Chapter Text
4.12.2033
If you had known something was really wrong with the area, you probably wouldn't have stayed away anyhow.
Even though your mom probably told you not to go exploring that compound, you hadn't listened.
No, being the age of nine, you wanted to explore, so you took your bicycle out of the garage, left your sister's old neon pink helmet abandoned on the floor, and tried to go see one of these curses for yourself.
They were always on the news, so it really wasn't that big of a deal. It was just like all of the other reports on the news, too.
Just like the weather channel, really!
Always on every single day, and always talking about these people who were sent out to fight the curses.
What did mom call them again? Sorcerers? Was that what she called herself, too? Or was that what dad was? Maybe that was what dad was because he was always out so late at night and would come back home with bruises and blood.
There was one night you stayed up a little later than you were allowed to—about ten o'clock—just to see what dad's bruises and injuries looked like.
They were nasty. Totally disgusting, but also so, so cool!
You thought of your dad as the coolest person ever for a while there— Well, you thought of your mom as cool too, obviously, but she was her own kind.
Dad fought weird-looking creatures for a living!
At least you think he does. Maybe he doesn't, actually … Maybe he's in an underground fight ring like those professional boxers your older brother is always watching.
But you were up later than you should've been, and you had heard your parents whispering to each other quickly. Your dad sounded kind of mean. What was the word? Defensive? Yeah, that sounds about right. He sounded defensive. Really defensive.
Mom was whispering to him about getting hurt too often, you think is what it was.
He whispered back about it being fine or something, and then there was this pretty glowing that came from his hand— a soft white light that sort of flickered around like a fire.
You rubbed your eyes a little bit because you thought you were seeing things, and when your vision came to, the light was gone.
Completely gone.
But so we're dad's cuts and bruises!
Despite the fact that you maybe weren't supposed to be watching, you gasped to yourself.
How often is it you see something like that, after all?
Not very. But you thought you might've been seeing things too, as tired as you were.
Plus, your mom looked in the general direction of where you stood hidden in the shadows, so you froze. Absolutely petrified.
Your stomach dropped and churned in fear, because you really weren't supposed to be up at ten.
Your older brother could do that, but you weren't allowed to.
Which you thought really wasn't fair, because sixteen and nine aren't that big of an age difference.
Just because you can't drive a car yet doesn't mean you can't ride a bicycle just as well, or play video games just as well, or read just as well.
It just means you can't reach the taller shelves, that's all … Maybe a little bit more than that, but it really isn't that big of a difference.
Either way, once you got over your initial petrification, you rushed yourself back to the safety of your bed, hiding your head beneath the covers.
When the quiet steps of two pairs of feet came, you held your breath and squeezed your eyes shut, listening for your parents.
All you heard was a soft sigh, and the light click of noise as they shut your door.
You waited underneath your blankets for a few more minutes, listening hard and intently for anything else that might give away the fact that you had been awake and had probably seen something you weren't supposed to.
Because, well— How many kids’ parents at school could wield light magic? You doubted any of them!
None of them compared to your dad, but you still wondered if you really did see that light.
So, the next few times your dad worked late, you made sure to stay up late enough to try and see that light again.
While you did get caught a couple of times and dug your toe into the carpet with your hands clasped behind your back and your head bowed in apology, you simply said in the most innocent voice you could muster that you just wanted to see dad do the light magic.
Your mom smiled warmly and told you, “You'll see dad do the light magic soon, okay?”
She picked you up and tucked you in that night, and the night after that, and the night after that, but not the night after that.
That night was different, because dad came home earlier than usual— around seven in the evening instead of ten.
He came in with the usual bruises and cuts, and somehow he saw you peeking your little head around the corner of a wall. He beckoned for you to sit with him at the table, and rather hesitantly, you made your way over there.
Your father was a kind man. Tired, but kind.
He kept his black hair short, and his dark eyes were always so sleepy-looking, but they still held warmth. You shared the game blue eyes as your mom, but you looked more like your dad in face shape.
That's what your money tells you, at least.
But he looks so tired. Especially now.
He's got a dark gash across the left side of his cheek, a spot on his eyebrow that's already going purple, and his arms are covered in cuts similar to the gash on his forehead.
He looks at you with a tiny smile on his face. He said to you in a hushed voice, “I heard mom say you wanted to see the light magic, yeah?”
To that, you nodded vigorously, hands resting on your knees with your elbows locked out.
