Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Waking up came slowly; languidly. There was the sound of the wind, the feeling of clothes on his back and the ever-present gnawing hunger, though for once it was almost easy to ignore. Opening his eyes to the curse before him, he sent an off-handed cleave, only to surprise himself at how quickly the curse disintegrated. Must have been a particularly low level one.

Sukuna stretched, allowing himself to take the time to look around, noting the many skyscrapers and fluorescent lights that littered the city before him. He grinned, his cursed energy unfurling and spreading out, finding himself feeling surprisingly settled in this body. 

“Hm, I wonder what those buildings are made of,” he muttered. Perhaps he could find a library around here, assuming they still used signs and all.

He turned around, finally acknowledging the sorcerer that was attempting not to quake in their boots.

Sukuna studied the sorcerer closely. He appeared to be young, though the fact he was still standing even with Sukuna’s cursed energy weighing on him spoke of some sort of experience with dealing with strong opponents. 

The sorcerer looked pale. Likely his doing. Well, seeing as he may be Sukuna’s only source of information for a while, depending on how fast communication traveled in this era, he settled for withdrawing his cursed energy back into himself.

The result was noticeable, the sorcerer begins appearing less weighed down and his breathing evened out, he seemed quick to regain composure. A good trait, Sukuna noted.

“Hey, kid. Do you know where the closest library is?” He asked, only to grimace at the fact his Japanese may be outdated. He’ll have to try and look through the memories of his vessel soon enough. Possession still was rather new to him, thinking it over this may have been the first time it’d actually succeeded. How much time has passed while he was in hibernation?

Seeing as the guy didn’t respond, aside from a spike of his cursed energy, (was he planning an attack?) Sukuna opened his mouth to speak only to find himself interrupted. 

“What do you think you’re doing with my body?!” His voice asked, except it was not his now, was it.

He blinked, “fascinating. I hadn’t considered the fact you would still be conscious,” he admitted to his vessel.

The vessel did not seem to care much for his words, “give it back already,” he insisted.

Well. This could prove a beneficial grace period to get Sukuna caught up to speed. Not to mention it was an exciting factor in and of itself, considering most vessels usually did not have the mental capacity to hold another consciousness at all, let alone one his age and remain conscious. He wondered what he would be able to do with this information.

Obliging, he let the other soul within his body (now that he felt it he found it much more noticeable) take over, leaving him within his domain. 

There was a lot of work ahead of him, lots to catch up on. He grinned. This would be interesting. 

——

Megumi watched in horror as Itadori swallowed the cursed finger, bracing himself for the excruciating death he was about to witness. What came instead, however, was infinitely worse. 

Itadori slumped down like a puppet whose strings were cut, then slowly, as if winding up, his back straightened out. He flicked his finger, and the curse in front of him crumbled as if it were chalk. Without warning, a blast of cursed energy enveloped the surrounding area, the force of it leaving Megumi both winded and suffocated. (He never knew cursed energy could feel quite so ravenous until today.)

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Megumi ascertained one thing. The being in front of him was no longer Itadori, it was no longer even human. It was now the reincarnation of the King of Curses. The worst case scenario.

He heard the curse murmuring under its breath before it whirled around, pinning him with its glare. He stopped breathing. The next moments ticked by painfully slowly until the air began feeling less claustrophobic. Was the curse attempting to make itself less intimidating? Deciding not to mull it over, curses tended to act without reason, he took the time to gather his thoughts. He wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, even if said horse was the Trojan horse.

Finally, the curse spoke up and, in a dialect he could barely understand and a rough voice that did not help in clarity, asked for directions to a... book house? Book store?

…huh? Megumi openly stared in mild bafflement. He had heard in the legends that the King of Curses was once a renowned scholar before falling into the ways of depravity and violence, but he was not expecting this. He reasoned that it was most likely some sort of trap and did not attempt to respond.

The curse opened its mouth once more, only for Itadori’s voice to come through.

“What do you think you’re doing with my body?!” Itadori demanded, surprising them both. 

The glint in the curse’s eyes that sparked upon this revelation left Megumi feeling pure dread. 

It spoke in the same outdated dialect, but then fell silent. Megumi stared as the oppressive cursed energy seemed to be completely sucked back into Itadori’s body as if it were never there to begin with. 

He desperately wanted to believe it was really Itadori that had managed to take over, however he could not dismiss the very real concern that this was just a particularly crafty curse and was attempting to put him in a sense of ease. 

He took in a breath, a half-baked plan already forming. If the curse truly was completely in control, he would have to eliminate it now before it got stronger. If it was Itadori… there was a chance he would stop being able to suppress it… he needed to be eliminated either way.

 “You’re no longer human,” he informed what he hoped was Itadori, “under Jujutsu regulations, I must exorcise you; the curse known as Yuuji Itadori.”

The teen raised his hands in surrender, “woah, woah, it’s me, not Sukuna! See how I’m not talking in ancient script? We’re both pretty beat up, why don’t we head to the hospital, yeah?”

Megumi faltered. If Itadori was indeed able to suppress the curse, did he still need to exorcise him? He grit his teeth, emotions conflicting and leaving him at a standstill. 

“What’s the situation?”

Being so stuck in his own head as he was, he startled when Gojo-sensei emerged into existence next to him, feeling like he was about to jump out of his skin.

“Wha-“ he stumbled, “when did you get here?!”

“Wasn’t planning on coming at first,” Gojo-sensei admitted, “but then the higher ups got involved because a cursed object went missing- wow, you’re really beat up,” he interrupted himself midway through to snap some pictures of Megumi’s face, “so I agreed to come if it meant I got to sightsee.”

“So…” Gojo-sensei drawled, “did ya find it?”

Megumi averted his gaze.

“Uhm,” Itadori raised a hand, “I ate it,” he said, sounding as apologetic as possible.

Gojo-sensei froze, tensing for just a moment, something most people would not have noticed lest they grew up around him as Megumi had, before his easygoing mask snapped back into place, “for real?”

“For real,” the two echoed, Megumi sounding much more exasperated.

Gojo-sensei leaned into Itadori’s personal space, tilting his head to examine him thoroughly, “hah, would you look at that! You’re not kidding, they’re combined. That’s hilarious.”

“How does your body feel?” He asked Itadori, “any phantom limbs? Strange feelings that aren’t your own? Anything out of the ordinary?”

Itadori hummed, seeming to mull it over, “I guess… there’s pressure in my brain? I don’t know how to describe it, just feels like somethin’s there.”

Gojo-sensei’s brows furrowed before his expression cleared, “makes sense, that seems to be where most of Sukuna’s soul’s accumulated. As far as I can tell. Can you switch with him?”

“Uh… probably?” Itadori guessed.

Gojo-sensei began stretching, “ten seconds,” he decided, “take back control after ten seconds.”

Itadori frowned, “are you sure? I mean, he’s being pretty quiet right now, he might be asleep…”

Gojo-sensei grinned, “wake him up. I can handle him. I’m the strongest Jujutsu sorcerer after all.”

Itadori sent him a dubious look, but upon seeing Megumi’s much more at ease posture (and the fact he did not refute the statement) the pink haired boy conceded.

Said strongest sorcerer proceeded to throw Megumi a paper bag.

He blinked, already tired of the man’s shenanigans, “what is this, Gojo-sensei?”

“Kikufuku mochi.”

His eyes twitched. Had he gone sightseeing while this was happening?! Megumi was so going to punch him.

——

Sukuna was only in his domain for a couple of minutes before he felt a tug at his soul once more. The vessel was calling to him already? That was fast. He had figured he wouldn’t bother checking, thinking it was unlikely anything too exciting would be happening until more sorcerers (preferably not fresh-faced children) arrived.

Safe to say he was rather surprised to find himself at the roof of a school only mere minutes later, brought over by sheer force of will. He would have to ensure that does not happen again.

There was another occupant now inhabiting the rooftop, some vaguely familiar looking albino man with hair that stuck up like an angry porcupine. (What was it with the hair of this era? Was he expected to suffer through horrible haircuts for the next few decades?!) 

Interestingly enough, he and the kid seemed to be discussing a flavour of mochi Sukuna had never heard of before. He walked over and waved, causing them both to tense, one more noticeably than the other.

“Never heard of that flavour, what are the ingredients? I have not dabbled in mochi creation in a while,” he began, hoping his dialect was slightly more understandable now that he’d filtered through some of the vessel’s vocabulary.

The albino tilted his head, “huh. ‘Gumi, you sure pink hair ate the right finger? For the ‘King of Curses’ he seems strangely docile. If you ignore the whole cursed-energy-trying-to-eat-you bit.”

Sukuna stood straighter, eyes suddenly gleaming, “oh? It was a fight you wanted? You should have simply said so-“

Only to be cut off once more, after exactly ten seconds of freedom had passed. He was back in his domain. He huffed, shuffling a few books aside from a desk and settling in to parse through more memories. He would have to establish communication with the vessel eventually, but for now he would settle for relearning the ropes.

——

Satoru wasn’t expecting much for a simple retrieval mission, let alone the reawakening of an ancient curse. Hell, even with the ancient curse! He knew how to deal with those, beat them into submission and move on, easy right? So why was a curse who’s cursed energy literally tried to devour people so… normal?! Such a thing was beyond dangerous. If they stop being able to differentiate curse from vessel…

He looked down at the kid in his arms, knowing the curse would almost surely be the end of him one way or another.

“What did you do?” ‘Gumi asked.

“Knocked him out,” Satoru replied. 

Megumi had that look on his face, the one that said he wasn’t satisfied even when he himself wouldn’t voice his concerns.

Satoru turned to him, “if he wakes up and isn’t possessed, it’s likely he can be deemed a vessel. So. What do I do with him?”

Megumi sighed, “even if he is a potential vessel, Jujutsu guidelines indicate he must be executed,” his expression hardened, a determination in his eyes sparked, and from that expression alone, Satoru knew he would have quite the interesting discussion with the higher ups, “but I don’t want to let him die.” 

Satoru grinned, “is that a personal opinion?”

“Yes, it is. Do something about it,” Megumi stated, and well, how could he not? A precious student of his was asking!

“Leave it to me,” he assured.

Chapter Text

Yuuji was having a… well, a day. His Grandpa finally succumbed to old age and he had almost lost two of his friends. Not to mention he ended up fighting a bunch of weird creatures he had no clue even existed until today and then swallowed a finger (which definitely was not on his bucket list) to then get possessed by the Ryomen Sukuna.

The story of Sukuna was a well-known urban legend that spoke of a being who had found the key to immortality yet insisted on hoarding everything he learned, hiding within the mountains as a recluse and kidnapping anyone who walked into his domain to conduct unspeakable experiments on them. 

A cautionary tale parents told children who visited the mountains to get them not to wander, a silly story with no clear indications of any Sukuna actually existing besides some time in the Heian era as a tyrant noble, let alone living for five hundred years. 

Thus, even while having learned that very day that curses were an actual thing, seeing them for himself even (and wow those things were creepy) he had not truly expected that finger to actually belong to Sukuna, or the curse that Sukuna had become. 

Even further, he had not expected he would end up falling asleep standing and waking up in Sukuna’s garden. 

Yet, here he sat. In Sukuna’s garden. In front of Sukuna himself. 

A table made of mangrove wood sat in front of red-orange blades of grass that stretched out as far as Yuuji could see, the clouds overhead were tinted a soft orange as the sun remained unmoving, a bright ruby right at the horizon line. The sky was stained blood that faded into pink and finally the first shades of blue at the other end of the skyline.

Yuuji was starting to see a theme.

Seated in front of him was an intricate looking cup filled with what Yuuji assumed was water. Looking at it closer, he noticed small brush strokes and imperfections that gave him the ridiculous mental imagery of Sukuna painting them himself. It was almost enough to have him crack a smile, though with the look the curse himself was giving him, he couldn’t quite manage.

“Good, you’re here. I was worried my ‘invitation’ wouldn’t have been enough,” the curse began conversationally.

The dissonance between his words and his expressions was jarring.

“Ah… invitation?” Yuuji prompted.

“This is my inner domain, a mindscape of sorts,” Sukuna explained, “usually only people I invite can enter. I just wasn’t sure if it would work seeing as you were unconscious.”

Yuuji waited for the curse to continue, but he showed no signs of planning to do so, in fact, all he seemed to do was observe Yuuji’s every twitch. Somehow it reminded Yuuji of the judgemental stare his gramps would give him when he was a kid having broken the rules.

“So, what do you want?” Yuuji blurted out, after the silence stretched on for way too long.

Sukuna’s four eyes narrowed even further, his kimono billowing as he shifted to lean on the table, finally glancing away as if having grown tired of staring at a doll.

“How much do you know about Jujutsu sorcery?” 

Yuji sighed, “practically nothing! Just found out sorcerers are even a thing today, really,” he admitted with false cheer.

Sukuna sighed, “alright. Sure. We’ll start with the most pressing issue. You, Itadori, are a vessel. What that means is that you’re cursed energy is in tune enough with mine that you are not being overpowered with the additional power my soul provides-“

“Wait, I’m just an ordinary person, wouldn’t I just… let out my cursed energy?” Yuuji interrupted, ignoring the dark look on Sukuna’s face.

“If you were constantly spilling out all your cursed energy all the time, you’d shrivel up and die. You can imagine it as having a cup of water,” Sukuna grabbed the cup in front of Yuuji. 

“This cup will represent your soul. It is always filled to the brim, otherwise you’d be comatose. The reasons why are still unclear, as are all the things involving souls. With me so far?”

Yuuji nodded numbly, wondering exactly when or why he had agreed to a lesson from a curse. This felt like a very bizarre fever dream.

“The cursed energy you let out are the emotions in your soul overflowing. Negative emotions are expelled from the body entirely to become curses while positive emotions are reabsorbed and aid in healing. Blessed energy, as it is colloquially called,” he summarised.

“Oh,” Yuuji mumbled for lack of anything else to say, “and about the vessel situation?”

Sukuna nodded, “cursed energy is a strange thing, it may mesh well with some techniques but not others, it may not even be willing to work with you at all. It really just depends on the technique, the energy, the amount of it and the person using it. With that many variables it becomes difficult to pinpoint an exact reason for why it behaves the way it does, it’s personal is what I’m trying to say.”

