Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There were worse ways to die, Yuuji supposed. Bleeding out in the middle of the now-abandoned Shinjuku Gyoen Park was a good way to go. At least here, he had an unobstructed view of the sky. White and painfully bright against the falling snow.

He knew he was bleeding. He could feel the warmth spreading beneath him, soaking through the fabric of his hoodie, but there was no pain. The only thing he truly felt was the snow landing softly on his forehead, melting against his warm skin. 

“So this is it, huh?”

The voice, one that had lived in his head for three hundred years, broke the peaceful silence Yuuji found in dying. He repressed the groan threatening to slip past his lips. But of course, Sukuna noticed. He didn’t need to see him to know he was rolling his eyes. After three centuries of sharing a body, Yuuji could tell when he was doing it even though he couldn’t see him.

“Pathetic way to go,” Sukuna muttered.

And maybe it was. One of the last sorcerers alive was brought down not by some big disaster, but because he hadn’t moved fast enough. What a joke. Or that was what Sukuna thought, at least. 

It had been a Grade 3. One of the last curses still crawling around in the world. A couple of years ago, something like that wouldn’t have even slowed him down, but maybe Panda had been right, and he was finally getting old.

“You could’ve taken over,” Yuuji said.

But they both knew why Sukuna didn't. Same reason he wasn't healing himself. After centuries of fighting, and fighting, and living while everyone else around them died—

They were tired. 

“Well,” Sukuna said dryly, “at least this way I won’t have to listen to you anymore.”

Yuuji frowned weakly, offended even now. “Hey. I thought you liked being with me.”

“You are exhausting.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“It is when you share a skull.”

Yuuji huffed. “You’re going to be lonely.”

“I was alone for years before you.” 

“Yeah,” Yuuji snorted weakly, the sound dissolving into a cough. “And look how that turned out.”

A sharp click of Sukuna’s tongue echoed in his head, a familiar, irritated sound that felt strangely comforting in his last moments. “Do not overestimate your impact.”

“Three hundred years,” Yuuji said after a moment, blinking slowly as a snowflake landed on his eyelash. “That’s longer than most marriages.”

“That's longer than anything, idiot." 

A faint smile tugged at Yuuji’s lips. The sky above him blurred slightly at the edges.

“Thanks, by the way.” Yuuji said.

Sukuna didn’t answer right away. “For what?”

“For staying.” 

Yuuji couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken about it. Maybe it had been years ago, back when Sukuna had awkwardly tried to offer something that resembled comfort after—

He blinked hard. No. Not that. The memory threatened to surface, so he let it sink again.

“I think,” he continued, “I would’ve gone crazy if you weren’t here.”

Sukuna scoffed immediately. “You are already crazy.”

“Be serious.”

“You are speaking to yourself in the middle of nowhere,” Sukuna replied. 

“Yeah, okay. Fair. But still,” Yuuji frowned. “It helped. Having someone there. Even if you were…you.”

Another snowflake brushed his cheek. He barely felt it now. For a moment, Sukuna said nothing, and Yuuji wondered if he wouldn’t answer at all.

“It’s not like I had another choice.” Sukuna finally said.

Yuuji blinked and turned his head slightly to the right, as if Sukuna might be sitting next to him instead of existing behind his eyes and beneath his skin. Just like the last time he had seen him properly, when they had both agreed to exist together. The same face as his own stared back, only sharper around the edges. The same pink hair falling over tired eyes. Yuuji had worn that face for three centuries, and still, in his mind, Sukuna had always looked slightly different.  

“You always had a choice.”

His lips felt dry, the words catching in his throat. He paused to wet them before speaking again.

“If you could go back…would you choose something different?” he asked quietly. “Not just staying with me. I mean everything. Even before that.”

Sukuna frowned. “What a pointless question.”

“Humour me.”

“No,” Sukuna said. “I wouldn’t.”

Three hundred years was a long time to share a body. Long enough to memorize the way someone thought. He couldn’t help but smile. 

“You answered fast.” 

“I did not.”

“You did.”

Sukuna rolled his eyes. “You are dying. Your perception is unreliable.”

Yuuji let out a slow breath. It trembled on the way out, fogging faintly in the freezing air before dissolving.

“We are dying,” he corrected.

Well, mostly Sukuna. There was still that ridiculous plan he’d made years ago. The one where, after he died, he would become a cursed object just as Sukuna once was. Just in case someone needed that kind of power someday.

He still remembered the day he had suggested it. Sukuna had immediately declared it one of the most idiotic, ridiculous plans he had ever heard. An impressive statement coming from someone who had quite literally turned himself into cursed objects before.

Sukuna had called him an idiot for an entire year afterwards, without missing a single day, as if it had become part of his daily routine. And he had refused to cooperate for nearly a decade out of pure, stubborn spite, so it took longer for Yuuji to actually know how to do the whole thing. If Sukuna had a physical body back then, he was fairly sure he would’ve looked exactly like a child being told he couldn’t have ice cream.

He cared about Yuuji, in his own way. 

“The past is immovable,” Sukuna said at last.

Yuuji blinked. “So you thought about it.”

Silence.

“It wouldn't change anything.” 

Yuuji let his eyes close briefly. “I know,” he whispered.

He had thought about it, too. More than once. On nights when the room they were staying in felt too quiet. When the air was cold, he lay awake staring at the ceiling, tracing the thin cracks in the ceiling like constellations. On nights when Sukuna was silent, the world felt unbearably empty despite the presence in his head.

There had been nights when the thoughts wouldn’t stop, the whatifwhatifwhatif looping endlessly, crowding his mind, what he could’ve done differently, what he should’ve said. The people he might have saved if he’d been stronger. What he could have avoided. The questions stacked on top of each other until they became a dull ache that never quite faded. He would turn onto his side, press his face into a pillow that didn’t smell like anything familiar, and force himself to forget about it until the following night. 

He knew he couldn’t change anything anymore. He’d told himself that a thousand times, but that didn’t stop him from wondering.

“I wish I could go back,” Yuuji admitted.

Beside him, Sukuna moved. The movement was stiff, pained, and he let out a sharp, involuntary hiss. He watched the way Sukuna’s hand trembled slightly as he pressed it against his stomach, blood dark and leaking between his fingers.

“You would make the same choices,” Sukuna rasped. “Your compassion is a terminal illness, brat.”

He felt the numbness creeping up his legs, the seductive pull of the blood loss whispering for him to just close his eyes, but even in his last moments, he was stubborn as hell. He forced himself to blink. 

