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~”
Notes:
Included the link in the chapter as well, but for the record, the song, sung by Suguru/Kenjaku's VA, is Suguru Getō (CV: Takahiro Sakurai) - LALALU. Japanese lyrics and English translation included in video.
Chapter 2: Thunderstorm Sounds, Fire Sounds
Chapter Text
There was something very strange going on, Sukuna knew, looking around. He was in some foreign mountain town in the middle of a thunderstorm at night, he had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten there.
Interesting.
Clearly he was in some kind of Domain; there wasn’t really any other explanation for it. The easiest way to deal with it would be to open his own Domain Expansion, but it was a novel phenomenon and he was curious, so he decided to go along with the situation for the time being. Usually time didn’t pass in these kinds of reality-bending Domains, so it wasn’t like he’d be getting any older. With Gojo Satoru having disappeared, there wasn’t any sorcerers in this age that were particularly worth his attention anymore anyway, defeating the rest would be a cakewalk, so it certainly wasn’t like he had much better to do. In any case, the rain wasn’t even an issue, he could just raise his body temperature with his fire technique so that all the raindrops evaporated to steam before they could even hit him.
In that manner, he walked down the dark, empty streets. He could sense no lifeforms anywhere, and despite giving the feel of a small mountain town that shouldn’t have had a downtown longer than a block, this town blacked out ghost town seemed to go on forever. The only lights were the streetlamps dotting the road ever dozen or so meters, always at the point where the light from the last lamp had been rendered distant and useless. Sukuna resisted the urge to count the streetlamps, since doing so would obviously be in vain. The number didn’t matter to this space of this place.
All in all, it wasn’t an unpleasant environment. He appreciated the darkness and the fierceness of the storm, and the lack of life had a liminal, eerie tranquility to it. It was rather calming, if anything, which was also the most alarming thing about it, so Sukuna kept an eye on himself and made sure not to let it lull him. The way the Domain prevented him from recollecting how he’d even gotten there was especially strange and noteworthy.
It was one of those spaces where an hour and a century felt more or less the same, and no matter which duration of time had passed it didn’t really matter, but the most noteworthy thing about all that was that there truly didn’t seem to be anything particularly malevolent about the Domain. It was likely an unconscious creation rather than a conscious one, although it was clearly a powerful one, easily ‘special-grade’ by modern sorcerer standards. It had a complexity to it that bespoke intelligence, although it also had a simplicity to it that bespoke emotional immaturity and lack of refinement.
It all made sense when he found that the vengeful spirit was a kid. A few more things made sense when he saw Gojo Satoru’s corpse.
“Did you do this?” Sukuna asked him, gesturing at Gojo Satoru’s body.
The boy—black hair, notably gold eyes, waxen-looking skin and blue lips as if from the cold, traditional Japanese attire and of course he was completely saturated by the rain—shook his head.
“Toji-kun did.” He slurred slightly when he spoke. His gold eyes regarded Sukuna, alighting on his second pair of eyes and then the tattoos on his face, arms and torso, the boy mumbling questioningly, “Ryomen Sukuna?”
Sukuna grinned at him. “The one and only.” Clearly the boy was a sorcerer family child, to be able to recognize and place him.
“So even the King of Curses gets lonely,” the boy slurred quietly, gaze on Gojo Satoru’s corpse in the puddle in front of him. “I guess that makes sense. You’re very alone.”
“What makes you say that?” Sukuna asked, more curious than insulted, since this seemed like it wasn’t just a throwaway comment but was actually important to something.
“This is the Wasteland of the Lonely,” the boy mumbled, hugging his legs to his chest. “People who are alone and lonely wander in… and then eventually they wander out again.”
“A Semi-Open Domain,” Sukuna said musingly, thumb and forefinger to his chin. “What’s the trick to getting out, then?”
The boy hesitated slightly, seeming not entirely certain. “There… are a couple ways, I think. The easiest is… remembering what you have to go back to. People who need you, things you have to do, the like.”
“And the hard way?” Sukuna inquired.
The boy hugged himself into a tighter ball. “The harder way… is to have me dissolve the Domain.”
“Oh?” Sukuna said. “And how does one do that? And why is that harder?”
“Because it…” The boy reached out a waxen hand, skin beneath his fingernails blue. “It involves making me less cold, and feel less alone. It’s… not like it’s hard, it’s just. More work, and most don’t care to, or even think to. I didn’t… I didn’t know.” He pulled his hand back. “I wasn’t the one who discovered it. It was Geto-san.”
“Geto?” Sukuna said, tilting his head slightly. “You mean Geto Suguru? The original one, or was it Kenjaku?”
The boy seemed confused. “The one inside Geto’s dead body. His brain had a mouth.”
“Kenjaku,” Sukuna nodded affirmingly.
“He just… Mahito got lost in here, so Geto-san was getting him out,” the boy mumbled. “And he wanted to use my ability.”
“To kill Gojo Satoru,” Sukuna guess, regarding the rather impressively stabbed corpse.
The boy nodded.
“Who’s ‘Toji-kun’?” Sukuna asked him.
The boy was silent for several long moments, seeming confused. “My… shikigami?”
“Oh?” Sukuna said curiously, looking around.
“He’s not here right now,” the boy said, speech slurring. “He’s… not usually here.”
“That so,” Sukuna said, regarding him. He raised a hand with cursed energy, threatening. “Of course, another way to get out would be to exorcise you, right?”
“If you wanted to get out easily you would have opened your own Domain already,” the boy mumbled, staring down into the bloody rain-splattering puddle.
“Cheeky brat.”
The boy looked confused again. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s true.”
The boy looked further perplexed.
“Do you have a name, kid?”
“Zen’in… Naoya.”
“Zen’in Naoya,” Sukuna said thoughtfully. “I don’t recognize the name.”
“I dunno why you would. I died when I was nine. And it was a while ago, I think.”
Sukuna regarded the desolate stormy Domain. “And you died from…?”
“Hypothermia, apparently.”
Sukuna looked back at him, blinking incredulously. “Seriously? A sorcerer kid dying from hypothermia?”
The boy curled up tighter. “I was waiting for Toji-kun…” Mumbling, slurring.
Sukuna regarded the child vengeful spirit, contemplating. “But if you became a vengeful spirit after death, that means there must be something that you want, right?”
The boy made a sound that appeared to be part pained giggle and part hiccuping sob, wiping at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I just didn’t want to be alone.”
Well then.
Sukuna contemplated his options as he regarded the boy some more, but his curiosity was winning out over everything else—it was never too late to exorcise the cursed spirit later if he decided the boy wasn’t worth it—so Sukuna walked off into the woods. The boy rather predictably didn’t say anything or try to stop him. Ah, what was that modern term? ‘Learned helplessness’? Yeah, he was pretty sure that was it. He also knew that it was the abused and neglected ones who, shown a even a little bit of kindness, became the most loyal and willing to sacrifice the most. It was evident enough that Kenjaku had used that fact to have the boy kill Gojo Satoru. And considering the boy was an eternal child, he could probably be betrayed again and again and still show gratitude and eager devotion at the slightest shred of kindness granted him. In whatever case, Sukuna stood to gain much more from extending some consideration to the child spirit than he stood to lose from doing so.
