The news came to Itadori Yuji as whispers that slipped past his door. He was seated in his room, back to the wall, ass on the bed, alone and bored. His only companions were the silence, his thoughts, and the ball he kept bouncing against the wall.
His wrist flicked once more, trying for a different angle, and the rubber ball shot out in a spin that bounced against a table and chair before rebounding and deflecting off the corner of the room and back into his hand. His control had grown better; he didn't know why, but his ability to exercise his strength, to control his own cursed energy, had gone up in leaps and bounds since he regained control of his body.
Despite how interesting such a feat was, Itadori Yuji was not proud; the ability to feel such an emotion had been weighed down heavily by the past few days, by what happened in Shibuya. Gojo Satoru was gone, sealed, and missing.
Sukuna had taken over his body and nearly destroyed Shibuya, if not for Megumi, Todo, and the scary shikigami with wings for eyes. Yuji still trembled sometimes when he remembered how overwhelming its presence had been. Yet, regardless of their efforts, people were dead. Hundreds lost to Sukuna's fight against Jogo alone. Little could be said about the sudden outpouring of hundreds of thousands of curses all over Japan, but at least, he had no hand in that.
"What would you do if someone you saved turned around to hurt people?"
His wrist flicked once more, sending the rubber ball in his hand flying, this time the angle was trickier; it ricocheted off a lamp, bounced into his wardrobe, then off the ceiling before returning into his waiting palm.
The loneliness brought about boredom, but it was one that he did not mind. Sukuna had used his body to kill hundreds of people, so he deserved this, at the minimum. When the higher-ups had sent the order immediately after Shibuya to detain him, he had agreed easily despite Todo's and Megumi's disagreement.
The Shikigami had simply stared, the weight of its presence somehow drowning and soothing. When they took him, they did it as gently as possible under the Shikigami's winged gaze.
Yuji shook his head. He didn't deserve to be protected by the Shikigami; he deserved to be punished on some level, yet unlike the previous time, where he had been detained somewhere underground in a room filled with flowing shamanic scripts and talismans, his body bound by seal-covered ropes, this time, they had simply returned him to his room and posted guards outside.
He had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that the Shikigami had trailed after them. It's every footstep a resounding thud that cracked the ground beneath his feet.
It had been almost a week since then, and he received food and water three times a day, but that was the summary of his interaction with any other person. Todo had been forced to return to Kyoto, while Megumi had been sent away when the Shikigami suddenly disappeared. Yuji flicked the ball into a basket and slipped to his feet. He made quick stretches to limber up before falling to his hands in a picture perfect press up posture.
He got to four thousand before he began to feel a slight burn in his muscles as he continued to push up and lower his weight, then it truly began to burn at nine thousand, his arms shaking and his muscles twitching, but he knew he could go further, so he continued. Sixteen thousand met his entire body shaking and twitching, sweat forming into a puddle beneath him as a slight groan left his lips from the effort of lifting his body weight up, and finally at twenty thousand, he allowed himself to drop to his chest and after a brief moment to catch his breath, he spun to his back, watching as his ribcage expanded and shrank in an attempt to support his lungs in their bid for air.
He could have done more than twenty thousand if he had paced himself better. He glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes. He had never thought much about it before, how vastly superhuman he was, and then he got access to curse energy, which put him leaps and bounds above almost every other person, physically at least. But now... He shook his head.
He had pushed himself hard today, but devoid of an actual chance to spar to see the extent of this strange growth, he was stuck with the silence of his thoughts, at least until the whispers began. He turned his head slightly toward the door as he began to hear the guards outside speak, and a name caught his attention.
Megumi Fushiguro.
Itadori sat up at once and scrambled further to the door. The conversation was not meant for him. He knew that, yet the moment he got to the door, he pressed his ear against it anyway.
"...walked out carrying him," the first guard was saying, the younger one, Yuji had decided, based on the voice. He had been cataloguing them by sound over the past week out of sheer boredom. He even had names and identities for them in his head. "Under his arm. Like luggage."
"You're making that up."
"I'm telling you what Usami told Ijichi, who told—"
"Usami wasn't even in the room."
"He was outside the room. He heard everything." A pause, the sound of shifting weight, boots on stone. "Everything. Said the sliding doors were shaking just from the Shikigami talking."
Yuji pressed closer.
"What kind of Shikigami even wears a suit?" A third voice spoke up, an unfamiliar guard. It was not quite a question.
