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The torrential rain outside the abandoned Sugisawa primary school didn't sound like rain. It sounded like wet meat slapping against glass.
There was no cursed energy in the building. That was the first thing Satoru Gojo had noticed when he led Megumi, Yuji, and Nobara across the rusted perimeter gate. In the world of jujutsu, everything left a footprint a residual ember of malice, a trace of cursed energy, a signature.
This place had *nothing*. It was a complete vacuum.
"Sensei..." Yuji whispered, his voice trembling slightly as he held his flashlight. The beam cut through the thick, stagnant air of the main hallway. "My skin feels like it's crawling off my bones. Is this a Special Grade?"
"No," Satoru said softly.
He didn't sound like his usual cheerful self. He stood near the rotting shoe lockers, his hand hovering near his dark blindfold. Through the Six Eyes, Satoru wasn't seeing cursed energy flows or technique residue. He was seeing emptiness a foul, rotting hole in reality itself where natural physics simply stopped working.
"Whatever is in here," Satoru murmured, his voice dropping into an icy, hollow tone, "it didn't originate from human negative emotions. It doesn't belong to our world."
Megumi stepped forward, his dark hair damp from the rain. He tried to form the hand sign for Divine Dogs, shadow pooling beneath his boots.
Nothing happened.
The shadows on the floor didn't rise. They remained flat, lifeless, and heavy.
"My technique..." Megumi choked out, his eyes wide with sudden, cold dread. "I can't access the shadows. The medium... it's dead."
Before Nobara could pull her hammers from her belt, the hallway around them shifted.
It wasn't a Domain Expansion. There was no barrier technique, no spatial folding. The plaster on the walls simply began to weep. A thick, pale grey sludge oozed out from beneath the floorboards, smelling faintly of old formaldehyde, spoiled milk, and calcified teeth.
Then, the thing at the end of the corridor moved.
It didn't walk. It didn't crawl. It slithered out from the dark doorway of the nurse's office, its body making a wet, sickening schluck-schluck-schluck sound against the rotten floorboards.
It was an entity that defied biological sense. It was a towering, writhing pillar of raw, pale, translucent skin that looked like it had been stretched over thousands of microscopic, clicking human jawbones. Where a face should have been, there was only a cavernous, dark hole lined with hundreds of tiny, blind human eyes all milky white, weeping a thick, yellow fluid down its neckless torso.
Instead of arms, it had six elongated, segmented limbs made of fused, snapping finger bones, terminating in dripping, raw pink tendons that twitched violently in the air.
From the cavernous hole in its head, it let out a sound.
It wasn't a roar. It was a high, wet, wheezing inhalation like a dying man trying to suck air through a throat full of maggots.
"M-Mmm-eeeg... guuu-mii..."
The sound didn't travel through the air. It vibrated directly inside their skulls, rattling their molars.
"What the fuck is that?!" Nobara shrieked, backing up until her spine hit the wall, her knuckles white around her nails. "That's not a curse! That thing is wrong! IT'S WRONG!"
Yuji retched on the spot, the sheer, nauseating stench of the creature hitting his nostrils—a smell like boiled copper and decaying fat.
"Megumi, get behind me," Satoru commanded sharply.
Satoru raised his right hand, twining his fingers into the sign for Cursed Technique Reversal: Red. Cursed energy flared around his fingertips, crimson and bright.
He fired.
The red sphere of compressed space slammed directly into the creature's center mass.
In the jujutsu world, Red would have pulverized a Special Grade curse into crimson mist. But when the blast hit the entity, there was no explosion. The red light was simply absorbed into the creature's translucent, sickly skin. The flesh ruptured with a wet squelch, spraying black, oily bile across the walls, but the wound didn't bleed red. Hundreds of tiny, translucent worm like tendrils wriggled out of the torn flesh, stitching the opening back together in seconds with a sickening clicking sound.
The blast didn't stop it. It only made it angry.
The entity's central orifice split open wider, tearing down its chest to reveal a ribcage made entirely of inverted human fingers. It lunged forward not with speed, but with an unnatural, jerky motion that skipped entire frames of space.
SCHLUCK.
In less than a millisecond, the creature was right in front of them. One of its long, bone-segmented limbs shot out, ignoring Satoru's Infinity entirely because Infinity relied on atomic mass and space manipulation, and this thing existed entirely outside physical laws.
The limb bypassed Gojo's barrier like it wasn't even there, grabbing Megumi by the front of his collar.
