Chapter Text
Soulmate gifts are precious things shared between souls, innate skills that tie souls together forever. They’re simple, yet meaningful. Some soulmates speak two languages as soon as they can talk, some soulmates always know how to comfort someone, still others use the perfect amount of salt in every recipe. They’re uncomplicated, mundane things, not meant to drastically change one’s path in life.
Yuuji was ten the first time he saw a monster.
It was a summery Thursday afternoon; he’d been walking home from school along his usual detour through the wooded path. He liked to watch the dappled sunlight shifting around on the dirt floor of the forest, listen to the birds chirping and the constant buzz of cicadas. It was a nice change from the sharp angles of his concrete school building and the small, dreary apartment he shared with his grandfather.
The sunlight shifted through the branches as usual, splotches of light highlighting fallen leaves and roots on the path, but there were no birdsongs, no cicadas, no crickets. It was eerily silent in a way that left him uneasy. He tightened his grip on his backpack straps and hurried forward. The woods weren’t that big, he’d be out and back on the main path in less than five minutes—
A branch snapped behind him. Yuuji whirled around in a panic and almost screamed. On the path, where he had been only seconds prior, stood a multi-armed, wormlike creature. Six blood-red arms sprung out of its torso to balance it on the ground, and the rest of its torso bent up, more vestigial arms flopping uselessly against its sides. A limp, sickly-looking tail flopped against its back. Worst of all was its face, which could have been human—would have been human, except for its two sunken eyes that looked like black holes. It opened its mouth to reveal a set of blunted teeth and shrieked, a high-pitched sound that hurt his ears.
Yuuji was frozen in place. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. What was that thing?
Slowly, horribly, he realized that he was going to die. He was going to die here, in the same woods he walked through every day, without ever seeing his grandfather again, without ever going back to school to see his friends, without any more yummy meals or fun movies or romps through the woods.
He was going to die...but he could at least go down fighting for what he loved, right?
Taking in a shaky breath, he raised his fists in front of him. He was strong for his age, and fast, but the thing in front of him was easily three times his size. All he could hope to do was land a punch before it killed him.
The monster screeched again and charged him, blurring as it ran forwards on six hands. Yuuji jumped backwards on instinct, aiming a blow at its head. He missed, but his fist connected with its back, right below the nape. It slammed into the ground, its momentum disrupted.
He took a deep breath, centering himself. He couldn’t afford to lose the flow he had going. He punched again, and again, and again, raining blows down on its back before it could muster the strength to get up. By the end of his flurry of blows, he almost thought he saw streaks of blue light billowing around his fist, but it was probably just the tears blurring his eyes.
He couldn’t keep it down for long. The monster reared up on its backmost arms, somehow perfectly balancing its useless lower half with its over-limbed upper half. It howled again, raising goosebumps on Yuuji’s arms, and swatted at him. He flew back, hitting a tree and crumpling to the ground underneath it.
Groaning, he looked up. He blinked as three copies of the monster advanced. Definitely hit my head . He tried to get back up on his feet, but his legs wouldn’t stop shaking.
“This is it, I guess,” he mumbled. “Sorry, grandpa….” He raised a hand up in front of his face, weakly attempting to guard. What happened next was pure instinct. Yuuji arched his fingers— why did it feel like he suddenly had claws? —and slashed downwards. The word came to him unbidden. Dismantle.
——————-
“Yuuji, you’ve been quiet today,” his grandfather said over dinner. “How was school?”
Yuuji poked at his rice. “Uh. It was fine. We had a math test. It went okay.” He didn’t say: I ran into a monster on the way home from school. He didn’t say: I almost never saw you again. He didn’t say: I thought I was going to die. He didn’t say: Somehow I sliced it into little pieces.
He swallowed. “Um, I was thinking...maybe I could join a dojo or something? My, uh, gym teacher suggested it.” He didn’t say: I need to be able to defend myself if I see another one of those things.
His grandfather regarded him over the rim of his glasses. “Sure, Yuuji,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find.”
——————-
Three years to the day after his grandfather had died, Yuuji opened the clubroom door to an unusually excited Sasaki. “Come in, Itadori, quick,” she said, ushering him in and closing the door behind him. “Look at what we found!”
