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He loves me, he loves me not, we are taught to say, as we tear the flower from its flowerness.
To arrive at love, then, is to arrive through obliteration. Eviscerate me, we mean to say, and I'll tell you the truth.
Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous”
***
“I love you, Fushiguro. I know you probably don’t feel the same but I thought I should tell you anyway.”
Yuuji is standing before him, his face pale and his heart on his sleeve. He’s saying that he loves him. He’s smiling but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s expecting a response.
“Itadori, I’m… I’m sorry. I don’t – I can’t – feel the same. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, you’re my best friend but I just. I have lost too much already to risk it.I don’t want to risk it. It’s bad enough that I care about you and Kugisaki at all, and that one day you’re going to die and I will probably have to watch. Again. I’m not going to make that harder on myself than it needs to be. I’m sorry. I hope you understand.”
Megumi knew he was hurting him, of course. He didn’t want to hurt Yuuji, but he had been anticipating this for a while. Why did Yuuji have to complicate things? He knew, they both knew, how pointless and dangerous it was to fall in love as a sorcerer. Hadn’t they learned enough from Gojo? Or Yuuta? Love is the most twisted curse of all . It was better to clip the feelings off at the base. Pull up the roots to prevent sprouting. Salt the earth. It was better for both of them, Megumi had convinced himself. There was no other option.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s okay, Fushiguro. I get it, I promise I do. We can still be friends, right?” Yuuji is smiling again, but it’s wrong. There’s no light in it. It’s a cheap knockoff of his trademark smile, usually so bright and warm and consuming.
“Of course. Best friends. Always.”
///
Yuuji is standing in Nobara’s bathroom, coughing over the sink. As the water washed away the blood, he could make out the color of the petals he’d been clearing his throat of, clinging to the sides of the basin. Yellow. Daffodils, still, then . He rinsed his mouth.
“I told him, Kugisaki. I just thought that maybe, if I said it to his face –” he was interrupted by another coughing fit. New blood stained his teeth, more petals caught against the roof of his mouth. He spit them into the sink. He didn’t bother rinsing his mouth again. “I thought he might change his mind. I don’t know.”
Yuuji didn’t try to hold back the tears that had been welling up against his eyes since he spoke to Megumi. Salt and iron filled his mouth as he sat fully in his despair for the first time, with Nobara standing behind him, trying in vain to soothe him. Megumi didn’t love him back. He basically said that he could never, would never, love him back. Megumi would never love him back and he was dying.
It started a few months ago. He’d noticed that sometimes it was harder to breathe after his typical morning jog. He’d started feeling chest pains at night, most often after he’d spent the evening hanging out with Megumi. He’d then developed a persistent cough, only partially manageable by constant consumption of lozenges and cough syrups. He’d only figured out what was happening when he’d woken up in an intense coughing fit and choked out a sprig of baby’s breath. He stared at the offending bloom in cold realization, delicate in its brutality. The beginnings of his funeral bouquet. A death sentence dressed in roses. A childhood game turned harbinger, ripping flower petals from his lungs to spell out a message in blood: “he loves me not, he loves me not, he loves me not.”
He’d heard enough to know how it would go, had heard whispers from the older women in his small hometown about a son with a rejected marriage proposal, a niece that was left for another woman. It always started with baby’s breath. The delicate sprays coming up in dry coughs, tickling the throat. Shortness of breath was also common here, some chest pain, maybe bad dreams. After baby’s breath, there were a few possible flowers. For Yuuji, it was daffodils. It was usually daffodils. With the daffodils came the blood, the incessant coughing fits, headaches, and nausea. Daffodils meant there was still time. Next, it depended on the situation, the primary emotion that had taken root. Was it sadness? Anger? Grief? Regardless of the flower produced, the symptoms were the same. Anemia, nosebleeds, vomiting. Wheezing and difficulty sleeping due to the blockage in the airways. Extreme fatigue and loss of appetite. The telltale signs of a body’s decay – a root system being suffocated.
Spider lilies were the death knell. Everyone knew that.
He’d loved Megumi since the day they’d met, but the feelings had compounded when he’d died by Sukuna’s sharp-nailed hand. He’d never forget the pain on Megumi’s face, the visage stamped in his retinas as consciousness left him. He felt his heart break as it was pulled from his chest, knowing that was the last time he’d ever see Megumi. When, mercifully, he was brought back to life, he was consumed by love. He spent the duration of his fake death dreaming of seeing Megumi again, of reuniting with the raven-haired boy and holding him against his chest, ear to heartbeat. I’m here, I’m alive, I missed you.