Your dad chuckled and said, “Look closely.” He pointed at a particularly nasty cut along his forearm, then spread his hand wide with the palm facing towards the gash.
That bright white light started to glow from his hand, and in complete, total awe, you watched as the skin underneath it started healing itself.
You gasped in amazement, looking back at your dad.
He chuckled again and continued using that light to heal himself—at least along the arms—before placing a hand on your shoulder and telling you quietly, “I need you to understand this, okay? Never go searching for the things you see on TV. And I mean the curses. I help take care of those, you understand? Your mom and I talked about this, and we think it's all right for you to know that.”
You asked if your siblings already knew, and your dad sighed, glanced away, and told you yes.
You grumbled, because obviously that wasn't fair, but your dad had simply smiled and said it was because you were young— Which you weren't. Or maybe you were.
You didn't entirely know.
Either way, you were the last to understand, and that made you a bit mad. But on the other hand, you knew what the strange light did! So that made it a little more bearable.
After that, you would watch the news more often with your mom in the morning, hugged against her side and pointing wildly whenever the segment about the curses came on.
You'd tell her happily, “That's where dad is!” And she would either reply, “Yes, it is.” or “No, but he's somewhere close.”
It was exciting to know.
You would tell the other kids at school about what your dad could do, and some of them thought you were strange, but all of your friends thought it was cool, so that was all that really mattered.
Even your teacher thought it was cool, but she seemed to always agree with anything wild you said— Seeing as you had tested that earlier in the school year.
Even if she believed you or not, it felt nice for an adult to listen.
Eventually your dad told you more and more about the news shown on the TV.
More about the curses being evil, ugly monsters that fed off all your bad emotions, and because you disliked seeing your dad with so many cuts and bruises, you started trying to be happier so the monsters would go away.
Even if the light magic was really cool …
He told you about what he would do to fight the curses, but honestly, all that information sort of passed over your head. Not the fact that grandpa used to do the same thing dad did as well, and that it's likely you could also do it too!
He told you about other people he worked with, and a bit about the history of monster fighting and how they weren't always fully acknowledged across Japan.
He gave you stories of powerful magicians like him from years and years ago—
Like the story of the man named Gojo and how he was so powerful, there was a sudden spike in the rate of curses spawning to counteract his power. You thought that story was the best one, and you asked what happened to him and the rest of his story.
Your dad sighed, pressed his lips into a thin line, and told you that was another story for another day, reserved for when you were a little bit older.
Upset, you asked if your siblings knew the rest of it.
And thankfully your dad said they didn't.
But he also told you about the high school where the magicians train—you asked if you could go there too—and about the students there during 2018.
What a looooong time ago that was, you thought.
Because, well— It is. Fifteen years ago is a really, really long time. That's about how old your brother is.
Your dad told you most of what he knew. They were all still alive now. Celebrated in the work field of magicians.
He told you about one of them—an Itadori Yuj, who you ended up favoring more than the stories of Gojo, or even the horrors your dad told you about the curse user Geto—who trained underneath Gojo. Your dad asked you, “Remember how I said Gojo was the strongest?”
You nodded your head so hard you thought it might pop off, but it stayed.
Your dad laughed and shook his head, and in a hushed voice he said, I lied.
He told you, “I lied, because he's no longer considered the strongest sorcerer anymore. He's been dethroned by his own student, y'know? Itadori Yuji, and his story is even more interesting.”
You begged and begged to hear more, but your dad looked at the time, sighed, and told you it was past your bedtime. So he kissed your forehead, stood up, shut off the lights, closed the door, and told you goodnight.
But eventually, he gave in to your nagging, and he told you a bit more about Itadori Yuji.
“He was supposed to be sent away. Faaaar off and away, because he did something the old Jujutsu High council thought of as extremely dangerous— he ate … a finger.”
You looked at your dad in disgust when he told you that. Why would anyone want to eat a finger?
But he continued anyway, “Not just any finger, no, no. The King of Curses. An old legend who made himself into a cursed object with very powerful levels of energy, yeah? He had four arms, so there are twenty fingers in total— Itadori Yuji consumed the first one, and guess what? Suddenly, Ryomen Sukuna was stuck in his head. He was brought back to life! After a thousand long years, he was back, but they needed to get rid of the King of Curses because he's evil. He's a terrible, terrible evil, but only Itadori Yuji was able to handle that evil.
“So they had to find the other nineteen fingers so Sukuna could be killed for good, yeah? Well— Itadori Yuji got stronger and stronger and stronger the longer Sukuna remained in his head. He had no technique originally, just a whole lot of super strength and speed because of some … things. That’s not for today. But he gained cursed energy and the King of Curses’ power after the months passed.
