Chapter Text
There’s one method for finding Toji that has worked for him once before.
Something he came up with by piecing together what little he knew about him, the things he’d collected the way Tsumiki, she’s gone, he’ll never see her again, never hear voice again, he who used her as ancillary, as port, as lighthouse, as compass, rudder, navigator, shelter, she’s gone, and he’d collected things about Toji the way she collected acorns at the rundown, badly lit park behind their apartment building only to place them in an old shoe box, information dropped in conversations he wasn’t a part of when he lived in the Zenin compound with her as his port and silently stalked its halls, moving through its shadows, haunting a past that didn’t belong to him.
Toji clearing out the warehouse was one, Toji cutting down one or two members of the Kukuru, as a warning, taking with him the cursed tools he said he had forged, that had forged him. Satoru’s eyes on him—He can’t think about that, he can’t, he can’t—Toji collecting cursed tools he could afford and those he couldn’t. Sightings of Toji, the sorcerer killer, wielding the Chain of a Thousand Miles, licking blood off the blade of the Suspension shortsword, sharpening the blunt edges of Grey Rain against a rock.
All these things Megumi collected to try and find him, once before. And they worked.
But faking a legitimate cursed tool being sold online takes time. Toji’s reckless, he’s stupid, and impulsive, but even he wouldn’t fall for something like the fire dao or Playful Cloud being sold suddenly, out of nowhere, not when he’s cultivated relationships of mutual resentment, a feeling as close to trust as can be found in his world, with peddlers and fences and receivers who could verify Playful Cloud has never been on the market before and the only ones selling would be the Zenin or someone stupid enough to steal from the Zenin, someone that isn’t Toji himself, someone who’d have to be like Sxxx—he can’t be thinking about that, the slope of his nose, the fit against his back, the pain, blood on his shirt, all over him, torn clothes, he can’t think of that. Toji wouldn’t fall for it and Megumi doesn’t have the time to fake its legitimacy.
Tsumiki thought the best of him. After they’d disappeared, Toji and her mother, she still thought they’d somehow come back, tearful and remorseful, with a sorrowful tale. They’d never meant to abandon them, you see, they’d planned to come back for them immediately but something awful had happened. One day they’d come back, Tsumiki would cry herself tired, dry-eyed and hoarse-voiced, and then she’d smile and say, I’m an idiot, aren’t I, Megumi? And Megumi would be forced to say she wasn’t, even though she was, she really was, up till the end, the biggest idiot, the way she laughed with Sxxx—he can’t think about that, he’s no longer that person, he’s the heir of a clan, his enemy, he moved that night, the smooth, contained flow of his motions, his unusually cool skin, no manic pleading, just soothing, smooth certainty, not a single trace of desperation, hate him, hate him, hate him, his eyes rolling the same way they did when he almost died, his skin burning cold, the way Megumi’s shadows felt against him that night, as if something was keeping them out, some sort of friction, hate him, he doesn’t want to think about his killer, her killer, she thought the best of him too, and that’s where they are now. That’s why. When he was a child, after Tsumiki had been taken from him, he had been taken from her, thrown in the pit where his father had been thrown before him, that’s what they’d said when they threw him in there, your father was thrown in here too, he’d think of what Tsumiki used to say, they’ll come back, Mom and Dad, that’s what she called them back then, they’ll come back for us, they’ll cry, they’ll apologize, it’ll be like the day they got married, we’ll eat so much our stomachs’ll hurt and we’ll fall asleep where we are, and Dad’ll carry us to bed and we’ll hear him still laughing with Mom in the other room, the music low so they wouldn’t wake us, the lights coming in from under the door, they’ll come back and it won’t be so lonely anymore. He would think about that inside the pit, the pit where they threw his father, and he would picture his father, Dad, Toji, a child himself, no cursed technique and no cursed energy, battling the curses in the pit, unable to see them, cutting their cursed flesh with his teeth, kicking their cursed faces with his bare feet, licking his own blood, mixed with the blood of the curses, alone in this room where he couldn’t see the enemy he was fighting, and killing them all the same. So he would think about that, even though he didn’t want to, and he’d think about the door opening, and Toji coming in, his face a blur because Megumi already was starting to forget, or maybe he had never memorized it in the first place, and Toji, who couldn’t see any of the curses, would tear them apart with his bare hands, taste their cursed flesh as he bit into it with his own teeth, and would take Megumi away from the Zenin, back to Tsumiki, and he wouldn’t apologize but they’d both know, Tsumiki and him, that he was sorry, that he wanted to, he just didn’t know how.
None of that was true. All his life, it’s all been just that. Sometimes in his memories he’d see Gxxx come into the pit, teenager Gxxx while he was a child, and maybe he already knew, that this would come to pass, hate him, hate him, she’s dead, that that would happen.
If he finds him, if he finds him, won’t it be like the last time he looked for him? A disappointment. Megumi has been raised on betrayal, nursed on disappointment, cradled in resentment, he knows them like parents, caretakers, hate him, hate him, he did the same thing, the same, she’s dead, they’ve kept him alive, made him claw his way out of the pit of curses when no one showed up, been a feast for his shikigami, for himself, wrapped him and Tsumiki up at night when no one showed up. He knows betrayal so well, he fucked it, too, when he fucked Gxxx—he doesn’t want to think about that, the smooth, cold movement, the unwavering certainty, the way his eyes fixated, like the universe was fixating, like the rolling of thunder on a clear day, hate him—he knows it too well.
But Toji’s the only one who can do what needs to be done after Megumi kills him.
Ijichi waits until the students are all gathered in a room, Yaga at the head trying to make sense of whatever’s going on, before showing her the tablet. The two of them stand right outside the door, huddled together as if spies in one of Suguru’s movies, exchanging information for each other’s eyes only.