"The kind of Shikigami that quotes law at you until the Zenin elder apologizes out loud with his own mouth." The younger one's voice had the particular quality of someone who was really enjoying himself. "Apparently, he cited something from the Heian period. A compact. Something the Fujiwara clan signed. Eleven hundred years old, and it just came out of his mouth in that smoker's voice. I heard they actually had to go begging Master Tengen for knowledge and her properly preserved version of the regulations, and were shocked to see the shikigami was right."
The second guard was shocked to silence, so the younger one continued enjoying his monopoly on information.
"I hear that the Zenin elder apologized. On behalf of the council. They admitted they had been about to pronounce a wrong judgment." The voice dropped half a register. "You know what it takes to make a prideful Zenin elder say the word apologize. One important enough to be a higher up?"
The third guard chuckled for a moment, then quietly asked, "And Fushiguro?"
"There would be deep investigations into him, alongside his parentage, and further investigations into the Zen'in clan, inherited Techniques, despite the elder's disagreements..." His voice dropped an octave, and Yuji could imagine him with his head on a swivel as he looked around to ensure no one was eavesdropping.
"Usami says they're scared shitless. So scared, they immediately made Fushiguro a special grade sorcerer. Effective immediately, most likely to appease the Shikigami." A short exhale. "He didn't want it, apparently. Said so to their faces. They gave it to him anyway."
Yuji almost chuckled at that. He was not surprised. Megumi hated the responsibilities that such a grade was no doubt going to bring on him. Then the next sentence silenced his chuckles as he nearly pressed himself against the door in an attempt to hear what was being said.
"I heard the Shikigami used to be a god centuries ago, before the Zenin clan found a way to bind it. That's why it's so powerful." One voice whispered.
"According to a Buddhist friend I know, he says the Shikigami used to be one of the protectors of the Dharma or something." Another replied.
"It doesn't matter what it is. It's not our business; it's so far above us, it might not even exist. What truly matters to us is our charge," the last guard said very carefully, with the tone and voice of someone who understood just how dangerous the discussion was. "What about his execution order?"
A longer pause this time.
"Usami says it's going to be left on hold," the younger one said finally. "Just like it was when Gojo Satoru was around. Nobody's touching the Itadori brat while that thing is standing behind Fushiguro." The ground groaned as one of them shifted their weight from nervousness. "You should have seen them talk about the size of it when they walked out. They said its head cleared the third-floor lintel. Wheel spinning. Just walking. Carrying Fushiguro like a package and not even looking back. And its cursed energy... it was frightening."
"And Fushiguro?"
"Cursing, from what I heard. The whole way down the corridor."
A sound escaped Yuji before he could stop it. Not a simple chuckle like before. It was small, involuntary, something that had not lived in his chest for over a week, trying to find its way out through his throat.
He pressed his hand flat against the door.
Alive.
He was going to stay alive. His joy only lasted for a moment. Who was he to live when hundreds had died by his hand? Why did he get to have a teacher strong enough to hold against his execution the first time, and when the elders were proven correct, he was once again lucky enough to have a friend stave off his execution a second time?
Why?
He slid down until his back was against the door and his knees were up, and he sat there on the floor of his room and felt his chest tighten and twist in indescribable ways. He had no right to live. He had absolutely no right, and yet he was alive anyway, because other people fought to ensure that, and how could he repay that...
"What would you do if someone you saved turned around to hurt people?"
He looked at his hands, palms open and stretched before him.
He did not have an answer to that question. He was not sure he ever would. But the question was going to have to wait, because apparently, he was going to be alive long enough to keep asking it, but he knew what he could do. He understood what he had to do. For every life that had been lost because of him, because of Sukuna, he would save a thousand for every one, and he couldn't do that from inside here, especially when he was not going to be executed anyway.
His palms were closed into fists that spoke of his newfound resolve.
Then a voice rang once, one that was only vaguely familiar.
"That's no way for a brother of mine to look... so defeated."
Yuji blinked in wide eyed surprise at the sight of a man. No, not just a man. The man who had nearly killed him back in Shibuya before he suddenly let Yuji live and walked off. The spiky-haired pale man stood in a crouch at his window still, his features pale and his brown eyes looking at Itadori with more emotion than Yuji knew how to interpret.
"I'm here to get you out, Itadori Yuji. We need to talk."
__
The Zen'in compound was a different kind of quiet from Jujutsu High.
Megumi had been to the clan compound a sum total of zero times; he would have preferred if things had stayed that way. Unfortunately for him, the past few days had been full of changes, and one of those changes was caused by Naobito Zenin. The patriarch of the Zenin clan was not dead yet, but it was a near thing. Everyone believed he had a day left at most, and while it generally was not his business, it became such when the letter had come in.