“He has multiple techniques, actually … Either way, Itadori Yuji is a living legend, just like Gojo Satoru was a while back. Or like Geto Suguru, and all the other sorcerers I've told you about. Itadori Yuji is—I think, among many, many others—the strongest sorcerer to live. Maybe even of all time, since he'll live for a long while.”
That little story hooked you on this Itadori Yuji, and so, being a nine-year-old, you asked your dad countless questions about him.
Eventually you saw photos of the pink-haired man with the large scars on his face—across the bridge of his nose and at the corner of his mouth—and they made him look really cool to you. Same as the way his hair was pink and black.
Why would a guy like Itadori Yuji want his hair to be pink? You didn't exactly know, but maybe he liked it, so you decided you liked it too, even if you really didn't.
But the more and more you learned about Itadori Yuji, the more you idolized him and talked about him and everything else.
Surprisingly, your older brother would talk about the magicians with you, even when nothing else you would say could get him excited like that. He seemed to like Itadori Yuji as well, though he thought that Okkotsu Yuta was better. He said that, and your sister butted in, saying she liked Zen’in Maki and Kugisaki Nobara more than any of the boys.
Then she stuck her tongue out at you two and left.
But it didn't seem that Itadori Yuji wanted to be part of the news, which frankly made you a little bit upset. The one time you did see him on TV, he glanced backwards at the camera, looked to his left at a man next to him, and suddenly they both disappeared straight into the ground.
It just swallowed them whole.
But based on what your dad had been telling you about what he and other magicians knew about Itadori Yuji, you were certain that he couldn't turn into the ground, so it was definitely because of the other man next to him.
Surprisingly enough, even though you were only nine, your dad seemed to think you could handle the stories he told and some of the more minor things he was required to do for work.
He told you it was dangerous, sure, but he never exactly explained to you how dangerous.
You would ask and ask and ask again to go with your dad to where he worked, but he always told you no.
No, it's too dangerous; no, you'll get hurt; no, I'm not going there because it's too dangerous for me— Which sounded insane. After all, nothing was too dangerous for your dad.
Sure, Itadori Yuji or Gojo Satoru were strong, but so was your dad!
So maybe that was why you didn't heed your mom's warnings.
After a few weeks of being able to spot some little curses yourself and catching them with your hands to take to your dad, you felt like you were one of the strongest, too.
But you really didn't understand just how weak flyheads were compared to everything else.
So when the compound appeared on the news—close enough for you to take your bike over there—you didn't hesitate to ask, especially since the news people said that a Special Grade magician would be taking care of the Shizuoka compound and the countless monsters crawling around. But specifically about some curse-embryo-thing that had been festering.
You didn't understand it at the time, but the compound was where a high concentration of deaths had occurred. Suicides, actually.
But a nine-year-old wouldn't understand the price of death.
And besides— they specifically said Itadori Yuji was a likely possibility.
So obviously, you had to go explore.
It wasn't as if you hadn't done it before with your older brother.
You told your mom you were going to go for a really long bike ride around the neighborhood, maybe even to the skatepark or along the trail, and she told you to be careful.
But she let you go.
So you ran to the garage, opened the door, picked up your little blue bicycle with no gear shifting, left your sister's old neon pink helmet abandoned on the floor, and started peddling madly down the suburban streets.
You made your way down the sidewalks of suburban Shizuoka, using crosswalks wisely and always waiting for the cars.
No one bothered you at all.
You saw a few flyheads on your way there. Perched on tall lamp posts, just chittering away to themselves.
They would always start shrieking when you caught them. Maybe it was because you held onto them a little too tightly, but who wouldn't?
The farther you got away from home, the more unruly the plants and trees got.
The sun shone brightly ahead, the wind was light, and the sky was a bright blue, but for some reason it started feeling strangely cold when you approached the compound. The gravel roads were worn down, the telephone poles, chain-link fences, and concrete walls covered in crawling green vines. And the compound was grey and ugly. An ugly, ugly brick, concrete, stone, and wooden building. Your brother took you to explore the big section of the compound, not the little buildings.
The two of you hadn't stayed there for very long anyway. Something your brother saw made him start shoving you away to the entrance, and so you left.
But you just really wanted to see how dangerous these curses really were, how powerful Itadori Yuji really was, despite fully believing everything your dad told you about him.
You wanted to know.
