Chapter Text
Naoya had grabbed an umbrella, simple and black, portable, folded down compact, had opened it and it had sprung up, dark and spanning above him like a small deathly specter as he’d run out into the night, into the dark, the cold, the rain. Thunder in the distance rumbled, but Naoya had never been scared of that.
The raindrops fell everywhere, tap-danced on the puddles they melted into and grew. Naoya’s sandals and socks were quickly soaked through. It was hard to see in the swathing shrouds of dark and the needle-beaded curtains of rain, and Naoya was looking for a shadow.
He’d made it to the outskirts of town when he finally saw the figure up ahead, beneath the light of a streetlamp—tall, broad, traditional yukata, black hair, completely drenched. Naoya ran to catch up, slipped in a puddle, landed on his stomach in the water, scrambled up, hakama and hakamashita now soaked, ran splashing through puddles until he was able to grab the man’s hand, place the handle of the umbrella in his palm.
“Return it sometime,” Naoya said, looking up into the man’s startled gray gaze, “Toji-kun.”
And then he turned and started running back, slipped and fell into a puddle again, scrambled back up, continued running through the rain, the dark, the cold.
Toji, lifting the portable black umbrella above his head, watched the child go, a twisting in his stomach he couldn’t quite name. Something about Naoya’s expression and the way the glow from the streetlight had caught on the gold of his eyes. Crazy kid, running all the way out here in the storm.
The rain pattered on the fabric of the umbrella above Toji’s head as he turned and continued towards the train station.
“Return it sometime, Toji-kun.” But Toji wasn’t planning on ever coming back.
Naoya may have gotten a bit lost, because he didn’t recognize these streets anymore. But then again, everything looked different and foreign in the dark and the rain.
There was a tall young man standing alone beneath the awning in front of a coffee shop, the warm light from within gently shining through his white hair, illumination on the side of his face managing to light up the aqua blue of his eyes. Naoya stopped in the dark rain-puddled street to stare, and then he splashed over to stand beneath the awning beside him, gazing with him out into the storming night. Shivers finally spurred him to reach out and take the young man’s hand. He shivered further at the warmth, the stark contrast from the rain that plastered his clothes to his skin and dripped from his saturated hair down his face and neck.
The young man looked down at him in surprise. “Do I… know you from somewhere?”
Naoya just clutched the man’s hand tighter.
The black-haired boy was soaked through, and the coldness of his hand made Satoru frown. He glanced back into the window of the coffee shop that was still open, and then he stepped towards the door and tugged the boy with him, saying, “Come on, let’s go inside where it’s warm. I’ll buy you something warm to drink.”
So they went inside, although it wasn’t actually that much warmer in there, and Satoru got a decaf latte, but the boy insisted on only wanting green tea even though Satoru offered to buy him a hot chocolate, they took a seat at a table. He observed the boy: maybe around nine years old, wearing traditional hakama and hakamashita that were all soaked, straight black hair that was also soaked, and rumpled from him pushing it out of his gold eyes, prominent black lashes stuck together with water. Something about the boy was niggling at Satoru.
“Do you have a name?” he asked.
The boy stared at him with large gold eyes for a moment, blowing on his tea, and then said, “Naoya.”
“Zen’in Naoya?” Satoru asked, because the boy was clearly a sorcerer, he just somehow hadn’t recognized the cursed energy.
“You know of me?” the boy asked, looking up at him, hands wrapped around his paper cup of tea that he was blowing on. His lips looked a little blue.
“Of course I do,” Satoru said. “You’re the Zen’in heir. And I’m—”
“I know who you are, Gojo Satoru,” the boy cut him off, gold gaze penetrating, permeating. “That’s why I didn’t want you to be waiting all alone by yourself in the rain.”
The lights above then flickered, and then went out, the entire place falling into darkness.
“Blackout,” the boy murmured, standing from his chair. “I’d better be heading back. I’ve been gone for a while. Thanks for the tea, Satoru-kun. I hope whoever you’re waiting for comes to pick you up soon.”
He walked around the table in wet squelching socks, wet sandals squeaking on the tile floor, a bell on the door jingled softly as he opened it, the sounds of rain and distant thunder tumbling in, and then the door was swinging shut again and the boy had disappeared into the darkness of the storm, although Satoru thought he saw his small shadow pass through the light of the streetlamp that must have been running on backup power because it still shone, yellow-white and eerie.
By the time Satoru reached out to take the nearly untouched cup of green tea, it was as cold as if it had never been warm.
“I hope whoever you’re waiting for comes to pick you up soon.” But there wasn’t anyone. Not anymore.
Naoya realized belatedly, depressively, that he’d taken an umbrella when he went out, and now he didn’t have it anymore, and his father would be angry. He really didn’t feel like being scolded, so he’d crouched down beneath a streetlight hugging his legs to his chest and was watching the puddle at his feet, white-gold raindrops splashing on the black surface, rippling eternal patterns of circles.
There was a strange reflection in the undulating puddle, then, and he looked over first to see white tabi socks and tan and red zōri sandals, and then up to see a tall young man in black yukata robes with a gold and green kāṣāya garment over black yukata robes, his black hair partially tied back, a strip of bangs falling over his left eye, dry because there was a small ray-looking cursed spirit flying above his head keeping the rain off.
“Curse Manipulator,” Naoya mumbled. “Geto Suguru?”
“Oh, my, am I famous?” the man smiled. “And who might you be, young sorcerer? And why are you crouched here all alone in the rain in the middle of the night? Don’t you have a family?”
“Of course I have a family, I’m Zen’in Naoya,” Naoya slurred slightly, hugging his legs tighter. “It’s just that I lost my umbrella. My dad will be angry. If he’s drunk he’ll hit me. And he’s always drunk.”
“Now, now,” the man in Buddhist monk clothes said soothingly, “I’m sure he cares much more about you being home and safe than he cares about you losing your umbrella. Why don’t I take you home? It’s not good for you to be out here in the rain like this.”
Suguru watched as the boy slowly stood, concern morphing to alarm as the boy slipped in the puddle and would have fallen if Suguru hadn’t caught him, scooping the young sorcerer up in his arms. The boy was completely soaked, skin cold and waxy-looking and his lips blue as he clutched fingers weakly in Suguru’s robes, shivering, breathing slow and shallow, pulse feeble.
“Can you tell me where you live?” Suguru asked him.
The boy pointed out into the dark.
Frowning, Suguru called up more cursed spirits, sending them out into the night. If the boy had come from the Zen’in estate, it couldn’t be that far.
His cursed spirits found it, but it turned out to be a lot farther than he’d have thought. How had the young boy wandered so far in the night?
“Were you out here all alone?” he asked the boy as he walked with him hugged to his chest, quickening his pace in the rain. The boy nodded, and then shook his head, and then nodded again, and then shook his head again and then buried his face against Suguru, nodding against his collarbone, shivering. Suguru frowned further. “How long have you been out here?” The boy just shook his head.
Suguru tsked and called up one of his larger flying cursed spirits, getting atop with the boy as the smaller ray floated as a makeshift umbrella above their heads, the larger spirit beneath them taking them up above the tops of the trees, Suguru eyeing the low clouds that lit with purple glow with every distant lighting flash, realizing that he’d never tested out if flying cursed spirits attracted lightning. He’d just keep his cursed energy ready just in case.
Fortunately they made it to the edge of the Zen’in property without incident, although he was growing progressively more and more concerned about the shivering boy in his arms. He offered to take the boy in, but the boy just mumbled no, it was fine, he could make it back from there, if Suguru tried to step through he’d just trigger the barrier, it wasn’t that far, he’d be fine.
Suguru was somewhat dubious, but he relented and set the boy down, watching him go, the boy pausing to look back at him and say, “Thank you, Suguru-kun, for going out of your way.”