A formal invitation to the Zen'in compound. He had picked it up, glanced through it, then flung it away, only for a heavily muscled pale white arm to snap out and catch it mid-air. Mahoraga did not even glance at it. He simply shoved it back into his face, and despite his protest, the shikigami did not care. Instead, it simply watched his reaction. He had waited for it to speak, to reply him, but ever since that day, it had remained as quiet as ever. Instead, it simply scooped him up, and after another vomit inducing journey around the city, they found themselves in the Zenin compound.
He had been deposited in front of a woman in a formal kimono, to her wide-eyed surprise and his own grumbling. Finally, with another glance at Mahoraga, he had given the woman the letter, and after a cursory read through, she had led him to a part of the clan grounds.
Toji Zen'in's estate.
His father, who, judging by the photos he found around the house, was the same man who had saved him, then tried to kill him before deciding suicide was the best option as opposed to stepping up when he finally recognized him.
"What's your name?" The man had asked, eyes wide in barely hidden surprise.
"Fushiguro." Megumi had replied in confusion.
The man smiled, a soft, endearing smile that tickled at a memory that Megumi had repressed a long time ago. That scared lips twitched upwards.
"It's not Zen'ni..." The man had trailed off, as if he was speaking to himself. Then, faster than Megumi could see, the man buried the sharpened end of Playful Cloud into the side of his own head. "I'm glad."
Those were the last words the strange man said, looking all too happy for someone who just committed suicide, then he fell over, face first into the ground.
Megumi was still deciding how he felt about that. He had been the one to tell Gojo sensei that he did not care about who his father was, and he had not, but that was then, now... now things were more complicated, and he had a feeling it was all Mahoraga's fault.
That was a day ago. Today, he found himself in the courtyard away from the vast majority of the Zenin clan. The courtyard was wide, stone-flagged, and bounded on three sides by low walls and on the fourth by the main house. Today, he was going to try it again. The subjugation ritual for Round Deer.
The day had started off with a spar that was, in truth, a poorly designed murder attempt by Mahoraga. The spar had left him feeling sore in muscle groups he did not know he possessed, then the Shikigami had gotten bored after beating him up for two hours, and then it kicked him away.
Megumi exhaled nervously and glanced to the side. That was thirty minutes ago. Now, he was on the second agenda on his very vague to-do list. The subjugation of another Shikigami.
Mahoraga was still present, even though Megumi knew the Shikigami was not going to help him. Over the past week, he had grown somewhat familiar with the shikigami's body language, at least enough to know that, judging by the tilt of the wings and the grin on his face, the shikigami was staring at him with amusement.
Unlike him, Mahoraga did not care or worry for much, this had become apparent within the first fifteen minutes of arriving at the Zenin compound, when it had become equally apparent that two of the younger female Zenin clan members had decided that the most productive use of their afternoon was to position themselves on either side of the divine general with large paper fans and apply them with solemn dedication, while the third sat beside him with a cup and straw filled with orange juice beside him.
Mahoraga lounged on a mat, legs crossed without care, elbow on the ground, and head resting in his palm as he watched Megumi with an expression that suggested he was enjoying himself more than Megumi was.
The two women fanned harder when Megumi looked at them, so he looked away.
He let out a breath once more to focus on the appropriate hand sign, curse energy coming to life in his gut, and then his phone buzzed in his pocket, and the shadows that had just come to life at his feet immediately stalled before returning to their natural state.
He frowned, then tucked his hand into his pocket and brought out the phone. The number on the screen was the medical ward's extension, and that realization made his eyes widen.
He answered before the second buzz finished.
"Fushiguro." The voice on the other end was a nurse he recognized.
"Yes, this is Megumi Fushiguro."
"Ah, that is good," the woman replied. "We have an update on your sister, Tsumiki-san."
He remained standing on the spot, fear, worry, and dread battling for dominance inside him.
"She's awake. Tsumiki-san is awake."
The courtyard turned quiet. Behind him, he could hear the fans slow their rhythm, and then stop entirely.
"When," he said.
"This morning. She's stable. Responsive. She's been asking for you."
He exhaled once, slow and controlled, as he manually forced his heart to beat once more and blood to flow.
"I'll be there," he said, and ended the call.
He stood still for a moment, basking in the news. Tsumiki was awake. Then he turned, finally remembering the unnerving silence behind him. He spun around and found Mahoraga no longer lounging on the ground.
The divine general was inches away from him, forcing him to backpedal. Its features were tight; gone was the grin and amusement. Megumi searched through their link, and all he could feel from the shikigami was rage, a cold, smothering rage, then the shikigami turned from him and looked into the distance.
Megumi had a feeling the shikigami was not happy, not in the slightest.