Chapter Text
Yuji wakes up thinking it’s still night.
The darkness surrounding him is not the heavy kind that presses against the eyelids in a bid to force them shut. It’s the dim, wavering kind that flickers between glowing hues of orange and yellow to blackened whips of red velvet and raw umber. Its calm glow is soothing enough that his first instinct is to roll over and try to go back to sleep.
But not even the comfortable lighting is enough to assuage the mounting sense of urgency in the teenager’s fog-addled mind. What happened? Where is he?
Yuji struggles for a moment before his eyes finally open.
There are lanterns.
Warm ones. Small and rectangular shaped, hung high and low at the edges of the room like scattered decorations rather than proper light sources. They glow faintly, and where at first the light had been comforting, now it feels encroaching and ominous.
Yuji blinks.
His vision swims. The ceiling looks wrong. Like it’s out of focus. It’s too high and then it’s too close. The visual back and forth is disorienting.
He blinks again.
Before the blur clears, a voice slides into the space.
“Good morning~.”
It’s syrupy.
Sweet in a way that feels deliberate.
Yuji’s stomach tightens.
He knows that voice.
His head turns sluggishly toward it, like his neck is moving through syrup too, and there — leaning over the back of a chair — is a man with white hair and an easy posture like this is all extremely casual.
Yuji stares at him.
He knows that face too.
But it takes a second to find the name that goes with the face.
“So,” the man continues lightly, chin propped on his crossed arms over the chair back, “which one of the two are you?”
The question is playful, but Yuji can’t help but feel like one wrong answer is all it will take for the man’s reaction to be less than favorable.
Yuji’s thoughts trip over one another. He has to say something back. He has to respond.
Two?
Which…
“Hey, wait,” Yuji mutters, pushing himself up slightly. His head throbs. “Aren’t you—?”
A memory teases the corners of Yuji’s consciousness.
Fractured images of a mad dash through his school. An overwhelming pressure and otherworldliness. Being slammed into concrete like he weighed nothing. The blindfold that Fushiguro’s teacher wears.
“—Satoru Gojo,” the man supplies easily, like he’s used to dramatic reveals. “Head of the first years at Jujutsu Tech.”
Yuji squints at him.
“Jujutsu…?” The word feels half-familiar, like something he overheard but was never properly addressed. “Fushiguro… Hey, where is he?”
“Depends on who’s asking,” Satoru Gojo sing-songs. Yuji gets the feeling that he’s being stared down from behind that blindfold. “Are you Yuji Itadori, or a thousand-year-old curse?”
That does it.
The fog in Yuji’s brain tears open and everything crashes back at once. The cursed object Yuji gave his friends brought cursed spirits into the school. Fushiguro tried and bled to save them all from Yuji’s mistake. Yuji desperately swallowed that disgusting thing in exchange for power.
Then there was that voice. That unhinged, malevolent voice belonging to the King of Curses. It came from inside his—
Yuji jerks forward instinctively—
And moves maybe an inch.
Cold metal bites into his wrists.
His ankles.
His ribs.
Yuji freezes and looks down.
Restraints are wrapped tight around his forearms and calves, chain links thick and dull against his skin. A reinforced band cinches around his torso, pressing into his lungs when he inhales too sharply.
“What the hell is this?” Yuji asks, unable to keep his rising worry from leaking into his voice.
The chains answer by tightening slightly when he strains against them, and heat flares around his wrists — a sharp, stinging pressure that makes him suck in a breath.
Gojo slumps more fully over the chair back, like he’s watching a mildly interesting documentary.
“I wouldn’t worry about others right now, Yuji Itadori.”
Yuji’s heartbeat starts to climb. The teacher’s tone is still light and unbothered, which in turn, bothers Yuji.
“What happened to Fushiguro?” he presses, looking to the only adult in the room. “Is he okay?”
Gojo tilts his head a fraction.
“It’s been decided,” he says, conversational as ever, “that you will be secretly executed.”
There’s a strange sensation in Yuji’s chest. It almost feels like bubbling laughter. He clamps down on it instinctively.
“Executed?” Yuji echoes, eyebrows pulling together. “For what crime exactly?”
The word crime tastes foreign in his mouth. He tries to piece together what rule, or rules, he broke. Swallowing that gross finger? Saving Fushiguro? Both seemed very appropriate at the time. It can’t be for damage to school property — Yuji would have been sent a court date and fine for that.
Gojo sighs softly, straightening a little.