On a desk in the middle of the room sat a small, innocuous-looking wooden box. Iguchi hovered anxiously near it. “We found this in the Stevenson’s screen on the west side of campus, behind the art building.”
Yuuji picked it up and held it up to the light before sliding the wooden cover back. Housed inside was a roughly cylindrical object, wrapped in old, yellowing bandages and covered in runes and sigils he didn’t recognize. Although he was certain he’d never seen it before, it felt oddly familiar. He picked it up and squinted at it. “What is it?” he asked.
“No idea,” Sasaki said. “We were going to come back after hours and unwrap it.”
“After hours? Why?”
She grinned, wiggling her fingers at him. “For the atmosphere. It’ll be way spookier.”
Yuuji rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. You guys still hide behind me every time we go explore somewhere that’s supposedly haunted.” (The buildings they chose were never haunted, because Yuuji always found out the location ahead of time, and went the day before to eliminate any monsters hiding there. He didn’t particularly care to watch his only friends get slaughtered right in front of him, thanks.)
“Hey, that abandoned factory was super creepy!” she retorted. “I have no idea how you weren’t scared.”
“A lifetime of practice,” Yuuji responded flatly, placing the object back in the box and sliding the cover shut.
“But, we wanted to ask if you would be willing to take the box back and put it back inside the screen,” Sasaki continued. “Just in case it was supposed to be there, or something. We can put the contents back after we open it tonight.”
“Sure,” Yuuji said. He popped the box open again, let Iguchi take the wrapped object out, and slid the box into his pocket. “I can go after my night class, okay?”
Sasaki and Iguchi nodded. “Good luck opening that up tonight,” he said, waving as he exited the room. “Don’t get too scared without me!”
He found his hand migrating towards the box again and again during his two-hour calculus lecture, fingers tracing the grains of wood almost reverently. Symbols and operators flashed meaninglessly on the projector screen, and he ended the lecture with barely a quarter of a page of notes taken. Oh well. There were always office hours.
Humming to himself, Yuuji slung his backpack over his shoulder and began the trek across campus. The building his calc class was in was on the opposite side of campus from the art building, but it was a nice night—clear skies, pleasantly cool. He’d stop by the cemetery to pay respects to his grandpa after he dropped the box off, Yuuji decided.
Halfway there, the crunch of footsteps behind him alerted him to someone’s presence. He didn’t feel the same terrifying presence that he did when one of the monsters showed up, so it was probably just someone going the same way as him. He ignored them.
“Hey,” the person behind him said.
Yuuji paused and turned around. The speaker was around his age, wearing dark clothes with a mop of spiky black hair. “Yeah?” he said.
“Sorry, I have to make this quick. I’m Fushiguro Megumi from Jujutsu Technical College. The cursed object you have is extremely dangerous. Please hand it over right away.”
“Cursed object?” Yuuji asked.
Fushiguro Megumi from Jujutsu Technical College rolled his eyes and pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapping at it for a minute before holding it up. “This. You have it, right?”
Yuuji squinted at the screen. It was showing a picture of the box Sasaki and Iguchi had given him earlier. “Oh, yeah! I do. I can give it back if it’s really important, but my senpai wanted it, so I’d at least like an explanation.”
Fushiguro heaved a sigh. “That box contains a cursed object, which generates cursed energy and attracts curses. Cursed energy is, well… Let me back up. There are over 10,000 unexplained deaths and missing persons annually, just in the area. The majority of these are the result of a manifestation of negative energy that flows out of people, known as a curse.”
“A curse?” Yuuji asked, scratching his head. “Like, ‘fuck?’”
“No, not like—look, okay, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not!” Fushiguro snapped. “It’s a manifestation of negative emotions. Places with a lot of traffic, like schools or hospitals, are more susceptible to negative energy, so cursed objects are often hidden at those places as a talisman to fend off other, weaker curses. The object you found is one of these talismans.”
