mouth mantra

by vulgairenoziere

Summary:

She’s twenty. Confused. Pretentious. Horny. Philosophical. She arrives at her dead father’s holiday home with couple of books she probably won’t read, grief she keeps trying to intellectualize, and a plush tiger she refuses to part with.

Her father is dead. That’s not the story.

Sukuna is alive.

Chapter 1: Le retour de la fille oubliée

The soil was that November kind. Soft, wet, and spiteful. Every step sank half a centimeter like the ground was trying to eat her shoes. One hand stayed buried in her coat pocket, the other held a cigarette mangled between her fingers. She hated cemeteries. Always had. As a kid, they terrified her. As an adult, they just bored her. Fake worship, fake flowers, fake closure. Just wet dirt and performative grief. Nothing sacred here. Nothing holy. Nothing real. Her mother was whispering something, some leftover fragment of a prayer from a religion (y/n) abandoned years ago. The sound was soft, soft enough that maybe only the worms heard it.

The wind tried to take the words away anyway.

(y/n) didn’t kneel. Didn’t fold her hands. Didn’t force a feeling she didn’t have. She just stared at the slab of polished stone. Rectangular. Cold. Impersonal. Dead flowers collapsed over it like they’d given up halfway through blooming. Only the purple hyacinths looked alive, Ayame had planted those this morning. Her mom still believed in symbols. (y/n) didn’t.

Dad.

The word floated into her mind like a typo. She never used it. Not for him. Not even in her thoughts. He was a man. A needle. A ghost that sometimes wore her cheekbones.

She flicked the lighter twice before it caught. The breeze was light but petty, dancing just enough to annoy her. She leaned toward the flame like she was kissing it, and the cigarette finally lit with a satisfying crackle.

Smoke tasted better than memory. Than pity. Than graves. She sucked in a drag so deep she swore she felt her chest hollow out. It grounded her. It tasted real.

The gravestone looked back at her, his name carved neatly, the dates pretending to matter, and some sentimental bullshit quote about peace or eternity or love.

Love.

She almost laughed. But her mother was still kneeling, still touching the cold stone with trembling fingers, still looking like someone who thought grief was a duty.

Ayame still loved him, or thought she did. Or thought she should. That was the sad part. Not him.

(y/n) stood in the cold, letting the smoke drift upward toward nothing, and thought, If the dead were watching, they’d probably be bored too.

She didn’t believe in souls. Never did. Souls were for people who needed consolation prizes. She believed in the body, in warmth, in breath, in weight. In what someone did when they were alive, not the bullshit people whispered after they rotted.

Mallory taught her that.

Mallory, her baby, her orange angel, her gentle little mother of a cat had died in the spring. She held her through it. Really held her. One hand on her ribs, feeling every frail rise and fall. Murmuring nonsense into her fur until the trembling stopped, until that last tiny breath left her.

She didn’t left her at the vet’s cold steel table. She buried her by her grandmother’s grave. Not some anonymous pet cemetery. Mallory deserved lineage.

After that, she never visited the grave. Why would she? Mallory wasn’t down there. Mallory was in the corners of her apartment, where dust bunnies still carried her fur. She was in the dip of the mattress where she slept. In the bathroom door scratch she never fixed.

Dead people go nowhere, because they were never fully there to begin with. Just bodies. Meat. Cells. Rot. Which made this whole holiday cemetery pilgrimage feel like a sick joke.

She dragged her cigarette out of her mouth and flicked the ash like she was flicking off a fly. Her eyes narrowed at the gravestone.

“You better be real fucking quiet down there. No haunting. No poetic monologues. Don’t start rattling pipes at night. Just shut the fuck up and decompose.”

She didn’t even realize she said it out loud. She never did when she was angry, her thoughts just spilled like a broken faucet no one bothered to fix.

Her mother turned from clearing the dead flowers.

“What did you say?”

“I said the soil’s really damp. Don’t stay on your knees too long. You’ll ache later.”

She replied with a flat little shrug. She wasn’t even trying to cover anything. She was worried for her mother. The only human being on earth who ever felt like hers.

“He was still your father, you know.” Her mother said quietly.

(y/n) didn’t look up. Didn’t respond. Just took another drag from her cigarette, or tried to.

The thing was weak as hell. Barely counted. It felt like inhaling flavored air. She glared at the filter. Jesus Christ. She needed something heavier, like a cigarette that punched her lungs, dragged her by the hair, and told her she wasn’t shit. But instead she bought this bullshit because she was scared of staining her teeth like a French philosopher in his seventies.

She exhaled, unimpressed, already itching to light another one even though this one wasn’t halfway done.

After a few minutes, her mother stood up and brushed the dirt off her coat. The gesture was soft, habitual, but her hands looked wrong. Soil streaked over her knuckles, mud under her nails, dead leaves clinging stubbornly to her sleeves. And her eyes were red around the rims. Not dramatic. Not swollen. Just the quiet kind of red you get from crying in silence, or trying very hard not to.

She turned toward (y/n). Her expression was calm, steady, but something small and worried flickered underneath it. Something measuring. Something bracing.

“Your grandfather’s been asking about you. He says he misses his only granddaughter. Sukuna will be there this time. He took some time off work.” Ayame said gently

(y/n)’s heart didn’t beat, it dropped. It collapsed somewhere low, dark, and ugly inside her. A clumsy, broken thud.

Grandfather.

No.

Not now. Not piled on top of the grave, the cold wind, the smell of damp soil. Not him. Not that house. Not them.

One at a time, her brain begged. One damn catastrophe at a time.

She lifted her cigarette, trying to steady her hands, but the tremor betrayed her. Her ears felt hot, too hot, like panic was rising through her blood. Something cold settled in her stomach. Dread, memory, the hint of something she’d kept locked up for years.

“And Jin. And Kaori. And the boys. Everyone’s coming. It’s been years, you know. Since–“

“Since he died?” She snapped, too fast, too sharp.

Her voice didn’t even sound like hers. She wasn’t aware how pale she’d gone, how hollow her eyes looked, how the cigarette shook between her fingers. Her mouth was flat, tight, ready to bare teeth.

“Since we were all together.” Ayame corrected, unfazed, her voice still calm, that librarian patience, that motherly endurance.

(y/n) swallowed hard. The bitterness burned. There were a thousand things she wanted to spit out. Ugly, honest, corrosive things. But she forced them back down her throat. She would not hurt her mother.

Not here.

Not standing in front of her dead father’s grave in the cold wind.

Ayame started walking. And (y/n) followed.

Through the graves. Through the fogged up silence. Through the weight of memories that weren’t fully memories, just shapes, just smells, just shadows behind her eyes.

She let the last drag burn all the way down, lungs tight, throat warm, the smoke almost painful. She flicked her cigarette, watched ash fall like grey snow, and crushed it beneath her heel with too much force, like she wanted something to break that wasn’t her for once.

She shivered. Not from the November cold. From that sick little knot in her stomach, the one that couldn’t decide if it was fear or excitement or nausea or all three braided together like a noose.

Family. Grandpa. Kaori. The boys. Jin. Sukuna.

God.

She didn’t want to walk back into that house. She wasn’t built for this. Not anymore. Not after growing a life alone, shaped by her own hands and her mother’s quiet strength. For years she’d sworn she would rather die than see these people again, not because she hated them, but because solitude had become her armor, her clarity, her survival.

She’d been enough for herself. Ayame had been enough for her. And she clung to that idea like a rosary. Because she thought she couldn’t bear it. Those faces that looked like his. Her father. His shadow. His voice. His cruelty.

What if someone at that table laughed like he did?

What if the way they breathed, or shifted, or cleared their throat cracked something open in her chest?

What if one raised voice sent her spiraling, convinced he’d crawled back out of the grave, ready to upheave her life again like he always did? She’d spent years avoiding all of that. And now she was walking straight into it.

So why the hell, why in God’s cruel joke of a sense of humor did her heart thrum with something else too? Something dangerously close to longing. Or curiosity. Or the ache of a kid who once had a big, messy family and then suddenly didn’t.

She should’ve been worried about worse things. Like being blindsided by the resemblance, the jawlines, the eyes, the shoulders that matched the man who ruined her childhood.

But instead, there it was again. This ridiculous, humiliating flutter inside her ribs. Like she was going to see something she’d forgotten.

Or someone.

She was nothing. Or maybe she became nothing. It was hard to tell which version hurt more. The only point of pride she could scrape together was that she didn’t end up a fucked up junkie like him. That alone felt like some pathetic trophy she never asked for. Her perfect student era died early, somewhere between her first panic attack and the first time she realized adults lied as easily as breathing. After that, school didn’t matter. Life didn’t matter. She wandered through her late teens like a shadow that forgot how to attach to a body.

She had passions, sure. But the wrong kind. Useless things. Things men on podcasts liked to call “whimsical” or “delusional” unless they came from a man during the fall of an empire. She had thoughts that would’ve been treated as little quirks if she was twelve, and as embarrassing flaws the moment she became a woman. Dreams that were only “charming” if you were a man or a genius, and she was neither.

She wasn’t even that pretty.

And then she froze.

What the hell was that? Was she really going to reduce herself to that? Pretty? Not pretty?

Skinny? Not skinny? Was she auditioning for some beauty pageant? And yet why did it matter? Why was this suddenly a battlefield?

Why was she wishing she hadn’t gained those few kilos these last years, kilos she earned while reclaiming her appetite, her sanity, her body? Why was she regretting every comfortable meal, every late night dessert, every morning she didn’t wake up starving herself thin?

It was so easy to feel liberated in isolation. So easy to believe she didn’t need makeup or diets or skincare or clothes that made her feel sculpted. Who was she trying to impress when her only witnesses were her cats and the occasional delivery guy?

But now? Now she was about to face a family she hadn’t seen in a decade, people who knew her when she was small and sweet and salvageable. And suddenly she felt… Unready. Not enough.

Too much.

Wrong.

She’d been hiding in her room for two years, protecting her little pocket of peace like it was sacred land. No new people. No new chaos. No new expectations. Just stillness. Softness.

Safety.

And now here she was, heart racing, palms sweating, because something in her chest was stirring that she thought was long dead. Something warm. Something terrifying.

Excitement.

Why? Why was she wondering if Yuji got taller, if Choso still glared like the world betrayed him every morning, if Kaori aged or somehow got hotter, if Grandpa softened or calcified into pure stone? Why was she suddenly hoping Jin was still gentle? Still kind? Still the only man in that house who didn’t treat silence like a sin?

Why was she wondering if Sukuna was still Sukuna?

Untamable, unbearable, impossible.

Her mother, queen of reverence and forgiveness. Her mother who still loved the family that abandoned them. Who still loved the man who died. Who still loved the father in law who broke more hearts than he mended. Of course she wanted her daughter to go. Of course she wanted them to see her again.

The car was too quiet. Too careful. Only the low hum of the engine, the heater wheezing like it had asthma, and her mother’s occasional throat clearing trying to sound casual but absolutely failing.

(y/n) pressed her forehead lightly to the cold window, watching the November sky smear itself over the city in one gigantic gray bruise. Buildings passed like strangers she didn’t trust. Every tree looked like it was freezing to death. The billboards were hideous. The sidewalks cracked. She catalogued every single thing outside like she was studying a foreign country, not the place she technically lived. God, this city was designed by someone who hated people. Half of it needed to be rebuilt, demolished, salted like ancient battlefields.

Her mother tried to break the silence with a soft cough. The gentle, testing kind.

“You know… He wasn’t really in the best healt–“

“Yeah, I get it. Grandfather’s dying, and I’m supposed to pretend this is some fun little family reunion.” (y/n) cut in, blunt, eyes still on the window.

Her tone wasn’t even angry, it was too tired to be angry. She hated this topic. Death. Aging. Obligations. Anything that pressed her into corners she didn’t choose. Anything she couldn’t control.