No such thing happened, though. Their reunion was stiff and awkward, with Megumi seeming hesitant to even talk to Yuuji, the pain in his eyes evident. He could not look at Yuuji without seeing a corpse, bloodied and broken. Watching his best friend die and then nearly dying himself at the hands of Yuuji’s killer had done irrevocable damage to his heart, had frayed the bonds between them until they were as splintered and fragile as his ribcage had been as his heart was removed. Walls had been built between them, taller and more fortified than before, cutting off Yuuji’s hopes for their happily ever after before he was even done dreaming of it. Death twice felt. The chest pains had started not too long after.
“Itadori… there’s a surgery, you know. They can fix this but it means you have to —“ Nobara started, fear staining every word.
“No, Kugisaki. I don’t want to, not yet, I can’t give up on him yet. I love him, I love him so much.” Yuuji sobbed in between coughs, spitting stray petals. “I just… I can’t let go. I don’t want to forget him. Not yet. Give me a little more time.”
“You have to promise me, Itadori, promise me . If this gets bad, like ‘point of no return’ bad, you get the surgery. You have to say it though. You have to promise you’ll choose yourself before it’s too late.” She was crying now, holding him from behind as he leaned over the sink. “I’m not going to lose you again, not like this. I know you love him and I’m sorry. But please.”
“Okay,” Yuuji hiccuped, “I promise. I’ll tell you if it gets to that point. I just can’t give up hope yet.”
He didn’t know how long they stayed in the bathroom, or when exactly they ended up on the floor, but Nobara held him until the tears and coughing fits stopped.
///
Yuuji looked bad. Sick. Like, really sick.
The dark circles under his eyes were nearly black against the dull pallor of his face, without even a ghost of the rosiness his cheeks normally held. He seemed excessively tired, his movements sluggish and imprecise even during routine training exercises. No one seemed to know what was going on (or if they did know, they were not telling him), and Yuuji himself would wave Megumi off with some excuse. “It’s just a cold.” “I didn’t sleep well last night.” “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about it Fushiguro.” Always with a half smile, clearly lying.
Megumi was hurt. Yuuji was supposed to be his best friend, and there was clearly something wrong, but he didn’t think it was important enough to tell him. Nobara had been no help, but had been sticking closer to Yuuji than usual (and the two of them were usually a package deal in the first place). He felt himself being iced out, and he was hurt. Logically, he knew that Yuuji’s behavior toward him was at least somewhat related to his confession a few weeks prior. He knew that. He knew that and he felt bad (horrible, rotten, awful) about it, but he couldn’t do anything about that. It wasn’t safe to fall in love. It wasn’t safe for Megumi, himself, specifically, to fall in love. Anyone he loved seemed to be doomed to some tragic end, burying him under grief so thick it had sunk into his bones, dug into the marrow. The only way to live with it was to pretend it wasn’t there. Love wasn’t there. He couldn’t afford it.
And Yuuji was loveable . That was the worst part. It’s not that there was anything about Yuuji that would keep Megumi from falling in love with him if he were a normal person without mountains of trauma and a signed honor contract with Death. Yuuji was good, and kind, and fun. He was handsome in a charming boyish way but also in a strong, dependable way that could sweep someone off their feet. Megumi wasn’t blind, he just refused to look. Yuuji deserved someone that wanted to love him, and Megumi wasn’t that person. There was no point in entertaining an idea, fantasizing about a world where he maybe could and maybe would allow himself to fall in love, with Yuuji, with anyone. It wasn’t the world he lived in. He had convinced himself as much.
He walked into class, Yuuji and Nobara already seated with Gojo standing up front prattling on about something unrelated to curses or fighting techniques.
“Good morning,” Megumi mumbled, taking his seat.
“Morning,” Nobara replied, her indifference toward him a little more pointed than the day before.
“Good morning, Fushiguro,” Yuuji chirped back, smiling as always, exhausted as usual. His cheeks looked a little more sunken today. “Do you still want to do movie night in my room tonight?” He dropped his voice down to a whisper, “I pirated that new horror film that came out last weekend.” He winced then, suppressing a cough.
Megumi smiled back, relieved that at least movie night was still standing despite the nebulous awkwardness surrounding them lately. “Yeah, that sounds good. We can run to the store after training to get some sn- oh shit. Itadori, you’re bleeding.” He watched in alarm as a trickle of blood poured from Yuuji’s nose, quickly turning into a gushing stream. He’d never seen that much blood from a nosebleed before, except from a couple of severely broken noses that he may or may not have caused in middle school.