So he gathered a few large piles of sticks from the woods—it didn’t really matter how wet the sticks were—and then he walked back to the parking lot, dumped them in a slightly less puddled spot, and then he went back, gathered up a bunch more sticks, aiming for larger ones this time, then he went back, dropped them on the large pile.
He did this several more times—it would have been easier with four arms, but he was keeping Megumi’s body for the time being, although that had much less purpose now knowing that Gojo Satoru was dead—until he’d piled up enough for a nice bonfire. Then he lit it all up with a powerful blaze, so hot the water didn’t matter because it was evaporated instantly.
The boy who had been crouched there watching him in blank puzzlement dropped his jaw in astonishment, eyes round and wide. Sukuna grinned at him and brushed off his hands.
“Come on over and warm yourself up, Naoya.”
The boy stared at him for a long moment, and then slowly he stood, stepping clumsily forward and then slipping, falling onto his belly in a puddle. He lay there in the water for a moment, and then he pushed himself back up, took another step forward, then his legs buckled, and he fell down sitting into the puddle. He sat there for a moment, and then he moved again, this time crawling forwards on his hands and knees through the water until he got to the area where the puddles had been heated away, crawling forward uncertainly into the fire-warmed area. He looked over at Sukuna uncertainly, crawled forward a little more, and then he collapsed down, lying on his stomach on the heated pavement, burying his face in his arms.
Sukuna, having watched all this, experienced a strange feeling of… what was it? It was something sort of like pity and admiration, but not quite either thing. It was more being thrown back to when he himself was a young child and being kicked down for his strange appearance, but continuing stubbornly forwards no matter what he had to do. Even if he had to crawl and drag his belly over the ground, he’d still continued forwards, knowing that one day he’d make it to the top, that he’d get their by hook or by crook.
Regarding the boy on the ground, he thought, He might have what it takes.
He appreciated that the boy hadn’t given up, and hadn’t looked to him for help. That he hadn’t cried from his clear embarrassment.
The boy had stubbornness and perseverance. It was just that he’d died before he’d been given the chance to truly cultivate his ability. His being a vengeful spirit, now, made him much more valuable to Sukuna than he would have been otherwise. The eternal childhood also meant he’d never develop a rebellious phase. Really, he was eternally at the perfect age. It wouldn’t take much at all to make him completely Sukuna’s.
Ha, Sukuna hadn’t had this feeling of wanting to possess except for with Zen’in Megumi, and that had been a bit different. He’d wanted Zen’in Megumi’s body and ability. But this Zen’in Naoya?
Sukuna kind of wanted to ‘adopt’ him.
Uraume’s reaction was going to be hilarious.
In whatever case, Sukuna believed it would be very worth his while to bestow the cursed child with some more favors.
He walked over to where the child was laying prone. “You did a good job moving so far in your sorry state, Naoya. I’ll reward you.” He crouched down, picked the child up beneath the armpits, stood up again, placed the child on his hip and then pulled him against him, the boy’s head tucked against his shoulder. He felt the boy go rigid, either in surprise, uncertainty or fear.
“Easy, I’m not going to hurt you,” Sukuna told him. “You’ll warm up faster this way, no? If you want to express gratitude, though, you can start by calling me ‘Sukuna-sama’.”
“Sukuna-sama,” the boy mumbled, speech still slurring slightly, but Sukuna could feel that he was still wet and cold, so he excused it.
“Very good,” he praised the boy. “When you’re not so cold I’m going to expect you to say it better, though.”
The boy rather wisely chose not to try to say anything, and just nodded against him.
Sukuna hummed, bringing them a bit closer to the bonfire. He’d be lenient in the beginning; he could be stricter later on, once he’d trained the boy and earned his devotion. He didn’t expect to have much issue with him, though. Naoya seemed like he caught on quickly, and he’d probably be desperate to please.
“Is there anything else that Kenjaku did to help you release your Domain? Aside from warming you up.”
The boy was still for a long moment, and then cautiously nodded against him.
“Well? Go on and tell me.”
The boy tensed up for a moment, as if embarrassed or not wanting to divulge, but then he went almost completely limp against Sukuna, giving in. Quietly, he murmured, “He sang to me, and then I fell asleep. When I woke up…”
“You were no longer in your Domain?”
The boy nodded against him.
Well. Why not? It wasn’t like Sukuna had much occasion to sing, but he was good at it, as he was good at all things he attempted. He’d dare say his voice was rather far above average.
Besides, he happened to have heard a song once—and accidentally memorized it, because at the time his mind had been too idle—that would be hilariously perfect.
He didn’t bother to be soft—he had the pounding rain, the rumbling thunder and the crackling flames to compete with, after all, and he only ever competed to win—going ahead and singing fully:
“Shining brightly in the pitch-black darkness
The white moon looks at me.
The way you gracefully look at me
Lights a flame in my heart.
For you, I’ve been waiting for you,
Beyond time and space
Until it burns my heart.
Like the moon at night and the dawn in the morning
You are in my arms.
I will protect you forever,
My little one.”
The boy trembled in his arms, and Sukuna swayed to the tune simply because it felt right to do so, continuing:
“Treading on the gravel, I walk towards the shrine.
Like a mirror, the moon follows me.
Stretching out my arms to embrace the moonlight,
I close my eyes just like the way I embrace you.
Like silk threads of the pale, pale moon,
That’s you and me, connected by the thread of fate.
Like water in a river and birds dancing in the sky,
Come over here.
Your sorrows and doubts,
Entrust it all to me.”
The boy had calmed and stopped shaking, as Sukuna helped him and swayed in the waves of heat.
“For you, I’ve been waiting for you,
Beyond time and space.”
He broke off from the song to say in a more spoken tone, closer to the boy’s ear: “Can you hear my voice?”
Naoya’s breath caught slightly, but he was breathing deeper than before as he warmed up, which Sukuna took as a good sign. Swaying and rubbing the boy’s back, he finished the song:
“Like the moon at night and the dawn in the morning,
You are in my arms.
I will protect you forever,
My little one.”
Naoya wasn’t asleep, but he seemed like he was falling asleep, and from comfort now rather than from cold.
“So, who had a better singing voice, me or Kenjaku?” Sukuna asked him.
“You do, Sukuna-sama.” The boy’s voice was stronger now, too, quiet but no longer slurring.
“Correct answer,” Sukuna grinned.
He continued to hold the boy, watching the roaring flames crackle and dance in defiance of the raining heavens, and it wasn’t long before he felt Naoya go completely limp against him in slumber, and the stormy mountain and bonfire all faded away, and Sukuna found himself standing outside the cave that he’d claimed as his temporary lair, staring up at the pale moon.
Huh, so he’d entered Naoya’s Wasteland of the Lonely standing right here? Interesting.
He went inside, lay Naoya down in some furs that he had simply because Uraume tended to make things cold and icy, and then got a fire going there was well. He wasn’t entire sure, but he guessed that both Naoya being alone/lonely and also cold could trigger him to open his Domain again.
Naoya was still sleeping by the time Uraume showed up.