Anything that forced her into feeling.

Her mom gave a small smile. They had the same dimples. She’d always loved that. Every trace of her mother on her face felt like a blessing, a shield, a defense against the fact she shared DNA with a man whose existence should’ve been edited out of humanity. Sometimes she wished biology worked like a recipe. Half a teaspoon father. Full cup mother. She would’ve happily spilled the father part on the floor.

“Don’t be an ass. He’s not that bad. He misses you. And Yuji and Choso too. They’re so curious about you. They’re growing up fast.” Ayame murmured gently.

(y/n)’s face crumpled at the word curious, an involuntary, disgusted little wince.

“Growing up, huh? Like actual men? Or just taller, louder boys?”

Because the truth was simple. Men. Boys. Same species. Same plague. She didn’t differentiate. A male was a male, whether he was eight or eighty. Her disgust was gendered, universal, eternal.

Her mother glanced at her, entertained, as if this was a personality quirk and not a deeply political stance.

“Yuji’s nineteen, sweetheart. And Choso’s twenty three. Not boys anymore.”

“Great. Nineteen year old boys still thing they’re gods until life punches them in the face. And twenty three year olds? Just upgraded versions of the same glitching program. Same ego, better hairstyle.”

Ayame laughed softly, shaking her head.

“You’re impossible. You forgot how Yuji never wanted to leave your side? The way you’d draw together? And Choso. Oh, that boy. He adored you two. I wanted him to be mine so badly. He was such a serious little thing. Always checking if you were safe.”

(y/n) finally glanced at her. And she wished she hadn’t, because her mother’s eyes were warm. Too warm. Talking about boys as if they were puppies. Talking about motherhood as if it was gentle, as if boys stayed sweet when they grew.

“Look, I don’t hate them. I just don’t do boys or men. It’s not my lane. But maybe talking to them won’t kill me.” She muttered, softer but still stubborn.

Her mother hummed.

“It might even be good for you.”

(y/n) almost snorted. Good for her? Men? She imagined men as parasites. Honestly she was irritated that her own mother thought she needed exposure therapy in the form of grown male cousins. Did she think her daughter was feral? That she needed to be “socialized”? As if men could civilize anything. As if a woman wasn’t born more human than any man would ever be.

She stared back out the window, the cold glass calming her cheeks. She breathed in the heater’s dry, dusty air. Her chest tight, but steady. The city blurred. The tension hummed. And for a second, just a second, she almost wished she’d never agreed to come at all.

Her mind drifted, flickering through half formed memories she wasn’t even sure were hers. The noise of old family gatherings, the kind where adults shouted over each other. Her grandfather, already ancient then, barking at anything that breathed wrong. Kaori with her shiny bob and lethal manicure, slipping into French whenever someone irritated her, which was always. Yuji, bright eyed and loud like he drank sunlight. Choso, softer, shy, a shadow made of warm things.

And then, hazier, stranger, Sukuna.

“I don’t remember much, mom.” She said, voice small in spite of herself.

“Except… I think Sukuna messed up my curls once. When I was tiny. I didn’t even know who he was then. I remember thinking he looked scary. But I remember I wasn’t scared of him.” It slipped out casual, like a thought she didn’t expect anyone to hear.

Ayame didn’t look away from the road. Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel, too fast, too tight.

“He’s changed a lot since then.” She answered, tone straight. Like a report. Like she was afraid of adding anything human to it.

Ayame cleared her throat, the way she did when she suddenly remembered a fact she’d been avoiding.

“We leave tomorrow morning.”

That was it. Dropped like a stone. No softness. No discussion. Tomorrow. A new house. A strange room. A family she technically belonged to but did not know. People who left her behind before she ever got to understand what they meant to her.

She swallowed around the tightness in her chest.

“Well, I guess I better pack my suitcase then.” She muttered, forehead sliding back against the cold, foggy window.

Her breath clouded the glass. For a second she imagined drawing something in the fog, a cat paw, maybe. But her hand didn’t move. She just stared at her own reflection instead. Tired eyes, stubborn chin, pretending she wasn’t already unraveling.

She sprawled across her bed like a wounded princess, rolling from one side to the other, limbs heavy with dread. It was past midnight, the window wide open, curtains flapping in the cold air because she couldn’t be bothered to close them. The lights were still on. Yellow, warm, soft, illuminating her shame like a stage play. Anyone passing by could glance up and witness the pathetic state of her existence, whole neighborhood could absolutely see that she was doing nothing. Not a single sock folded. Not one pathetic pair of underwear tossed into a suitcase. Not even a list.

She didn’t know what to pack. Or how to pack. Or why she even agreed to this whole family bonding fever dream in the first place.

Her room breathed around her, alive and familiar, smudged with her fingerprints and her habits, smelling faintly of candle wax and last night’s burnt sugar experiment. It was her bubble. Her fortress. Her womb. Her sanctuary. How was she supposed to leave this for a week of smiling politely and pretending she was emotionally stable?

How was she supposed to survive even one day without her space? Without her books, the dozens she hadn’t touched in a year but needed near her like oxygen? They still provided an emotional support unmatched by any living human. Just looking at them gave her comfort.

Without these sage green walls, plastered with her beloved film posters. Truffaut, Kitano, Demy, Pasolini, Polanski (she’d been meaning to take him down, but the poster was pretty), scanned glossy magazine clippings from the 30s and 60s, faded Italian actresses in dramatic cat eyes. Her cats stared back from framed photographs, Mallory the angel, and the other’s from the past, each captured in gorgeous high resolution like they were royalty.

How was she supposed to sleep without her enormous bed, her ridiculous mountain of pillows, her mismatched blankets, her salted caramel candles?

Speaking of caramel… Her kitchen. Her kitchen was not just a kitchen. It was her domestic rage chamber. She baked at ungodly hours when her anxiety got too loud. She made midnight bagels she didn’t need, 4AM cookies because a thought disturbed her and she became hysterical.

And now she was going to some family mountain house where she didn’t know the rules. Could she even use their oven? Would they judge her if she made an entire tray of brownies at 2AM? What were these people like? Gluten free? Keto? A cult? She had no intention to go a whole week without touching flour or sugar. She would rather die.

She groaned and shoved her face into her pillow. A week without this room. Without her smells. Her little rituals. Her warm clutter.

God. God. She didn’t know how she’d survive. Maybe she wouldn’t.

This whole thing was already sitting on her chest. She’d known it was coming, she could always tell, the way her mother got this suspiciously soft, tip toey kindness, like she was handling a skittish deer that might bolt into traffic at any second. It was the warning sign. The omen. But still she was grateful, in the pathetic, resigned way anxious girls are grateful for anything that doesn’t knock them over too violently.

Her mom had dropped the news last minute, and honestly, Thank God. If she’d known days earlier, she would’ve built an entire apocalypse in her head, complete with evacuation routes and emotional casualty charts. At least this way, she could panic fast, spiral efficiently, and get the whole existential earthquake over with before her brain started adding unnecessary sequels.

Family.

What a useless concept.

In her mind, people only truly needed their mothers, especially girls. Boys didn’t even deserve that luxury half the time.

Her mother’s side of the family were basically ghosts. Names on old wedding photos. Faces she wouldn’t recognize if they were standing directly in front of her. Strangers bound to her by blood and generational politeness, nothing more. There was no belonging there. No softness. No place carved out for her.

If anyone asked, she would’ve rather died than attend one of their gatherings. She was built from spite and stubborn loneliness, she wasn’t trying to share that with a room full of people who barely remembered her existence.

There was once a moment, stupid, fleeting, when her mother mentioned her nieces, (y/n)’s cousins, the whole little flock of girls that apparently existed somewhere out in the world. Girls her age. Girls she never met. Girls she could’ve grown up with. For half a heartbeat, the idea had felt almost comforting. Something she never got to have. But she was terrible with women, terrible with closeness, terrible with anyone who required emotional availability. So maybe it was better that fate never gave her that option.

Ayame, meanwhile, was the calm in her storm. A librarian, the kind of woman who believed in cataloging chaos into neat little boxes because something in life had to make sense. Patient, gentle, stern when it mattered, but never with her daughter. Never once with her.

Ayame’s family had cut her off the moment she married her father. Tradition, shame, disappointment. All the usual dramatic reasons families used when they wanted to feel righteous. They couldn’t bear that their girl had gotten pregnant by a man like him.

Ayame said it had been love. (y/n) always thought it looked more like hormones and bad decision making.

Her father had been an addict, an incompetent bastard with that typical Itadori charm, the kind that lit up a room while simultaneously lighting the fuse to destroy it. She never understood what her mother saw in him.

She inhaled hard, dramatic, like she was bracing for impact.

Now she was curious. About Yuji. About Choso. She didn’t like males as a species, god forbid. But she did enjoy observing them the way other people watch nature documentaries. Boys under thirty were still boys to her. Unfinished. Emotionally gelatinous. Which automatically made most grown men even less worthy of her time.

Still, something in her flickered at the thought of seeing them again. A little scientific itch. A social experiment in family dysfunction. She’d take exactly one look at them and instantly judge their entire character. Their moral fiber. Their lifelong potential. Their sins. Their intelligence, or lack thereof.

She dragged herself out of bed like a corpse doing one last favor for the living. Still in her graveyard chic. The sweater stretched from panic sweating, the leggings clinging, everything smelling like dirt and a hint of dead leaves. Her sleeves itched like hell. Probably crawling with the kind of imaginary bugs anxiety invents just to bully her.

She stripped everything off in a single, irritated sweep and stood bare, the cold air rushing over her skin. She walked to the full length mirror leaning crookedly against the wall.

And she stopped. Just stared.

She looked good. Not the glossy kind of hot. Not the man destroying femme fatale kind of sexy either. But good. Present. Real. A human being instead of a silhouette she kept trying to shrink into nothing.

Her body had been a battlefield since she was a kid, a childhood spent being too much before she even knew what womanhood was. Eleven years old with hips that betrayed her, thighs that announced her, a chest that made grown men glance twice and made her want to peel her skin off. Every part of her felt like an accusation. She remembered the shame more than the years themselves. The way she tugged her shirts down, the way adults made her feel responsible for their gaze, how she convinced herself softness was danger.

And she still felt it. She still saw the soft arms. The curves that came before the confidence. The thighs that touched. The hips that didn’t apologize. But she was tired. God, she was tired of fighting herself every minute of every day, tired of beating her own body like it was something she stole.

So yeah. She looked good. She looked like someone who survived her childhood and still had the audacity to grow. She looked like her, and for once that felt almost enough.

She found the oversized band tee she’d thrown into the corner that morning and dragged it over her head. Thin, worn, softened by time and too many wash cycles. It smelled faintly of detergent and the summer she stole it from an old childhood friend she didn’t even speak to anymore. Perfect.

Then she hauled a little wooden chair to the closet, climbed up, and stretched on her toes to yank down the old suitcase. It came crashing to the floor with a dull, dusty thud that echoed off the walls. She almost followed it, a near face first dive into her own mess.

“Whatever.” She muttered to no one. She deserved a reward just for trying.

The countryside would be cold. Brutally so. A November that bit at your ankles and went straight for the bone. She had no idea what to pack. Her brain refused to form a single coherent plan. So she drifted instead, slow, unfocused, toward her bookshelf.

Her fingers brushed over the spines until they found the thick Marie Antoinette biography she’d abandoned two summers ago. Six hundred pages of powdered wigs and doomed queens and dread. She pressed the cover to her palm for a moment. It felt good. Steady. Heavy. She tossed it into the suitcase. It landed with a soft thump.

Then she saw it on the bed. Her tiger, Mafi.

A small, scruffed up plush with faded stripes, the fur rubbed thin on his belly. One embroidered eye had started to hang loose, giving him a permanently suspicious expression, like he knew too much about life for a stuffed animal. She didn’t even really know where he came from. Someone said one of her uncles had given it to her, maybe Jin. She couldn’t remember. Childhood memories had a way of dissolving, like sugar cubes in hot tea. But Mafi stayed. Always stayed.