“And you think that’s him?” she asks him, her lips, so dry in this weather, sticking to each other. Your ashen mouth, Suguru would call it. How long has it been since she’s heard that from his mouth? And he was there, just now, and they were back at school, when he would light her cigarettes and tell her to quit.
Ijichi nods and pushes his glasses back up.
“Why didn’t you tell Satoru?”
She reaches for another cigarette but she smoked the last one a little while ago. There must be some lying around. Who would want to go buy some for her now? Yaga would probably veto her if she ordered any of the students to go. Maybe one of them has some. Nobara, probably, just so she can offer them to cute girls she meets while shopping, strike up a conversation, light their cigarettes for them and say they can share, share long distance kisses and make a note of them, second hand, Nobara probably says.
“I didn’t think it would be wise,” Ijichi answers her.
That makes sense, not in the state they left things.
“Where is that?” she asks.
She doesn’t recognize the name of the neighborhood in the news story. But she’s never been good with names.
“Not too far. It must’ve been right after he learned of it, when he–right after he left here.”
“And you think he doesn’t know?”
“You think he’d do that on purpose?” Ijichi looks at her like she’s crazy. Like she’s the one whose actions are surprising.
“I don’t vouch for anyone,” she shrugs. “You saw him yourself.”
Ijichi looks away. There’s still bruising on his neck, where Megumi tried to choke him, like he did Satoru. There were no bruises on Satoru, though. There were no wounds on him at all.
Megumi swallowing an entire block, the entire daily lives of the people living in those buildings, those shops, walking through those streets, disappearing them into his shadows, purposely or not, barely registers for her anymore, really. Just seconds before, war with Kyoto was brought to their own yard, spearheaded by the Zenin. Just seconds before, Satoru announced all the elders had been killed by his hand, and there were no wounds on him, not even bruises, not even scratches. Just seconds ago, Suguru’s seals were removed, he’d summoned his curses without impediment, he was running on school grounds like these were their high school days, time stopped inside this cursed place, like all they had to worry about was when Megumi would finally realize the creepy kid was in love with him.
She starts laughing which makes her cough which makes her remember she’s out of smokes.
“This is enough for him to be branded a traitor.”
“Who’s gonna execute him?”
“Do you think they bought that he tried to kill Gojo? Do you think they’ll believe that?”
“Not the first time a Zenin tries to kill a Gojo, right?” Shoko shrugs.
“I’ll send some windows,” Ijichi says after a pause, like he’s thinking it over, like he wanted to say, Isn’t it different this time, but Megumi did try to kill Satoru. “And I’ll contact Tsumugi, so they can pull this down and stop it spreading.”
“Sure. The Kyoto people probably already saw it, though.”
“We can say it’s unrelated.”
“Mmhm, the other Ten Shadows user did it,” she sighs, then tilts her head to indicate she’s going in. “Let me know how that goes.”
Inside the classroom, Yaga holds his head in his hands while the students come up with theories and solutions. The general sentiment, Shoko finds, is the same as it has been since Satoru showed up, as a child, and they were stuck with him: he’ll be the one to fix it. That’s his duty, after all.
No one’s mentioning the fact that he’s the one who caused all this, in the first place. But, as it always is, he’ll be the one to shoulder it through.
Sometimes Megumi would let it get to him, watching these kids, healthy and agile, rough-tongued and ready, work themselves to oblivion, tear their own limbs like a gardener weeding, separating the grain until none was left except one, and that one carried the others and their burdens and the burdens of those who came before, those who would come after, those who would look at him as they did a killer, a monster.
“That’s what’s behind this whole thing, huh?” Shoko asked him, once.
Megumi pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about, what the whole thing was, so she had to name it.
“Your attachment to the kid.”
She wasn’t born into a big family and already on their second year she was told to stay behind, You’re more useful not seeing battle, was the reason, and she took it, she didn’t care about the things Suguru and Megumi cared about, their long winded speeches, their deep-seated exhaustion, the faces they made every time another sorcerer was brought back for her to patch up, another shipwreck to her bay. She wasn’t born into a big family so the politics escaped her the way they escaped Suguru, something they had been once able to share in, late into the night, after Megumi had taken the kid, who clung so desperately to him, back to his dorm room so he could rest. What it must be like they couldn’t know. Megumi had been sold back into a family that was supposed to be his own, chained and bound and only allowed to exercise the smallest amount of agency—to study in Tokyo instead of Kyoto—because he had accepted to become the next head and return as soon as his education was over. And Satoru had been sent on special grade missions when he was no taller than her hips, and the rest of the sorcerers, those who did know because they were from a big family and had grown with rituals and traditions and knowing exactly where to sit and what distance to keep, would step back whenever they saw him, bow deeply, almost uncomfortably, and then whisper about the child behind his back, an ominous, terrifying thing, not a child at all, never looking him in the eye.
Satoru spelled it out for all of them when he gave his explanation to Gakuganji and the others.
“Shoko,” Nobara speaks to her as soon as she walks in, that feeling of August on tired skin, cool sea breeze on a hot summer night. “Did sensei really try to kill Gojo?”
“It’s not what you think,” she says and manages to sound so mysterious she wonders if they can tell she’s flirting, or if now that Suguru and Megumi are both gone there’s no one left to decipher her, if it’ll fall flat, cause it’s not the time, not the place, not the occasion.
“I explained as much as I can for now,” Yaga tells Shoko.
“And now?”
“We wait.”
In his seat by the window, Yuuta picks at the skin on his thumb with his index finger then bites off pieces of his own flesh, strips his skin almost to the first knuckle, until Maki, sitting next to him, takes his hand away from him.
He smiles at her and tells her the truth.
“I wish they’d told me what I’m supposed to do.”
“I think making sure Itadori and the others are okay is exactly what they’d ask of you. What do you make of the whole Megumi trying to kill Satoru thing?”
Yuuta can still see their hands in his mind—Gojo’s hand, sensei’s hand—resting on the grass, pressed against each other in the cool of night, the loneliness he’d felt, the excitement.