“I mean, absorbing curses doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”
Fushiguro squinted at him again, letting out an aggravated huff. “At first, it’s not. The more evil that’s placed on a cursed object, the more it deflects curses. It’s like using poison to fend off poison. But when the seal on it eventually weakens, the talisman attracts curses, instead. The one placed at this school is extremely dangerous, and I’ve been tasked with collecting it.” He held out his hand. “Now, hand it over before anyone dies.”
Yuuji rolled his eyes and tossed it to him. “Like I said, I don’t really care. I was about to put it back where it came from anyway.”
Fushiguro caught it and slid the box open before blanching. “Hey, wait! Where are the contents?”
“Like I said! My senpai have it!” Yuuji said, then snapped his fingers as a thought occurred. “Actually, they were going to peel off the seal tonight.”
Fushiguro stared at him, mouth agape.
“What? Is that bad or something?” Yuuji asked.
He jerked a bit, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Not just bad . It’s the worst-case scenario. They’ll die.”
Yuuji blinked. “...Shit.”
“Show me where,” Fushiguro said. “I have to stop them. Now .”
“Okay,” Yuuji said. “You good to run?”
His companion nodded. Yuuji took off, heading back to the spare classroom the Occult Club held their meetings in. Fushiguro kept pace surprisingly easy. Geez, I hope he’s not just some weirdo, Yuuji thought as they ran. That would be just my luck.
They were almost to the building when a sudden, overbearing pressure fell over them. Yuuji’s heart hammered in his chest. This was...this was the same pressure he felt emanating from his monsters, multiplied by ten. He’d never felt it this strong before. His knees wanted to buckle. “This pressure…” he murmured.
“You stay here.” Fushiguro ordered. “Where’s the clubroom?”
“What? I’m coming with you!” Yuuji said. “They’re my friends, I can’t just abandon them!”
“No. Stay here,” his companion said, leveling him with a truly intense glare.
Yuuji gulped. If the pressure he was feeling truly was due to the supposed cursed object...what did that mean? Were Fushiguro’s curses the same as his monsters? Fushiguro seemed to know a lot about them, but Yuuji had no proof that he even had a way to deal with them. He wanted to trust Fushiguro, but he couldn’t leave Iguchi and Sasaki to be killed. He rubbed his sweaty hands on his pants. “You need my ID to get in the building. I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t blame me if you die,” Fushiguro said, already starting towards the entrance. Yuuji darted ahead of him and scanned his ID card to unlock the door, kicking it open so that Fushiguro could grab it before it swung shut, and raced inside.
They made it to the third floor without incident, with only the increasingly immense pressure and the rapid staccato of Yuuji’s heartbeat as company. As Fushiguro yanked the door open, Yuuji caught a glimpse of what looked like a baseball bat—only it was pitch black, eight feet tall, and covered in wide eyes and gaping mouths. Its club-shaped body culminated in a three-toed foot. It was, undoubtedly, one of his monsters. As they stood in front of the door, its eyes swiveled towards them, and its mouths seemed to grin wider. It took a stuttering hop forward.
“You’re in my way,” Fushiguro snarled at it. He did something with his hands that Yuuji couldn’t see, and then— “Divine dogs! Go!”
Yuuji stared in amazement as two huge wolf-like dogs, one white, one black, rose out of the ground on either side of his new companion. The white one lifted its head and let out a chilling howl before they darted forward, jaws latching onto the curse and easily tearing it in two. Fushiguro sprinted after them, the dogs easily dispatching other curses that oozed out of the walls. “Stay back!” he shouted as he ran.
“No way!” Yuuji retorted. “I can fight!” He darted after the three figures.
“You really can’t—” Fushiguro’s sentence cut off as he rounded the corner.
Yuuji almost skidded into him as he followed. At the end of the hall sat another curse, big enough to block passage. It had two gangly legs, its bulbous body covered in lesions that on closer inspection were actually small, insect-like curses, struggling weakly. Unconscious, partially absorbed into the sagging flesh, were Sasaki and Iguchi.
His legs moved forward before he could form a complete thought, and he aimed a wild punch at it, forgetting to infuse it with blue fire in his panic. The curse let out a garbled wail as it reached for him, and he used its distraction to grab Sasaki and Iguchi by the collars and pull . Sasaki’s legs were released with a wet, hollow squelch.