He’d been tucked under her arm through fevers, nightmares, the quiet panic attacks she hid under blankets. Through the lonely years. Through the years she pretended she was too old for him, pushing him to the far corner of the bed only to reach for him again the moment the lights went off.

So she picked him up now, held him by the torso, thumb brushing the worn seam on his head, and placed him gently into the suitcase. Like placing a relic in a shrine. A little creature who didn’t judge, didn’t ask, didn’t leave.

And God, that thought made her eyes burn. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, quick, embarrassed, stubborn. She was sensitive about him. About this stupid, precious toy she couldn’t even remember receiving. Sensitive in that deep, bone stitched way, where nostalgia and grief and something soft all tangled together inside her ribs. Mafi was the closest thing she had to a witness. To her small, quiet joys. Just looking at him gave her serotonin spikes sharp enough to sting.

And now he lay in her suitcase, nestled between a doomed French queen and whatever cold weather clothes she’d eventually force herself to pick.

She wondered if her uncles even remembered her, the real her from back then. Peach pink cheeks, bouncy curls that never stayed brushed, those absurd dimples that showed up the moment she even thought about smiling. She looked like a walking doll in every old photo, all sparkle and sugar, brightness leaking out of her like she couldn’t help it. A tiny creature made of glitter and joy.

There was something almost unreal about her in those pictures, not ethereal because she was beautiful, but because she looked so free. Like she came from some other world entirely. A world where nothing hurt yet. A world made of sweets and cats and shiny things, where everything was soft and safe and she could grin until her face hurt. She smiled in every single photo. And it wasn’t posed. It wasn’t polite. It was pure. God, her smile was so damn cute. It almost made her angry to look at it now.

She’d always been a high maintenance girl. Joyfully, deliberately so. It wasn’t vanity, never was. It was ritual. She didn’t dress up for trends or seasonal palettes, didn’t give a shit about which designer was churning out the newest ugly handbag. What she loved was history. Texture. Legacy. She loved fashion the way a historian loves ruins, not for what’s new, but for what still breathes after centuries.

And she loved makeup too. The theater of it. The intimacy. But lately, she liked her bare face even more.

Her bare skin, with its warmth and unevenness. Her real lips. Her real nose. The peach fuzz the world once told her to shave. The pores capitalism insists are flaws. She liked looking like a woman who had survived things. A woman who didn’t need to perform softness to justify existing.

It had taken years, actual years to unlearn the idea that being “presentable” meant erasing herself. Patriarchy had crawled into her vanity mirror by the time she was thirteen, whispering, fix this, hide that, be smaller. And men made it worse. Men always made it worse.

Especially him.

He had poisoned even her reflection. There were days she couldn’t look in the mirror without thinking, your genes are there. The thinness of her lips. The shape of her nose. All the places where she could’ve mirrored her mother instead. Her mother with her beautiful, full lips and soft, generous features, the kind of face made for Renaissance paintings.

But she cut the thought off, sharp and clean. Her lips were hers. Her nose was hers. Her face belonged to the girl who survived him, not the man who made her.

She packed slow, half absent, aching. Her suitcase was already filled with things she’d probably never wear. Lace tights, blouses, velvet skirts, dresses of all lengths. She put them in knowing she wouldn’t touch most of them on this trip, but she needed them. She needed the promise of beauty nearby.

“So many things. Why do I bring so many things?” She murmured to herself, smoothing a sweater that would take ten hours to dry in this cold.

Under the hot shower that night, her thoughts started doing that thing again. That slippery, chaotic slide into places she never meant to visit. Showers were dangerous like that. They were memory traps, idea incubators, anxiety incubators, trauma incubators.

Her uncle, Jin. Yuji’s sweet, steady dad, the kind of man who made quiet feel like a blanket instead of a warning. Someone who probably brewed his son tea when he had nightmares. She could practically hear him now, humming like some Ghibli woodland creature while stirring honey.

Yuji didn’t know how easy he had it. Meanwhile she had an entire three terabyte emotional hard drive labeled Daddy Issues, Do not Open. And this boy was out there probably getting moral support over herbal infused chamomile. Ridiculous.

She huffed out a breath, steam curling off her skin like she was boiling from the inside. She fucking hated scrubbing herself, it required arm strength she did not have. Half of her shower was dramatic huffing and pausing.

Sukuna.

Her brain put his name on screen like a movie title card.

Was he still single? Probably. Who the hell would voluntarily sign up for that. Childless? Also probably. Emotionally unavailable? Obviously. Physically terrifying? Yes. Spiritually terrifying? Also yes.

He was the older uncle. The exile uncle. And she remembered faintly, faintly, like a dream with torn edges, how he used to fill a room. Not just stand in it. Fill it. Like the walls pushed back a little to make space for him.

Maybe Jin wasn’t the sensible one after all. Maybe he was. Maybe all that rage, all those sharp words, all that ink over muscle over more ink, maybe it was a membrane. A shell. Maybe under all that was the only man in the entire universe who didn’t lie.

The next morning, she woke up already irritated at the air itself. This was it. The starting line. No rewind, no pause, no mercy. Just forward, straight into whatever cosmic joke awaited her.

And because she was unhinged and exhausted and human, she prayed.

Yeah. Prayed.

Not out of faith, she didn’t have any. Whatever belief she’d been force fed as a kid had rotted off her like a bad scab. Praying was something weak people did, something you turned to when you were drowning.

She refused to be her mother. The woman who got pregnant by an addict. Who got cut off by her whole family. Who clung to gods the way some people cling to lifeboats.

That morning, she kissed her mother’s cheek. Hugged her. Brief, tiny, almost shy. Ayame blinked like she’d just witnessed a solar eclipse. Her daughter, the quiet one, the prickly one, the girl who practically hissed if anyone hugged her too long, was suddenly soft.

Ayame didn’t know the truth. (y/n) wasn’t repelled by touch. She was starving for it. She’d built whole personality layers to hide that hunger, the hard opinions, the films, the politics, the rage, the coldness. Armor. All of it was armor. And underneath there was a girl vibrating with loneliness she refused to name.

She wasn’t just like this with her mom, either. Friends got the same distant chilly treatment, like she lived behind frosted glass.

And romantic interests were nonexistent.

Twelve years old, crying over some guy who didn’t even know she was alive, that was her first real heartbreak. Stupid. Embarrassing. And it left a crack in her she still felt when she pressed too hard.

At sixteen, she kissed another older guy at a house party. It was bad. Not traumatic, just gross. His tongue shoved into her mouth and she shoved him off with all the disgust her teenager body could summon and that was that. A single, disappointing blip in the archive.

Sure, guys flirted. She flirted back, too, sometimes, mostly to hear her own thoughts from someone else’s mouth, like an echo she didn’t want to claim. They listened or acted like they did because they wanted her body more than her words.

Then something flipped. Maybe it was age. Maybe it was rage. Maybe it was Mallory dying, or panic attacks, or the world turning into a sharp place she didn’t want to touch.

Now the idea of a man being close to her like that made her skin crawl. Revolting. Pitiful. Like watching mold grow. She didn’t see men as something worth compromising for. Not her principles. Not her mind. Not the sharp, complicated creature she’d become.

She’d never throw all of that away because she was horny. If anything, the thought repulsed her more.

She was twenty years old now. Still untouched in all the ways that mattered. She wasn’t ashamed, not even close. Just carved differently. Built on caution and grit. Too aware of what men could ruin. Too aware of how easily she could be shattered.

Stepping into the train, she tugged her sunglasses off and blinked at her reflection in the dark window, like meeting a version of herself she didn’t fully approve of.

The outfit was too much. High waisted trousers in a dusty sage green, too structured, too adult. Clinging where she didn’t want opinions, loosening where she preferred to disappear. And the satin shirt. Creamy white, soft, almost glowy. The kind of thing that made her feel like a museum girl in glass.

The lace of her white bra peeked through under certain angles. She saw it immediately, cursed internally, and fought the urge to fold her arms over her chest. She wasn’t ashamed of her body, she just hated the idea of some man somewhere, getting a little spark of joy because her nipples lined up prettily under a stupid satin shirt.

Just the thought made her jaw clench. She was not here to feed anyone.

Her hair was tied into a single lazy braid, the kind you do without thinking. Bangs soft around her face, merciful in the way they forgave everything. No makeup except the serums she drowned in every morning, moisturizer, brushed brows, brutally curled lashes, and her cherry lip balm that gave her the illusion of life.

If it were up to her, she’d have been in leggings or a long skirt and an oversized tee the size of a tent. The sacred uniform. The safe uniform. But Ayame had hovered in her doorway all morning, arms crossed, lips pressed tight, insisting she “look put together” like she was sending her daughter into a workplace, not a family gathering.

So here she was, dressed like a woman who had her shit together, while feeling like a girl who most definitely did not. Her head already throbbed from discomfort. The trousers dug at her waist. The shirt felt too delicate for her skin. And her favorite gigantic cotton panties, the ones that felt like a hug, were banned because “they leave lines.”

She wanted to scream.

She slid into a seat, put her sunglasses back on like a shield, and pressed her back to the rattling train wall.

She inhaled. Her hair still smelled like fresh shampoo. Clean, warm, innocent. And her lotion like honeyed milk. It was such a small, stupid, perfect comfort she felt her shoulders relax for the first time all morning. Her lips curved. A quiet little smile. Private.

A tiny moment of softness, a reminder that she still belonged to herself, even dressed like this. Even heading toward a family she barely remembered. Even stepping into a story she hadn’t decided she wanted to be a part of.

Ayame was unwrapping the sandwiches she’d made carefully. Meanwhile, (y/n) was starving and vibrating with that weird, jittery excitement she hated admitting to. Not about the trip, not about the stupid house.

About Kaori. She liked women like that. Women who walked into a room like a slap. Women people whispered about as if confidence was a crime. Women who refused to shrink. Kaori never pretended to be small. People hated her for that. (y/n) understood. Maybe even admired it.

Her mind flicked to Sukuna.

Was he still single?

She didn’t look up when she asked.

“Mom, do you know if Sukuna ever got married?”

Ayame froze mid fold like someone had pressed pause on her.

“Sukuna? No, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard about a wife. He’s… Private.”

Private. What a useless, man excusing word.

(y/n) bit into her sandwich. Sourdough, smoked turkey, basil, a criminal amount of mayo. Everything tasted like someone else’s choices.

“So you don’t know.” She said flatly.

“Not really. We didn’t talk much after Shuhei. Not beyond practical things. He helped where he could, but we weren’t close. Your uncles are all strange, honey. In different ways.”

“I don’t remember much of him.”

Ayame paused again, like she was choosing her next words from a shelf.

“You were little. He was around. He’s not warm, not like Jin. But he wasn’t cruel.”

That made something hot spark in (y/n)’s chest.

“You don’t really know him.” She muttered.

“No. I guess I don’t.” Ayame said gently

“Then don’t say he’s not cruel.” She said it with quiet fire. No yelling. No drama. Just a boundary drawn in steel.

Ayame inhaled, tight, tense. The kind of breath that held ten years of guilt and twelve years of trying.

“Sorry, baby, you’re right. I shouldn’t assume.”

(y/n) looked down at the sandwich in her hands. She hated when people gave men the “he tried” discount. She hated when family became an excuse. She hated when absence got rewritten as sacrifice.

The train rattled on, cold slicing through the glass. Her braid had already started coming undone, slipping over her shoulder in a lazy twist, and she kept picking at the hem of her satin shirt just to keep her hands busy, to keep her mind from spiraling.

Sukuna.

The name felt foreign. Dusty. Like it belonged to someone else’s childhood, not hers. All she could scrape together were blurry impressions. Something big beside her once, a shape that blocked out the sun, a rough hand brushing her hair when she was too tiny to understand the world. And then?

