Chapter Text
The world ceased to spin as a dull tone filled the empty hospital room. One note, so conclusive, yet so uncertain. The tone rang of loss. Loss of life, loss of connection, and loss of structure.
A lifetime of memories vanished in that instant, which seemed to last forever—not because they suddenly hadn’t happened, but because without him, they felt meaningless. Empty.
Death was the end of all that could claim to have lived, and time claimed everything else.
The only permanent rule of the universe was impermanence, and death was its most familiar face: a cloaked figure dragging away all that people loved, hated, or never thought to notice.
Death was the final change of any single thing, and of all concepts, tangible or otherwise, change was the one humans feared most.
It can be small, like a subtle shift of atoms in a place where no life resides, or grand, like the explosion of a star.
Somehow, both extremes belonged to the same spectrum. They were not equally terrifying, of course. To a human, the death of a loved one was far closer to a supernova than the subtle shifting of atoms.
And for Yuji, Wasuke was the last loved one that remained.
Wasuke’s eyes remained open as his soul passed on, filled with the regrets of an entire lifetime, which would never be resolved.
Mistakes, poor words, and all the things done or left undone, important or otherwise. They all hung suspended in the air as Wasuke’s grandson stared at his lifeless body, a blank expression on his face.
Yuji hadn’t witnessed death before—at least not in person, and up until his grandfather’s final moments, it didn’t seem like the true meaning of loss had been felt yet.
Maybe he didn’t believe that Wasuke’s life—something so permanent to him—could leave so suddenly, even when the signs all said the opposite. Maybe he just didn’t know how to feel, out of lack of experience.
There was a rush of emotions that followed the shock, all so complex, and often contradictory.
Frustration, denial, and somehow even inadequacy, as if anything he could have done would have changed the inevitable outcome of all life.
He hadn’t personally experienced death before, at least not consciously, and certainly not in person, but in truth, every member of his family had died.
Itadori Yuji was the final member of his bloodline, a family who had, generation after generation, tried to grow, only to be stifled by the universe’s single permanence.
But Wasuke had been more than the final member of Yuji’s family.
He had been the last person who knew Yuji before Yuji had ever needed to know himself. The last person who could look at him and say what kind of boy he was, or what kind of man he might become.
Without him, it felt like more than family had ended.
Something like definition had died with him.
His hands trembled, and he brought them to the sides of his head, gripping his dark roots as his lighter hair spilled over his fingers.
Tears welled in his eyes, but as the monotonous chime of the heart monitor screamed, they remained suspended there, ringing with it in his head until finally…
Silence.
Twin streams slid slowly across the sides of his face, asymmetrically, and each fell from his jaw at different moments, the sound of somber chatter and footsteps replacing the dull tone from before.
Nurses tended to Wasuke as if Yuji wasn’t there, wheeling away the equipment that had sustained him through his final days, soon to be used by someone whose name Yuji would never know.
His gaze fell slowly to the ground, and he watched as different sets of legs walked in and out of the room, unmoving, unthinking, but deeply feeling.
He remembered his grandfather’s final words, which were hours ago by that point, just before Wasuke went to sleep, only to wake up mere moments before his heart stopped.
“You’re someone who’s always wanted to help people, so…”
His grandfather’s voice faded from his mind before the sentence could finish.
For the first time, Yuji couldn’t tell if those words had been true, or if they were simply what Wasuke had wanted to be true.
Was he someone who helped people?
Was that who he was, or who he had been told to become?
And if the only person who could answer that question was gone, then what did the answer even mean?
A new set of legs entered his vision, covered by dark, slightly oversized slacks. They looked like a school uniform, only… different, more fluid—livable.
His gaze climbed slowly, to a face full of confusion, urgency, and anything but sympathy.
“You’re Itadori Yuji, am I correct?”
The boy’s hair was wild, spiky, and flowing in every direction, and yet, he seemed so composed—so together.
“I guess,” Yuji responded, not bothering to fix his posture, nor offer any of the manners he typically would.
The boy continued, either ignorant or completely uncaring of Yuji’s obvious condition.
“You were seen carrying this,” he said, so low that it was almost a mumble, and he held his phone in front of Yuji’s face, with a picture of a small wooden box on it, vaguely familiar.
“Where is it?” the black-haired boy interrogated, not caring to explain why.
“My friends have it, I think.”
“...”
Yuji and the boy locked eyes for several seconds, but only one of their expressions changed, even slightly.
There was a twinge of emotion—concern, maybe—but somehow, not for Yuji. Not exactly. It passed through him, toward something beyond him, as if the boy were already counting losses Yuji couldn’t see.
