Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There were stories and rumours spreading across the northern remote regions of Japan, quite often deeply ominous and foreboding. Screams of pain, wails of sorrow, derogatory curses spread through the air like a contagious virus. The rumours claimed that on one of the unremarkable peaks of the infamous Ou Mountains, there lurked something dark and heavy, suffocating any traveller passing through the region with misery and anguish, feasting endlessly on their terror. Some claimed they heard people choking on their own blood in the forests at night. Others swore that hikers were found limbless along the route, eyes still wide open as though they had died still searching desperately for an escape.

Alas, an abandoned route was traversed today.

The grey early afternoon settled heavily over the Itadori house in one of the tranquil neighbourhoods of Sendai City. Outside the house stood a brown van, and the driver in the seat, Sukuna, was certainly already tired of his family.

"Brat, we are going to leave you behind!"

Sukuna leaned out of his window from the rented van. It was a dark brown vehicle they had borrowed to travel to the family's weekend trip at a resort nestled in the valley of the Ou Mountains.

"Wait a minute! Just tying my shoelaces—"

"Tie them in the car! Honestly Jin, your kid is dumb—"

"Look who's talking. Do you honestly think you're smarter than anyone?" An androgynous figure from the seat behind Sukuna narrowed their sharp black eyes at their brother-in-law's pink hair.

"Did I talk to you, Kenny?" Sukuna rolled his eyes as he popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth.

"You should be ashamed that the old man is faster than you, Yuji!" Sukuna shouted again as he watched Yuji closing the front door before walking briskly down the grey pavement of the Itadori house. He locked the gates hastily with a clink and clang of the metal before rushing to sit at the back of the van beside Choso, his quiet older half-brother.

"Sukuna, you've run your mouth enough today. Just drive and don't be a lunatic trying to commit fratricide while on the highway."

Wasuke looked fully dressed in a loud ruby beach shirt he had received for his 75th birthday the previous year. He sat beside Sukuna in the passenger seat, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"You have too much faith in your son that he won't be the one to kill you, don't you, dear father-in-law?" Kenjaku laughed lightly as they inspected their nails.

"My dear, let's not pick a fight before we've even started on our trip," Jin said, pushing the middle seat straight to lock it in place after Yuji got in. He stepped inside to sit beside Kenny before closing the door.

"Jin," Wasuke began, "tell your brother and your marriage partner that I don't have much time left in my life before—"

"Oh god!" Sukuna threw his hands into the air as Kenny rolled their eyes.

"Get a grip, old man. It will be a very long time before the devil comes after you. You're quite bothersome to deal with."

"Why are you so sure I'll go to hell?"

Sukuna raised a questioning brow. "Do you really think you'll go to heaven?"

Wasuke scoffed as he put his glasses on. "Heaven or hell, I'm going out with style."

Now that all the Itadoris were finally settled — Yuji squeezed in the back with Choso, Jin and Kenny occupying the middle row — Sukuna started the engine.

"Speaking of style, I hope you were informed that we are going to the mountains — not to the beach, Grandpa," Yuji observed his grandfather's nonsensical choice of outfit with a raised brow.

"Yuji, sweetheart," Kenny tipped their head back.

"Yes, Mom." Yuji handed Kenny the house keys.

"Never teach your grandfather about social media. He now believes youth returns at the ripe age of 76."

Yuji and Jin chuckled as Choso piped in, "I'm afraid Sukuna is responsible for that."

Sukuna muttered darkly under his breath, "Biggest regret of my life is gifting that goddamn phone."

The van rolled smoothly through the streets of their familiar neighbourhood as Wasuke posed cheerfully for a selfie with the others visible in the background. He then proceeded to open Facebook to post it.

Jin sighed fondly as he pulled out his phone, setting the map to their destination. "It will be a long trip to the resort. Let's have fun!"

The Itadoris considered themselves entirely normal, like any other ordinary family in Japan. This belief survived despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If ignorance was bliss, the Itadoris were undoubtedly the most blissful and happy family in the world. Surprisingly, it was a statement none of them would agree to. Sukuna, in particular, would scoff loudly.

Halfway through their adventure to the Ou Mountains, Wasuke cursed sharply under his breath as he clutched his seatbelt.

"Boy, are you planning to throw me out of the window!?"

"You've said that five times already! I am driving at a perfectly acceptable speed!" Sukuna slowed down a notch, but Wasuke was still grumbling.

"If this was everybody's plan to get their hands on my inheritance by finally killing me—"

"Don't worry, we are not desperate for your pocket money," Sukuna snapped.

A vein popped.

"Itadori Sukuna! I'll make sure you are not in my will," Wasuke declared firmly before turning away to aggressively stare past the window.

Sukuna sighed heavily before Kenny chimed in, "Please split my brother-in-law's share between Yuji and Choso."

Jin simply shook his head tiredly.

Wasuke clicked his tongue before adding, "Either you or Sukuna are going to murder me tonight in the resort—"

"Ok, I've had enough!" Sukuna slowed the van to everyone's surprise.

He brought it to a halt at the side of the highway and switched on the hazard lights.

"Get down."

Yuji's mouth hung open in disbelief, and Kenny watched everything unfold with great interest. Choso's eyes played tennis between his uncle and grandfather. Jin intervened, leaning forward between the two.

"Sukuna, this is wrong—"

"Great! Now I'm getting abandoned by my own family in the middle of nowhere!"

"I'm not kicking you out, old man! Just move to the last seat with Choso."

Wasuke's mouth dropped open in shock as Sukuna continued, "I'd rather tolerate the snot-eating brat than listen to your death fantasies every five minutes."

Wasuke blinked at Sukuna a couple of times. Then a second later—

"Ow! Ow!" Sukuna tried to pry Wasuke's hand away from his ear, cowering dramatically in pain. "I can't believe you share my blood!!"

Kenny added without glancing up from their fashion magazine, "I find it entirely believable that he shares your blood—"

"Shut up!" Sukuna and Wasuke snapped simultaneously at an unbothered Kenny before Jin stepped between them.

"Alright, let's change seats quickly."

Wasuke grumbled resentfully about 'sins' and 'sons' as he hopped down from the van. Jin got out to let Yuji through, who then helped Wasuke climb inside to squeeze beside Choso. Once again with everybody settled in their seats, Sukuna started the van.

The van submerged into peaceful quiet. Probably for about three seconds. Because, unfortunately for Sukuna, his nephew was yet another flea in his ear.

"Alright! Let's turn up the volume and make this the best family trip ever!"

"Oh, come on—!" Sukuna surrendered the last sliver of his sanity.

"Whoo!" Kenny whooped enthusiastically as Yuji hit play, effectively launching Sukuna into orbit.

The first notes of the song played as Yuji nodded his head to the beat. Sukuna found himself enjoying the groove despite his performative annoyance. Choso quietly snapped a picture while Wasuke grumbled about their terrible taste in music. Jin smiled warmly as Kenny's foot tapped rhythmically to the beat.

"Lost in Paradise, baby!"

The playlist played cheerfully for an hour until they reached the final stretch of their road journey. After a total three-hour drive from Sendai, they finally reached the pass of Mt. Tatari.

Kenny and Jin had been responsible for the navigation throughout the journey. Ordinarily, one would take the exit some distance past Takizawa, the last city on the main route before reaching the valley past the Ou Mountain range. But Kenny had insisted on a shortcut, which required taking an earlier exit from the highway before even reaching the city. This shortcut would require them to pass Mt. Tatari, a forgettable peak at the tail of the mountain range. Once past the mountain, the route would lead directly to the small valley nestled in the middle of the Ou Mountains, where their much-awaited resort was located. It was a route they didn't come across the day before.

Sukuna had initially questioned, "Why don't we just take the popular route?"

Kenny sighed patiently.

"Don't you want to reach the hot springs earlier?"

"Look, I heard the weather has been bad for the past two days around Takizawa. I think it's best to take the proper route," Wasuke chimed in.

"Trust me. This route is quite legitimate. Isn't it, Jin?"

Jin zoomed into the map on his phone, carefully assessing the route. "They're right. The route does look legitimate on Google Maps."

"You'll believe a phone over a human," Wasuke rolled his eyes as he leaned away from the conversation.

"Fine." Sukuna switched on the left indicator as the van cautiously moved to the left lane. After a couple of hundred metres, the van joined the service road before turning left towards Mt. Tatari.

The sky had progressively turned a deeper, darker shade of grey — a typical sign of heavy rain and approaching storms. A car window slid down as Yuji stuck his face out, the cool wind running its fingers through his soft pink hair.

Yuji took a long, deep breath. The earthy scent of wet soil immediately filled his lungs.

"I think it's going to rain."