“Sukuna-sama! I’ve been—!”
Sukuna held a finger to his lips. “Quiet, I finally got him to fall asleep.
Uraume obediently quieted their tone, finishing, “—looking all over you!” before turning their gaze to the vengeful spirit child lying in the furs. “Sukuna-sama, what is that?”
“That,” Sukuna said, quietly but with satisfaction, “is ‘special-grade’ vengeful spirit Zen’in Naoya. He used to belong to Kenjaku, who used him and his Domain to kill Gojo Satoru—” oh, he wondered what happened to Gojo’s corpse. Maybe it had ended up wherever Gojo had entered the Domain, “—but finders keepers losers weepers. Kenjaku abandoned him, so he’s mine now.”
Uraume was looking at him like he’d grown two heads. Which was kind of funny, considering that he’d once had—and would eventually regrow—two faces and four arms.
“Sukuna-sama… you… took in a child?”
“A cursed child,” Sukuna emphasized. “Which means that he’s going to stay that age, which means he’s not ever going to get all rebellious, he’s just going to adore me and do whatever I say. All I had to do was light some fire and sing him a song and he was looking at me like I’m his idol and falling asleep in my arms.”
“You… sung him… a song?”
“I am great at singing, I’ll have you know.”
“…I don’t doubt that, Sukuna-sama.”
“Good,” Sukuna said, sitting down and reaching over to muss up the boy’s damp hair. “Then don’t doubt me about Naoya, either.”
Kind of interesting, that the two sorcerers of this age that he became truly interested in, Megumi and Naoya—well, if you could count Naoya as a sorcerer with him being dead and having become a vengeful spirit—were both Zen’ins. And he was in Megumi’s body, now; so wasn’t it something like a family reunion?
The thought made Sukuna’s lips curl in a smirk.
Naoya didn’t know it, but Toji had abandoned him, had a son, and then it was Sukuna in that son’s body who finally took him in and kept him from being lost and cold and alone.
At first, Naoya had always watched him hopelessly, like he was expecting to be used and cast aside. Eventually, though, Sukuna got him to the point where Naoya looked at him with nothing but starry idolization and adoration in his eyes.
Naoya really was eager to please. Utterly obedient, always waited for orders, was attuned to the slightest signal, picked things up next to immediately, never made the same mistake twice. All in all, he was like a highly intelligent, completely devoted dog. But better, because he was human/sorcerer/vengeful cursed spirit. On top of that, his Projection Sorcery made him impressively fast and was exceedingly useful. His ready eagerness really was endearing, and he somehow also managed to reliably be cute.
Sheesh, was all Sukuna could think sometimes, observing the boy and shaking his head. Anyone who forsook him was a goddamned fool.
Sukuna certainly knew better than to give up a strong sorcerer kid who looked at him like he’d hung the moon and the stars, who could wait an eon alone in the dark in the freezing rain and obey a command to cling to life even if he had to drag his failing body through bloodied puddles along the ground.
Notes:
Included the link in the chapter as well, but for the record, the song, sung by Sukuna's VA, is Tsuki no Manazashi - Junichi Suwabe. Japanese lyrics and English translation included in video.
Like with Kenjaku's song, I just looked up the names of the voice actors and then 'singing' and then clicked on the first song that came up that had English subtitles. Then listening to them and reading the lyrics I was like, Well. That works perfectly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you enjoyed this story, make sure to let me know with a kudo or comment. :)
Chapter 3: Umbrella Ribs
Notes:
so i went on a walk in the dark this morning and it started raining on me and i didn't want to go back for an umbrella so i just got wet
and i thought, Well, isn't this a perfect day to write a 3rd chapter for that umbrella fic? :))
i wasn't gonna continue this fic cuz i liked the ending last chapter, but then a someone expressed interest in seeing Sukuna in Megumi's body meet Toji, and once i started thinking about it the idea wouldn't leave my head...
Thank you so much for all the supportive comments!!! <3
lol this chapter watch Sukuna try to justify everything to himself bc he definitely does not have feelings
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“I need a rain umbrella,” Sukuna had told Uraume.
“A rain umbrella?” Uraume had asked. Why would Sukuna need a rain umbrella?
“A large, sturdy one,” Sukuna had appended. “The nicest and most impressive one you can find.”
Uraume was silent for a long moment, and then hazarded, “May I ask to what purpose?”
“Because,” Sukuna said, grin pulling at his lips and that spark in his eyes that always lit Uraume’s frigid heart on fire, “I have a point to make.”
So Uraume bowed, and left to go find the most impressive sturdy rain umbrella that could be found.
“I’m curious to meet this Toji-kun of yours,” Sukuna had said to Naoya.
He hadn’t expected Naoya’s wide eyes to well up with tears that started trickling silently down his face. It took Sukuna aback. The look in Naoya’s crying eyes was so utterly, devastatingly desolate, no single word could have captured the full extent of the emotion within the look. In that gaze was an endless wilderness of sorrow and hopelessness, not at all unlike the rainstorm badlands of his Domain, if that entire ruinous environment could be encompassed in a single look.
The tears ran down Naoya’s cheeks, and reaching up to wipe at his crying eyes with the back of a hand, he mumbled, in a small, forlorn tone, “If you fight him…” those gold eyes were back on Sukuna, intense, hollowed, “one of you will die.” The tears welled and fell faster, Naoya’s voice probably the most heartbroken thing that Sukuna had ever heard, a sad ghostly breath anguished in despairing resignation: “And I don’t want to lose either one of you.”
It wasn’t that Sukuna had any problem with making children cry, or making anyone sad. Usually he got great enjoyment from doing so. The difference, though, was that here he hadn’t been trying to make Naoya cry and become grieved. If he’d been trying to upset Naoya, that would have been something else entirely. The fact that Sukuna had caused an entirely other effect than had been his intention irked him greatly.
It wasn’t that Naoya was crying that, it was that Naoya was crying when Sukuna hadn’t intended for him to cry.
“Oi,” he said, dropping down to his knees to wipe the tears from Naoya’s cheeks, “don’t cry, I’m not going to fight him. I just want to meet him.”
There was only hopelessness, no trust in Naoya’s gaze as the cursed child looked at him. But of course he didn’t trust Sukuna about this. Why would he, after the way he’d only ever been used and abandoned?
“I’ll make a Binding Oath, okay?” Sukuna told him. “As long as he doesn’t attack me first, I won’t attack Toji, either. I swear it as a Binding Vow. How’s that?”
It truly wasn’t his plan to fight Toji and upset the child. He truly was just curious about the man who had abandoned Naoya and then become his shikigami. And he wanted Naoya to trust him, because Naoya had never trusted anyone before, so Sukuna wanted it, that thing that nobody before had ever managed to claim, much less retain. Where everyone else had so utterly failed, Sukuna was going to dominate.
It was easy to let people down, anyone could do it. The weak did it all the time. The truly strong were the ones who lived up to or even succeeded all expectations.
As the Dishonored One and the King of Curses, Sukuna had never let anyone down: for his opponents, he fought them to the death; for his allies, he both used them as they desired and took care of them as they needed. (For the rest, they didn’t have any right to expect anything from in the first place.)
