Chapter Text
“—ji!”
The world rocked erratically from side to side. Worse than being on a boat, rivaling the most extreme of carnival rides from his youth, Yuji slapped a wobbly hand over his mouth in anticipation of his stomach spilling its contents. Thankfully, his nausea did not escalate despite his brain rolling tormented laps around his skull.
“Yuji!”
Someone was calling his name. A voice, higher than what he was used to hearing—a child? Were there supposed to be children running around this the part of the city? Where were their parents?
“W-Why can’t you…? Is Yuji hurt!?”
Yuji’s eyes continued to spin, distorting the image of what he assumed to be the child currently ringing through his ears. The teenager tried to move, hoping to gain clarity beyond the swirling blurs of pink, brown, and silver crawling toward him. Upon moving, every muscle and bone roared in protest. Mostly centered in his back. The chips of stone bouncing off his shoulders acted as a blatant reminder of the gash in the wall from where he had been thrown just moments earlier.
Oh, yeah. He was definitely hurt. And while his innate recovery was bound to kick in, all Yuji wanted to do right now was slump forward and imagine he was still in bed.
“You can’t sleep now!”
Unfortunately, there was still a child. The blissful state of going unconscious would have to wait, as tiny legs and a suspect number of hands crawled over Yuji’s legs to reach out and stabilize his still bobbing head.
The teenager’s eyes fluttered open. Starting with a few erratic twitches, Yuji was able to get his eyes to remain partially open as he confronted the one whose hands were currently squishing the sides of his cheeks.
The child— a little boy —looked awfully familiar. Swept back hair and two sets of eyes full of panic that felt out of place when compared to the curse he knew with more than one pair of eyes. Eyes that glowed a menacing crimson, never once appearing close to the waterlogged grays and silvers Yuji was witnessing now. But said curse possessed an additional four arms and the expected number of fingers to go along with them, a trait this child clearly shared… Weird.
It was almost as if Yuji was blankly staring at a smaller version of Sukuna.
“Kuna is… so small…” Yuji found his thoughts emptying from his mouth in an undignified slur. They matched his impulsive desire to remove his hand from his face and press it on the little boy’s head.
The fluff awaiting him was soft. Enticingly so. Only a mild pause meant for proper thought and consideration had delayed Yuji’s need to fall forward and press his cheek against the child’s head.
“Y-Yuji! Please don’t s-sleep…” The boy was sniffing up snot, hiccuping between his pleas. Whoever he was, he was terrified on Yuji’s behalf and that wouldn’t do. The teenager knew he would be just fine from the perks of growing up with a body as durable as his.
“Hey now, it’s going to be ok.” Yuji pulled the kid closer, bracing under the sudden grip of four tiny arms latching around his torso. He wanted to do more, so he patted the boy’s back while forcing energy back into his voice to prove he was already gathering his bearings. “I just need a minute… and we’ll be all set. Got it?”
His head was still pounding, even as his once intense heartbeat had slowed to a manageable speed. The curse he had been fighting and the reason for why he was out here in the first place, that was what had been responsible for slamming him into the concrete wall. And if jumbled, but still present memory served, it made some kind of attack against him while he was compromised.
If only he could recall the mission details from their briefing. Yuji couldn’t begin to guess what said attack had done, but there were no signs of the curse now. Did someone else take care of it? Draw it away? Or was it lurking out of sight in wait for another chance to strike? If so, then now was not the time to be passing out with this surrogate plushie in his arms.
“You’re not hurt, are you…?” A name would be nice to have right now, as calling the kid ‘Kuna’ didn’t feel wrong, but it couldn’t be right either. And speaking of Kuna—or rather, Sukuna—where was his commentary in all of this? Surely the curse would be interested in a child that looks so blatantly like the monstrous form he’d boast about when Yuji foolishly brought up how weird it was to keep seeing himself when the curse felt inclined to interact with him.
“N-No! But Yuji is—!”
