"What kind of girl is your type, Yuji?"
The question had hit him mid-sip and the water went down the wrong pipe for a split second.
Yuji coughed violently, thumping his chest as Tiona stood in front of him with an innocent expression plastered across her face. Several Familia members in the hallway turned to stare.
"W-What?" He managed to say between coughs.
"Your type! You know, in women!" Tiona said, bouncing on her heels as the slight exhaustion from their spar completely disappeared. "You can't just beat up all three of us and then not give us something in return! Come on, spill it!"
Behind her, Tione had her hand over her face. Lefiya was bright red and staring at the floor. Two lower ranked members had stopped dead in the hallway, pretending to read a notice board that was clearly empty.
"How is that related to sparring?" Yuji asked, wiping the water from his chin.
"It's not! That's why it's fun!" Tiona leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. "You've been here for weeks and nobody knows anything about you! You're like a mystery wrapped in a mystery wrapped in pink hair! So come on, what's your type?"
Yuji opened his mouth for a moment to deflect the answer.
The words didn't come to him.
Instead, something else happened. Something he hadn't experienced in a very long time.
The hallway of Twilight Manor flickered.
----------------
For a fraction of a second, Yuji was somewhere else.
A school hallway. Fluorescent lights hung from above and the familiar floor and hallways greeted his eyes. The distant sound of a bell signalled the end of a period and the smell of chald dusk reached his nose.
And standing in front of him, arms crossed and expression dead serious, was a man built like a small mountain. Short dark hair, a scar running across his forehead and left eye. He stared at Yuji with an intense, deadset gaze.
Aoi Todo.
The memory wasn't real. Yuji knew that, the same way he'd known it every time it happened. Todo had described such memories to him before, and he himself experienced it with Choso during their short time together. Yet, centuries after the man's death, the echoes of those fabricated memories seemed to reach Yuji.
In this one, they were in a high school hallway between classes. Todo had cornered him after lunch as he huffed out a breath of air.
"YUJI ITADORI." Todo's voice boomed, causing the phantom figures of students to scatter. "I have one question for you."
Yuji, seventeen, was confused and blinked. "Uh, okay?"
"What kind of woman is your type?"
"Why would you-"
"STOP HESITATING." Todo grabbed him by the shoulders, the same grip that was strong enough to dent steel. Tears were streaming down his face for reasons that defied all logic. "This is the most important question a man can answer! It defines your soul! Your conviction! YOUR VERY EXISTENCE AS A MAN!"
"Todo, we literally just met-"
"We have been besto friends since middle school!" Todo declared with absolute certainty, despite the fact that this was demonstrably and categorically false. "I was there when you confessed your feelings and got rejected! I bought you ramen to cheer you up! We promised to face the world together as brothers!"
None of that had happened. Not a single second of it, but Todo's eyes were burning with sincere emotion that arguing felt like kicking a puppy.
"Now ANSWER ME, my BROTHER! My BESTO FRIEND! What. Kind. Of women. Is your TYPE?!"
The phantom hallway was silent. Even the imaginary students had stopped to listen.
And seventeen year old Yuji, overwhelmed and bewildered, let out a soft, gentle smile. His smile was happy but his eyes were filled with a sense of melancholy.
"You never change, do you?" Yuji said quietly, and Todo merely gave him a toothy grin.
----------------------
The hallway of Twilight Manor snapped back into focus.
Tiona was still standing in front of him, waiting. The entire exchange in his head had lasted less than two seconds.
Yuji looked at the Amazon, then looked up at the ceiling, then he let out a breath that carried centuries of nostalgia and the faintest ghost of a laugh.
'Still looking out for me, huh, Todo. My brother.'
"Tall women." Yuji said.
Tiona's ears practically shot up. "Oh? Oh?!"
"With big butts."
The hallway went silent.
Tiona's mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Her brain was clearly attempting to process whether or not the man in front of her, the same mysterious and stoic man had just said what she thought he said.
"...Did you just-"
"You asked."
Tione, who had been trying to pretend this conversation wasn't happening, slowly turned around with an expression that suggested she was reconsidering every interaction she'd ever had with Yuji. The silhouette in her mind that formed his figure cracked like glass.
Lefiya made a sound that could only be described as a teakettle reaching its limits and buried her face in her staff, her face bright red.
The two lower ranked Familia members, looking at the empty notice board, turned to each other. Then they nodded, acknowledging and agreeing with Yuji's words, a new form of respect for the man was cemented in their minds.
Tiona, to her credit, recovered faster than anyone else.
"BAHAHAHAHA! I KNEW IT! I KNEW you had a type! You always seemed like you'd go for the taller ones!" She slapped Yuji on the arm hard enough to make any normal person stagger. "Big butts though? Really? That's so specific! Who was she? Was there a girl? Is she from where you came from?! Tell me EVERYTHING!"
"I'm going to breakfast now." Yuji said, turning and walking away.
"Don't you walk away from me, Yuji Itadori! This conversation is NOT over!" Tiona chased after him, her voice echoing down the hallway. "I might not be tall, but I fit fifty per cent of your typing! Does Aiz know?! Show I tell Aiz?! What, does Aiz even have a-"
"Tiona, I swear to every God in this city-"
"AIZ! RIVERIA! HE LIKES BIG BUTTS!"
The morning continued as words of Yuji's preferences spread like wildfire through the Twilight Manor.
--------------------
The Southern District was quiet in the late afternoon for once.
The sweet potato stall had closed for the day an hour earlier. Takemikazuchi had packed up the cart, counted his earnings, and with a satisfied nod, headed back toward his Familia's home.
