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Itadori Yuji had known he would die young.
Long before he opened his eyes to the nothingness of Shibuya, concrete splitting his fingertips as though he could replace the blood of the dead with his own. Longer still than when he arose naked in Jujutsu Tech’s morgue.
Ever since Gojo-sensei announced his execution would be postponed and brought him to Jujutsu Tech; When he told Principle Yaga he couldn’t live knowing Sukuna’s fingers would continue to hurt people if he alone could stop it.
Except that was a lie, wasn’t it?
It wasn’t a conscious revelation. It was a twist in his brain, his cells shifting millimetres off course, leaving his hands numb around a vase of flowers. Words settling, at first carelessly, in his chest, but steadily sinking deeper into his bones like a brand.
“Just save as many people as you can. When you die, you should be surrounded by people.”
His grandfather likely intended for him to die surrounded by a gaggle of his children and grandkids, seniors and family friends. But, truly, Yuji didn’t think that far ahead. Just felt, intrinsically, that to die surrounded by loved ones was to die early. To be sent off by myriads of people he’d saved, it would only be as a martyr.
The image of it changed, solidified, with the incarnation of Ryomen Sukuna. Still, contrary to the sombre and bitter opinions of his friends, it had been a nice thought for him. Not so much a dream as it was the patient blankness between it and waking. Blinking eyes chasing the imprint of something pleasant. Smiling, not at the vision of it, but for its existence. Like the lingering scent of a loved one that you can’t name but simply know.
There was comfort in the uncertainty, because the dead cannot know the shape of their grief.
Yuji knew he would die young. Maybe at fifty, maybe at twenty, maybe six months after swallowing that first finger. Always younger than his grandfather had been, and always more fulfilled than he had been. Because, while he didn’t know what it would look like, he knew he would be surrounded by people.
In the quieter moments –watching a movie sandwiched between Fushiguro and Kugisaki’s warmth, their silhouettes softened by the television light, Gojo-sensei shuffling by with a hair ruffle– he wanted so badly. The cruelty of it would hang heavy like a guillotine on the ribs of Sukuna’s domain. Yuji would turn his face away, scared that they would see the traitorous thoughts on his face: that he wanted to die just like that. Not on a couch watching a movie, but laid gently in a circle of his loved ones, like one giant group hug. In an imaginary meadow somewhere in Sendai, flowers and grass tickling his cheeks. Sunbeams would take the place of the screen’s glow, exposing the soft affection in their eyes with overwhelming clarity.
And just as the sunlight begins to sting, Gojo-sensei would approach, safeguarding Yuji in his shadow like he always does. His sensei would take off his blindfold and gaze at him with something unreadable. To convey his sorrow and remorse– perhaps so they might recognise each other’s souls in heaven. Then Gojo-sensei would slip the blindfold over Yuji’s eyes with a laugh pretending it was just another of his pranks, instead of the last kindness he could afford both of them. Yuji’s vision would already be dark, so he wouldn’t notice a change even as Gojo-sensei killed him. Sukuna would seethe in his prison but Yuji wouldn’t be able to hear him over the sound of overlapping ‘goodbyes’.
It was shameful and abhorrently selfish, that he wanted them to see him off with love, even if it would leave them mourners.
But it was okay. He was allowed this one selfish desire because his grandfather said it was okay.
Itadori Yuji does not die young.
He is older than Fushiguro and Kugisaki. Older than his seniors at Jujutsu Tech. Older than his eldest brother, Nanami, Higuruma. Older than Gojo-sensei was and will ever be. Uncountably older than his grandfather.
Perhaps it was too selfish a wish.
He still doesn’t know what his death might look like, but there’s a certainty that wasn’t there before. It’s no longer a foggy dream nipping at his eyelids. He’s shaken by the enormity of the tunnel it has become. He’s walked so far that both ends merge seamlessly into a loop. He’s curled on abandoned rails waiting for a train that will never come.
He doesn't know which death will be permanent– will slice his infinity into two.
It’s beginning to look more like a wintry landscape, frozen in a tomb made of snow. Deep in a forest resting his shell against the trees. In the backyard of his childhood home in Sendai.
He’ll know that the soil is loose and dry as it’s overturned. Only half as deep because it turns clay-like near the bottom. His body will be frigid, and shivering from the flies already feeding on its flesh as it eases itself inside. He’ll know that his arms will press tightly against the too slim walls. And he’ll know intimately that darkness encroaches like a closing door when he dies.
He knows what the shape of their grief will be.
Lonesome and quiet.