Chapter Text
The nurse screamed louder than the mother.
The doctors whispered among each other, exchanging glances. The mother passed out from the effort of the labour, the father behind a glass with ever darkening thoughts clouding his mind.
Nagasaki children.
There were horror stories. Children rumoured to be sick, children actually sick, with strange growths and with too many limbs or not enough of them.
These ones were neither. These ones were on the wrong side of strange, a step to the left from what was both normal and the expected side of strange.
Boys. Twins. Perfectly healthy lungs on both of them. One was a bit smaller than the other. It was normal. It was only one thing.
They both had pink hair.
Wasuke was weaker than his brother.
He knew this. To a certain degree, everyone knew this. It had always been that way. It was nothing notable.
Wasuke was not weak, not on his own. He was stronger than the other kids, he was almost always winning in fights. He didn’t let the pain bother him, he rarely got sick and if he did then he recovered quickly.
But Sukuna was stronger.
Wasuke knew that deep in his bones, from a million different little things he saw every single day, before he ever noticed that Sukuna was growing taller than him.
Wasuke was never really bothered by the cold or the heat, but for Sukuna it was like those things did not exist. Wasuke rarely got sick but Sukuna never did. Wasuke sometimes had trouble doing things on his own but Sukuna did them like he already knew how to do them. By the time Wasuke would figure out how to climb a tree Sukuna was already relaxing on top of it.
Wasuke burned his hand with scalding water once, and Sukuna smacked him around the head and told him to pay attention to the handles of the pots.
Sometimes Sukuna was looking at Wasuke like he could not believe he was still around. Wasuke wondered why Sukuna kept him around.
The other kids certainly didn’t want them around.
Those freaks from Nagasaki, they said, even though Wasuke and Sukuna had never been anywhere near Nagasaki since they were born. They pointed at the pink hair and yelled at each other not to touch them because they may catch it.
Once Wasuke overheard some guy tell his daughter to stay away from them because the nuclear could carry to you.
Wasuke wasn’t sick. He had been sick a few times but it was the normal sick, that stupid cold everyone in his class got. And Sukuna had never been sick. Sukuna felt like he had a fever all the time but it was all the time so it was not a fever. He wasn’t sick, he was just strong.
No, Wasuke wasn’t sick. Wasuke was angry and he did the only thing he could.
Mother did not look at them that day either but she yelled at him more than she spoke to him in a month. It was strange because the house was normally very quiet.
Sukuna looked bored.
“You’re weak” he said, looking into his eyes.
“I broke his kneecap” grumbled Wasuke.
“I was not talking about your strength. It’s good you can crush bone. You’re weak because you feel the need to prove yourself to them.”
Sukuna was always running hot. But today he felt very cold.
So I need to prove myself to you.
He did not say that out loud but maybe Sukuna heard it anyway.
Nobody came close again. Wasuke wondered if Sukuna was right or wrong.
Sukuna was the stronger one. He ran faster, he could lift more, he slept less, he ate more, he had better grades, and he always did things like he already knew how to do them.
Sometimes Wasuke thought that was a good thing because he was better at taking care of them than mother was. He taught Wasuke how to keep his stuff clean and when it was fine to get things dirty, and he taught Wasuke how to cook too because nobody can live without cooking.
Wasuke never told him but eating the food Sukuna made was the highlight of his day. He wasn’t sure where Sukuna got the ingredients from because mother never gave them money – he was not really sure they had money – but Sukuna always brought food back and he cooked it and told Wasuke how to handle some stuff, and then each of them would serve themselves and eat together. It was always delicious because for some reason Sukuna was really weird about the food being good enough. Wasuke slipped two bowls to mother’s room because Sukuna never bothered.
Sukuna acted like mother did not exist.
Wasuke would see the empty bowls from the room drying on the kitchen counter and would climb the counter and put them back in the cupboard.
The day after he broke that man’s kneecap, the school principal called him and Sukuna during lunch break with a branch in his hand, and then he called all the other students too. Wasuke knew what would happen, but he also knew that this time it would be extra bad.
Normally the teachers counted the lashes. One if you disturbed class, five if you forgot your book, fifteen if you were in a fight, ten and having to do something embarrassing if the argument was stupid and clean the whole school afterwards.
This time was different. The principal told them that he would keep up with the punishment until “you two little freaks got the point”.