He staggered backwards, determined to put some distance between his senpai and the curse. It slowly turned towards them, encumbered by its mishmash of a body. “What time...is it now?” it croaked.
Yuuji blinked, stunned. It could talk? He’d never heard any of the monsters talk before, only make guttural screeches and moans.
Before it could move towards them, Fushiguro ran forwards and stabbed it in the eye. It fell to the ground, steam rising off its form. The dogs ran forward and began tearing at its flesh.
“Normally I’d be pissed you ran in like that,” Fushiguro said, “but good job.”
Yuuji rolled his eyes. “Okay, dude.” His eyes flitted over to the curse’s corpse. “How did you summon those dogs, by the way?”
“They’re my shikigami,” he responded, like that was any sort of explanation. “Normally, you can’t see them or curses. Except when you’re facing death or in a place like this with a lot of cursed energy.”
“Ooohhh,” Yuuji said. Another point on the I-guess-the-monsters-nobody-else-can-see-are-actually-curses board. He has so many questions.
“You’re not scared?” Fushiguro asked.
Yuuji bent down and scooped Sasaki off the floor. “Nah.” He paused. “I mean, I was. But people really die, you know? For the people I know, I want them to at least have a proper death. I’m not afraid to go out fighting to ensure that.”
As he stood up, something slipped out of Sasaki’s pocket onto the ground. Yuuji picked it up. It was...a mummified finger, weirdly enough, bigger than would fit on any human hand, with a pointed, blackened nail. “Is this…”
Fushiguro nodded. “Yeah. The cursed object ‘Ryoumen Sukuna’s fingers.’ Well, one of them.”
“Ryoumen Sukuna...” Yuuji looked back down at the finger in his hand. Despite being practically mummified and obviously old as hell, it felt electric in his palm, sending tingles through his skin. Weird.
“It’s dangerous, just hand it over.”
He was going to strain his eyes if he kept rolling them this hard. “Yeah, okay.”
Fushiguro was stretching his hand out when he glanced up, eyes widening. “Shit! Run!” he hissed. Yuuji barely had time to leap out of the way, Sasaki and Iguchi in tow, as the ceiling crashed in. Another curse, even bigger than the previous one, landed heavily on the ground. Its bulbous head with gnashing teeth swiveled around, four blank dark eyes latching onto Fushiguro. Yuuji couldn’t even move before one of its six arms grabbed Fushiguro and threw him through the wall of the school, leaping after him.
Shit . This was bad. Yuuji propped Sasaki and Iguchi up against a wall and darted after the curse, leaping out of the window and punching it on the head. Concrete buckled under the combined force of his landing and the curse’s weight.
He glanced up. Fushiguro was sprawled out on the concrete, blood trickling down his brow. The curse reared back, balancing on its back legs, and Yuuji threw himself in front of Fushiguro, shifting into a basic stance. “You okay?” he shouted.
“I thought I told you to run,” Fushiguro snapped, lifting a hand up to wipe blood out of his eyes.
“Forget it!” Yuuji said. “I’m more capable than you think. Besides….” He couldn’t get the images of the monsters—curses—he’d been killing since he was a kid out of his head. This was just as much his duty as it was Fushiguro’s. “...I’ve already got quite the curse myself.”
He attacked, leaping into the air and aiming a blue-fire kick at the curse’s head. His foot connected, and something cracked sickeningly inside its skull, but it didn’t outwardly react. Instead, it only seemed pissed off, swinging a fist up blindingly fast and catching him in the head before he could react. He slammed into the ground, his head smacking against the concrete. “Ngh!” His vision swam. Shit, how strong was this thing? Most curses he ran into at least looked hurt after he hit them.
“I told you to run away!” Fushiguro said, struggling to his feet. “A curse can only be exorcized by cursed energy. Besides, you need to carry those other two to safety. You’ll just get in the way.”
“No way,” Yuuji grit out. He pulled himself up off the ground. “Hey, why is it targeting the finger, anyway?”
“It wants to eat it to gain cursed energy,” Fushiguro replied.