“There’s no way they’d turn on each other. Is your sister okay?”
Maki can’t help but laugh at his change of topic. Even though, coming from him, he probably really does care.
“Yeah. Her friend Momo said she’s with her. I don’t think they know, honestly.”
Vaguely, she wonders about Noritoshi, whether he’s aware. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for his family? That’s all he cares about, isn’t it?
“What do you think?” Yuuta asks her after a while. Maybe he didn’t really mean to change the subject before. “About sensei and Gojo?”
“I don’t think you’re wrong. Not over the elders, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think there’s lines Satoru could cross that Megumi would never let him come back from.”
Yuuta looks at her like he gets it. Maybe he does. He can see sensei’s firmly drawn lines, the boundaries, the unwavering strength of his back when he stands in front of him and other students during missions, his breakwater stance keeping crashes at bay. There’s places he wouldn’t allow Gojo to venture to and would never let him come back from if he did. He can’t think of any, though. It might just be speculation. And he’s not too sure Maki’s right about Gojo.
When he tries holding Satoru’s shoulder, Suguru finds he can’t get his hand close to him, as if the distance kept increasing and increasing, despite them barely moving away from each other, as if Satoru was running Infinity, despite being focused elsewhere, giving no indication of the strain it usually puts on him. Their running speeds are about the same, too, they’ve been keeping a steady pace, so why can’t he reach him?
Best tactic here is to stop. He stops the tracking curse too. It’s not like it’s being very useful, anyway, since it can only detect Megumi’s past residuals based on Suguru’s memories of those. A little how search and rescue dogs have to go off of scents left behind on objects the victims might not have touched in a while, and have to determine, out of all the traces, all the paths that share that same scent, that same residual, which one is the latest one, the newest one, the most correct one.
He does stop and Satoru spins on his heels and lets him see that bratty, spiteful sneer he reserves for Suguru.
“Why did you stop?”
“Tell me what’s actually happening. Why can’t I even touch you?”
“Huh, you must be getting too old. Out of practice. Not my fault I’m leagues above you,” he shrugs, drops the annoyed sneer and lets it melt into his easygoing smile. “Let’s go. We need to find Megumi.”
There’s no way, with the urgency he wants to find Megumi, the urgency he awards these kinds of cases, that there’s anything easygoing about him. But he seems so collected, so unlike the desperate child, obsessed with appearing nonchalant, looking down on the adults around him, and still so hurried to grow, to stand by Megumi’s side. There’s none of that left, as if all his manic energy had been smoothed out, allowed to flow steady and rhythmically, a sozu instead of the downpour of an electric storm coming out of nowhere.
“Use your curse again,” he demands, impatient and petulant.
“Tell me. Why would he try to kill you?”
Satoru sighs and hangs his head, the picture of a weary adult, having lived a thousand lives, answering the questions of a child that’s just started to see the world, finding out things that are common knowledge, acting like he’s the one to have discovered them, the first person on Earth to think a certain thought, make a certain connection. It’s tiring to see, to think he was once that way too, as a kid.
“He thinks I killed his sister,” he looks Suguru in the eye and when he does, Suguru has the impression of something undefined, some ominous fluttering of a million lashes staring back at him with horizon eyes. He has the impression something’s permanently changed.
Suguru summons the curse and asks it to track Megumi again. It shares with Suguru the burnt out edges of its visions, feeling around tentatively for Megumi’s residuals, all traces of him, records left behind somehow. The curse’s attempts at thoughts—images forming in the shape of following, tracking, finding, tendrils of color like fingers of smoke, coiling into columns in the dark—dissolve into Suguru’s own, the understanding of Satoru’s answer, the implications.
“I didn’t know he had one.”
“Guess he didn’t tell you about her because she’s not a sorcerer,” there’s no bite to Satoru’s words, just a matter of fact. Suguru would like to say he’s wrong.
“Is she like Maki?”
“She’s not a Zenin.”
Suguru remembers, from his slouched position, bending to grab the can of coffee at the vending machine, the way Megumi looked, staring at the sunlight reflecting off some windows, the day they were given the mission to escort Amanai Riko to her merger. Erasure , Megumi repeated what Yaga had said to them. It was the way he’d repeated it. Suguru had been bothered by it, but nothing beyond the usual. Eat the curse, save the humans, taste vomit at the back of your throat, with your cottonmouth venom and your endless pit above your stomach. More of the same. But because Megumi said it in such a way, he’d felt compelled to say something else.
What do you wanna do? Become an enemy of the jujutsu world?
After it happened, he’d never had time to think it over. Hadn’t given himself the time. Megumi had become preoccupied by Satoru, Shoko focused more and more on healing, Haibara was killed, Nanami left, Mimiko and Nanako needed him to save them from the rest of the humans, the non-sorcerers, and he never once thought about being an enemy to the jujutsu world, not in that sense. Even when he did, he was an enemy of humanity, first and foremost.
Megumi repeated the word that way not because he was thinking about Amanai Riko, but because he was thinking about his sister, the one who was not a Zenin, the one who was not a sorcerer, the one who was not a part of their world.
“Why does he think you killed her?” he asks Satoru.
“It was my mission, to lead her to merger.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we let Riko go, they must’ve picked her out of spite.”
It was the same back then. When they let Riko go, some other young woman would come to take her place, Yuki had said as much. You can’t rescue them all, you have to make a choice, and that choice is always either or.
So, when the second years he’d been forced to accompany on their mission were told, yelled at by non-sorcerers who had just then learned of curses, of the whole fabric of their world meant just to protect them, woven with the lives and the deaths of children, ripped like flowers from the field, trampled on, ground, scattered meaninglessly, he made the choice himself, and it was neither nor. He did away with the curses and the humans, and let the second years go.
It was an impossible choice that would’ve been possible for Megumi. It would’ve been possible even for Satoru.