Sukuna was so very curious, therefore, about this Toji, who was strong enough to kill Gojo Satoru and yet weak enough to fail Naoya so completely.
While Sukuna did so enjoy a good fight with a strong opponent—and to defeat Gojo Satoru, Toji was clearly strong indeed, and Naoya was right in that if they fought one of them would most certainly kill the other—since Toji was Naoya’s shikigami at this point, and Naoya was Sukuna’s subordinate, it was only to Sukuna’s advantage for Naoya to have Toji, and most certainly not his intention to take Toji from him. It also brought no enjoyment at all to hurt Naoya, because his entire being as a vengeful cursed spirit had abject desolation at its core, and he fell back into it easily and completely, breaking not with a scream but with the barest whisper of a whimper, and then everything human of him had become nothing but ghost.
It brought no enjoyment to hurt Naoya when doing so made Naoya look at him like he was just like everyone else. Sukuna had most certainly never gotten his pleasure from making others happy; it was just that when he brought Naoya happiness, Naoya looked at him like he was the most incredible entity in the world, in a way entirely different from anything Sukuna had ever received from any of his adult admirers.
It wasn’t that Sukuna had never been adored. But he’d certainly never before been so esteemed by a child. It was something entirely different, and something he would never have imagined could be so gratifying. After all, most children were insipid and annoying.
But Naoya was a naturally depressed and intelligent little thing, wiping at his silent tears that were slowing and ceasing as he regarded Sukuna with some confusion at the Binding Vow, gaze assessing and trying to figure him out. “If you don’t want to fight him, then…” The perplexity cleared from his expression. “You just want to meet him so you can evaluate the tool that’s now at your disposal.”
What a cynical kid. He certainly had every right to be, after the way Kenjaku had used him.
“Well, that’s part of it,” Sukuna said, standing and placing a hand on Naoya’s head. “The other part is that he’s important to you, and since you’re mine now and I care about you, the person who abandoned you to die and then after death came back to be your shikigami is of great interest to me.”
Naoya tilted his head slightly as he looked up at him, gauging his expression and seeming to be contemplating those words, and Sukuna huffed slightly, ruffling the boy’s hair before pulling back his hand. The cursed child seriously didn’t understand what it meant to actually be cared for. But, well, that did mean he had literally zero expectations of Sukuna to be anything to him, which freed Sukuna up to be whatever he wanted to the boy. So if he cared for the child, it was because he wanted to, not because the boy expected him to. He liked that about Naoya.
Another nice thing about Naoya was that when he did cry, it was literally just those silent tears falling down his face and making his gold eyes glisten, it wasn’t loud or ugly or irritating. It was just kind of the most objectively heartbreaking thing that Sukuna had ever seen, and he didn’t consider himself to have any sensitivity to any such thing, so it rather baffled him how souls who should by all rights be more emotionally receptive than the King of Curses could have abandoned the child. And sorcerers considered him heartless. Honestly, they should take a good hard look in the mirror and realize that they weren’t morally superior to him just because they were weaker. But, well, the weak always told themselves that the strong were the ones in the wrong, and so all their own committed atrocities were justifiable beneath and against that ‘greater evil’.
Naoya just regarded him for another long moment and then nodded to himself, gaze moving away. “If you’re going to care about me, it makes sense that you’d want to meet Toji. After all, he’s the strongest part of me. If not for him… I can’t see why you’d even want me. The only reason you were interested enough in me to gently get me to dissolve my Domain rather than exorcise me was because he killed Gojo Satoru, right?”
Sheesh, this child was seriously all cynicism and no sentimentality. It had Sukuna’s lips curling in endeared amusement even as he said, “Yes, function comes first. Care comes after. But you shouldn’t doubt that my care for you is true just because I am interested in your strengths. I’m not Kenjaku.”
That had Naoya glancing back at him.
“Want to know what the difference between me and Kenjaku is?” Sukuna said, reaching out to brush his thumb over the tearstains on Naoya’s cheek. “The difference is that Kenjaku views a sword as a disposable tool, and no matter how sharp and well-crafted it is, he casts it carelessly away as soon as he’s done with it, always just wanting to move on to the next thing. But if I find a sharp and well-crafted sword and like the way it fits in my hand, I’m going to be keeping it and carrying it with me and not ever letting it go, and whenever there’s a use for it I will use it, and whenever there isn’t a use for it I’ll keep it well-maintained hanging as ornamentation on my wall, because although it may be a tool, a sword is so much more than that, as well. And such a sword as you are is rare and beautiful.”
“Then…” Naoya looked at him like through the windows of Sukuna’s eyes lay the obscured truth of the universe, and Naoya was trying to discern it amid the snaking swirls of death and dark, “Toji-kun abandoned me because he cared about me but didn’t have a use for me, and Geto-san abandoned me because he had a use for me but didn’t care about me, and you plan on keeping me because you both have a use for me and care about me.” His gold gaze moved from Sukuna’s eyes to roam over the rest of his face before returning to meet his stare, the boy tilting his head slightly. “And I guess you must be telling the truth about wanting to keep me, because I’m not sure why you’d go to the effort to convince me of this when I’m pretty sure you can figure out that even knowing that you were planning on throwing me away I’d let you use me anyway.”
“Why I’m trying to convince you?” Sukuna said, reaching to ruffle the boy’s hair, grinning savagely. “It’s because I don’t want you thinking that I’m as lame as everyone else. I’m not just the strongest, I’m the best.” He flicked the boy lightly in the forehead, teasing, “It’ll hurt my pride if I can’t convince you otherwise.”
Naoya scrunched his face and reached up to rub his forehead, regarding Sukuna from around his hand. “Well, you’re certainly trying the hardest.” He lowered his hand, his gaze following it, his voice quietening, “Thanks for that. For putting in that effort.” He looked lost. “It’s a lot more than you have to.” Never having been cared truly cared about, the boy was so ready to be used just to not be alone, it was as if he didn’t care whether or not he was cared about anymore, was saying that he didn’t even need it, it wasn’t necessary.
“Sheesh,” Sukuna said, mildly annoyed that the boy had been damaged to this extent. “I really need to bully the people who hurt you.” They’d made it so damn hard for him to get Naoya to actually believe in him. He was actually starting to get irritated. But it wasn’t Naoya’s fault, it was primarily Toji’s.
So he asked Uraume to get him a rain umbrella so he could make a cursed point.
Uraume figured Sukuna’s request for the rain umbrella had something to do with cursed child, Zen’in Naoya. Uraume didn’t understand why Sukuna was so taken with the cursed child, although Sukuna always indulgent with any individual who piqued his interest, Zen’in Naoya brought out a side of Sukuna that was more indulgent than any that Uraume had before seen. Certainly, Sukuna had never before been interested in a child. Although Zen’in Naoya was a vengeful spirit, and certainly a rather strong one—as far as vengeful spirits who weren’t Sukuna went—but still, given Sukuna’s penchant for slaughtering children mercilessly, it was strange indeed to see him, with Zen’in Naoya, acting somewhere between brotherly and fatherly.