Cursed energy...the pressure from earlier, still heavy in the air around them. If Yuuji could just exert his own pressure…. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth wide, holding the finger to his lips. Wow, he’s so smart.
“Wait! What the hell are you—” Fushiguro shouted, reaching out helplessly towards him, but Yuuji had already dropped the finger into his mouth, swallowing it whole. Despite its size, it slid down his throat like it was nothing at all.
Blood rushed in his ears, deepening into a droning sound that rose in volume until Fushiguro’s voice was a fly in his ear. His vision doubled, tripled, then snapped back into one view, clearer than it had ever been before. He could smell the hint of oncoming rain, the leaves from the courtyard, the exhaust fumes from the highway miles below. A sickening sense of glee rose within him, and his face split in a wide grin without his permission.
His hand raised on its own, nails sharpening into black claws, and slashed downwards.
Is that…? Yuuji wondered. He stared in awe as deep gouges appeared in the body of the curse, raw power blasting its skin away from its body, its eyes liquefying and then evaporating. It fell to the ground with an earth-shaking splat .
Oh. Yuuji was laughing. Why was he laughing? This wasn’t...wasn’t funny. His senses were still magnified, colors so bright that it hurt to look at anything, the deep ringing in his ears reverberating all the way down to his bones. His nerves felt raw and exposed. He wanted to...to…
“...so long since I’ve been able to experience the flesh!” he was saying. Was he? His mouth was moving, his body was moving, but….Yuuji felt like his entire body was asleep, his limbs buzzing, not responding to his will. “Women and children crawling everywhere like worms! It’ll be a bloodbath!”
Images of bodies ripped in two—guts spilling out, bones exposed—flooded his mind. The absolute glee he felt at the vision made Yuuji’s stomach churn. No way.
He swallowed down the nausea and grabbed himself by the chin. “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing with my body? Give it back.”
“Huh? How are you able to move?” The sensation of his mouth moving without him ordering it was uncanny. Now that he was focused on it, the other thing speaking with his voice sounded different than him—deeper, with an accent he couldn’t quite place.
“It’s my body!” Yuuji said. And, suddenly, it was again. He could suppress the curse. The strange sensation of his muscles not listening to him faded, like he’d finally managed to start shaking out the pins and needles after his leg fell asleep. The cool night breeze raised goosebumps on his skin. When did he lose his shirt? He glanced down at his bare chest, which now had stark black lines running down it, almost to his waist. Weird.
What the hell is this? The same voice that had spoken using his mouth echoed around his mind, painfully loud, and Yuuji gritted his teeth and imagined building a wall between them, locking the voice away in as small a space as possible.
“Don’t move!” Fushiguro shouted.
Yuuji turned to look at him, his hand still on his chin. “Huh?”
“You’re no longer human,” Fushiguro said, raising his arms out with his hands fisted tightly together. “You’ve become a curse. Under jujutsu regulations, I have to exorcize you.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Yuuji said, holding his arms up in the universal surrender position. “I think I got it, actually.”
Do you? The voice sluices effortlessly through his walls, but the pins-and-needles sensation continues to fade. Yuuji twitches a bit, but ignores it.
“Also, we’re both pretty beat up, we should get to a hospital or something…” Yuuji continued.
I could heal you, if you let me.
Yuuji clenched his jaw. The gut-wrenching wave of bloodlust he had felt only a few seconds ago felt like it was barely held back. I don’t trust you , he thought back as hard as he could. Shut up and leave me alone.
Malicious laughter echoed through his mind. You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you? Yuuji gritted his teeth at the mocking tone. No matter. You’re weak. You’ll come around.
Fushiguro squinted suspiciously at him, his hands still at the ready.
“Yo!”
Yuuji gave a full-body flinch at the sudden appearance of a tall man with a shock of white hair and—was that a blindfold? Why was he wearing a blindfold? Could he even see like that?
“What’s the situation, Megumi?” blindfold guy asked.
“Gojo-sensei!” Fushiguro exclaimed. “Why are you here?”
‘Gojo-sensei’ rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Weeellll, I wasn’t gonna come at first, but the higher-ups got involved when they heard it was one of Sukuna’s fingers that went missing, so I had to swing by. I got mochi, though! Here, try one.” He tossed the bag at Fushiguro, who caught it with only a slight fumble. “Man, you’re really messed up, huh?”