“Your situation,” he says, “is a bit more complicated and less black-and-white than you’re thinking, Itadori.”
Yuji almost snaps back that he doesn’t remember telling him what he’s thinking, but antagonizing the man who just informed him of his execution isn’t strategically wise. So he swallows the retort.
His fingers curl unconsciously against the restraints instead. The burning pressure returns when he pulls harder, a warning pulse of some kind of energy embedded in the metal.
“Seriously?” Yuji mutters under his breath. “Did you guys put a vice around my whole body? That’s a little overkill, don’t you think?”
His tone is half sarcasm, half an attempt to steady himself.
Gojo watches him strain against the restraints for a few seconds longer before pushing himself upright and stepping away from the chair. There’s nothing hurried in the movement. He walks a slow circle around Yuji with his hands still in his pockets, studying him the way someone might study an unknown specimen — not cruelly, but with a kind of detached curiosity that makes Yuji’s skin crawl.
“Let’s clear up the confusion,” Gojo says lightly. “You swallowed a special-grade cursed object, and not just any cursed object. One of the fingers of Sukuna Ryomen.”
The name means nothing at first, but the second it’s spoken, something deep in Yuji’s chest tightens, as if the sound itself brushed against something alive inside him. That strange, misplaced hint of mirth stirs again, faint but undeniable.
Gojo stops in front of him.
“The King of Curses,” he adds casually. “The strongest curse to have ever existed.”
Yuji waits for more clarification.
None comes.
“Okay,” Yuji says slowly, unease beginning to creep up his spine. “Do his past sins transfer over to me, or something like that?”
Gojo’s expression doesn’t change.
“Something like that. But don’t worry — I’m not one of the ones who think that about you, Itadori.”
The lantern light flickers against the seals lining the walls, and suddenly the room feels smaller, heavier.
Yuji blinks at him, trying to process the words in the right order.
“That’s not… this isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
There’s still no visible shift in Gojo’s posture, but the absence of humor in his reply settles into Yuji’s stomach like cold water.
“You are what we call a vessel,” Gojo continues. “A compatible host. That is exceptionally rare.”
Yuji swallows.
“So what, he’s just… sitting in there? Like a freeloading roommate?”
“If he ever breaks out fully,” Gojo says, and this time there’s a faint steel beneath the smoothness, “it would be catastrophically disastrous.”
Yuji’s mind tries to wrap around that. Catastrophic feels like a news channel word. Something exaggerated. But Gojo doesn’t sound theatrical — much more unmercifully factual.
“We’re talking cities slaughtered. Countries demolished. Potentially the entire modern world’s jujutsu balance thrown out of alignment forever.”
Yuji’s fingers curl against the restraints without him realizing it.
“But,” Gojo says, raising a finger as if that changes everything, “lucky for us all you’re still you.”
Yuji looks up at him.
“You swallowed the finger. Sukuna manifested briefly. And then you regained control. That,” he adds, tapping lightly against Yuji’s forehead, “is extraordinary.”
Yuji doesn’t feel extraordinary. He feels dizzy and sick.
“So I’m… special,” he says, though the word feels hollow.
“Yes,” Gojo replies easily, gently running his fingers through the pink mop atop Yuji’s head. “Which is precisely why they want to execute you.”
The echo of laughter in Yuji’s chest swells again, sharper this time, and he clenches his jaw until it subsides.
Yuji keeps staring at the floor long after Gojo’s hand leaves his hair.
The gesture lingers in an uncomfortable way. It was almost friendly. Almost reassuring. But the chains are still tight around his wrists, and the hundreds of strange papers lining the walls hum with a low, unnatural vibration that Yuji is only just realizing must be the reason this room exists.
Execution.
He swallows and forces himself to look back up at Gojo.
“So that’s it?” Yuji asks finally, licking his chapped lips. “Are we — are you going to do it now?”
Gojo’s head tilts slightly.
“Do what now?” he asks.
Yuji’s throat tightens as the words begin to feel childish even to him, but the thought has already taken root. He can’t shake the growing certainty that this calm explanation is some kind of strange courtesy — that Gojo is taking the time to make sure Yuji understands why he has to die.
Why Gojo has to kill him.
The memory of those careful fingers in his hair turns sour.
Yuji swallows and forces the thought away.
“I mean… are you going to… you know.”
His chin jerks slightly toward the restraints, the room, everything.
Gojo’s brows lift.
“Woah,” he says, straightening slightly. “No need to rush to your death, kid.”
Yuji stills.
Hope rises before he can stop it, fragile and unwelcome.