“Probably,” he answered. "I’m not smart enough to do it any other way."

"At least you’re self-aware in your final moments," Sukuna countered. Yuuji let out a wet, bubbling snort. A fresh streak of red painted his chin, but he was far too tired to wipe it away. 

​“You would fight, you would lose,” Sukuna continued, his gaze drifting back to the falling flakes, “and you would still find yourself dying in the snow with me.”

​“Yeah.” 

Strangely, the thought of dying didn’t fill him with dread. There was a quiet sort of peace settling in his chest. For once, there was nothing left to do. No one left to fight for. Whatever curses remained, Yuuji knew that at least the remaining members of the Gojo Clan would deal with it. 

He had failed his grandfather's last wish, he supposed. He wasn’t dying in a crowd of loved ones, no one crying for him or holding his hand, but he was dying with the only being left in the world who truly knew who he was. After the long, lonely years of outliving everyone else, that felt like enough.

“I guess this was always the finish line for us.” A strange warmth tracked down his frozen cheeks, and he blinked, startled to find that he was crying. ​With a monumental effort, Yuuji forced his heavy neck to move, turning his face towards the sky. It was a piercing, crystalline white, so vast and indifferent that it made their entire life feel small.

“Hey,” Yuuji cleared his throat, his smile widening into something dazed and genuinely fond. “I hope I see you in the next life. Maybe we can try something less...murdery next time.”

Sukuna actually snorted, a sharp puff of air that sent a spray of red onto the snow. He finally looked down at Yuuji, his expression one of genuine amusement. “I hope not. I’ve had quite enough of being stuck together, brat. A thousand years of silence sounds far better than another lifetime of your nonsense.”

Yuuji chuckled, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a sigh. “You’re gonna be bored without me.”

“I will enjoy the silence,” Sukuna muttered. 

“Liar,” Yuuji answered, his head lolling back against the cold floor. He went quiet for a moment, his expression softening into something far away. “I hope I see him, too.”

He didn't need to say who he was talking about. Sukuna could tell by the look on Itadori's face. He let out a long, shuddering sigh. He looked down at his hands, palms up. They were coated in a thick, cooling red that had begun to freeze in the creases of his skin.

Sukuna had a thousand years of regrets, lives he’d discarded like ash, power he’d chased until there was nothing left to kill. But as he watched his own life leak out to join Itadori's, he realized his greatest regret wasn't anything he had done as a human. It had been using that boy. If he could go back, as Itadori seemed to wish, he would change that.

He had listened to Itadori's incessant talk about love, fear, regret, and sadness with the detached amusement of a scientist watching an insect struggle in a web. But living next to Itadori's soul had been a slow, insidious infection. He hadn't just inhabited the boy’s ribs; he had been forced to breathe his air, to feel the resonance of a heart that broke for everyone but itself. He had caught Itadori's humanity like a lingering fever, and it had rotted his soul from the inside out.

He hadn’t truly understood those feelings until that day. The one Itadori would never talk about, no matter how often he had mocked Sukuna for hiding things.

He remembered the feeling pretty well. It was a sensation no blade could replicate, and it wasn't a wound he could heal or a poison he could purge. It wasn’t something he could carve out or burn away. It felt as if an invisible hand had reached into his chest, wrapped its fingers around his heart, and begun slowly dragging it downward into a bottomless, freezing pit where breathing was impossible. The air was right there, yet his throat had constricted, locking tight. He had found himself gasping with a frantic rhythmic of his chest that was looking for oxygen he knew his lungs were physically capable of taking, but his body simply refused to accept.

Sukuna had endured torture, mutilation, years of violence and war. Pain had always been something measurable, something he could overcome. But this, this had no shape he could grasp, there was no enemy he could tear apart.

He didn’t grieve Fushiguro Megumi the way Itadori did, but he understood the pain of losing him. 

Beside him, Itadori let out a chuckle, the sound barely louder than the cold wind. “Ah…I don’t think he’d want to be born again,” he said.

Sukuna blinked and looked at the boy who had forced him to feel the crushing weight of a broken heart, the boy who, after everything, still offered him a chance to live again, not as a curse, but just as himself. 

“Sorry, Fushiguro,” Itadori whispered, his chin dipping slowly toward his chest as the weak rhythm of his pulse flickered beneath his skin. “I guess you’ve gone somewhere I can’t follow. You’d probably kill me for that, too, wouldn't you?”

Sukuna could feel they were both just about to die. He could feel it in his bones, in the way he felt as if he was fading. For the first time in a very long while, Sukuna felt something disturbingly human stir inside his chest. A sick, aching impulse.

If there was any power left in his soul, he would have liked to give him another chance. Just as Itadori gave him one. He didn't know how to pray, and he had never cared for miracles. The idea had always seemed pathetic to him, pleading to something unseen for mercy, for the fate to bend. Miracles were for the desperate, weak humans. And yet, as the last warmth drained from his limbs, Sukuna found his thoughts turning in a direction he had never once allowed them to go.

If the brat could start again, perhaps things would be different.

“You really don’t know when to die, do you?” Sukuna asked one last time.

The wind gave one final, jagged shriek before collapsing into a heavy, suffocating silence, as if the world itself had held its breath, granting them a solitary, hushed moment of peace to finally let go. 

The red pool at their feet, once steaming, began to glaze over with a thin, dark crust of ice. Their breaths, which had been misting the air in frantic hitches, slowed in a cruel, perfect synchronisation until the last one left them both at once.

Yuuji had never really spent much time thinking about what came after death.

Once or twice, the thought had crossed his mind in passing. He vaguely remembered imagining something like a train station. Endless white floors, bright lights overhead, people sitting quietly on benches while they waited to be called somewhere else. He was pretty sure he had seen something like that in a movie once. It had stuck with him for no particular reason. Maybe he should have asked Sukuna since he had existed long before Yuuji had ever swallowed that first finger. If anyone would know what waited after death, it would have been him.

Or maybe there would be just…nothing. No thoughts, no body or pain. Just a quiet, endless existence in the dark. For a while, that idea had terrified him. The thought of simply disappearing, of everything he was dissolving into darkness, had once made his chest tighten. Later, though, he had made peace with it. After everything he had lived through, a little nothingness almost sounded comforting. 

But when Yuuji opened his eyes again, every idea he had ever had about what came after death shattered instantly.

His vision was blurry, heavy, as if his eyes were still learning to exist again, and for a few seconds, he simply stared, not understanding what he was looking at.