Yuuji boggled as he started taking pictures of Fushiguro, who looked increasingly pissed off. “Sooooo,” Gojo said, drawing the vowel out, “did you find the finger?”
Fushiguro’s eyes shifted to meet Yuuji’s, and he fixed him with the evilest glare that Yuuji had ever been on the receiving end of. Guess that meant he should own up. “Um,” he said, raising his hand like he was asking a question in class, and Gojo swiveled around to face him. “Sorry, but, uh, I ate it.”
Gojo blinked. “For real?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
He stepped over to Yuuji, face uncomfortably close. Yuuji shifted a few inches back. Personal space, dude. “Do you feel any different than normal?”
“Not really,” Yuuji replied, ignoring the angry hiss that filled his mind at the admission.
Gojo leaned back after a minute. “Hm. As far as I can tell, you really have combined with Sukuna. You’ve already got substantially more cursed energy than the average non-sorcerer. Interesting!”
Combined? As if. Sukuna piped up inside him, although it seemed like he was talking more to himself than to Yuuji.
“Can you switch over? Just for ten seconds.” Gojo said.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Don’t worry!” He gave Yuuji a thumbs-up. “I’m the strongest!”
Yuuji hesitated. Sukuna was frothing inside him, rage palpable, his inner monologue a constant litany of letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutI’mgonnakillhimI’mgonnakillhim . His bloodlust was far beyond anything Yuuji had ever felt. He took a deep breath, relaxing his mental walls just a tiny fraction, and Sukuna’s rabid monologue tripled in intensity. LetmeoutletmeoutletmeoutLETMEOUT —
He took a deep breath and dropped his concentration. Immediately, a stark burning sensation appeared on his wrists, his face, his chest, even the back of his neck. The flesh on his cheeks split open as his vision doubled. The unbidden glee from earlier rose up in a nightmarish cacophony of emotion.
Yuuji smiled.
No, wait, that’s not right— Sukuna smiled, his canines sharper and longer than Yuuji’s pitiful human teeth, and Yuuji inexplicably felt like smiling back. Sukuna propelled their body forward, leaping into the air and slamming his fists down towards Gojo. Yuuji’s consciousness, nestled snugly in the back of Sukuna’s mind, was only vaguely aware of the words being exchanged between the two. Something about…sorcery? He wasn’t sure. It was cozy in here, though, wrapped up tight and warm in the surprisingly gentle embrace of Sukuna’s consciousness.
That’s right, vessel, Sukuna’s voice purred in his ears. You can rest now. I’ll take care of things from here on out.
Haah, I don’t think so , Yuuji thought back. Seven…eight…nine….
He wrenched his eyes back open. There was a distinct ache in his shoulders that wasn’t there before, the throb of bruises begging to be formed. The crystal-clear vision he caught glimpses of when Sukuna took control faded, the tattoos on his body sinking back into his skin. Motherfucker! This again? Sukuna spat inside of his head. You shitty little—
“Incredible,” Gojo said as Yuuji gaped at the huge swaths of destruction behind him. Did Sukuna do that? “It looks like you really can control him!” He stepped closer to Yuuji, smiling beguilingly, and poked him in the forehead with two fingers.
Yuuji dropped.
——————-
The first thing he registered was the light, the dull golden glow of candle flame that somehow illuminated too much and not enough at the same time. His eyes burned with it. “Urgh…” he mumbled, blinking to try to bring his surroundings into focus.
Wake up, brat.
The voice felt like it had been poured directly into his skull. Yuuji yelped and jerked upright, inadvertently tugging on the heavy ropes that bound his arms together from wrists to elbow. His shoulders were pulled back roughly in order to get his arms into position, a dull ache already settling into the muscles there. Jeez. How long had he been like this, tied up and unconscious?
“Yo, you’re finally awake!” someone said.
Yuuji swiveled his head around until he could pinpoint the source of the second voice. It was a man, dressed in all navy, wearing a blindfold and sporting some truly gravity-defying white hair. He was sprawled the wrong way across a folding chair, resting his arms and chin on its back. “So, which one are you right now?” he asked.