Nothing.

A decade of nothing. Silence so complete it felt intentional.

She didn’t trust him. Why would she? Men vanished all the time, especially the ones who pretended they wouldn’t. Especially the ones who acted like affection was a favor they could hand out or take back when it bored them.

If he turned out to be like the rest, loud, adored, stupidly confident in their own mythology, she already knew exactly how she’d handle it. Quietly. Sharply. At a distance. Like she always did. Like a girl who learned too early that no one was coming to save her, so she saved her own damn self.

“Mom, do you think they ended up like this because they didn’t have a mom? Like… Grandma died after Jin, right? That has to screw a family up. Maybe that’s why they’re all–“ She twirled her hand, searching for the right insult.

“Emotionally arthritic.” She asked, eyes on the window, voice flat enough to pass as bored but heavy enough to be real.

Ayame gave her that patient motherly look. The one that said finish your thought properly.

She groaned.

“I’m serious. Men with no mothers? That’s already a recipe for disaster. Then pair that with a father like Wasuke? He probably raised them with a sword in one hand and a list of rules in the other.”

She didn’t want to talk about her father. She never did. The man lived like a cautionary tale and died like one too. But everything circled back to him.

And she hated that. She didn’t believe in “trauma explains all.” She didn’t believe men deserved pity. But facts were facts, these brothers were raised in a house run by a man who was all spine and no heart. Maybe he’d always been like that. Maybe Grandma dying had carved out the last soft part of him. Maybe he’d loved her so much it broke something permanent.

(y/n) didn’t care enough to solve the mystery. She wasn’t writing a thesis on “Why Men Are Like This.” She was just filling the silence on this freezing ass train.

Ayame took a sip of her tea.

“It’s possible. Losing a mother young, it leaves a mark. But no, it’s not an excuse. Your father–“

“Was a bastard.” She said simply.

Ayame sighed, but there was fondness hiding in it.

“He was my choice.”

“You were nineteen. You get a free pass for everything before twenty one.” She flicked a crumb off her pants.

“Besides, we all make tragic choices. I watched the Sailor Moon reboot on purpose. Fully conscious. Not even tipsy.”

Ayame laughed, a real one, warm and chest deep.

“Oh, sweetheart. You’re ridiculous.”

“No. Just honest. And maybe a little cruel. But only toward people who earn it. Not you.” She said, leaning her head back, adjusting her sunglasses with a smile.

Her mother watched her, eyes softening in a way that made (y/n) feel both embarrassed and protected.

“You’re not cruel. You’re careful. There’s a difference.” Ayame murmured.

“Yeah, well… People get cut when they stop being careful.” (y/n) said, stretching out her legs.

Her tone was light, but the truth in it was razor sharp. Like she’d been born holding a blade she didn’t remember picking up. Like something in her blood had always known it.

“How long are we staying again?”

“A week. Maybe more, if your grandfather’s feeling well enough. He wanted the house full again. Said it might be his last chance.”

(y/n) didn’t answer. Didn’t trust herself to. She just nodded, jaw tight. A week. A whole goddamn fucking week. Long enough for her to spiral, cry, pack her bags, unpack them, then hate herself for both.

They were standing at the gate.

The taxi had pulled away minutes ago, the soft roll of its tires already swallowed by the mountain silence. And she immediately regretted every travel decision that led to her standing here like an idiot in the middle of nowhere. They should’ve taken her mother’s car, not the damn train. But Ayame didn’t trust herself to drive mountain roads, not with the November fog that clung to everything.

Now it was just them.

Her. Her mother. And the house.

The cold hit differently up here, not dramatic, not snowy, just that dead, bone deep cold that makes your nose sting and your fingertips turn into stiff little corpses even with gloves on.

The house stood tall in front of them, too tall. A proud, weather beaten thing with wood that had darkened over the decades and paint that peeled in quiet, curling strips. The roof tiles were blackened at the edges with moss. A single thin column of smoke slipped out of the chimney and dissolved into the grayish sky.

(y/n) adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. It slipped, she huffed, yanked it back up. Her suitcase sat beside her, wheels crusted with dirt. Ayame’s suitcase leaned against the gate post, her gloved fingers neatly wrapped around the handle.

“You okay?” Ayame asked, voice soft but with that irritating tilt to it.

(y/n) snorted.

“Define okay.”

“Nervous?”

“Always.”

Ayame gave a tiny sympathetic smile.

“It’s normal.”

(y/n) blew out a cold breath through her nose, eyes drifting up toward the second floor windows.

“Feels like we’re standing in front of a haunted house. Like it’s sizing me up. Planning where to bury me in the yard.” She muttered.

“Don’t be dramatic.” Her mother sighed.

“I’m literally not. Listen.”

A faint creak groaned from inside, the old wood settling or a ghost stretching its legs.

“This place definitely has spirits. They’ve absolutely gossiped about every miserable person who’s stepped through that door. I hope they like me. Or at least tolerate me.”

Ayame let out a breathy laugh.

“You’re so much like your father sometimes.”

(y/n) went still. Her gaze snapped to her mother, sharp enough to cut the air.

Ayame lifted her hands slightly, placating.

“I didn’t mean it badly. I meant… When you get anxious, you get this little bite to you. This edge. Like him. Like you’d prefer to start a fight instead of–“

“Feeling anything?” She finished, flat.

Ayame hesitated.

“Yes.”

(y/n) clicked her tongue and looked away, jaw tight.

“I’m just saying be prepared, Jin looks a lot like him now. Same eyes. Same build. He’s softer, though. He’s healthier. Drinks tea. Eats vegetables. You’ll see.”

She tried not to wince. Oh god. As if she would get sentimental over a man who shared a face with the bastard who ruined half her childhood.

“Mom, don’t expect me to get emotional. That’s your department.” She muttered, adjusting her jacket collar as the wind nipped her cheeks.

Ayame didn’t answer that. Just gave her a knowing look and let her hand fall back to her side.

“Are you scared?”

“Yeah. But I’m more curious than scared, I think.”

The cold settled around their ankles, the kind that felt like it crept upward, like it wanted into their bones. (y/n) tugged her coat tighter, watching chimney smoke curl above the roof. Even from outside, the house smelled faintly of damp wood, old tea leaves, and history she didn’t ask for.

Her mother finally stepped forward and pressed the doorbell.

Silence. Then footsteps. Slow. Heavy.

“Brace yourself.” Ayame murmured.

“Oh, just kill me.” (y/n) whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

The door opened with a soft creak. Jin Itadori stood in the doorway, framed by warm, golden hallway light. Dust floating in it like glitter. He looked heartbreakingly familiar. Like her father, but not the version she hated thinking about. Not the shaking hands and the cigarette breath and the hollow eyes of someone dying in slow motion.

No. Jin looked like the photos. The wedding album. The young man who held her mother like she was something precious. The man he could have been if life wasn’t a wolf chewing you up one limb at a time.

(y/n) felt something shift, quietly. She wasn’t going to cry. She didn’t cry for men. She’d built an entire personal religion around not crying for men. Especially not for the ghost of one who’d left her with more holes than memories. She had opinions, morals, a spine, she wasn’t going soft for nostalgia.

But the feeling was still there. Warm. Heavy. Uninvited. For a second, just one, she was five again. Curls bouncing. Cheeks red from cold. Small hands tucked into too big mittens. And there stood a man who, in some universe, might’ve scooped her up, spun her around, told her she was loved, that she was someone worth staying for.

She wasn’t grieving. She refused to give the past that much dignity. But it could’ve been beautiful.

“(y/n)? Look at you…”

His voice came from the doorway. Warm, deeper than her father’s, but carrying the same shape. The same shadow.

She turned, managed a smile. Small, stiff around the edges, like it was still waking up.

“Hi.”

He stepped aside immediately so they could enter, but not before she caught that tiny flicker in his eyes, the shock of recognition, the ache of ten lost years, all tightened into a single breath.

Ayame slipped in first, thanking him politely.

Warmth rolled over (y/n) as soon as she crossed the threshold. Cedar, old books, faint smoke, something sweet in the oven. She rolled her suitcase inside.

Jin’s gaze found her again, softer this time.

“You look so much like your father.”

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even grief. Just a man saying the truth out loud for the first time in a decade. She didn’t mind. She didn’t flinch. She gave a little smile, except it came out sharper than she thought. A tiny blade instead of a curve.

“Poor me, then.” The laugh that followed was small, stupid, embarrassed, like her mouth had betrayed her.

Jin exhaled through his nose, not a laugh, not pity, something quieter. Something understanding. He tilted his head a little, studying her the way only someone who loved her father could. Like he was tracing the parts of him she didn’t know she carried.

“No, sweetheart. You got the pieces he wished he’d had. The ones that never broke.” His voice was low, steady.

Compliments were suspicious. Men were suspicious. But Jin’s didn’t feel like flattery. It felt like someone was remembering her father gently, something she couldn’t bring herself to do.

“Uncle… Please. I’m barely through the door. Don’t make me tear up, that’s so rude.”

Jin’s mouth curved into a crooked little smile, soft and a bit sad, like he’d been waiting years to smile at her again.

“Tears don’t scare me. You forgetting us, that scared me.” he said.

Ayame’s shoulders softened, something unreadable passing between her and Jin. Relief, nostalgia, guilt, all tangled together.

She set the bags down while Jin nodded toward the hallway.

“Come on. Shoes off. This place is freezing when it wants to be, and November doesn’t play fair.”

(y/n) slipped off her coat, the cold peeling away from her skin like a second layer of nerves. Jin’s calm presence hovered nearby. Steady, dependable, that rare soft masculinity that didn’t demand anything from her. She wasn’t used to men like that. She wasn’t used to trusting men at all, really. But with Jin, she could breathe.

Then heels clicked, sharp, confident, unapologetic.

Kaori.

(y/n) turned just in time to see her aunt sweeping across the room, perfume trailing behind her like a spell. Jasmine, vanilla, and something expensive and earthy. She hadn’t aged. Not even a little. She still looked like the kind of woman magazine editors chased down the street and painters offered their souls to.

Those almond eyes locked on her.

“Oh, look who finally chose to honor us with her existence. Mon dieu, I thought you died.” Kaori announced, hands on her hips. Her accent slipped in, that faint French lilt that made everything sound both insulting and elegant.

(y/n)’s cheeks burned immediately.

“I mean… I was busy. You know. Life.”

Kaori raised a perfectly groomed brow. No mercy.

“Life. Darling, life also contains phones. Envelopes. Postmen. Did you know that?”

(y/n) wanted the floor to swallow her whole. She always forgot how overwhelming beautiful women made her.

But then Kaori stepped closer. Something softened. Barely. She reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of (y/n)’s shirt, tugging lightly as if checking she wasn’t some ghost her mind had invented.

And Kaori really looked at her then. Slow. Appraising. Not cruel, attentive. Familiar. Like she was remembering the little girl who once clung to her leg, hiding from loud men and drunk uncles.

“My god, you’ve changed.” She murmured, a quiet shift in tone.

Her gaze traveled up to (y/n)’s face, lingering with a strange, almost startled admiration.

“You’re grown. And beautiful. Very beautiful.”

(y/n)’s throat tightened. It wasn’t vanity, it was recognition. Someone seeing her for the first time in years and realizing she survived.

Kaori’s fingers cupped her cheek for a moment, brief, almost brusque.

“I don’t know how you did it, but you turned into something extraordinary. I’m glad you’re here, sweetheart.” She added, voice dropping to a velvet softness. A tiny smile curved her lips, proud and wistful.

(y/n) felt the warmth bloom under her skin. Shy, small, stupidly touched. She didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or giggle or crawl under the table.

As they drifted slowly toward the living room, she spotted them, her cousins. Her actual cousins. Weird.

Yuji was the first one her eyes landed on.