Sukuna scanned the surrounding environment carefully. There was no sign of any living movement — no humans, no animals. On both sides of the road stretched a vast expanse of overgrown land, wild shrubs and weeds running rampant, the trees looming large and ominous.

Yuji turned up the volume on the radio, which buzzed with static noise.

"I don't think the radio works out here," Sukuna said as he narrowed his eyes at something far in the distance. As the van approached the sparse settlement before the now-visible mountain entrance, Sukuna took in the worn-down shops that had surely been built forty to fifty years ago. He parked the van in front of an ancient boarded-up shop.

"Sukuna," Jin called from behind.

"Hmm?"

"This area has very poor signal." Jin tapped at his phone repeatedly. "Google Maps isn't working."

"Shit." Sukuna quickly pulled out his own phone to check. Jin was right — nothing was working.

Choso hummed thoughtfully as he checked his internet settings. "Phones usually have low signal in forest regions."

Wasuke was now peering past the van window at the other buildings lining either side of the road.

"Hey." He pointed a slightly shaky arm at one of the buildings ahead. "I can see light coming from that shop."

Everybody turned in the direction Wasuke pointed.

"Old shops usually carry guidebooks for tourist spots. We should check them out."

The engine roared to life again and the van moved ahead, stopping right outside the shop Wasuke had pointed out.

The shop walls were a faded ivory. A white canvas banner hung above the entrance, painted with black Japanese lettering already peeling at the edges.

"Let's get out of the van first." Kenny clicked the door open and stepped out onto the unruly, grassy ground.

Moments later, the whole family had stepped outside. Choso exhaled heavily, and wisps of white condensation appeared and faded into thin air.

Sukuna's ruby eyes travelled slowly up the height of the mountain. The entire range was swallowed in grey fog. He was genuinely taken aback by the sudden shift from sunshine and mild spring weather just an hour ago to the biting cold and dampness surrounding them now.

"I'm going to visit the loo," Wasuke announced before rushing to the restroom located behind the shop. Yuji and Choso were enthusiastically taking photos of each other with the wild scenery as their backdrop. Kenny and Jin stood close together, Kenny pointing towards the hidden peak of Mt. Tatari while Jin nodded in quiet agreement.

Sukuna resigned himself to exploring the shop.

The bell jingled as he stepped inside onto the dusty wooden floor. The floorboards creaked immediately and Sukuna winced at the hollow sound.

He looked slowly around the shelves. There were rows of candies and sweets, the kind typically found in holiday gift boxes. Sukuna stepped closer to one of the stacked boxes by the door and picked one up.

'I thought these were popular way before I was born.' He checked for the expiry date, which wasn't printed.

But as much as Sukuna loved eating, finding the guidebook was far more pressing.

He stepped towards the counter where tons of rolled-up posters, cigarette boxes and old books were stacked on the wood. He reached for a book and then beady shiny eyes—

"Fuck!" Sukuna cursed sharply, hand flying to his chest.

Only a beat later did he notice someone small sitting behind the counter.

The man had a deeply stoic expression and small, shiny beady eyes that didn't once leave Sukuna. His hair was a few sparse wisps of dark grey protruding from an otherwise bald head. He looked decidedly peculiar and, unsettled. He was tiny compared to Sukuna, wearing an old yukata, and sat rigidly in his chair clutching a magazine as he stared.

Sukuna cleared his throat.

"I'm taking this guide." He waved the book in front of the man.

The old man remained perfectly still for a moment. And then he moved. His arms stretched slowly towards the book Sukuna was holding out but—

Crash!

The old man accidentally nudged the posters and the cigarettes, sending them tumbling to the floor.

Sukuna sighed and bent forward to pick everything up.

For a solid minute as he gathered the scattered items, the air seemed to grow thin and strangely heavy. And suddenly, he felt the hair rise sharply on the back of his nape — a creeping sensation, like a ghost reaching for his neck.

And before Sukuna could look up, a pair of measured footsteps echoed across the wooden floor behind him.

Sukuna straightened up and turned to look behind.

He paused.

His breath was stolen clean away.

'Wow, this guy is…'

Standing before Sukuna was a man so strikingly beautiful he had never encountered anything like it. The man was nearly as tall as him. Soft white hair fell loosely to his brows, and those eyes -

Oh. Those were the most breathtaking blue eyes he had ever seen in his life.

'This guy is…'

The man standing before him looked deeply serious, visibly tense, as he gripped his own arms tightly and drew in controlled breaths while running a restless hand through his hair. He wore a fitted white jacket and black joggers to match. He looked undeniably handsome.

'Wow, this guy is incredibly hot!'

The man spoke, his voice low and urgent. "Are you going through the mountain pass?"

It took a beat too long before Sukuna's brain registered the words.

"Yes." He flashed a deliberately charming smile, leaning casually back against the counter as he gave the man a slow once-over. "Why, do you need a lift?"

Sukuna had fully expected the man to give him a strange look in return instead —

"Yes, please!" The man gripped Sukuna's left arm firmly. "I need to get to the valley. M-my friends are waiting there and I'm already very late."

"Oh." Sukuna was caught genuinely off-guard by the earnest, desperate plea. He flashed another grin and pointed towards the van standing outside.

"No need to worry. See that van out there? That's mine. There'll be a dumb pink-haired kid and a depressed-looking emo somewhere nearby. They'll definitely help you. But before that—"

The man pulled his gaze away from the van to look back at Sukuna.

"What is your name?"

The man answered in a rushed, breathless voice. "Gojo Satoru."

"Nice," Sukuna said in a low, deep voice before extending his hand. "Itadori Sukuna."

Gojo shook his hand and nodded quickly.

He whispered a hushed thank you and stepped past Sukuna, moving outside the shop.

"Damn, does this guy take a hint? And wait, does he have a fever?"

Apparently, Sukuna would have to find out himself. He convinced himself that patience was a virtue and that he would woo the man over eventually, somehow. But first, he had to pay for the guidebook. He turned back to the counter and blinked at empty air.

Nobody was there.

The old man had vanished entirely.

"Strange."

But Sukuna honestly couldn't bring himself to care all that much.

"Yeah, well…"

Sukuna simply took the guide and dropped a couple of bills onto the counter. They were already running late, and he had a gorgeous man to win over out in that van. He left the shop with purposeful, hurried steps and a very clear mission in mind.

What Sukuna did not know was that the old man was crouched beneath the counter, both hands pressed hard over his head. His pupils had blown wide — enormous spots of black swallowing the whites of his eyes — in pure, unrestrained terror.

"So, you're on vacation too?"

Yuji was sandwiched snugly between Gojo and a thoroughly smitten Sukuna in the middle row. Yuji's eyes were quietly concerned as he watched Gojo's tightly pursed lips.

"Y-yes."

"Are you okay?"

"No." Gojo exhaled a heavy breath. "My head's killing me. I feel like my brain is about to explode."

"Sleep will make you feel better," Jin offered kindly, his eyes remaining steady on the now-winding road up the mountain trail. Dark trees arched overhead, forming a dense tunnel that effectively blocked out most of the sky. Light was minimal and Jin had already switched on the headlights.

Kenny didn't bother engaging with Gojo, remaining focused on the guidebook Sukuna had bought.

Gojo glanced between the Itadoris.

"Does anyone have a sleeping pill? That would be absolutely wonderful."

"Hey, old man." Sukuna turned towards Wasuke in the back and snapped his fingers in front of the man's face. Wasuke flinched sharply.

"I know you carry those pills. Give one to Gojo." Sukuna shot a glance at Gojo, who had already pressed his face wearily against the window. "Poor guy needs some rest. Hurry up."

"Thank you, Itadori," Gojo offered a brief, tired smile.

Sukuna smirked smoothly as he ran a hand through his hair. "Ask me for anything, I'll get it for you, sweetheart."

Gojo didn't register the nickname before leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes.

Wasuke regarded Sukuna for a long, silent moment — evaluating or perhaps also judging — before reaching for his fanny pack. Choso and Yuji did their absolute best not to visibly shake with suppressed laughter. Kenny coughed loudly while Jin was too secondhand-embarrassed to say anything.

They were all thoroughly familiar with the shameless flirt that Sukuna was. It was always entertaining to watch him spectacularly fail at winning anyone over, and even more entertaining to witness just how unshakably confident he remained despite being genuinely terrible at it.

Wasuke tapped Gojo's shoulder and handed him the tablet directly, much to Sukuna's barely concealed disappointment. Gojo murmured a small thank-you and accepted the water bottle Yuji was already handing him.

"Thank you so much." Gojo closed his eyes and handed the bottle back to Yuji.

"Jin, dear," Kenny said, flipping carefully through the pages before turning to their husband, "I need you to stop the van."

