Chapter Text
The dream started simple enough.
He dreamt of his grandpa, in the days before he got sick. They had gone downtown to celebrate Yuji's 8th birthday and were walking through Jozenji-dori avenue, Yuji contently devouring the last bits of his chocolate ice-cream. It had been a surprisingly warm day for March, the sunlight warming his cheeks, unobstructed by the early leaves of the zelkova trees.
"Can I have another?" Yuji chirped, grinning up at his grandpa.
"Such an insatiable brat", Wasuke chided with a smile that betrayed his true spirits. Yuji scrunched up his nose in confusion.
"Grandpa, what is in-say-shibble?"
"It means you will eat anything you see and still ask for more!" Wasuke ruffled his mop of pink hair.
"Is not true!" Yuji protested and pointed at a nearby rock. "I won't eat that!"
"Are you sure? That's a special rock with red bean filling."
"Is not!"
His grandpa let out a laugh.
"Not very gullible, huh? Good, that will be of use to you in the future."
"Grandpa, what is gully-bull?"
Wasuke sighed.
"Don't schools teach children anything these days?"
Yuji was ready to try his luck one more time when his attention got pulled away by distant shouts somewhere ahead of them.
Strange, this was usually not how the dream went, as it wasn't part of the memory.
The shouts suddenly came closer even though they'd barely made a few steps and Yuji could now discern a crowd of people wearing old-fashioned clothing, just like in his history book. They seemed angry but… they seemed scared too.
"Grandpa, who are these people?" Yuji asked uncertainly before turning to look at Wasuke, only to realize that he was now standing all alone.
"Grandpa?" Yuji panicked, "Where are you?!"
The landscape around him crumbled like plaster. The familiar Sendai streets transformed into dirt paths and the concrete buildings into houses with thatched roofs and weathered bark.
And just like that…
You're dreaming, his mind supplied.
Sudden awareness snapped into place.
Yuji had never been awake in a dream before. He'd always wanted to try it but never thought he actually could.
"No way!" He looked around with wide eyes. "Don't look at your hands, don't look at your hands…" he muttered, afraid that if he did, he'd wake up too soon.
Before him sprawled what seemed like a village market. Merchants called out, selling everything from fish, vegetables and rice to straw sandals, woven baskets and pottery.
In the middle of the wide street, however, a commotion was taking place.
Yuji took a tentative step closer, careful not to touch anyone or draw attention to himself. Who knew how dream rules worked anyway?
"This wretched little demon tried to steal from me!" a middle-aged woman was shrieking at the present court guards, as she dragged something roughly forward. The remnants of a rice ball had been trampled in the dirt.
"When I caught him in the act, he pushed me and tried to run away like the cursed thing he is! What if his kegare has clung to me? Oh, what misfortune!" the woman wailed.
"This demon-child should not be allowed into the village! It bears the mark of a murderer! It will bring calamity and ill fortune upon us all!" another man shouted, to the crowd's approval.
Curiosity took the best of Yuji and he approached cautiously to take a better look at the accuser. It was clear enough, from the small figure, that it was a a child. A young boy in a dirty, torn-up hemp kosode. No older than Yuji had been in his dream moments before. He was trying to keep himself hidden beneath an equally pitiful excuse for a blanket.
"Speak, demon! Did you try to steal from the vendor woman?"one of the guards roughly shook the small form and the blanket slipped free. Horrified gasps rippled throughout the crowd as his disfigured face, with another set of eyes, and four arms came into view. His once pink hair clung to his skull in dirt-stiffened strands and a small black mark was visible at the center of his forehead.
No way.
Yuji stared, dumbfounded, as instant recognition struck him.
The resemblance, the deformities, the marks that were too unique, too impossible to mistake…This child. It couldn't be. Could it?
Before Yuji could process what he was seeing, he felt a whisper of a second presence.
"You dare?" The voice slithered through the darkness like a serpent, venom dripping from its fangs. Ready to strike, ready to kill.
Yuji snapped his head to his left, attention instantly diverted.
The King of Curses was watching him. No trace of the usual mocking smile, four burning red embers focused on him, barely containing the flame raging within.