“Of course,” Suguru said. I’d always go out of my way to help a fellow sorcerer. “Be well and don’t wander around in the rain alone at night by yourself from now on, okay?”
There was a lightning flash, and in the brief moment of brilliant illumination Suguru saw gold eyes beneath black hair and blue lips that may have mouthed Mō teokureda, ‘It’s already too late,’ or else may have mouthed, Mochironda, ‘Of course.’
By the time Suguru had blinked the after-image from his vision, Zen’in Naoya was gone.
Suguru’s sleeves and front were wet from holding the soaked child. As he turned to go, he felt like there was something he should remember, but for the life of him could not.
Maybe it was that somewhere along the way of helping Naoya back to the Zen’in estate and being concerned about the child’s welfare, he’d completely forgotten what he was doing in Kyoto rather than Tokyo.
It was only later that Suguru remembered that, in the inventory of the cursed spirit that he’d gotten from Zen’in Toji after the man’s death, he actually had an umbrella, albeit a rather small one, portable and black. The least he could have done was give it to the child for the last leg of his journey home.
It was a few days after the night in the rain when Satoru, something having been niggling at him the entire time since, thought that he should really stop by at the Zen’in estate to make sure that Naoya really had gotten home safely.
When he got there and asked, Zen’in Naobito, with a can of beer, stared at him and deadpanned, “Is this a joke?”
“Why would it be a joke?”
“Naoya’s been dead for ten years.”
Thunder crashed in Satoru’s chest. “Huh??”
Naobito took a swig of his beer, looking at Satoru with narrowed eyes. “You can’t have not known this. He died at age nine, the morning after Toji left. From hypothermia, because he’d gone out into the rain without an umbrella or rain gear, chasing after the no-good failure. Nobody knew he’d gone out. We found him in the morning passed out on the engawa. We woke him up but he was delirious and we weren’t able to save him." The old man peered at Satoru with beady eyes. "Although, now that I think about it, he did mention your name in his delirium. Said something about a cafe and you buying him green tea. But he also said that Geto Suguru brought him back and was wearing monk robes. And this was all ten years ago, mind you, and he was completely delirious when he said it.”
Satoru felt dizzy and vertiginous, hand going to his head. “What. What even. But I swear it was—just last night, it was raining and—”
“I don’t know what dream you had, but if Naoya were alive, he’d be nineteen, now,” Naobito stated. “And it didn’t rain here last night. It hasn’t rained here all week.”
Satoru sat down. Cross-legged, on the ground, clutching his head. “What,” he breathed. “What the fuck.”
“You really should have known that he was dead already,” Naobito told him. “You must have heard the news. That the Zen’in clan lost their heir. Well, maybe the news that we got Toji’s son with the Ten Shadows Technique blotted it out.”
Toji’s son, Toji—that’s right, hadn’t Toji’s last words been something about returning an umbrella?
“Any last words?”
“Nah. Ah… I never did return that umbrella. Wonder how Naoya’s doing now.”
Right, that was right—at the time, Satoru had thought it strange that Toji hadn’t known that Zen’in Naoya was dead. How had he forgotten? Both Toji’s last words, and that Naoya was dead?
And wait, why would Suguru have been wearing monk robes if he met Naoya that night? He didn’t don the monk robes until after Toji’s death, and Naoya was long dead by then. But then, Satoru hadn’t bought Naoya green tea ten years ago that rainy night, had he? It had been only just a few nights ago—in a dream? But he’d had to lay his clothes out to dry because they’d been soaked through by the rain. And why would Naoya have mentioned the same thing happening ten years ago when it hadn’t happened?
Satoru made a noise of frustration as his fingers clenched in his hair. “I don’t understand.”
Naobito hmphed above him. “You’re tired and overworked and clearly had a strange dream. Just go home, Six Eyes.”
So Satoru went home, and when he checked the pocket of his dried clothes, he found a receipt for a decaf latte and a green tea.
When he looked up the name of the cafe, it didn’t exist.
He wondered if he was still dreaming.
It was dark and raining, the raindrops pitter-pattering, and Mahito was skipping and splashing through puddles sing-songing cheerfully, “Splishity-splashity! Splishity-splashity! Lightning-flashity! Thunder-crashity! Splishity-splashity! Raindrops-smashity!”
Presently, he noticed splashing behind him, and turned to see that he’d gained a follower, a young boy in traditional hakama and hakamashita, with black hair and eyes that shone gold when they caught the light of the streetlamp, who was splashing in the puddles behind him and copying his movements.
“Follow the Leader, yay!” Mahito said, spreading his arms out to his sides as he went back to splashing through puddles in the empty parking lot. “Splishity-splashity-boo! Splishity-splashity-whoo! Flashity-crashity, monster-mashity, ghost-bashity, BOO!” He whirled around and hopped into the puddle right in front of the boy, splashing him, crouching down and hugging his legs as he smiled up at the boy. They were both completely soaked, clothes and hair sticking to them. “You’re pretty young for a special-grade vengeful spirit. This is your Domain, right? It’s pretty advanced, I’m not even sure how I ended up here!”
“I’m not sure how it works,” the boy said, wiping the water from his gold eyes. “It’s not like I trap anyone here. People just wander in, and then they wander out again.”
“Hmm,” Mahito smiled up at him. “How’d you like to join our curse group? There’s four of us! Five if you count the guy who’s not a curse!”
The boy blinked down at him. “Really?”
“Of course!” Mahito said, jumping to his feet and clapping his hands together. “Of course, it does require us getting out of here first!”
“I don’t know how to get out,” the boy mumbled, looking down at the puddle they were standing in, his soaked socks and sandals, Mahito’s soaked sneakers. The rain fell on them, sheets of it gusting in the wind, blowing like cold needle-curtains.
“Hmm,” Mahito hummed, tapping his lip with a finger. “That is a bit of a problem. You said people just wander in and then wander out again?”
The boy nodded.
Mahito hummed contemplatively again and then said, “Well!” as he reached into his pocket, “Let’s see if my phone still works!” Usually phones didn’t work in Domains, as they didn’t work in barriers, but since this seemed like a strange Open Domain, Mahito figured he’d try his luck. He also wasn’t sure if the water would have damaged his phone, but wonder of wonders! His phone screen lit up, he was able to swipe to Geto’s number, the phone rang twice and Geto picked up.
“Mahito. Where are you?”
“I’m stuck in a rainy Open Domain!” Mahito said blithely. “Neither me nor the child vengeful ghost whose Domain it is know how to get out! Humbly requesting help!”
Geto gave a longsuffering sigh. “Alright, where and how did you end up in this Domain?”
“I don’t know that either!”
Geto mumbled irritably, and then quieted. “A—rainy Open Domain, you said? With a child vengeful ghost?”
“Yup! Dark, rainy, thunder and lightning, kid’s I don’t-know-how-old but he’s little, a boy, black hair, gold eyes.”
There was a pause. “Is the boy’s name Zen’in Naoya, by any chance?”
Mahito glanced over at the boy. “Is your name Zen’in Naoya, by any chance?”
The boy’s gold eyes widened slightly and he nodded.
“He nodded Yes,” Mahito said into the phone. “You know him?”
“I… may have encountered him and his Domain before. Or, well, this body encountered him and his Domain, at least. I… may have some idea how to get in. And out.”
“Nifty,” Mahito said.
“The child’s cold and he was alone, right? Keep him company, and maybe see if you can do anything to keep him warm.”
“Uhm, last I checked, I’m not Jogo and am not a living fire mountain.”
“Just carry him or something.”
“Never carried a kid before.”
“He’s small, just pick him up beneath the arms and set him on your hip with his legs around you. It’s not that hard. I’m sure you can do it, Mahito.”