Jin looked genuinely puzzled at the command and slowly brought the vehicle to a halt.

"What happened?"

"There are two routes to the resort. Look." They passed the book to Jin, who adjusted his glasses properly before reading.

Sukuna watched the pair of them tracing a path through the pages before leaning back with a bored sigh. "Just pick the shorter route."

"I was going to suggest the same," Kenny agreed.

Gojo, who had been quietly listening, opened his eyes.

"In this region, longer routes tend to be the safer option."

Everybody looked at him.

"How would you know that?" Yuji asked curiously.

Gojo looked thoughtful for a moment. "My family used to live somewhere near here, a long time ago. The shorter routes are often narrower and vehicles as large as this one would frequently get stuck. Getting help out here is difficult too."

Sukuna watched him with quiet concern as Gojo drew a slow, steadying breath. "Are you okay?"

Gojo assured him with a brief flash of a smile. "Yes. I will be."

Kenny pressed further. "Do you live here now?"

"No." Gojo was quick to deny it. "My f-family did. They moved away to Kyoto long before I was born."

Wasuke, on the other hand, had grown noticeably interested in him.

"I think I've heard your name before…"

Gojo laughed awkwardly. "You have?"

"Hmm. I might have come across it somewhere, but I could be misremembering…"

Wasuke seemed to sink into deep thought as Kenjaku interjected again. "Do you visit this place often?"

Gojo shook his head a fraction too slowly. "N-no. Just once."

Kenny remained visibly sceptical. Their sharp eyes carefully tracked every shift in Gojo's demeanour and body language. Gojo offered a small, measured smile at Kenny and then at Sukuna before closing his eyes again and pressing his head back to the window.

Sukuna, for his part, had just found Gojo even more hot simply because he had spoken. Gojo seemed to be aware of it.

"Earth to Sukuna!" Yuji snapped his fingers in front of his uncle's face. Sukuna startled and immediately made a grab for his nephew's fingers. Yuji gasped.

Gojo's faint smile remained, his eyes still closed.

"Ok, ok! I'm sorry!"

"Think twice before you snap at me next time."

"Sukuna, stop threatening my kids," Kenny warned from the front.

Sukuna pulled a look of theatrical disgust at them before turning away.

"Fine, let's take the longer route," Jin said as the engine roared back to life.

"No, the shorter route. I'm not wasting time," Kenny countered firmly.

Wasuke, who had been quietly mulling things over, intervened.

"Let's take the shorter route."

The whole family snapped in the older man's direction.

"Are you—" Sukuna began, fumbling over his words in genuine shock. "Are you actually agreeing with Kenny? Your in-law!?"

Wasuke hummed warmly before letting out a short laugh. "Hell will break loose before Kenny and I break a bone to call a truce."

Kenny scoffed and turned sharply away. Jin took the left fork, following the shorter route. Wasuke continued in a musing, reminiscent tone.

"I believe I've travelled through this area once in my youth. These forests feel quite familiar. And I believe the shorter route will connect back to the same road we've been following, which will then join the main highway of the Ou Mountains after crossing Mt. Tatari."

Yuji looked genuinely surprised. "Wow, so you actually had hobbies instead of just being grumpy all the time?"

Sukuna snorted.

Wasuke bonked Yuji squarely on the head — "Ow!" — before continuing calmly. "I visited Mt. Tatari once, when I was in my early twenties, on a trip with two of my friends. One of them lived here and invited us to stay overnight at his house."

"And you didn't think to mention this before?" Choso, for once, asked a question.

Wasuke didn't grace it with a direct answer. "It reminded me of when this mountain used to be a destination in its own right. People never missed Mt. Tatari whenever they planned a trip to the Ou Mountain range."

Sukuna glanced at Gojo. He was mildly startled to find the man already fast asleep.

Yuji's eyes were bright with curiosity. "Were the roads empty back then too?"

"Not at all! This place always drew a good crowd. You'd see young people everywhere. And this area was also famous for the waterfalls a little further down the route, just before you reached the valley!"

Sukuna listened passively to his father while gazing out the window, straining to hear any sound from the forest beyond the grinding of tires on wet rocks.

"So you know your way around here?"

"No, I'm afraid I've long forgotten. But no wonder those shops from earlier looked so familiar."

The van settled into a comfortable quiet. Then, about a minute later, Sukuna noticed a single droplet of water streak across his window. The sound of tires was slowly swallowed by a soft pitter-patter on the roof, which steadily grew into a heavy, relentless hammering of rain against the metal.

"It's going to be very hard to see now," Yuji observed the water sheeting down the glass as the wipers swept it aside.

"Grandpa," Yuji turned his attention back to Wasuke, "how was it when you came here last time?"

"Hmm," Wasuke hummed thoughtfully before beginning. "It was around the time my college friends decided to take a trip somewhere outside Sendai. One of my friends suggested we stay overnight here on the mountain before heading down to the valley. I don't remember his name — uh, just a minute, I think it was something like Zen or—"

Then Wasuke straightened up suddenly, eyes brightening.

"Yes, I remember now! His name was Zenin Naobito! That Zenin fellow was the one who invited me and my friend to his house. He was quite wealthy!"

"Your friend was rich and you didn't take advantage of that?" Sukuna grinned at the old man.

Wasuke laughed. "It wasn't that easy. That Zenin was a particularly cunning man. You wouldn't want to cross him. Shrewd and crass — I honestly don't remember how I ended up friends with him."

The leaves on the trees rustled past the slowly moving van. The road had grown noticeably narrower than before.

Wasuke continued, "I remember Mt. Tatari being famous partly because it was a place where the wealthy used to reside. The Zenins were one of those families living here. I remember Zenin mentioning that there were so many rival families living in the same area, they'd have full-blown neighbour disputes every other week!"

Yuji glanced briefly at the white-haired man beside him before asking, "You think you'd heard about Gojo-san's family?"

"Possibly," Wasuke pondered, scratching his head absently. He soon dismissed the thought. "Well, setting that aside at one point, this was one of the most popular destinations in the Ou Mountains, right up there with the hot springs in the valley."

Choso, who had been silently taking in the whole conversation, addressed the elephant in the room.

"So why isn't this place popular anymore? What happened?"

The heavy hammering of rain and the low roll of distant thunderclaps overhead were the only sounds filling the van after that. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the quiet gravity now written into every line of Wasuke's weathered face.

"About six months after my trip here, very dark rumours began circulating about Mt. Tatari. Multiple hikers had reported discovering dead bodies along the trails."

Yuji glanced frantically between Sukuna and Choso, checking whether they had heard the same thing correctly.

Sukuna's brows furrowed deeply, and Choso looked mildly but attentively interested.

"Did I hear you correctly?"

Wasuke chuckled at Yuji's obvious alarm. "Yes, you did. There were countless theories behind the body sightings. Some claimed the wildlife here was particularly ferocious and that the locals had grown exhausted from driving dangerous animals away from their homes and the trails. There were even wilder conspiracies involving the wealthy families residing here. Some claimed they hunted tourists for sport. Stories like that eventually frightened people away entirely. And in time, the affluent families didn't want to tarnish their reputations by staying associated with this place, so many relocated to nearby cities like Sendai or moved further south to Tokyo or Kyoto. I nearly forgot how queasy I felt about this place when I first came here"

Jin looked thoughtful. "Did you ever stumble across a dead body here yourself, jii-san?"

Wasuke replied airily, "Nothing of the sort. I was far too busy spending all of Zenin's money while I stayed at his place. I personally have no memory of any near-death experience here at all."

Sukuna smirked at that. He truly was Wasuke's son.

"But…" Wasuke's voice dropped lower than before, as though he was quietly revisiting a small, buried memory. "I do remember my other friend, Hiroshi, urging me quite insistently to leave this place."

"Why?" Yuji tilted his head in confusion.

"He said something to me that I still remember vividly to this day. That one night while sleeping in one of the rooms of Zenin's mansion, he saw something horrible watching him throughout the entire night."

Sukuna shared the same bewildered expression as Yuji as they watched the old man continue.

"He said he saw a monster that remained eerily, unnervingly still as he tried to fall asleep. The creature he described to me in vivid detail was a hunched, bloody-skinned human figure with patchy bald spots. He said the monster was also missing one eye. I won't lie, it sounded genuinely terrifying when he first described it."

The loudest thunderclap yet was the only sound echoing inside the brown van after Wasuke's final word. Yuji, Choso and Sukuna stared at him with unreadable expressions. Jin sat in quiet confusion.

It seemed only Kenjaku had anything worth asking.

"You're telling me this is what your friend told you?"

Wasuke confirmed, "Yes. He was truly out of his wits after that night. He cut the trip short before he even got to see the waterfalls or the valley."