Uraume sort of wondered if Naoya or his situation reminded Sukuna of his own childhood, but didn’t dare conjecture too much on the subject. Deciding to simply accept that Sukuna was fond of the child, Uraume went looking for an umbrella with no further question, resolving to also no longer question such things.
If Sukuna wanted Uraume to get a rain umbrella, specifically the nicest and most impressive one that could be found, then Uraume would get the very best rain umbrella.
So Uraume searched extensively, and then finally decided on a sturdy bangasa umbrella made with Kurotani Unryu paper, pale creamy off-white with delicate filaments in the paper, a genuine wagasa umbrella that was elegant and beautiful, made of 40 stretchers of bamboo bone, wooden shaft and metal latch, the entire umberlla about 80.5cm in length and 82cm in diameter, coated with vegetable oil specially made for Japanese umbrellas to make them waterproof.
“It’s perfect,” Sukuna grinned when presented with it, and Uraume felt warm.
Sukuna standing there with the umbrella opened above him and leaning against his shoulder, the sunlight shining through the fibrous white paper, Uraume could only look up at him in awe. The vengeful ghost child was doing the same, looking up at Sukuna like he was a god-king.
It was then that Uraume decided that Naoya was worthy of remaining at Sukuna’s side.
Anyone who regarded Sukuna like that was a kindred spirit to Uraume.
Later, when Uraume patted the boy’s head for the first time, Naoya’s expression of eager devotion made Uraume think, Oh.
I get it now, why Sukuna wants to keep him.
What Uraume saw later of Naoya’s Domain… well, that just made the entire thing make sense even further.
Uraume really should have known better than to doubt Sukuna in the slightest.
Sukuna was the acme of what a man and sorcerer could be.
Bold, powerful and beautiful—no matter the weather.
“Well, it’s certainly not a sun umbrella,” Sukuna noted, tilting his head back to look up at the semi-translucent white paper with its bits of fibers like a scattering of shredded feather down, through which the sun shone brightly through. “Which is perfect, because there’s never any sun where we’ll be going.”
He glanced back down, looking to Naoya. “Naoya, can you open your Domain and take me in but not Uraume?”
Naoya nodded.
Sukuna moved his gaze to Uraume. “Naoya’s Domain isn’t a closed one, but it also isn’t an open Domain like my own. I’m rather curious how it manifests in the world, if at all, so I’m asking you to stay here and observe for me, Uraume.”
“Hai,” Uraume replied, bowing their head.
Sukuna grinned, turning his gaze back to Naoya. “Go ahead, then.”
Naoya’s entire demeanor shifted, his body going relaxed in a numbed resigned way, his expression empty and desolate as his left hand reached out slightly, not desperately but forlornly, and his right hand moved to cover it and curl fingers against its palm like it was simultaneously holding it back and offering comfort: “don’t reach out, no one’s coming, just stay here alone, it’s okay”—but still the fingers of his left hand sadly, feebly reached from between the curled fingers of his right, forced to go from pointing slightly upwards to dropping downwards by the pressure against the lower side of its knuckles at the top of its palm by the pads of his other hand’s fingers.
“Domain Expansion: Wasteland of the Lonely.”
It was eerier, seeing Naoya open the Domain and then finding oneself there, in the dark and the pounding rain, and for a moment Sukuna forgot how he’d gotten there, where he was, what he was doing—an effect of the Domain, clearly—before the umbrella in his hand upon which the raindrops kamikazed themselves and seeing Naoya standing there in the rain brought things back in ribbons which he grasped in a fist and yanked to himself bodily, gripping it tight and secure.
A fascinating Domain, for sure.
“How are you already soaked?” Sukuna asked Naoya wonderingly, because the boy was completely soaked through like he’d been standing there forever, and Sukuna wondered if he’d been standing there unaware of himself for a while or if Naoya as soon as he entered his Domain was immediately soaked as if he’d never left it.
That latter was probably the case, because when Sukuna stepped over and crouched down to pick Naoya up, Naoya’s lips were already blue, his skin wan and waxen, his expression empty and deathly.
Well, it was certainly reason to have Naoya use his Domain as little as possible, if it always brought him completely back into this place. It would probably cling to him every time when he got out, which made sense, because his Domain was basically his greatest suffering made endless.
“C’mere,” Sukuna said as he picked Naoya up, settling him on his hip, “you can share this umbrella with me.” He used a bit of his fire ability to warm himself, and Naoya who had wrapped arms around his neck and buried his head against his collar bone, shivering.
“Thank you, Sukuna-sama.”
As if Sukuna wouldn’t have. He hadn’t had Naoya with him under the umbrella when Naoya opened the Domain because he’d wanted to view it, but now he wondered, if Naoya opened the Domain with Sukuna holding him under the umbrella like this, if Naoya would still end up in a hypothermia state even in Sukuna’s arms beneath the shelter, or if that would actually spare him from it. He’d try it next time and see.
But right now: “Can you summon Toji?”
“I already did.”
And then Sukuna heard the scraping, metal dragging over wet concrete, felt the cursed energy, turned his head to see, out of the shadows of the trees across the parking lot, a man in tight black pants and loose light sweatshirt sticking wetly to his muscular figure, soaked black hair and eyes with black sclera, light irises, a cursed weapon in his right hand, a red three-sectioned staff that was dragging over the ground, in his left hand a dilapidated skeleton of an umbrella held above his head, doing nothing to protect from the rain.
The thing was, though, Sukuna could feel the cursed tool’s cursed energy, but the man—
“Toji-kun has zero cursed energy,” Naoya said, slurring slightly, pulled back to look at his surprised face. Naoya’s eyes were someone as intense as Toji’s, even without the black sclera. “He’s the strongest. It’s pure physical prowess. Cursed energy has no hold on him. Doesn’t matter to him. He can see curses, anyway.”
Toji stopped a couple meters away from them, seeming confused, tilting his head slightly.
“Toji-kun,” Naoya said, scrambling out of Sukuna’s arms, dashing uncoordinatedly over to throw himself at Toji, hugging his waist.
Toji seemed to relax slightly, then. “Naoya,” he greeted lowly, hand holding the cursed tool moving to carefully stroke Naoya’s wet hair with thumb and two fingers, his ring and little fingers holding the section of staff to his palm. The saddest part was that Toji held the wrecked umbrella out over Naoya’s head, as if would protect him from the rain, though of course it didn’t.
Naoya was getting rained on again and Sukuna tsked, walking over to them and stepping close enough to hold the umbrella completely above Naoya, but only partly above Toji. Toji looked at him and his dark eyes widened.
“Megumi?”
“Oh?” Sukuna said, now interested and diverted from what he’d been about to say. “You know Megumi?”
“Megumi’s…” Toji’s brow was furrowed slightly as he looked at Sukuna who was Megumi but wasn’t, “my son.”
Sukuna stared at him in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing, with such violence of hilarity that it felt like he was going to tear the muscle of his—Megumi’s—abs. “Are you serious?” he asked one he could breathe and speak again, wiping at the literal tears of mirth that had started dripping down his—Megumi’s—face. “That’s great. You’re seriously telling me that you abandoned Naoya to die, went off and had a son, abandoned him, too, and now he’s the avatar of the King of Curses, who is the first person to actually care for Naoya in all this time.” Toji’s expression was mildly astonished and Naoya was still hugging Toji’s waist and looking back and forth between them, and Sukuna fell back into laughter again, but this time softer, lung-crackling snickers.