The boy squirmed out from underneath his chin, reeling his head back to look at Yuji with a stretched-out hand flailing about around his head. Yuji couldn’t tell if he was motioning toward a head injury the teenager didn’t know about, or if the kid wanted to mimic the head pat he’d received. Not until the face of worry in front of him became that of anguish when nothing could be grasped between the kid’s fingers.
Without warning, the boy fell over to the ground at Yuji’s side, legs still on top of his while arms were stretched as far back as they could to squeeze between the teenager’s backside and the wall. Yuji had initially thought the act was inappropriate and was about to yelp in protest when the boy pulled back and clutched Yuji’s shirt with his tiny hands.
“Your tail is missing too!”
The kid’s wailing while simultaneously digging his forehead into Yuji’s chest did nothing to explain why the kid was looking for a tail. Was he supposed to have ears as well? Had that been what the boy was looking for upon his head?
“W-Who did this? Who?” A torrent of very familiar cursed energy began to pool around the kid. The sediment on the ground shook around them, all the while an infuriated red Yuji knew all too well emanated from the boy’s eyes. “I-I’ll fight them! I'll kill them!”
“No! Wait, hold on—!”
Then it clicked.
Yuji’s memory finished its reconstruction, granting him the final pieces he needed to understand just what the hell was going on.
He’d been assigned a mission alongside his classmates, Kugisaki and Fushiguro. A curse user was reported to be scamming people with the use of a cursed object that temporarily de-aged their victims who thought the effect would be permanent. The reports of non-sorcerers to the police had been odd enough to catch the ears of Jujutsu Tech, and since the curse user was operating in Tokyo, it only added urgency to take care of it being so close to their headquarters.
Locating the man responsible for the scam hadn’t been difficult. It was the fight that broke out and the unknown cursed technique they had to deal with once the man was backed into a corner and his cursed object destroyed, thus releasing the curse inside out into the streets. Yuji’s natural speed had made him the one to pursue it while the other two took on the curse user. He’d ended up in this abandoned building as a result of following that curse… And he’d been hit with the de-aging effect of its attack. Yuji had held no doubts regarding that. But since he felt and appeared normal within his own clothes aside from the physical damage that came with being chucked into a concrete wall, his soul may not have been the receiver of the cursed spirit’s attack after all.
And if it wasn’t him, then the only other soul within his body was—
“Sukuna!?”
“AH!?”
The child jumped at the curse’s name. His name. Sukuna’s name. They were both, or this kid was— There was a tiny version of the King of Curses in his lap!
“S-something wrong? D-Don’t move! You feel weak…”
Was it that obvious? Now that Sukuna mentioned it, something was wrong that he didn’t catch before. With Sukuna in front of him, the curse was no longer inside him, which meant the nearly endless pool of self-sustaining cursed energy had become drastically limited. Since this was Sukuna, Yuji had expected the cursed to catch onto this and mock his situation, but the boy didn’t. He looked up at Yuji with puffed cheeks and furiously nodded at whatever thought had crossed his mind.
“I’ll keep Yuji safe!”
This was utterly bizarre. Completely insane. Nonsensical— Why would Sukuna care about keeping him safe? Let alone a child version of him—Wait. Why did a child version of Sukuna know him?
“And avenge your ears and tail.”
And why did he think he had an extra set of ears and a tail!? This poor kid in his lap thinks he’s been mutilated and Yuji had no idea why or how… But that didn’t stop him from seeing the shaking in Sukuna’s hands. He felt tremors throughout the boy’s entire body, not to mention the way his breath continued to pick up after just barely calming down. The determination on display was a front. There was a genuine fear that Yuji never saw the curse show before, and that had him taking a breath before thinking of a way to calm him down.
It would be better for everyone if they figured out this case of mistaken identity or accidental overlap between past and present memory without the threat of this little monster’s rampage.
“Sukuna…” Yuji began, still finding it strange to address this admittedly adorable child with that name. “You don’t need to… avenge my ears. Or tail.”
“Why not!?” God, the kid looked offended.
“They weren’t taken. They were, er, are… hidden! That’s right.”
“Is it because of all the humans?”