"Grandpa," Yuji started, a slow smile creeping onto his face.

"What?"

"Are you trying to entertain us with a horror story?"

Wasuke looked genuinely taken aback. "What? No, brat!"

Sukuna sighed long and heavily.

"Wow. I'm suddenly reminded of how old you are."

"Hey, this is what he told me! And believe me, I laughed at him too at first!"

Kenny turned back to look at him while Jin smiled apologetically at his father's predicament. "And then what, father-in-law? You started believing him eventually?"

"Look, I didn't believe him! But I would be lying through my teeth if I said I didn't find it strange. The house, the whole trip — I always had this deep, unsettled feeling in my chest. It felt like the whole place was fundamentally wrong despite how beutiful this place this looked."

"You know what, old man?" Sukuna looked at him with theatrical mockery. "If you had written a horror novel based on your true experiences, I think it would have been a bestseller. Really, you have a genuine gift for storytelling."

"And we would have made a fortune and become rich," Choso said, smirking quietly behind his hand.

Yuji added with a grin, "And we'd have built an entire mansion right here on Mt. Tatari!"

Jin laughed warmly. "I'm sorry, Dad, but it does sound exactly like the horror stories you used to tell me and Sukuna to scare us before bedtime. Mom would often laugh at them too."

Kenny laughed rather obnoxiously. "Your father has finally gone completely senile!"

The relentless mockery was wearing severely on Wasuke's patience. But unfortunately for him, he was well accustomed to it by now.

"Laugh all you want, you fools! This is a completely true story, and go laugh at my friend who still talks about it to this very day! And the only reason I suggested the shorter route is because I want to get through this place as fast as possible."

Kenny was thoroughly enjoying every moment of it. "Are you certain he's still alive, father-in-law? He might be far too old by now—"

That was when they heard it.

A loud, violent snap.

THUD!!!

"Shit!" Sukuna instinctively cowered, eyes flying to the van's roof.

"What was that!?" Yuji whipped around to look at everyone. He was mildly startled to find that Gojo was still sound asleep.

One of the branches overhead had snapped. The sound was so sharp and thunderous that the Itadoris had initially mistaken it for another clap of thunder. It fell and struck the roof heavily, jolting everyone inside.

"Oh God!" Wasuke clutched his chest, taking deliberate, steadying breaths in the wake of the shock.

Kenjaku was gripping Jin's arm tightly as Jin glanced briefly back. "Is everyone alright?"

"Yes," Choso answered calmly, twisting to look through the rear window.

"It was a tree branch. It snapped under the weight of the rain and landed on top of the van."

Sukuna craned to look at the branch past Wasuke. "Damn. That's a big one."

"Do you think there's any damage to the roof?" Yuji looked worriedly at Jin.

"Uhm," the bespectacled man said nervously, "I sincerely hope not. We might have to pay for additional damages."

"God!" Kenny pressed both hands over their forehead.

"I wish we were wealthy enough to not have to worry about money."

Wasuke, still smarting from the earlier mockery, went straight for the jugular.

"Well, if we didn't have to pay for your transition, we probably wouldn't have to worry now."

Choso and Yuji's heads snapped towards their grandfather in wide-eyed alarm.

"You've poked the bear, you angry fossil," Choso buried his face in his hands, bracing himself.

Jin shot furtive glances between the back of the van in the rear mirror and Kenny's face.

Kenny had turned fully around in their seat. Their eyes were terrifyingly wide and their mouth had curled into a sharp, dangerous snarl.

"You had better take that back, father-in-law."

"What? I didn't say anything wrong. Even Sukuna here would agree with me—"

"Be mindful of your words, Father," Jin reprimanded Wasuke with quiet firmness.

"Don't drag me into this, you stupid geezer. I never agreed to anything," Sukuna snapped.

Yuji and Jin both tried urgently to placate.

"You know how he is. Older people hold onto outdated thinking—"

"Calm down, dear. What he says doesn't define you—"

Wasuke poured fuel directly onto the fire, and even Choso privately wished he could simply go stand in the rain rather than remain inside this van.

"I don't even know what you are! Are you a man or a woman? The way you act confuses and unsettles me—"

"Who are YOU to tell me what I do with MY body!?" they snapped sharply. "You are my father-in-law and nothing more. I have absolutely no obligation to justify myself to you—!"

"Do you think I care what you think of me—!?"

"Will you all just shut up for once!" Sukuna bellowed so loudly that even Yuji shrank back into his seat. "We have this exact fucking argument every single week! Aren't you all tired of it by now!?"

"Imagine how tired I am, Sukuna—!" Kenjaku pointed a sharp, accusing finger at him and Yuji sighed loudly, pressing his mother back gently.

"Come on, let's not do this right now!"

Wasuke scoffed. "I don't know where this family is headed to"

Whatever cutting retort Kenny had lined up evaporated into thin air when the tires screeched to a sudden, violent halt.

It caught everyone completely off-guard.

Kenny looked sharply to their right.

"Jin."

Jin stared downward in bewilderment, inspecting the pedals beneath the steering wheel.

"I — I don't know! The van just stopped moving."

"Oh no," Yuji leaned forward urgently to get a better view of his father working the controls.

"Don't tell me the van has broken down in the middle of the forest," Sukuna muttered, dragging a tired hand through his hair.

He then offered, "Should I get out and che—"

The engine roared violently back to life, swallowing the rest of Sukuna's words entirely.

And then, without warning, the van lurched forward sharply — and began speeding through the forest at full throttle.

"Fuck! Slow down, Jin!" Sukuna shouted.

"It's a slope! The ground is soaked — the tyres aren't gripping!" Jin slammed the brakes repeatedly but the van showed absolutely no sign of slowing.

"Jin, stop!" Kenny clutched Jin's arm in a white-knuckled grip.

The van was now tearing through the trees at terrifying speed, perpetually on the verge of slamming into one of the massive trunks. Branches lashed violently against the windows and Sukuna pressed himself away from the glass, the force would shatter it any moment. There were sudden bumps across the path and the van launched into the air, throwing its occupants upward.

The merciless rain hammering down on them didn't help a single thing.

"Brat, hold Gojo! He'll get hurt!" Sukuna lunged for the sleeping man, his hand shooting out past Yuji to grab Gojo's shoulder.

"Oh my god!" Wasuke shouted as he seized Choso in a vice grip. Choso clung to his seatbelt, shoulders rigid with tension. Yuji and Sukuna braced against each other as the van made another ferocious leap into the air, the rain now feeling nothing like the comfort it had been mere minutes ago.

The van tore through the narrow trail for another long, terrifying minute.

"There's a clearing ahead…"

Jin quickly calculated the rough distance between the van and the opening and pressed down hard on the pedals.

As desperately as he hoped, he genuinely did not expect the van to obey him with a sudden, shuddering halt.

And neither did anyone else inside.

"Oof!" Choso and Wasuke were caught off their inertia and slammed forward in their seats. Wasuke's head struck the seat in front of him.

"Ow!"

Sukuna had practically vaulted over Yuji, one elbow pressed into his nephew's back for leverage, doing everything he could to keep Gojo from getting thrown around.

"Unc, you're crushing me," Yuji said, his voice muffled by Sukuna's weight.

"Hold on for a second. You won't die."

Kenny took several slow, deliberate breaths, still clutching their husband's arm.

"Jin… what just happened?"

Jin was also steadying his own breathing. "I'm as clueless as you are, dear."

Jin started the van again and cautiously moved forward. To his quiet relief, the van neither stalled without warning nor launched itself wildly through the trees again as though chased by the banshees.

"That was… something," Jin murmured, guiding them slowly toward the clearing.

"This place is familiar," Wasuke said quietly as he took in the increasingly visible stone fencing on either side of the road. It was clear the estate had not been maintained for years. The shrubs and flowering plants had grown wild and unruly, spilling thickly into the already narrow, muddy road.

Once they reached the clearing, the Itadoris fell into stunned, collective silence.

Ahead of them stood a European-style 19th century mansion. The walls were discoloured and deeply green with moss, ravaged by years of complete abandonment. There were four to five large windows on each floor, each fitted with attached balconies. But several of the windows had been shattered, jagged glass still clinging to the frames. Near the splintered front door, drifts of dead leaves lay scattered across the porch; ceramic plant pots were smashed and overturned in a line along the entrance.

The most unnerving detail was that all of the damage appeared deliberate.

There was no natural explanation for why the railings on the balconies were twisted and splintered outward, as though something had exploded through them from inside.

"It looks really creepy, I love it…" Yuji murmured as Sukuna wound the window down.

"I will never understand why anyone would choose to live in the middle of a forest," Kenny observed the old front door creaking slowly in the wind and rain.