It was his fault.
“That’s why you killed the elders.”
“Did you find him already?” Satoru, who’s been crouching, stands upright and sighs. “Stop wasting time.”
“I’m still tracking him. I’m not a GPS. Where’s his sister now?”
“She’s safe. I told her to hide.”
“But the elders are dead—”
“It’s not just them. You saw Gakuganji and the Zenin.”
That day was cool, the sun had warmed the rock lined paths and the green grass, and sunlight reflected off of windows. Birdsong hung in the air and nothing changed, the moment they first saw the kid, and everything was different, like night had fallen for the two of them. It feels the same now, watching Satoru stare at him and sensing the undefined, ominous fluttering of a million lashes looking back at him. Like it did then, something’s permanently changed.
Megumi, Shoko and he had discussed it before. Yaga sometimes joined in. Things in their world changed because of Satoru’s birth. The world tilted, it spun faster. Curse users grew scared and curses stronger. Yaga said it best that first day, right before they decided to let Riko go, the whole world rested on Satoru’s shoulders, and the elders had sent him to them to prove he was strong enough to carry it.
Sometimes Megumi would meet Suguru, late at night, exhausted with pain, unhealed wounds, and guilt, and say he wished Satoru would just grow faster, become strong, the strongest, faster, so they could rest, and then the guilt would sink its fangs into him, would color dark circles around his eyes and he’d say he didn’t mean it. It’s unfair, he’d tell Suguru, and Suguru would agree. So Megumi stood by Satoru’s side, carried the load with him, held his hand, wrapped him inside his shadows so he could rest, curled up into Megumi’s body, a child that wasn’t a child, and then a teenager that wasn’t a teenager. Megumi and Suguru agreed, it was unfair, it still is, and still sometimes they thought why not just leave it all to him, why can’t he grow faster and stronger and carry with all of it?
They weren’t the only ones who thought as much, and it’s no comfort, it’s no excuse, but they at least felt guilt, let it always have their teeth in them, kept their wounds festering so they’d never forget, and, this Suguru cannot claim, Megumi stood by his side, always held his hand.
Whatever’s changed here and now, the only answer is to bring these two back together.
Shoko’s text reaches his phone at the right moment. Maybe that’s always been her real cursed technique, her timing. Always finding him when he needs to be found. Suguru feels the vibration of the phone and, taking it out of his pocket, looks at it before he wishes she hadn’t texted at all.
“What’s the matter?” Satoru asks, but he’s already by his side, snooping on his screen. “What’s that?”
“I’m guessing it’s what she says it is, the screenshot of a news story about a whole neighborhood disappearing after being covered in darkness that looked like the sea. She says they took it down, the article.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Satoru says, and even if he wasn’t so certain, Suguru would still agree.
“He might not know he did.”
“What do you mean?”
Suguru’s surprised to see such sincerity in Satoru, hear so much of it in his question, before he catches himself, before he remembers how young Satoru really is. How little he’s lived.
“Grief does horrible things to you.”
“Hurry up and find him!”
The first time he dived, headfirst (and it wasn’t Megumi covering him, wrapping him in his shadows like a cape, like a puff, covering his eyes and his Eyes so he could sleep, so he could finally rest), the first time he did, he thought this is like swimming, this must be what it’s like to plunge in headfirst into the ocean in the middle of the night, dark waters and darker skies, rocks shining in the night reflecting the light of the moon in their mossy surfaces, slippery with falls waiting to happen, the school pool you broke into with a classmate, the classmate one would want to plunge into the ocean with, the one that’s all Megumi, in every way, that’s not his classmate, the one he’d follow if he plunged into the river from the bridge, the mucky, tarry waters of the river, shallow waters, even, he’d jump in headfirst, drown in the way light refracts in water, the faintest of lights amplified, and drown in the way Megumi’s shadows swallowed it all. That’s what he thought. Like swimming.
After the first time, there were many others, one after the other, until he could say, Megumi, I’ve been inside you so, so many times, it’s your turn to be inside me , and Megumi would roll his eyes at him (that started when he was older, though, at first he’d smack him, open palm at the back of Satoru’s head, light touch, the same place where his fingers would linger sometimes, when they spoke of things in whispers before falling asleep in the same bed and wrapped by the same shadows) and tell him to focus, or to eat, or to go to sleep, or he’d interrupt their bath and Satoru would know he’d hit the nerve, just right, and they’d end up falling asleep while facing away from each other, but he’d turn in the night, to find Megumi had turned too, and then he had Megumi’s thigh between his thighs, or he’d tell him to go back to whatever it was he was supposed to be doing.
If it’s at all like that for non-sorcerers—or even sorcerers for whom Ten Shadows isn’t a perfect reflection of their technique, the only one that can nullify his own—he can’t imagine the deaths of the people from those neighborhoods could have been easy, or peaceful, a gentle fading away. In movies, those drowning look desperate, they wave their arms, kick their legs, and beg for help with their eyes opened wide and pleading.
He needs to be by his side when Megumi learns of what he’s done, so he can take that away from Megumi, tell him it’s his fault, not Megumi’s, he made this happen.
With the kind of payday the kid gave him, he can retire. He’s getting old so he should think about that, actually. Spending the rest of his days leisurely, maybe checking the papers once in a while to see if he’s won anything. He’ll keep a small fund just for betting, only a little, so he can get the thrill of it still.
Maybe he shouldn’t have asked her about her mom, but what was he supposed to do? Ask about the weather? Tsumiki looked at him like she hated him, blamed him somehow, so he ended up asking about her mom, she was his wife once, it’s not like it was inappropriate or something. How was he supposed to know she bailed on them the first chance she got? He didn’t think she had it in her. He’d chosen her because he didn’t think she did, she had a daughter close to Megumi’s age, knew how to take care of the kids, laughed almost as loud as he did, washed her long brown hair every morning and smelled good even coming home late from work, and they could joke around with each other when they fucked, she’d trace his muscles with her fingers and ask who he was trying to impress and he’d laugh despite himself. He didn’t think she’d disappear on them.