"MEGUMI!" Satoru roared.
The creature didn't bite him. It pressed its gaping, eye-filled head straight against Megumi's face.
Megumi gasped, his body locking up in total paralysis as thousands of microscopic, wet tendrils slid out from the entity's face, attempting to burrow into Megumi's nostrils, mouth, and eyes. The fluid dripping from the entity burned like concentrated lye, singeing Megumi's dark uniform and turning his skin raw red.
"Join... the... marrow..." the voice wetly wheezed into Megumi's ear, the sound accompanied by the sickening crunching of its internal jawbones grinding together.
"GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY BOY!"
Satoru didn't use cursed technique. He dropped his hand, reached forward with his bare, physical strength, grabbed the creature's bone-arm, and snapped it in half with a deafening crack of bone and a jet of foul, black bile.
Satoru hauled Megumi back against his chest, locking one arm around Megumi's waist while kicking the creature square in its chest with enough raw physical force to throw its towering, gelatinous mass thirty feet back down the corridor.
Megumi collapsed against Satoru, coughing violently, black, foul-tasting slime dripping from his chin as he gagged for air. "S-Satoru... it tried to... inside my head..."
"I know, kiddo. I got you," Satoru rasped out.
For the first time in his life, Gojo Satoru's hands were shaking.
Not because he was weak, but because he was looking at an entity that couldn't be destroyed by jujutsu logic. He pulled his blindfold completely off, letting his bare blue eyes burn through the dim light as he shielded Megumi, Yuji, and Nobara behind his broad frame.
"Yuji! Nobara! Out the window! NOW!" Satoru barked, his voice carrying an authority that admitted no argument.
"We aren't leaving you!" Yuji yelled, his eyes wide with horror as the creature on the floor began to pull itself back together, its torn limbs knitting together with wet, sucking sounds.
"YOU CAN'T FIGHT THIS WITH CURSED ENERGY!" Satoru shouted, grabbing Megumi by the arm and throwing him toward Yuji. "TAKE MEGUMI AND RUN TO THE PERIMETER! IT WANTS HIM!"
The entity let out a piercing, wet screech a sound like a child screaming underwater—and hundreds of long, pale, finger-like tendrils burst from the hallway walls, reaching for Megumi's boots.
Satoru stepped directly into their path, digging his boots into the rotten wood, his bare blue eyes blazing with a cold, protective rage as he prepared to tear the eldritch nightmare apart with his bare, bloodied hands to keep his boy safe.
Yuji caught Megumi before he could hit the ground, hauling him toward the shattered window at the end of the hallway. Nobara was already there, her hammer raised, her eyes wild with terror.
"GO!" Satoru roared behind them, his voice cracking. "DON'T LOOK BACK!"
They didn't need to be told twice.
Yuji practically threw Megumi through the window, glass crunching beneath their boots as they tumbled out into the pouring rain. The cold water hit them like a slap, washing away some of the slime and grime, but it didn't wash away the fear.
The schoolyard was a muddy mess, the grass slick with rain, the perimeter gate barely visible through the downpour. They ran sprinted their lungs burning, their legs pumping, their hearts hammering against their ribs.
Behind them, the school building shuddered.
A sound like tearing metal echoed through the night. The walls bulged outward, cracks spiderwebbing across the concrete. And then, with a deafening crash, the entire front of the building collapsed outward.
The creature stood in the wreckage.
It had grown. Its body was twice the size it had been before, a towering, writhing pillar of pale, translucent flesh that reached toward the sky. Its hundreds of eyes were all fixed on Megumi, all weeping that thick, yellow fluid, all watching him with an intensity that made his skin crawl.
"M-Mmm-eeeg... guuu-mii..." it called out, its voice echoing across the schoolyard. "C-Come... b-back... I... w-want... y-you..."
Megumi stumbled, his legs giving out beneath him. He hit the ground hard, his palms scraping against the wet grass, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps.
"Megumi!" Yuji grabbed his arm, trying to pull him up. "Get up! We have to keep moving!"
But Megumi couldn't move. His body was frozen, his muscles locked, his mind screaming at him to run but his limbs refusing to obey.
The creature was coming.
It didn't walk. It didn't crawl. It simply moved, its body sliding across the ground like a slug, leaving a trail of black, oily slime in its wake. Its bone-fingered limbs reached out, grasping at the air, reaching for Megumi with a hunger that was almost desperate.