A ceiling.

Yuuji stared at it for a long moment, his mind struggling to catch up with what his eyes were telling him.

…A ceiling.

His brows pulled together slowly. “What?”

Carefully, Yuuji pushed himself upright. The movement felt wrong, not painful, just…light. His body responded too easily, muscles obeying without the dragging exhaustion he had grown used to over the years. The blanket pooled around his waist as he sat up, and for a second, he just looked down at his hands. There were ten fingers. Yuuji blinked slowly, his brain refusing to process the sight at first. He lifted his hands higher, turning them in the light as if the extra fingers might disappear if he looked long enough. His fingers trembled slightly as he flexed them and turned them over.

“No way,” he whispered. 

Yuuji stared at them for a long second before letting out a quiet huff of disbelief. If someone had told him dying would give him his fingers back, he might’ve died sooner. It wasn’t like the missing fingers had ruined his life or anything. After the first few years, he had barely even thought about them. You learned to adapt when you had no other choice. The human body was good at that, at learning how to live around loss. 

It hadn’t been that hard, but it still felt good to have them back. Yuuji spread his fingers wide, then curled them into a loose fist, watching the tendons shift under the skin with a strange sort of fascination.

Wait…if his fingers were back, then it meant… His hand flew to his face before he could even process the thought. His fingertips grazed his cheek, then traced the curve of his jaw. There were no lines cutting through his skin. No scars where Sukuna’s eyes had once been. He moved his hand higher, feeling the bridge of his nose and the arch of his brow, searching for the ghost of the scars. There was nothing.

He almost jumped in excitement. He pushed the blanket aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the floor cool beneath his feet. His eyes moved across the room, and he blinked, finally registering where he was.

His heart skipped hard in his chest. He had never expected the afterlife to be an exact replica of his bedroom in Sendai, back in the house he had shared with his grandfather. Yuuji turned his head slowly, eyes moving from one corner to the next.

There was the desk by the window, just where it had always been, the familiar stack of textbooks slumped carelessly on top of it. The chair beside it still leaned slightly to one side, one leg shorter than the others. The poster he’d cut out of one of his grandfather’s old magazines was still there too, the corners curling where the tape had begun to peel away, exactly the way he remembered it.

His eyes moved slowly across the room again, picking out details he hadn’t thought about in centuries. The faint scratch on the desk where he’d dropped a pair of scissors once. Even the curtains by the window, cheap, pale fabric his grandfather had bought because they were on sale.

Everything was exactly where it had been. 

He had heard people say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. Maybe they weren’t completely wrong. Maybe this was something like that, some strange space between moving forward and being stuck, and his mind just recreated something familiar. That made sense, right? His brain had probably just picked the place where he’d been happiest.

He stood up and lightly tapped the desk with his knuckles, half-expecting his hand to pass through it like a ghost in some movie. Luckily, it didn’t. So it was real. If this was some sort of waiting room, he could deal with that. Sit here for a while, look around and maybe take a nap. After three hundred years, he had definitely earned one.

He was just starting to stretch his arms over his head when—

Knock knock.

His head snapped towards the door.

What?

Wasn’t this supposed to be…his thing? Why would there be anyone else here? Or maybe he imagined it.

Yeah, that made more sense. Brains did weird things when people died. Maybe this was just part of it. He was just about to shrug it off when another knock came from the front door.

“Hey, Itadori! Are you there?" 

His eyes widened slightly. Okay. He definitely hadn’t imagined that.

"I told you we shouldn't have come.”

“Ha!? Why not?” the first voice shot back immediately. “What if he’s sick or something? We need him! We were supposed to do the thing today!”

“Oh,” the second voice replied flatly, “so that’s what this is about.”

The voices were familiar in the way dreams sometimes were—like he should recognise them, like they were sitting right at the edge of his memory—but nothing actually clicked.

Another knock echoed through the house, louder this time, followed by the same voice as before.

“Hellooo? Itadori! If you’re ignoring us, I’m coming in!”

“You can’t just break into someone’s house,” the other voice complained.

“Watch me.”

Yuuji blinked. He walked towards the door of his room, still half-expecting something to glitch out. Maybe the hallway would stretch forever like one of those weird dreams, or maybe the house would dissolve into white nothing the second he stepped outside.

But when he slid the door open, nothing changed. It was still the same narrow space. He stepped out slowly, glancing around before walking towards the front door.

“I’m serious. We should leave.”

“Relax!” the other one replied. “Worst case scenario, he’s just sleeping!”

Bang bang bang.

“Itadori! Wake up already!”

He stopped a few steps from the door, staring at it. He should be glad he's not alone, right? But if this really was some kind of personal limbo, then dragging other people into it felt…wrong. Like they were stuck here, too, just because his brain had decided it needed company.

“Man,” he muttered under his breath, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Why is this so complicated?”

Another knock rattled the door.

“Itadori!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!”

He sighed and stepped forward, reaching for the handle. The door slid open, and Yuuji forced himself to blink because the two people standing on the other side were the last ones he had expected to see.

His mind went completely blank for a second.

“Sasaki-senpai?” he said slowly.

Beside her, another familiar face looked back at him.

​"Iguchi-senpai?"

​Both of them stared at him as if he were the one acting strange. Sasaki had her hands planted firmly on her hips, while Iguchi stood by, looking characteristically confused.

​“Yeah?" Sasaki said, arching a brow. “Who else did you expect?”

It had been so long, so ridiculously long. Centuries of faces that came and went, people he buried, people who disappeared into the slow passage of time. Whole generations he had watched fade away while he kept walking forward.

And here they were, the first real friends he ever had. Exactly the same. Something warm spread through his chest so suddenly it almost hurt. Before either of them could utter another word, Yuuji stepped forward, throwing his arms around them both and pulling them into a crushing, desperate hug.

​"Whoa—!" Iguchi yelped, nearly losing his balance.

​"H-hey! Itadori! Get off!" Sasaki protested, her face flushing as she tried to shove him away.

But Yuuji just laughed. He clung to them for another second, making sure they were actually there before finally pulling back.

“Man," he choked out, his voice trembling just a little. "I’m really, really glad to see you guys.”

Sasaki finally shoved him away, planting a hand firmly against his forehead and pushing him back with an annoyed huff. “Okay, seriously, what is wrong with you today?” she said, squinting at him. “Are you sick or something? Is that why you skipped school?”

Iguchi leaned forward, peering at him with concern. “Yeah, you’re kind of shaking, Itadori. Are you sure you’re okay?”