“How long after did she bail?” he asked her, right after being informed of the fact that she had taken off.
Tsumiki stabbed at the orange he had offered her with the blunt knife, tried to think of this as just another one of the families they’d told her was going to be hers, despite none of them being Megumi. It could only ever be just the two of them, they were family, Megumi and her. If she thought of it like that—these people are not Megumi so they’re not your family and could never be—she could talk to them as if they didn’t matter. They couldn’t hurt her.
“Not long. You left her some money, I guess? She left it to us.”
Ten million, Toji almost said. Wouldn’t it just have been embarrassing if Tsumiki said, No, just two million, or just one, or just one hundred thousand yen? Then he would’ve had to explain and he would just be chomping on his own foot, for no good reason. So he kept his mouth shut.
“Didn’t matter anyway. A year later they took Megumi. Once my school caught on to my situation, I was put into care,” she shrugs.
Looking back, the years passed by in a flash, she can barely distinguish the year she broke her arm because her foster father pushed her too hard, and the year she was taken away again because the family never cleaned the house and it smelled of dead animals, mostly because there were so many dead cats, hiding among the trash that covered every inch of the floors, cats that Tsumiki hadn’t been able to find and properly bury. They went by so fast until her third year of high school she was moved to a wide apartment in a high rise, placed in a private school where they prayed to a Western god and spoke of values she didn’t recognize as her own, but that didn’t matter, because there were no adults when she returned to her apartment, except for a woman who cleaned and cooked and smiled at her before leaving, and the place always smelled good, and she could sleep all night without any worry, she could even leave the light on and pretend she still believed her mom and dad would come back to get her and Megumi would be with them and they’d explain they’d been looking for her all this time. They let her have her name back, Fushiguro Tsumiki, and that was also the first time they explained why Megumi was taken away, and how she was linked to him, and would be until her death, which wouldn’t be death, but merger, new life, and she’d be helping Megumi, and she thought, alright, no one is coming, so I might as well, at least I’m now Fushiguro Tsumiki, again.
“You kept the name too, didn’t you?”
Toji’s face is exactly as she remembers and nothing like it. It’s Megumi’s face, the same eyes, the same expression, and when he smiles and he’s not pretending to tell a joke, she catches something she can only think of as self-loathing, because she must have the same expression on her face. They’re really family, after all.
“Guess it suited all of us. You think she still has it?”
“I don’t know. Can you call him?” she ends up asking instead. She wasn’t going to, and she’s the one who brought up their names, but now she can’t.
The kid said not to call Megumi. To make sure no one found her, it wouldn’t be over, and he needed to protect her, that’s what he was getting paid to do. But the kid didn’t pay extra to keep her from using a phone. And she clearly doesn’t want to be here with just Toji, playing Father and Daughter reunion, so who is he to deny her? Not her dad, certainly.
He nods but doesn’t look at her face, cause he doesn’t want to see the relief in it.
The members of that family, he recognizes. He never learned to say, My family, he had one and it wasn’t them. Gxxx—he doesn’t want to think about him, not now, not with Naoya’s smirk closing in, the same smirk he wore when Megumi told him to stay away from Mai and he said, You’re no different, with your hands around the neck of the Gojo heir , no, no, not like that, she’s dead, not now, feels like raining, dark tar and shadowhands, shadowwings, dark tide rising, not now.
He recognizes the members of the family, she’s dead, she’s dead, she was his family, but not some of the others. A couple of teachers from Kyoto, he knows that one, she’s dead, he’ll never speak to her again, never see her again, never be able to look at Gxxx again, his killer, her killer, there’s some sorcerers aligned with the schools, but the rest he’s never seen before, their faces are muddled, he tries not to see Gxxx in them, his enemy, she’s dead, he’ll never see her again, never hear her voice again. Some of them look like Curse users, the way they dress to stand out, to make themselves look a certain way, as if prompted by something beyond themselves, to wear some kind of uniform. Nice of them to make it easy to tell them apart, Suguru said, and then he started dressing like one of them too and Gxxx, hate him, hate him, stepped in, but he killed her.
Chojuro’s the first to speak, his foolish grin pulling at the wrinkles on his face, paper thin skin, but worn like leather.
“Fushiguro Megumi,” he says and that’s all Megumi needs to know.
He never wanted to be head, she’s dead now too, he’ll never see her face again, he’ll never hear her again, she’ll never do any of the things she wanted to do, the flowers on her windowsill, who’s going to tend to her things, he never wanted to be head, they thrusted that on him, threw him in the pit for him to prove himself, told him he should be grateful they’d picked him up instead of letting him starve in the streets where his father, who was a mother, who didn’t deserve them, had abandoned him, and he fantasized with Toji’s hand coming to rip the curses apart, kicking down the door, Dad and Mom, the way Tsumiki had called them, but they always called him the next head, even when he fantasized with Gxxx being the one to come, hate him, hate him, he would never rescue—he doesn’t want to think about that. He wasn’t the one who asked for the position as head. And they asked him to go by Zenin, like the rest of them, to never speak his former name again, for that was expected, and even when he strongarmed his way into the Tokyo school, away from them, closer to Tsumiki, she’ll never say her name and have her turn towards him again, hate him, he’ll never be able to look at Gxxx again, the way he moved that night, he’ll never have that night again—he can’t think about that—he went to Tokyo so he might find Tsumiki again, so he wouldn’t lose her again, used as leverage the fact that he’d inherit as soon as Naobito left them—Naobito spat on the floor when he said that—and promised he would, the way he was supposed to, he never wanted to, he didn’t want to lose her again. He didn’t intend to inherit, he didn’t want to lose her again. He started using the Fushiguro name as soon as he possibly could and would grit his teeth when the Zenin corrected him and now she’s dead, he lost her again.