“Hai~” Mahito said, and hung up the phone, sliding it back into his pocket and looking down at the boy. “Well! Geto may know how to get in and out, and apparently I’m supposed to carry you, so—hup!” he picked the boy up beneath the harms and set him on his hip, so that the boy’s legs were on either side of him, the boy’s arms circling easily around his neck. “That wasn’t so hard!”
The boy’s brow was furrowed slightly. “Geto? You mean Geto Suguru?”
“Yup!” Mahito confirmed. “You know him?”
“He helped me home once,” the boy said, though he seemed slightly confused. “I think.”
“Well, he’s coming to get us, so we just have to hang tight until then,” Mahito said, and the boy just nodded and then buried his cold wet face against Mahito’s neck. His slow, shallow breaths tickled.
Toji didn’t know how long he wandered in the dark in the rain and the storm. The wind kept blowing his umbrella—Naoya’s umbrella, the umbrella that Naoya had given him because he hadn’t had one of his own—the wind kept blowing it inside-out, and he had to keep pausing to fix it, set it back right again, till finally one of the ribs wasn’t snapping back right and was staying bent and limp, the canopy sagging, and then it caught on a branch and tore, and then the wind ripped most of the rest off and it didn’t keep the rain off at all anymore. But he’d been soaked to the bone by that point, anyway, and Playful Cloud was the only other thing he had with him and it didn’t work as an umbrella any better. Light-colored sweatshirt sticking to his skin that he didn’t recognize as his because all his sweatshirts were black. He didn’t recognize the pants he was wearing, either, nor the shoes, although they all fit well enough, if you didn’t count the sticking to his skin because of the water that saturated him.
He didn’t know how long he’d been wandering in the storm, in the dark and the rain. Didn’t know quite what was driving him on or where he was going, just remembered Naoya giving him that wide penetrating look in the lamplight as he pressed the umbrella into his hand and saying, “Return it sometime, Toji-kun.” Remembered the boy slipping in a puddle, falling flat and getting completely wet but scrambling up and continuing running back from where he’d come into the dark. Remembered a twisting in his stomach that he’d ignored as he’d lifted the umbrella above his head to block the streetlight and rain, a twisting that had never truly left but had maybe subsided, but had returned with a vengeance and was strangling his insides, now.
Where are you, Naoya?
The rain made it hard to track the boy’s sent, and it certainly wiped all traces of footprints away.
It really was storming hard, and on top of that it was cold. And Naoya had come out into all that, alone, just to give Toji his umbrella, and had run back towards home without it? He’d followed Toji so far from the estate.
Toji felt half asleep, or else felt like he’d finally woken up from a dream, because what had he been thinking, letting Naoya go back alone, and without an umbrella? But Toji at the time had just been so focused on getting away, and Naoya was—
Naoya wasn’t his problem, he’d told himself, turning and heading to the train station with his hand threatening to crack the umbrella’s plastic handle. What a flimsy little thing, and it may have been more than enough for a kid but from tip to tip spread open it barely covered the breadth of his shoulders, but he supposed it would have been difficult for Naoya to run in the night with a larger one. It wasn’t like he’d needed the umbrella, anyway, and it wasn’t like it even did anything when he was already soaked through. But it had done something, maybe, as he’d walked through the rain with the drops pattering on the canopy above his head, feeling just a little more protected within the world, a little less desolate and solo in the dark of the storm.
For a long time, that umbrella had been his only possession aside from the clothes on his back. One of the women he’d slept with had borrowed it, once, and he’d rarely been so furious in his life.
“Return it sometime, Toji-kun.”
What would he have done if he’d lost it?
He hadn’t really ever planned to go back. The umbrella had just been something that was tying him to someone, tying him to Naoya, when without it he would have been utterly alone, no ties to anyone. Ultimately, he’d been more invested in keeping it than returning it, because once the promise was fulfilled there would be nothing tying him to Naoya anymore. So he didn’t understand why it was so imperative that he return the umbrella now—
No, what he didn’t understand was why he hadn’t realized, before, that by keeping the umbrella he was keeping Naoya alone. That by holding on to the umbrella, he was abandoning Naoya, who was waiting for him. Naoya who’d run off alone into the dark and the rain and the cold, drenched to the bone. Eyes gold in the lamplight and the skin beneath his nails turning blue.
Blue, blue like those eyes that had looked at him strangely as Gojo Satoru had said, “Zen’in Naoya? Zen’in Naoya’s been dead for years. He died as a kid, he never even entered Kyoto Tech.”
Toji’s step stumbled, shoes sloshing in a puddle, but then he kept going, moving faster, rain on his face like furious tears.
No, no, no, no—
But now everything was coming back, and he wanted to roar with the thunder, howl with the wind, rend the very sky itself like the lightning above him.
There was the sound of metal scraping over wet cement, and Mahito looked over to see a man step out of the deep shadows, light sweater sticking to a muscular chest. He was dragging a three-sectioned staff with one hand. His other held the skeletal remnants of an umbrella. His eyes had black sclera and light irises and his gaze seemed zeroed in on the boy in Mahito’s arms.
“Uhm,” Mahito said. “Do you know him, by any chance?”
“Toji-kun,” the boy murmured.
“He looks dangerous.”
The boy smiled, cold lips against Mahito’s skin. “He is. But not to me.” The boy shivered.
It was sort of hard to determine cursed energy in the rainy domain, but either the man or the weapon he was dragging had a lot of it. At the very least, it probably wasn’t the skeletal remnants of umbrella, which the man, once in front of them, held towards them, up above them, as if the empty air between its bent and damaged ribs would keep off the rain that pelted them.
“I’m late,” the man said, quiet, breathy.
The boy sobbed in Mahito’s arms. “You’re too late. I’m dead already, Toji-kun. And so are you.”
The man’s eyelids lowered slightly over black sclera, light irises that in the streetlight shone pale blue. He handed the sad skeletal umbrella to Mahito. “Better late than never.”
The boy sobbed again, burying his face in Mahito’s neck.
“I don’t think this umbrella is going to help anything,” Mahito remarked, glancing up at it as he lifted and lowered it in the air, blinking at the rain that fell through its gaps onto his face.
The man exhaled, pale wisps of hot steam. “I’ve got to go.”
“I know,” Naoya answered, speech slurred, fingers curled weakly in Mahito’s black shawl. “I know.”
The man turned to leave, light sweatshirt clinging wetly to his shoulder blades, pooling heavily at the base of his spine. “I’m sorry, Naoya.”
“It’s my fault,” Naoya mumbled indistinctly. “I knew you weren’t coming back. But still I didn’t want to go back inside without you. I just… didn’t want to be alone.”
The man stood there frozen for a long moment, streetlight glancing off the wet planes of him, the water dripping from his sopping clothes and hair, running in rivulets over the skin of his neck and muscled forearms where his sleeves were rolled up. Then he continued walking, dragging the three-sectioned staff gratingly over the cement, through puddles, back into the dark.
Mahito looked back up at the bent and broken skeletal remains of umbrella, flapping it in the raindrops that were falling on them. The boy was sobbing in his arms again, shivering. Mahito pursed his lips and flapped the flimsy metal contraption again.
“I really don’t think this umbrella is going to help anything…”
Kenjaku had an idea of how Zen’in Naoya’s Domain worked, from Geto Suguru’s experience with it, and from what he knew about the boy’s death.
Zen’in Naoya had died at age nine from hypothermia, on the night that Zen’in Toji had left, a cold rainy night like his Domain. When Geto Suguru had found him there, he’d clearly been exhibiting the symptoms of his core body temperature having dropped too low. Confusion and memory loss were among the symptoms, but Kenjaku found it notable how the boy had been the most confused about whether or not he’d been alone, especially considering that Geto Suguru had been uncharacteristically alone when he’d ended up in the Domain, having usually been with his ‘family’. But on that night, Geto Suguru had been feeling especially alone, and missing Gojo Satoru. He’d wandered out of the Domain after he’d dropped Naoya off and had, because of the child, been thinking about his ‘family’ again.