God, when had he grown so much? He was taller than her now, much taller, annoyingly. With that familiar, gentle presence that felt like Jin had been photocopied into Gen Z golden boy format. The same quiet strength. The same softness in the shoulders. But Kaori’s genes… Yeah, they had absolutely done their magic. His eyes were a warm brown, almost golden in the amber light, like honey that had been heated just a bit.

He looked like he’d hug you without asking and somehow you wouldn’t mind.

Then there was Choso. Choso wasn’t pretty. He was striking. That strange, still kind of beauty that didn’t ask for attention but collected it anyway. He stood with that guarded posture he always had, hands tucked into his pockets like he’d rather implode than accidentally take up space he wasn’t allowed to. But he watched. He always watched. Quiet, observant, picking up the smallest shifts like it was second nature.

And then there was her, absolutely hating herself for, God forbid, getting smitten by boys. Boys. At a family reunion. She wanted to sue the universe for this humiliation. She’d never been a “boys” girl. She wasn’t even a “men are disappointing” girl. She was a “kill all men” girl. But today her brain apparently decided to betray her with warmth and softness and everything she’d spent her life pretending she didn’t need.

Yuji didn’t help.

“(y/n)… Wow. You look… Different. Good different.” His voice went soft, as if speaking too loudly might scare her.

Her stupid lips curled again, dimples out, cheeks pink. Disgusting. She wanted to crawl into a drawer and die.

Choso shifted his weight behind Yuji, not exactly hiding, but sort of hovering.

“Yeah, you look really good.” He muttered, eyes flicking up to hers for exactly one second before darting away.

Yuji stepped closer, grin widening.

“So, what have you been doing all this time? Besides, you know, being mysteriously glamorous.”

She snorted. Actually snorted.

“Reading. Watching movies. Avoiding real life. You know. The usual.”

“Honestly? Same.” He laughed the way Jin always did.

“You still draw?” Choso asked, voice low but steady.

Her breath caught. Draw? No one asked her about that. Not anymore.

“Yeah. Trying to get back into it. A little.” She answered quietly.

“You should show us sometime. Seriously. I wanna see.”

The three of them slipped into a rhythm she didn’t expect, Yuji talking with easy warmth, Choso listening like he actually cared, and her softening. Opening. Not completely. Never completely. But enough. Enough to feel like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t an intruder. Maybe she wasn’t the odd, forgotten girl they tolerated.

Maybe she was theirs. Even if she didn’t know how to be. For once, she didn’t feel like she needed to run. She felt included. Protected, even.

She followed the voices through the hallway, heartbeat climbing her throat like something alive, something with claws. Her mother wasn’t behind her anymore, but she didn’t dare turn back. Didn’t want to see that look on Ayame’s face again. The one that said be nice, you owe them softness.

She didn’t owe anyone anything. And yet she kept walking.

The living room was dim, the kind of dim that felt intentional, like the house wanted to watch her before letting her settle. The only light came from the fireplace, slow flames licking at the wood, throwing warm, amber shapes on the walls.

And then she saw him. Her grandfather.

Exactly as she remembered, but pared down, older, thinner, but still cut from that same brutal stone. A man who looked like he could still destroy a person with a sentence and a look. A man who probably had.

She stared at him and thought, He does not look like he’s dying. I’ve been played.

Wasuke sat in the chair that was very clearly his chair. His throne. She suspected, he’d sit in even if Death himself came to shake his hand.

He looked up at her. And for a heartbeat, just one, something flickered in his eyes. Relief, maybe. Something too old to name.

“The hell took you so long, girl?” His voice was harsh, but he was smiling. Barely. But definitely.

She forced her feet to keep moving. Slow. Controlled. Her palms were stiff at her sides. Then she bowed. Low. Proper. The kind of bow you give someone you’re not sure you should hug.

He clicked his tongue.

“Straight back. Your father always slouched. Looked like a thief ashamed of his loot. Disrespectful little shit.”

Her chest squeezed. She straightened. Somehow the correction made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

She lowered herself to the floor, cross legged, without thinking. Her body remembered before her brain did. Like muscle memory from a childhood she’d shoved so deep it lived under concrete.

And he watched her. Really watched her. His old eyes were sunken a bit, but there was a spark there, still sharp, still alive, still dangerous. The kind of ancient heat you don’t see in gentle men.

“Yuji’s an idiot. Choso broods too much. You’re the only one in this family I can stand to look at.”

It was shockingly sincere. And a sound cracked out of her before she could stop it, something between a snort and a laugh. Embarrassing. Too real.

“I’ll try to accept that as a compliment.” She managed, her voice much smaller than she intended.

“Hmph. You should. I don’t compliment children. They get spoiled.” He didn’t look at her, but the edges of his mouth twitched.

“I’m twenty.”

“Same thing. Age doesn’t fix stupid.”

Warmth bloomed in her chest. Strange. Unwanted. Annoying. But she kept looking at him. And he kept looking at her, like she was some relic he thought the world had lost. Like he was trying to memorize her face before anything else in this house could take her from him again.

And suddenly she wasn’t angry. Not fully. She still remembered all the ways he didn’t show up. The ways he let her father rot. How nobody came back for her, not really. But right now, with the fire curling in the corners and this old, dangerous man staring at her like she was the last part of his bloodline that wasn’t broken, something in her softened.

Wasuke didn’t look at her now, he glanced down at the fire, the glow sharpening the lines in his face, throwing long shadows over the room that somehow made him look even more sharp.

“You look like your father. But better.” He said finally, offhand, like he was commenting on the weather.

That didn’t hurt. It should’ve. But somehow, from him, it didn’t.

“Don’t get too proud. Your father was a damn fool.”

That got her. A startled little laugh that burst out before she could swallow it. God, she needed someone to say it. Out loud. Someone who wasn’t herself.

She drifted toward the couch near him, sinking into the cushion closest to his chair. The fire’s warmth reached for her face. Everything before this moment felt like a glitching memory. The graveyard, the panic spiral, the train, the nausea, the shaking hands zipping her coat.

This felt real.

The fire cracked loud. She flinched. Wasuke didn’t even twitch an eyelash. He sniffed once, eyes narrowing sideways at her.

“Still skinny.”

Her head snapped toward him.

“Me?” Higher pitched than she intended. She wasn’t flattered. She was confused. Her? Skinny? After all that time being terrified she was too big, too heavy, too much to see anyone?

“You heard me. Your thighs, though, good. Strong. Like your grandmother’s. But your face…”

He leaned in, squinting.

“You’re prettier now. That nose suits you. Your eyes look like your mother, big. Expressive. Shame your idiot father had to throw his genes in and complicate the rest.”

“Excuse me?!” It came out half shriek, half snort, purely scandalized.

“What? You thought I was gonna give some sentimental speech? You want me to cry about your cheekbones? I’m telling you you look good. Don’t make a damn ceremony out of it.”

And godhelphergodhelphergodhelpher, she beamed. That foolish, warm, mortifyingly girlish smile cracked open her face like a sunbeam she didn’t authorize. A dimple even appeared, betrayal. Heat climbed her cheeks. She hated herself for liking this.

She wasn’t supposed to feel soft here. Not in front of this old, mean, patriarchal man who could probably snap bones with a sigh. Not when she spent her whole life being harsh, guarded, stubborn, suspicious of men.

But he wasn’t performing for her. He wasn’t pitying her. He wasn’t tiptoeing around her insecurities. He said what he meant. And for a girl who’d spent years afraid her body was wrong, too heavy, too awkward, having him say she looked good meant something uncomfortable and huge.

Wasuke eyed her knowingly. Hmphed.

“You’re a sensitive one. Like your grandmother. Don’t start crying or I’ll throw you out in the snow.”

She let out a laugh again, shaking her head.

She looked at him now. All craggy face, coarse gray hair, thick eyebrows that looked permanently annoyed at God. Deep lines carved from decades of barking orders, repressing panic, and refusing to process a single emotion like a normal human.

His big, knuckled hand tapped against the ceramic mug. Steady rhythm. He cleared his throat once, loud and irritated.

“Your grandmother would’ve liked you. Loved you, actually. She had a soft spot for girls like you. Sharp. Book smart. The ones with opinions. She’d have spoiled you stupid.” The voice was gruff, lowered, almost grudging.

She froze. That was not what she expected.

“She died giving birth to Uncle Jin, right?” It slipped out. Maybe she shouldn’t have said it, but honestly it was too late. If he was that sensitive, he shouldn’t sit there acting like Zeus on the mountaintop.

“Bled out in her sleep. I woke up and she was gone.”

Her eyes pricked. She hated this. Hated how women died from the things only they could die from. Things their bodies were cornered into.

“Growing up without her. It must’ve been hard.”

Wasuke let out a humorless huff. He stared into the fire like he was trying to intimidate the flames.

“It made ‘em cold. Sukuna especially. That boy came out pissed. I swear he was clenching his tiny fists at the doctor. Never wanted to be held. Never wanted to be told jack shit. Born angry. Jin tried. Tried to be the soft one. Took on more than he should’ve. He was always holding Sukuna back from wrecking something. Or someone."

“That sounds like Yuji and Choso now. Just less dramatic.” She muttered under her breath. God. This really was her diary. She was giving him bibliographic analysis.

“But you, you’re not like the rest of ‘em.” He pointed a crooked finger at her.

“Me?”

“You’re not sweet. And you’re not chaotic. You’re tactical. You think before you speak. You watch. You protect yourself. That stubbornness is not ignorance. Instinct.” He nodded to himself, satisfied with the analysis like he was grading her.

“Got that knife edge thing. Reminds me of Sukuna.”

She blinked. Hard. Her? Like him? Her mother always compared her to Shuhei or Kaori. Kaori, who wasn’t even blood. But Sukuna? Never.

“The way you hold your face. That blank, unreadable look. Makes people uneasy. Good. Keep it.”

She didn’t know what to say. Wasuke leaned back in his chair, staring at the fire again.

“You were soft when you were little. Curls, chubby cheeks, clingy as hell. Always touchin’ my pant leg. Always smiling.” He said without looking at her.

“But now there’s steel in you. I respect that. Don’t you let a single person take it.”

She stared at him, this stiff, mean, half broken man she grew up terrified of in photographs. And somehow, suddenly, she adored him. He understood her. Even when she barely understood herself.

“You hungry?” Wasuke barked, out of absolutely nowhere, like he’d been sitting on the question for hours and it finally slipped out sideways.

“A bit.”

“Don’t wait ’til dinner. There’s tempura left from lunch. Probably cold as shit. But I’ll have Yuji reheat it. I don’t trust Choso not t’set the damn kitchen on fire. Boy’s got two left hands and half a brain.” His hand flapped vaguely toward the kitchen, bossy, impatient, but not truly annoyed.

It shouldn’t have made her smile. It shouldn’t have warmed anything in her chest. But it did. She laughed. Out loud. Bright. Sudden. Unfiltered.

His eyes, sharp, old, irritated at the world, flicked to her. And softened. Barely. Not enough that another soul in this house would’ve noticed. But she did.

“Go on. Eat. Your skin’s too pale. Looks like a damn ghost wandered in. I ain’t havin’ my granddaughter starve in my house.”

Her heart tugged at that one. My granddaughter. Not girl. Not kid. He said it like it meant something. Like he hadn’t been waiting a decade to say it again.

The low growl of an engine drifted in from outside just as she was about to stand up and pretend she was going to help in the kitchen. Not loud, not flashy. Just deep, throaty, obscenely expensive, the kind of sound that sent a tremor through the floorboards and then settled into her bones.

It idled too long. Like whoever was behind the wheel wanted the entire house to know he’d arrived. The air in the living room shifted first. Wasuke lifted his head, eyes narrowing into something amused and irritated all at once.

“Speak of the devil. Your favorite uncle just got here. Let’s see if he remembers how to speak like a human being.”