“Huh?” Yuuji asked. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
You’re a bit slow on the uptake, aren’t you? the voice inside him asked again, and Yuuji twitched. He glanced around the room, taking it in in its entirety for the first time. It was plastered floor-to-ceiling (and floor, and ceiling) with kamifuda filled with intricate markings that made his head hurt to look at. The bland scent of tallow filled his nose.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Satoru Gojo,” the man said, waving. “I teach the first-years at Jujutsu Tech.”
Jujutsu…why did that sound familiar again…?
Oh, shit . “My senpai! Fushiguro!” he shouted, lurching forward only to get jerked back by the ropes around his arms. He tugged on them again, noting for the first time the kamifuda that also adorned the thick knots. “Are they okay? ...And why am I tied up?”
Gojo laughed, a sharp bark that echoed through the room. “I’m not sure it’s other people you should really be worried about right now, Yuuji Itadori.”
Itadori…. the voice inside him murmured. So that’s your name .
“Your secret execution has been set!” Gojo announced, grinning brightly.
Yuuji stared at him. “Secret execution? Huh? For what?”
“Let’s see…how much do you remember, exactly?”
Yuuji thought back. He’d been in calc class, and then had gone to put the talisman box back, and had run into spiky-hair Fushiguro, and they’d fought a bunch of monsters, which were apparently called curses and also not just a figment of his imagination. And…and then he’d eaten that weird mummified finger, and lost control of his body, and….
“I’m—I became a—” he racked his brain for the word the finger-monster had used.
A cursed vessel , the voice supplied.
Ah. That was Sukuna, wasn’t it. That would make sense. Good job, Yuuji.
“—a cursed vessel,” he finished, somewhat lamely. “For, uh, Sukuna?”
“Indeed!” Gojo crowed. “And that’s why you’re going to be executed!”
That’s not all there is to the story , Sukuna said. Why haven’t they killed you yet?
The ancient incarnation of evil that now lived inside Yuuji’s head had a point. “Why am I not dead yet, then?” he asked.
Gojo smiled, but there wasn’t any warmth to it. “An execution is an execution,” he said. “Your status as the vessel of Ryoumen Sukuna ensures that you will be killed regardless. However, and fortunately for you, your sentence has been suspended.”
“So, it’s on hold for now?” Yuuji asked. “Why?”
Gojo rustled around in his pocket for a minute before pulling out something purple and wrinkly. “This is the same as the cursed object you ate—one of Ryoumen Sukuna’s fingers. There are twenty in all. Jujutsu Tech has six in its possession.”
“Ah, for both arms and legs.” Yuuji cringed a bit at the idea of swallowing a bunch of toes, but at least they’d be smaller than the fingers. Hopefully.
“Nope! Sukuna has four arms.”
Sukuna bristles with pride inside him, sending images to Yuuji’s mind of himself, resplendent in the glory of battle, a massive, tattooed figure with four arms and two faces, towering over a field of broken bodies —
Yuuji shook his head to clear out the image. Gojo watched him curiously for a minute before tossing the finger up in the air, flicking a massive wave of power at it. It shot into the wall, cracking the concrete and forming a crater easily five feet in diameter. The kamifuda only fluttered gently. “We can’t destroy them or seal them, and they get more powerful every day. You saw the destruction that just the one at your school caused. But here’s where you come in! See, if you die, the curse inside you dies as well.”
He gazed solemnly at the finger, still stuck in the epicenter of the crater and smoking slightly. “The higher-ups want to kill you right away. But that would be a waste. After all, there’s no guarantee that another vessel capable of holding Sukuna back will ever be born again. You’re one-in-a-million, you know!” Yuuji got the impression he was winking under the blindfold.
“So I proposed this: If we’re going to kill you anyway, we might as well wait until you’ve consumed all twenty of Sukuna’s fingers and take out the curse at the same time.”
So that’s their angle , Sukuna mused. I had wondered how many of my talismans they had gathered.
Yuuji stared at Gojo, his jaw working soundlessly as he tried to come up with a response.