He started with Wasuke because he was the one who did it. The branch was heavy and gnarled and big and it wasn’t the usual one. He just hated Wasuke and Sukuna in particular so he grabbed the special one.
Wasuke was good at ignoring pain, but it hurt. The principal at first counted the lashes but then he didn’t. He was screaming at Wasuke he should be sorry for his existence. Wasuke wasn’t sorry. He was just angry. He did not say a word. But the pain was a lot and he fell on his knees and he was tearing up and he was angry at that too.
Eventually the lashes stopped coming. Wasuke looked up and the teacher was sweaty and red in the face. His ears were buzzing but he overheard some guy complaining about missing lunch.
Sukuna was standing a few steps to the side with his hands in his pockets.
The principal raised the branch at him too. Sukuna looked bored.
He grabbed the branch as it was coming down and shattered it in his hand. The principal lost his balance and fell.
The yard fell silent.
“Will you continue laying there like a weakling?”
And oh it was ON so Wasuke got up and took a swing at his brother. It didn’t land, and when he turned around Sukuna was already walking off. The other kids parted to make a hallway for him and Wasuke was pretty sure the westerners had a saying for this, something about red. Their uniforms were blue though.
“Hey, don’t leave me behind you asshole!” Wasuke ignored how his ribs were throbbing and ran after him.
They made way for him too.
Sukuna glanced behind him. “So you got up after all.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Sukuna smiled and Wasuke was suddenly hit with the image of Nakamura-san’s fat cat finding leftover fish.
They walked home together, and this time Sukuna handled all of the cooking. Wasuke slept like a log and the next day his ribs barely bothered him and his bruises were already fading.
It was not mother who named them. Nor father, though Wasuke had never met him.
When Wasuke had been very little and still asked a lot of questions hoping some would get answered, he asked mother how he and Sukuna got their names. That was before they started school, back when mother was more present in the house because Sukuna still needed a stool to reach the counter and both of them stumbled all the time.
(Well, Wasuke did. He had this very clear memory of being annoyed that Sukuna was going slow so he wouldn’t stumble, but Sukuna was faster than him and never stumbled so maybe he remembered wrong.)
Mother sat them both down and told them that they would start school soon and they needed to know how to write their names, and they had to learn it early because the kanji was complicated.
So he asked her and she answered.
It was not her who named them nor their father. One of the older nurses at the hospital had called a monk to take a look at them because she was afraid of the bad omen.
The monk took one look at Sukuna and wrote down him name, and thought a bit longer about Wasuke but he gave him a name too. The names did not share kanji like twin names usually do, but they both had “su” in them. The monk fled after that.
Wasuke did not remember mother’s expression while she told them that story. What he remembered was that he had never seen Sukuna pay so much attention in his life.
Wasuke and Sukuna continued going to school. The principal didn’t lash them again and neither did the teachers, but everyone kept throwing dirty looks at him. Not at Sukuna. When Sukuna walked into the room everyone quieted down.
The boys would pick fights with Wasuke but not with Sukuna. Sukuna looked disappointed at everyone. Wasuke would walk back home with his bruises, cook with his brother, leave the bowls for mother and place them back in the cupboard the next day.
He briefly wondered if anyone told her about the kneecap. Probably not. Nobody ever spoke to mother and she never left the house.
Wasuke kept getting into fights, and after a while he kept winning them too, and over time he had less bruises, but Sukuna would always see him with a sneer on his face.
Sukuna was stronger. Everybody knew it. He did not get into fights but after the branch nobody dared to touch Sukuna.
A family moved in from another town because their house caught on fire and living here was cheaper. Wasuke did not have much of an opinion on that because even though they had no money Sukuna always made sure there was plenty of food and the house was decently warm, and Wasuke was figuring out how to do repairs around the house. They were both growing taller too, and Nakamura-san’s children started middle school now and had gotten way taller, so Wasuke went and asked if they could take the clothes because she did not need those anymore.
Nakamura-san said fine but in exchange they would need to sit the cat while she was out of the house. Wasuke said yes even though animals didn’t like Sukuna, because the cat mostly just lazed around. He returned home one day to see Sukuna lounging on the tree and the cat lounging on his chest, only for the two of them to look at him with the exact same expression of utter disappointment at having their nap under the sun interrupted. Wasuke informed Nakamura-san that Sukuna and Aki-dono (as he found out was the cat’s name, and yes the –dono was part of the name) were now best friends. Nakamura-san laughed her head off. She was nice.