Yuji quietly made his assumptions.
“They were gonna open it tonight for the occult club. They probably still will, since they don’t know why I’m gone.”
The boy took a half step back, his expression tightening around some conclusion Yuji couldn’t see, and a few seconds later, he sprinted out of the room.
Yuji watched him leave, then leaned back in his chair, the two beside him sitting empty.
Only then did he realize that the room was completely empty now. Even Wasuke’s lifeless body was gone.
Still, a nurse watched him from behind the desk, wearing the only compassionate expression Yuji had seen all night.
His eyes shifted to the floor, and with a sigh, he finally came to his feet.
He drifted toward the desk, tired and unenthusiastic, only glancing up when he finally stood in front of her.
“Hey there… Itadori Yuji, was it? Do you have anyone to call? Maybe one of your parents could deal with the paperwork, and-”
Yuji turned away without answering, hands sinking into his pockets as he walked toward the elevator. The nurse’s hand reached out slightly, but the farther he walked, the smaller her confidence seemed to become.
As the elevator doors slid shut between them, she muttered to herself.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. You shouldn’t have to.”
Yuji stood in the elevator in silence for several seconds, his brain so clouded that he didn’t immediately understand what floor he was to get off on.
Eventually, his fingers found the button labeled “G”, and out of muscle memory, he pressed it before he could make a mistake.
He sighed, a chill running down his spine as he felt the elevator begin to move, that familiar weightless feeling making him more uncomfortable than he already was.
Eventually, his weight returned to him, and he stumbled forward from the elevator, and out of the hospital’s front doors.
The cool night air greeted him readily, running through his hair and slipping into every crease of his clothes as he mindlessly ambled into the darkness.
“You’re someone who’s always wanted to help people,” Wasuke’s gravelly voice repeated quietly across his mindscape.
What does that even mean? How could Wasuke say something like that? Yuji never consciously went out of his way to help people, nor did he ever mention anything similar to his grandfather.
Was that something Wasuke had seen in him, or something he only wanted for him? Was it a wish, or a regret passed down with his final breath?
For as long as he could remember, he had only ever done what he was told.
Be respectful. Clean your room. Do your homework. Go play sports with your friends.
Always a command. Always someone else’s voice. Had he ever actually decided something for himself? Had he ever done something, truly of his own volition?
He couldn’t say yes, and something low in his gut seemed to know why.
He shook his head, and pulled his hoodie over his neck, sinking further into himself.
“No.”
Yuji’s voice was a low, but confident statement. After a few seconds, he lifted his gaze, stopping himself in place.
“Grandpa would’ve probably told me to head home, so that’s what I should do.”
With a deep sigh, he started to turn around, but in doing so, he realized where he stood.
The outer fences of his high school bordered the sidewalk he had taken without thinking.
He stared at the school from a distance. From where he stood, he didn’t hear anything odd, nor did he see anything that would normally cause him alarm.
He realized he had sent that spiky-haired guy to the school, where his friends were having their legally ambiguous fun, but there were no flashing police lights.
Maybe they got away.
That was the explanation his mind offered first, until he squinted and saw something faint hanging over the roof of the school.
Then he looked a little longer. Broken windows dotted the upper floors, but it didn’t look like a break-in.
Why would the windows be broken on the fourth floor?
He felt himself being drawn in two separate directions, with unequal force behind the tethers.
The grandfather Yuji had lived with, the man who had given shape to most of his life, told him in his mind to go home.
But then…
“You’ve always wanted to help people, so…”
He thought the sentence would end there, like it had done the past few times he tried to remember, but…
“—so whenever your heart tells you to act, you should listen.”
Yuji’s hand tightened over his chest.
That sounded right.
That was the problem.
It sounded like something a dying man would say when he wanted his grandson to live better than he had.
It sounded like something a good person would believe. It sounded like something Yuji wanted to be true, even while some bitter, frightened part of him wanted to reject it simply because it had been given to him.
He took a step toward the fence, planted his opposite foot in the wiring, and started to climb. But just as his body committed to the choice his mind still hadn’t fully made, the smoke became the least of his problems.
A thunderous explosion sent glass and brick flying from the center of the school, followed by a shockwave that seemed to attack his entire nervous system. It blasted him onto his back and sent him rolling into the road.
It felt like his blood had thickened, and yet, his entire body felt lighter than before.
Was it shock? Numbness maybe?
He lifted his shaking hands in front of him, then sat up quickly, making sure all of his limbs remained. His vision snapped back to the school, where fire had already begun crawling across the building.
But more than that…
He felt something alive in the school, and every fiber of his being screamed that it shouldn’t have been.