Favorite uncle. Please be serious. She didn’t even have a regular uncle. But that engine, that low, sinful purr, it could only meant one person.

Sukuna.

The front door hadn’t even clicked open yet. She hadn’t heard his voice. She hadn’t seen the stance she somehow knew he’d take, wide shoulders, hands in pockets, annoyance for no reason.

None of that.

Just the sound. And yet her body reacted first, uninvited, unwelcome, a jolt under her skin like someone pressed a cold hand to the back of her neck. She curled her fingers around the arm of the chair, grounding herself, pretending she was casual. She wasn’t. She didn’t look toward the hallway. Not yet. She glanced sideways instead, toward the kitchen.

Where was her mom?

She could hear her. Bits of laughter. Soft, shaky. That tone Ayame used when she wanted everyone to get along so badly she’d bend herself in half for it. Kaori’s voice came sharp and crystal clear. They were talking. Catching up. Probably gossiping. Probably dissecting her existence. Probably doing all the things grown women do when they think the younger one isn’t listening.

Her throat tightened.

Why did she feel eight years old again, standing in the middle of the hall, waiting for someone to tell her what to do?

She didn’t even remember Sukuna properly. That was the worst part. Everyone else in this house lived clearly in her mind, Jin’s bright smile, Wasuke’s unimpressed glare, Kaori’s chaos, Yuji’s sunbeam energy, Choso’s quiet awkwardness. Even the furniture made sense. Even the damn wallpaper.

But Sukuna? Nothing. Just impressions. Just a shape. A shadow that once hovered in doorframes. A voice she might’ve heard through a wall. Rough, low.

Maybe a hand ruffling her hair once. Or maybe her brain made that up, the way it made up sweet things when it was desperate.

A beat of silence fell, then the front door creaked open.

And the sound of boots. Slow, heavy, claiming, dragged across the wooden floor like someone who believed every plank should feel honored he stepped on it.

She stared at the kitchen doorway again, fingers tightening. She didn’t understand why she felt like this. Anxious, wired, small, pulled. Like something old inside her recognized him even if she didn’t.

Her heart had started that ugly, fast thumping, the kind that makes you wonder if you’re scared or excited or both in some sick, humiliating mix. Her body always reacted quicker than her thoughts. Traitorous thing.

What if he was like her father? What if he was just another cold, impossible man the women around him endured because survival demanded it? Oh. Of course he was. Men were like that. Men were always like that.

Her fingers tapped anxiously against her thigh. Little, soft staccatos. She didn’t want to look fragile. Not now, not when she finally started feeling the slightest bit tethered to something. Not when the house had just begun warming her, making her laugh again. She could still feel Wasuke’s grumpy, begrudging affection lingering like heat, his stupid joke about tempura and boys and her being the only one he could tolerate. For the first time in forever, she remembered what breathing without fear felt like. Her brain had stopped spiraling.

Then the thought hit her like a shove, what if Sukuna was the one who looked the most like her father? The familiar chill skated up her neck. The one that whispered don’t trust men, don’t look at them, don’t let them in.

Her mom’s voice floated out from the kitchen.

“Yuu, don’t eat it all before dinner.”

Then Kaori’s laugh followed, sharp and bright and unapologetically alive.

“Oh, let him. He’s growing. That boy’s thighs are than mine.”

She almost smiled. Almost. Then a shadow crossed the hallway.

His shadow.

The boots hit the wood first. Heavy, unmistakable, like someone dropping the spine of a book too hard on a table. A warning. Thunder stomping its way into an old house.

One step. Two.

Each one pulled the air tighter around her, pulled the walls closer. The temperature didn’t drop like in stories. No, it climbed. Suffocating. Hot in a way that made her chest tense and her hands itch.

And then came the silhouette. Not a shape, not a figure, a presence. Something stepped into the firelight like it had been born there. Slow. Unhurried. A man who didn’t walk so much as appear, slipping into the room the way storms slip over mountains. Inevitable, uninterested in whether anyone was ready.

Black boots first. Laced high, worn smooth, planted with the kind of confidence that wasn’t taught. It was bred. Inherited. Fed.

Then the rest of him emerged.

The tight black turtleneck stretched across a chest that had absolutely no business existing outside of myth. Fabric pulled and shaped itself to him like it was scared to wrinkle around someone like that. His shoulders were wide enough to make the doorway look narrow. Arms corded with muscle, not gym sculpted but built through real life, real weight, real violence.

Japan didn’t do tattoos like that unless they meant something. Unless you came from something. Unless you’d bled for something. His were thick, jagged strokes crawling up his throat, disappearing under the collar, spilling down his wrists like marks from another life. Veins ridged under skin, fingers thick, knuckles scarred. The kind of hands that could break, build, lift, destroy without ever raising a voice.

His pants were black. Sharp lines. Heavy fabric. They looked tailored to the bone structure of a man who didn’t sit still. Like he’d tear through them if he moved wrong. Like his thighs alone could break a table. A mouthwatering silhouette of strength and mass. He was huge. Broad. Thick. Towering. Like someone carved him out of obsidian and told him to walk.

His hair was a mess. Purposeful. Spiked and wild, falling in chaotic points like he’d just run a hand through it or survived something that tried to take him down. Firelight caught the tips, turning them the color of fire. The silver in his ears gleamed, small rings that flashed like warning signs rather than jewelry. They made him look more feral, if that was even possible.

And his face.

There were beautiful men in the world. Movie star handsome. Clean, pretty, symmetrical. This was not that. This was striking. This was unreasonable. This was beauty sharpened to a blade. It hurt to look at him.

His browbone heavy, shadowing his eyes even when he looked straight ahead. Brows slashed with old cuts, marks that never healed clean. His nose was a weapon. Straight, long, a little bumpy at the bridge, the kind of thing sculptors would have killed to study. Aristocratic in a tribal kind of way. A wide jaw that could cut glass. His lips were too full, too red, too alive for someone who looked like he’d tear through a battlefield without blinking.

And those eyes. Not brown. Not hazel. Cinnamon burning. Almost red. Wasuke’s eyes, but worse. Hotter. Sharper. Almost violent in their focus. Like if you leaned closer they’d burn right through you. Eyes that made everything else in the room feel insignificant.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t nod. He didn’t acknowledge anything. He just stood there, quiet and terrifying, as if his stillness could rearrange the room around him.

And she, she felt her stomach drop to her ankles. This was her uncle? This… This thing? This monster dressed as a man?

She felt stupid for staring but she couldn’t stop. Nerves. Awe. A strange, unwanted heat. She hated it. She didn’t even know him, hadn’t seen him since she was a kid, and she hadn’t remembered him then either. He was nothing but a name, a story, a missing piece of a life that already had too many missing pieces.

Whatever she felt, it came fast, and it came low. An instinct. Older than shame. Her thighs pressed together before she even realized it, crossing on the armchair like she was trying to hold something in, or keep something from spilling out.

What the hell was that? And then another question, even worse, even softer, whispered across her mind like static. Does this man really belong to this family? My family? She’d seen photos of Wasuke in his thirties, dusty album pages, grainy seaside shots, him mid shout, mid laugh. The resemblance was real. The eyes, the jaw, the wildness. That Itadori ferocity.

But this, him, Sukuna… He wasn’t just someone’s brother. He didn’t carry himself like a man with a job, a schedule, a preferred supermarket. He moved like he’d been carved out of some earlier century and accidentally misplaced in this one. Every line of him felt premodern. Pre everything.

She’d never seen a man like that. Not in life. Not even in films. And that skin of his. Not golden, not bronze, but something with heat inside it. Ash tan, sun warmed, the kind of tone that only gets richer with time.

He didn’t look 43. He didn’t move like he was 43. He moved like time was a rumor someone told him once, and he hadn’t bothered believing it.

It felt like meeting a creature she’d been dreaming of since she was little, the shadow in the doorway, the silhouette in her imagination, the impossible man with the impossible presence. Someone you’d swear your brain invented because no reality could sustain it.

He was taller than she remembered. If she even remembered him at all. Because right now, he didn’t feel like a memory, he felt like a phenomenon. A weather event with a pulse. A shadow that stepped into the light only when it felt like it.

And yet, beneath all that terrifying magnitude, there was a strange serenity in him. A quietness that made everything worse. A composure so deep it made her want to kneel, or curl up and disappear.

Yuji burst out of the kitchen first, sunlight in human form.

“Uncle!”

His voice cracked with joy as he sprinted across the room. Choso followed. Slow and unsure, hands hovering like he wasn’t entirely convinced he was allowed to exist in the same air.

Sukuna moved toward them without even shifting that towering, unshakeable posture. His presence didn’t change, just widened, like the room made space for him by instinct.

His hand came down on Choso’s head, fingers sliding into the boy’s hair in a gesture that wasn’t gentle or rough, it was claiming, familiar.

And she felt it. God, she felt it on her head. Like a phantom memory. Like the ghost of being five years old, standing in a sunlit hallway, hair sticking up from sleep as his hand did the same thing and she didn’t even know that was something to miss.

“Still wearing your guilt on your sleeve, huh? Try existing like a normal human sometime. Might suit you.” Sukuna muttered to Choso.

Choso made a noise. A mix of laugh, an embarrassed cough, and something like relief.

“He made curry today. Didn’t burn anything!”

Sukuna snorted.

“I’ll alert the media.”

Their chatter blurred after that. The whole room felt dipped in water, sounds muffled and moving in slow motion. Her world thinned to a single focal point.

Him.

Not Yuji tugging on his arm. Not Choso hovering close. Not Wasuke grumbling in his throne by the fire. Not the warm lamps or polished floors or soft clatter of dishes.

Just him. And he didn’t even look at her.

Her heart pounded so hard she felt it in her wrists. Her face burned. Her palms were cold. She was twenty. She paid taxes. She made her own meals. She read Russian novels for fun. She was a woman. But right then, she was small. Too small to hold this tidal wave curling in her chest. Too young in her bones, too old in her wounds. She wanted her mother, not to hide behind, but to anchor her, to tell her she wasn’t insane for reacting like this over a man.

But not a man. Sukuna.

And still, he hadn’t looked at her.

Her mind split into two neat halves.

Look at me look at me look at me.

and

Don’t. Don’t. Please don’t. I’ll die if you look at me.

She wished she could shrink. Dissolve. Slip between the floorboards. She wished she had concealer on. She wished she’d did the blowout her mother forced on her yesterday. She wished she didn’t gain those few kilos in the last year. She wished she’d lined her lips. She wished she was glowing instead of plain. She wished she wasn’t wearing yesterday’s nerves as perfume.

Oh, God. She wished so many stupid things.

Most of all, she wished she wasn’t his niece.

The kitchen door creaked open. Ayame slipped out first, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Behind her came Kaori, swirling a half finished glass of wine.

“Oh, finally. The prince of hell decides to grace us with his presence.” Kaori declared.

Ayame’s smile was gentler.

“Sukuna, you made it.” She said softly.

He glanced at them. A flicker of acknowledgment. A nod. Barely a sound.

God. Why was he always like this? Why couldn’t he just open his mouth so she could hear that voice again?

Wasuke grunted from the armchair by the fire.

“Took you long enough, ya damn statue. What, lose a fight with a comb again?”

A muscle ticked in Sukuna’s jaw.

“Was busy burying the last old man who tried to tell me what to do.” His tone was perfectly calm, perfectly lethal.

Yuji snorted into his sleeve. Choso actually smiled. Kaori muttered something in French. Probably a curse, maybe a prayer, hard to tell with her.

Wasuke leaned forward, the fire snapping behind him.

“Make it quick next time. I’m already halfway in the ground.”

Sukuna’s eyes flicked up, lazy and sharp all at once. He tilted his head, just a fraction.

“Trust me, if I wanted you gone, you’d be fertilizer by now.”

Wasuke’s laugh was quiet, dark. Something like pride, something like hatred, they were the same thing with him.