The grin on his face refused to fade. It stretched wide, almost ridiculous, his cheeks were starting to hurt from how hard he was smiling. His eyes were bright, tracking every micro-expression on their faces—the way Sasaki’s brow furrowed in genuine annoyance, the way Iguchi shifted his weight from side to side. It was so real.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said quickly. “Just surprised to see you guys, I guess.”

Sasaki narrowed her eyes.

“That was a weird reaction for ‘surprised.’”

Iguchi nodded slowly. “Yeah. You looked like you were about to cry.”

Yuuji blinked. “I just didn't expect it to be this...normal," he whispered, his eyes scanning the hallway behind him. "I thought it would be quiet. Or maybe that we’d all be floating. But this is perfect. If this is where we stay, I’m okay with it."

Sasaki traded a long, worried glance with Iguchi. "Where we...stay? Itadori, we were staying in the clubroom for exactly forty minutes before the President kicked us out. What are you talking about?"

"The afterlife," Yuuji said simply. "It’s okay. You guys don't have to worry about the school or the council anymore. We’re just here now."

Iguchi leaned towards Sasaki and whispered behind his hand, “He’s definitely lost it.”

"It’s the occult stuff," Sasaki sighed, grabbing Yuuji by the sleeve of his hoodie and tugging him towards the inside of the house. "I told you reading those scrolls at lunch would scramble his brain." 

“Hey—!”

“Come on, weirdo,” she said. “You’re clearly coming down with something. Let’s get you inside and make some tea."

Yuuji didn't resist. He let himself be led, his feet feeling weightless as they moved through the familiar entryway. He followed them into the house, his heart brimming with a quiet, glowing warmth.

Sasaki kicked the door shut behind them and marched straight towards the kitchen. Iguchi shuffled in after her, glancing around awkwardly while slipping his shoes off by the entrance. Yuuji followed a step behind them, hands shoved in the pocket of his hoodie, watching them move around the house like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Sasaki was already opening cabinets. “Do you even have tea?” she called over her shoulder.

“I think so,” Yuuji said automatically.

“Why do you have so many instant noodles?” Sasaki complained.

“Emergency food...?” 

Iguchi leaned closer to Yuuji and murmured, “You sure you’re okay?”

But before he could answer, Sasaki clattered something loudly in the kitchen. “Found it!”

She set a kettle on the stove and filled it with water, moving around the kitchen while the other two hovered nearby. Iguchi leaned against the counter, and Yuuji just watched, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

When the water finally boiled, Sasaki poured it carefully into the three mugs she’d pulled from the cupboard.

“Alright,” she said, sliding them onto the small table in the living room. “Sit.”

They did.

The three of them gathered around the table, steam curling lazily from the cups between them. For a few seconds, no one said anything. Iguchi blew cautiously across the surface of his tea, while Yuuji wrapped both hands around his mug, letting the warmth sink into his palms.

Sasaki suddenly cleared her throat.

“Uh, Itadori.”

“Yeah?”

She avoided his eyes.

“…Sorry.”

Yuuji blinked. “For what?”

Sasaki scratched awkwardly at the back of her neck. “We kinda just showed up at your house and barged in.”

Iguchi nodded beside her. “Yeah, we didn’t even ask.”

Sasaki looked more embarrassed by the second. “We just thought you skipped school and maybe something was wrong,” she muttered. “But we should’ve asked first.”

Yuuji stared at them for a moment, and then he laughed softly and shook his head.

“It’s fine.” At both of their expressions, he said. “Really,” he added, lifting his cup slightly. “I’m glad you came.”

Sasaki reached across the table and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead before he could react. “You’re warm.”

“I’m always warm,” Yuuji protested weakly.

Seriously, what was up with these two? They didn't realize where they were? He had half-expected them to be happy to see him again! Instead, they were there treating him like he had a disease.

Yuuji frowned at them over the rim of his cup. “Aren’t you supposed to be guides or something?” he asked after a moment, genuinely puzzled. It was the only explanation that made any sense.

“Guides?” Iguchi repeated. “For what?” he added.

“For the afterlife,” Yuuji said. “That’s why you’re here.”

Sasaki slowly lifted her cup and took a sip of tea, watching him carefully. Meanwhile, Yuuji kept going, the idea settling more comfortably in his mind the more he thought about it.

“Actually, it makes sense they picked you two,” he continued thoughtfully. “You died first, so you’d already know how things work here—”

Sasaki choked. Not just a cough, she full-on choked, sputtering tea everywhere as she slammed her cup down.

“DEAD?!” she croaked.

Iguchi shot up halfway from his chair. “Sasaki-chan!”

Sasaki managed to suck in a shaky breath, eyes watering as she pointed an accusing finger at him.

“WHAT do you mean dead?!”

Yuuji blinked at her, taken aback by the intensity of the reaction.

“You know,” he said slowly, glancing between the two of them as if the answer should be obvious. “Dead.”

Sasaki stared at him as he’d just announced the sky had turned green.

Iguchi looked between them helplessly, one hand still hovering awkwardly near Sasaki’s back in case she started choking again.

“What part of that made sense in your head?” Sasaki croaked.

He scratched the back of his neck, thinking it through again. Maybe people didn’t immediately understand they were dead. That would explain why they were acting so normal about everything. Which meant—

Oh, crap. Did that mean he was the one who had to tell them? He was terrible for that. Not that it happened before. 

He winced internally. “I mean,” he started carefully, glancing between the two of them, “you were the first people to die.”

Even before Maki. Yuuji still remembered standing there in the back, hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets, staring at the framed photos placed beside the flowers. They hadn’t really talked anymore after he’d left for Tokyo. Life had pulled him in a completely different direction, one he couldn’t even begin to explain, but that hadn’t meant he stopped caring.

So he’d gone to their funerals, paid his respects and stood there longer than he probably needed to, quietly remembering lunches in the clubroom and dumb arguments about ghosts and curses. 

They’d died of old age. And for a while after that, Yuuji had even kept tabs on their families. Making sure things were okay for them. He remembered the first time he’d seen one of their grandchildren who had Sasaki’s exact same annoyed expression. He’d laughed for ten straight minutes.

And then there had been the grandchildren of those grandchildren. Entire branches of family trees growing and spreading while Yuuji kept moving through the years like someone standing still in a river.

He’d stopped checking eventually.

“... First.” Iguchi repeated faintly.