Yuuji clapped his hands over the bottom half of his face, catching the blood as it continued to flow aggressively, before jumping up with a call of “Sorry, sensei!” as he bolted out of the room. Nobara quickly followed after him, a look of panic on her face that Megujmi had never seen outside of a fight with a curse.
Megumi was frozen in place, eyes fixed on the thick puddle of blood that had been left behind on Yuuji’s desk. It looked wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Megumi was no stranger to Yuuji’s blood, having drawn it himself by accident more than once during particularly heated training sessions, but Yuuji wasn’t hurt. This blood was not from any cut or scrape or wound that could be seen on the outside, not curable by a roll of bandage and antiseptic. He looked up at Gojo, whose face was disingenuously neutral.
“Gojo, what is going on with him?” Megumi demanded.
“Sorry kid, it’s not my place to disclose the medical status of other students.” Gojo replied, not looking in his direction.
“So he is sick? Is it bad?”
Gojo sighed. “He is sick. And getting worse, from the looks of it. If he wants to tell you why he’s sick then that’s on him – it’s none of my business.”
At that, Megumi stood up from his seat and hurried out into the hallway. He assumed Yuuji and Nobara had gone to the closest bathroom, so he started down the hallway toward the training locker room. He entered the changing room, about to push the door open to enter the bathroom when he heard Nobara’s voice.
“...purple, Yuuji. What does purple mean? You said that you were okay as long as the flowers were yellow but that one is purple.”
Flowers? Why were they talking about flowers? He could hear someone (Yuuji, he assumed) retching on the other side of the door.
Yuuji finished heaving and spitting before responding, forcing nonchalance past the shakiness in his breath. “They’re hyacinths, actually. Not sure what they symbolize really but I’d assume they-”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it! What does this mean, Yuuji? How long has it been since you’ve been puking purple fucking hyacinths and not daffodils without telling me?” Megumi could hear that she was crying underneath the rage in her voice. More than anything, she sounded terrified.
Megumi held his breath as Yuuji retched again, and again, punctuated only by Nobara’s stifled crying.
“About a week,” Yuuji responded, finally, weakly. He didn’t sound like he had the energy to fake a smile anymore.
“How much longer do you have? When is this going to be enough? You’re dying, Yuuji. You know that right? Me, Gojo-sensei, Fushiguro – we’re watching you die.”
Megumi was shocked. Dying? Itadori is dying? Why hadn’t anyone told him, why hadn’t Yuuji told him that he was sick, why—
Nobara wasn’t finished. “He doesn’t love you! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but that isn't going to change. Fushiguro isn’t going to change. You’re getting sicker while you’re holding on to hope for nothing and I’m sorry. But I love you, and your other friends, we love you!” A heavy sob wracked through her as Yuuji was sick again.
Megumi felt as if he might be sick himself.
Megumi doesn’t love Itadori.
And it was killing him.
Megumi was killing him.
He didn’t know how long he stood at the door, waiting to hear more but knowing there wasn’t anything more to say. He stayed until he heard a toilet flush, a sink faucet running, the sounds of two people silently and heavily collecting themselves to rejoin the rest of the world as if it wasn’t ending. When his feet uprooted themselves from the ground he all but ran out of the locker room, silent as a shadow, his two best friends none the wiser.
Megumi struggled to act as if he didn’t know what was going on later that evening in Yuuji’s dorm room. After hearing Nobara and Yuuji’s conversation in the bathroom, he had immediately returned to the classroom to confront Gojo who confirmed his suspicions. Yes, hanahaki. Yes, it was rare but not as rare as it was made out to be. He explained that those afflicted with the disease tended to hide it, deny its existence, as many found it to be… embarrassing. Most people didn’t go around parading the fact that they were so desperately unloved that it was killing them. That small fact made Megumi feel less angry about Yuuji keeping the secret from him, at least.
Yuuji himself seemed unsuspicious of his quieter-than-usual demeanor, content to provide commentary on the movie as usual and pick at the snack selection Megumi had brought with him. His typically insatiable appetite was all but nonexistent, not even opening the bag of chips that Megumi grabbed because he knew they were Yuuji’s favorite. He looked even worse than he had that morning, if that were possible, with chapped lips and sallow, slightly greasy skin. He was sick and he was dying but he was still smiling, and he was still, relentlessly, beautiful.