The new kids also had to take clothes from other people because theirs all burned down with their house. Their parent’s clothes burned down too, and so did a lot of their money. They had some left from their hometown, but Wasuke noticed many of them had patches. They wore the wrong uniforms for a while too.
The other families gave some clothes to the new family, but most of them were looking at them the say way they looked at him – like they just saw something gross. Wasuke didn’t get it. He knew why the other kids found him and Sukuna disgusting: mother was from Nagasaki, and they had pink hair, and there was no father around and they were stronger than the others. The new family was none of those things.
Wasuke didn’t get it but the other kids decided that being out of town was a good enough reason to hate someone, and since nobody could bother Sukuna and Wasuke left behind broken noses and sprains all the time (he was now careful not to break bone because sometimes he had nightmares about the principal), they decided to go after the new kids instead. Three of them, two girls and a boy. They tried to be good but they were not from around here and they did not belong so the girls got their hair pulled and rubbed with tree sap and the boy was followed every day after school and came back tired.
Wasuke didn’t get it, but it wasn’t fair.
(His whole life wasn’t fair but if you asked him many years later, “fair” wasn’t a concept that ever applied to him. He had no idea how the concept of “fair” entered his mind.)
So he found the kids as they were beating up the boy and then because the boy’s foot hurt too bad he carried him to his house at the edge of town. The boy’s mother and sisters looked horrified. Their father was out working.
He could tell the parents found him weird too, but they were more worried about their son, so they thanked him and invited him in. Wasuke had never been invited in someone’s house before.
Wasuke only half-remembered what followed. Their mother offered him tea and helped him bandage him up even though Wasuke would be fine tomorrow, the girls thanked him, and their father didn’t really say anything because apparently he couldn’t decide if Wasuke was good or not but he didn’t kick him out either.
Wasuke went home late, rubbed Aki-dono until he was reduced to a pile of fluff, and served himself. Sukuna was out. For the first time in a while Wasuke ate alone, he picked up and cleaned everything up, and let two bowls of lukewarm food at mother’s door as always.
The older girl was Momo, the middle girl was Yuzu, and the boy was Hinari. Hinari would stick close to Wasuke and Wasuke had no idea what to do with that. Momo was in middle school so he rarely saw her. Yuzu for some reason would also stick close to him during breaks, but not very close. She looked scared. On really weird days, she would stick around Sukuna which was practically unheard of, but she looked even more scared.
Even worse, Sukuna looked interested, and Wasuke had wondered for a crazy moment if his brother had one of those “crush” things on that girl.
So he asked him.
Wasuke had the exceedingly rare honour of seeing his brother completely bewildered, before his expression settled into a scowl. “She’s weak, so she flocks to us because we are strong for her protection.”
Oh. She was trying to avoid the girls.
But he was still a bit curious so he decided to ask Yuzu too.
“You’re scarier than the monsters. They stay away from you two. Especially Sukuna-san.”
“Those guys aren’t scary” said Wasuke even though Hinari was pretty scared of them.
She looked at him in the eye and something in Wasuke’s stomach lurched wrong. “I wasn’t talking about them. I meant the monsters.”
Yuzu was weird.
There was a second fire. This time it wasn’t the family’s house that burned down, but their garden did. Yuzu screamed and suddenly there was fire everywhere.
A few days later a strange man came and took Yuzu with him. He stared at Wasuke weird for a bit and made some weird gestures, but then he decided to ignore him. Sukuna was nowhere to be seen.
A few months later the whispers got too much so the rest of the family left too. They gave Wasuke some tea-bags as thanks, and the father grumpily told him that he and his brother should probably get their hair dyed because they kept getting into fights and he didn’t want that sort of role model for his son.
Wasuke scoffed, but didn’t say anything. The teachers told them to change their hair all the time.
He never saw them again.
Sometimes he caught himself thinking about them.
The first change Wasuke noticed was that his mother’s bowls were unwashed. There were a few leftovers in them.
It was weird, because their mother ate about as much as Wasuke did and she never had leftovers.
He gave the leftovers to Aki-dono (earning himself a bit of mochi from Nakamura-san) and cleaned the bowls and put them in the cupboard, like always.
For some reason the leftovers kept bothering Wasuke.
The next day a bunch of boys approached him with sticks, but Wasuke was really not in the mood. He got up and stared at them.