Sasaki blinked. Then blinked again. “We what?” She slowly leaned forward, both palms flattening against the table as she stared directly at Yuuji. “We saw you yesterday!”

That made Yuuji pause. “Yesterday?”

“YES, yesterday!” Sasaki snapped. “At school!”

Iguchi nodded quickly. “You helped the track team carry equipment after class.”

Yuuji's brain tried to process that information. None of that lined up with the last thing he remembered—snow, blood freezing on the ground.

He blinked again. “Huh.”

“That’s it?” she said incredulously. “Huh?”

Yuuji rubbed the back of his neck again, looking genuinely puzzled. “Well, that’s weird.”

Sasaki pointed at him again, eyes blazing. “Okay, no. You don’t get to just say ‘weird’ after telling us we’re dead!”

Yuuji raised both hands defensively. “Hey! I’m just working with the information I have!”

“And what information is that?!” Sasaki demanded.

“Well, I died,” Yuuji said, counting with his fingers, “I woke up in my old room. You two, who definitely died years ago, show up at my door.” He gave a small, helpless shrug. “So obviously this is the afterlife.”

Iguchi stared at him. “Your logic is terrifying.”

Sasaki rubbed both hands over her face. “Oh my god,” she groaned. 

“I think he hit his head,” Iguchi muttered.

“I didn’t hit my head!” Yuuji protested immediately.

​“You just told us we’ve been dead for years!” Sasaki snapped, her voice rising in disbelief. “Look at us, Itadori! We’re sixteen! Do we look like ghosts to you?” ​She paused, taking a deep breath. “Okay,” she said slowly, looking over her glasses. “New question. Did you take something?”

“Take something?”

​“Drugs,” Iguchi clarified helpfully, “Hallucinogens? High-grade painkillers? Anything that might make you think your senior club members are zombies?”

​“What?! No!” Yuuji's hands went up again, this time in genuine shock.

​“Because you’re talking like someone who definitely took something,” Sasaki said, crossing her arms. “Either you’re high, or you’ve finally transcended reality. And frankly, the drugs would be easier to explain.”

“I’m not high! And I haven’t transcended anything! I didn’t take anything!” Yuuji insisted. He ran a hand through his hair. None of this made sense. 

“You just told us we died,” Sasaki reminded him.

“Years ago,” Iguchi added.

“Yes.”

The two of them stared at him.

“You see the problem here, right?” Sasaki said slowly.

Yuuji looked between them, clearly baffled. “But you did,” he said. “You both died when you were really old. Like, super old. I went to your funerals.”

Iguchi and Sasaki blinked.

“Our funerals,” Sasaki repeated.

“Yeah!” Yuuji said quickly, relieved they were finally following. “You had this huge family by then. Grandkids everywhere. Iguchi-senpai, one of your grandsons had your exact same haircut, which, no offence, was kind of horrible. And Sasaki-senpai, you had that photo with this giant shark—”

Both of them were staring at him now like he’d grown a second head.

“—and I stood in the back because I didn’t want to bother your families,” Yuuji finished, gesturing awkwardly. “But I still went, because we used to be friends.”

A brief silence followed.

“I see,” Sasaki said.

She had a strange look on her face now. Then she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, thoughtful for a moment before a slow smile began to spread across her lips.

“So what you’re saying…” she said slowly. “...is that you travelled back in time?”

“What? No!” Yuuji shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying at all!”

Sasaki paused. “It’s not?”

“No! I’m saying we’re all dead! You two just haven’t realised it yet!” Yuuji continued, pointing between them like that should make everything clearer. “You probably need to accept your death or something before you can move on!”

Sasaki leaned forward and rested her chin in her hand, studying him like a specimen. “So your theory,” she said, “is that we all died…”

“Yes.”

“…and now we’re sitting in your kitchen…”

“Yes.”

“…having tea in the afterlife.”

“Yes!”

Sasaki slowly nodded. “I see.”

Then she turned slightly towards Iguchi, hiding her mouth behind her hand and whispered in a not-subtle way. “Do you think this has something to do with that box he found?”

Yuuji blinked. “What box?”

Iguchi hummed thoughtfully, immediately bringing a hand to his chin. “Mmm.” He glanced at Yuuji and then nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”

Yuuji looked between them. “What box?”

Sasaki ignored him.

“The timing lines up,” she said to Iguchi.

Iguchi nodded. “It does.”

“He was normal yesterday.”

“Mostly.”

“And then he opened that thing.”

“Right.”

“HELLO?” Yuuji said. “I’m still here!”

Both of them finally looked at him.

“You don't remember?” She frowned. "We were supposed to open it today at school,” Sasaki started and turned towards the bag she’d set by the chair earlier. “That’s why we were waiting for you to show up. We figured three heads were better than two for a curse-breaking ritual.”

"Curse?” Yuuji's brow furrowed, a cold, prickly sensation beginning to crawl up the back of his neck. “What are you talking about?”

Sasaki didn't answer. Instead, she reached inside her bag and carefully withdrew something Yuuji couldn't see yet. She set it on the wooden table with a dull thud.

The moment Yuuji’s eyes landed on it, his heart seemed to stop. Cold rushed through him, starting at his feet and racing upward until it reached his fingertips, leaving them numb. The air in the kitchen, which had been warm and smelled of tea, changed instantly. It became thick and filled with the suffocating, metallic smell of blood and rust.

For a terrifying moment, his lungs strained for air he didn’t even need anymore, because he was dead. He knew he was dead. And yet, his body still tried to breathe.

It was Sukuna’s finger.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing in the afterlife made sense.

Was Sukuna following him somehow? They had died as one, after all. Maybe the universe didn’t care about what should happen. Maybe it only cared about what had happened—two souls tangled together so tightly that even death couldn’t separate them. So maybe, in the eyes of the universe, they were still bound together.

The thought made his stomach twist. The last thing he wanted was for Sukuna to be tied to him again, even if he would feel lonely without him.

It didn't make sense.

“Why is that here?” he whispered under his breath to no one in particular. Still, Sasaki answered.

She frowned. “You gave it to me yesterday. We were trying to figure out what made the rugby team sick,” she continued. “You know, so the President wouldn’t have another excuse to kick us out of the clubroom.” She huffed in irritation. “Seriously, he’s so persistent.”

Iguchi nodded in agreement. “He’s been trying to get rid of us since last year.”

“Right?” Sasaki said, throwing her hands up slightly. “Like, sorry we’re not a real club, but it’s not like the room was being used for anything else!”