"Wait! I know this house!"

Wasuke's face lit up with sudden recognition.

"This is one of the Zenin guest houses! I remember Zenin mentioning he had several foreign girlfriends who stayed here regularly!"

Uncle and nephew exchanged a quick, electric glance. A slow, mirrored smirk spread across both their faces, very clearly utterly fascinated by this information.

Kenny rounded on their father-in-law.

"Please keep your gutter-brain knowledge strictly between yourself and Sukuna. Don't corrupt my children's innocence, old man."

Choso muttered flatly, "It's far too late for that. Sukuna made sure of it."

But the smirk vanished from Sukuna's face as a deeply unsettling thought crept into his mind.

"Please tell me you went on this trip before you met Mom."

Even Jin snapped his head towards his father in quiet horror at that. Yuji looked between them in confusion, not quite catching on to what Sukuna meant. Kenny, for the first time since the jab at their transition, looked genuinely thrilled. Choso simply sighed, bracing.

Wasuke, meanwhile, was staring at them as though they had each grown an extra head.

"What do you mean? I met your mother at work. Didn't you hear me say I came here during college?"

The entire van exhaled in unmistakable relief.

"Good." Sukuna gave a firm thumbs-up towards an equally relieved Jin.

Kenny giggled and turned back to face the front.

"Wait, what just happened?" Yuji was looking between everyone with enormous, bewildered eyes, desperately hoping someone would explain what had just passed between the adults.

"Nothing, kid." Sukuna patted his shoulder firmly, which did absolutely nothing to ease Yuji's confusion.

"Wait a moment," Wasuke caught up a full beat later to what Sukuna's concern had implied.

"How low do you think of me, you uncouth brat!?" Wasuke lunged forward, swinging his fanny pack hard at the back of Sukuna's head.

"It was a genuine question!!" Sukuna twisted to dodge but Wasuke looked completely unhinged with offended dignity.

"How dare you accuse me of something so vile! Your mother was the only person I ever truly respected in my entire life!"

"Well, that does ease my own doubts," Kenny consoled themselves quietly. "I was starting to think I was the only one you wanted to set on fire."

Sukuna rubbed the spot on his forehead where the fanny pack had connected. "Alright, old man! That was wrong of me. I shouldn't have asked."

Wasuke settled back stiffly, his posture rigid as he fixed everyone in turn with a steely glare.

"Your mother, grandmother," he looked firmly at Yuji and Choso "and mother-in-law," Kenny turned back and raised one sharp brow "was the most extraordinary woman I was ever blessed to know. After my own parents died of poor health when I was ten, she was the first person I ever had to call family."

Silence settled over the van as lightning split the sky above them.

"I may be stingy or stubborn, but I have a code of honour I would never cross," Wasuke's gaze narrowed deliberately at Sukuna.

"Unfortunately, it seems my son did not inherit that same sense of honour."

Sukuna's mouth fell open.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Boy, do you really want me to spell it out for you?"

Kenny tutted pointedly. "I'm afraid I have no choice but to agree with him. You are rather well known for ghosting your dates."

Sukuna's eyes narrowed at both of them,

"I am a perfectly respectful person. What are you even talking about?"

Yuji burst out laughing. "You are genuinely terrible to date! Just a few months ago you called Dad to come pick you up so you could abandon that tall, brown-haired guy in the middle of dinner!"

"In my defence, he talked about nothing but his hair care routine for two straight hours—"

Choso added calmly, "You hid in my college food court hogging instant noodles for an entire afternoon just because you spotted your date wearing the same colour shirt as you at a restaurant a few blocks away."

"It was incredibly awkward—!"

"I actually think that's kind of cute," Yuji said, crossing his arms.

Wasuke threw his hands into the air in exasperation. "And when you brought that lovely businesswoman you met at your restaurant to our house, you had apparently told her I was a cancer patient and you were my devoted caretaker! All because I happened to mention my knee was hurting that week!"

Kenny didn't pause before delivering the killing blow. "And when your carefully constructed lie started crumbling because old man was arguing back, you tried to rush her out the door by casting me as your unstable, jealous, possibly dangerous gay stalker who had broken into a house where I already live — in the middle of a dinner party — apparently attempting to murder her out of sheer possessive rage."

Sukuna was now shooting desperately furtive glances at Gojo, silently praying with every fibre of his being that the man was not taking any of this in.

"Look, you all have to give me some credit here. Every single one of them was absolutely unhinged—"

"If I had to point to the unhinged one in any of those situations," Jin said very calmly, "I would point directly at you."

Sukuna snapped. "Do you have any idea how alarming that woman's veneers were? I genuinely thought she was a vamp—"

BLAST.

"Oh Lord!" Wasuke's hand flew to his chest.

The Itadoris' heads all whipped left towards the mansion, the lightning burning white behind the pure shock etched onto every one of their faces and Sukuna's tattoos.

The uppermost left balcony had blown entirely apart. The last remaining intact pane of glass exploded outward, shards catching the rain like scattered sparks. The torn curtain hanging from the ruined balustrade caught a brief flame and charred instantly, dark smoke curling upward from the blackened cloth.

"Did… did the balcony just blow up?" Yuji wiped the condensation quickly from the window, straining for a clearer view through the downpour.

"I think we must be imagining things…" Kenny laughed, but even they couldn't fully mask the tremor in their voice.

But Sukuna knew better.

Yuji wasn't imagining anything. The only structure on the mansion that had still been mostly intact had just detonated and, the sound alone had confirmed it.

Wasuke swallowed audibly. Choso strained to see inside the blown-open hole at the top corner of the building. Nobody appeared to be inside.

Jin drew everyone's focus back to what was ahead of them. His palms were damp but his voice remained steady.

"We need to keep moving. It must have been struck by lightning."

"Yes…" Kenny faced the front and quickly leafed through the pages before speaking with renewed confidence. "Straight ahead, dear. We should reach the main route shortly."

"Good."

Everyone tried their best not to think too hard about what they had just witnessed as Jin attempted to start the van. But Sukuna, Yuji and Choso found they couldn't bring themselves to look away from the mansion. The rest of the family might have been too rattled to register it, but the three of them felt it — a sharp, sudden spike in the pressure around them. A suffocating stillness in the air. Charged and heavy, like the moment before a strike.

Sukuna finally looked away from the window.

"Aniki. Let's go."

"Uhm." Jin turned the key. The engine coughed weakly and refused to catch.

"Jin." Kenny watched their husband try again and again, each attempt more strained than the last. Wasuke felt the weight of his old friend's unhinged, rambling story about a simple mountain trip pressing down on him with renewed and unwelcome gravity.

The van would not move.

"Jin, please hurry—"

"I'm trying — but!"

BOOM.

The enormous tree directly opposite the ruined balcony split clean down the centre and collapsed to the ground with a tremendous, rattling thud.

Every head inside the van snapped instantly to the back window.

Silence fell, nothing but the rain and then—

"MOVE!"

BLAST.

A second tree came down. Twenty feet closer.

Sukuna roared and the engine finally roared back. The forty-one-year-old Jin slammed the accelerator and the wheels spun wildly in the wet mud before the van launched forward and tore out of the clearing.

Wasuke sat rigidly, facing forward, beads of cold sweat tracing lines down his deeply furrowed face. The trees rushed past on either side in a blur, looming as though they intended to close in before the van always just barely cleared them. Kenny held the guidebook in a white-knuckled grip as they stared ahead, brows tightly drawn in barely-concealed anxiety.

Yuji and Sukuna both craned to look behind them as the mansion was swallowed back by the treeline, disappearing through the gap between Choso and Wasuke.

Choso narrowed his eyes sharply as something in the distance splintered into fragments.

"The trees are exploding one after another."

"That shouldn't be possible," Sukuna said quietly, his eyes still scanning the trail they were rapidly leaving behind.

Yuji drew a shaky breath which could pass as a laugh. "I think the lightning isjust funny here."

"That's the only reasonable explanation."

Kenny was quick to second it as another blinding flash of lightning erupted somewhere above the forest canopy.

Jin kept his eyes and his focus locked on the road and the wheel. He couldn't say exactly what it was, but something deep inside him was pushing hard against the thought of stopping not even for a second until they reached the highway. He didn't need to say it aloud. He could feel with absolute certainty that every other person in this van felt exactly the same thing.

"Where is the road!?" Wasuke shouted from the back as a branch snapped loudly and viciously against the side window.

Kenny bit down on their thumbnail, doing their level best to sound calm. "We should be converging now."

"Oh God! The tree!" Wasuke thrust a trembling arm forward pointing desperately ahead.