A beat passed, letting Yuuji absorb it, was Sukuna expecting more questions? That was strangely considerate.

“Due to this,” the man continued, “it is almost impossible and ridiculously improbable for someone’s cursed energy to match that of a cursed object well enough that their consciousness isn’t completely overtaken. Sure it could merge enough that the curse takes over, but your situation? Not in my five hundred years have I personally gotten to see anything like it.”

Yuuji’s head was spinning by this point with how much information was more or less dumped onto him, he felt like he was back in class, “why are you telling me this?”

Sukuna shrugged, “your ignorance both irritated me and was of no fault of your own, no reason to get annoyed over someone with possible potential. I’m making you my newest project. How far can someone with no prior knowledge of sorcery go?”

Being called nothing more than a ‘project’ ignited something in Yuuji, but seeing as this was a curse he was talking to, he figured he shouldn’t be too surprised. 

“I still don’t know why this is important,” he bit out, frustrated.

“It means there’s a chance you won’t instantly have a bounty on your head,” Sukuna replied flatly.

Yuuji shot up from his seat, “why didn’t you start with that?!”

Sukuna stared at him for a beat, then two, then groaned in pure aggravated annoyance, “sit down. Damnit, you’re boring. Of course I had to go and explain all that to the most dull moron around. And now I’m stuck with you. Great.”

Yuuji wanted to be offended, he really did, he seriously wanted to defend his honor and all, but it was a little hard to focus on that in the face of his possible impending doom.

“Can we please focus on the fact there’s a chance I could die-“

He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Sukuna flicked two fingers in his direction making the world appear tilted, his eyesight failed him and everything went blank.

——

He must have been unconscious for a good while as when he next woke up, he had a pounding headache that told him he overslept.

He blinked blearily, belatedly noticing he was upright and not on a bed. That should have been the first indication that something was wrong. The second was that when he went to rub at his eyes, his hand was being held down. And behind his back. For some reason.

He seemed to be in a dimly lit room with papers or… sigils? covering the steel walls. He tried to read the things inscribed within them but the words seemed to shift and blur the more he focused on them. For a moment he thought he heard grumbling within his own mind that was distinctly not his own but it was gone as soon as it came.

“Mornin’,” he heard from in front of him, jolting him to wakefulness much quicker, “so, which one are you right now?”

A lone man sat on a chair in reverse, leaning on the back and looking at ease despite Yuji feeling the exact opposite.

He squinted, “aren’t you…” he had seen him just yesterday, hadn’t he? 

“Gojo Satoru,” the man confirmed for him, “first-year teacher at Jujutsu High.”

“Jujutsu-“

His eyes widened, he moved to tug at his arms again, before realising they were both bound in what felt like rope.

“What’s going on?! Are my friends okay? What about Fushiguro?! Am I going to get executed?” 

“You should be more worried about yourself-“

Gojo seemed to still, his head tilting slightly and somehow even with the blindfold covering his eyes, he still made Yuji feel like he was being pierced with a glare he couldn’t even return.

“Now what gave you that idea?” He hummed, sounding both chipper and off-putting.

Yuji glanced away.

“…I had a dream, or maybe I was in Sukuna’s dream? We talked and he started explaining… things? Like souls and vessels and a lot of it went over my head,” he admitted.

The man didn’t show any obvious signs of displeasure, though that could have meant anything, “I see. And he didn’t ask you for a favour or anything?”

Yuji shook his head, “no. He didn’t. Just called me boring in the end and… kicked me out? I think? I’m not sure.”

Gojo shrugged, “ah, well. I’m sure it’s not an issue. You tell me if this happens again, yeah? Anyway, he was right on the nose! You are going to be executed!”

Yuji cringed. Did he have to sound so cheerful about it?

”What’s the method? Trying to get me to die from shock alone?” he muttered under his breath, something the other still picked up on if the bark of laughter he let out was any indication.

“An execution is an execution, but…” Gojo grinned, “…we’re suspending the sentence.”

“Oh,” this did not make Yuji feel better. He was essentially living on borrowed time, “it’s on hold then? Until when? How long do I have left to live, doc?” The last part was supposed to be lighthearted but it came out a little more raspy than he intended.

The man slumped onto the seat, “I’ll try to explain from the top. The finger you ate yesterday?”

He rummaged through his pockets and procured another finger from his pocket, equally as foul and disgusting looking as the one Yuji had swallowed. Yuji grimaced.

“It is one of twenty (probably) and nigh indestructible,” Gojo explained, proving his point by sending it flying across the room and denting the steel walls. It did not even look bruised, despite the fact it should have been much more malleable due to the rot it had been suffering for the past thousand years at the least. 

Yuji was beginning to wonder what exactly it was he had been dragged into. 

“Twenty?” He still asked, “oh, do you mean toes and fingers?”

This time, it was not Gojo who answered.

“Nah, kid, I was just one freak of a human being. Had four arms and all back when I was alive,” Sukuna said within his own head. 

He must’ve jolted, or shown something on his face, because Gojo was suddenly staring at him distinctly quizzically, still he continued, “no, Sukuna just has-“

“Four hands,” Yuji interrupted, “he just told me.”

The albino frowned, “hm. I’m a little surprised he’s being so cooperative… Well, we’re losing the plot, aren’t we?”

”Basically, the fingers have been continuously getting stronger,” Sukuna snorted, Yuji ignored him, “and now they can’t even be properly sealed any longer. That’s where you come in.”

Yuji sat straighter, while the man continued, “if you die, the portion of the curse within you dies as well. Our elders, the people in charge, well, they’re cowards. They’re kicking a big fuss, tryna kill you right from the get-go. But that would be such a waste, wouldn’t it?”

“A waste?” Yuji echoed, starting to see what it was Gojo was alluding to.

The man continued, “there’s no guarantee a vessel capable of suppressing Sukuna like you manage to will ever crop up again. So I proposed an alternative.”

Then, as if Gojo was quoting himself, “‘if we’re gonna kill him, might as well do it after he’s consumed the rest of Sukuna.’”

“So,” Gojo sent him a grin, “now you’ve got two options. Die now, or die after finding and absorbing the rest.”

This wasn’t much of an argument, really. He pursed his lips. 

“Will there be a time limit for this?”

“Nope!” The albino chirped. Yuji could almost imagine the knowing glint he would have if his eyes were visible.

——

Sukuna was feeling impatient, to say the least. The vessel had gone to visit his old friends, Sukuna had last heard, having zoned out. He needed to get himself his own body, and he needed to do so quickly. Unfortunately, without sufficient planning, or even an idea as to how he planned to achieve that at the very least, not much could be done.

So, that’s what he did. He grabbed a notebook from one of the shelves and began writing.

First, he needed to understand what it was he could do. 

He’d done a few tests during this time and had determined a few things. His own soul was not as much ‘mixed’ as it was ‘enveloped’ by his vessel’s. Maybe some sort of assimilation was happening as well, as his vessel was starting to show some of his own characteristics, at least in the physical sense. What with the eyes and the extra mouth.

Which was another thing. How could he just rip a mouth into his vessel’s cheek and have it disappear again? It may as well have become its own cursed technique by this point.

No point in dwelling on such a thing now. He had never quite managed to learn how his own digestive system worked, despite his numerous dissections of others and attempts at dissecting himself.

Sukuna could only open one mouth on his vessel’s body, but it seemed it could be almost anywhere as long as it was on the outside of his skin. He’d tried to open one in the boy’s internal organs but all that did was make him look like a constipated idiot.

‘Their’ cursed energy also behaved strangely, it was certainly still his but now it seemed he was sharing with the kid, it even responded to him strangely, as if it were water before but now only pulled like thick tar. He wondered if that would change once he escaped this body. If not he would only have to retrain his cursed energy to respond quicker.

This left him idly wondering if the vessel could consume curses like he could. Would he need to use his own mouth for it to work? Could he teach the child how to do it himself?

All these questions and he could do nothing to answer them. It tugged at his thinning patience. He focused back on the task at hand. Finding out how to make a body. His soul was still around so the hard part was done, he could probably find a way to transfer his soul from corpse to corpse easily enough. (He was sounding like Kenjaku, he offhandedly wondered whether he was still alive, knowing that rascal and the fact his vessel was a little too perfect, the answer was probably.)

He huffed. Perhaps he could try to get into alchemy. Or engineering. Engineering himself a body did not seem too bad an option right now. Only issue would be how he would get his soul in there… or where he would find the time and resources to make the cyborg that would hold him.

He scribbled a few thoughts into his notebook, frowned, and crossed it all with ink. Then he sat about, glaring at it for a minute or two. He had a long decade ahead. Luckily, he had time. All the time in the world even. 

Opening a new page, he began to theorise.

——

When Sukuna next checked on his vessel, he noted he was at some sort of funeral. Had one of the kids at his school died? Sukuna honestly did not care to ask. The mochi guy was there as well, though if he noticed Sukuna’s presence he did not voice it aloud. 

They seemed to be talking about the child’s ambitions, before coming to an agreement.

His vessel was handed another finger, swallowing it down. Sukuna felt the rush of power taking hold and let it wash past him, flowing deeper into their body. Their souls grew all the closer. 

He tugged at his cursed energy once more, finding it flowing just a little easier. He frowned. With how much there was, it should have been spilling out some way. Was his vessel keeping it in to suppress him? He could not dwell on it further as his vessel loudly began complaining about the taste.

The mochi guy hummed, looking equally pleased and wary, “he’s not even pushing back is he? Still, you’ve got a tight hold on the curse,” he praised.

Sukuna’s vessel simply shot him a thumbs up.

Sukuna sighed, returning to the depths of his domain. Back to his library. Back to his research.

Chapter Text

Satoru spun the situation around in his head one last time as he and his soon-to-be student hiked up the mountain. Sukuna, the tyrant curse-user turned curse, the king of curses so widely known his name was still mentioned amongst the ordinary folk as an urban legend, had resurrected five hundred years after he was initially banished.

Worst of all, he seemed, for lack of a better word, human? Even his soul lacked the distinct ‘sharpness’ it needed to be viewed as a cursed soul. At first, Satoru thought this was because it had nestled itself within the soul of its vessel, but upon closer inspection, it really was just a human soul. Only cracked, as if that made any sense.

In other words, Sukuna was more of an anomaly than Satoru had initially imagined he would be. It left Satoru feeling caught off guard; not sure what to expect. It left him on edge.

He was cut out of his musing by Itadori’s excited exclamation, forcing him to focus back on the hike. It seemed they were at school grounds already.

“Woah, it’s in the mountains? Is this really Tokyo?” Itadori asked, it seemed this was his first time on such a trip.

“This isn’t actually too out of the ordinary for the Tokyo suburbs,” Satoru said, amused by the look of awe from his studen- nope, not yet. That’s what they’re here for.

“How’s Fushiguro?” Itadori asked.

It was nice he already cared about the other so much, despite only having known him a little less than a day, “he’s probably asleep right now,” he mused aloud, “got some treatment so he will be good as new by the time he wakes up.”

Now that they were approaching the school, it seemed an appropriate time to being up their to-do list, “first thing’s first Yuji, you got an interview with the principal,” ignoring the echo of ‘the principal’ he got from the kid, he continued, “if you mess up you’re likely to get rejected for admission so stay frosty, ‘kay?”

This seemed to alarm Itadori. Had he not mentioned this before? Apparently not, judging by the panicked look on the other’s face.

“Does this mean I can get executed right away?!” Ah. That is a good reason to panic. Well, the higher ups could certainly try. As if Satoru would let them get their way after pulling so many threads to make sure that exact scenario doesn’t happen.

“An interview? Things must have changed quite a bit since last I was here,” Satoru tensed. That was not Yuji’s voice, nor his cursed energy readings.

“I’ll have to check out the current curriculum,” Sukuna muttered, continuing on even though Itadori had paused, eyes wide to try and look at the open mouth in his cheek.

“Hey, Mochi-guy, mind if-“ he was interrupted by Itadori slapping the side of his face, effectively covering the mouth.

Mochi-guy? Strange nickname for Itadori, was it some sort of inside joke- wait. Why would he need to ask Itadori out loud if he could say it within the confines of the kid’s own brain.

Then, would that make Satoru…

“Sorry sensei,” Itadori said, sounding exasperated, “he comes out sometimes.”

“What an interesting body you have now,” Satoru mumbled, trying not to appear distracted.

Another mouth opened up, this time on the kid’s hand, “tell me about it,” Sukuna muttered, continuing their conversation like he belonged in it, “now, back to what I was saying, you’re a teacher right? You got some sort of study plan? I want to compare from what I had last seen-“

He was cut off again, by another hand, still, he appeared undeterred, “pink-hair, d’you mind?”

Itadori huffed, “why are you so talkative today?” 

“I need to know!” Sukuna insistent, “and the easiest way is to ask, also, Blindfold, didn’t you say you wanted a spar sometime? Hopefully, I’ll have obtained a body of my own by the time the spar can be scheduled.”

What is it with Sukuna and nicknames? Satoru wondered.

“The great Sukuna, wishing to spar with me? What an honour!” It was all he could think to say because that’s not how curses were supposed to act. 

Judging by the purse of Sukuna’s lips, he was apparently looking at him incredulously, “but… wasn’t it you who- do you or do you not want to- Whatever, back to the curriculum, if you would?”

Itadori sighed, seeming to have given up on trying to shut the curse’s mouth.

Satoru hummed, this was getting out of hand, “I wouldn’t want to spoil it for Yuji, here! Maybe I’ll tell you when you ‘obtained a body of your own’ as you put it.”

Satoru could almost imagine Sukuna narrowing his eyes at him, feeling strangely watched by a thing as innocuous as a soul, probably sensing the lie, but at last he let up, his cursed energy curling around itself once more as he sank deeper into Yuji’s own encasement of a soul.

They continued walking. Yeesh, this walk was turning out to be a long one. At least they were in the school walls.

“Sorry about Sukuna, sensei,” Yuji sighed. Satoru waved him off.

“I still can’t wrap my head around the fact this is… like, the Sukuna. He’s so…” Yuji tapered off, apparently just as at a loss for words as Satoru, he shook his head, “anyway, is the story of Sukuna and the way Jujutsu sorcerers know Sukuna different?”