For some reason they left.
For some reason that made Wasuke angry.
One day Sukuna decided to break the routine and called Wasuke late at evening outside. He had a makeshift bow in his hands that Wasuke had never seen before, and in his surprise he almost dropped the second one that he tossed at him.
“Follow me. We’re going hunting.”
So they spent the whole evening in the forest and somehow Wasuke managed to accidentally shoot a crow yet completely failed to shoot a goose. Any kind of goose. Sukuna informed him in the most infuriating and condescending tone he could use – which was pretty infuriating and condescending – that there were around thirty different kinds of goose around these parts and Wasuke somehow managed to miss all of them.
Wasuke threw Sukuna a rock and Sukuna had to dodge it so he considered that a success.
He didn’t let Wasuke gather herbs though because he wouldn’t be able to tell apart the poisonous ones from the safe ones.
Wasuke wasn’t sure there was anything poisonous because he saw Sukuna chew ALL the berries.
Nakamura-san’s husband needed help fixing some stuff around their house and Wasuke offered because they needed more clothes. That quickly turned into a different neighbor that Wasuke hardly ever spoke to asking for help and before he knew it he was fixing stuff all around town.
The other boys at school still hated him. Apparently someone’s mother told her son “even that Nagasaki kid is more useful than you” and that was the start of a nuclear fallout that had little to do with Nagasaki and everything to do with someone’s dowry and no less than fifteen cows. The only reason Wasuke knew this is because Sukuna walked up to him one day and asked him if he were involved in any arranged marriages.
It was by far the single strangest sentence he ever heard from his brother. It was also the day he found out something new about Sukuna: he could get oddly invested in family drama.
Well, Sukuna looked bored most of the time so this was an improvement. Hopefully.
Suddenly he was hit with the mental image of Sukuna lounging at Nakamura-san’s couch stroking Aki-dono while Nakamura-san dutifully reported to him her latest gossip findings like a court lady in those period dramas on the tavern TV and he had to fight back his laughter all day.
At least for a little while the whispers focused on something other than them.
The teacher noticed anyway and made him clean the entire yard after school.
Still, he kept working and his grades started slipping but he never really cared about that sort of thing anyway. The neighbors paid him in foodstuff; half the time it was sweets which was definitely different because Sukuna had never been fond of any sweetness that did not come from whatever fruit he picked from the forest, and Wasuke followed his lead in food choices. Other times it was money, and Wasuke was at a loss of what to do with it before deciding to add that to their collective funds for stuff that needed to be replaced.
He was starting to realise that Sukuna’s hunting, foraging, and uncanny ability to set things on fire was saving them a lot of cash.
Sukuna started teaching him about the plants when Wasuke had spare time. Wasuke had picked up a fair bit anyway, from cooking with Sukuna. He was now good enough that Sukuna did not complain about his performance anymore. His archery skills were getting better too.
If anything it made Wasuke feel the gap between them more clearly than ever.
Sukuna was strong enough to survive on his own. Wasuke wasn’t there yet. But he hoped he would be.
He started fixing stuff around people’s houses. That did not mean the other guys stopped hating him.
If anything, some of them hated him even more now.
They will never be happy.
Wasuke was not sure for how long he had been pummeling these guys. It had gotten old years ago. His head was buzzing so much it felt like bursting and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears and thundering in his chest and it was all so very hot, and he hated it.
He was angry. These guys just kept coming at him for years and years, pointing fingers and yelling at him that he and his brother are freaks and it’s no fucking wonder their family doesn’t want them and they’ll beat the disease out of them and they should have packed their shit and left with that pyromaniac family.
And Wasuke saw nothing but red and he kept seeing red and this time he no longer paid attention to holding back, he heard bones break and he didn’t care.
He almost fell in a daze, like he was running down the hill on a sunny day, but everything in him was screaming to put them in their place.
At the edge of his vision he saw someone rushing at him holding something.
He remembered the principal with that heavy branch.
Something stopped it. There was a scream from above him.
Sukuna was here.
These guys were highschoolers. Wasuke only knew them in passing. Why were they here. No, he knew why they were.
Nobody wanted them around.
Wasuke stole a glance at his brother and his first impression was that he was angry.
No. He was not angry.
Wasuke was angry. Wasuke was always angry.