Yuji didn't fear Sukuna. Hell, he'd been waiting for a chance to square up with the bastard and whoop his ass. But in the few seconds of their stare-off, he felt chills run down his spine as it wasn't fear of Sukuna he was feeling. It was the fear of intruding on something deeply private, something utterly vulnerable, not meant to be seen.
"Is that—" Yuji fumbled, not exactly sure what to say. It wasn't a feeling he ever thought he would have toward Sukuna, of all people. "Is that real?"
He turned to look back at the dirty little boy who had barely any meat on his bones, his ribs painfully sticking out beneath his bruised skin. Yet, somehow, against all reason, it was undeniably Sukuna.
"LEAVE." Sukuna sliced the air with a two-finger cutting motion toward Yuji.
Nothing happened.
Sukuna's brows furrowed in a rare display of confusion and his stare pierced the boy.
Yuji blinked back at him blankly.
A second passed in silence before realization hit.
"DID YOU--DID YOU JUST TRY TO CLEAVE ME?!"
In an instant, Sukuna was in front of him, clawed hand snapping toward Yuji's throat, ready to rip him open. Yuji raised an arm to shield himself, but it turned out he didn't need it as Sukuna's hand passed straight through his body. This shifted the King of Curses' weight forward and, for a moment, he stumbled. A frustrated growl followed.
"Huh?" The moment Yuji realised what had happened, he burst out laughing.
"Serves you right for trying to make tonkatsu out of me. Prick."
"How the hell are you doing this, brat?" Sukuna snarled, eyes narrowed in irritation. "We are presently not in my innate domain, yet both of our souls inhabit this place."
"I'm not doing anything, asshole. I wouldn't even know how, even if I wanted to. I was having a great dream until you came along and ruined it."
He pointed at the scene still unfolding.
"That's you, isn't it? Can't believe it! So am I in your dream now?"
Sukuna remained silent, the air around him brimming with dark energy.
"I was hungry", the child's tiny voice tried to rise above the chaos of the crowd. "I'm sorry, please don't hurt me again!"
From the corner of his eye, Yuji saw Sukuna flinch. It was barely there, but it had happened. The motion itself was enough to take Yuji aback but to also hear Sukuna pleading like that - even if this was not a version of him he was used to - left him unsettled.
Was it disgust at his once-weak human form or was it reliving the memory that had caused the visceral reaction in someone no longer human?
He hates this, Yuji realized. He's vulnerable in a way he hasn't been for a long time and it's made all the worse because I'm here to witness it.
Yuji would be lying if he said he didn't feel the tiniest sense of twisted satisfaction at that. Finding a crack in your worst enemy's armour, especially one you never expected to find? If the roles were reversed, Sukuna would have already started mocking him mercilessly, exploiting his weaknesses and basking in his misery.
Pathetic, he would taunt. Weak. Useless.
He was almost tempted to say something just to screw with him, when more voices from the crowd attracted his attention.
"The monks should have put that thing down long ago!"
"It killed its own mother! It even ate its brother in the womb!"
"It will bring disaster upon us all!"
It.
The little boy had started crying now but no one cared as the crowd screamed for blood.
Yuji felt something twist uncomfortably in his gut as he suddenly realized what he was actually a witness to.
This wasn't the Sukuna he knew. At least not the cannibalistic, deranged monster that resided in him now. This was a scared, starving child, born deformed and demonized because of it.
All quips and insults died in Yuji's throat.
One of the guards slapped the child harshly across the face and Yuji winced.
"Uncomfortable?", his Sukuna asked derisively. The boy ignored him.
"That's enough! You know what we do to thieves, creature. Take him to the cells. Twenty lashes for theft. Then Kagesada will mark him. Let the townfolk know what exactly he is." They snickered, "If they hadn't already fled at the sight of him."
"Please, don't!", the little boy shrieked in the hands of the guards. "I won't do it again, I promise! I promise, I won't! Please!"
"Pathetic". The venomous hiss was the last thing Yuji heard before he jerked awake. But Sukuna, he realized, hadn't directed it at Yuji this time. He'd directed it at himself.