Satoru gave a so-and-so motion, “depends on which version of the urban legend you’ve heard. Sukuna did indeed exist, but it was a thousand years ago. His last records were recorded, we assume, in his fifties before he died in an ambush. He went off the grid for some time before popping up across several accounts as a curse with an extra set of arms and eyes and a mouth on his stomach, though some theorise he’s had those since before becoming a curse, the records being both ordinary and sorcerer-related, for the next five hundred or so years before the last known records of him were a document on the fact he was sealed. Doesn’t say how he was sealed, though. Just that he was.” 

He sounded a little like he was regurgitating text, but he wasn’t too upset. He had to do his research after all, and this was just the simplified explanation.

Itadori seemed to ruminate on this for a while, finally when they were just at the door, “is he stronger than you, sensei?”

Satoru considered the question, “at full power… I imagine it would be a rather difficult fight,” he allowed.

Yuji looked at him expectantly, “would you lose?”

“Nah, I’d win,” He replied, a smirk spilling onto his face. 

It transformed into a scoff when he heard Itadori hack a lung trying to stop himself from laughing, “what, don’t believe me?”

“N-no, it’s not that, sensei!” Itadori hurried to explain, “it’s just that- Sukuna cooed at you, and I really wasn’t expecting it.”

Sukuna was becoming the cause of his biggest migraine in months.

——

Progress had been moving slowly, too slowly for Sukuna’s liking. The days seemed to pass by in a blur as well. 

He had been passively trying to keep up with the passing of time. From what he recalls, the vessel had gone to collect the third student, a steely girl with more fire and ambition in her pinky than his vessel and the shadow user combined. Even from what little he had seen, he knew she had potential. All of them did, even his vessel. 

He really needed to get a body, and soon. He was already losing too much information trapped in his vessel’s soul. Luckily, he now had a plan. 

Human souls are made of energy. Both positive or negative. Sukuna knew this well. Souls also had a ‘capacity’ for energy stores, and when they exceeded that, this extra energy would spill out. Positive ‘blessed’ energy would be reabsorbed into the body for healing while negative ‘cursed’ energy was expelled out of the soul and body to form curses. 

Ordinarily, the souls of curses are made of pure cursed energy, and are not truly ‘souls’ in the same way human souls are but rather figments and memories left over that take the form of souls through memories of their time as human fears. 

They form ‘bodies’ made of cursed energy as well, and in that way their bodies become their souls. They can instinctively keep their shapes although it is thought to be possible, at least according to Sukuna’s research, to teach a curse to expand its ‘soul’ out of its ‘body’ though this poses the risk of having their souls spill out into the world and have their consciousness be lost to the atmosphere, though that does make for an interesting way to attempt to kill a curse.

If Sukuna were an ordinary curse, he could simply attempt to gather his ‘soul’ outside of the vessel’s body at the, most likely, ridiculously high risk of losing his sentience completely, there has to be a reason it is not commonly done, no?

Unfortunately, even if he could do it, he does not have the soul type. He was not a curse in the typical sense after all, despite having all the features of one. He still had blessed energy within his soul, making it infinitely harder to have his soul simply spill out as it were, due to the fact his soul was completely neutral.

He clicked his tongue, he had effectively screwed himself over in attempting to keep his mind intact. Ah. Well. He is a thousand years too late to regret it. Not that he can truthfully say he does. This would just be an even funner challenge once he got everything in motion. 

A few ideas were already forming in his head. If he could reverse the places of the blessed energy and cursed energy in his soul then perhaps he could simply let that be his makeshift ‘body’ and-

He was interrupted by the strangled sound of sobs. 

Turning around, he found his vessel, a heap of limbs on the floor and a cracked soul, in the process of spilling out. 

What the fuck.

——

Nobara had finally fulfilled her dream of reaching the city. Sure it cost her risking her life as a career and having to deal with two idiot classmates but it wasn’t all bad. She got to drag them to the stores and she had potato head carry her bags and sea urchin was used as her tester for makeup products, much to his dismay. 

 Apparently, idiot no.2 had swallowed a special grade cursed object (which honestly, who in their right mind does that? He wasn’t even a sorcerer when he did it?) and was now semi-possessed but he really did not seem it. The curse in him had yet to speak a word. Eh, better for the rest of them, except that right now they could really use a curse stronger than the special grade currently glaringly daggers into her with far too much glee in its expression. Preferably one that could be controlled afterwards.

She had only realised it was approaching when idiot no.1’s shikigami wolf let out a strangled sound, something she almost missed due to their loud arguing, and honestly, was this the time to talk about what to do with a corpse?! Can’t they figure that out when they’re sure they won’t become corpses themselves?!

Luckily she was quick enough to snap them both out of their bickering and sea urchin managed to absorb his shikigami back before it was permanently destroyed. Only problem was that she was now directly in its line of sight.

Her finger twitched, ignoring the way both idiots tried to warn her not to engage which was all well and good, but what else is she supposed to do exactly?! Its mere presence had her knees shake and her legs wouldn’t move no matter how much she tried to force them to work and she had to come to terms with the fact she was so afraid she couldn’t even move-

By some divine intervention -whether one that wished to help or make her life more miserable, she didn’t know- the ground under her sunk down and she slipped through the once solid floor, narrowly escaping being mauled by the curse.

She found herself in what she assumed was previously a basement but was now in another incomplete domain, most likely of another curse. She turned to where she could feel most of the cursed energy congregating and shivered. Exorcising that curse was definitely way above her pay grade. Still, it was no special grade. Counting her blessings, she changed her stance, preparing to fight and trying not to think too hard of how the other two would be faring by the end of this. 

Better to survive long enough they can be mourned than to not survive at all, right? She did not have to marinate on those thoughts for long as the curse attacked. If she did manage live to the end of this she would be draining Gojo-sensei’s bank account dry and she truly meant it this time.

——

Megumi could barely catch his breath, each gasp leaving him feeling more out of breath than before. He glanced at the scrap of fabric in his hand. The same nametag Itadori had ripped off of the prisoners body, held it even tighter as he planned to get Kugisaki. 

He ignored her comment about the frog easily enough, just trying to pretend everything was still salvageable. Trying to pretend he had not let himself leave his friend to an almost guaranteed death because why didn’t Sukuna respond- how had they ended up in this mess?

They should never have been allowed to go on such a mission, Megumi thought, staring at the detention centre with pure loathing. This sort of thing should have been dealt with by an appropriate special grade, or at least a first grade, or, anyone who was not three first year students, none of which were even close to special grade. 

He was not stupid. He knew what this was the moment he walked in to find an incomplete domain. This was an assassination attempt. He and Kugisaki were just to be ‘unfortunate collateral’. 

Finding the grotesque balls of flesh that used to be the bodies of the remaining prisoners was expected, truth be told, Megumi had not been anticipating survivors. No ordinary person could survive a special grade, let alone doing so while within its domain. 

Kugisaki had appeared disgusted by the bodies, but not necessarily affected. Itadori on the other hand… Megumi found he almost had to talk him out of dragging one of the bodies back with them. He was just glad the other settled for only grabbing the nametag instead. That almost kicked off another argument in and of itself, it seemed they both got more wound up the closer the special grade approached, Megumi noted, now that he was out of the cursed building. 

He dragged Kugisaki to the car, told Ichiji to take her and get out of her, ignoring her half-delirious protests. He half wondered if she was poisoned at some point by one of the curses. This was a mess.

Now all that was left was to wait, he thought grimly. Settling at the exit of the domain, leaning back and hoping against all odds that eventually Itadori would make it out. 

He closed his eyes as his wolf howled, letting the sound echo into the building.

Chapter Text

Why did you choose to come here?

That was the question principal Yaga had asked when he first entered the school grounds. Yuji hadn’t been fully sure what it was he meant at first, but by the end of it he thought he had given a truthful answer, even if it had to be beaten out of him.

Now, everywhere I go, I see those curses. See the way they hurt others, and I think, what if that was someone I cared about instead? The feeling of cursed energy bubbling inside of me, something I never noticed before eating the finger, the growing need to do something about it, I knew if all I did with my life was sit around all day or run from my fear, I would end up living a life full of regret. I refuse to live like that.

That is the gist of what he had said to his principal, and now that answer is being put to the test because the special grade has already torn off his left hand and his entire right arm and he’s fairly certain he has acid splattered across his entire torso and it might be melding into his flesh and it's all so painful he is seriously wondering how he is still conscious.

Despite it all, the only thing on his mind is his regret, not the pain, not the elation that his friends made it out, not anything it should be on.

“Stop thinking,” he gritted his teeth, ignoring the way tears rolled down his eyes, “stop it. Stop. Sukuna, please!” He’s not sure why he’s still trying. Sukuna is not there. Cannot even hear him. Hasn’t been around for almost two weeks now.

“I’ll do anything,” he muttered, a weak thing, “I swear, anything- I- I don’t want to die. I don’t- I want to see my friends again,” he’s not even sure if he’s talking to Sukuna anymore, these words may as well be for himself, a confirmation, “I want to get stronger, I want to survive, why did I let myself do this? I thought I would be happy being the only one to go,” he stopped fighting, watching dully as the special grade prepared a fatal attack. He lay on his knees, too tired to even stand, bleeding far too much. He's left surprised (dismayed, he doesn’t want to feel himself die-) he hasn’t passed out from blood loss yet.

“I want to curse them all, but at the same time I… I don’t truly mean it. I just. I thought I’d live longer,” he murmured, dropping before the final hit landed. Heart stopping. 

Somehow, dying before the last attack felt worse than it would have had he survived until the final shot.

——

As a child, he was always running around, curious and without the slightest hint of fear. He would poke at broken glass on the sidewalk, pick up frogs or toads near ponds, watch worms wriggle on him in fascination, his teachers often told his grandpa he was a rather whimsical child. 

He himself was told he had a lot of trouble focusing, often zoning out into space or staring at one particular area with intensity. When he responded by telling them of seeing things only he could notice, they laughed in the way adults did at the woes of toddlers, expecting him to grow out of it.

As he grew older, he noticed them more and more often, their gnarly limbs, unnatural movements, strange croaks that sounded almost too human for comfort. He didn’t really know what to think, hadn’t had a reason to do more than keep an eye on them.

He once tried telling his friends about them, being kindergarteners and first graders, they thought he was joking and those that did believe him screeched whenever he described the things he saw, growing paranoid yet disbelieving. Even when one was laying right under the desk he was sitting on. He shifted his legs away every time it tried to shuffle towards him.

He was reprimanded for ‘scaring the other children’ by his teacher that day. He tried to listen, but with one of those things curled around the teacher’s torso like a sloth, it was a little hard to focus.

As the years passed by his teachers grew concerned, informing his already worried grandfather, - whom he had not yet told for fear of not being believed. Of being told he was lying as well. The thought made him queasy. His gramps hated liars. He didn’t want to be one - that he may have some sort of attention deficiency. All because he still couldn’t ignore the things during class.

It came to a head when he was eight. His gramps had taken him to an old, run-down store and the moment he walked in he tensed. The entire time there, it felt like something was preparing to pounce, like a spring rearing to snap back.

Leaving felt like a relief until he heard the cashier would be staying until the next shift. 

One thought rang through his mind at that moment with startling clarity. If the woman stayed, she would die.

He had snuck out that night just in time to run across the street and find a monster stronger than he had ever seen before standing over her limp body. The smell of iron so strong it was dizzying. Without letting himself think, he rushed towards the thing and gave his strongest punch. 

With an ease and strength he’s never been on the receiving end of, he was batted away, sending his small form flying to one of the aisles of the market.

The last thing he remembered was a flash of pink that he may very well have been his own final attempt at survival before blacking out.

When he regained consciousness, he was within the sterile walls of a hospital, antiseptic being the only thing he could smell. 

It was the first and last time he saw his gramps so distraught. That day he had confessed, admitted he saw monsters no matter where he went, told his gramps about how no one believed him, not even himself, and his grandpa had responded with an admittance himself. Those monsters he was seeing? His dad often spoke of them as well. Described similar things.

He was told to promise not to speak of any of what he saw to anyone, and for years he tried his best.

He would eventually break his promise when the day his grandpa passed, when a guy named Fushiguro Megumi walked in while he was filling out the funeral paperwork, demanding he hand over an ancient artefact belonging to Sukuna. Cementing his legacy. 

His life was really flashing before his eyes. Guess this was the end then. He likes to think he had a good run. 

Hopefully, his next life will be more merciful.

——

Yuji gasped and choked on air that definitely did not exist, curling in on himself as if trying to shield himself from an imaginary enemy.

His insides felt as if they were filled with jagged, broken glass, any trembling breath or choked sob he took had him displacing them further and making them dig deeper into his organs, every waking moment felt like agony and for a long moment he thought that this could not get worse.

Unfortunately, the afterlife sought to prove him wrong as suddenly there was something looming over him, grabbing him and setting him aflame and for a delirious moment he was convinced he must have ended up in hell before the thought was gone as quickly as it came, along with every other thought in his head.

The fire literally being ignited from within him began to melt the broken pieces in him, forcing them to fuse together in a way that felt more like his very essence was being deformed and changed until it finally reshaped itself back into its rightful form.

He did not know how long this went on for, or when he had blacked out, as by the time he came to, stars were dancing in his vision and it felt like he had taken enough sedatives to put a herd of elephants to sleep.

Blinking away the dark spots, he tried to get up only to be pushed back down.

He suddenly found himself aware he was not alone in this… room? He stared in a daze at the tiled ceiling. It was definitely not something he’d seen before. In fact, he realised he was lying on a… futon. Complete with a blanket wrapped around him and all.

Out of his peripheral vision, someone came into view. Pink hair and two sets of eyes, along with markings brought him a fuzzy sort of recollection though nothing else seemed to be making sense.

“You awake?” He heard Sukuna before scoffing, “rhetorical question, I know you are. Think you can talk?”

His mind felt like it was filled with cotton, the scratchy kind that felt more like barbed wires, was that cotton? Every thought he had felt like it was scraping his brain but he pushed through the shattered visage of memories to try and puzzle the pieces together through sheer brute force.

“Curse… really strong… died to- my- friends are… okay? How long-?” He heaved with every thought, adrenaline rushing through him as he tried to get up once more, did his friends make it out alive? Was the special grade dealt with? How long has it been that he’s been napping while his loved ones were dying?!