"I... w-want... y-you..." it wheezed."I... n-need... y-you... I... h-have... n-nothing... e-else..."
And then Satoru was there.
He dropped from the sky like a meteor, his body wreathed in blue and red light, his bare eyes blazing with a fury that made the air itself tremble. He landed between the creature and his students, his fists clenched, his teeth bared.
"You want him?" Satoru roared. "You have to kill me first!"
He launched himself at the creature, not with cursed energy, but with his bare hands. He punched, kicked, tore, ripped—using every ounce of his physical strength to tear the thing apart piece by piece.
But it kept regenerating.
Every wound he inflicted healed in seconds. Every limb he ripped off grew back. Every time he thought he was making progress, the creature would simply rebuild itself and keep coming.
And it was fast.
Not fast like a curse. Fast like a nightmare. Fast like something that existed outside the rules of time and space. Its limbs moved in that same jerky, frame-skipping motion, appearing and disappearing with no warning, striking at Satoru from angles he couldn't predict.
One of its bone-fingered limbs caught him across the chest, sending him flying backward into the wreckage of the school. He hit the concrete wall hard, the impact cracking the stone, blood spraying from his mouth.
"Sensei!!!" Yuji screamed.
Satoru pushed himself up, wiping the blood from his lips. His ribs were broken—he could feel them grinding against each other with every breath. His left arm was dislocated. His right eye was swelling shut from where the creature's limb had caught him across the face.
But he didn't stop.
He couldn't stop.
Because the creature was already moving again, sliding across the ground toward Megumi, its hundreds of eyes all fixed on the boy with that terrible, hungry intensity.
"M-Mmm-eeeg... guuu-mii..."
Satoru forced himself to his feet, his body screaming in protest. He stumbled forward, putting himself between the creature and his son once again.
"Over my dead body," he growled.
The creature tilted its head or what passed for a head and let out that wet, wheezing laugh.
"T-That... c-can... b-be... a-arranged..."
It happened too fast.
One moment, Satoru was standing between the creature and Megumi, his body broken but his resolve unshaken. The next moment, the creature's limb shot out not toward Satoru, but around him, curving in a way that defied physics, bypassing his defenses entirely.
The bone-fingered appendage wrapped around Megumi's ankle and yanked.
Megumi screamed as he was dragged across the wet grass, his fingers clawing uselessly at the ground, his nails tearing against the dirt. The creature pulled him closer, closer, until he was directly beneath its towering, gelatinous body.
"NO!" Satoru roared, lunging forward.
But he was too slow.
The creature's central orifice split open wider than ever before, revealing that ribcage of inverted human fingers, those hundreds of tiny, blind eyes, that cavernous, dripping throat. And from somewhere deep inside its body, a thick, viscous liquid began to pour out.
It wasn't bile. It wasn't blood. It was something else entirely. Something pale and yellow and glowing faintly in the darkness. It smelled like formaldehyde and spoiled milk and something ancient and wrong.
The liquid dripped down onto Megumi's face.
He tried to turn away, tried to close his mouth, tried to do anything to protect himself. But the creature's limbs pinned him in place, holding him down, forcing him to look up at that terrible, gaping maw.
And then the liquid poured into his mouth.
Megumi gagged, his whole body convulsing as the thick, burning substance slid down his throat. It was hot hotter than anything he had ever felt. It seared his tongue, his gums, the back of his throat. It felt like swallowing molten glass, like drinking liquid fire.
He tried to scream, but the liquid filled his mouth, his throat, his lungs. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He could only feel the burning, the searing, the agonizing heat as the substance worked its way deeper and deeper into his body.
"D-Drink..." the creature wheezed, its voice echoing inside Megumi's skull."D-Drink... a-and... b-become... o-one... w-with... m-me..."
Megumi's vision went white.
His body arched off the ground, his spine bending at an unnatural angle, his limbs thrashing wildly. The liquid was inside him now—he could feel it moving through his veins, crawling through his organs, burrowing into his bones.
It was trying to take him. Trying to consume him from the inside out.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Satoru's voice cut through the haze of pain. Megumi felt hands on him warm hands, familiar hands grabbing him, pulling him away from the creature's grasp.
But the liquid was still inside him. Still burning. Still consuming.
"Megumi! Megumi, look at me!"
Satoru's face swam into view above him, his blue eyes wide with terror, his face streaked with blood and rain.