“This family is cursed.” Kaori muttered loudly, lifting her wine like she was making a toast.

He turned toward the fireplace. Didn’t rush. Didn’t stiffen. Just shifted like gravity bent differently for him. He dropped into the armchair across from Wasuke with that heavy, claiming kind of ease, like the house belonged to him, the chair belonged to him, the air belonged to him, and frankly, the entire concept of furniture bowed at his feet.

One long leg crossed over the other, boot dangling with a lazy thud thud. It wasn’t loud, not really. But it sounded like authority. Like punctuation.

And then, only then, his gaze lifted.

She felt it before she saw it. Something hot, concentrated, slicing straight through the living room like a spotlight that had been waiting decades to hit its mark.

His eyes landed on her. Not touched. Landed. And (y/n) didn’t melt. Oh no, melting was too gentle. She fractured. Clean down the middle. Like lightning striking a glass window. Her lungs collapsed. Her heartbeat did something medically concerning. She met his eyes for half a second, a breath, a blink, and instantly looked away.

Because she was stupid. Oh god. She was so stupid. She was autistic.

Something in his jaw shifted, just slightly. Then came the smirk. Slow. Cynical. Spreading across those too red lips that no man had any right to possess.

And his eyes, lit orange by the firelight, darkened. He looked at her like he could see through clothing, skin, bone, into the places she didn’t even let herself think about at night.

She felt his gaze slip down her body. Not sleazy. Not gross. Just knowing. A violent kind of knowing. He stared at her sage green pants like he knew precisely how they looked discarded. Like he could measure the shape of her thighs without touching them. Like he already imagined it. Once. Twice. Enough times for it to not be accidental.

She couldn’t take it. She could handle creeps on buses, drunk men at weddings, men who blurted their filth like they were reading from a cheap porno. She could handle the eyes that said, You’re a body. She’d lived with that since she was a girl.

But this, this wasn’t that. This didn’t feel like a man looking at her. This felt like a man seeing her. Not as a niece. Not as a girl returned home. But as something else. Something dangerous. Something that shouldn’t exist between the two of them.

She should’ve felt ashamed. Horrified. Mortified. Repentant. Anything religious, really. Instead she felt warm. Stupidly warm. Like desire in his eyes was just another one of his eccentric features, like his scars or his stupidly pretty mouth.

God, was she being delusional? Probably. Absolutely. Ninety percent chance. He probably wasn’t even staring at her thighs. He was probably thinking she looked like a bag of flour that had been dropped from a second story window the moment she sat.

Yes. That made sense. Much safer. Much easier for the brain to file away and survive.

She was doomed.

“So, you’re Shuhei’s kid.”

That was the first thing he ever gave her. Not hello. Not nice to meet you. Not the warm, soft shock most adults had when they realized she wasn’t eight anymore. Just that word. Kid.

Fuck you.

“Yeah. I am.” She said, chin lifting before she even realized she was doing it.

He didn’t nod. Didn’t soften. Just leaned back, one arm thrown over the side, wrist hanging lazy.

God, his wrists. He had no business being shaped like that.

“Shuhei was always the softest one. Thought he was deep. He wasn’t.”

She blinked. What the hell was he talking about? Why weren’t they discussing something normal? Something human? Like, oh, she didn’t know… Wheter she was single or not? Her favorite movie? If he’d like to ruin her life in 4K?

Her face was doing a cute little dead stare.

He kept talking anyway, voice so low she could feel it in her stomach. She focused on the loose thread on her sleeve because looking at him too long felt dangerous, like staring into the sun or a porn ad.

“You don’t look like him.” He said, almost to himself. And then his eyes moved. Slow. Deliberate. Her nose. Her mouth. Her jawline.

“Your nose is better. His was weak. Caved in on itself.”

She stayed silent. She wasn’t listening to the meaning of words, she was listening to his voice. Those low vibrations. That gravel. She was pretending she wasn’t imagining his ungodly arm wrapped around her throat while he whispered the exact same insults in her ear. Pretending she wasn’t writing smut about him in her mind with Olympic level dedication while he insulted her father’s nose.

“Strong nose. Small face. Big eyes.”

Her heart fluttered for a second.

“Shame about the lips, though. His. I see them.”

The words hit late. And when they finally landed, they stung. She wasn’t bothered when Wasuke said the same thing. Or when Jin joked about it. But the way he said it, like “his” was a flaw stamped on her face, some leftover genetic trash, made her arms cross under her chest without thinking. She leaned back in her seat, pretending she didn’t care.

Why her lips? Of all things, why her fucking lips? The one feature she’d spent her whole life hating. The thing she scrubbed, bit, picked, hid. The thing that never fit her face the way she wanted.

Why did he have to notice that? She wanted to claw them off. Hide them.

But he was still looking at her.

Not politely. Not kindly. Looking at her like he was measuring. Calculating. Debating something godawful in that brutal mind of his.

“You’re skinnier than I thought. Thought you’d be rounder. You had the cheeks for it. Used to have curls. Messy ones. Like wire. I told Shuhei to cut ’em off. Said you looked like sheep.”

Oh. They liked round girls, huh? Him and his father both, like some ancient bloodline preference coded into the men of this cursed family. She wasn’t fucking skinny and she was being gaslight into gaining weight since the moment she stepped into this cursed place.

“But they suited you.”

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t even compliment shaped. It was truth. His truth. Sharp edged, unavoidable, dropped straight into her bloodstream.

Her fingertips dug into her sleeves. She hadn’t realized she was holding herself so tight until her ribs began to ache.

There was something cold in the way he spoke, but not cruel. Just incapable of softness. Like warmth wasn’t in his genetic code. Like tenderness was a language nobody ever bothered to teach him. But beneath that cold, there was weight. And a kind of brutal sincerity that made her bones buzz. He didn’t say things he didn’t mean. And that was somehow worse. Because it meant he meant all of this.

The lips. The body. The curls. The memory of her.

“Still nervous?” He asked. It was almost lazy, thrown out into the air like he already knew the answer and was waiting to see her choke on it.

She actually flinched. Her eyes snapped up, wide, bright, stupidly honest for a second.

“What?”

“You haven’t said shit. I don’t like quiet people.”

Oh. So he was one of those men, the kind who thought silence meant weakness, who thought he’d read her already, filed her into a neat little drawer.

He had no goddamn idea what he’d just invited.

“You haven’t asked me anything.” She said, shoulders lifting in a soft, deceptively innocent shrug. And then, like her body wanted to embarrass her to death, her lips curled. Slow. Sweet. Sharp. God, she knew the look she gave men. The one half the time she didn’t mean to give. The one that said fuck me or get out of my way.

Sukuna tilted his head, and something resembling a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Not a nice grin. A trouble grin. A man who knew exactly what she was doing grin.

“You think you’re clever. I can smell that on you.” He murmured, voice low enough to scrape over her skin.

Her whole body went warm. Treacherously warm. She hated, hated, how those words hit her.

Of course she was clever. Of course she was sharp. She was a girl who raised herself in the dark. A girl who learned danger by scent alone. She lived by reading people, dissecting them, deciding if they could hurt her before they even breathed.

But now this man, this man with his stupid leather boots, with that maddening grin, with those broad shoulders she shouldn’t be noticing was looking at her like she was some cute little puzzle. Like he could solve her.

What the hell did he think he was? Just because he looked like that, just because God had sculpted him on a bad day just to annoy women, he thought he could look down at her?

Wasuke let out a smoker’s cough cackle from his throne by the fireplace.

“She’s clever. That’s why I like her. Only one in this godforsaken family with a working brain.” He barked, pointing a knobby finger in her direction like she was an exhibit.

It should’ve made her feel proud. Or at least acknowledged. But all it did was make her want to vanish behind the carpet.

Sukuna didn’t even spare the old man a glance. He just kept staring at her.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

No smirk. No kindness. Just a calm, cold blade.

She wanted to fire something back, something witty, something sharp, something that would slice through his arrogance like. But nothing came. Her chest tightened. Her cheeks burned. Her gaze slid away before she could stop it, and her hair fell forward like a curtain she desperately needed.

And of course he noticed.

“Ah. There it is. Knew the little sheep was still in there.” Sukuna murmured, voice dropping into that deceptively gentle place. The softness in his tone wasn’t real. It was bait. If she bit, she’d drown.

Yuji shot up from his chair.

“Uh! We should eat! Yeah, yeah, food’s ready, like, totally ready, let’s go!”

Kaori rolled her eyes dramatically.

“God forbid we eat before a bloodbath breaks out.“

Jin started laughing. Choso muttered something about “this is why I stay in my room”. Wasuke scratched himself loudly.

Everyone began filing into the dining room with the jittery choreography of people pretending nothing explosive just happened.

Ayame lingered beside her daughter. She placed a warm hand on the small of (y/n)’s back. A quiet mother touch, grounding, checking if she was about to pass out.

“Sweetheart, are you alright?”

(y/n) nodded too fast, like a puppet. She stood up abruptly, posture stiff, eyes wide. She offered nothing. No expression. No word. No explanation. Because if anyone poked even slightly, she’d crumble.

The oak table had nicks in it. Not damage, just memory. Dark grooves like old paper cuts, shallow scratches catching the candle light. She traced one with her fingertip, feeling how the wood dipped, warm from the radiator, almost soft. She wondered if it was from her grandfather. Or Sukuna. Honestly, both men looked like the type to stab a table during an argument then pretend it added character.

She lowered herself into her seat between Yuji and Choso. The two safest choices, which said a lot about the rest of this family.

Yuji immediately pushed half his rice toward her before blinking and remembering she had her own food. Choso didn’t say a word. Just nudged his dish of pickled vegetables a little closer, like he thought she needed them more than he did.

Yuji leaned in, shoulder brushing hers, voice pitched for her alone.

“You mad about what Sukuna said?” He didn’t sound scared. Just steady.

“Why would I be?” She tried to shrug like a girl who wasn’t unraveling.

Yuji watched her, chewing slowly, assessment tucked behind that soft exterior. He wasn’t dumb. Just gentle.

“He can be a dick.” He said finally.

Choso’s eyes flicked up at that, a quick sharp look. Not disagreement, just acknowledgement. Then he returned to his food, pretending he wasn’t listening. Failing miserably.

“I think seeing you again messed with him. He misses his brother. Maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe he’s just Sukuna.”

Her fork clinked against her plate. She hated this thing inside her, this compulsion to understand why mean men were mean. She didn't want to care about Sukuna missing anyone. She didn't want to make room for his grief. She only wanted to understand why her body trembled at his voice, like a stray cat caught in the first melt of March, fragile and wild, aching for something it couldn't quite name

“I’m not mad. If anything? I’m relieved.”

Yuji lifted an eyebrow.

She took a breath and let the truth out raw and fast, the way it always came for her. Sharp and bitter.

“I’m glad he doesn’t think I look like him. Everyone keeps telling me we look alike and I’m going insane. I don’t want to mirror that man. I don’t want to inherit anything from someone who ruined every room he ever entered. I hate it when bad people die and suddenly they’re saints. I think my dad’s name shouldn’t even be said out loud. Honestly, it should be a forbidden topic.”

There it was. Bare, ugly honesty. She braced for horror on Yuji’s face. Instead, he huffed a laugh, slow and relieved, letting his shoulders drop.

“Then good. Because he definitely doesn’t think you–“

“Swallow before you speak, idiot.”

The words cracked across the table like a leather strap. No shout. No warning. Just Sukuna’s voice. Deep, flat, edged with steel. The kind of tone that didn’t need volume because fear carried it for him.

She felt it in her spine before she even registered the words. A jolt. A pull.

Yuji froze mid chew, fork suspended like he’d been shot.

“Sorry.” He muttered, clamping a hand over his mouth.

Sukuna didn’t even glance at him. He wiped his fingers on the napkin, slow, deliberate, then cracked the grilled fish open with the tip of his knife like he was gutting something alive.