Sukuna had opened up a new stall opposite of his Takemikazuchi's own, with a scribbled sign hanging on top reading, 'Malevalent Potatoes'. Surprisingly, people liked the potatoes he made, especially those with higher spice tolerance, as each and every single one of his potatoes were loaded with spices beyond normal comprehension.
After closing up shop, he sat on a low wall of a dried out fountain in a small plaza, his legs crossed and his arms folded inside his sleeves. His eyes were closed and for people walking by, they would assume he was taking a nap.
He wasn't.
He was busy cataloguing everything he'd come across the past few days, mainly what he found in the sewers and what could lay behind those Orichalcum doors.
Someone had built escape routes, or entry points. Perhaps serving as both.
The sound of approaching footsteps pulled him from his thoughts. They were light and held a bit of fanfare with each step taken.
Sukuna opened an eye.
A man stood at the edge of the plaza, leaning against a lamppost with a flamboyant posture. He wore a featured hat over sandy orange hair, wearing a light travelling outfit that reminded Sukuna of those cowboy movies the Brat watched while he was training. He had a smile plastered across his face, but his eyes held something else entirely.
"Good afternoon." The man said, tipping his hat. "You must be Sukuna. The God from the Far East who sells sweet potatoes."
Sukuna studied him for a moment. The divine presence was unmistakable beneath the mortal clothing. This was a God, one who had been walking the Lower World for far longer than he had.
"And you are?"
"Hermes." The God said with a slight bow that was more theatrical than respectful. "Messenger, traveller, entrepreneur, and occasional purveyor of useful information. I run a small Familia, nothing too impressive, and I have a terrible habit of introducing myself to interesting people."
"Get to the point."
Hermes merely chuckled before continuing on. "A God descends to Orario for the first time in recent memory, registers an empty Familia, works a sweet potato stall with Takemikazuchi, and bears a striking resemblance to the man who had just joined the strongest exploration Familia in the city." Hermes adjusted his hat, his smile never once changing or wavering. "That makes you very, very interesting."
Sukuna's expression didn't change, but his remaining eye opened fully, fixing Hermes with a gaze that would have made weaker men prostrate themselves before him.
Hermes, to his credit, didn't flinch. The smile stayed exactly where it was.
"What do you want?"
"Conversation." Hermes said, " I find that the Gods who arrive quietly tend to be the ones worth knowing. The loud ones are predictable. The quiet ones have plans."
"Your blathering is grating my ears."
"Haha! You really are an interesting one, a God with no agenda in a city built on them." Hermes pushed off the lamppost and took a step closer, his hands behind him. "May I sit?"
Sukuna said nothing and Hermes took that as permission. The messenger God settled onto the fountain wall a comfortable distance away, cross one leg over the other.
"I'll be direct with you, since you strike me as someone who doesn't enjoy games." Hermes said, which was ironic coming from one of the most prolific game players in Orario. "I;m curious about your relationship with Yuji Itadori."
"Then stay curious."
"Fair enough." Hermes shrugged but didn't press on, instead shifting the topic. "Let me offer something instead, a gesture of good faith."
Sukuna's eyes narrowed a fraction. "I don't need your faith."
"No, but you might need information." Hermes leaned back, looking up at the sky. "You've been exploring the tunnels beneath Daedalus Street at night. Don't worry, I'm not here to stop you. My Familia handles deliveries through some of those same tunnels, so we tend to notice when someone new starts walking them."
The air went still with silence for a moment.
"The structure you found down there." Hermes continued, his tone dropping low to imprint the gravity of his words across to him. "It's called Knossos. It's been there for centuries, built by the descendants of an architect named Daedalus who went made trying to replicate the Dungeon."
He paused, letting Sukuna absorb the information.
"Currently, its occupied by a group that I highly suspect to be referred to as Evilus. They're the remnants of factions that tried to destroy Orario during the Dark Age, roughly twenty years ago. Most people think they were wiped out. They weren't." Hermes's smile had faded entirely. "The orcichalcum doors you found are the reason why nobody's been able to root them out. The material is impervious to everything short of Arcanum. No one has the keys."
Sukuna listened without reacting to his words. His posture hadn't changed and he kept the same expression on his face, but Hermes could tell he was paying attention to everything he was saying.
"And you tell me this, because?" Sukuna finally asked.
"Because I believe in investing early." Hermes replied, the smile returning to his face. "The situation on Orario is changing. The things coming out of the Dungeon are getting worse, the factions are shifting and the balance that's held this city together for fifteen years is starting to crack."
He looked directly at Sukuna.
"And it all go pushed ahead of schedule by Yuji Itadori." Hermes said. "I don't know what your connection is with him, but I know that whatever's building beneath this city is going to surface eventually, and when it does, he will either save this city or be the one to bring it to its knees."
Sukuna scoffed before standing up to walk away.
"You're a clever one." Sukuna said with his back turned to Hermes. "If you knew the Brat, you wouldn't be here to bore me with your incessant barking."
He looked over his shoulder towards Hermes, and for a split second, Hermes felt goosebumps crawl along his skin.
"You and the other rabble might be useless with your sealed Arcanum, do not presume to think the same of me."
Instinctively, Hermes jumped up and reached towards his throat, but found nothing had happened. For a moment, he had a vision of his head being cut off before he could react.
By the time he recovered from his shock, Sukuna had long since disappeared.
He stared silently at the empty plaza where Sukuna had been, before reaching into his jacket and pulling out a letter. The emblem of the Zeus Familia formed into a wax seal was broken in half when he peeled it off to read the letter earlier in the day.
There was a single line at the very bottom from the God who had once commanded the strongest Familia in Oraria, and had faked his own death before going into hiding.
'Beware the cycle of curses.'