Now they’ve given him his name back which means they’re here for the same reason he’s here, to finish off this whole thing. He’ll never see her again, so it doesn’t matter anymore, he’ll never have that night back.
“We’re here to deliver your punishment.”
The reasoning behind all of this escapes him, and does it matter, anyway, he’ll never have any of it back again. Naoya, could be the reason, or Naobito changing his mind, giving Naoya what he once was promised, for a couple of years before Megumi, some months younger and infinitely more powerful, appeared in their home, the son of the sorcerer killer. He never wanted to be head, so what’s his actual crime?
“All of you?”
The presence of outsiders means this isn’t a family matter. Witnesses, maybe. Support, surely. They know, they all know, there’s only one sorcerer who could kill him and he never would—he doesn’t want to think about him now, she’s dead now, he’ll never, and there’s the certainty that he never would, despite all the atrocities he’d be willing to commit, he never would, not him, not Megumi, he’d rather look at him with the eyes he had when Megumi was trying to squeeze the air out of his lungs, holding back his tears, he’ll never get that night back, the way he looked, soothing, smooth, she’s dead, she trusted Gxxx, her killer, his killer.
“Megumi-kun, what are you implying?”
Nobuaki replies, in his martial manner, even though back at the estate he wouldn’t dare address Naoya so carelessly:
“That if he could take on the elders on his own, he thinks he can take on all of us.”
Megumi has no idea what Nobuaki’s talking about, hate him, she’s gone, lost her again, and he doesn’t care to find out. There’s no time. He has to find Toji. Tsumiki’s gone, hate him, hate him, hate Gxxx who—he needs to find Toji, spread his wings, rain dark tar and shadowhands, high tide, rising, when he finds him the only way—
“What’s happening?” Naobito asks his son.
Naoya doesn’t know, that much is obvious. The other sorcerers, non-Zenin, they don’t know either, they watch the puddle of dark matter spreading from Megumi in the shape of tentacles, or tendrils, spreading like vines, snaking their darkness into every crevice, disappearing within themselves everything and leaving only emptiness, dark and rhythmic, bobbing like waves.
“It’s what he did in that town,” some sorcerer says. Naobito never learned her name.
“What town?” someone else asks.
“By the Tokyo school, the whole town disappeared,” this one, a teacher in Kyoto, Naobito notices doesn’t pin the blame on Megumi, as if the town had disappeared on its own, and not into Megumi’s shadows, because of his technique.
He has to rid himself of everything but his most inner garment so he can reach Megumi. Megumi can counter his technique, but at least he’ll be forced to slow down, and maybe he can contain the shadows spreading.
“No!” Ranta shoves him aside, drives his shoulder right into Naobito’s side, sending him against a wall, before using his own technique on Megumi.
With Megumi frozen in place, the shadows stagnate, muzzles and wings and tongues lap the edges of their own shores like wounded dogs nipping at their own skins.
“That was the Sword of Extermination,” Naoya says to no one in particular.
Naobito looks at him but Naoya’s not looking back, instead he’s focused somewhere around Megumi’s feet, where the shadows were, until just a moment ago. Did Ranta see that too? Is that why he stopped Naobito?
“Megumi, have you exorcised Mahoraga?” Naobito asks, scrambling to his feet. If that’s so, then—
“No,” he shakes off Ranta’s technique and cracks his shoulder.
“I saw the Sword,” Naoya insists.
Other sorcerers nod their heads.
It doesn’t matter, Megumi tells himself, I have to go, I need to go, if he finds Toji, if he finds him, somehow, somehow, that’ll make a difference. He can’t kill him but Toji might. Toji might. Is he doing the same, fantasizing with his father breaking the door to the pit of curses and ripping through them with his bare hands, letting his enemy bear the load, waiting for him to become the strongest so it didn’t all have to fall on him, isn’t he doing that again?
It is the sword, Naobito realizes, rising like the muzzle of a dog from Megumi’s shadowsea, rescued shipwreck revealing itself between the waves, a sword that cuts with reverse technique, its positive energy cutting the drops of darkness. He hasn’t summoned it, Naobito memorized the rites needed, in case he’d ever need them, in case he’d somehow suddenly develop the technique the male sorcerers in their family kept trying to breed into existence, the one he thought he deserved in a son, at least. He hasn’t summoned it so the shikigami shouldn’t be a threat, not for now, but the fact that its sword is peeking out is a threat to all of them. A stroke of luck. Impartial witnesses can see, he truly is a traitor, to point that sword at them.
Satoru stops and it feels as if the world stops its motion, too. He turns to watch him and Suguru almost forgets what they’re doing, almost feels the kind of fear he hasn’t felt since he was a child and he didn’t know what the curses were and his parents told him they weren’t there, that he could just ignore them and they’d go away.
“Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Sukuna,” Satoru pants the way Riko’s old dog used to pant, right before she had to put it down, weak in its old age, but instead of looking haggard, he looks as if he were barely nervous, as if his body hadn’t caught up to his emotions. “Go find him,” he says and disappears, flickering out of existence like an analog television being turned off.
There was something Yaga said, wasn’t there, something some years back, or months, or whenever, something he said about the fingers. Satoru replied he wasn’t the keeper of the vault and it was none of his business but Yaga had said it, clearly, the fingers they’d collected had been taken. Yuuji ate three, Megumi and Satoru had collected eleven of them, the ones that went missing, he fed another one to Yuuji, that makes fifteen. The eleven missing fingers, the collector of those must’ve had a goal in mind, something to do with Sukuna and not a simple finger fetish, they must’ve collected all of them, all sixteen not inside of Yuuji, and if that rotting smell of intestines, of fire, of sulfur, is any indication, then they’re at the school and Yuuji and the others are at their mercy, and then, and then—
The curse howls and Suguru would make a joke, he can already see Megumi himself, not a lot of good the curse did, but then he realizes that’s not why the curse is howling, when he sees the sword, like the mast of a ship, cutting the ground from inside the darkness. Before he can get there himself, carried by one of his flying curses, he can see Satoru flickering back into the air, right beside Megumi. And he can see the pain, he can see the betrayal, in Megumi’s eyes when he looks at him, and suddenly he feels there really may be no hope.