So you explored. It looked rather dark in the main building.
You crawled underneath the warped and bent chain-link fence gates, stood, then dusted your knees off, hoping no one would steal your bicycle.
With a short glance back at it, you started walking forward, kicking up the dust into the air.
Something in the shadows of the askew doors seemed to move a little. Maybe rustle.
The doors were almost torn off of their hinges. Claw marks raked down the sides of the concrete building. Even on metal.
You pushed down that ever-growing fear in the pit of your stomach. You wanted to know, and so that nine-year-old bravery somehow pushed you forward.
You entered and turned down a hallway, peeking into rooms and stirring up dust as you went along.
There were no noises.
There were no odd smells.
There were no curses or monsters or creatures.
But there were minimal amounts of light that shone through broken or caved-in panels of the roofing. And that really made the dust show.
That bubble of fear only grew when you finally heard a shuffling noise come from behind you.
A bowl rattled and spun around off of a stack of books.
It spun and spun and spun like a top until it tumbled to the floor and shattered.
And then it was silent again.
Something in your gut told you to leave, so you tried to. You really, really did.
You found the exit and everything. You found where you had come in from. But there were no more doors, and so there was no more exit.
Slowly, so very slowly, you turned around, hands clutched up at your chest. You started shuffling again, a burning feeling rising in your throat, and a heavy pressure constricting your chest.
You turned another corner. Then another. Then another one.
There really was no more natural light poking through the caved-in ceilings and windows anymore. No, the light was damp and musty-looking. It was too dark. Too damp. Too cold.
There were still no noises.
There were still no odd smells.
There were still no curses or monsters or creatures.
Not until you turned another corner and walked down a lengthy hallway.
When you opened the sliding door, something made you freeze. It wasn't anything natural— somehow, even at nine, you knew it wasn't anything natural that made you freeze up.
As soon as you opened the door, it was like you had depressurized the entire compound. You found it impossible to breathe. Everything just stuck to your lungs as you heaved for breath. And the immense cold didn't help you either.
And the awful humming made the pressure worse. A constant, low hum was emitting from the middle of the room.
You wanted to run.
You so, very much wanted to run.
You tried to, actually.
You really did try.
But you were completely frozen.
And your body was no longer your own.
Despite this, you knew what was making you freeze up. Go stiff. And it was that ugly, writhing in the middle of the large, large room.
It hung suspended in mid-air, with long, inky black tendrils attached to the walls, floor, ceiling, and any furniture it could hold onto. And it clung to everything. It seemed as if it seeped into it and simply clung. The tendrils had smaller ones that detached from them and spiderwebbed out even further, but these smaller ones looked more like veins the way they spiraled a little.
What the tendrils sprouted out of, you couldn't exactly understand, but it looked terrible. Terrible and ugly and disgusting.
And it made you and your little nine-year-old stomach churn with sickness.
They connected to a large egg. A sack that throbbed harshly with the same pulse as a human heartbeat. But no human was born like that. You were certain of it. Each time it beat, the tendrils sprouted from it carried the beat like a sound wave outward until it dampened through the walls. Every twitch that it made you felt run up your spine and reverberate in your skull. Each heartbeat was sickening because it sounded wet. It squelched, and it sounded just as murky as the light looked.
But each beat drew you closer.
You stood frozen, yes, but once that heartbeat began, it drew you closer. You had no control over your movement. And you walked closer and closer to the egg.
As you got closer, you saw more and more, and the heartbeat got louder and louder. Faster and faster.
The outer layer of the shell wasn't hard. No, it was translucent, and you saw an outline through the slick, veined surface of the membrane. An outline of a human shape breathing slowly in a dark, sludgy, blood-like fluid.
Your face was nearly pressed against the egg. Its heartbeat in your throat. You felt it breathing. You felt that hum, you felt that cold, you felt that overwhelming pressure, and you still couldn't breathe yourself.
The thing was curled into a ball— collapsed into itself in a fetal shape. But it was too large to be a baby. It was about the size of your dad. It had its face pressed against the edge of its egg. Its face was long, with pale skin stretched too far across it. Multiple lines where eyes should be were closed. Some were even sewn tightly shut. It opened its jaw slowly, then closed it. Its heartbeat drew you even closer, as suffocating as it was.
The thing twitched. And you stayed still.
Then a seam popped above you, and a molasses-like substance spilled from the split vein. Dropping slowly onto the floor. It reeked of rotten fruit, or of something dead. A rotting corpse, maybe. More of these seams and veins seemed to split open, and the sticky, inky substance crept closer and closer to your feet.