If Kenjaku’s hypothesis was correct, getting into Zen’in Naoya’s Domain was going to be much more challenging—or at least much more unpleasant—than getting out of it again.
First, though, he gathered supplies to take with him.
Death from hypothermia was caused by complete failure of the heart and respiratory system. Primary treatment was to warm the body back up to normal temperature. So first he made a thermos of hot tea, and then he gathered up blankets, and some of Mimiko and Nanako’s old clothes that were relatively gender-neutral and which he estimated were about the right size, possibly a bit big (that being much better than too small) and then he threw them all in the dryer for a bit to warm them up while he went to find a water-proof duffel bag and a large umbrella. Then he changed out of the Buddhist monk robes into simple black pants and jacket, pulled on rain boots, and then he came back, threw in the blankets with the clothes in the middle so they’d be kept warmest, threw in the thermos of tea, then he closed the duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, took up the umbrella and went out into the night, holding on to the umbrella but not opening it.
It wasn’t actually raining where he was. It was just that it would be raining where he was going. If he could get there.
The problem was that he was pretty sure that ending up in Naoya’s Domain required an acute sense of loneliness, isolation, desolation, abandonment. He would have guessed that it also required missing someone, and would have despaired completely, except that Mahito had ended up in the Domain, and Mahito had no one to miss and sentimentality with which to miss anyone. He was a lot like Kenjaku, in that way. So if Mahito had made it in, assuredly Kenjaku could, too. It would just… require sinking into a place in his mind that he usually steered quite clear of. It was generally an unproductive and childish mindset to be in, after all. But this was the Domain of a child.
Kenjaku inhaled, exhaled, and wandered down the dark streets, the empty streets. He was pretty sure he needed to be utterly alone.
Well, the stray cats probably didn’t count.
He let himself sink into his thoughts. The desolation, the longing, the pain. The Heian Era, the Golden Age of Jujutsu, was long over, and he and Sukuna were the only ones, and Sukuna had spent most of that time as a cursed object, and even now Sukuna was bound in Itadori Yuji, Kenjaku’s son. Over a thousand years of life hopping from body to body with his cursed technique, trying and failing to find what lay beyond sorcerers and cursed spirits, trying and failing, trying and failing. No true company, not any that weren’t fake, this group of cursed spirits and especially Mahito were the closest that he’d had, and yet…
Ah, the loneliness was terrible, yawning wide like an abyss, dark, cold—raindrops in his hair.
He looked around, and he had no idea how he’d gotten there. He wasn’t in the city anymore, was in a town in the mountains it looked like. Empty rainy streets as he realized he’d just stepped off from a train station platform, raising the umbrella above his head. Had he taken the train there? But when he glanced back, the train in the station was dead. He turned and walked out into the night, hefting the duffel bag up from where it had been slipping. He didn’t know where Mahito and Zen’in Naoya were, but given the nature of the Domain, he figured it was inevitable that he’d come across them sooner or later.
The rain was dumping down, the streets were completely deserted. Distant lightning lit the clouds and made them look alive, the distant thunder their dragon-like growling. The buildings were completely dark, the only lights were the solitary streetlamps that lined the road every so often. The ground was covered in rippling puddles, many of them deeper than they looked. He was exceedingly glad he’d worn rain boots and changed into clothes that were easier to keep dry, and to move in should they get wet.
He didn’t know how long he wandered the dark abandoned streets in the cold and the pouring rain. He had the feeling that time didn’t really matter in this Domain, one of those places where he could have been wandering for half an hour or he could have been wandering for half a century and it would have felt the same, time and distance losing all meaning. Especially with how dark it was and how heavy the rain, it was impossible to see how far he’d come, or how far there might be yet to go. He tried counting streetlights, but once he caught himself counting number 70-something he faltered in doubt, wondering if he’d been skipping numbers because he wasn’t paying attention, and then he lost track. Especially since when he paused to open the duffel bag slightly and check the blankets inside, he found them thankfully still warm, which they certainly wouldn’t be if he’d really been wandering in the cold for so long. Although it did feel like it had been an eon, and the loneliness and desolation only grew worse with every step. The feeling that he was the only one, that there was nobody else there, that there never would be, that he would always be alone, abandoned by the very world and everything he had ever held dear.
Clearly an effect of the Domain, probably a pervading atmosphere of Zen’in Naoya’s own feelings. It made him feel a little bad for the child, that he felt like this so completely, that he’d died feeling like this. Not that he was unique in that in any way, countless children were abandoned and left alone and died like that, it certainly wasn’t special. It was just that most children weren’t powerful sorcerers who became vengeful special-graded cursed spirits after death with Domains that could make even someone as self-possessed as Kenjaku feel such devastating ruination.
Ah well, he shouldn’t try to prevent himself from empathizing with the child. Sympathizing with Zen’in Naoya would only aid Kenjaku in getting out again, with both Mahito and the vengeful spirit kid.
Finally he came upon them in a small parking lot lit by a streetlamp, Mahito prancing around in the rain, jumping and splashing in the puddles as he carried the kid in one arm, with the other hand holding a tattered broken umbrella that moved up and down above them as he sang, “Flappity-flap, flappity-flap, metal skeleton bat, flitter-flatter-flutter, squeak-creak-tweak-screech, got him on a leash, flappity-flap, flappity-flap, skeleton wings with the flesh all gone, wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on? Flap! Flap!”
“What are you doing?” Kenjaku asked as he approached, tilting his large umbrella back slightly to regard them.
“Just playing around ‘cause I’m bored,” Mahito said. He flapped the broken umbrella again. “Some guy Naoya called Toji-kun gave of us this broken umbrella. He had black sclera, that’s weird right? Apparently he’s already dead, too, although I couldn’t tell if he was a vengeful ghost or what. This Domain makes it really hard to read cursed energy. He said he was late and apologized. The kid’s been sadder since he came and left, so I’ve also been trying to cheer him up. He’s called me weird, like, twice.”
“Only twice?” Kenjaku said mildly. “Well, I can imagine that he’d be sadder after Toji came and left, considering he supposedly died waiting for Toji. Black sclera, huh? Must be a summoning. It makes sense that someone would summon him at some point, he was strong. He doesn’t have any cursed energy, though.”
“Oh, then the cursed energy must have been the cursed tool,” Mahito said. “Along with the umbrella he was carrying a three-sectioned staff with him.”
“Playful Cloud? Well, it did get taken back by the Zen’in clan after Geto Suguru’s death. I guess he got it back somehow. It really is the perfect weapon for him, I’ll admit.”
The boy in Mahito’s arms looked at him drowsily. “Who’re you?” he slurred. Drowsiness, slurred speech, waxy-looking skin, blued lips and nails, shivers. Kenjaku was sure that if he checked his pulse it would be weak, his breathing assuredly slow and shallow. Definitive symptoms of hypothermia. Of course, he was a vengeful ghost, so he couldn’t actually die, but they were certainly never dissipating the Domain with him like that.
“Why, I’m Geto Suguru, don’t you remember me?” Kenjaku smiled.
“You’re not, you were just talking about Geto Suguru’s death,” the boy mumbled, speech still slurred but his gold eyes were penetrating despite how otherwise lethargic he looked. “Also you’ve got stitches across your forehead and your demeanor is different.”