Why she thought Megumi would answer his phone or even have it on him is beyond her.
Toji insisted they stay, but not enough that she believed that was what he actually wanted, so they took off to try and find him.
Toji doesn’t bring it up so neither does she, but their old neighborhood looks the same. The badly lit park is covered in fallen leaves, some of them getting blown in the wind, pushed here and there, some of them stuck to the ground by some miracle. She wonders who lives in their old apartment, if anyone, and traces the cracks in the building’s side with her eyes, peels at the chipped paint, finds their balcony and sees the ghosts of their clothes still drying in the breeze, flapping their footless ghost bodies, waving goodbye.
His index finger goes right through the hole inside of the pocket of his sweatpants and he thinks that must be an omen. The first time he saw the apartment he’d thought of the four of them inside its walls, futons next to each other, a kotatsu, fresh milk in the morning for the children, because they need to grow, and warm rice in matching bowls. What a ridiculous dream, what an idiot, letting himself think he could have that, he deserved as much.
An earthquake—starts slow and then the earth cracks and Tsumiki loses her balance—so he catches her arm to keep her steady.
“Thanks,” she says but he barely hears her.
He can smell them, unmistakable, it’s that family, they’re close by. Maybe they didn’t end up here at random, maybe he was following his senses, like he always has, following his sense to find Megumi here.
“Come on,” he tells her. “We found him.”
Hate him, hate him, staring at him, is he flying? Since when? Since when can he use it like that, floating above Megumi, looking at him the same way as that night, he can’t go back, they’ll never go back—
“Megumi,” he whispers in a paper boat voice, not enough to float the way he’s doing, not in this current. “Megumi,” he comes closer, floating down, since when can he use it so effortlessly, was he that changed, he was so soothing, smooth that night, no traces of his restlessness, the despair, the urgency of his love, that was gone, when did he change?
There’s a bang, that’s why he looks away. Not a bang but a thud, of Suguru and his curse dropping on the bridge not far off, the curse a giant vulture perched on the wires of the bridge, swinging in the breeze, how can he be here, summoning a curse that powerful without a guard? Salt in his eyes, they burn the same as opening your eyes underwater, he can’t see Suguru clearly anymore. Everything’s changed, night has fallen on them, brought about by the child, deep and dark abomination, ominous like thunder rolling on a sunny day.
“Now!” he hears someone say, a Zenin. He should be able to tell who but he can’t, his body is sweating, pouring, overflowing, he’s becoming water himself, the shadowsea, the wings that rise in his dark tides, since when, when did that happen, can you hate him, when he’s all you have left, and did he know you wouldn’t be able to, and then he puts his hand on Megumi’s shoulder and he’s solid again, present, a body that exists, and Infinity must be holding the Zenin’s attacks off, Suguru’s curses placing their large bodies between them and the Zenin, protective like guard dogs.
“I told you I was the one who killed the elders,” someone says, it must be him, hate him, hate him, ask him what he means. “Why are you here?”
“We know you lied about him trying to execute you—”
“You saw the video.”
“Even so, he terminated hundreds of people.”
“He was trying to do it to us, too.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Satoru says, raising his voice.
Megumi doesn’t seem to have heard, or understood what they said. He might be on time still, to be the one to let him know. To accept his responsibility for those deaths. All his. But not now. Now, they need to go back to the school. Sukuna’s presence grows stronger, erratic, it comes and goes. They might get there in time if they hurry.
It comes to Megumi like the word one forgets during a conversation, the word haunting the rest of one’s day until it appears, out of nowhere, when the time has passed. It comes to him like a blow, he must’ve died. That’s what he was after, with Okkotsu, with Sukuna. He must’ve obtained it, he can feel his breath growing shallower, he can’t focus his eyes, there’s some sort of buzzing, electric current in his spine, if he died, then what he said now makes more sense, that’s what he means, he really did, killed the elders, and if he died, and he killed, then he, then she must be, then he must’ve kept her, then he, his breathing is so shallow, not matter how deep he tries to breathe, weight on his chest, void in his stomach, then she’s not, because he died in her stead, and now he’s alive in the way he wanted to be, they were all waiting for him to be.
“Satoru,” Megumi finally says his name without dipping it in anger and hatred, without wrapping it in disgust.
The Sword retreats the second Megumi says his name, too. Satoru notices Toji immediately as it retreats, he’ll have to worry about how Mahoraga messes with his Six Eyes later, whenever he can, because he clearly instructed Toji to keep her safe, and she’s right next to him.
Tsumiki calls out to Megumi with the same voice she used when he was taken from her.
Megumi throws up some sort of dark bile, shadow-water, as soon as he lays his eyes on Tsumiki. He drops to his knees and throws up and Satoru crouches by his side and keeps himself from saying, This is what I was trying to tell you, if only you didn’t go around jumping to conclusions, as he tries to figure out what it is that’s pouring out of Megumi’s mouth in a steady, dark stream. At one point, infinitely later, he can see wings in the shadows coming out of Megumi, and he can see the Sword, rising from the shadowsea and touching Megumi with its tip. It’s here to heal him, it must be, to use its reverse cursed energy on Megumi, now that he’s hurt in ways he’s never been hurt. Even if Satoru has undone it now, the Sword needed to exterminate that, too, and none of the lives lost will be regained. All of this wouldn’t have happened, shouldn’t have happened, now’s not the time to tell him, but all of this is on him—and when he does say that Megumi won’t accept it. How can he make him share? What can he do except put his hand on Megumi’s back and tell him he’s there.
