated white wall still new and powdery from the paint.)
And then the void, stark-white and yawning open inside him like a mouth that can’t be satiated. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you why can’t you come back –
The ink-grey haori, the moka pot and many other coffee-making tools with names Yuuji never learned, and the books, so many of them: notebooks with handwritten notes on a variety of topics, botanical sketches, jujutsu scrolls, journal subscriptions, folders full of ephemera, sitting heavy in a dozen unopened boxes that had been brought over from Megumi’s study and then stacked into a corner to gather dust. All those things, they used to bring Yuuji comfort. He felt like as long as he was surrounded by clutter that carried Megumi’s essence, he wasn’t really alone.
But they have quickly lost their magic against the rough chafe of time. Seeing them now just reminds Yuuji of the one life they’ve had. He supposes they were lucky enough to spend a lifetime together, but a lifetime was not enough.
Is he too greedy when it comes to love? Maybe if he weren’t so ungrateful, he wouldn’t have been cursed to live forever. He might get to spend the next life with Megumi, and the next one after that …
He packs the stuff away, rents a storage unit far enough from the city proper that it would be inconvenient to stop by too often, and he makes a mental note to send the key-code to Kugisaki the next time they talk.
Returning to his empty flat, he curls up on the floor. He allows himself some semblance of grace before commanding his body to straighten up again.
It’s not just Kugisaki he’s living for, he reminds himself. There’s a chance, a hopeless ghost of a chance, of seeing him again. Not as the Megumi he knew, of course. The person will not remember him. They might not be born into the jujutsu society this time; they could literally be anyone … hell, they could be anything. But Yuuji believes he can recognise Megumi anywhere. In any form, in any skin.
-
Petals falling through the paper doors, catching the wet rim of their tea cups. Petals on their shoulders, petals in their hair.
Megumi is smiling, old and young at once. Yuuji must have said something silly to make him smile like that, though he can't remember what. He can’t quite remember how they got here either, in a tangled heap on the floor, Megumi a glorious sight beneath him. Eyes bright, kimono loose, dark hair falling mussed around his face. And Yuuji’s sniffing at his neck, nibbling his collarbones to make him laugh.
“Bad dog,” Megumi says, voice low, in a way that never fails to turn Yuuji’s insides into jelly. It’s almost unfair, how easy it is for Megumi to undo all his defences: a few words, a single glance levelled at his direction, and Yuuji is wholly his to toy with.
Megumi flips them over easily, a hand on Yuuji’s throat, pressing down just so, a hand tugging his own obi loose. “Stay here, Yuuji.”
-
Two slices of white toast. Eaten plain.
Two eggs, scooped up from the boiling water. Shelled. Salted.
Bottled tea to wash it all down.
Megumi has asked of him the one impossible thing: to live. To live when there is nothing to live for.
-
He has resorted to waiting.
He doesn't know how long he'll have to wait, but the mental image of a destination makes things somewhat more bearable.
He imagines them meeting again, on the street corner, at the metro station, or maybe in the supermarket aisle for dairy, Megumi with his basket full of coffee filters and kibble. He imagines feeling a tug of recognition, karma at work, invisible threads woven between their fingers, a knot drawn tight.
Hey.
The same clear, summer eyes; perhaps a different face.
(There you are.)
Will Megumi feel the same pull of gravity? Is it possible there might still be a small part in him, though operating at a level below conscious threshold, that remembers Yuuji?
The line of thought becomes both ambrosia and poison. On one hand he finds it much easier to leave his room now, the city practically glowing with promise. On the other hand, there is always the possibility that Megumi might take a look at him and decide he isn’t someone worth knowing. He’s fallen quite low in the intervening years. When Megumi left, it seemed he’d taken with him the part of Yuuji that was ever worthy of his love.
Time passes as he waits. Months, then years. He keeps waiting, but serendipity remains an elusive thing. His days blur into a vertigo of broken time. There are nights where he can't sleep at all, prowling the dark streets in desperation, convinced that if he pauses his search for so much as an hour, he’ll miss his only chance of an encounter with Megumi.
He knows he’s being impatient. Reincarnation could take centuries. But he can’t help the stomach-sinking belief that he’s done something wrong, that he’s always doing something wrong, and that’s why Megumi hasn’t come back to him yet.
How long will this go on? How long can he keep this up without going crazy?
-
It’s spring again. The city once more in her mourner’s white.
He hops on a train with no particular idea where he wants to go. Anywhere but the here and now. Anywhere but the eternal spring where the clock is broken and their summer never comes.