“There’s another option,” Gojo continues.
For a moment — just a moment — Yuji lets himself believe what that might mean.
“You’re a vessel,” Gojo says. “And that makes you uniquely useful.”
The hope falters.
“If we execute you now, Sukuna’s fingers will remain scattered. The curse itself will persist.”
Yuji’s chest tightens.
“But if we wait,” Gojo continues, raising a finger slightly, “and you consume all twenty… then when we eliminate you, Sukuna dies with you. He can never come back.”
The words settle with quiet finality.
Yuji exhales slowly.
“So I don’t die now,” he says.
Gojo’s faint smile returns.
“Not if you cooperate.”
The lantern light flickers against the walls.
Yuji nods once. He understands.
“Do I just wait here then?” Yuji sounds as tired as he feels. “Until you bring me the rest of the fingers?”
Gojo tilts his head slightly.
“More or less. It won’t be immediate. We’ll monitor you carefully. There are procedures.”
Procedures. The word sounds sterile and impersonal. Yuji imagines checklists. Reports. Meetings where old men discuss his lifespan like it’s a budget allocation.
“And I stay chained up the whole time?” Yuji mutters, shifting slightly against the restraints again. The unnatural energy embedded in the metal hums faintly in response. He’s a little proud he can feel it now that he knows exactly where he is — and who put him here.
“For now,” Gojo replies. “Until we’re certain of your stability.”
Yuji huffs out a weak breath.
Stability.
Like he’s the problem.
He lets his head fall forward and closes his eyes for a second, trying to slow his thoughts. They keep circling back to the same place: he chose to swallow the finger. He chose to gamble with his own life. He chose it because it was the only way to save Fushiguro and the others.
And now the reward for that choice is a delayed death sentence.
There’s no anger in him, not really. Just a dull, hollow disappointment that feels heavier than rage ever could.
“Do they all agree?” Yuji asks quietly. “The higher-ups.”
“Yes,” Gojo says.
“No debate? No one arguing that maybe I deserve a medal instead?”
Gojo’s mouth twitches faintly.
“There was debate.”
Yuji opens one eye.
“And?”
“And they decided execution was cleaner.”
Yuji exhales slowly through his nose.
Of course they did.
For a moment the room settles into a strange calm. The lantern light flickers gently against the two people occupying the space, casting uneven shadows along the walls. Yuji becomes acutely aware of his own breathing, of the weight of the constraint around his torso, of the faint thrum beneath his skin that hasn’t entirely faded since swallowing the finger.
It’s still there.
Quiet.
Watching.
He doesn’t like that he can feel it.
“So when do we start?” he asks after a while.
Gojo studies him carefully.
“You’re taking this well.”
“I’m not,” Yuji replies. “I just don’t see a better option.”
That earns him a slightly longer look.
“We’ll bring the next finger once arrangements are finalized,” Gojo says. “It won’t be today.”
Yuji nods, though a small, involuntary tremor passes through him at the thought of doing it again. The memory of the taste creeps back into his throat — bitter, rotten, wrong — and he forces it down.
He can handle it.
He already did once.
“If I lose control,” Yuji says carefully, “you’ll stop me.”
It’s not a question.
Gojo’s expression sharpens just slightly.
“Immediately.”
There’s something steady in the way he says it that eases a small fraction of the tension coiled in Yuji’s chest.
“Good,” Yuji murmurs.
Because if he’s going to die anyway, he at least wants to know he won’t hurt anyone else on the way out.
Gojo straightens fully now, dusting off his hands as if the conversation has reached its natural conclusion.
“I’ll have the restraints loosened once the board confirms the postponement officially,” he says. “You’ll remain in a sealed room, of course.”
“Of course,” Yuji echoes dryly.
Gojo pauses at the doorway, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Try to get some rest,” he says. “You’ve got a long stay ahead of you.”
The words settle in the room after he leaves.
The door closes with a low, final hum and Yuji is alone again.
The lanterns glow faintly in their corners, insufficient and warm in a way that almost feels mocking. The chains dig into his wrists when he shifts, and he exhales slowly, staring up at the ceiling.
A long stay.
He lets his eyes drift shut, but sleep doesn’t come easily. His thoughts circle back to his grandfather again — to the promise he made without realizing it was one.
Help people.
If this is what helping looks like, then he’ll endure it.
Even if it means the end is already decided.
Deep inside his chest, that faint ripple stirs once more, almost amused.
Yuji presses his lips together and refuses to acknowledge it.