While Yuuji watched the movie, Megumi watched him. The furrow in his brow as he was immersed in the lead up to a jump scare, the score of the scene building up to a crescendo. The way his eyes widened slightly, as if enlightened, when he put together plot points and predicted a twist accurately. The commentary, be it funny or thought provoking, kept Megumi invested in the story (though he didn’t have to try very hard, when Yuuji was such a good narrator). Watching movies with Yuuji had become a routine early on in their friendship and quickly became Megumi’s favorite leisurely activity. He could lay on Yuuji’s couch for hours — days, maybe forever — watching literally anything Yuuji wanted and he’d have the best time. Could he bear to lose this? Again, but permanently?
Megumi had decided from the start that Yuuji was worth saving; a conviction he held close to his chest in a white-knuckled grip. Could he… could he save Yuuji, this time? Could he fix him, cure him, whatever the verb may be? Yuuji was dying because Megumi didn’t love him; rather, because he wouldn’t love him. He cared deeply for the other boy, of course. Yuuji was his best friend, his partner, the weight behind his fist that kept him fighting when he felt like he was losing the battle, but he didn’t love him. Not the way Yuuji loved him, at least. But he could, maybe. If he loved him, if he chose to forgo one of his primary rules and allowed himself to be vulnerable, to bond himself to someone else in that way he’d spent his life avoiding, he could save Yuuji this time. He could keep him and their movie nights and their quiet comfort. He could spare himself the pain of having to watch his best friend die again because Megumi wasn’t strong enough to save him.
Would it work, though? Could Megumi just change his mind and decide that yes, he could and would and should and will fall in love with the sunshine boy with rose-toned hair, just like that? Did he want to love him? Would Yuuji even believe him? He looked across the couch to the boy in question, dozing off now that the movie was over. His breathing was strained, but he looked more comfortable than he did while he was awake. Megumi felt nauseous at the thought of never seeing the color return to his cheeks and never again hearing Yuuji’s laugh when it wasn’t interrupted by wet, shaky coughs. The idea of losing Yuuji now, in this way, for this reason, was scarier than any other fate he could imagine for them. Was that not heartbreak? What was a heartbreak, really, but an occupational hazard.
Yeah, he could love him. He just needed time.
Megumi decided. He would let himself love Yuuji, and he would tell him this as soon as the sun was up. He would be honest and vulnerable and press every ounce of sincerity between his words like flowers between pages, hoping that the promise of “not now, but soon,” would be enough to sustain him. He sat on the couch for a while longer, observing the would-be object of his affection until he himself was too tired to keep his eyes open. He grabbed the extra throw blanket and laid it gently across Yuuji’s sleeping body before quietly slipping out of the dorm.
///
Yuuji woke up disoriented.
Or rather, he woke up but it took him a beat to realize it because he was preoccupied with the terrifying fact that he could not breathe. He was choking, fighting to even gasp, to grab hold of any amount of air that he could force into his rootbound lungs. He sat up and pounded on his chest, panicked, a searing pain shooting through his throat. Finally, excruciatingly, he coughed. Wet and bloody and without relief, he hacked until he could finally draw in one deep, shaky breath. On the exhale, he vomited suddenly and unceremoniously onto the carpet. He continued to retch without any time in between to catch his breath, hardly able to keep his body upright against the pain and dizziness trying to push him to the floor. His eyes were watering profusely — or he was crying, who could say — but when he finally opened his eyes, all he saw was red.
It was all red. The blood on the carpet and the blood on his hands and the blood in his lap and the small, delicate petals and the long, thin tendrils swimming amongst the viscera. Truly spider-like in a sense, red like the hourglass on the belly of a black widow. Red spider lilies decorated his carpet and the backs of his teeth and his airways. He was out of time.
It’s a funny feeling, to die again. To be dying, again. For a moment, unaware if it had been seconds or hours, he stared at the blood on the floor. It wasn’t unlike staring at his own heart in his hand, something that should be in his body now outside, starting the countdown to blackout. Dizzily, he vomited again. He was tired. He didn’t have the energy to hold himself up anymore, so he didn’t, instead slumping off the couch. It was all he could do to continue drawing shallow, searing breaths that seemed to be doing more harm than good. His vision started blurring around the edges, the promise of painlessness anchoring him to the floor like a new kind of gravity. He could just… sleep, maybe. He could just, no, no– Nobara. I have to call Nobara. I promised.