“Mm, I think I did hear that Zen’in Naoya was supposed to be a little genius before his death,” Kenjaku hummed. “Of course, waiting outside in the cold while soaking wet isn’t a very smart thing to do, but someone with hypothermia usually isn't aware of his or her condition because the symptoms often begin gradually, and the confused thinking associated with hypothermia prevents self-awareness. Additionally, the confused thinking can lead to risk-taking behavior. It wasn’t your fault that Toji didn’t think to worry about you.” He nodded at the tattered, broken umbrella. “Is that the umbrella that you gave to Toji, by any chance? He finally return it to you? It’s in a rather sorry state after all this time. How long did it take him? Fifteen years? That’s rather late indeed.”
The boy mumbled something and buried his face against Mahito’s neck. Mahito’s lightly perplexed expression was rather comical. He looked up at the warped metal ribs of the umbrella and flapped it again, raindrops splashing and glancing off the metal.
They were both so completely soaked, hair and clothing plastered to them, that there was really no point in sharing his own functioning umbrella with them. Much better that he keep himself warm and dry for the moment.
“Well, let’s try to find some shelter, ideally somewhere inside,” he said. “I think I saw a coffee shop with its lights still on a few blocks back.”
He led the way, telling Mahito mildly not to splash him, since Mahito seemed dead-set on making his course through the rain as splashful as was conceivably possible. Well, at least he was having fun. Trust Mahito to feel lonely and isolated enough to end up in this Domain on accident, and then to find a way to have fun with it. Knowing Mahito, he’d probably managed to be cripplingly desolate without even realizing what he was feeling. It was probably better that he didn’t. Ignorance was bliss, and all that. And Mahito was a very, very ignorant curse. Assuredly significantly more ignorant than even the vengeful child spirit of Zen’in Naoya. Although for a vengeful spirit, Zen’in Naoya did not seem particularly malevolent. Kenjaku’s theory was that he was just abandoned and alone and wanted someone to care for him. Kenjaku was pretty sure that had been part of the key of Geto Suguru getting out of the Domain the first time, since he’d carried Naoya ‘home’. Truly, though, the smartest kids had to be watched the closest, because with their keen intelligence that their rational minds hadn’t caught up with they got into the stupidest kinds of trouble. They were like problem cats that got into everything and should never be left alone in the house. The smarter they were, the more lonely they got, and the more lonely they got the more trouble they got into.
Kenjaku could only shake is head. Zen’in Naoya had not been looked after properly. It was a shame, too, because Projection Sorcery was a nice cursed technique. If Kenjaku hadn’t gotten Geto Suguru’s body, and if Zen’in Naoya hadn’t died so young, taking Zen’in Naoya’s body would certainly have been worth considering.
Ah well, things had certainly worked out better this way for Kenjaku. Both getting Geto Suguru’s body, and Zen’in Naoya being a child vengeful spirit with a Domain like this. Kenjaku already had an idea for a use for him. And all he needed to do to get the child on his side was just to care for him the way he should’ve been cared for. Kenjaku had no idea how many people had wandered through Zen’in Naoya’s Domain and failed to give him what he needed. But, well, admittedly they also probably hadn’t come prepared. But to not notice the child had hypothermia, they must’ve been either idiots or else were like Mahito and completely ignorant—but well, nobody was like Mahito, because despite his human-esque nature he was still very much a cursed spirit and not a human. In some ways, he was more curse and less human than Jogo, Hanami and Dagon. Probably why he’d ended up feeling alone enough to end up here.
They got to the lit coffee shop, and found that the door was open, but nobody was inside. Well, no surprise there. It wasn’t actually any warmer within the coffee shop, but at least it was a space that was dry.
Kenjaku had Mahito set the boy down, then he stripped the boy of his wet garments, dressed him in the dryer-heated child clothes he’d brought—they were just a touch too big for him, perfect. Then Kenjaku took off his jacket and stripped off his own shirt, since body heat would warm the child up fastest, and he sat in a chair and hugged the child to his chest and then wrapped the blankets all around them, and then he took the hot thermos of tea he’d placed on the table, opened it and gave it to the child, telling him to drink all of it, but not too fast. The hot liquid would help warm the child up from the inside while the dryer-warmed clothes and Kenjaku’s body heat heated him from without.
Mahito had started to squeeze the water out of his shawl onto the floor. Kenjaku had told him to go to that outside. When Mahito came in, dripping slightly less, Kenjaku told him to do some jumping jacks. Not that Mahito really needed to, but Kenjaku was in full nurse mode.
Zen’in Naoya really was cold. Kenjaku was shivering from hugging the child against him. As Naoya drank the hot tea, Kenjaku hummed softly, slightly rocking him back and forth. Eventually, they were both shivering less. Once Naoya had finished the hot tea and his hypothermia symptoms had decreased, his lips and fingernails no longer blue, his skin no longer so waxy, his pulse no longer so weak and his breathing coming stronger, Kenjaku tucked Naoya’s head beneath his chin and started singing gently.
“La la lu, la la lu, let’s give everyone a glittering star
La la lu, la la lu, a rosy cloud within a dream
La la lu, la la lu, rest your feathery wings, sweet angel
La la lu, la la lu, softly, goodnight, la la lu, la la lu, la la lu~
La la lu, la la lu, rest your feathery wings, sweet angel
La la lu, la la lu, softly, good night, la la lu, la la lu, la la lu~”
As the boy fell asleep in his arms, the Domain dissipated, and Kenjaku found himself seated on a park bench in the dark. At least it wasn’t raining.
“Slight oversight, I am now sitting shirtless in the middle of a park that is very probably closed,” Kenjaku smiled. “Mahito, could you check your phone and see where we are? I hope we’re not too far from Dagon’s Domain.”
“I didn’t know you could sing,” Mahito remarked as he took out his phone to check.
“I can do a lot of things.”
“That so.” Mahito blinked at the screen and then held it for Kenjaku to see. “Nope, not that far.”
“It’s still almost a thirty-minute walk,” Kenjaku huffed. “But true, it could certainly be farther. Hold him for a moment while I put my shirt and jacket back on?”
Mahito took Naoya—it was never not going to be amusing to see Mahito carry a child, he should make Jogo and Hanami take turns doing so as well, they’d assuredly be willing to since Naoya was a cursed spirit at this point—and Kenjaku put his clothes back on, and then wrapped Naoya up in the blankets and took him back from Mahito. He made Mahito carry the duffel bag, thermos and umbrella instead.
“The broken umbrella disappeared,” Mahito noted as he picked up the umbrella that Kenjaku had brought with him.
“That umbrella had long not been real,” Kenjaku told him. “It was as metaphorical in existence as the Domain itself, if you will.”
“Hmmm,” Mahito hummed idly, raising the closed umbrella and jabbing it upwards like he could poke stars into light pollution night sky of the city.
At least there weren’t puddles for the cursed spirit to splash in as they made the thirty-minute walk back to the abandoned building with the room where Dagon’s Domain was.
“We’re back!” Mahito declared as he walked onto the beach.
“We’ve returned with a child, make sure to congratulate us on our new parenthood,” Kenjaku smiled, just to watch Jogo splutter and his volcano head fume.
“You what?!”
«C̶͔̼͚͇̳̆͂ô̶̧̹̺̈͘n̷̼̭͍͖̳̳̥̦͓̽̅͆͋ͅg̶̯̞̗̽͋͌͛̊̂̋ŕ̸͕̖̮̆̂̇̾̽â̸̧̼̞̣̼̩̘͕̙̚t̸͈̬͕̻̙͖̙͆̀ṷ̷̠̭͈͚͛̾̾͌l̶̻̤͗͆̄a̶͈͎̭̝̜͊͂͐̑̔̃̔̎̍͜t̸̨̪̠̯̜̪͋́̋́̈͐̆͗̿ḯ̵͈̯̼̬̖̮̺̉̚ͅő̴̼̎̇́̄̃͛͝n̵̗̖̖͖̼̪̖̪̰̟͌͒̎̑̎̆́̆̈́s̶͚̈́̿͛̀̋̀̓̏̿,̷̟̦͛̑̓̕͝» said Hanami.