Gojo smiled blithely at him. “You have two options, Yuuji Itadori: Die now, or find the remaining pieces of Sukuna and die after consuming them.”
“What the hell kind of an option is that?” Yuuji burst out. “I’m supposed to what, just drop out of school and dedicate the rest of my life to actively bringing about my own death?”
“Pretty much,” Gojo said. “Let me put it this way: Sukuna was known as the King of Curses for a reason. He had immense physical prowess and a vast amount of cursed energy. Even consuming a single one of his fingers essentially makes you a weapon of mass destruction. If you lose control, he could take out entire cities before we manage to contain him again. There’s no way we can allow that kind of power to roam around unchecked.”
“…Is this common? These kinds of casualties from curses?” Yuuji asked.
You already know the answer , Sukuna said.
Shut up , Yuuji thought back, or I’ll go ahead with the quicker sentence just to spite you.
Sukuna’s chuckle faded as Gojo started speaking again. “Circumstances this time were unusual, but in terms of the collateral damage, it’s pretty common. Curses kill or torture thousands of people on an annual basis. In a lot of cases, finding a dismembered corpse is considered the good end. You’ll definitely see your share of gory stuff if you decide to start hunting down the remaining fingers.”
Yuuji has already seen his share of gory stuff. He’s found dozens of bodies over the past decade. He’s intimately familiar with the black bugs and pulsating masses of maggots that swarm around dismembered corpses. He carries the scent of rot and putrefaction with him daily, scrubs himself extra hard in the shower trying to get it out of his skin even when he hasn’t fought any curses for days.
“Pick your hell,” Gojo was saying, but Yuuji’s been in hell since he was ten.
“If Sukuna was killed, would there be fewer people killed by curses?” Yuuji asked.
Pathetic humans like you will always be killed , Sukuna hissed.
“Of course,” Gojo said.
He never really had a choice, did he? His whole life has been leading up to this. Even if he hadn’t swallowed that finger, he’d still be out there hunting down monsters, hacking and slashing at them with powers he didn’t understand.
“Okay,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’ll do it. Give me that other finger.”
Gojo unfolded his legs from the chair and strode over to the wall. He plucked the finger out of the center of the crater and daintily proffered it to Yuuji.
“You’re not gonna untie me?” Yuuji asked.
“If things go poorly, it’ll be better to have as much protection as possible,” Gojo replied.
They already don’t trust you , Sukuna said. This is proof, they don’t think you can control me, they’ll kill you the moment you let your guard down—
“Okay, just, uh…” Yuuji opened his mouth as wide as possible. Gojo gently placed the finger on his tongue. It tasted kind of soapy, mostly dusty, with a strong undertone of putrefaction. He swallowed it down quickly, suppressing a gag at the taste.
Sukuna’s consciousness pressed forward again, now-familiar black markings oozing their way over Yuuji’s body. Stay back! Yuuji thought desperately. The slits on his cheek opened to reveal hollow sockets, the extra eyes remaining unformed. His arms reflexively strained against the ropes still binding him. One of the ofuda brushed against his skin, and where it touched, it burned. Yuuji bit back a strangled scream, and Sukuna retreated, hissing, like a cat that had burnt its paw on a hot stovetop.
Yuuji let out a winded exhale that turned into a breathless, panicky laugh. “Eww, that was so gross!” he said between giggles. “Gross! Awful! Nasty!”
Gojo watched him placidly, a small smile on his face. “You ready for what’s next?” he asked once Yuuji had finished spluttering, striding over to him and beginning to undo the ropes with nimble fingers.
“Not at all,” Yuuji replied. “To be honest, I still don’t really understand why I have to be executed. But…I can’t leave this alone. I’m going to consume the rest of Sukuna, and reduce the number of curses in this world.”
How noble, Sukuna sneered from inside him, apparently already done licking his wounds. Yuuji ignored him. He’d known for years that his death would not be natural. He was going to die fighting, going to be killed. But he’d always thought that he would be alone in his final moments, beaten and bloodied, a desperate stand against something much stronger than himself. It would be a relief to die surrounded by people, even if they were the ones holding the knife.