Yesterday. 

It was the second time they talked about yesterday.

“We saw you yesterday!”

“Yesterday?”

“YES, yesterday! At school!”

“You helped the track team carry equipment after class.”

But it was impossible. Yesterday he wasn't at school. Yesterday, he had been in Shinjuku after he and Sukuna tried to take down another curse. Yesterday, he had fought until his body finally gave out, until the snow beneath him turned dark and red with blood. Yesterday, he wasn't helping the track team. Yesterday, he didn't give the finger to Sasaki. 

He was dead. He was sure of it. Maybe this is a memory, he thought, his brow furrowing. Some strange loop his mind was trapped in while his real body still lay somewhere in that frozen street, half-buried in snow, waiting for someone to eventually find it.

But that didn’t make sense either. He had never invited Sasaki and Iguchi to his house, because then they would ask questions about whether he lived alone or not, and he didn't want to burn them by telling them his grandpa was sick. So it wasn't a memory. He frowned, trying to think. Maybe it was a dream—a cruel, vivid hallucination born from his final moments. Any second now, he’d wake up to the cold again.

“Okay,” Yuuji muttered to himself.

Before either of them could react, he raised his hand and smacked himself hard across the face.

“Itadori!” Sasaki shrieked. “What the hell are you doing?!”

He didn't answer. Instead, he stood frozen, his hand still hovering near his face, waiting for the world to dissolve. He waited for the kitchen to melt into grey slush, for the smell of tea to turn back into the scent of ozone, and for the warmth to be replaced by the biting wind of December. 

But the kitchen stayed where it was, and the sting on his cheek didn't fade; it throbbed with a rhythmic, stubborn heat that felt undeniably physical.

“Wake up,” he whispered, his voice trembling. He raised his hand again. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

CRACK.

The second strike was harder. His vision blurred for a second, stars dancing in the periphery of his eyes.

“Stop it! Stop!” Sasaki lunged forward, grabbing his wrist before he could swing a third time. Her hands were warm—terrifyingly, realistically warm. The heat of her pulse against his skin was a physical anchor he didn't want.

“You’re hurting yourself! Iguchi, get some ice!”

“I’m not…I’m not waking up,” Itadori breathed, his eyes wide and unfocused as he looked at her. “Sasaki-senpai, why am I not waking up? I’m supposed to be dead. I’m supposed to be gone.”

The grief in his voice made Sasaki’s breath hitch. She had never seen the usually easygoing boy look so completely lost.

“Itadori, I don’t know what’s going on with you,” she said softly. “But stop saying that. You’re alive. You’re right here. Okay? Just breathe with me, c’mon. In and out.”

She squeezed his wrist, forcing him to look at her. For a second, Yuuji tried to follow her lead, his lungs hitching as he attempted to mimic her steady rhythm. He wanted, desperately, to believe that he had simply lost his mind, that this was all confusion and panic and nothing more. That his life really was still simple. Still normal.

But then his eyes landed back on the table, and he knew his life had never been a dream.

Sasaki kept a steady grip on his wrist, her thumb pressing lightly against the pulse there like she was afraid he might vanish if she let go. Yuuji’s breathing had slowed a little under her guidance, but his chest still rose and fell unevenly, each breath catching halfway through.

A second later, Iguchi appeared again in front of him, an ice pack wrapped hastily in a dish towel.

“Found it."

Sasaki let out a small breath of relief. “Thank you.”

She reached over and took it from him, unfolding the towel slightly before pressing the cold pack gently against Yuuji’s cheek.

Yuuji flinched. The cold shocked his skin, dragging him a little further back into the present.

“Hold it there,” Sasaki said softly.

He did, almost automatically, one hand rising to press the towel against his face while his eyes remained distant.

It was real. And everything that happened before he opened his eyes was real, too. 

“So what you’re saying is that you travelled back in time?” Sasaki's words echoed in his mind.

Could that even be possible? In all the years he had lived, there had never been a single mention of something like that. There was no Cursed Technique, no Special Grade object, and not even a whisper of a legend that suggested time could be reversed. Sorcerers could warp space, manipulate gravity, and even cheat death for a time, but the clock only ever ticked in one direction. To go back was to break the fundamental law of the universe.

Yet, here he was. Alive in a year that should have been long behind him, with every piece of evidence in front of him insisting that everything he thought he knew about the world had been wrong.

“Sasaki-senpai,” Yuuji started, his voice cracking. He swallowed hard, trying to force his vocal cords to work. “What day is it?”

She blinked, her brow furrowing. “The fourth? Why?”

Four. Shi. Death. 

“No, I mean...” He cleared his throat, his fingers tightening around the ice pack until his knuckles turned white. “What year is it?”

Sasaki’s expression shifted from confusion to genuine concern. She exchanged a worried glance with Iguchi before looking back at him. “It’s 2018, Itadori. Are you… Are you really okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?”

The number echoed in his mind. 2018. He felt a wave of nausea so violent he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep the kitchen from spinning. The ice pack slipped from his hand, hitting the floor with a wet thud, but he didn’t care. The freezing water soaked into his sock, a tiny, physical sensation that only grounded him further into this impossible reality.

If it were 2018, then Nanami was still alive. Gojo-sensei too. Nobara hadn't...and Fushiguro...Every face he had buried, they were all out there, breathing. It felt like a gambler who had lost everything, round after round, only to pull the lever one last time and see the sun rise on a jackpot he didn't deserve.

He had won.

“Itadori? Is everything okay?” Sasaki asked carefully. Her eyes flicked to the object on the table. “Does this have anything to do with that thing?”

She reached towards it, and Yuuji’s head snapped up.

“Don’t touch it!” 

Sasaki froze mid-movement, her hand hovering above the table. Iguchi stared at him. Sasaki blinked, clearly startled.

Yuuji realized too late how tightly he was breathing. “Sorry,” he blurted out immediately, pushing himself upright. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to yell.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, forcing out a nervous laugh that sounded thin even to his own ears.

“I just, uh, got you guys, right?” he said quickly. “I was messing with you. You should’ve seen your faces.”

Sasaki frowned. “Messing with us?”

“Yeah! Like a prank,” Yuuji continued, waving his hand dismissively as if nothing had happened. “You know, acting all weird about being dead. Thought it’d be funny.”

It wasn’t convincing. He knew it wasn’t convincing; he had never been good at lying, but if he stayed there any longer, he might start shaking again.

“So, uh… I should probably take that back to the school,” he added. 