But Jin took a sharp, instinctive turn to the right, narrowly sparing everyone from a catastrophic collision by less than a heartbeat.

Kenny's hand shot out and seized Jin's arm.

The van pressed on, chasing the highway, and gradually the trees behind them stopped bursting apart. Sukuna let himself believe, just briefly, that whatever had been pursuing them had given up now that they were so close to the main route.

He was immediately and thoroughly proven wrong.

A sudden, enormous weight struck the top of the van with devastating force, jolting everyone hard inside. Sukuna's eyes went wide when a wet smear of dark red swept across his window and then the rain wiped it clean instantly.

"Oh my god!" Wasuke's grip on Choso's arm tightened so violently the boy was hissing through clenched teeth. Yuji pressed himself back in his seat instinctively. Kenny simply screamed.

"Jin! faster! You should have reached the main route by now!"

Everyone's stomach lurched at that.

"What do you mean!?" Wasuke demanded as Yuji looked frantically between his parents.

Jin broke into a visible sweat. "By when were we supposed to reach it?"

Kenny dreaded answering. They swallowed hard.

"Five minutes ago."

Wasuke shook his head and began praying quietly and very sincerely under his breath for what might have been the first time in years. Jin did not ease off the accelerator as he steadied himself and tried to steady everyone else.

"It's alright. We'll reach it any moment now."

"I don't know—"

"We will, dear."

Kenny and Jin shared a single, steady look of quiet reassurance before both faced forward again.

"What is happening right now…" Yuji leaned back into his seat and bit down on his lip, his expression a fragile thing caught between trying to hold together and simply falling apart.

Choso was tightly wound himself, Wasuke was practically fused to his arm. But Choso's attention had drifted now, fixed on Sukuna's face with growing unease.

His eyes were blown wide. His lips were pressed into a thin, pale line. A single bead of sweat traced slowly down the side of his face.

"Sukuna…?"

"Nothing." The word came out too fast, clipped in the way of a man forcing himself to function past something he didn't want to name.

Sukuna seemed to be fighting every muscle in his face to keep his expression from giving anything away.

Sukuna sincerely, bitterly wished the old man had never told his damned story — about monsters, about corpses found along the trail's edge. Because if he hadn't heard a single word of it, he wouldn't have gone completely and utterly still the moment he'd registered what had been on the other side of his window.

A pair of human legs.

Trailing intestines and an abdomen split wide open.

Rolling away from beneath the van and into the rain.

It was a few long, silent minutes later that the tension finally, slowly drained out of the van like air leaving a punctured tyre.

"I can see a clearing!" Yuji's voice rang out sharp and bright beside him, and Kenny let out a long, shuddering breath of relief.

The narrow trail opened at last onto the main route of Mt. Tatari. Wasuke had stopped his prayers. The iron grip on Choso's arm had finally, mercifully released.

"Hey. Nobody is taking the shorter route ever again. Kenjaku, do you understand?"

Kenny nearly snapped their neck at the speed they turned around.

"You wanted the shorter route too!"

"I did not! I said the path looked familiar — !"

"You absolute liar —!"

"Can we please stop arguing!?" Yuji stared at both of them with an expression of someone who had already aged five years over the past hour.

"Jin, stop at the side for a moment. I need some air," Sukuna said, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead and massaging slowly. Jin nodded without a word and pulled over.

Everyone climbed out of the van, and the outside air hit them in the face like a mercy. Cold, sharp and real. After being trapped in that narrow, closing trail, the main route felt almost startlingly wide in comparison. The trees were fog-heavy and the visibility was low, but the absence of branches clawing at every window with every inch of movement was quietly reassuring.

Sukuna walked a short distance from the van alongside Yuji and Choso. He could still make out Gojo's silhouette in the back seat, head tipped against the window impossibly still asleep.

"He must have been completely exhausted if he slept straight through all of that," Yuji mused, rubbing his hands together before shoving them deep into his jogger pockets. Choso folded his arms and stood quietly, watching the conflict working visibly through Sukuna's face.

"Are you alright? You don't look well."

Yuji blinked between Sukuna and Choso before the same realisation landed. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," Sukuna said, nodding with the conviction of a man trying to reassure himself as much as anyone else. He ran both hands back through his hair. When he finally looked at them, his eyes were very wide.

"Yeah. I'm good. Completely fine. Genuinely never been better—"

"You're… sure?" Yuji and Choso exchanged a glance, neither of them at all convinced.

Sukuna let out a short, slightly unhinged laugh, spread his arms wide and looked at the sky.

"Yeah! I'm absolutely fine! What could possibly be wrong with me?"

Yuji and Choso took a small, mutual step backward.

"You kind of look like you've lost it."

"Do I!?"

Both brothers flinched as Sukuna's voice cracked without warning. He caught himself almost immediately, closed his eyes, took two slow, deliberate breaths. Yuji reached out carefully.

"Are you scared?"

"No…" Sukuna shook his head. Then he beckoned them both closer with two sharp jerks of his hand. Yuji and Choso exchanged another cautious look before huddling in. Sukuna checked past their shoulders to make certain nobody else was watching.

"Whatever I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. Just hear me out until I finish."

Choso's jaw tightened. "Is it about this place?"

Sukuna nodded. "Something is deeply, fundamentally wrong with this entire forest. I really wish Apollo hadn't blessed the geezer who was partly responsible for my birth with the gift of prophecy."

"Huh?" Yuji's eyes widened confusion. "What do you mean? Why are you talking about a meme and grandpa?"

Choso and Yuji both watched their uncle with barely-concealed apprehension.

Sukuna genuinely wished he didn't have to tell the kids. He sincerely wished there was a functional, sane adult in this family. Yuji and Choso were the most reasonable options available, but even that wasn't saying much. At the very least, they wouldn't summon the entire local wildlife by panicking at full volume the way Kenny and Wasuke invariably would if he told them what he was about to say. Jin would be steady and understanding but Kenny was permanently attached to Jin's side. There was no realistic way to pull Jin aside for thirty seconds without five immediate questions firing in from the other half.

"Do you remember something heavy striking the roof of the van while we were driving?"

"Wait, the branch?" Yuji asked, but Choso cut in.

"No, it missed us — "

"Oh wait, right, now I remember—"

"Will you both please shut up for one moment!" Sukuna pinched the bridge of his nose.

Yuji and Choso zipped their lips together and gestured for him to continue.

"It was not a tree branch. Do you honestly think I would be standing here looking like this over a fucking tree branch—"

"Alright, alright! We believe you!" Yuji held his hands up in quick surrender. "Then what was it?"

Sukuna looked at them both steadily. He was going to say this plainly.

"It was a pair of human legs. No upper body. J-just intestines spilling."

Silence.

A silence that had never once existed between the Itadoris before in their lives.

Choso was the first to break it, his expression blank, eyes fractionally wider than usual.

"What?"

Sukuna exhaled slowly. "Believe me or don't. It was a corpse. It landed on the van from above."

Yuji had not blinked. Had not said a single word. Which was, in itself, alarming enough to make Sukuna actively uneasy, because Yuji always said something.

"Oi. Are you still in there?"

Sukuna shook Yuji's shoulder firmly. Which, as it turned out, was precisely the trigger for the loudest sound ever produced by a human being, effectively broadcasting to the entire mountain.

"YOU SAW LEGS — HMPF!!!"

"What is wrong with you!?" Sukuna's hands clamped hard over Yuji's mouth. Choso immediately looked back at the others, alarmed.

"I told you to keep your voice down!" Sukuna hissed, but Yuji wrenched himself free from his uncle's grip.

Yuji took several quick, sharp breaths. Calling him startled was an understatement. He was sweating through the cold, his eyes blown wide, every instinct he had clearly screaming at him from multiple directions at once. He opened his mouth and, despite the very real and pressing context of their situation, the poor boy simply could not help it—

"A DEAD BODY—!"

"I am going to fucking kill you—"

"What is going on!?"

Kenny, Jin and Wasuke came striding over at once. They had been mid-discussion about whether to leave immediately, and two of Yuji's shouts back-to-back had been enough to send them running.

"Nothing, Mom," Choso said smoothly, stepping lightly in front of Kenny's path. Kenny looked sharply between Yuji's expression and Sukuna's face, worried and irritated.

"Yuji, sweetheart, are you alright? Did your uncle do something? What were you shouting about?"

Sukuna was half a breath from snapping but Yuji beat him to it.

"N-no! I'm totally fine, he just—" he glanced quickly between Sukuna, whose mouth was pressed flat, and Choso, who gave the smallest possible shake of his head.

"He smacked me hard on the back. You know how he is. Like I'd actually get scared of a haunted mountain." Yuji managed a dismissive wave of his hand.