“You sound like a sewer rat choking on garbage. If you’re gonna eat at my table, use your fuckin’ throat properly. Nobody here needs to hear you gagging.” He said, voice colder now, effortless cruelty sliding out like breath.

A little hush rippled through the room. Comfortable, practiced. Kaori gave the tiniest snort, unimpressed. Ayame’s sigh was that soft, tired. Wasuke grumbled something about how children these days chewed like they were raised in barns.

Normal reactions. Ordinary reactions.

She was the only one who felt it like a blow.

God, she hated this. She hated when men snapped like that. Hated the way it used to make her stomach turn, the way it made rooms feel smaller, colder, unsafe.

And yet.

Why, why the hell did it feel different this time?

Why did her pulse spike? Why did her breath hitch instead of shrink? Why did that dangerous tone, the one that should terrify her, hit her behind her knees felt like a kiss?

Why did she want him to do it again? Why was she sitting here like a masochistic little freak, imagining what he’d sound like if he said her name in that voice?

He sat there like the rightful owner of every oxygen molecule in the room. That black turtleneck clung to his shoulders like it feared being torn off. The fabric pulled wickedly over the cut of his chest, the curve of his arms. His sleeves were shoved up now. Forearms corded, veined, scarred.

He didn’t look at her.

She didn’t even notice she’d been holding her breath until Choso reached for his glass. His fingers brushed hers. Purposefully, gently. His mouth twitched. Barely a smile. Just enough to say breathe.

She did. A little. But her eyes, like idiots, like masochists, slid right back to Sukuna as if pulled by a hook.

Her cheeks were burning, burning. She could feel the heat all the way up to her ears. She knew she looked like a matryoshka doll dipped in shame and rosacea. She hated the way he could just sit there. Silent, brutal, radiating that cold, effortless power that made everyone adjust themselves without realizing.

Her feet shifted restlessly under the table, knees knocking. She tugged them in, too fast, too nervous, and the toe of her boot brushed against something solid.

Leather. Heavy. Warm. His boot. She jerked her foot back like she’d touched a live wire. There was no sound, no reaction. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift. Didn’t spare her a glance. But she knew, knew he’d felt it.

She could feel her pulse in her throat, in her wrists, everywhere. She hated herself. Hated that her body reacted to him like this. Hated that his indifference made her even more flustered.

He sat there looking like the end of the world wrapped in a turtleneck. And she sat there feeling like a pathetic, trembling thing hoping the world would notice her.

Kaori cleared her throat, performed it. Her wine glass caught the amber light. Her nails, long, lacquered, violently red, curved around the stem. She glittered, utterly. Hair glossy, neckline golden, cheekbones sharp enough to cut open the night.

(y/n) peeked at Jin beside her. Sweet, soft eyed, holding his chopsticks like he’d been raised in a monastery of kindness. A good man. A rare one. But Kaori? Kaori was a different species entirely.

Then came that catlike smile.

“So, (y/n). Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Kaori purred, voice pitched curiously.

(y/n) almost yeeted her spoon straight into the soup. Of course. Of course this was the next trial. Not career questions. Not the college bullshit. Not “Are you eating?” No. The interrogation of romance. The most cursed of all.

Jin leaned in, ever the diplomat, eyes soft.

“Yeah, sweetheart. Anyone special?”

Her neck went hot. Her shoulders stiffened. Her pulse stuttered, because… God help her, she had been a man hater for years. A proud one. An ideological one. But then twenty minutes ago that man walked into the living room and rearranged her entire stance on heterosexuality with one bored glance. Her whole misandrist code of ethics cracked straight down the middle.

“I don’t… I mean… I’m not really… I don’t like–“

“So you’re a lesbian?” Yuji blurted, bright as a puppy.

Kaori slammed her wine glass down a little too dramatically.

“Yuji Itadori! You can’t just diagnose people like that!” She gasped, scandalized.

Yuji blinked, both offended and confused.

“Kid’s lucky he’s cute. Otherwise I’d have him scrubbing the floors with his tongue.” Wasuke muttered darkly

“Grandpa!!!” Yuji yelped, betrayed.

Choso reached over and bonked Yuji lightly on the back of his head, like he was petting him with corrective violence.

(y/n) inhaled. Exhaled. Straightened her posture. Swallowed a steamed carrot that suddenly felt like a pebble. This was not the ideal moment for a gender and sexuality crisis in front of three generations of traumatized men. She turned to Yuji with a tiny smile, sweet, but carrying a razor under the sugar.

“No, Yuji. I’m not a lesbian.”

Pause.

“Unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately??”

(y/n) took a sip of water like she was downing a shot of tequila. She kept her tone airy, almost innocent, if innocence had teeth.

“Because boys are exhausting. And men? Even worse.” She said simply.

Kaori preened. Jin nodded sympathetically. Wasuke snorted something approving.

She peeked at Yuji. He was trying so hard not to look at her that he looked at her twice. Poor kid. His cheeks were pink, his brows pinched together like her existence was a puzzle he desperately wanted to solve but was afraid to ask about.

She’d never had a sibling. But if she had? She hoped it would’ve felt like this. The gentle, dumb warmth of Yuji. A boy who’d hand her half his pickles without asking if she even wanted them. No competition. No cruelty. Just someone who liked sitting next to her.

Thank every ancient god that her father never bred more. The idea of a boy shaped like Shuhei. No. She was good. The universe had spared her.

And then she felt it. His gaze.

She looked up to see Sukuna raise his head slightly, eyes dragging over her slow, heavy, a little too knowing.

“Men are pathetic. No shame in not wantin’ one touchin’ you.” He said, tone flat as a blade.

(y/n) froze. Her pulse hopped like it had tripped over itself. He kept looking at her like she had just said something he didn’t expect to respect, but did.

“Didn’t expect you to have that kind of sense. Guess Shuhei didn’t ruin everything.”

This was the emotional equivalent of getting a high five from a violent god.

Before she could process it, Kaori cleared her throat. loud this time. She didn’t look at Sukuna. She tilted her chin, eyes half lidded, as if addressing an inferior species.

“Well, we can’t all live like monks just because some people make terrible choices.” She drawled, voice dripping with that elegant poison she’d perfected.

Yuji blinked. Then blinked again.

“Wait, who made what choices?” He whispered to Choso

Choso kicked him under the table.

Sukuna didn’t look away from Kaori. Not once.

“You’d know about terrible choices, wouldn’t you, Kaori?” He said, voice deceptively lazy.

Kaori’s lashes fluttered, not in embarrassment, but in lethal femininity. Her red nails tapped the stem of her glass. Click. Click. Click. She smiled with every tooth she had.

“Oh, sweetheart, still bitter I didn’t let you cop a feel in ‘09?” She purred, tilting her head.

WHAT.

No. Absolutely not. This had to be some kind of elaborate bait, right? A joke? A psychotic inside joke?

Wasuke barked a laugh so wheezy she thought he might die right there.

“Kaori was prettier back then. Sukuna wasn’t.” He said with no shame at all.

Sukuna didn’t even turn his head.

“Shut the fuck up, old man.” He said, tone flat, but the corner of his mouth twitche. The tiniest, nastiest little smirk.

Kaori clicked her tongue and turned to (y/n) with a mock smile.

“You see, darling? This is exactly what happens when a man goes too long without a wife or a therapist. They rot from the ego outward.” She cooed, tilting her head, gold earrings brushing her cheekbones

Yuji snorted into his tea, then looked between them like a kid studying a wildlife documentary.

Sukuna didn’t even bother responding at first. He just exhaled. Long, lazy, like he’d been waiting for someone to set him off. Then set his knife down with a soft click that still somehow felt dangerous.

And then he leaned back.

A full stretch, slow, obscene, deliberate. His shoulders rolled, spine arching. It was less man relaxing and more beast waking up. Casual and predatory and utterly unaware, or too aware of every stare on him. Even Kaori went quiet for a heartbeat.

“That so?” He said finally, voice low, gravelly, like he’d been dragged out of sleep he didn’t want to wake from.

“No woman with a working brain would marry me.”

He paused. His eyes, dark and edged with amusement, flicked to (y/n).

“But the sex would be absolutely phenomenal.”

Like he was announcing it. Like it was a fact he expected to be printed in the family newsletter. Like the entire table should be grateful he shared the wisdom.

Her thighs pressed together under the table so fast she nearly kicked it.

Forks stalled. Something clinked too sharply.
And Kaori’s wine glass hit the table like she was slapping God across the face.

“Sukuna, didn’t I tell you to stop saying things like that in front of the children?” She said, each syllable wrapped in glossy venom.

Sukuna didn’t even blink. Didn’t twitch. Didn’t give her the basic human courtesy of pretending to care. He just exhaled a low, sinful laugh.

Yuji stared at his uncle with a wide eyed curiosity. Choso went rigid. Jin rubbed his brow slowly, sighing like he was praying silently. Ayame simply folded her hands, blinking quietly.

Sukuna leaned back in his chair like it was a throne.

“You call this a room full of children? Please.” He said, voice low, amused, and razor sharp.

He pointed his spoon at Yuji.

“That brat’s been jerking off since before he could spell his own name. Don’t let the dimples fool you.”

Yuji choked on air.

“Uncle–?!”

Sukuna’s attention slid to Choso, a slow, mocking drag of his eyes.

“And that one looks like he’s been studying European porn like it’s a fine arts elective.” He gestured with the spoon again, lips curling

Choso turned an impossible shade of cherry red.

“I haven’t–“

Sukuna laughed. Not loudly, worse. Soft. Knowing. Filthy. Like he was enjoying the humiliation as an appetizer.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s the good stuff.” He murmured, voice dropping into a smoky, obscene purr.

Kaori’s hand slammed flat on the table. Her rings glittered like weapons.

“Jin, say something before I pour this entire bottle over his head.” She said through clenched teeth.

Jin gave the most exhausted little smile.

“Let’s… Just try to enjoy the meal?”

Sukuna’s eyes slid to her again, that same slow, hungry drag like he was peeling her open molecule by molecule. From the crown of her head, down the soft fall of her braid, over the sleeves she kept tugging over her hands like she could hide inside them. Then his gaze hit her chest. And stopped dead. Her satin shirt wasn’t helping her at all. The thin lace bra, the one her mother insisted she wear this morning, the one she nearly had a breakdown over, pushed her tits up in a way that was borderline humiliating. The lace showed through the fabric, delicate patterns outlining everything, her nipples embarrassingly obvious despite her trying so damn hard to pretend they weren’t.

It felt like a finger under her chin and a hand between her thighs at the same time.

“She hasn’t run screamin’ yet. Maybe she’s the only one here who can stomach a real conversation.” Sukuna murmured, voice rich, smooth, dangerously amused.

He smirked. Small. Wicked. Private. Like it belonged right against her mouth.

“Eat your rice. You’re already losin’ your hips.”

“What?”

He noticed her hips. He noticed her fucking hips.

He didn’t repeat himself. Didn’t even look her way. Just reached casually for his bowl.

“Would be a damn shame if that ass disappeared like your father’s spine.”

It hit her so hard her lungs fluttered. A soft, helpless, humiliated, delighted noise slipped out. A little choke laugh. A tiny gasp. Something shameful.

“That’s cruel.” She whispered, heat crawling up her neck.

Finally, finally, he turned his head just enough for her to see his jaw flex, tattoos shifting with the slow, predatory stretch of muscle under skin.

“So was Shuhei.”

A beat where something raw in his eyes surfaced, barely. A flicker of something ugly and protective and furious on her behalf.

Gone in an instant. Buried. Snapped shut.

“Eat. Or you’ll blow away the second we step outside.” He muttered, eyes back on his bowl.

His tone was almost nothing. Almost casual. But she felt it in her bones. He was watching her. He was always watching her. And he liked what he saw far, far too much.