Something compelled you to raise your hand. Press it against the membrane.
The heartbeat stopped, and the eyes opened. The thing looked at you, its heartbeat still silent. Its jaw opened; it showed the second jaw inside the first. Its curled-up hands moved away from its chest, and toward you.
It smiled.
It blinked.
It started to move.
The veins bled.
Its heartbeat began again, and yours completely froze.
And then you were thrown backward.
You heard a loud explosion from behind you, and an awful, terrible, wet, ripping noise from in front of you. The sound of sharpened bone against the fragile membrane of the egg containing that thing. That creature.
The creature with two jaws, eyes sewn shut, a heartbeat that takes over your own black veins that bleed something worse than just blood, and something worse than you ever thought you'd see.
A force and feeling entirely different from the one you felt when you opened those doors started to envelop you. It felt warm, and it felt safe.
A pair of hands caught you, and your vision came into focus.
There was a man staring at you.
He had tanned skin, reddish-brown eyes, a scar stretching from his left eyebrow down diagonally across the bridge of his nose to the inside corner of his right eye, a starburst-shaped scar at the left corner of his mouth, and his hair was covered by the hood of his white windbreaker jacket.
His jaw was set tightly as he set you down on your feet, though he remained crouched on one knee. He placed a calloused, heavy hand on your shoulder that reminded you much of your dad.
The man looked at you—and he looked familiar, though at the same time, not at all—and he rubbed your shoulder in comfort. Slowly, you felt yourself begin to breathe again as your heartbeat returned to normal.
However, when he looked back behind you, his face morphed into something terrifying to you. It was the face you had seen your mom make once and only once. It had been when she found out your sister had been attacked walking home from school by some of the girls in her old class. She had pressed charges; they won, and your sister moved schools.
While you tried looking behind, the man brought his other hand up to shield your face. He said to you kindly, “Hey, bud. So sorry I'm late. You doin’ okay? Holding up all right there?”
You swallowed hard and nodded; the sudden urge to cry bubbled up your throat.
His expression softened, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “You'll be okay, yeah? I promise you. Nothing is gonna harm you while I'm here, okay? You're all right now, kid. Now,” he said, and his eyes sharpened as he looked back behind you again. He told you, “I need you to stay real still while I handle this. It won't be too long unless they're lying about how Special this one is again.”
Then he scooped you up, and you squeezed your eyes so tightly that you didn't see where he placed you. When you opened them, you were sheltered with concrete around you. The light was still dark and musty, but it wasn't as terrible as it had been.
The familiar-unfamiliar man stalked forward— Toward that thing. His hands were shoved into his pockets, and he looked almost calm.
The creature roared. It chittered and groaned and shrieked all at once. You covered your little ears and stifled a shudder.
The thing was skinny. Its waxy, undead, overly stretched skin was wrapped too tightly over the bony frame. It looked shrink-wrapped. Its own blood covered its skin, dripping onto the floor as the membrane it inhabited seconds earlier shriveled up with a hiss and sunk into the floor.
And from that floor, writhing, ugly masses similar to the thin creature formed. They twitched as they grew, arms snapping around into place, bones crunching as they fell into the right position. They creaked just like the big one.
And the man was just standing there. You thought he had sighed. Maybe he did.
One of the smaller monsters lunged toward him, and he simply stepped out of its line of reach. When it reared back toward him, he raised his foot and slammed it onto the little thing’s head. Already, it was dead.
You saw him scoff to himself, turn back around, and roll his shoulders. Hands still in his pockets.
Then the big creature sent the other mini ones after that familiar-unfamiliar man.
He sidestepped, he avoided, he hardly did anything to harm them. Not until he got them all to rush toward him in that small room all at once— Crawling over each other in their haste to reach him.
Only then did he take one hand out of his pocket. Two fingers extended, he pointed them at a mound of waxy creatures rushing towards him, and only when they jumped toward him—obscuring your view of the relatively familiar man—did he move. Minimally.
Their bodies fell away, cut into with precise lines. They collapsed onto the floor and broke apart into their cut pieces, bleeding that ugly, inky black substance.
And then they sank into the floor with that same hiss as the egg the big thing crawled out of.
That big thing watched the man carefully, and when the little creatures it made died, it shrieked in obvious anger and summoned even more from the floor.
Then, it attacked the man alongside the small ones.