"I'm here," Satoru said, his voice cracking. "I'm here, Megumi. Stay with me. Stay with me, please."
Megumi tried to speak, but the liquid was still in his throat. He could only cough, black and yellow fluid spilling from his lips, his body convulsing with the effort. Then Megumi's eyes rolled back.
His body went limp.
Yuji and Nobara reached them seconds later.
Yuji was screaming, his voice raw and panicked. Nobara was crying, her hammer abandoned on the ground, her hands shaking.
"What happened?!" Yuji shouted, dropping to his knees beside Satoru. "What did it do to him?!"
"It poured something down his throat," Satoru said, his voice hollow. "Something that's burning him from the inside out."
"We have to get him out of here!"
"I know!"
Satoru gathered Megumi in his arms, cradling him against his chest. He could feel the heat radiating off Megumi's body, could feel the way his son trembled, could feel the liquid still moving inside him.
"We need to run," Satoru said. "We need to get as far away from this place as possible."
"But the creature—" Nobara started.
"Fuck the creature! We need to save Megumi!"
Satoru was already moving, his long legs eating up the distance as he sprinted across the schoolyard. Yuji and Nobara followed, their lungs burning, their legs pumping, their eyes fixed on the limp form in Satoru's arms.
The creature screeched behind them, its voice echoing through the night.
"C-Come... b-back... I... n-need... y-you..."
But they didn't stop.
They ran until the school was nothing but a distant speck in the rearview mirror. Until the rain had washed away the blood and the slime and the fear. Until the creature's presence was nothing more than a faint, distant echo in the back of their minds.
And then, something changed.
The oppressive weight that had been pressing down on them since they entered the school began to lift. And with it, they felt something return.
Their cursed energy.
It flared to life inside them, warm and bright and familiar. Yuji could feel his strength returning. Nobara could feel her technique humming. And Satoru—
Satoru could feel Megumi's cursed energy.
It was weak. Flickering. Barly hanging on.
The shadows beneath Megumi's body stirred, curling around his limbs like worried pets. They were responding to him again. They were alive again.
"Megumi," Satoru whispered, shaking him gently. "Megumi, wake up. Please. Your shadows are back. Your technique is back. You're going to be okay."
Megumi's eyelids fluttered.
He let out a weak, rasping cough. More of that black and yellow fluid spilled from his lips, but this time, there was less of it. This time, it was mixed with something else.
Blood. Red, human blood.
Satoru's heart clenched.
"Megumi!"
Megumi's eyes opened.
They were hazy. Unfocused. But they were open.
"S-Satoru...?" he whispered, his voice barely audible.
"I'm here," Satoru said, tears streaming down his face. "I'm here, Megumi. I've got you. You're safe."
"The... the thing..."
"It's gone. It can't reach us here. We're too far away."
Megumi was quiet for a moment. Then, very softly, he said, "It tried to... take me. It tried to... become me."
Satoru's heart shattered.
"I know," he whispered. "But it's gone now. It can't hurt you anymore."
Megumi's eyes drifted closed.
"I'm tired," he mumbled.
"I know. But you can't sleep yet. We need to get you to Shoko."
"Don't... don't want to move."
"I know. But I'm going to carry you, okay? I'm going to carry you all the way back to the school. You just hold on."
Megumi didn't respond.
Satoru gathered him up in his arms, cradling him against his chest.
"Yuji. Nobara. We're leaving."
They didn't argue.
Satoru closed his eyes and held them. And then he teleported.
Shoko was in her office when the door burst open.
She looked up, her cigarette falling from her lips, as Satoru Gojo stumbled into the room, his body broken, his face streaked with tears, his arms full of a limp, pale Megumi Fushiguro. Behind him, Yuji and Nobara stumbled in, their faces pale, their eyes wide, their bodies trembling.
"Shoko," Satoru gasped. "Please. Help him."
Shoko was on her feet in an instant.
She cleared the examination table, her hands already glowing with the soft green light of her reversed cursed technique. "Put him down. Now."
Satoru laid Megumi on the table, his hands trembling. He didn't move away. He couldn't. He just stood there, watching, waiting, as Shoko began to work.
"What happened?" Shoko demanded, her voice sharp.
"A creature. Something... something that wasn't a curse. It attacked us. It got inside him."
"Got inside him how?"
"It... poured something down his throat. Some kind of liquid. It was trying to consume him from the inside out."
Shoko's expression darkened.