“He’s a cursed spirit, what’s the problem?” Mahito said shruggingly, dropping the duffel bag and thermos into the sand and flopping down onto one of the beach chairs. “I’m still all wet.”
“Then you should sit in the sun, not the shade,” Kenjaku told him, moving the sun umbrella away from Mahito’s chair, and then moving away the sun umbrella from the beach chair beside, sitting down and lounging back with the boy in his lap. He cast off his jacket and a few of the blankets, keeping only a single one around the child, figuring it was best at this point to let the boy warm up against him, in the sun and the warm air of the tropical beach.
“Explanation?” Jogo demanded irately.
Kenjaku pet the boy’s damp black hair. It had been a while since he’d held a child. There was always a strange comfort in the action. Even if this child was at the age where he was starting to get a bit big for it. “Mahito accidentally wandered into his Domain and called me to get him out. I thought I’d bring the kid, too, since he’s a vengeful spirit and easily special-grade, considering he has an Open Domain, which I don’t think anyone but Sukuna has ever had. Although Naoya’s here is rather different. Perhaps it shouldn’t be considered an Open Domain, but a Partially Open Domain? It doesn’t quite exist within the real world the way that Sukuna’s does, but it’s also not enclosed within a space the way most Domains are. It’s almost like it exists in a layer over reality, with permeable edges. In whatever case, aren’t you glad for another curse for your curse group?”
Jogo grumbled. “But he’s still a kid, isn’t he?”
“Mahito’s basically a kid,” Kenjaku smiled.
“Attempted insult has missed, I take no offense,” Mahito said, taking his hair out from behind his neck and draping it up over the top of the chair. “Wet hair is such a hassle!”
“It would be less of a hassle if you cut it short,” Kenjaku told him.
“You have long hair too!”
“Oh dear, you are quite right. My bad. In that case, I recommend a hairdryer.”
Mahito actually lifted his head slightly to make a show of looking around. “I don’t see any outlets around here.”
“It’s a beach!” Jogo said. “Why would there by any outlets?! And on top of that it’s a Domain Expansion!”
“There was electricity in Naoya’s Domain Expansion!” Mahito said. He settled back, grumbling. “Dagon is slacking.”
“Well, Dagon does have a sun,” Kenjaku offered. “That’s something that Naoya’s Domain doesn’t have.”
“That’s true,” Mahito relented. “But, huh, they both have a whole lot of water, though. Are watery Domains a thing?”
“Just as much as any other kind of Domain is a thing, I suppose.”
“You still haven’t explain what we’re going to do with a curse kid!” Jogo snapped.
“Play soccer with him when you lose your head the next time!” Mahito said brightly. “Another player for our games! Kids love games! Unlike you, you’re boring.”
Jogo fumed at Mahito, while Hanami said to Kenjaku, «Ÿ̶̧̫͍̻̞̻̬̣̪͚́̔͛̑́̈́̕o̷̰̹̒̊̈́̋̒͆̉͝͠ͅṷ̴̡̟̠̰͔͙͖̟͛ ̴̫̭͚͋̄͗̌̄͑̈́͂̄̑s̷̢̩̮̥͓̓̎a̶̮͖̠̝̜͉̦̱͆̈́̊ͅi̷̱͔͖̻͖̓̄̅̈́̿̒͝d̴̪̝̳͖͂̓̆̄́͂̀̍̂̾ ̶̪̼̳̊̀h̷̺̟̯̟̖̲̪̲̘̟̄̾͆i̴̡̞̹̱̥̯͎͓̠̎́̿̓̎s̴̛̮̗̪̭̰̳͙͙̹̯̊̅̔͋̈̈́̚͝ ̶̨̡̡̞̥̱̇̓̉͌͜n̵̛͙̠̝͈̫̙͕̾̍̊̌͂͗̂a̵̡̛̘̣͇̰͓̗͙̐̚͜m̵̰͓̃͗e̴͉͊̾͌̈́̇̀̓̃͘ ̴̤̥̤͍͕͗í̷͍̪̰͜s̷͎͉̪̀̄̑̎̋̿ ̷̣͈̼̠̉͒͌͑̋̇͆̎̓͠N̸̳̼͕̉͐̔͌͐̽͊̒͘͝a̶̡̛͍̥͍͛͐̈́̃̿͑͗̕̕o̸̜͆̑̆͑͒̇ỷ̴̡̛̙̞̯́̾̀͗̒͝ͅä̵̺͕͉̪͈́́͛͐͒?̸̡͎̔́̉͛͋͒̽̾͠»
“Zen’in Naoya,” Kenjaku confirmed, stroking the boy’s hair, smile growing on his lips. “And I think I know just what to do with him.”
There was thunder rumbling overhead, and everywhere there was falling rain, a cacophony of pattering, striking, splashing. Satoru was… at a train station, that’s right, he was at a train station—why was he at the train station again?—but the station was empty, no train, no people except—there was a boy, a young sorcerer, he was standing outside, not under the roof of the station but out in the rain, standing beneath the streetlight, traditional hakama and hakamashita, tabi socks and zōri sandals, all of him drenched, black hair sticking to his face, gold eyes catching the light of the streetlamp eerily. His skin looked almost waxen.
Satoru didn’t know what he was doing there. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there, or how long he’d been there. He was at a train station at the end of a mountain town, it looked vaguely familiar, like he should know it, but the buildings were all dark, and he didn’t even see the cursed energy of anyone but the boy. The boy was just staring at him silently as the rain fell on him, and those eyes—Satoru knew them from somewhere, didn’t he?
He tried to wave the boy over under the roof, tried to call out to him, but the rain and thunder drowned out his voice and the boy just stared at him silently, so finally Satoru was forced to walk out into the rain, holding up a hand to keep the rain out of his eyes as he walked over the surfaces of the puddles, and then realized like an idiot that he could just use his Infinity to keep the rain off of him so he lowered his hand, bending down to better meet the boy’s gaze. “Hey, what are you doing here?” What am I doing here? “Are you alone? Is there anyone with you?” Is there anyone around here anywhere? Why did Satoru feel like he’d been in this situation before? Like he’d been here before, with this boy before.
The boy shook his head, paused, then nodded, then paused and then shook his head harder, then paused and then nodded again, although uncertainly.
Damn it, which is it?
“Can you tell me where this is?” Satoru tried instead.
“This is the Wasteland of the Lonely,” the boy said quietly, voice nearly drowned out by the rolling thunder and the pounding rain, but his eyes were more riveting than the lightning that lit the dark clouds, “and nobody’s more alone than you, Gojo Satoru.”
There was the sound of metal scraping over wet pavement, and Satoru turned to see—
No way, is that…?!
“Well,” the boy amended quietly, glancing over at the man as well, light sweatshirt and dark pants and shoes, black hair, black sclera, pale irises, scar at the corner of his mouth, “no one’s more alone than you and him.”
“Fushiguro Toji,” Satoru breathed, his heart pounding in his chest.
With one hand, Toji was dragging Playful Cloud. In the other hand, he was holding the tattered remnants of a portable umbrella.
Satoru could only stare as the specter of Toji approached, Toji moving his dark stare to the boy, sloshing through the puddles to stand in front of him.
“Naoya-kun,” Toji said, and it was unmistakably his voice, Satoru could still remember it and hearing it again sent shivers down his spine, and then also Naoya? Zen’in Naoya?
If that was the case, then both of the people he was with were dead. Did that mean that he was dead, too?