Before they could protest, he stood up. His body felt light, too light, lacking the heavy density of the cursed energy he was used to. He turned towards his discarded school bag.

Just as he remembered, the small, empty wooden box was tucked into the side pocket. He snatched the finger from the table, his skin crawling as the proximity to Sukuna’s soul sent a familiar, oily shiver down his spine, and shoved it back into its container.

“Go home, you guys,” he said, already heading for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I promise I’m fine!”

He didn't wait for an answer. He burst out of the house into the evening air, his mind racing. What the hell was he supposed to do with this thing? Destroy it? Seal it somewhere? Throw it into the ocean? But even as a million ideas crossed his head, he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Sukuna if he did that. 

The King of Curses hadn't died as a monster; he had been defeated and offered a path towards something else. If Yuuji destroyed the fingers now, or sealed them away for an eternity, would that progress vanish? Would the Sukuna of the future—the one who had finally understood the weight of a human soul—simply cease to exist? Or would he just reappear in another thousand years as the same mindless, bloodthirsty curse, denied the chance to ever be anything more?

He gripped the strap of his backpack tighter, feeling the weight of the box inside. He didn’t know how, but he had been given another chance. For what? He wasn't sure. He didn't have a plan yet. He didn't even have his cursed energy. But he had one thing, one person who was still breathing, still waiting for him in a hospital bed.

His feet moved on their own. He still remembered the way to the hospital that would be destroyed in a couple of years. Last time, he had stopped by a flower shop before visiting, just for his grandpa to yell at him, saying to stop bringing him flowers. Just thinking about that made his eyes start getting blurry, and a lump formed in his throat, sudden and tight. He swallowed hard, blinking back the tears.

The hospital was several kilometres away, a distance that would take a normal person fifteen minutes by bike. Yuuji arrived in five.

He pushed through the hospital’s automatic doors, the scent of antiseptic immediately filling his nose. The lobby looked exactly the same as he remembered. The same pale floors that reflected the overhead lights, the same rows of plastic chairs near the wall, the same quiet murmur of voices from visitors speaking in low tones so they wouldn’t disturb the patients upstairs.

“Evening!” Yuuji called out automatically as he hurried past the front desk.

One of the nurses glanced up briefly from her paperwork and gave him a small nod of recognition before returning to what she was doing. None of them tried to stop him.

As he reached the door to room 301, he slowed his pace, his hand trembling as it hovered over the handle. He could do this. 

Slowly, he opened the door.

The room was bathed in the soft, orange glow of the setting sun, casting long shadows across the floor. There, propped up against the pillows of the narrow bed, was a frail figure silhouetted against the window. The sound of the door must have caught his grandpa’s attention, because the old man slowly turned his head towards the entrance.

He clicked his tongue. “I told you not to come today,” he grumbled. “Don’t you have a club or something you’re supposed to—”

His grandpa stopped mid-sentence. His brow furrowed as he looked at him, his grumpy expression softening into one of genuine confusion.

Yuuji couldn't help it. The sight of those sharp, judgmental eyes—eyes that were alive, eyes that were looking at him—broke the last of his defences. A choked sob escaped his throat and the tears spilled over immediately, hot and relentless, sliding down his cheeks as his shoulders shook.

"Grandpa," he rasped, his voice cracking. 

He moved before his grandfather could even ask what was wrong. In one long stride, he crossed the small room and wrapped his arms around the old man, pulling him into a tight embrace and burying his face in the rough, scratchy fabric of the hospital gown.

“Whoa, hey! What the hell are you doing, you brat?” Wasuke Itadori stiffened. He tried to push Yuuji off with his frail hands, but it was like trying to move a mountain. “Stop it! I ain't dead yet!”

“Please don’t say that,” Yuuji mumbled, refusing to let go. 

For a moment, the only sound in the room was Yuuji’s muffled breaths. 

“What’s wrong with you? Did something happen at school?” his grandpa asked finally.

Yuuji didn’t answer. His grip only tightened, fingers clutching the thin hospital gown as his shoulders shook. He tried to speak, but the words tangled in his throat, dissolving into another broken sob.

“…Oi.”

Yuuji buried his face deeper against him, like if he let go, he would disappear. His chest hurt from how hard he was trying to breathe. 

“I—” Yuuji's voice cracked. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

Sorry for letting you die. Sorry that I didn’t fulfil your wish. Sorry that once you are gone, I will never see you again. Sorry that I saved everyone but you. Sorry that you had to raise me alone. Sorry that me being born took your son away. Sorry you’re lying here in a room that isn't filled with people who love you, all because you’re just as stubborn and difficult as I am. Sorry that I never got the chance to say how grateful I am because you raised me. 

The apologies crowded his chest, suffocating, but none of them made it past his lips.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Now quit the waterworks. You’re getting my bed damp.”

Yuuji let out a wet, shuddering laugh, finally pulling back just enough to look at his grandfather. He wiped his eyes aggressively with his sleeve, feeling his face burn hot and red. One of his nostrils was partially blocked, making his breath hitch in a pathetic way.

There were so many things he wanted to say, but the only thing that made it past the lump in his throat was a broken, child-like plea.

"Please don't go."

Even if he was over three hundred years old, in this room, he was still just that same small child. He was still the boy who had once tugged on his grandfather’s sleeve, begging for five more minutes to play in the fresh snow until his boots were soaked and his cheeks were bright red. He was still the boy who used to wait by the window for his grandfather to come home, pressing his forehead against the cold glass until it fogged up. He was the child who had learned to cook his first meal in secret, quietly figuring things out in the kitchen when he noticed the way his grandfather began hiding how tired he was getting.

His grandpa looked at him for a long moment. “Tch,” he clicked his tongue quietly.

Yuuji lowered his gaze, fingers twisting the thin hospital blanket. He knew he had no right to ask that. He had no right to beg someone to stay when he understood better than most that some things simply couldn’t be changed.

The old man glanced towards the window where the last of the sunlight was fading.

“That’s how it goes,” he said simply. “Old guys like me don’t stick around forever.”

Yuuji shook his head quickly, his eyes burning again. “I know, but—”

“Listen.” Yuuji looked up. “When I go,” the old man said bluntly, “don’t go making that face all the time.”

Yuuji’s chest tightened again.

“I mean it,” he continued. “You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Don’t waste it thinking about some old man in a hospital bed.”