"How about I leave you here on this haunted mountain, hm?" Sukuna said, completely deadpan, before turning and walking back toward the van. He paused just long enough to add over his shoulder, "You're sitting next to me while I drive."

"Why!?" Yuji whined but followed immediately.

Choso sighed and went after them both.

"Tch." Kenny glared at the back of Sukuna's head as Jin chuckled tiredly beside them. Wasuke grumbled, "He's in a foul mood. One of us is definitely getting launched out of the van before this trip is over."

The rain that had been lashing at them so mercilessly while they were near the mansion had eased somewhat by the time they rejoined the main route. But now that they were climbing further up the mountain and passing through scattered, half-abandoned pockets of villages swallowed by the forest, the wind had grown sharper and faster, driving the rain sideways and making what remained of the downpour feel twice as violent as before.

There was nothing remarkable about the small ghost settlements they drove past. The shops were old and shuttered, boards warped and paint peeling away in strips. The trees had reclaimed whatever gaps once existed between buildings. It was a town the mountain had quietly digested. Wasuke would occasionally point at something and announce he had once bought an ice cream there —a shop that hadn't visibly changed in fifty years, except that now nobody lived in it.

On paper, this should have been frightening. Most people would call it unsettling at the very least. But the Itadoris were, collectively, far too stubborn to acknowledge anything unusual, considering they themselves were unusual. Their strong preference was to pretend that nature was simply being eccentric and to talk loudly over whatever the problem was until it presumably sorted itself out.

And that, ironically, explained precisely why the sole brown van on the mountain road was carrying six deeply cautious, quietly apprehensive people who were pretending, with great effort, that they were not.

It's fine. The Itadori family had agreed to let Wasuke's old Japanese playlist fill the silence from his phone, letting the familiar music paper over the uneasy undercurrent that had settled into the van's atmosphere since the mansion. Wasuke himself seemed perfectly at ease — humming along contentedly.

Sukuna had no words for it. They might encounter another body at this rate, but his father would be over there swaying to his old lullabies like a man on a pleasant Sunday drive. Even if one of them gets mauled to death. The man's ability to simply refuse to be disturbed was infuriating.

Yuji twisted in his seat and exchanged a look with Kenny. Choso had put on his most neutral expression becuase the music wasn't to his taste and he was making no effort to pretend otherwise. Jin, on the other hand, was quietly mouthing along to the lyrics with genuine fondness.

Sukuna's eye twitched when both Misora Hibari and Wasuke hit the full crescendo together in a song he would have genuinely enjoyed at any other point in his life.

What possible reason could Wasuke have had to start singing along right now!?

"Will you stop? It sounds like a loud funeral procession! People might think someone is already dead in here!"

"Misora-san was truly one of a kind," Wasuke said, entirely unruffled, his tone taking on the satisfied loftiness of a man whose taste is simply beyond the room. "The present day junk you guys listen to pales in comparison to her voice"

Sukuna grunted.

"I remember playing one of her songs at our wedding. Your grandmother absolutely adored music. I still have every record she collected throughout her life." Wasuke's voice softened into fondness as he continued.

"She comes back to me every time one of you argues over what to play on a car trip. She loved choosing the music whenever we travelled anywhere together. She was very particular about it." He paused, gaze drifting briefly somewhere past the window. "I'm glad that much hasn't changed."

Yuji smiled broadly. "Obaachan would be so happy."

"She would be pissed at your playlist choices, though," Sukuna said flatly, jabbing a finger at Yuji.

"Oi!"

Sukuna huffed once — and then, despite himself, softened into a quiet chuckle. Jin hummed along to the next verse. Kenny gazed out the rain-streaked window with a gentle expression. Choso settled back against his seat, thinking of his grandmother.

Gojo, who had surfaced gradually from unconsciousness somewhere in the middle of all of this , found he couldn't look away from the rear mirror. From the soft, unguarded quality that had settled briefly over Sukuna's face. It was a remarkable thing to catch, and he stayed very still in case looking away might make it disappear.

"Gojo-san, you're awake!" Yuji twisted round with characteristic brightness, still craning sideways to see him.

Sukuna's shoulders went immediately rigid.

"Yeah." Gojo pulled himself upright, sounding thoroughly wrung out.

"Sleep alright?" Sukuna asked, his voice having dropped half an octave without apparent effort. "I apologise if anyone disturbed you." A dramatic, suffering sigh. "My family is—well what can I say –lacking when it comes basic decency. They forget to be quiet when someone is asleep"

"Huh!?" Yuji looked personally wronged by this statement. Wasuke produced an indignant noise. Choso simply rolled his eyes with the patience of someone who has long since made peace with his circumstances. Jin had nothing much to say while Kenjaku had plenty.

"Well," Kenny said edgily, "that's quite the bold assessment to make in front of the family you are, as we all know, a full and enthusiastic member of."

Gojo raised a single brow in Sukuna's direction. Kenny had already turned back with the most controlled, dangerous little smile at the corner of their mouth.

'Definitely plotting something. I should probably watch that one', Gojo noted, with the private conviction of someone who recognised a natural predator.

"You really don't need to worry about me, Itadori," Gojo said. "Your family was perfectly fine. They didn't disturb me at all. If anything—"

He stretched carefully in his seat, keeping his expression pleasant while his head continued to pound with steady, punishing conviction, and the pull of sleep tugged at the back of his collar with both hands.

"I slept like I was dead to the world."

"Ah, you certainly did," Kennny said airily, casually checking their nails.

"Pardon?"

Gojo looked between them as the Itadoris all found somewhere else to look at once.

Kenny continued, in that same breezy tone, "I only mean — the branches snapping directly against the window you were sleeping on should have woken most people. Or perhaps the sustained divine intervention-level thunder and lightning display. Or atleast when old man behind here crying to god several times. But as you've said, dead to the world."

The van fell into a particular quality of silence that had nothing to do with the rain outside. Yuji turned fully forward and became very interested in the road ahead. Jin gazed serenely out his window. Wasuke eyed him with unknown interest. Choso beside him just observed Kenjaku going for the jugular while Sukuna snapped from the front,

"Leave him alone. He was ill."

"I asked a simple question."

Gojo attempted to say something, but Sukuna drowned it out completely.

"He was sick! Have some shame by not nagging him!"

“Don’t start barking at me already! Geez, you are down bad for a good looking hitchhiker and you might sell your own family to the rich lunatics living here”

Gojo tried to interrupt again,

“I’m sitting right here—”

But Sukuna drowned Gojo’s voice as he supported the man aggressively again,

“Why are you after him? He just asked us for our help and that’s a crime? Helping is a crime now?!”

Kenjaku snapped back even when Jin placed his hand on their shoulder, “No, but blindingly allowing a stranger in our van while travelling this— god knows what’s happening in this forsaken mountain— isn’t right either!”

“Hey, you were the one with the map—!”

Gojo dropped quietly back against his seat and let them go. There was nothing to be done about it. Yuji's helpless, apologetic laugh somewhere to his left was almost comforting.

But Wasuke chose that moment to produce something entirely different.

"You know, I once saw a woman in this area who looked almost exactly like you."

…

Gojo blinked.

Choso asked, with the tone of a person genuinely unsure whether to be concerned, "Are you high on your meds?"

Sukuna stopped the van to look back directly, "He is a man!"

Kenjaku sighed with extravagant patience.

"Go to sleep, Grandpa," Yuji said, flatly and kindly.

"Yes, Dad, please — back to the lullabies," Jin said, with the careful diplomacy of the perpetually exhausted.

'Dammit.' The voices around Gojo had begun to blur and overlap and pull apart at strange angles as he pressed both hands to his hair, trying to push back the throbbing at the base of his skull.

Sleep was dragging him back toward the dark. He fought it with what he had left and forced his eyes to track the window to the road and the trees.

From the fragments of conversation he'd managed to catch, certain things were becoming increasingly hard to dismiss. Something had clearly happened while he was out. Something loud and strange and poorly explained. And why was the old man dredging up memories of his grandma!?

'Wait.' Something cold moved through Gojo's chest as the connection landed.

'That means they might have already encountered a—'

"Guys." His voice didn't carry over the overlapping noise of the argument that had somehow reignited, and the rain, and Sukuna laughing suddenly and loudly at something Yuji had said, and the branches striking the window like they had a grudge.

"Be careful." his voice was barely audible. His hand found the seat in front of him and gripped it.

"It's dangerous. You'll—"

The warm cascade of their laughter swallowed the words whole.

Gojo heard the low, particular sound of Sukuna's chuckle — unhurried, a little unguarded and for one suspended moment, the ache in his chest had nothing to do with his head.

He went under again.

Sukuna blew a fresh piece of gum into shape and leaned back. "As entertaining as the old man's greatest hits are, we should probably talk about something that actually matters."