He was forced back down with enough force to make his ribs ache.

“Stop squirming so much, you were just revived. Is this really the time to think about a bunch of other brats?” Sukuna snarled, sounding as done with him as he felt with the situation.

“Why didn’t you…” he tried to force out, “help me?” Hear me? Why weren’t you there? You said you’d teach me to survive! Where were you?! He wanted to scream but just the thought of talking above a whisper made his head spin. 

Sukuna clicked his tongue, igniting a rage Yuji had not felt in a long while to flow through him, he tried to speak but his voice failed him and his body was not much use either.

“I did help you, I revived you didn’t I? Besides, how was I supposed to know you needed help if you didn’t say anything?”

Yuji grit his teeth, “I-!” he coughed, “I did.”

Sukuna frowned, seeming to be lost in thought for a moment before shrugging, “I might’ve been too distracted to hear. It’s happened before.”

That was all? Yuji ended up dying and having to have Sukuna revive him, and for what?! Because Sukuna was distracted?! He was certain his teeth were grinding and he so desperately wanted to strangle the curse. Horrible. Sukuna was horrible.

Sukuna was horrible and Yuji was bedridden and exhausted and suddenly everything was weighing far too heavily on him and his traitorous brain told him he was going to burst into tears because he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want the fear of his friends’ safety to take over every thought he had, he didn’t want to suffer just because some unreliable curse in his body got distracted. He wanted- 

He needed to get stronger. That was the only way he could see himself fixing all of this. He would get strong enough he wouldn’t need to rely on anyone to save him. He wouldn’t get left behind again.

Apparently, seeing his eyes begin to water, Sukuna began trying to placate him, “relax, your friends are probably still alive if they were still around by the time you died, it’s only been two minutes in the real world, even if it’s been two hours here. Now, if you start crying again I will let you stay dead this time.”

Yuji was genuinely relieved to hear his friends were likely still alive, even when his anger burned right under his skin. The news brought it down to a much more controllable simmer and his tears began to slowly recede. 

Seeing it safe to proceed, Sukuna continued, “don’t try to get up, in fact, your best bet is to go back to sleep right now. I’ll deal with whatever it was that did this much damage to you, alright?”

Then, in a move reminiscent of his late grandpa, Sukuna patted his knee and got up with a groan, opening a sliding door and leaving the room, giving Yuji the peace he needed to lull himself back to sleep.

He dreamt of dinners with gramps and the smell of home cooked meals.

——

It has been watching for decades yet it has not been truly ‘aware’ for long. Ever since it left the warm embrace of its womb some moons ago, it has known it was the strongest. Those within its midst quivered in fear around it, flocking left and right in an attempt to escape its grasp. It has found them very amusing. Their despair, delectable.

It has tired of its prey, despicable, their actions. Horrendous, their emotions. Filling, yet ultimately predictable. There was no thrill in the chase, no struggle in the devouring of their beings.

It had been planning to leave for quite some time, when it was sent a gift. Three more disgusting humans entering its walls like pests requiring extermination. Except these seemed… powerful. More so than the flies it has been feasting on all this time. 

It had snickered in glee, watching them as they marinate in dismay upon realising its superiority. Alas, two got away - a first - but it was having far too much fun with the one that stayed to care.

Unfortunately, that fun too had to end, as the pest collapsed without it ever getting to the main course. 

It prepared to give chase to the others, only to freeze. There was a change in the air. Imperceptible at first. Familiar as it grew stronger. Then…

Hungry, it was so hungry-

It choked, feeling fear for the first time since conception. How. 

There was something much stronger than it emerging from the corpse of its latest feast. It turned around to find the body standing, alive. Alive. Wrong.

“So this was the curse that killed my vessel,” the other mused aloud. Unimpressed.

It snickered to hide its fear, perhaps this will be its new game? It is the strongest, it has to be! It has never met anything capable of beating it. Not even the magic pests. 

It would not let this creature make it feel fear. With great confidence, it threw its first attack. The hit did not land. How? The other was healing, just like it could. How? It thought only it knew how to heal, not even the others like it could with such ease. How?

“Awe,” the corpse cooed, “you think you can beat me? Can’t believe my vessel died to a curse so cute.”

It was being mocked. How dare this worm, how dare they?! It was the strongest, how could it be mocked?! It moved quicker, attempting to pummel the other with speed. That did not work. Its hits still were not landing. 

“Yikes, you sure squirm a lot, dontcha? Think you can sit tight until I remember how to seal suckers like you? You’re too cute to kill right off the bat, I bet you’d make a good lab partner too once you’ve grown and calmed a bit…”

It did not care to attempt to discern the meaning of the corpse’s words, all it cared for was the fact its food was looking down upon it.

Pulling up all its pent up rage, it let out an aggravated, shrill screech, all it wished was to get the other to shut it. 

It did not feel the first attack until it was cut through.

——

Sukuna’s ears were ringing. He couldn’t think, brain scraped raw. Vermin, daring to raise its voice to such an ear splitting degree?! Who does it think it is? With such a mockery of strength. How dare such a feeble creature-!

He watched distantly as it was sliced and burnt, leaving naught but ash remains on the floor along with a single unharmed finger. The domain dissipating around them before it too eventually burned. He stood unmoving all the while, the ringing like an ear splitting bell, echoing the remains of a scream that could no longer be produced.

He grit his teeth, choking down his rage and turning his attention away from the scene to instead focus on his injuries. 

It appeared there had been quite the damage done to the brat. Bruised kidneys, punctured lung, multiple areas in which even his flow of cursed energy appears affected due to his vessel being screwed up, an arm and half his leg had been ripped off… what a mess. He stretched a little, allowing RCT to stitch the body back together as he walked himself out, his leg healing first, letting it form during his first step.

He grabbed the finger as an afterthought before finally leaving the dump of cracked concrete walls.

He almost missed the kid curled up near the entrance until he was being called out.

“Itadori?-“

He kept moving, perhaps he was due for a tour anyway…

“You’re not Itadori. What happened to him?”

Yeesh. Were all kids this demanding? He tried to remember his last interaction with a child before this whole mess… oh right, they always were. Well that was one thing that had remained the same.

“What did you do to him?” Yeesh. People thought so little of him these days. Why would he go out of his way to screw over the only person keeping him connected to the outside world until he got his own body?

He finally turned around, eyeing the ten-shadows user with mild disdain. What was his name again? Fu-something? Fush-? 

“I am not in a good enough mood to deal with paranoid brats,” he mused to himself.

“Relax, hairspikes. Your friend will be back in a couple of days, he’s just knocked out from the damage to his soul. Healing from death is exhausting, you know,” he scoffed.

Hairspikes seemed to consider his words, watching him carefully, fingers twitching.

He sighed, taking out his vessel's phone… only to find a cracked screen and several parts of it chipped off. He squinted. Were those wires? Was that glass? Why the hell would his idiot vessel put something this fragile in his back pocket?!

No wonder he had to heal his literal ass on top of everything else. 

He paused, chewing his lips. It would be easier if he could get a phone, with a gps system and all, but… phones were expensive… and libraries would not always be available. He could just borrow his vessel’s phone but eventually he would need one for himself. The jujutsu libraries are a different beast altogether. He let out a groan, tossing the now unusable hunk of junk and pressing his palms against his eyes. Why was the future so complicated? He was only gone for five hundred years…

He clicked his tongue, “you think I could get a high paying job without having gone to college?”

Fushu- argh he still couldn’t remember his name- must have not been expecting a question directed at him as he jolted so hard he may as well have jumped out of his own skin.

“What are you trying to get into?” Hairspikes asked, trying with all his might to not sound too awkward and failing rather painfully.

Sukuna shrugged, “mostly just trying to get my own phone. Then I can catch up at my own time. Where do they sell these, by the way?”

At hairspikes’ very clear discomfort, Sukuna huffed, “fine, fine, I’ll figure it out myself.”

He lunged forward, avoiding the bird that erupted from his shadow only to find himself caught in the maws of a giant snake. Oh, this would be fun.

The snake skin began to sizzle where it had trapped him, leading it to unlatch its jaw and having him hop out. Milliseconds later, he was standing in front of the ten-shadows user, ready to throw the first punch and smiling when he got blocked.

He made sure to put an effort into being slow enough for the kid to keep up with, dodging the shikigami all the while. It seems, the snake had been dismissed to heal.

“You’re not very creative, are ya?” He observed in between hits.

Hairspikes’ eyebrow twitched, “huh?”

Very eloquent.

“You should try synergising your shikigami more often, don’t have them go at attacks one at a time,” he explained, swiping at the kids’ feet and knocking him off balance. He waited for him to recover. Sukuna knew the shadow user was catching on when he narrowed his eyes at Sukuna’s actions. 

“If you overwhelm your opponent, even for a moment, you can get the edge over them,” and to prove his point, he sped up just enough that he would be pushing hairspikes to try and think of something else before he tired himself out.

He was pleased to see the kid shooting upwards, a long toad’s tongue wrapped around his torso as it fluttered on borrowed wings. He hadn’t really had literal synergy in mind, but this certainly worked as well. He wondered what else he would find if he kept pushing. 

The toad dropped the kid some ways away, and Sukuna found himself having to jump back to avoid a very snake-like dog from biting him. Eugh. He does not want rabies.

At least things were finally picking up, it became a game of cat and mouse, with haispikes finding more and more interesting ways to keep Sukuna distracted the longer time went on. Sukuna allowed himself to go easy on the kid, more curious to see how far the boy could push himself.

Sukuna was almost disappointed to see all the shikigami fade into nothingness, and a quick glance to where hairspikes was confirmed that the guy had used up all his cursed energy. And looked moments away from passing out.

Still, he was almost impressed.

Sukuna walked towards him, movement effortlessly graceful in a way that showed no hint he had been in a fight at all, and truly, he hadn’t been. This had been an act. They both knew it.

“You weren’t even going for me,” the kid pointed out through short bursts of air, leaning against the building and clutching his side.

Sukuna watched him with amusement, “hm, you’re not completely daft. A little bland, but you’re passable for a first year. Next time, focus more on the cohesion of your shikigami’s attacks. I noticed a couple of times they got in the way of each other, which, in a real fight, could’ve been catastrophic.”

“I got what I wanted the moment we started the match,” Sukuna admitted, a hint that hairspikes only got when he took out the phone he had pocketed during the start of the match.

He almost laughed at the panicked look the kid got as he desperately patted his pockets only to find his phone wasn’t even there.

Still, he only clicked his tongue, “you shouldn’t have things as fragile as these on you during a fight. Especially not in your pockets,” he reprimanded.

“Like giving glass to a toddler…”

“Give it back,” hairspikes demanded through gritted teeth, pretending he had not heard his previous comment.

Sukuna tutted, “from what I gather from Itadori… your birthday’s on the twenty-second of December? Two thousand and two,” he hummed, typing in the date and grinning when the phone unlocked, “very predictable.”

Hairspikes looked like he was fuming, but was still too exhausted to do more than catch his breath.

Finally, he took some time looking through the maps app before moving to some texting app he took a solid twenty seconds to find, pointing at a name, “that’s your teacher right?”

It was clear of all the things the kid expected him to say, this was not one of them, judging by the way his breath stuttered and he mutely nodded his head.

He pressed the call button. 

The call was accepted by the fourth ring.

“Gumi-chan! It’s rare you ever call, let alone when I’m on a mission!” The terribly cheerful attitude was getting on his nerves fast.

“Don’t care where you are. Come pick up your student,” he interrupted, “neither he nor pink hair should have been sent to a special grade, and I swear if it was you who authorised it, had I been in charge you would have been executed on the spot, fool. You have not only failed to protect your wards, you have also-“

“Is Megumi okay?” He was interrupted.

Rolling his eyes, he huffed out a quick, “the kids are alive and in one piece-“

The idiot ended the call before he could finish. He tossed the phone back to hairspikes and strolled off. Vanishing the moment he left the detention centre’s borders, leaving not a trace behind.

Chapter Text

It has been roughly three days since Yuuji died, or, at least that’s what the calendar said. For Yuuji himself, however? It feels like it’s been weeks of him lying in bed. Literally. After the first night, he’d woken up in his childhood bedroom, just as he remembered it, despite having packed it all up and away after his gramps died.

He had woken up curled up on his bed with a headache like nothing he had ever felt before, and no recollection of that short time he had been conscious after dying the day before. Figuring he must have been in some form of afterlife, he allowed himself to grieve. For the future he would never get to have, for the friends he would never see again, for the things he regretted not doing and the people he would miss.

He stayed like that until he ‘felt’ the door to his room open, despite there not being one before this moment, and for an awkward moment Sukuna was facing him while he was mid-sob.

Right, if he was dead then Sukuna would be too. The thought had him wanting to cry all over again, this time in rage.

Sukuna seemed surprised when he saw him, clearly not having expected, nor really knew how to deal with the situation at hand.

To be honest, when Yuuji saw the bastard again he was half tempted to go off on him, because, seriously, what the hell?! Sukuna says he’ll teach him, goes completely silent for all but two weeks, and only comes back after Yuuji dies, and even that is only because Yuuji somehow ended up in his domain.

He probably would have punched him if he didn't feel so tired, or… ill. Which was a first.

He turned over and curled in on himself tighter, not willing to deal with whatever nonsense the curse would spout at him.

Instead Sukuna just cleared his throat, standing awkwardly at the door, “uh. You… feeling better? Less dead?”

Yuuji’s response was an incredulous scoff, “was that supposed to be a joke?”

Sukuna squinted, “…no?”

“I feel about as dead as any other person six feet under,” he humoured the curse.

Sukuna just nodded, “mmh, recovery tends to feel like that.”

“Recovery?” He asked.

Had Sukuna lost it? He was dead, what was there to recover from?

“From what? The mental instability of an eternity stuck feeling sick and forced to see you all the time will cause?”

“Tch, you weren’t this much of a brat the last time we talked,” Sukuna clicked his tongue, rubbing the back of his neck

“Not like I have anything to lose. Can’t get any more dead, can I?” He snarked, bitter.

Sukuna abruptly let out a laugh, only to try and stifle it when Yuuji shot him a glare.

“You think you’re still dead, kid?” He asked.