This was Megumi’s father. This was Megumi’s father.
Absolutely fucking hilarious. Sukuna didn’t think he’d laughed so hard in his entire existence, the laughter feeling like it wasn’t just wracking his—Megumi’s—body, but the very essence of his own being.
This was the most poetic fate he had ever borne witness to.
Toji’s expression, after a moment, quietly faded into dull resignation. “Incarnation, huh.” His dark and light gaze moved over Sukuna’s black markings, his extra pair of eyes. “You’re Ryomen Sukuna?” The black sclera clearly marked him as a summons, but there was definitely part of him in there, although clearly not all of him. He was not reacting like a living man, but nor like a mindless puppet. Was something in between, lingering remnants of his being while the man himself was gone, a piece of will and memory left in the world without any soul.
“Indeed,” Sukuna confirmed, purring. “I was actually thinking of doing a full incarnation and getting my old body back…” he looked Toji up and down and grinned, cruel glee bringing crinkles to the corners of his—Megumi’s—eyes, “but maybe I’ll keep Megumi’s body for a while.” He regarded the man with zero cursed energy. “Fushiguro Toji, huh. You took your wife’s name to distance yourself from the Zen’ins?” Otherwise Megumi’s last name would have been Zen’in rather than Fushiguro. Staring into that gaze of piercing light irises surrounded by black, Sukuna asked mordantly, “Did you know Naoya was dead?”
“I didn’t know until right before my death, when Gojo Satoru told me,” Toji answered. Phlegmatic, but there was depression and pain there. He certainly wouldn’t have become Naoya’s shikigami like this if he hadn’t cared about Naoya at all.
“No wonder it was after death that you finally came back for him,” Sukuna remarked. He nodded at the sad excuse of a once-umbrella that was in Toji’s left hand still, lowered beneath Sukuna’s actually functional one. “And that umbrella?”
Toji’s hand tightened around the cracked plastic handle. “Naoya gave it to me.” Oh, possessive; so the umbrella was important.
“Was it broken like that when he gave it to you?” Sukuna inquired, although he already knew the answer.
“No,” Toji said. “It got beat up along the way… on the way here.” His thumb, pointer and middle fingers stroked carefully through Naoya’s wet hair. “To where he was.”
Sukuna regarded the man with zero cursed energy—he clearly was strong—and the way he was trying to physically express affection even with no hands free as Naoya hugged him, the entire scene rather tragic, and Sukuna decided that bullying Toji for abandoning Naoya was pointless because he clearly already understood well what he’d done and felt as bad about it was possible for him to feel in that soulless state, and he appeared to be about the same level of depressed and despondent as Naoya, and there was no particular satisfaction to be had in scraping a deep sea trench a foot deeper. Just another raindrop in the sea of misery.
“Tell you what,” Sukuna said to Toji, “I’ll help you remedy your mistake a bit.” It was evident at this point that Toji and Naoya were more closely linked than Sukuna had realized, and so the way to help Naoya, in a way that would bring Naoya to believe in him, was to help Toji. So Sukuna said, “Let me look after Naoya while you go gather and pile up a bunch of sticks and branches and deposit them in the middle of the parking lot. Enough for a bonfire. It doesn’t matter how wet they are. Also, bring a log that can be used as a bench. Then we’ll go from there.”
Toji stared at him for a long moment, and Sukuna stared back, and then finally Toji looked down to Naoya, gazed at him for another long moment while Naoya looked up at him, and then slowly Toji moved to gently disengage Naoya from him, Naoya letting go easily and stepping back, Sukuna pulling the boy to him, Toji staring at Naoya still for a moment before finally handing him the stripped and busted umbrella, lips quirking just slightly at the scarred corner as he murmured, “Return it when I get back, yeah?” Then he stepped out from under Sukuna’s umbrella, turned, and then in a blink he was gone, bolted into the forest with truly impressive speed.
Naoya closed the broken umbrella as much as it could be closed with how busted its ribs were, and then hugged it to him. Sukuna picked him up to hold him and keep him warmer. Naoya shivered and buried his face against Sukuna, cold nose against his neck, and Sukuna looked out at all the rain falling around them, sparking in small explosion bursts all over the ground sending their shockwaves in dilating rings across the surfaces of the puddles, the rain especially visible in the light of the streetlight that also illumed through the semi-transparent textured-white umbrella, the pounding of raindrops all around them loud, thunder rolling in the distance, and Sukuna wondered at himself.
When he wanted to eat, he ate. When he saw an eyesore, he killed it. And when it entertained him, he threw it a bone. That was the kind of man he was.
This didn’t go against that. He was just doing all this because it entertained him. Showing some consideration to these tragic beings who’d received no such thing from others. Wasn’t it just hilarious, for the King of Curses to be more considerate to them than anyone else in their existences?
He just didn’t think he’d ever gone to such lengths to throw such bones before. And he didn’t think he’d ever thrown these kinds of bones before. It had always been that people wanted things from him, and so he gave them what he wanted to give them. But Naoya and Toji didn’t want anything from him. So he had to go out of his way to prod and entice them.
Somehow it felt more interesting and stimulating, that way. The challenge of it, and the novelty. A better way to kill the time before he died than the usual ones.
He did feel some regret, though, that he’d destroyed Megumi’s soul so completely. Because wouldn’t it have been funny if he switched with Megumi and made Megumi deal with his dad and Naoya who his dad had abandoned? Before switching back, of course, after he’d had his fill of the entertainment of that. Even if Megumi’s soul were actually still aware of what was going on and he at least got Megumi’s reactions in his head would be interesting. But, alas, Megumi’s soul was completely submerged. Did that kind of complete depression and utter hopelessness run in the Zen’in blood? Because it was literally all three of them who’d become like that. Meanwhile, all the other sorcerers were refusing to give up on their ideals and fully willing to die trying to kill him. But these Zen’ins easily let go of their ideals, as if they’d barely had them in the first place, and then gave up completely.
Maybe that was why Sukuna was so drawn to them. These Zen’ins. He’d always loathed ideals, had never been bound by them himself and had never understood them in others. He didn’t understand depression, either, but the depression of these Zen’ins struck him as a much more accurate way of viewing the world than all those who’d boasted of strength they didn’t have and those who were obsessed with themselves, all those willing to die for their ideals—and so these Zen’ins who were willing to die for nothing at all endeared him. In a way it was not entirely unlike his own way of being: Naoya had no ideal about others, he simply didn’t want to be alone; Toji had no ideal about being there, he’d simply wanted to return to Naoya; Megumi had no ideal about maintaining his self or defeating Sukuna, he simply didn’t want to live with having killed his sister. And there were all those times that Megumi had been perfectly willing to bring out Mahoraga even if it meant he would die. And Naoya had been perfectly willing to give Toji his umbrella even if it meant not having one for himself and getting soaked and cold (although assumably Naoya hadn’t known he’d die from it). Sukuna didn’t know much about Toji, but he gave the exact same feel of being willing to die for absolutely no ideal—or perhaps more accurately, from a lack of ideals.