Everyone turned toward him. Sukuna asked, "Am I the only one who thinks this mountain and this whole area is deeply wrong?"

"Nope," Kenny said, with the speed of someone who had been waiting to say exactly that. "As I said to the sleeping beauty over here earlier, there is something very off about this place."

Wasuke rubbed his jaw. "There's no one else on this route. Not a single other vehicle or person since we started here. That's not normal."

Jin said, "I couldn't shake the feeling we were being watched."

Sukuna stared at them. "You all felt this the entire time and none of you said anything!?"

"We were waiting for you to bring it up first," Kenny said simply, accepting the water bottle Yuji was passing forward without breaking eye contact.

"Whatever," Sukuna muttered.

Choso asked, "How much further to the resort?"

Kenny consulted the guidebook. "Probably another hour and half."

"Old man," Sukuna addressed Wasuke, the van rolling now past another overgrown, neglected estate garden. "Since you've apparently been here before, do you remember what comes next on this route?"

Wasuke thought hard. "There's a well-known waterfall nearby."

"Good." Sukuna nodded. "So we have a concrete landmark to aim for before the resort. Because frankly the guidebook has already been unreliable once."

A quiet murmur of agreement moved through the van.

Yuji chewed on something that had been bothering him. "But I keep wondering, if your friend saw a monster, how come you never saw one yourself?"

'Good question, Yuji', Sukuna thought, with a private nod of approval. 'Not as hopeless as I thought.'

Wasuke exhaled. "I've thought about that many times. I never saw anything directly, but there was always this weight - a strange, suffocating energy wrapped around everything here. I felt it clearly near the mansion."

"…Do you feel it now?" Yuji asked with a careful quietness.

Kenjaku and Jin exchanged a glance before both turned behind to look at Wasuke. Choso simply waited. The old man's expression settled into something sombre and considered.

"Yes. Considerably stronger, in fact."

Several people stopped breathing. Sukuna frowned.

"Why stronger?"

Wasuke looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Why is it stronger now? What's changed?"

A pause, then a careful reply, "I'm not sure that's quite what I meant. The intensity itself feels similar to before. But back then, it would ease whenever I was near Zenin. Being close to that man was like walking beside some kind of human talisman. Whatever this feeling is, it quieted around him."

Kenny raised both brows.

"What was the matter with these wealthy families? They sound profoundly strange."

Their eyes drifted, involuntarily, toward the sleeping figure of Gojo on their right. Jin, seated to Kenny's left, found his hands had tightened on his knees without him quite deciding to.

Sukuna's voice came out quieter than he intended. "He's just someone with a bad headache. That's all."

"That said," Wasuke mused aloud, "I do believe the Zenin mentioned a name like Gojo at some point. Maybe that woman is a Gojo"

"Ha," Kenny said, with the quiet satisfaction of a point being proven. "Now he makes sense."

Sukuna was not prepared to concede anything. "There are dozens of families named Gojo across Japan. And so what if his family has some connection here? He's made it very clear he knows nothing about this place."

Choso was fast to counter, "It's still worth noting that he advised us on the route. And he was correct about the longer option being safer."

Sukuna fumbled. "H — he might have come through here once before—"

"It is your spectacularly inconvenient and immature libido to a mysterious stranger that is keeping him in this vehicle," Kenny cut icily. "And we all know it."

Sukuna opened his mouth to respond—

"Hey."

Yuji's hand came up, pointing directly ahead. His voice had gone very quiet, and the edge in it was nothing like Yuji at all.

"What is that."

The last traces of Kenny's sharp, satisfied expression evaporated. Sukuna's gum slowed. He squinted hard through the rain and the grey.

"It looks like an animal. Dark fur," he said.

"A chimpanzee?" Kenny couldn't quite make out the shape.

"No," Jin said, leaning forward between the front seats, peering through the windscreen. "I don't think a chimpanzee would look like this."

"It might be injured. That would explain why the outline is …wrong," Choso was at the back—he could only get a glimpse of the creature but he could straight away say something was wrong.

Wasuke felt it too. "Is it moving?"

The dark shape was roughly a hundred feet ahead. Sukuna could not determine movement through the driving rain. He reduced speed to a careful crawl, not wanting to agitate whatever it was if it turned out to be a wild animal. A low crack of thunder rolled above them and the light inside the van flattened to grey.

"Careful…" Jin couldn't help it.

Sukuna didn't look away from the shape.

"Did anyone hear that?" Yuji had gone very still, shoulders pulled back, both hands curled around his seatbelt.

"I think it might be a bird," Kenny hated how uncertain they sounded.

Since the mansion, the Itadoris had been running at a frequency of tightly managed anxiety, each of them keeping themselves just barely on the correct side of composed. The relief when Sukuna had named the wrongness out loud had been real and immediate. The confirmation that they weren't losing their minds, only that the mountain itself was genuinely hostile.

Wasuke's story hadn't helped. It had lodged in all of them in different ways, and now, with the dark shape in the rain ahead growing slowly clearer as the van crept forward, it was very difficult not to let the mind go somewhere cold and specific.

When Sukuna hit the brakes at fifty feet, all of their stomachs dropped in unison.

They really desperately hoped what they were seeing was not what it looked like.

Cold sweat ran the length of Sukuna’s face, his reddish eyes couldn’t move away from the creatures arms. Yuji was dumbfounded. Kenny’s eyes couldn’t get any wider, Wasuke had his mouth gaping, Jin was wiping his glasses to see clearly and for the first time throughout the journey, terror etched on Choso’s face.

The creature was a grotesque sight. Its eyes were orbs of dirty ivory— no spot of pupils could be seen. A slimy dark red limb was attached to the torso by a loose muscle thread which might as well be detached from the body. It sported a lopsided jaw in such a way that someone had landed a brutal lead hook, dark liquid dripping out from the corner of its Chesire mouth. Something resembling a metal spatula was inserted on its neck which protruded from the other side. Its skin or the hide was gross and slimy.

It was a picture straight from a nightmare.

And then it moved.

Toward them.

Instantly. With a growl.

"Sukuna!!"

"I know!!"

Sukuna hit reverse and the van lurched backwards along the trail, tires screaming on the wet ground.

"What — how—" Jin's voice came out in pieces, his eyes tracking the creature through the glass.

"WHAT IS THAT THING ON ITS NECK—!", Kenjaku screamed.

"Sukuna!" Choso's voice cut clean through the noise. "You're going to hit a tree —"

"Shit — !"

The van shuddered to a halt as the back end clipped a trunk. The creature seized the moment and launched itself at the windscreen directly towards Yuji and Sukuna.

The van filled with screaming. Sukuna floored it. The creature's aim was off by half a breath, it struck the top of the van instead of the glass, a massive impact, the metal groaning under the weight, before it rolled off and hit the ground somewhere behind them with a wet thud. Sukuna wrenched the wheel and nearly took out another tree before correcting.

"Oh god, Choso — I think my chest—" Wasuke's voice had taken on a quality none of them had ever heard before.

"NO!" The entire van said it at the same moment. A half-second of wild, collective eye contact before Sukuna pushed everything else aside.

"Old man. You hold on. We are not doing this right now."

Kenjaku had already spun in their seat, water bottle in hand.

"Please drink this—"

"IT'S COMING AFTER US AGAIN—"

Yuji's voice from the front cracked upward.

Sukuna drove. The rain drove down. The creature was behind them.

Sukuna had no idea what it was, and had absolutely no interest in finding out tonight.

It hit the roof again. Jin pushed Kenjaku's head down by instinct. Kenjaku's hands found Yuji and Choso by sound alone. Wasuke and Choso grabbed for each other and Yuji, from the very front, could only shout the first thing his brain produced,

"Please tell me this is a nightmare! I will do all of my homework! I swear on everything — !"

"Now is not the time for bargaining with God now, BRAT—!"

The creature hammered at the roof with the patience of something that was not in any particular hurry. Sukuna threw the van through a series of violent turns trying to break its grip. Almost managed it but not quite. He also mistakenly swallowed his gum.

Up ahead there was a small opening to a wide clearing.

Sukuna made his decision.

"Everyone! brace yourselves. Hold something solid or you're going sideways, NOW!"

"I knew he'd throw us out—"

"GRANDPA, THE MONSTER IS RIGHT BEHIND YOUR HEAD—"

"OH, MY CHEST!"

"Hold on—!"

The van screamed into the clearing, Sukuna pitching it into a skid across the wet mud, and the creature,finally lost its grip and was flung clear.

Silence engulfed the van for a moment.

Then Choso, very quietly said, "There are more of them."

"What!?"

"It has FRIENDS?!"