What.

“The hell do you mean ‘still’ dead? It’s not like I can just come back to life-“

Sukuna coughed.

“…I’m back?” Yuuji asked, flabbergasted.

“I told you yesterday, didn’t I?” Sukuna deadpanned.

“Oh,” was all Yuuji found himself able to respond with.

Sukuna had then looked him over and confirmed he would likely have a fever spike while he was recovering, and for someone who has never actually experienced being sick for as far as he could remember? This was a special type of hell. Time was moving at a snail's pace and it felt like he was constantly crying except he didn’t even get the benefit of an emotional release. How did people do this?! 

When he admitted this while wallowing the first… evening? Hour? (Time seemed to move so differently…) with Sukuna as his only - much to his misfortune - company, Sukuna almost dropped the notebook he was holding. Blinking owlishly at him.

“You’ve never been sick before?” Sukuna repeated.

Yuuji, feeling a little put-off by his shocked demeanour, just shrugged, “not as far as I can remember.”

“Is this… normal? For this day and age?” Sukuna asked again.

“Ah… maybe? I mean, I’m only fifteen, and there’s probably someone out there who’s not been sick for longer, but it’s not like illness has been removed entirely, it’s just… you know, less deadly. I think,” Yuuji explained.

Sukuna merely hummed and went back to whatever it was he had been scribbling on the small notebook of his for the past eternity. Seriously, did he not get bored? What was he even writing in there and how did that sad notebook still have pages left?

By the time he started feeling moderately more alert, it was already the end of the second day and he decided enough was enough. He needed to know what was happening in the outside world during the time Sukuna was not asleep and keeping an eye on him. Surprisingly, Sukuna obliged his request on the first ask.

Yuuji was then filled in on the rest of what he missed.

——

After Sukuna had walked away, a destination already in mind thanks to using GPS while he still had access to a phone, he had taken the time to properly examine the city around him. It was… it was magnificent. Neon lights in every direction, food stalls where he looked, it was abundance in its purest form and he had no clue what to do with it. 

He honestly could have spent hours, days even, just exploring the few streets and skyscrapers he could see, instead, he refocused himself into reaching his destination. He needed to acquaint himself with modern day life. Luckily, he had a bunch of the kids' memories to sift through. Hopefully he would be able to form a cohesive enough disguise.

Going to a nearby store, it seemed a rather unpopular choice, perhaps it was old? It certainly seemed run down and the curses inside of it looked to be running amok. He grinned. Perfect. The camera’s and security were probably low quality enough that no one would notice a few stolen items. Or well. He hoped so. In all honesty he had no clue what a camera even looked like. Ah, otherwise he would have to deal with the headache of finding out how well investigation work had come along if anyone tried to catch him. 

Oh, that would be a fun idea- wait no, he was getting distracted. Right. Steal supplies, head to the nearby library, maybe grab a bite or two on his way, he sensed a moderately higher grade curse just at the entrance of this place. Really, he’d be doing this place a service for clearing out the curse infestation while he grabbed his things.

Entering the store, he found it even more dreary on the inside, with only a tired cashier at the front desk as its only occupant. He offhandedly noted the crocodile-sized curse draped on them. It was low level enough it wouldn’t be a problem aside from being literal extra weight. Sucks to be them. Except it does look quite… delicious. He snapped out of his thoughts quickly, focusing on the task at hand.

First, he got himself a bag. A plastic one. Plastic. Such a common yet utterly ingenious idea. Up until you take into account its difficulty to be destroyed, what was previously deemed as a positive, and its overconsumption because of that, has led to large scale damage. Modern day issues were so strange. 

He was spacing out. Again. Shaking his head, he brought the supplies he would need. As he was traversing the aisles, he noted the overwhelming amount of brands littering the shelves, the only reason he was able to choose and not just close his eyes and grab the nearest colourful wrapper was because he was basing his taste entirely off his vessel’s memories of what tasted good.

He was about to leave when he spotted an interesting product. It was a costume. Most notably, it had a wig. The wig was a simple, most likely low quality, mob of plastic black hair that was obviously fake if one looked at it hard enough but it would do in a pinch.

Grabbing it before he could let himself think too deeply about it, he decided to go ahead and snatch a dress or two as well. Those seemed close enough to a Kimono.

Then he rounded to the cashier. Okay. What was he supposed to do now? Book it? He could.

He watched the cursed still wrapped around the cashier click its jaw, watching him without interest. If he could get it to wrap itself around him…

Nodding to himself, he greeted the women and pretended to look through his pockets for his wallet. While he did so, he began slowly unfurling his cursed energy just enough to catch the attention of the curse.

It worked like a charm. The thing snapped its head towards him and rushed forward quickly enough it had the lady at the register stumble, blinking in confusion. He bet her head was quite a bit clearer now that it wasn’t obstructing her view quite as much.

While she was still looking dazed, he left, running faster than anyone could ever hope to keep up with. Surprisingly, she did not follow him. Did she even notice he was holding any bags? Was this curse really leaving her that exhausted?

He moved to an empty alleyway and looked around, trying to discern whether anyone was watching. 

When he confirmed he felt no cursed energy aside from his own and the curses’ and… one with a metallic tinge that seemed to be everywhere since his formation, perhaps a curse user? Though that didn’t seem quite right. Oh, and Tengen’s of course, it’s good to see that hasn’t changed. He wondered how she was doing. He would have to visit soon.

He shook his head, finally turning to the curse that had gone back to being dormant after he stopped feeding it. Well, now, it was only right it was his turn to feed, no?

He lifted it off of him and bit. 

The shrill shriek of a dying creature pierced through the cold, still air. A child’s sobs followed after, as they tore the beast open with shaking hands and shovelled slimy guts and blood-warmed muscles into their constricting throat, their breath heaving with every bite as the spoilt meat threatened to liquidise their very core.

He choked, feeling it go down like tar, and settle like acid, trying to burn a whole through him. Still, he held onto the curse tight enough he felt it being crushed underneath his grip-

——

“So, after I left the shop I went to some empty alleyway and began eating the curse-“

The kid stopped him there, “ok, ok, I can get behind stealing supplies because we don’t have any way to access our money right now, but didn’t you steal food? Why did you eat the curse?! Isn’t it like eating poison?!”

Sukuna gave him the most deadpan expression he had, responding with, “why would you eat a finger? Wouldn’t you just be eating poison?”

Yuuji quieted down at that.

Sighing, Sukuna still went on to explain, “I’m forcing your body to absorb more cursed energy through the act of eating cursed spirits and then purifying the energy I obtain while it’s inside so that the excess doesn’t kill me.”

Yuuji nodded slowly, that one nod people make when they don’t understand a word of what he says, before replying with a simple, “how?”

Who the fuck let this kid get anywhere near Jujutsu? Let alone Sukuna’s own finger! That thing was poisonous to most idiots! Well, that’s one thing this particular buffoon had going for him, Sukuna supposed. If one’s too dumb to do much, then one best hope their luck makes up for their lack of skill.

Well. If one thing remained the same throughout these five hundred years, it was that the sorcerers were still as smart as fleas. 

Alas, it wasn’t this fool’s fault for his ignorance seeing as no one seemed to be actually teaching him despite them thinking he hosts ‘the King of Curses’. What a joke.

“Do you still remember what I told you about the soul the first night?” He asked.

For some reason, the fool brightened, “yeah, actually, it came up during one of Gojo-sensei’s lessons, he was really surprised because your explanation was very similar to what he planned on teaching.”

Sukuna offered an uninterested, “hrm,” before continuing, “you remember then how the soul acts as a filled cup?”

The kid nodded. Good, he would not have to repeat himself then.

Taking three different cups from what he felt of his own mindscape, he moved so that he was half-seated on the end of the kid’s bed, the glasses’ contents swishing between them yet managing not to spill.

“Here’s where the example starts to get a little mind bending so try to focus,” he admitted, “now, the reason I’ve brought three cups is to show that they’re different sizes, just as souls are. Some souls are small and cannot handle much cursed energy, whereas some souls are large and can contain a lot of it. Keep in mind, the size of the soul does not determine whether someone is to become a sorcerer or not, that has about eighty other factors to consider and even then there’s still a chance results may vary or be entirely inaccurate.”

The kid seemed genuinely intrigued for once, so Sukuna took it as a sign to continue, “what sorcerers can do is use their store of cursed energy as fuel for their technique, simple enough right? Except that it’s entirely random how large their fuel source can be and it’s usually never large enough. Of course, people tried ways to combat this, you aren’t the first to think of simply trying to eat something with cursed energy, but as we saw before, it doesn’t give the best results.”

Pink-hair nodded, “so… what’s different about how you do it?”

“It comes down to the purifying process. Cursed energy is not meant to gather inside you. Sorcerers most commonly have a thin layer right above their skin where a lot of their cursed energy can be stored so that it does not escape fully nor does it harm the body, but when you forcibly add it into your system, it will start killing off a lot of your cells and your bodies immune response will act up.”

“To be honest, I’ve never been too interested in how cursed energy affects the body, that’s never been one of my… specialties, so to say, so you’ll likely have to do your own research if you want to know about the exact processes, but from what I can tell of what I have subconsciously taught myself to do; after ingestion, I alter the ‘flow’ of my cursed energy and force myself to convert it into blessed energy before it can do any harm, which then ‘adds on’ to my soul as I’m basically overpowering it and making it my own through the ritual of eating it and living through that.”

There was a long pause where Sukuna waited to see if the kid had anything more to say, but it was clear he was drawing blank. Finally, he mumbled, “I don’t get the ‘flow’ part. How do you change cursed energy to blessed energy?”

Sukuna paused. 

“Did they really not teach you that yet? I swear, I need to know what their damn curriculum is,” what the hell are they doing to his school?! Idiotic cur, the lot of them! When he saw Tengen once more he was going to demand to know exactly what happened- he took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and kept going.

“I’m reversing cursed energy, if cursed energy is negative what I’m doing is multiplying it onto itself so that it may become positive. If I explained more than that today, you’d probably forget about it come two hours from now.”

The kid huffed, “okay, back to where we were then?”

Sukuna frowned, “where were we?”

“Curse eating,” Pink-hair responded.

Sukuna found himself stifling a smile.

——

By the time he’d left the alley and cleaned up, the sun was peeking through the horizon. He found himself an empty stall to change in and wrestle with the wig for a solid thirty minutes but by the time he was done he looked like a proper woman. 

He stared at his reflection for a moment, finding he had not allowed himself to indulge in his feminine side for far too long… 

Snapping out of his thoughts, he finally entered the library, the receptionist that greeted him appeared to have just woken up. Had the library just opened? How lucky for him.

He walked to a nearby desk, noting the computer on it and settled down. For the remainder of the morning, he spent his time trying to get up to date on all that he had missed. 

This consisted of using a ‘search engine’ which was apparently, as the name suggested, an engine you could use to search stuff. What an engine was, Sukuna had no clue, so it was the first thing he’d searched up, which lead him to the Industrial Revolution, which then brought him down a rabbit hole or twenty including factories and cars and manufacturing facilities which then had him researching modern technology as a whole and coming across ‘digital simulations’ that apparently helped with calculations and analysis and so much more, he had gotten a reintroduction to math through the use of school curriculums and the systems of said schools and colleges, and by noon, he had found himself studying quantum physics and he had not moved from his seat all day.

It was only midway through trying to solve an equation (and getting frustrated enough to quit) that Sukuna remembered there was a goal to all of this. He was supposed to be learning how to adapt to the modern world.

Closing the fifty-something tabs he had open, finding that the loading screen went much quicker this way, he decided to finally get up. He stretched as more of a habit than from any fatigue, and went to the many bookshelves looking for an introduction to modern Japan.

He spent the rest of the remaining opening hours just reading through history books of the five hundred years he missed, trying not to grow annoyed at the inaccuracies he spotted in the things he did recognise and deciding that history was, as always, a sham when not taken from original sources, and reading up on common practices in Japan, though they seemed mostly written in different languages, a lot he only distantly recognised, these books were most likely targeted at tourists then.

Closing hours came faster than he would have preferred, and upon finding out just how far surveillance could go earlier that morning (and wasn’t that a dreadful revelation) he was not particularly inclined to continue snooping around after hours, worried they may not let him in again.

Left with nothing else to do, Sukuna went out into the night and feasted.

——

This was the fifth time in twelve minutes that Nobara had checked her messages. They read identical to the last she’d checked. Nothing new in her inbox. No news, no mission, not a word on the whereabouts of one Itadori Yuuji. 

She bit back a snarl, shutting the phone and placing it on a nearby coffee table.

Flopping back on the couch to glower at the ceiling. The last mission was- it was a fucking disaster. She had passed out because one of the curses got a lucky nick at her and it must have had some poison effect because she was delirious for the next twelve hours. 

The entire time she had been practically useless. Her friend classmate had been possessed while she slept like a baby! Just thinking about it made her angry all over again. She grit her teeth.

If she hadn’t gotten hit- she stomped that thought where it sprouted. If this and if that. She was above moping like this. Still, with no use of her classmate’s location, and now left to stew in her frustration with the knowledge that he was still being possessed by the beast of a curse, all she could do was think. 

Letting out a frustrated huff, she turned to the only other occupant in the lounge, “any news?”

She was asking like she didn’t already know the answer.

Fushiguro lazily moved his gaze towards her from where he had been swiping at his phone, “same as you,” he replied.

That was that, then. She was left to stew once more, chewing at her lip with a moody enough look to scare away most. 

“How are you not more worried about this?” She bit out, only half a minute later.

Fushiguro sighed and put down his phone, “even if none of the rest of the Jujutsu world knows where he is, Gojo-sensei does without a doubt.”

Nobara shot up from where she was laying, “then why hasn’t he done anything. It’s already been days. Didn’t he teleport over like the moment his mission was complete? Why didn’t he follow Sukuna!?” 

Fushiguro leveled her with a look, “the Elders sent us out to the detention centre expecting casualties. What do you think it looked like to them when instead Itadori lost control and Sukuna pranced out into the world with no consequences?”

Nobara frowned, “so what, they’re calling for retribution or whatever? For something they caused? That still doesn’t explain why Sensei hasn’t gone after him, unless you mean to tell me they actually want to execute Itadori now-“

She stilled. 