Truly, these Zen’ins were nothing at all like all the others.
As much as Sukuna wanted the return of his original body… the idea of keeping Megumi’s for a long while was becoming more and more attractive.
Well, he didn’t need to think about it too hard. If he ever felt like incarnating into his old body, he would. If he didn’t feel like it, he wouldn’t. But having himself a weird fundamentally depressed dead Zen’in family was becoming the most delightfully amusing idea he’d had since taking Megumi’s body to use Mahoraga against Gojo. Which he didn’t get to do, because Naoya and Toji had killed Gojo first, so he might as well do this instead.
Trying to explain this to Uraume was going to be hilarious.
Even as he was thinking all this, Toji was amassing an impressively growing mound of sticks, his comings and goings so fast that anyone with lesser eyes—which would be most everyone—wouldn’t even have been able to see him and would only see the pile of sticks growing as if out of thin air.
And then there was indeed a bonfire’s worth, and then there was a loud CRACK and a CRASHH and then Toji came back a bit slower, dragging with him an entire tree, which he dropped down a bit away from the pile, it clearly being the requested bench, and Toji proceeded to break off the branches from the tree and toss them onto the pile as well. Then he looked over at Sukuna expectantly, like a dog.
Sukuna grinned, endeared by the man’s strength and amused by his behavior, walking over with Naoya and tilting the umbrella back out of the way as he raised a hand and lit the entire pile ablaze in a wave of flame and heat. Naoya giggled a little against him, seeming pleased with the display, which was rather cute and validating, because never let it be said that Sukuna didn’t like to show off. The slight widening of Toji’s eyes at the cursed fire was just as good.
Sukuna then went over to lightly roast a part of the tree to dry it off and warm it, then he sat down with Naoya in his lap with the umbrella rested over the shoulder that Naoya wasn’t leaning against, nodding over at Toji, saying, “Once you’re all dried off, I’ll let you hold him.”
There was a definite spark of interest in Toji’s black sclera eyes, and then he proceeded to take off his sweatshirt and then his shoes, socks and pants so he was just in boxer briefs, laying his sweatshirt and pants on the dried cement close to the fire to dry off faster.
Well, that’s one way to do it. It certainly seemed to be Toji’s style, to do things in the most brutally efficient way possible. Sukuna approved. He also liked being shirtless. Toji’s musculature was also definitely something appreciable. Showing off what was genuinely worth showing off was also something Sukuna approved of. Though he was sure that that hadn’t factored in to Toji’s choice of action. It was more like, whileas most people would say that the fastest way between Point A and Point B was a straight line, Toji would simply fold the paper so the Point A and Point B touched. That was the kind of brutal, unforgiving efficiency he demonstrated, enacting without the slightest hesitation—or, it seemed, actual thought. He didn’t think about it; he just did it.
Interesting.
Amusingly, though, after stripping Toji didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. So after glancing at Sukuna and Naoya and then around with an aimless gaze, he got down into a plank position and started doing push-ups. Which were clearly much too easy for him and he could probably have kept going at it like that for hours with tiring in the slightest, but he was clearly only doing light exercises to warm up and dry himself off faster without exerting himself so much that he sweated and therefore got wet again.
The fire was hot, though, so it wasn’t that long before Toji was standing and going to get his sweatshirt and pants, and after checking to make sure they were dry pulled them back on—apparently he liked clothes more than Sukuna did, although he did forgo the socks and sneakers and remain barefoot—and then he walked over and sat down on the felled tree next to Sukuna, and Sukuna let the also now much more warmed Naoya crawl over to him and curl up in Toji’s lap. Naoya was still holding the closed skeleton umbrella. Sukuna had thought the thing pathetic before, but now it had a certain delicate, ravaged beauty to it, like a skeleton leaf.
Not holding the umbrella, and having dropped his cursed tool to the ground, Toji was now free to embrace Naoya with both arms, burying his nose in Naoya’s mostly dried hair.
“I’m sorry, Naoya.” It was barely a murmur.
“I’m the one who made my hell and then dragged you here with me, Toji-kun. Don’t apologize. I didn’t want to be on my own, but you did.” Naoya was playing with the loose fabric of Toji’s sleeve. “…Were you happy, Toji-kun? After leaving. Did it make you happier?”
Toji exhaled shakily. “I’m not sure I even know what happiness feels like. So I never could tell. If I was happy or not.”
“I was happy, Toji-kun,” Naoya murmured. “When I was with you.”
Toji gave another shaky breath. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like you, Naoya. It was just…”
“Everything else sucked.”
“Yeah.”
“But then you left, and things sucked less, right?”
“Yeah. But there was no crazy little cousin running up to me with the most shit-eating grin on his face just because he’d seen me.” Toji moved a hand to carefully brush a finger along one of the busted umbrella ribs. “…That umbrella was my most prized possession.”
“Did it help keep you dry?” Naoya was fiddling with light fabric.
“Yeah,” Toji murmured. “Yeah, it did. I still walked through puddles in my sandals, though.”
The exchange probably should have been ‘sweet’, if they both weren’t so obviously and inexorably dejected. Toji was clearly much more reactive towards Naoya than towards Megumi, which did make sense, because he wasn’t actually Toji himself and so couldn’t react as he would as a person, was just part of the memory of Toji, and there was more of that in regards to his cousin than to his son.
“Aren’t you even wondering how your son ended up as my avatar?” Sukuna asked, just to see how the shikigami summon would respond.
“You wanted him ‘cause he has the Ten Shadows and you wanted Mahoraga, right?” Toji said, black sclera gaze moving to him. “As for the ‘how’ I’m sure it wasn’t that hard for you to find a way.”
Sukuna’s lips curled. “Do you even care about your son at all?”
“I killed myself rather than kill him,” Toji said. “When I was brought back a summons. But I didn’t know him. I abandoned him, and more purposefully than I abandoned Naoya. I just…” something in his dark and light gaze flickered, “couldn’t care about any of it anymore.”
Well, that explained a lot. About all three of the Zen’ins, because they were all that way, had all reached that point. No idealism, just nihilism. Even from the beginning, Megumi had said that he saved who he wanted to—saved people unequally. A far cry from the brat’s idealism about everyone having a ‘proper’ death, saving people equally. Even Gojo, whose capabilities were so great that he shouldn’t have been bound by ideals, had been clinging to them.
These Zen’ins were just built different.
They truly felt the closest to the way Sukuna was. Except that they gave up and were always ready to die, while he persisted and was always ready to live. It was like the difference between ‘nothing means anything’ and ‘everything means nothing’. It was almost uncomfortable to think that his own worldview was so akin to a kind of depression; but at the same time, it was invigorating that these Zen’ins with their depression were capable of similarly phenomenal feats. Naoya with his semi-open Domain that shouldn’t be rights be possible; Toji with his complete lack of cursed energy and his ability to kill the Six Eyes.
When the rules didn’t mean anything to you, you were able to easily go beyond them.
Everyone bound by ideals was fettered by the rules the had created for themselves which they could not break. Gojo Satoru had severely limited himself with his idealism.