Reaching into his pocket for his cellphone was torturous. Every movement of his oxygen-deprived limbs felt Olympian in effort, but eventually he had his phone in his hand. He wheezed as he pulled up Nobara’s contact and hit “Call,” hitting the speakerphone button and placing the phone on the couch near his face so he wouldn’t have to hold it up. He realized that he had no idea what time it was and that she was likely to be sleeping, but he hoped she’d answer anyway.
The phone rang. He felt his eyelids slipping closed, the effort of keeping them open proving too much. On the fourth ring, he heard Nobara’s groggy morning voice through the tinny distortion of the speaker.
“Yuuji? It’s like 4am, what’s wrong?”
Yuuji attempted to take in enough breath to respond, but ended up coughing again instead. Between wheezes, he could hear Nobara panicking on the other end.
“Yuuji, tell me right now if I need to come over! Should I get Gojo? Tell me what to do!”
Finally – finally – Yuuji was able to rasp out something despite the protests of his shot vocal chords. “Get Gojo. It’s time,” he managed, before promptly losing consciousness.
///
Megumi had been woken up abruptly by Yaga at sunrise. A solo mission, grade 2 curse, liked hiding in shadows. Nothing too difficult for him to handle on his own, but was located in a remote village several hours away and would keep him off campus for at least three days.
“Can I at least say goodbye to Itadori and Kugisaki before I head out?” he’d asked Yaga.
“They’re on their own mission in Tokyo, left earlier this morning,” Yaga had replied gruffly before leaving the room.
Megumi was anxious for the entire three days, seventeen hours, and forty two minutes that his solo mission had taken. He’d wanted a chance to talk to Yuuji as soon as possible after their movie night, to tell him that he wanted to be given a chance to learn how to love him. That he did, already, love him, he just hadn’t known it until now. He hadn’t been able to get ahold of either Yuuji or Nobara while he was away, which wasn’t uncommon for missions but didn’t do any favors for his anxiety.
Surely, they should be back to school by now , Megumi thought as he tried to keep himself from picking at his cuticles. It was a four hour train ride and a twenty seven minute cab ride and three bleeding nail beds before Megumi found himself in the entry of Jujutsu Tech again. Nobody greeted him, not even Gojo, a fact so unusual that he should have noticed. He should have noticed the disconcerting stillness of the large, underpopulated campus, but he was so preoccupied by a singular train of thought that he couldn’t be bothered with anything else. Yuuji’s probably in his room, I need to find him, I hope I still have time to fix this. He was running, through the halls and past the classrooms to the dorms, not caring and not aware if anyone saw him. He should have noticed that Yuuji’s door was closed, when it was never usually closed during the day, because it was always open to let Megumi know that he was welcome in at any time. He should have heard Nobara down the call, calling out for him to “ wait, stop, hold on ” as he reached Yuuji’s closed dorm door.
With no further thought besides finding Yuuji, Megumi burst into the room as if it were his own, because it kind of always had been. “Yuuji!”
Megumi had never once worried that he wouldn’t be allowed in, or that Yuuji wouldn’t want to see him. He’d never been concerned about texting beforehand or announcing his presence because their shared space had always been a given. He’d never felt anywhere but home in this room, with this boy, who was currently standing across the room with a confused expression and a slightly defensive stance.
Something was… wrong. Yuuji looked like Yuuji but the room didn’t feel like home and Megumi felt like an intruder under the concerned gaze of the boy in front of him. The boy with fluffy hair and rosy cheeks and bright, alert eyes. The stranger that looked like Yuuji cleared his throat.
“Um, hi. I’m Itadori Yuuji, which you seem to already know. Are you a new student? Did Gojo-sensei send you here to introduce yourself? I’m not like, mad or anything but I’d appreciate it if you knock next time, haha.” He laughed nervously, hand going up to rub the back of his neck. He looked at Megumi, expecting something.
Megumi couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do much of anything but feel the seconds stretching out like cracks on the surface of a frozen lake. He felt the cracks tear through his chest somewhere between the third and fourth rib as he realized that Yuuji didn’t remember him. He was too late, had been too selfish and blind and stubborn to risk losing his best friend and ended up losing him anyway.
“Yeah I’m… a student here. Fushiguro Megumi. Sorry for barging in, I uh, I actually have to go,” he stammered, doing all he could to maintain a neutral face as he turned on his heel and left the room that would never feel like home again, closing the door behind him.
Again, he started running. Away from Yuuji, away from the growing ache in his chest, away from the sudden shortness of breath – away from what, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, anyway.
He loves me not. He loves me not. He loves me not.