“You went out without an umbrella again,” Toji murmured, holding the tattered, useless umbrella out over Naoya’s head for the boy to take.
Naoya took the cracked handle of the umbrella with clumsy, uncoordinated fingers. The skin beneath his nails were blue and he giggled slightly, but it was a heartbroken sound. “It’s too late, Toji-kun. It’s too late.”
Toji turned his dark, hair-raising gaze to Satoru. “And him?”
“He’s the only Heavens,” Naoya said quietly, “that you can tear down, here.”
Toji’s grin widened and he adjusted his grip on Playful Cloud and Satoru’s stomach dropped, even as a tingle of thrill sparked in his veins, a thrill he hadn’t felt in how long? God, it had been years. Satoru’s grin was intensifying with the pounding of his heart.
“Run along home, Naoya,” Toji said, before lunging at Satoru, and Satoru, as he rose into the air and grasped his cursed energy to fling Toji back, barely caught Naoya’s mumbled “Home’s right here, Toji-kun, in the cold and the pouring rain beneath this ruined umbrella and a rumbling dark sky.”
But then the slightly slurred words were forgotten as Satoru could only focus on fighting Toji again, but when he did finally think to check for Naoya, the boy was gone from underneath the streetlight.
In the 299 seconds after activating his Limitless Void for 0.02 seconds, Satoru annihilated the approximately 1,000 transfigured humans who were released within B5F of the Fukutoshin line. At the end of the platform, he was panting from exertion.
“You know, Satoru…”
That voice, familiar, too familiar, and Satoru whirled to see Geto Suguru step out, a hand on the back of a young boy but that wasn’t just a boy. That was a special-grade vengeful spirit.
That was Zen’in Naoya.
And that man was not Geto Suguru.
“Who are you?” Satoru demanded.
“Rude,” the fake Suguru pouted. “Obviously I’m Geto Suguru. Have you forgotten me already? Well, probably not, we were best friends after all. But maybe you’ve forgotten who this here is?”
“That’s Zen’in Naoya, and he’s dead,” Satoru said. “And that’s the body of Geto Suguru, and he’s also dead. I don’t know who you are, but we were never best friends.”
“Oh my, was I so obvious?” the fake Suguru smiled obscenely, and then he pulled on the stitches that stretched across his forehead, popping open the top of his skull, revealing a brain inside with a mouth. Brain fluid leaked down over Suguru’s face, Suguru swiping his tongue out to lick it, two mouths grinning at Satoru. “What gave it away?” Naoya looked up at him curiously, and then over at Satoru curiously.
Satoru was quaking with rage.
“As I was saying,” the brain inside Geto Suguru’s body spoke, somehow still with Suguru’s voice, “I actually originally had a different plan for you, Satoru. But I think this one suits you better.” He clapped Naoya on the shoulder before reaching up and closing his skull, beginning to redo the stitching as he turned. “I leave him with you, Naoya-kun.”
Satoru started to move, to go after the fake Geto, but Naoya turned back to look at him and froze him with his wide gold eyes, because it was—
Looking at his childhood reflection but the colors were wrong.
Still it froze him solid, made his heart pound as the boy with black hair and wide gold eyes placed one hand over the back of his other, curling the fingers of his top hand between the loosely straightened fingers of his bottom hand.
“Domain Expansion: Wasteland of the Lonely.”
“Warm,” was the first thing Naoya said when he woke up on Kenjaku’s chest in the sun on the tropical beach, squirming and sitting up and covering his eyes, brow scrunching in bewilderment. “Hot, bright. The ocean?” He turned to squint through his fingers at the crashing waves, then regarded the rest of the beach, the cursed spirits there, then looked down at Kenjaku beneath him, lowering his hand as his eyes adjusted, reaching out instead to brush his fingers over the stitching across Kenjaku’s forehead. “You never told me who you are.”
“I’ve gone by many names over the years,” Kenjaku told him smilingly. “In this body you can just call me Geto to make it easy.”
Naoya considered him and then said, “Geto-san.” Interesting. He’d called the original Geto Suguru ‘Suguru-kun.’ “You…” the cursed youth regarded him in puzzlement. “You got me out of there.”
“I did,” Kenjaku agreed, reaching up to brush the dried black hair out of the boy’s admittedly rather striking gold eyes. He kept his voice soft, gentle, lulling. “You were waiting in there for over fifteen years, weren’t you? That’s a long time to be freezing to death in the rain. I’m sure it felt like even longer.”
“Time loses its meaning once you’re dead,” Naoya murmured, gaze gone distant. They were rather profound words for a child. “Your life no longer has an end, so there’s only eternity. That’s how long I was planning on waiting.”
“For Toji?” Kenjaku asked gently. He’d noticed the way Naoya was leaning wantingly into his touches, so he cupped the boy’s cheek and let him press into the touch of his palm. To call the boy ‘touch-starved’ would probably not have been inapt.
“For…” Naoya’s brow furrowed, his lips pursing. He seemed to be deeply thinking, or at least as deeply as a child of his mental age could think. “I knew Toji wasn’t coming back,” he said quietly, after several long moments, his gaze lowered, the angle truly highlighting how uniquely long and dark they were. “And I knew that even if he did come back, he’d just leave again. So I guess I was just waiting…” his voice dropped even softer, barely a breath giving life to the murmur: “to no longer feel so alone.”
“Mm,” Kenjaku hummed, brushing his thumb over the cursed boy’s cheek. He’d expected as much. “Can you tell me the name of your Domain?”
Naoya’s gold eyes widened slightly, and he nodded, but he seemed reluctant to speak, his gaze going over to Mahito was lounging in the chair beside them rather obviously watching and listening, Naoya looking away again, fingers fidgeting a little with the fabric of Kenjaku’s shirt.
“Is it embarrassing?” Kenjaku asked teasingly, kindly. He tapped the side of his face in front of his ear. “C’mere, you can whisper it in my ear. I won’t tell.” He let his smile grow a little, take on a hint of devilishness. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”
The boy regarded him for a long moment, and then finally he leaned in and murmured the name in Kenjaku’s ear, breath moist, warm, a stark contrast to how it had been in his cold rainy Domain. Mahito extended his ear to try to hear it, but Kenjaku surreptitiously batted his extended ear away, making Mahito pout as he returned his ear to normal.
“Mm, a very fitting name,” Kenjaku told Naoya, rubbing the boy’s back as he pulled away. “Tell me, as a vengeful spirit, can you still use your Projection Sorcery?” Naoya looked at him curiously and nodded. “Very good,” Kenjaku smiled, continuing to stroke the boy’s back. “You’re a very valuable ally to have, Naoya-kun. Such a shame for you to have been abandoned like that. Nobody realized what they were throwing away.” Kenjaku’s hand kept up its ministrations as Naoya’s eyes beaded up with glimmering, sun-kissed tears, and then he was leaning forward and burying his face in Kenjaku’s chest, fingers clenching in Kenjaku’s shirt as he shook with silent sobs and Kenjaku wrapped both arms securely around him as he soothed, “Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Naoya shook harder, but he still didn’t make a sound.
Unfortunate child.
Kenjaku almost truly felt bad for him.
“It’s creepy as hell seeing him be parental,” Jogo grumbled as he eyed Geto showing the young vengeful ghost how to make a sand castle.