When you get better, it’ll be warm again. The garden will be green and beautiful and noisy with frogs and cicadas singing all night long. We’ll have everyone over for a barbeque night – how does that sound? Not bad, huh? Know what, we can make Maki-san sing ‘Blue Lagoon’ again, and –
He lets the crowd push him this way or that, feeling like an imposter among them, a Curse in human skin. He used to be like them too, going about his daily life unaware of how beautiful, how small and silly it was. He can’t remember what it felt like, to be grounded in one’s own fragility.
In transit, he watches a salaryman hold a sustained 90-degree bow to his senior as they part ways. There's a girl with a guitar case slung over her shoulder, humming low under her breath as she descends the stairs, her hands moving in small, timed motions rehearsing a performance. Waiting by a pillar, a boy in uniform glances down at his watch, then around, his eyes jumping restlessly from face to face.
Yuuji ends up falling away from the flock. He finds himself alone at the seaside. A dove-grey sky spreads feathery over a restless sea.
It’s lonely without you.
Megumi came back to life for him once; just for him, when death would’ve been sweet mercy. Is it selfish to hope that Megumi might answer his prayer for a second time?
The coldness seeps through polyester as he wades out into the deep, but it’s as if his skin has gone numb, he can’t feel anything.
The tide is rising; the waves keep throwing him back as he tries to push forward. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to achieve with this. He guesses he just needs to fight against something overwhelmingly powerful without risking hurting anyone. And the sea is not just powerful, it’s mechanical about it. There's no deliberation behind its actions; any act of destruction is merely incidental – therefore it is never apologetic. Just what Yuuji needs.
Straining, floundering, gasping for air, he slams himself again and again into the dark, uninhabitable swell. Lets it engulf him, drag him down. “Fushiguro!” His throat burns from the bitter sting of seawater, from the blood in his mouth as he gnashed and screamed, “Fushiguro – COME BACK!”
If there's a time in Yuuji’s life where he comes close to hating Megumi, this is it. Only Megumi can bring him so low. The knowledge that no one else – not even Megumi – shares his abasement only makes him angrier. In his final days, Megumi withstood the shutting down of his body with the utmost, heartbreaking dignity and calmness. He was peaceful in the face of death; yet for Yuuji, this detachment was almost like an insult. And the anger, the humiliation, which he could not express at the time, has been festering in him since then.
Megumi has left him alone in a wasteland and forbidden him to follow. A world beyond me – what a sick, fucking joke. If he could say such a thing, then he didn’t know Yuuji at all. He has condemned Yuuji to roam the earth, blind and obsessive like a ghost and forever wanting; while he went, enlightened, whole, to reunite with his family in another life: Tsumiki, Gojo-sensei, his mother…
“What about me?” Yuuji pleads, heaving, as another wave crashes down on him. “WHAT ABOUT ME YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE?”
He chokes out an animal sound. Just what is he thinking? How can he begrudge Megumi for dying peacefully? He is truly disgusting, blaming Megumi for his own weakness, that’s the kind of person he has become these days.
All the fight leaves him. It's cold, so cold, all of a sudden, and it's as if the fabric of his clothes has been saturated with the heaviness of the sea. He starts shivering. He feels the futility of his actions now more than ever; the weight of his curse. His hopeful delusion – thinking that he deserves to find Megumi again – is after all just a delusion.
Megumi is gone (forever).
–
The shadows left them one early morning in April, the way pain leaves a body under sedation: swiftly, silently, as if they were never there in the first place.
For days the shadows had gathered around their master’s sickbed, contorting, folding like a starved thing, eating away the air and metastasising into black, crude-oil bursts of hallucinations. Four ritualists stood guard at each corner of their house. Yuuji was warned to stay away.
Until the blue hour came, and suddenly they were all gone. Yuuji had sensed the change in the air before others. He staggered up at once, hurrying down the hallway and through the door. The room was faintly aglow with the dim colours of the sky. The cherry tree was a large white spectre in their garden. A wind began blowing through an open window as he came near.
Megumi was awake. He looked serene. He cupped Yuuji’s face with a slow, trembling hand, brushing a petal off his fringe. It fell into the hollow of his throat. A drop of white. Just where Yuuji used to kiss.
Ah, this is beautiful, Megumi murmured. His smile was soft, a melancholic little thing, yet heartbreakingly beautiful. But what wouldn't I give to spend another summer with you.
His hand faltered, and Yuuji caught it, held it to his chest as it grew cold, but even then Megumi didn't stop watching him. Not until the last breath left his body; his fragile love, unfurling between them for one last time.