“They’re calling for his execution, aren’t they?”

Fushiguro grimaced, nodding stiffly.

“So, what’s Sensei’s plan? Wait it out?” Nobara demanded.

“He’s waiting to see if Itadori will take back control. If that’s the case then it will be a lot easier for them to go underground. Say Sukuna’s cursed energy was repressed once more and insist he can no longer sense him. Insist he lost Itadori. Maybe he’ll send him off to another country, maybe he’ll lock him in a basement until the situation dies down, either way, right now, all we can do is train harder,” he said, getting up from his seat.

Nobara shut her eyes, already exhausted, “right, the Goodwill event.”

Fushiguro hummed, “it’s almost 11pm and our senpais won’t take it easy on us, they’ll likely have us up early in the morning for our first day of training. Might as well get as much sleep as I can before then,” he said, bidding Nobara goodnight.

She stayed for just another few minutes before getting up, closing the lights, and heading back to her own dorm room.

Chapter Text

Curses are necessary.

It is the first thing Jogo learned, when he was still being nursed in the cursed womb of an active volcano he would come to learn is named Sakurajima. The voice of The Mother called out to him. They explained his purpose, his reason for creation. 

Whispering from the rocks, They lay in the molten core of the world, with the Earth as Their domain. They weaved a tale.

Jogo often reminisces on The Mother’s words, ‘a beacon of hope for curses’, that is what the Mother had made him to be. A creation to bring a new age of curses, the new form of evolution. And Necessity requires evolution. 

A new order had been whispered into his mind, travelling across the paths of magma beneath the surface, he had a new task. The harbinger before him has awakened once more. The awakened one is the greatest form of evolution The Mother can offer.

Alas, the awakened’s rebirth remains shrouded in mystery even to Them.

Jogo’s task is to accompany the ex-harbinger. Ensure he is on the right path. Aid him in completion of The Mother’s vision. Bring him to Them.

Jogo will do anything to keep his gift for cursekind prospering, and if that means devoting his very life to The Mother, he will do just that.

——

Sukuna had all but cleared the surrounding area, the guts of curses that were too weak to bother with consuming still strewn out, slowly dissipating back into the atmosphere. 

His nightly escapade had led him past the bright lights and tall buildings that marked civilization and far into a forest he had no hope of navigating. Eh, push comes to shove, he could just sprint until he found a clearing and took a train back to where he was. He’d memorised the address.

At least it would work as a nice warm up after spending so long inactive. 

He sighed, dusting himself off. He had been taking extra care in making sure his outfit remained pristine.

“If you’re gonna keep following me, you might as well come out,” he called out to the open air, cursed energy flaring.

He felt more than saw it tense, his cursed energy nipping at its skin and nicking it in volatile swipes.

“You know, most special grade curses I’ve come across tend to be strong enough not to need to resort to tactics such as concealment when chasing after their prey,” he began, “so either you could sense my cursed energy before I let it out, which while not impossible is rather improbable… or you know who I am and someone sent you.”

He sprinted fast enough he was already behind the curse before it got the chance to move, dress billowing behind him.

With one quick strike, he knocked it down, cutting a limb while he was at it, “explain why you’re here before I deem that tongue of yours useless and slice it off your throat.”

The curse sputtered, its volcano-shaped head sputtering dark smoke and sparks of lava, he narrowed his eyes at the curse, with a grimace, the angry bubbling tapered off into smoke.

“The one with stitches across their forehead sent me, calls itself Geto Suguru,” the curse bit out.

His brows furrowed, but acquiescing, he let it go, “surprised they didn’t come visit me themself,” he muttered, “you got a name?”

“Jogo,” the curse responded, carefully standing on its now healed leg now that it’s no longer being held down, “I have been sent to accompany you for the time being and aid you in your endeavours.”

Sukuna stared at him and cringed, “you’re to be my… errand boy? How very unusual for stitches,” he murmured, crossing his arms and expecting the curse before him more carefully, “I suppose you are the strongest curse I’ve come across so far in the modern world, but that doesn’t mean much, not truly.”

“Is there something I’m not getting?” Sukuna wondered, grabbing Jogo’s arm and poking, causing Jogo to grit his teeth, the ear plugs he had rumbling, he snapped and pulled back. Sukuna raised a brow, "temperamental as well?” He scoffed.

Apparently, that appeared to be the final straw for Jogo, “temperamental?! Says the weak wimp whose first greeting was slicing my leg off,” he fumed, the earplugs falling out and molten rock exploding out his head.

Sukuna jumped back, feeling rather annoyed, “tch, you really gonna have a tantrum now?”

He began stretching as Jogo threw him pillars of lava, fine. If the curse wanted to play, he’d play.

Cutting through the next lava beam, he shot a kick at Jogo at a fast enough speed it had the curse go flying. With a grin, he chased it, excitement flaring in his core.

Jogo landed on his feet with a grunt, dragging his arm through soil to slow his moment. Just what was that attack? He hadn’t even felt any CE from it, in fact, unless Sukuna’s CE was deliberately pushing against his, he never felt it, and yet that hit undoubtedly had CE behind it. Could he really be that efficient when using it?

Jogo had heard all the talk of Sukuna being the king of curses, but he found he was starting to understand what that entailed. 

“C’mon, you wanted a fight, didn’t you?!” Sukuna egged on, “show me what you modern day curses can do, brat!”

Gnashing his teeth, Jogo stomped the ground and caved the ground underneath Sukuna’s path, and when Sukuna jumped to avoid falling, Jogo sent out waves of lava while Sukuna was in the air, figuring he couldn’t dodge high up, only for Sukuna to respond with cutting a path through.

Sukuna still managed to land softly on the grass without even a thump to accompany the sound.

“Are you really only capable of throwing your technique around aimlessly?” Sukuna sighed, dodging a punch and sending one of his own, holding Jogo in place to ensure he didn’t go flying again, “you have good control, but you are far too wasteful of your CE,” he blocked a kick and weaved the next two punches, throwing in his own hits.

Jogo jumped back to get some space between them, switching to shooting Sukuna with bullets of magma in rapid succession instead. Sukuna circled around him taking trees down with him as he went, before striking Jogo once more, he moved fast enough Jogo couldn’t feasibly keep up, instead forced to endure it as he was sent further and further into the soil below, finally, Sukuna let up, and Jogo took the moment to breathe. 

He was utterly outclassed right now, and while he had been aware of that before, he had not quite realised just how grand the difference in strength was. Geto had said he was barely two fingers worth in strength, which he had at first thought was an understatement, an exaggeration, but now he was starting to realise really wasn’t.

If Sukuna was already this strong with three fingers, Jogo shuddered to think what beast he would be at full strength.

Sukuna had returned to the earlier trees he had cut down and began throwing them in rapid succession nowhere near Jogo’s location. He squinted at what it was Sukuna was attempting to do, before he was suddenly rushed at, grabbed and thrown like a- a basketball! The trees forming a circle in the air he ended up flying through. He was too busy feeling utterly flabbergasted to be insulted because why was Sukuna cheering like a buffoon?

“Score! Woo, it’s been a while since I’ve done that,” he said with a laugh, grabbing Jogo by the shirt and hoisting him back up and… dusting him off?

“You’re execution’s a little rough, could use some work on the accuracy for sure, and you need to work on your speed, but otherwise, you’ll do fine,” Sukuna confirmed, “you’re not entirely boring, that’s for sure, and while I would love to go all out, I am trying to keep it on the down low,” 

Down low?! How was that was keeping it down-low?! Jogo thought with mild despair.

“Well, the library should be almost open, you got an e-mail, phone number? Phone?? No? Get one. If you’re to be my psuedo-minion I need to at least be able to know where you are,” Sukuna decided with a nod. 

“I’ll be off. Find me again once you have a phone. Or don’t. It really doesn’t matter much in the end,” he called out, waving and heading off once more.

That was him holding back, Jogo realised belatedly. Jogo had been thrown around like a basketball and though neither of them got to go all out it still felt like Jogo had been completely toyed with. A joke. That was all Jogo amounted too. If that… if he was what the future of curses looked like… Jogo thought following him may not be the worst thing.

He heard quiet snickering from behind him and he narrowed his eyes with a huff, “Geto.”

“Looks like ‘Kuna had fun,” the sorcerer replied, “now, what’s this about accompanying him?”

“Oh, shut it.”

“Haaahhh, you have no idea what you signed up for, do you?” Geto teased.

Jogo fumed, “better than working with the likes of you,” he bit back.

“Oh, no, not at all. What you’ve chosen is just about infinitely worse,” Geto replied, sounding far too delighted.

——

Morning came and found Sukuna, once more, the first one arriving at the library. He believed it was because the past two days were ‘work days’, thus not many had the time to go out in the morning. 

One thing he noted from the previous day was that it seemed anything on Jujutsu and curses had been practically wiped clean from all he had read so far, not a mere mention, not even a footnote was left, and while there had been some sort of revolution happening with the ordinary folk, curse-users and sorcerers before he’d fallen into slumber, sending many notorious sorcerer families into hiding, he had not anticipated it would stick, and certainly not to this extent. It was clear he would not get any answers from these libraries but that was never the main reason he was here. He was here to learn what to expect of the modern world and it seemed secrecy and surveillance lead the world.

The day passed by much the same way as the previous although one thing of note was a skittish looking sorcerer coming in at around closing time, mapping the perimeter, likely a low grade seeing as, if not for the liquid-like texture of their cursed energy, Sukuna would not have noticed anything amiss. 

He made no move to glance away from his book while the sorcerer patrolled, well, up until he felt the sorcerer staring right at him. He waited another few seconds before drawing his eyes up towards where he felt the stare coming from.

A kid that could not have been all that older from his vessel, with light, straight hair reaching to his chin, he was staring at Sukuna with the look of a deer in the headlights. 

Curious, Sukuna got up in a single swift motion, his eyes crinkling in amusement at the way the kid flinched. It seemed where he went he kept meeting such hilarious people.

“Excuse me,” he said, walking up and pitching voice an octave or two higher. He probably sounded more feminine like this, he hoped. 

“A-ah, yes, ma’am?” The kid jolted, very obviously trying not to act suspicious.

Sukuna smiled kindly, “I just want to put my book away and you’re in front of the shelf,” he explained.

The boy was quick to move out of the way with a mumbled ‘sorry’. 

Suppressing a snicker, Sukuna put the book away and grabbed a different one, turning around to find the kid had run off, probably to call in his supervisor. Or whatever the student equivalent would be. He glanced at the book and paused, recognising the author. With a barely concealed smile, he moved back to his seat.

He wondered if he had been found, but then decided he didn’t really care. If push came to shove, he could always run, and he somehow doubted he had managed to trick the six eyes of this generation.

Speaking of, the guy waltz right in fifteen minutes later, blindfold and all. Sukuna, however, was rather too engrossed in his current reading material to bother acknowledging his presence.

Only when Blindfold was directly behind him, practically leaning over to see what he was reading, did he finally turn, giving the most polite cough he could make, he smiled thinly at him, “can I help you?”

White-hair gave an easy grin, backing off, “sorry, ma’am, I hadn’t realised you were a fan of this author too, or are you just browsing? Not many tend to look too deep into the history section.”

Sukuna blinked, looking down at the book then back at the lanky fellow, “a fan too?” He echoed, fighting every inch of himself to keep from letting out the laugh that so desperately wanted to break free. This was a library, he had to remain quiet.

“Well, I suppose you could say that. I presume you are also ‘a fan’ then?” He responded.

Blindfold lowered his voice further, “who in the Jujutsu world isn’t a fan of Kyuurio?”

Before Sukuna could deign to respond to that, the teacher continued, “you caused quite an uproar you know, an unnamed woman going around capable of eating curses as her cursed technique, you gotta tell me how you did it because there is no way that’s your actual CT,” he decided.

“Not only that, you are completely untraceable and the only known sighting of you was through cameras, the higher ups know of every curse user out there so for you to just pop up out of nowhere? They think you’re in cohorts with a certain King of Curses.”

Sukuna watched him with mild disinterest, “quite the story you’ve painted here. I’m guessing this is all their conjecture?” He replied, just as quietly, “it does make me wonder why you haven’t corrected them.”

Sukuna swore the eyes boring through him behind the blindfold sharpened, “great, great, so we can skip the whole reveal? Think of me holding my tongue as a… me extending an olive branch you could say, yeah, ‘Kuna?”

This definitely piqued Sukuna’s interest, though he grimaced at the nickname, “sounds intriguing,” he agreed.

“Oh, by the way, I do wonder, is the King of Curses actually a woman or is that all part of the disguise?” Blindfold asked.

Sukuna made sure to look him dead in the eyes as he answered, “what does it look like?”

Lanky didn’t respond. It was silent for a few moments, before Sukuna sighed, taking pity on the other, “I’m surprised you managed this long without asking about your student,” he changed the subject.

The albino cocked his head, “huh, didn’t even have to be the one to bring it up. You’re certainly speeding the conversation up. That’s a first! But yes, in exchange for my continued silence, I would like my student back.”

Shrugging, Sukuna agreed easily enough, “he should be healed enough to call over, though I’ll need to explain what he missed. Don’t worry if it takes a while.”

Rummaging through his pocket he took out one of the last snacks, a kitkat, before handing it to the other, “for the wait,” he explained, only to get a contemplative look midway through.

“And the advertisement,” he amended.

The albino turned to him, mouth downturned in confusion, “advertisement?”

Sukuna nodded, “you know. The kitkat ad you were in.  It was a strange ad, I’ll admit, don’t remember where I saw it either.”

“I never did an advertisement for kitkat,” Blindfold replied.

Now it was Sukuna’s turn to be confused. 

“No? Not even the one where they photoshop you all cut in half? It was a rather macabre choice I’ll admit but it certainly left an impression,” he described.

“I never advertised anything, like, ever,” was the response he got.

Sukuna shrugged, “weird. Must’ve been someone else then. They also had the same white-hair blue-eye thing going on, well, I’ll get the kid,” he hummed, moving to rest his head on a nearby table so he wouldn’t just collapse.

———

Yuuji stared at Sukuna with pure incredulous frustration.

“You spent thirty minutes spouting Quantum Theory jargon I understood almost none of, just to tell me in like two sentences right after that you got a- a what, a minion?! And all of that just to say my teacher was looking for me?! Why didn’t you start with that?!”