She pressed her hands against Megumi's chest, her cursed energy flowing into his body, searching, probing, healing.
She found the damage.
The liquid had burned through his throat, his esophagus, his stomach. It had seeped into his bloodstream, spreading through his organs, attacking his cells. It was still there, still burning, still consuming.
But it was weaker now. Fading. Dying.
"The creature's influence is still in his system," Shoko said, her voice grim. "But it's not active anymore. It's like it lost its power source when you got far enough away."
"Can you heal him?"
"I can try."
Shoko worked for hours.
She purged the liquid from Megumi's bloodstream, healed the burns in his throat and stomach, repaired the damage to his organs. She worked until her own cursed energy was depleted, until her hands were shaking, until she could barely stand.
And then, finally, she stepped back.
"He's stable," she said, her voice hoarse. "He's going to be okay."
Satoru let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.
He sank to his knees beside the examination table, his hand finding Megumi's, his fingers intertwining with his son's.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you, Shoko."
Shoko didn't say anything. She just lit another cigarette and walked out of the room.
Megumi woke up three days later.
The first thing he saw was the white ceiling of the infirmary. The second thing he saw was Satoru Gojo, sitting in a chair beside his bed, his head bowed, his hand wrapped around Megumi's.
"Satoru?" Megumi whispered.
Satoru's head snapped up.
"Megumi!"
He was on his feet in an instant, his hands cupping Megumi's face, his blue eyes searching, checking, making sure.
"You're awake," he said, his voice cracking. "You're actually awake."
"How long...?"
"Three days. You've been asleep for three days."
Megumi blinked. "That's... a long time."
"Yeah. It was."
Megumi looked at Satoru. At the dark circles under his eyes. At the stubble on his jaw. At the way his hands were still shaking.
"Did you sleep at all?" Megumi asked.
Satoru laughed, a wet, broken sound. "Not really."
"Satoru..."
"I couldn't. Not while you were... not while you were like that."
Megumi was quiet.
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
"Don't apologize."
"I scared you."
"You did."
"I didn't mean to."
"I know."
Megumi looked away.
"The creature," he said. "What happened to it?"
"I don't know. I haven't gone back. I don't plan to."
"Was it... was it really evil?"
Satoru was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know," he said finally. "Maybe. Maybe not."
Megumi nodded slowly.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. I'm okay."
Satoru's eyes burned.
"You're not okay. You almost died."
"But I didn't. I'm here. I'm alive."
"That's not the same thing."
"I know." Megumi looked at him. "But it's what I have."
Satoru stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed a real laugh, warm and bright and full of relief.
"You're incredible," he said.
"Shut up."
"Make me."
The others came to visit later.
Yuji burst into the room first, his eyes red from crying, his face streaked with tears. He threw himself at Megumi, wrapping his arms around him in a crushing hug.
"Fushiguro!" he sobbed. "You're okay! You're actually okay!"
"I'm okay," Megumi said, patting him awkwardly on the back. "You can let go now."
"Never!"
Nobara was next, her face pale but her eyes fierce. She didn't hug him she just stood at the foot of his bed, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable.
"You scared us," she said flatly.
"I know."
"Don't do it again."
"I'll try."
"You'd better."
Maki and Panda came in together, Maki carrying a small bag of snacks, Panda carrying a ridiculous get-well card that he had clearly made himself.
"Glad you're not dead," Maki said, tossing the snacks onto his bed.
"Thanks," Megumi said dryly.
"I made you a card!" Panda announced, holding it up. It was a drawing of Megumi surrounded by hearts and flowers, with the words "GET WELL SOON, GRUMPY BOY" written in sparkly marker.
Megumi stared at it.
"...Thanks," he said, his voice strained.
"You're welcome!"
Inumaki came in quietly, his collar pulled up over his mouth, his eyes soft. He didn't say anything he just walked over to Megumi's bed and placed a small rice ball on his bedside table.
"Takana," he said softly.
Megumi nodded.
"Thanks."
Yuta was the last to arrive, his expression warm and relieved.
"Glad to see you're awake," he said, sitting down in the chair beside Satoru's.
"Thanks," Megumi said.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like I swallowed molten glass."
"That sounds... unpleasant."
"It was."
Yuta laughed softly.
"Well," he said, "I'm glad you're okay. We were all really worried."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. You didn't do anything wrong."
Megumi looked at him.
"Thanks," he said quietly.