It should speak worlds that he was beaten by Naoya and Toji.
There was a little pleased smirk on Sukuna’s lips as he concluded these thoughts and glanced back over at Toji and Naoya, who had lapsed into silence and were just holding onto each other, breathing together with nonliving lungs. There really was a poeticness to it all, and Sukuna wasn’t one usually sensitive to such things. But there they were after all the tragedy, and here he was, in Megumi’s body, literally currently blood-related to them—
Wait. Wait.
Thoughts about how he’d never had a family, but now—now it was like he was part of one, and his mind swam, because he’d never needed someone to fulfill him, the thought had never crossed his mind, and these individuals didn’t fulfill him, anyway, they were just—
A way to kill the time until he died, yes.
But also, possibly, something that was his. And that was the part that had his mind unbalanced and tossing as if in a fitful sleep, the discovery of a desire to possess something, not as fulfillment but as—just something that belonged to him, was his when nothing had ever been his if he hadn’t taken it—
Something that belonged to him without his having taken it, that belonged to him simply by virtue of him being who and what he was, like his own power.
The bonfire was crackling and popping, wood snapping and shifting, sparks leaping. The rain was turned to steam above them, not hitting them, but all around the fire it still pounded down, and the thunder in the distance rolled, the wind whispering and hissing through the trees, sometimes letting out a yowl or a shriek.
He was over a thousands years old but the breathing dead man next to him was literally the father of his current body, the vengeful spirit boy in his lap that was like a little brother or a son was also related and would have been older than Megumi if he hadn’t died that night alone in the rain, and Megumi was missing out on all of this, and Sukuna was literally having the thought that he wanted to keep them as his family and it was definitely distressing, trying to figure out where this utterly foreign desire was coming from and what it meant.
Taking things was uncomplicated. If he wanted it, he took it. But this having something, this idea of blood relation and feeling of being somehow kindred in a way that couldn’t be removed, this—
Oh.
This feeling of not being alone.
Ironic, that he had the realization of such a feeling in a Domain literally named Wasteland of the Lonely. But, wait—hadn’t he been lonely? If he’d accidentally wandered into the Domain in the first place. If he’d wandered in, that meant he had been lonely, even if he hadn’t realized it. And only now was he realizing what it felt like to feel not alone.
This was a disturbing disruption of his sense of self. He didn’t need anyone. He’d never needed anyone. He didn’t need anyone to make him feel not alone.
But now that he’d felt this, he didn’t think he could let it go.
He didn’t think his life would ever be the same, now.
What have I done?
He was fighting with himself. Either everything would be worse from now on—or everything would be better. And for some reason, the latter was not any less alarming than the former.
To have such a fundamental belief about himself destroyed like this. To now be able to look back and see all the signs, and not to be unable to refute that it was true.
It was true. He’d been alone, which he’d known. But he’d also been lonely. He’d been craving company in others, even though he’d believed that he wasn’t, even though it was only tearing through them. But he’d humored them and fought them because he’d wanted someone to meet him where he was, but they never did, so he told himself his joy was in being above them, destroying them.
He hadn’t known what it was like to be with someone with whom he didn’t feel so different. But hadn’t he always wanted it, deep down in that place that he never acknowledged? To be able to meet with someone on a plane where he could actually engage with them engaging back the same?
But to finally get that feeling of kinship with these two utterly depressed, already dead disasters—didn’t that say too much? About him, things that he didn’t want to acknowledge, couldn’t acknowledge. It went against his very self.
“Are you okay, Megu—Sukuna?”
Sukuna glanced over, and found both Toji and Naoya looking at him, Toji with some actual trace of concern or else perplexity, Naoya just with empty watching eyes that absorbed everything in and swallowed it.
No, Sukuna was not okay. But he wasn’t about to let them know that. He’d sort himself out later.
It would be nice to get out of this rainy, desolate Domain.
“Can you sing?” he asked Toji.
Black eyes with piercingly light irises blinked. “I… sang for Megumi, a few times. When he was a baby.”
“Remember any of the songs?”
“I…” Toji’s expression pulled slightly in reservation, probably try to recollect, before the uncertainty cleared and he said with decision, “yes.”
“Good,” Sukuna said, and nodded at Naoya in the man’s arms, “sing for him.”
Toji looked thoughtful for a moment, glancing down at Naoya who looked back up at him, not anywhere near pleading but certainly with unabashed interest, and Toji’s expression softened, and then he started singing, voice clearer and brighter than his speaking tone:
“Ah, within the darkness the moon is white
Is time stopped in sleep?
A long night is, again, ahead
A distant light
Just like in your dream
Ah, it’s written in this heart
Even when I can’t see anything
There’s only one memory I keep close
One, one forever
That day will never come back again
I cannot meet you anymore
A heavy memory in this sea of solitude
An unusual pain that passed
I believe that it is love
Ah, within the darkness I walk
Is time stopped in sleep?
A long night is, again, ahead
You will wait for me right?
And we will return to that day
The two of us smiling
I just wanted to be saved by that
The only one I have this feeling for
Without being able to notice
Ah, that day will never return
Still always in my heart
Forever in the sky shining
The only one I have this feeling for
You are my white moon.”
When Naoya’s Wasteland of the Lonely dissolved, Toji was still holding him, which meant that Naoya could probably summon him without opening his Domain, which was definitely useful to know.
The song, though, so full of love and loss and longing, was one that would not have touched Sukuna in the slightest before. He wouldn’t have understood it. Now, though, it felt like a portent of the kind of yearning that would plague him forever if he let go of this thing that he’d now found and would never be able to un-find.
‘The one who will teach you love,’ huh.
What Sukuna had thought before was love was nothing at all. Fighting and killing those who sought to fight him, humoring them—just a way to kill the time before his death, a way to fill the emptiness. The feeling had been mild, nothing compared to this which dug talons into his chest and mind and was trying to rip him to shreds.
And people said love was supposed to be beautiful?
Love was violence.
Although violence was indeed beautiful.
Hm.
Notes:
well fuck i think this story isn't over lol. there might be more to come cuz i at least want to visit Naoya's and Toji's povs and maybe visit Kenjaku again too and Sukuna never got to fully make his point with the umbrella lmao my stories don't know how to end :')) too many of them.... too many
this chapter did not go the way i expected it to lol. but today after getting back from my rain walk i read jjk ch248 and it gave me so many Sukuna feels
and then things here just... happened...oh also this is the umbrella that Uraume got
the description was clearly originally written in Japanese and then translated into English but the translation isn't very good and was hard to make sense of... but i tried.included the link in the chapter, but for the record the song Toji sings is Koyasu Takehito - Shiroi Tsuki
fjdskljfkdljlkkk i love his singing voice
well, just his voice in general lol, Takehito Koyasu's my fav VA, all the characters voice by him are >>>>>>>>>
*cough* anywaysif you enjoyed this chapter and/or would be interested in seeing more, make sure to let me know with a comment!
Guest (Guest) on Chapter 1 Wed 10 Jan 2024 05:02AM UTC
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Last Edited Thu 04 Jan 2024 04:40PM UTC
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