«Í̷̫̗̖͕͆́̈́ ̵͎͕̲͉̟͖̞̣͙̄͗̽͒̌̀͆ͅt̴̥̦͎̎́͌͌͊ḩ̷̢̫̰͇̗̏̾͆͗̇͋̽̔̌̚ī̷̯̟͋̕͜n̶̢̖̞͙̥̱͖̏̐k̶̝̃̃̆̃̄́̕͝ ̷̧̢̺͓̟̉̒̀̀́͘͜͜ͅi̵̫̠̻̱̓̏́t̵͉͎̲̒́'̴͓̮̖̖̟͍̫̐͆͒͗̈́̈́̓̚͘ͅs̷̲̖̱͍̠̜͉̖̱̐͌ ̴̬̰̽͛c̷̠̘̼͓̹̦̏̌̀͜ų̵͂̔͠t̸̡͍̭͉̆͗̂̏̚͝ȩ̶͖̺̮͚̳̗͒͠,̶̰̞̭̖̞̏̐̿̃̾̒̄» Hanami said in their strange exotic language that creepily imparted its meaning straight into one’s head.
“Of course you do,” Jogo muttered.
“You know that humans have many sides,” Mahito told him airily, carelessly tossing one of the sectioned-off pieces of his dried hair. “It shouldn’t be that surprising that he acts different with a kid. Besides, as far as kids go, this one’s pretty cute, don’t you think? I mean, just look at those big gold eyes.” He waved enthusiastically to get Geto and Naoya to look over at them, Geto smiling with closed eyes as he waved cheerfully back while the vengeful spirit kid just stared curiously, and in Jogo’s opinion his eyes were creepy, they were too round and too gold and too pale and they stared too much. It wasn’t quite as creepy as Hanami speaking, but almost.
After the curse kid had made a small uncertain wave at Mahito and then gone back to working on the sand castle with Geto, Mahito continued flippantly, “It his Domain it was pretty uncanny though because he looked kind of like a wax doll, his skin was all cold and weird.” He grinned as he patted Jogo unnecessarily heavily on the shoulder. “Fortunately we have you to keep us warm, Jogo!”
“Just kindly don’t set everything on fire again,” Kenjaku said melodically as he walked over, leading the the curse kid by the hand. “It creates such a mess.” He looked down at the child and smiled, before beginning to gesture with rather pretentious elegance. “Naoya-kun, I think I forgot to introduce you officially to everyone, my bad. That’s Mahito, you know him already. This is Jogo with the volcano head, the cherry tree is Hanami—that one’s easy to remember—and then hiding over there behind that palm tree is Dagon, we’re in his Domain right now, I’m not sure why he thinks that tree hides him. Everyone, this is special-grade vengeful spirit Zen’in Naoya.”
The creepy-eyed curse kid looked at them each in turn and then bowed slightly. “Nice to meet you, Mahito-kun, Jogo-kun, Hanami-chan,” he even turned to bow in Dagon’s direction, the ocean spirit shrinking back further behind his palm tree, “Dagon-kun.”
“So polite,” Geto smiled, with that glint in his eyes that Jogo never liked. “Everyone, Naoya-kun here’s going to be the key to our success. Treat him well.”
Naoya watched Toji and Gojo Satoru fight from underneath a tree, clutching the busted umbrella as best as he could with fingers clumsy and numb. He shivered, and wiped at the water that ran down his face, smiling slightly with lips quivering.
“Geto-san was right,” he mumbled, speech slurring slightly as his pale gaze followed the battle, Gojo Satoru in the dark rainy air like a god of the storm that Toji was trying to tear down, running over puddles and vaulting with his staff, grinning like a demon with eyes of cold death. “Put the two of them together, and they’ll never find the way out.”
He shivered harder, hugged the useless umbrella to him, its ribs arching warped and empty over his head, and told himself it was all rain on his face, no tears.
“It’s too late, Toji-kun. It’s too late. I’m already dead, and so are you.”
The umbrella wouldn’t help anything anymore. But it was all that Toji had to give.
At this point, there wasn’t anything he could do but bring down the very Heavens, that man who had said, “Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the honored one,” who had said like it was nothing at all, “Zen’in Naoya’s been dead for years. He died as a kid, he never even entered Kyoto Tech.”
Naoya’s skin was waxen and his lips were blue and his clothes soaked through and his gold eyes said, I died looking up to you.
There wasn’t anything Toji could do, now, except give Naoya something worth having looked up to, and bring Gojo Satoru out of his Infinity and into the cold, the rain, the dark, the storm, as human and helpless and desolate as the two of them who were already dead.
Come join us down here, Gojo. Wanna see those lips turn as blue as those eyes and see that skin look plastic and hard like you really are too perfect to be alive.
To that end, Toji was willing to rend the very world, like the cracking lightning, the roaring thunder, the ululating wind.
Satoru could accept, at this point, that he truly did feel the most alive when he was the closest to death.
That only ever had been while fighting Fushiguro Toji.
Satoru was never so close to being a god as he was in gold and black skies, sunlight and rain falling around him, Toji defying cursed energy and gravity with sheer physical prowess and power of will, that grin as wide as a crescent moon and eyes on fire like the ghost-hearts of flame, where the fire burned hottest but was hardest to see.
“I’ll kill you!” was the echoing sound of Satoru’s lullaby, the song in his ears with the cacophonous pattering of rain, “Nobody’s more alone than you, Gojo Satoru. No one but him.”
There was distant rumbling of thunder that he could feel through his bones and the water soaking his back as the dark sky above him laughed with lavender light, leaving yellow behind his eyelids, not quite gold but it reminded him of Naoya’s eyes all the same.
Was I really alone, Zen’in Naoya? He thought of Suguru, of his fellow classmates, thought of his students, thought of Toji. My life wasn’t a bad one. It wasn’t bad at all.
I think that nobody’s more alone than you, Naoya, with your home in the cold and the pouring rain beneath a ruined umbrella and a rumbling dark sky
Naoya didn’t know what happened, but Geto never came back, and neither did Mahito, nor any of the others. He’d more or less expected it. Eventually, Toji got through Satoru’s Infinity, and then Satoru was lying in a puddle that was growing dark in the lamplight, and Toji was walking back over to him dragging his three-sectioned staff.
Naoya stood clumsily, stumbled over through the puddles. Toji caught him, steadied him. Naoya pressed the busted handle of the tattered skeletal umbrella into Toji’s hand.
“Return it sometime, Toji-kun.”
Toji bent down to press cold scarred lips against Naoya’s forehead, making him shiver, and then turned, useless umbrella held above his head, and walked past Gojo Satoru’s corpse in the light of the streetlamp and into the dark.
Geto-san had been right; Toji’s summoned soul really was like a shikigami in Naoya’s Domain, a sure-hit technique that couldn’t be beat.
“Between Toji-kun and Mahoraga, who do you think would win?” Geto had asked him.
“Toji-kun,” Naoya had said immediately.
“So do you believe that if Toji-kun and Gojo Satoru were to fight to the death, that Toji-kun would win?”
Naoya had believed it like he’d never believed that Toji would come back.
“Very well, I believe you, Naoya-kun. And your Wasteland of the Lonely is very singular as far as Domains go. So Naoya-kun, this is what I’m going to need you to do—”
Naoya had more or less known that trapping and killing Gojo Satoru was all that Geto had needed him for. Naoya had expected Geto not to return, like he had expected that Toji would never return, but just like with Toji, it still hurt when he never did. Naoya crouched at the edge of the bloody puddle that Gojo Satoru lay in and watched the rain fall on and around his unchanging corpses. His bright blue Six Eyes were pretty even when he was dead, staring sightlessly.
Toji’s summoned soulless body and Gojo Satoru’s lifeless corpse were the only company he had.
Still he sang softly to himself in the pounding rain, shivering, speech slurring,
“La la lu, la la lu, let’s give everyone a glittering star
La la lu, la la lu, a rosy cloud within a dream
La la lu, la la lu, rest your feathery wings, sweet angel
La la lu, la la lu, softly, goodnight, la la lu, la la lu, la la lu~
La la lu, la la lu, rest your feathery wings, sweet angel
La la lu, la la lu, softly, good night, la la lu, la la lu, la la lu~”