That. Right there. That was interesting. Whoever Yuji was supposed to be, he wasn’t a part of the humans. Neither was Sukuna, so at least this kid acknowledged himself as different. Yuji could work with that.
“Yup! I think you may have hit your head a bit—” Yuji could still feel his own head pounding. “—Or else you’d know that. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“At home.” Now the little version of Sukuna sitting in his lap was mumbling. He’d diverted his eyes to the ground… in shame? “I don’t remember leaving…”
“It’s alright! My memory is a bit spotty too. I think this curse messed with us a bit too much.” Yuji scratched the back of his head, unsure how he felt about working with these half-truths and lies. Sukuna or not, it didn’t sit well with him. Maybe it would if he knew where to take the conversation from here. Oh boy.
“It’s gone now.”
“The cursed spirit?” Yuji looked around again. This time, he reined in his focus to search for trails of energy that would indicate the curse had run off to. With only one line of movement to follow, that being where he and the curse had clashed during their chase, there was no evidence of it running off. Which meant… “You took care of it?”
Sukuna nodded.
“Oh. Wow.” Little Sukuna could definitely hold his own. At least that intense aura of cursed energy from before was being used against curses and not people…. For now. Maybe he should reinforce that? “Good job, Kuna-kun.”
The little boy beamed in delight as soon as Yuji raised a thumb in the air to go along with his praise. Yuji swore he saw sparkles in the kid’s eyes. Why did he have to be so cute? If this kept up, Yuji would have no choice but to squish him by the cheeks—
“Yo! Are you in there, Yuji-kun?”
The door mere meters away from Yuji’s right was kicked open, allowing his sensei’s shouting to hit Yuji’s ears as clearly as possible.
“Yu-ji-kun—?” Gojo was practically singing his name, dragging out each syllable until he turned his head and froze at the sight of his student and the small curse sitting on his lap. He was surely blinking underneath that blindfold to guarantee he was making sense of what situation he’d stepped into.
Yuji was going to say something. The perfect sentence to encapsulate the situation and all the confusion that came with it. All he needed was just a few more seconds to think of it! But he would not receive them, as Sukuna was quick to point a finger at the sudden intruder standing before him.
“Humans say Tora-sama! Only I can call him Yuji!" A growl paired with it, as the tiny mouth on the boy’s stomach bore its fangs, much to Yuji’s horror. Tora-sama? Was that who he was supposed to be?
“Is that…?” Gojo knew the details of their mission and the curse they were targeting. Along with possessing the six eyes that were able to read the child’s cursed energy instantaneously, there was little point in doing anything but preemptively nodding before his sensei could even finish his question.
A chorus of laughter rang out as a result. If it were any louder, it would have surely shaken the building. His sensei had to grip his side’s to steady himself, but when that wasn’t enough, he’d stepped back to lean upon the door frame behind him as the struggle to intake oxygen continued. There was an attempt at words, jumbled comments which Yuji interpreted to be about Sukuna and his much smaller form, though he couldn’t tell if little Sukuna knew the man was talking about him or if he was getting angry on Yuji’s behalf again. The growling hadn’t ceased. By the time Gojo collected himself and walked over to crouch next to Yuji to get a better handle on the situation, Sukuna was all too ready to bite at any hand his sensei tried to poke either of them with.
Yuji wouldn’t put it past Gojo to be angering Sukuna on purpose considering the animosity the curse held for him when fully grown. A glare on Yuji’s part was enough to get him to stop. A few stray chuckles would escape regardless, and the grin would remain plastered to his sensei’s face, but at least something was being done before little Sukuna attempted to maul the man.
“Ok. Ok. Whew. Let me just— Deep breath.” Gojo shook his head, hand on his temple as he worked out much of what Yuji had already gone through. “May I speak to… Tora-sama for a moment? In private.”
Sukuna glanced up at Yuji, who took the opportunity for what it was and climbed to his feet. This kid clung to him as he did, but with enough struggle, he was able to hold Sukuna out at arm’s length before informing him he would be put down.
“We’ll be just a moment.” Looking in any other direction was important at this step, or else Yuji would give in to the despondent face in front of him. “Wait right here.”