Sukuna chortled, “hey, you asked to know.”

“Because I thought this was just an ordinary checkup!” Yuuji replied, voice between shrill and exhausted.

“It’s already been two hours- don’t tell me we had sensei waiting for two minutes,” the pink haired boy said, frazzled.

“Nah, don’t worry,” the curse saved him off, “it’s been two minutes at most outside of your mindscape, we’re talking about as fast as your neurons can fire so this conversation, while seeming to happen in real time, is more in the realm of information being implanted into your head than actual conversation.”

Yuuji’s jaw slackened, looking rather distressed, “that is about the most unnerving thing you’ve said so far, Sukuna.”

Sukuna outright laughed at him in response.

“Come on kid, don’t leave your teacher waiting more than required.”

“Yes, yes, whose fault was that!? Ugh, I’m leavin’ alright,” Yuuji was decidedly very very done with Sukuna.

And his mindscape. And just about the entire fiasco after his death.

With a grumble, he got up on slightly unsteady feet and stumbled to the door, yanking it open and leaving, Sukuna watching his back with something akin to concern.

———

Yuuji woke up blanketed by the sound of shoes on a wooden floor, the rustling of paper and the general hush of a well respected library, and for that he was glad. He wasn’t sure he could handle anything louder than a whisper at the moment with how his own skin felt strange to him. Too heavy. Too foreign.

He was glad the feeling was fading quickly enough at least. Though one thing he couldn’t quite ignore was the feeling of something tickling the back of his neck. 

Moving his head just enough to get a look at it, he almost flinched at the jet black… hair he found. Right. Wig. 

…

Wait, did that mean-

He shot up from the desk to get a look at himself, and found that, yes, he was still in a dress.

He sighed, scowling at the quiet fit of laughter from behind him only to find his heart heavy instead at the sound.

Gojo-sensei quickly collected himself, a painfully obvious joy humming through him at the sight of his long lost student and it was almost overwhelming just how plain happy he was to see Yuuji.

How Yuuji had dreamed of this exact seventy times over during his time in his own mind, where linear time meant nothing and minutes stretched on and on.

“Welcome back Yuuji-kun,” Gojo-sensei all but sang, just a decibel too loud for the library so of course he was already half leading Yuuji out of it.

Yuuji grinned bright even as his eyes stung with too much emotion to have anywhere else to go but his eyes, flooding them, “it’s glad to be back, Sensei! What’s the plan?”

The door to the library creaked close and they were in the bustling streets of Tokyo once more. Gojo-sensei’s eyes sparkled in what could only be described as mischief. Suddenly Yuuji was feeling suspicious.

“Sensei…?”

Turning to him, Gojo-sensei said far too joyfully, “it’s time to fake your death, Yuuji-kun!”

Yuuji stared at his sensei with the desperate hope the man was joking. He wasn’t. 

Yuuji sighed, “okay, sensei. What do I have to do?” 

“Awee, if only all my other students were as easygoing as you,” the albino cooed, leaving Yuuji to respond with the most tired expression he could manage.

“First order of business, I take you to a remote location where no one can track either of us!”

Yuuji gave him a dubious glare, “Sensei this sounds more like the plot of an actual murder than a fake one,” he admitted.

With a barked laugh, the older man was already leading him to a parked car, “good thing it’s from me and not anyone else! No, but if someone else does say that to you, you should probably run away screaming.”

“Probably?” Yuuji drawled, “well, at least you’re self aware…” he muttered.

Entering the car, he was equally pleasantly surprised and pitying seeing Ijichi-san there as well, “he got you too?”

Ijichi-san replied with a remorseful sigh, “It’s good to see you again, Yuuji. I am unfortunately still his driver.”

Gojo-sensei squaked, “unfortunately?! This is an honor, Ijichi, and Yuuji-kun; conspiring against me?! You’ll hurt my feelings!”

Yuuji gave him a half-hearted pat from the backseat, “you’ll live Gojo-sensei.”

His teacher grumbled something under his breath before directing Ijichi-san to get moving.

Watching trees and cars move along through the car window with Gojo-sensei’s humming in the background settled Yuuji’s mind in a way he did not even know he needed. The warm feeling that threatened to expand his chest like a balloon returned and he shut his eyes, letting it wash over him. 

For all that he would be facing now that he was back, he found that he was willing to face anything that came his way. Especially if it meant getting to treasure this warmth for all the longer.

Chapter Text

Yuuji wasn’t sure when he had drifted off, but he jerked awake upon feeling the car stop, blearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes and grimacing when he went to rub them only to smudge mascara. Sukuna, what the hell?! He instead moved forward towards Ijichi-san, “are we there yet?”

Ijichi-san jumped, turning around to face Yuuji, “Itadori-kun. If you’re still tired, you should keep sleeping. Gojo-san just insisted on meeting someone first.”

Yuuji looked out the window to try and get an idea of where exactly they were, propping himself up and squinting past the dark streets.

There were a bunch of signs outside of a large building but it was too dimly lit for him to see what they said.

“Er… Ijichi-san? Where exactly are we?” Yuuji asked.

Ijichi-san fumbled with his glasses for a moment, “ah, since you’re new to Jujutsu-tech, you won’t recognise them,” he mumbled, “Gojo-san probably wouldn’t mind if you knew… he’s visiting the suspended third years.”

“Eh? Suspended?” Yuuji prodded. Sukuna seemed interested as well with the way his presence grew more noticeable nearer to the forefront of Yuuji’s mind.

“Well, how to say…” Ijichi hummed in thought, “those two and the higher ups always had friction, on official documents they were ‘suspended’ but in truth they were the ones to leave first after beating one of the elders up. They now run a fighting ring together and Gojo-san is hoping to find information on a certain individual that frequents the place through them.”

“What’re they li-“ 

“Kid,” Yuuji paused midway, hearing Sukuna so clear in his head almost had him jolt.

Ijichi-san furrowed his brows, puzzled, “Itadori-kun?”

Yuuji motioned him to wait, “sorry, Ijichi-san, headache,” he said as way of explanation.

“Use the wig to hide your face better and don’t look at the crows in your vicinity,” Sukuna said.

What.

Yuuji swallowed an incredulous noise and tried to respond back, wh- “what?” 

 “The crows have traces of cursed energy congregating in their eyes,” Sukuna elaborated, as if that clarified things.

“…so are they curses or…” Yuuji really wasn’t sure of the significance of this information. 

“It just means we’re being watched, likely by a curse user or sorcerer, though I suppose for the less adept in cursed energy reading it would be rather hard to differentiate between them and curses,” Sukuna allowed.

Yuuji tried to lean his face to hide it better, unsure of how well he succeeded.

Ijichi-san was still glancing at him with concern every couple of seconds, and glancing at his phone every other minute, but otherwise remained quiet.

“Ijichi-san, what does it mean if a bunch of crows with cursed energy are staring at the car?” He asked, trying to be subtle. The resigned sigh he heard from his own head proved otherwise.

Ijichi-san turned to him and narrowed his eyes, “were you talking to Sukuna?” He responded accusingly.

Yuuji looked away, “…no?” 

Sukuna snorted at them both.

——

In all honesty, Satoru had not actually meant to leave Sukuna unattended for that long. He had not planned to leave his students for that long either! His workload was just slowly becoming more and more ridiculous.

For one, he had his usual Jujutsu Sorcery work that had him travelling abroad far more often than he’d like for sad excuses of ‘special grades’ (honestly, what was he supposed to feel when facing a drowned video game character?) that could, quite frankly, be easily disposed of by Nanamin. NANAMIN. Hah, but it wasn’t actually about the curse’s Grade, no no, it was about the politics. 

They send Satoru away as a way to build trust between far-off, smaller communities, make them feel all special because the strongest is there to help, send him away long enough to fuck shit up so that when he comes back he’ll be too busy cleaning up messes to deal with what he actually needs to do, and by the time he manages most of the backlog he already has about a hundred and twenty things that need to be done in the next two damn hours and it got to a point where he genuinely did not have the time to deal with Sukuna. Sukuna became the last of his problems when he was too busy trying to put out fires and create them simultaneously.

Clearly the person who ordered the mission be sent to them wasn’t a Zen’in as even they seemed rather miffed a student with a technique like the Ten-Shadows was put in this much danger while still in training. Satoru already had a couple of ideas on who it could be, but he hasn’t had the time to look into it. He wasn’t going to get the time either. 

In all honesty, if the Nitta kid hadn’t found the guy (girl?) when he did, Satoru would have ended up letting that stew for a lot longer. Wasn’t his older sister a manager of some kind? He’d have to send his regards if they met up. Nah, he’d probably forget, did he mention this to Ijichi? He would have Ijichi do it.

Well if there was at least one silver lining to all this it was that Sukuna brought Yuuji-kun back without too much needling. Whether that was a cause for concern or not… oh, who was he kidding the first thing Sukuna did upon being let out was not only save his students but call him to inform him what happened, something none of the elders had bothered to do, and the time he was left unattended, what did he do?! He read. Satoru even took a moment to look through the several tabs the guy had open, it was shit like the history of piping engineering. 

It was downright unnerving how ordinary the so-called ‘King of Curses’ was. Definitely one of the better senile old men Satoru had the displeasure of meeting.

Really, aside from the whole advertisement mention and the ability to put a whole face of makeup while using the completely wrong products (it looked like they had used blush as lipstick and somehow managed to pull it off) which is where he motions back to the senile part, the guy really did just seem like an ordinary person you would meet at the grocery store.

The point was-

“G-Gojo-san?” He was interrupted. The urge to break something flared but he forced it down right afterwards. Ijichi deserved better than his rage; he already had the guy doing 75% of his own paperwork.

“Hmm?” He replied, focusing back to the streets outside the window.

“You’ve been squeezing your bottle hard enough it popped …that was two minutes ago,” he was informed.

He removed his blindfold just enough to confirm, looking at the bottle in his hand. It was indeed crumpled, the only reason his lap wasn’t drenched was because of limitless. He wondered how he didn’t hear it pop. He loosened his grip, “oh. Right, yeah, whoops.”

Neither said anything else for a couple of seconds, “Yuuji-kun slept through that?” He asked, worried he was so lost stuck in his own head he missed the kid waking up.

“He did,” Ijichi replied.

“Cool, cool,” he cleared his throat, “I, uh. Was lost in thought.” Sorry. 

“It’s fine.”

Satoru relaxed every so slightly.

The rest of the car ride consisted of Satoru trying to scoop the spilled water back into the bottle with the help of limitless, and he managed to seem ridiculous enough while doing it, it earned him a stifled smile from Ijichi which he counted as a win.

When he finally left the car, he was feeling just a little less like he was going to crawl out of his own skin. He needed to be at his best when facing his ex-students after all.

He walked towards the building and past the guard, only for the guy to grab him by the shoulder. Was this guy new or something?

“Gojo Satoru? Door to the left, keep going past the corridor ‘til you reach the elevator near the end, go up to the final floor, the rest of the way’s the same,” the guard explained.

Satoru hummed, “switched things up, did they?” He said to no one in particular, patting the guy and following the directions. Definitely saved him the time of having to go through the crowd. Here’s to hoping this wouldn’t take long.

The hallways had been a lot less guard filled last time he was here, did they have an incident or just decide to up the security on a whim? He’d have to ask when he wasn’t running on fumes. A couple of flickering lights and new cracked windows seemed to be the only other difference since last time he visited the cement building. He wondered if they’d need any help with repairs before remembering the paperwork he was complaining about ten minutes prior. Well, he hoped this endeavour was paying well, he loved his ex-students but not enough to deal with all that paperwork.

Knocking before coming in, he threw himself onto the empty couch, “there’s my favourite ex-students! Kirara-chan, did you get new piercings? Looking cute as ever! And Kinji-kun, I love the hair, trying something new?” He greeted.

“Must be getting pretty chaotic if you’ve come to us for help,” Kirara noted with amusement, “Kin’s hair does look pretty nice like this,” they agreed. 

“You got some new firsties, yeah? Any troublemakers?” Kinji asked, eyes on a gold ring he was fidgeting with. 

“Going three years in a row now,” Satoru confirmed, “still not as bad as you two,” he responded with humour, “I’ll just cut to the chase shall I?”

“You just sat down, and you’re trying to go off already? Those executives are running you ragged, Sensei,” Kirara pursed their lips, looking displeased, “Kin, we’re hitting them harder next time.”

It warmed his heart how much his ex-student cared, “I’m not your teacher anymore, you can drop the sensei,” he repeated the same thing he had been saying since they graduated first year, “in any case, I’m here for information, more specifically, there’s a curse user that frequents this place that I need to talk to.”

Kinji turned to look at him, scrutinising his eyes behind the blindfold, ah, how the kid has grown. No one would believe him if he said Hakari wasn’t half as brazen during his first year. (It’s possible Satoru himself had some influence in how Kinji and Kirara turned out, but he couldn’t find it in himself to feel much guilt for it.)

“Information like that’ll cost ya,” Kinji grinned.

Satoru pouted, giving his best kicked-puppy expression, as he sat up, keeping one leg on the couch and the other dangling, “don’t I at least get a teacher discount?”

“You coming up here for free is the discount,” Kinji informed, the cheeky brat.

Satoru sighed and slumped deeper into the sofa, “I blink and suddenly my ever-so-well-behaved student’s become a conman, fine, fine, I’m a generous ex-teacher, name your price.”

“Tell me who you’re lookin’ for and I’ll decide then,” Kinji said.

Finally, they were getting somewhere, “long grey hair, reportedly green eyes but they’re always covered, weird scars across their body, often wears funeral attire, they come in every Saturday,” he described.

Kirara raised a brow, “weird she’s who caught your interest, got a body you need to bury?”

He waved them off, “oh, something like that. You kids know where I can find her?”

“Eh, she has a funeral parlour a few blocks out, she’s one of our bigger sponsors, often cackles like a lunatic during every fight, apparently has some sort of corpse related cursed technique, I have her address, she keeps tryin’ to invite the guards,” Kinji responded, rattling off everything he knew about her, opening the contacts on his phone and sending Satoru the address.

Satoru blinked. That was fast. Things were going disturbingly well for him today.