“I’m here, Megumi.”
Satoru’s hand on his back burns despite its coolness, it’s iron-heavy, burns with guilt, that’s all it’s ever been, right, that’s all he’s ever felt, he’s been no different, with his hands around his neck, pretending he was the ship Satoru was stuck to, moored with, the two of them a front to keep their world from imploding, manufacturing safety to keep Megumi’s students from being ripped to shreds by the machinery they were and handled, even though Satoru himself was just a student too, even though all he wanted was for Satoru to become the strongest, so Megumi could rest.
All he ever did was pour his resentment, his shame, his guilt, into Satoru, let him think it was for his sake, shouldering the load together, the two of them in the vanguard, when in truth he was always waiting for the switch, the moment Satoru would show himself, the moment he’d see him the way everyone else seemed to see him when they said, There’s no way the Six Eyes child is not a monster, some deep, dark abomination that cannot see beyond its own desires, a walking nuclear disaster sparing the rest of humanity on a whim, biding its time until it swings its horizon smile and levels the earth for a playground where he can kick curse and human heads around.
Megumi would tell himself he didn’t believe it, drown that guilt in the darkness of his shadow, ask his dogs to bite down on it and swallow it whole, extinguish its flapping wings whenever it threatened to rear its head, he’d tell himself he didn’t believe it until he remembered the way he felt sometimes, when Satoru said something and Megumi got the feeling he was a child playing with a yoyo and at the end of the string were all human lives, was the world, the universe, all prisoners to his whims, the way he felt when he kept Satoru at arms’ length, when Satoru asked for more than kisses and more than bathing each other and more than just sharing a bed every night, and he had to battle the guilt that pushed him into saying yes and the guilt that told him to fear him.
That betrayal he felt, that unspeakable, unnameable treason that bore through his entire being, Satoru must’ve felt it too, when he realized Megumi really thought him capable, when he felt Megumi’s shadows creeping inside Infinity, ready to choke the life out of him.
The best he can do now is throw up all that regret and stand by his side as he’s always done, put his own hand on Satoru’s waist and draw him closer, so Satoru at least understands he’s there too, even if he doesn’t say, I’m here, the way Satoru said. He can save the rest for later, when they’re eating each other’s flesh in the aftermath, if there is one.
“What are we all standing around for?” Naoya asks.
No one seems to listen, though. They all remain as they were, not taking their eyes off the Zenin reject, the sorcerer killer Naoya never got a chance to meet, that he only knows from the way they spoke of, not a woman, not a man, but a monkey, less than that, and still they all feared the name worse than a curse.
“We don’t have time for you people,” Satoru tells the Zenin. “You have the worst timing, as usual.”
The presence Megumi started feeling, like a pebble in his shoe, was growing now, impossible to ignore, and was far more urgent than whatever the Zenin wanted with them. Entertaining them here would keep them from the school.
“They all know. Shoko and Masamichi are with them,” Satoru says because he knows that’s what Megumi was going to ask and Megumi has to swallow the urge to throw up again, swallow all that regret, for later. “Someone must’ve gotten—”
“They’ve been stealing the fingers for a while,” Megumi says, even though he knows, they both know, but the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes, like a headache coming on. “They knew you wouldn’t—” he doesn’t say they had more trust in Satoru than he did, they knew he would never let Tsumiki merge, they didn’t let their emotions cloud what he’d always known to be true.
“They knew I’d end up killing the elders,” Satoru says, and he looks shocked, he even gasps, and it’s so theatrical it’s like a fist crushing Megumi’s heart, stopping its beating, grinding him into sand, can they ever come back from this, will there ever be a time he’s not throwing up black tar, and he has to look away, grit his teeth.
“Then they’d come in. With their perfect timing—”
“Sukuna wasn’t us,” Naobito says. No point in pretending.
“I figured,” Megumi says, but Naobito allied sorcerers with curse users and finding one that wants the return of the Golden Age of Curses is a stone’s throw, all of them hate Satoru, all of them recoil at the mention of his name, they whisper behind his back, the way sorcerers do, spitting on the ground so saying his name won’t bring about his presence. “Anyone here got a problem with us leaving?”
What can they do, against the two of them, the three of them, now that Suguru’s bindings are gone? What could they possibly think to do? Some of the curse users disappeared as soon as Satoru flickered into view like an apparition, an angel in battle come to cut off their heads.
Tsumiki and Toji have already disappeared, somewhen while he was throwing up, most likely, Satoru must’ve thought of that, he must’ve found Toji expressly for him to keep her safe. He’d been looking for Toji all this time not just for himself, not just to kill himself. What an idiot I am, Megumi wants to tell his sister, as much of an idiot as you.
“Seems like they don’t,” Satoru says and leans in closer to Megumi, the warmth of Megumi’s hand on his back, no Infinity between them, the only thing he’s ever really wanted. He takes Megumi’s other hand in his and focuses on the other side.
Satoru teleports the two of them, his fingers entwined with Megumi’s, some sort of prayer ritual, their own religion, their skin burning against each other, and they both keep quiet because they’re both quiet while at the shrine, serious in their devotion.
Maybe in the aftermath, if there is one for them, they can lay their dying bodies next to each other, hand against hand, tasting the other’s blood and flesh, and maybe in the aftermath they can forgive each other, they can forget the specters that have haunted their love since they first met and they were both children, and they were both lonely, and they were both moored with each other, by choice, by chance. Maybe in the aftermath, if there is one, they can wash each other’s skin the way they always have, make shrines of each other for each other, they’ll touch each other with all the reverence they have for each other, all that is possible, they’ll soak in their blood like bathwater, they’ll be offerings to their religion of two, each other’s deities, lighting incense in each other’s wounds to cauterize them even if that might be impossible, two worshippers at their shrines. Maybe in the aftermath, if they get one, they won’t need to explain themselves.