Despite him and Sukuna having the same face, Wasuke had never thought he and his brother were very similar. Sukuna was always better at everything, bored at everything, and hardly interacted with anyone unless it was something really weird.
Still, he liked to think he mostly knew Sukuna. Sukuna thought of everyone as weak, and therefore he was never interested. He liked nothing more than his personal comfort – good food and a good place to read and sleep as he pleased.
Wasuke heard a word once: surreal. Something so crazy it feels like reality tilts a little.
It came to the forefront of his mind right now. Because right now he had the surreal realization that despite feeling the gap between them for his whole life, Wasuke had underestimated his brother.
Sukuna wasn’t angry. He was hungry.
He had not seen Sukuna fight since the day with the principal and the tree branch.
He remembered what he said the day prior, that it’s a good thing Wasuke can crush bone.
Sukuna did so much more than crush bone.
Sukuna laughed as he slammed a skull against the wall, leaving behind cracks. Hands in the pocket as he kept mocking them, come on, keep trying, do your best.
This was all some little joke to him. Barely worth two chuckles.
Wasuke was probably just as much of a joke.
By the time Sukuna was done the ground was covered in blood. Sukuna swiped his hand across it and took a lick at it.
Wasuke kept staring at him numbly.
Sukuna. Was just licking the blood. Like it was leftover sauce on a plate.
Maybe in another world Sukuna would be mocked and beaten like Wasuke was. They had the same pink hair and no father and a mother who locked herself in her room and no money, and Sukuna was also a girl’s name with a different spelling and he never helped anyone ever so if anything the others had more reasons to hate him than Wasuke.
But Sukuna was stronger.
Maybe in another world Sukuna was born alone, and Wasuke knew he would have been fine because he never needed Wasuke.
One of those highschoolers had his arm ripped off its socket. Perhaps that other guy would lose that eye.
Sukuna bit off someone’s finger and shoved it down their throat.
Wasuke had no idea what would happen tomorrow. But right now he was not afraid of the principal.
Wasuke’s anger was nothing before Sukuna’s hunger.
Sukuna got bored playing with his food so he rose up to his feet and walked away.
Wasuke did not follow. Not right away. He had to get this out of his chest.
“Why are you still here?”
Sukuna paused.
“You could leave any time. You don’t need me. You don’t need any of this. Why don’t you just leave?”
He could not see Sukuna’s face, with his back turned to him. Sukuna did not say anything. It made Wasuke’s tempter flare up all over again.
“SAY SOMETHING YOU BASTARD!”
Sukuna turned his head towards him, not fully turning around but looking at him in the eye nonetheless.
“It is said that twins are two halves of the same soul.”
…huh?
“Two fragments of the same soul, the same pool of energy, eternally tied together. Holding each other back. The two halves have to grow together or not at all. Any effort and cost is only worth half of what it’s supposed to. That’s why twins are an omen.”
An omen…
A monk named Sukuna “demon slayer”.
“But you’re stronger.”
It was the first time Wasuke said it out loud.
Sukuna turned around to face him fully. “I’m the strongest.” It was statement of fact. Wasuke could wholeheartedly believe it. He could always feel it and he believed it. Sukuna was untouched by everything around him.
Sukuna thought himself so different from everything around him that he licked the blood off the unconscious boys for fun.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“That beatdown just now wasn’t half bad.” An incredulous laugh made it out of Wasuke’s throat. “But it is as I told you before; you are wasting your effort in proving yourself to them. They are weaker than you, yet you act weak yourself. You shouldn’t feel the need to prove yourself good enough for their approval.”
Sukuna thought he was weak… because he was fighting? He fought because they hated him!
“Be hungrier. Fight for your pleasure. Eat for your pleasure. Take what you want and enjoy it. They have no right to question that we exist.”
Wasuke never understood his brother at all.
“Why haven’t you left?”
“No part of me will be weak. Including you. You will not hold me back.”
Sukuna walked away. And Wasuke followed.
On the way home they gathered up water from the stream. Sukuna boiled it and they washed off the blood. They cooked together like always and ate together in silence and Wasuke slipped the two bowls to mother’s bedroom.
The next morning Wasuke found her leftovers.
Here is a brief story about Itadori Mio.