“Price?” There had to be some sort of catch, students or not, right?

Kinji snorted, “come fight when you have the time, yeah? That’s the price. You bring people to a frenzy. Especially if you plan to kill her.”

“When I have the time?” Satoru teased, “I’ll be old and wrinkled the day that happens but sure, it’s a deal,” he chuckled.

Kinji rolled his eyes and Kirara gave a huff.

“Get going already, before the murder of crows takes notice,” they said.

Murder of-

He jolted, “you’ve gotta be kidding me,” he grumbled, sprinting out the room and jumping out the nearest opening, using limitless to soften his fall, he warped to the nearest location to the car he could remember the coordinates of, scanning the place and trying to look casual while doing so.

He noticed Yuuji was up and he had never been more glad to see the kid still in a black wig and dress, Mei Mei probably wouldn’t suspect the kid to be Yuuji seeing as he was still in the car. Maybe he really should invest in those blackout windows Ijichi kept mentioning…

He sighed, ignoring them for now despite being very aware Mei Mei knew the gig was up with the way the crows scattered the moment he moved. The higher ups needed to relax, he was going to drag Yuuji’s dead body to them in all cases.

He entered the car, craning his neck so he could turn his face towards Yuuji, “there’s my favourite soon-to-be-legally-dead-student!” He cheered.

He may have a problem with how he greets his students.

——

The awkward silence that followed Yuuji and Ijichi-san’s sad excuse of a conversation was broken by Gojo-sensei’s sudden appearance. Yuuji jumped in surprise, he kept forgetting the man could literally teleport.

Gojo-sensei was quick to enter the car and show Ijichi where they were going next.

Yuuji relaxed, relieved he didn’t have to continue that conversation, “welcome back, Sensei! How were the third years?”

Gojo-sensei turned to Ijichi-san to glare at him before shaking his head, “shoulda guessed you’d be told, well not like it’ll be much of a secret you can share when people think you’re dead, but try to keep it hush-hush that we came here, ‘kay?”

Yuuji, realising his response probably dictated Ijichi-san’s fate, hurried to nod in agreement, “absolutely, sensei! You won’t hear a word from me, I swear!”

Gojo-sensei twisted to send his hand back and ruffle Yuuji’s hair, or, well, wig, “that’s the spirit, Yuuji-kun! If only the rest of my students were this agreeable…” he lamented.

Ijichi-san whispered something to Gojo-sensei that Yuuji didn’t quite manage to catch but he guessed it was likely in relation to the crows. Gojo-sensei just dismissed the other so Yuuji tried not to think of it, besides, Sukuna hadn’t said anything else so far so it was probably fine.

He still tucked himself closer into his seat and fiddled with the hem of his shirt anxiously, but that was neither here nor there.

They didn’t drive for much longer, perhaps eight minutes total, before Gojo-sensei was getting out the car once more.

He stalled for a few seconds, expectantly, and it took him walking over to Yuuji’s door for Yuuji to realise he was supposed to be coming down too. He hurriedly opened the car door, almost hitting his teacher in his rush, and got down.

“Where are we going, sensei?” Yuuji asked curiously, following his teacher.

The man was whistling along unhurriedly, but his strides were fast and it had Yuuji needing to jog just to keep up with his speedwalking, “a curse user that’s been surprisingly elusive, they’ve helped cover the tracks of a lot of crime scenes, especially by other curse users.”

He turned to Yuuji abruptly, “right, have we talked about curse users? Eh, I’ll just say it again, they’re people with cursed energy but not registered or affiliated with sorcerer society, a lot of them are criminals but not all of them, they’re outcasts more or less,” he explained in a rush as they neared the door, “this specific fellow, while not having any crimes to her name specifically, is an accomplice to many.”

Yuuji tried not to look too distressed at the thought of meeting someone so shady, “by criminal you mean… like, murderer?”

Gojo-sensei tilted his head towards him, seeming to dissect for several long seconds, only for Yuuji to feel a sudden weight around his neck and the man used his ridiculously long limbs to drag Yuuji in for a side hug, smiling wide at him, “I wouldn’t bring you here if I wasn’t completely sure you were safe, Yuuji-kun, and how could you not be? I’m here aren’t I?” He assured.

Where were you when I died-

That wasn’t even the issue, but instead of making him feel better, the words bubbled something brittle and bitter in him. He swallowed it down, feeling it settle like dread at the bottom of his stomach, the arm around him feeling too heavy, suffocating. Gojo-sensei didn’t deserve that. Yuuji knew his teacher always tried to put his all into helping them out, it was the main reason he was here in the first place. Still the thought traitorously remained like a thorn in his mind.

He smiled, hoping his sensei wouldn’t notice the fact it didn’t reach his eyes with the blindfold on, “yosh! Let’s head in,” he said with false bravado.

Gojo-sensei opened the door, walking in first as if waiting for a trap. Yuuji peeked in afterwards, looking around and blinking in surprise. He was so lost in his own head he forgot to read the signs outside the building. They were in some sort of funeral home? Oh, oh no, was Gojo-sensei planning on stealing a body?!

Yuuji hurried after him, noticing the man stopping in front of a plain ceramic vase. He took a moment to inspect his surroundings, the place was dark, a single dim lamp lit the entrance, though if he were to be honest, if it weren’t for the coffins, Yuuji thought this place would’ve looked more like a storage area.

Stained cement walls and shelves upon shelves of weird vials and glass ornaments littered the place, wracks of coffins supported by pipes and a heavy layer of dust caking every visible surface made this place feel almost untouched, abandoned even.

Yuuji swallowed, feeling creeped out. Maybe they were in the wrong building or something and this place was just closed…? Except the door wasn’t locked…

He subconsciously moved closer to his teacher, half expecting a curse to pop out of nowhere and catch them by surprise.

“I thought we were meeting someone here?” Yuuji whispered.

Suddenly the vase Gojo-sensei had previously been inspecting tipped over and crashed onto the floor, causing Yuuji to jump, arms already in defence positions, on high alert. 

The cracked ceramic that the vase once used to be shuffled and Yuuji narrowed his eyes, only for them to widen once more as a figure emerged from the rubble.

“Interesting hiding spot,” his teacher mused.

The person, (woman?) had long silver hair that covered up the entirety of her face, a robe that was long enough it dragged across the floor and sleeves that reached far past her arms, but the most noticeable thing she wore appeared to be a ridiculously oversized hat that covered her face even further.

The person’s shoulders began shaking in what Yuuji identified as laughter, sounding like it was coming from behind her teeth, she suddenly sprang up, making Yuuji take a step back.

“Lookie, lookie, who do we have here?” She said.

Yuuji cringed. Really? Were they really going to do this?

“In need of coffins are we? Well, aren’t you at just the right place,” the person continued like they hadn’t just been hiding in a vase, brushing themself off.

“Welcome, welcome, Aikawa Sueno at your service! I see we have the good strongest sorcerer, how’s that moniker going for ya, eh? Quite the chains the title comes with, baffling you encourage it,” Aikawa rambled, Yuuji noted Sukuna watching.

“Which body are you planning to bury, today? An enemy’s? A student’s like the one behind you? We have premium coffins for your every need, I’d be happy to bury you as well, if you’d so wish!” She sounded far too eager.

His teacher seemed to think for a moment, quite theatrically too, humming and tilting his head, “hm, what other services do you offer?”

Aikawa giggled the same weird laugh again, moving instead towards Yuuji. She was blocked by Gojo-sensei, “ah, ah, the kid doesn’t need to be included in the grownup talk,” Yuuji couldn’t tell whether to feel relieved or patronised. 

“Sukuna’s vessel, quite lamb-like for being able to contain such a beast, how long will that last, I wonder,” she said. Yuuji felt Sukuna’s eyeroll more than saw it, and he had the urge to do the same.

“Ah, who am I to pry? I’m only here for the dead after all,” she then added with a shrug, “though I think I may yet guess why you have come to my humble abode for if not for the coffins, though my experiments’ll cost ya.”

Yuuji felt like he was missing context, or more like Gojo-sensei skipped a chapter or twenty in this conversation. Coffins? Experiments? How did they seem to be on the same page? 

Gojo-sensei smirked, all teeth and no cheer, “I think I have enough money to ensure we’re both satisfied by the end of this.”

The response he got was a scoff, “things so frivolous are kept for coffin-filling but this deserves a much purer form of payment,” Aikawa replied.

“What, you gonna have me pay you in gold?” came his sensei’s joking response.

“My payment comes only in laughter,” Aikawa explained gleefully.

“Eh? Then with how much you’ve laughed already, haven't I paid you enough?” Goji-sensei pointed out.

Aikawa shook her head in response, “that was before we settled on payment~” she sang, “oh, give me the wonderful bliss of joyous laughter my cravings have been reduced to,” she cried, and okay, that was weird, that was really, weird.

“Sukuna, please tell me you thought that was weird too,” Yuuji begged internally. He got what was the equivalent of a thumbs up GIF embedded into the very forefront of his mind. Which. Sure, that worked.

“Hop to it! You each get one try so don’t take too long,” she added.

“Alright, how about this, how do you handle irrational bar customers?" Gojo-sensei started.

“How?” Aikawa indulged.

“Give them all a round,” he said.

The only audience he had in response were crickets. Yuuji cringed, “was that a math joke?”

“Awweeee, Yuuji-kun, you didn’t like that one? C’mon, really? Not even a little bit?” he said, amusement colouring his voice.

“I still have yet to receive my payment, well, it appears the child will have to contribute if you still want what I have to offer,” Aikawa continued, unphased, or maybe just unimpressed.

Gojo-sensei turned expectantly at Yuuji. Yuuji blanked.

“Uh. Uhh. Knock knock…?” Yuuji began, only to be interrupted by a mouth opening at his cheek.

“I have a ‘joke’ I believe one such as yourself would enjoy,” Sukuna told Aikawa.

Yuuji looked towards his teacher with trepidation, but as the guy seemed more intrigued than alarmed, Yuuji figured he’d just try and think of a joke while Sukuna talked. Maybe he could look one up? Perhaps the curse-user would enjoy more dark-humour like jokes?

“Ohoho, the scholar and jester themself, here to entertain me? Had you grown tired of playing executioner all those years before? Ah, but you’re awake now, go ahead, who am I to decline nobility?” Aikawa replied, voice sharp. Almost personal. 

Yuuji turned back to his teacher to find that, for once, the man was just as puzzled as he. From the back of his own mind he felt the weird mix of phantom emotions that he could only decipher as discomfort and… resignation? This whole thing was far too complicated, especially considering he had barely been coherent and definitely dead (can he get that thought out of his head?!) a day before this. 

“Since you insist on speaking of nobility, what did one outcasted ex-noble say to the other?” Sukuna asked.

Aikawa raised a brow, “go on.”

“Nothing, they were too busy ripping through the muscles and tendons of the first,” that got a twitch of amusement from Aikawa, so Sukuna then proceeded to explain in excruciating detail the feeling of warm blood on half-frozen lips, and things Yuuji found equally disturbing and disgusting to the mounting laughter of Aikawa until she erupted into a laughter that felt like it would shook the whole shack if it got any louder.

By the end of it Yuuji was utterly done with this entire outing, though Gojo-sensei seemed unphased as ever, or had he just been tense since the moment he got here? Yuuji couldn’t tell.

“You curses always have the best stories,” Aikawa lamented once she got her breathing under control, unfortunately Sukuna had already lost interest, instead going back to listen from the back of Yuuji’s head. Yuuji himself wasn’t sure if he could stomach thinking of Sukuna right now, let alone hear his voice again, despite him having taken the time to heal Yuuji-

Yuuji shouldn’t… he shouldn’t feel bad for Sukuna. Sukuna was the reason he had died in the first place. But at least he was there for him- (was he?)

“Payment received, eh?” Gojo-sensei crowed, “you’ve had your laugh, now, business?”

Aikawa waved him off, “yes, yes, don’t ruin my mood so soon, eh? Now, all that’s left,” she began, going across a counter and grabbing a sotoba, “is to spill a little blood,” she finished, looking straight in Yuuji’s direction.

——

With every passing day that they didn’t know the whereabouts of Itadori, Megumi grew more concerned. He didn’t blame Gojo-sensei, as it was clear with each passing day the man was drowned in more and more work, but he really wished the man would hurry it up and find him already. 

It wasn’t like a curse that strong could escape his six-eyes, that was something Megumi was sure of, but that itch grew sharper with each day. He struggled to focus and training with his senpai’s was only showing his lack of attention, with how often he was being thrown around. 

Even Kugisaki had noticed, having shifted from fiddling anxiously with her phone every while to instead staring at him when she thought he wasn’t looking with a pensive look. 

It was getting rather overbearing, but he wouldn’t be the one to point it out. He didn’t blame her for worrying in any case. They were both in the same common room, once more, lounging about when he got a notification around the same time she did, sent from Inumaki-senpai. 

He ignored it, figuring it was another meme to cheer them up, but Kugisuki suddenly sprang up, moving towards the door. She took a step outside only to whirl back around.

“Well? You coming?” She demanded, already irritated.

He frowned, “what do you mean?”

She huffed, “Tch. Inumaki-senpai told us to head to the main entrance, something’s going on,” she explained, already speed walking outside.

Megumi hurried after her, hardening himself for whatever they may have to face. It was coming from Inumaki-senpai so there was a high chance it could just be a prank but this late at night it was significantly less likely. Besides, he wasn’t the type to do it at the front gate, where anyone else could end up collateral.

Kugisaki arrived at the hallway first, only to pause right outside the entrance, subconsciously letting out a sound that bordered on wounded.

Megumi caught up only to stumble, his heart stuttering and climbing to his throat. 

“Gojo…sensei?” He muttered under his breath.

Gojo-sensei was standing in front of principal Yaga, in his arms a crumpled corpse with pink hair, still dripping a trail of blood behind it. It looked mutilated, a chunk of its torso missing and its arm ripped off. Its face looked… pained.

Megumi glanced away before he could look at its eyes, only to meet his teacher’s instead. What he saw in those sickeningly bright irises was guilt and suddenly he was feeling dizzy. 

Gojo was the first to look away, turning to the principal instead, “Yuuji Itadori is dead.”

The words resounded across the hall like a judge’s verdict and echoed like betrayal.