Only then did he start throwing punches. Blindingly fast, he cut and sliced through the creatures one by one by one, and the angered shrieking from the original thing got louder and louder and louder.
The man threw a small creature your way by accident, and when it stood, it whipped around. It stared at you, and it grinned.
Then it exploded into guts, brain matter, flesh, and ink. The man held two fingers out toward you, mouthed sorry, and killed the next thing. He dodged a swipe from the main creature, pedaling backwards to a wall.
The growingly familiar man stopped in a far corner of the room. He slapped both his hands together, and rolled his shoulders forward. A small drop of something grew and grew and grew before his outstretched hands, and it just got redder and redder and redder until you realized it was blood.
Actual, real, red blood.
Somehow, it made you feel just a little bit better.
Well, until the large drop of someone's blood shot straight across the room and started cutting furniture and everything else in half.
Over and over and over, the familiar man killed the little creatures because he couldn't get close enough to the big one. Well, it was like that until he rocketed real blood at it, and the thing started shrieking louder than ever. Probably in agony.
You didn't want to find out.
You actually shoved yourself further into the corner the man set you in the first place.
You wanted to shut your eyes so badly, but something made you keep them open. And so you witnessed things no nine-year-old should witness.
You watched the man kill the small creatures over and over again until he had an opening against the big creature. He hit it, and a flash of black light lined with red rocketed across the room. Then it flashed black and red as he hit it again, and again. Flash after flash after flash.
And by then, you couldn't exactly see, because the light burned your eyes so badly, but the man stood in the middle of the room, hood down, hands back in his pockets as the creatures around him hissed and sizzled into black dust.
And with his hood down, you knew who the man was.
The light pink hair was very obvious.
You couldn't believe you didn't recognize him earlier.
You crawled out of your little shelter, legs wobbling as you ran towards him. He turned toward you, a surprised look flashing across his face while you bounced up and down on your feet.
Natural light had returned to the room, and with the man standing there, it no longer felt so bad.
The man looked at you, then asked, “Hey, bud. You okay after that?”
You completely ignored the question. You shouted at him with excitement, “YOU— YOU'RE ITADORI YUJI, RIGHT?”
The man—who was so obviously Itadori Yuji—chuckled, and ruffled your hair with one of his calloused hands, his eyes crinkling upward in an offset grin. “Ah, yes and no.”
You stopped bouncing up and down, suddenly confused. “What?” You asked him.
“How about this, I'll tell you what I mean as long as we get ‘ya outta here, okay?”
You nodded your head vigorously and followed Itadori Yuji out of the compound, waiting patiently as he lifted fallen rubble off the floor and lifted you up and over it.
Once you two got outside, you tugged on his jacket and asked again.
He smiled, then told you, “I say yes and no, because while I am technically Itadori Yuji, I'm not an Itadori anymore— I took my husband's name. It's Fushiguro now.”
You gasped and whispered to yourself, “That's so cool.” Itadori— No, Fushiguro Yuji laughed and agreed with you.
Then he pointed at your bike, still on the ground, and asked if that was how you got there.
You told him yes, and stared at the dirt road with shame, and told him about what you saw on TV, and that you wanted to meet him. Or just see a curse for yourself because your dad had been telling you stories about them.
Fushiguro Yuji sighed, lips pressed into a tight line similar to an expression your dad makes, but he didn't do anything. He didn't say anything besides, “Let's get you home then, bud.”
And so the pink-haired man picked you up with one arm and carried your little blue bike with the other, and he walked you home, based on your directions.
Once the two of you reached your street, he set you down, and you walked your bike near him until he made sure you reached your home.
He told you, “Listen to the dangers of the news. What they say is mostly true. And listen to your parents, as well, okay?”
You nodded, and Fushiguro Yuji patted you on the shoulder, pulled his hood up, shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, and started walking away. You stood there, staring at your house while the sun still shone brightly in a clear blue sky.
When you turned around again, the man was already gone. You stood in your driveway for a little while longer, then pushed your bicycle up into your garage.
You got a therapist after that.
What your parents didn't tell you though, was the fact that your dad had been called by a man that told them his name was Yuu who suggested a woman that specialized in cases of curse-related trauma.
Your parents never asked you any questions, but they certainly did see how you seemed to change your opinion on power, how you listened to your dad's stories more intently, and how much more you idolized Itadori Yuji.
Or how you insisted that his last name wasn't Itadori anymore.
Which, they thought was odd, because Fushiguro was the last name of the man with the Ten Shadows technique— Not Itadori.