She was one of two daughters, and her parents had never been neither disappointed nor happy with her. She performed according to expectations. She found a husband in the form of Itadori Shuji that treated her decently, and they were trying for a child. Both his and her parents told them to hurry and give them a grandson. Privately in her mind she thought that if she had a daughter she would ask their families permission to name her Sakura because she loved the scent of the blossoms. They could try again for a son later.
She was born and raised in Nagasaki, and the day the bomb fell she was out grocery shopping.
Mio lived and Shuji was out of the city for business. Her parents were not so fortunate, and so they both gathered what few belongings they had and went to live with Shuji’s parents out of the city.
The parents took them in, and just like any daughter-in-law ought to do, she did her chores and helped around the house, and she tried finding a job after a lot of debating with her husband because she did not want to feel like she was burdening them. She knew that once she brought a child into the world it would be all the harder to keep everyone afoot, so she wanted to help secure their future as much as possible.
The Itadoris weren’t poor but they weren’t rich either, so after much debating, they frowned at her but praised her work ethic. So she found herself working in a grocery store, and it was not half bad.
She noticed feeling off a little over a month later.
She would never admit this to anyone, especially not in polite conversation, but after the bomb fell she and Shuji were so incredibly glad to be alive.
They celebrated life more passionately than they celebrated their wedding day.
Itadori Mio was happy. She was scared. She was dizzy. She felt sick. She felt ecstatic.
After a couple of months she announced the news to her husband, and they together announced the news to his family. Mio decided to keep working at the grocery store for a bit longer to save up a bit more cash.
Then someone at the store asked her if it was safe for her to be around other people’s food.
People from Hiroshima and Nagasaki kept falling sick. That’s what everyone said.
But Mio wasn’t sick, she was pregnant.
She wasn’t sick but she felt sick. Her mother-in-law assured her the pain and the nausea were all normal, but soon Mio found herself dizzy and exhausted and she could not work anymore because she kept seeing things that weren’t there.
She went to the hospital and stayed there and time passed in a blur and too slow. She saw strange shapes that were more than tricks of light and her womb felt like it was burning.
The doctors told her there was a very high chance she was expecting twins.
Everyone kept a distance that was too far to be polite.
Her husband was a shadowy figure behind a paper screen. Her in-laws did not come to visit.
A few nights she woke up in the middle of the night to find eyes lurking at her. She was running a fever.
Little by little, the more her stomach grew, the more she felt like something was being drained from her. Something vital and irreplaceable.
The day of her labour came and with it astounding pain, enough to blind.
A tiny part of her clinging to everything that wasn’t pain was glad she did not see the eyes anymore.
It was twin boys, both healthy, and under any other circumstances the house would ring with joy.
But Mio was sick and everyone said it was because of the bomb, and the boys had pink hair of all things and maybe it was because of the bomb too.
She wanted to name her daughter Sakura, but the boys were born with the cherry blossoms on their heads. She had no plans for what she would name a son, let alone two.
A nurse called a monk to exorcise the infants. Mio was dizzy and half asleep and told the monk about Sakura.
She had no idea if the monk heard her, but he named the boys. It was as if he recognized them in some way, or recognized something about them.
Shuji walked up to her when she was awake enough and told her those children weren’t his. They did not look like him. And he was not sick. The sickness had to have come from her.
Itadori Mio never got divorced because the family would not let that stain their reputation. But she was given the children and a payment agreement and was asked to live far away. So she packed her belongings and the babies’ belongings and she and Shuji rode together on the train for days until they were as far from Nagasaki as the train would take them. Or until he decided that here was good enough.
Winter in Sendai was beautiful.
So they bought a house in a village out of Sendai that was tiny and a little broken and had a tree in the front yard. He stayed until he was sure he was not needed anymore and left.
She could not see the eyes anymore but she was sure they were there. Draining her off something vital and irreplaceable.
She got up and washed the clothes until she found them already washed, cleaned until she found them already clean, shopped until she realized there was no need to, and kept paying.
Wasuke asked her where their names came from and she answered.
One night Sukuna walked into the bedroom, grabbed something above her and ate it.
He never asked permission to enter.
The days were all the same, and there were less and less reasons to leave her bedroom.
Itadori Mio kept trying until she no longer could, and all that was left for her was a bowl of rice and a bowl of the main meal of the day dutifully waiting for her on the door of her bedroom every day. She nibbled at the food until she could not and cleaned her own mess, and even though the food was delicious her tongue felt dry each time.
She walked to the kitchen every morning, and the kitchen smelled like blood.