With that order, Yuji placed Sukuna down on the ground, patting his head and adjusting his robes as he did so. The teenager then shuffled over to the door with his sensei, keeping Sukuna’s little form in the corner of his eye as they whispered.
“Tora-sama?” Gojo covered his mouth to snicker behind it.
“I don’t know! He thought I had ears and a tail!”
“Do you?” Was that supposed to be a genuine question?
“No!” Yuji’s hiss caused his sensei to step back with arms raised in the air.
“But you’ve already committed to playing along?”
“I thought it would be better than starting a fight with him…”
“Probably the best call here. Especially since most of the cursed energy you once had is now wrapped in that small, possessive bundle of anger over there.” His sensei poked his head through the door to glance at Sukuna over Yuji’s head. “How unlucky do you have to be to cross paths with Sukuna in not just this life, but a previous one?”
“A past life? Sensei, I think he’s just confused.” Yuji let out a half-hearted laugh. The curse, from what was explained to him, was only supposed to affect the body, not the mind. But with Sukuna’s case being an extreme case of regression over a thousand years, that probably jumbled everything upstairs. Yuji would have thought the curse was acting, but there was something too genuine about how Sukuna's little self was clinging to him that made the teenager think otherwise. The Present Sukuna wouldn’t have willingly acted so ‘demeaning’ as the curse would most certainly describe what Yuji was witnessing now. “Whatever the answer is, it could be worse, right? And the effects of the curse don't last all that long.”
“Correct. The curse should wear off in a day or two. I can have you both stay at my place again until we’re back to normal. At least, I would assume as long as you two are together, you’ll go back to housing Sukuna as you did before getting hit. If not… we can cross that bridge when we get to it. No big deal.”
That second outcome sounded like a pretty big deal to Yuji, but if his sensei wasn’t worried, then he shouldn’t be either.
“I’m good with your plan, but Sukuna doesn’t know why we’re here or what’s going on other than we were fighting a curse. And since he thinks I’m someone important…?” Yuji then elaborated further on the conversation Gojo had not been present for.
“Let’s keep the story simple, and rooted in half-truths just as you’ve been doing. Yuji-kun traveled to assist us with a curse. Sukuna followed. And now you’re both guests at my home. Easy.”
“Tora-sama is a guest at your home.” Yuji jokingly corrected him, earning a flick against his forehead.
“My apologies, Oh great Tora-sama” His sensei sneered. Gojo then raised his voice to ensure that Sukuna could be privy to what came next. “I, the strongest there is, Gojo Satoru, am honored to have your presence within my home.”
The teenager would roll his eyes at that, scoffing as he returned to the child still patiently waiting for him. His own reaction sparked amusement within Sukuna, like a shared secret despite Gojo’s faux offense at the lack of respect in front of him.
“Gojo-san is going to let us stay at his home for a while as a thank you for taking care of the curse.” Yuji explained. “You don’t have to like him, but let’s not pick a fight. How does that sound?”
Little Sukuna scrambled to his feet, eager to wrap his arms around Yuji’s legs. His chin rested just above his knees, eyes staring at him with that same worry from earlier.
“Will you be alright? You’re so far away from home…”
And what home was that supposed to be?
“I’ll manage just fine.” Yuji smiled, deciding this would be the perfect chance to pick Sukuna up now that he no longer felt the world swaying underneath him. “If I can carry you, I can do anything!”
“Isn’t this precious?” His sensei clapped his hands together, signaling that it was about time they reunite with the others. If Gojo’s lax presence here meant anything, it was that Kugisaki and Fushiguro were already done with their half of the mission. “Will my precious Yu— Tora-sama carry me like that sometime?”
Sukuna strengthened his grasp on Yuji the moment Gojo’s request left his mouth. If the daggers Sukuna was glaring had been real, Yuji doubted that even his sensei’s infinity could protect him from being repeatedly stabbed over and over. The effects of the de-aging curse may only last a day or so, but Yuji suspected that if those two continued on like this, the next twenty-four hours were going to feel like an eternity.