It was exactly the kind of thing his grandpa would say, but hearing it still hurt, because how could his grandfather expect that he wouldn’t think about him? For years after this moment, the memory of this room had followed him everywhere. He had carried it through every fight, every loss, every moment he thought about what it meant to live the kind of life his grandfather had asked of him.

Yuuji wiped roughly at his face again, though the tears kept threatening to return.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

“Good. Now, there’s one more thing,” his grandpa sighed, a long, rattling sound that seemed to drain the last of his energy. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “There’s something I want to tell you before the end. It’s about your parents.”

Yuuji leaned in, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The first time, he had shut him down before he could even begin. Back then, he hadn't cared about them, he only cared about the man who raised him. But now, after learning the horrific truth of his own birth, he didn't stop him.

“Your father, Jin…” his grandpa started. “He was a kind man. Too kind, maybe. He had a heart that didn't know how to let go, even when it was rotting in front of him.”

The old man’s grip on the bedsheet tightened, his knuckles white and trembling.

“When he lost your mother, he couldn't accept it. He clung to the memory of her until it turned into something dangerous. He was so desperate to keep her that he let a shadow into our home, thinking it was her light.”

Yuuji knew who his mother had been, but he had never understood what had happened. Now he had a pretty good idea.

“I watched him destroy himself trying to hold onto a ghost. That’s why I’m telling you this, Yuuji. You’ve got a big heart, but that heart will be your undoing if you don't learn the hardest lesson there is.”

His grandpa reached out, his hand rough and cool as he took Yuuji’s on his own.

“Listen to me. If you truly love someone, you have to be strong enough to let them go when the time comes. If you try to hold on past the end, you don't save them—you just create a curse. Don't be like your father. Don't let your heart turn into a chain that keeps the dead from resting.”

Yuuji felt the weight of those words settle into his bones. He thought of all the people he had tried to save, and all the people he had failed to let go of.

“Promise me,” his grandpa wheezed, his eyes searching Yuuji’s for an answer. “Promise you won't let your love become a curse.”

"I promise, Grandpa," Yuuji whispered.

The lie tasted like iron in his mouth. Even as he said it, he knew he was already breaking it. He had travelled back through the veil of time itself because he couldn't let go. He was already the man clinging to the ghosts, the one refusing to let the dead stay buried.

“You’re a strong kid, Yuuji,” his grandpa murmured, “Help others. Even if it’s only those closest to you, just save the people you can. It’s okay if you lose your way, and don’t worry about whether they’ll thank you or not. Just save as many people as you can, even if it’s only one.” 

He let his hand rest there, his thumb brushing Yuuji's knuckle one last time.

“That way, when you die...You won't be like me. You'll be surrounded by people.”

Yuuji stared down at their hands, his vision blurring again as he heard those words again. He wanted to scream that he had already failed, that he had tried to live by those words with everything he had, had thrown himself into saving people again and again until there was nothing left of him, and he still watched them slip through his fingers. He wanted to tell him that no matter how many people he tried to save, there was always someone he couldn’t reach in time.

He wanted to beg him to take those words back, to say something else. To give him a different mission, a different burden, or just once, to tell him it was okay to stop. He wanted him to say that it was okay to fail. And he also wanted to ask him to take Yuuji with him. The thought slipped into his mind suddenly. If his grandfather was leaving…why couldn’t he go too? Why did he have to stay behind again? Why did he have to live this moment one more time?

When he first realized he had travelled back in time, he saw it as a win, but now that he was holding his grandfather’s fading warmth in his hands, he realized the truth. 

This wasn't a second chance. It was a punishment.

“Quit looking at me like that,” his grandpa muttered, making Yuuji blink. “Every man wants to go out in style, you know! Get a grip, you useless grandson.”

The stubbornness in his voice was almost absurd considering the circumstances. Even now, his grandfather refused to make things sentimental. It kinda reminded him of Sukuna. The comparison was so ridiculous that a hysterical, broken laugh almost bubbled up in his throat.

“Honestly,” his grandpa continued, shifting his head slightly on the pillow, “kids these days…”

Yuuji let out a shaky breath that was half a laugh, half a sob.

“Oi,” he grunted. “Don’t cry.”

Yuuji tried to wipe his face with his sleeve, but the tears kept coming anyway. His grandpa sighed again, tired and faintly annoyed.

“What did I just say?” he muttered. “You’re supposed to be the strong one.”

Yuuji squeezed his hand again, his shoulders trembling. “I am.” 

His grandfather snorted quietly. “Then act like it.”

Yuuji lowered his head, pressing his forehead briefly against the back of their hands. He knew what was coming, and he didn’t think he could see it again. From where he was, he could feel how his grandpa’s breathing had grown uneven.

Yuuji felt panic begin to claw its way up his chest.

“Quit crying already,” his grandpa muttered weakly.

Yuuji laughed softly through the tears spilling down his face.

“I’m not.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

The grip on his hand weakened slightly, and Yuuji’s fingers tightened instantly. “Hey,” he whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. “Stay with me, okay? Just a bit longer.”

“Bossy kid,” his grandpa said, his eyes drifting towards the ceiling.

Yuuji felt his grandpa chest rise and fall one more time until the hand in Yuuji’s grasp loosened completely, the weight of it turning heavy and limp against his palm. He froze. The world felt like it had suddenly lost its gravity, and he was falling and falling with no one to catch him. 

“Grandpa?”

The word came out as a broken sob. He still couldn’t bring himself to look up. Instead, his trembling fingers moved against the fragile skin of his grandfather’s wrist, searching desperately for the familiar rhythm of a pulse.

There was nothing. 

A choked sound forced its way out of his throat, a sound he didn’t even recognize as his own.

“I just got here. You can’t—”

Another sob cut him off. He had already lived through this once, and it still hurt like it did the first time. 

Yuuji’s chest heaved as another sob tore out of him, louder this time, the sound echoing weakly against the quiet hospital walls.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry—”

He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for anymore.

Once he managed to calm himself—at least enough to breathe without choking on every breath—Yuuji called the nurses. His movements were stiff and mechanical, as if he were operating a body that no longer belonged to him. He watched them pull the sheets over his grandfather’s face, a sight that should have felt familiar but instead felt like a fresh blade to the heart.

As they began to wheel the bed towards the door, one of the nurses paused. She looked at him, her eyes filled with a genuine sadness that made him want to flinch. She reached out, resting a hand briefly on his arm.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she whispered. “He spoke about you constantly. He was very proud of you.”

He didn’t trust his voice not to break if he opened his mouth, so he simply gave a small smile and a stiff nod. The nurse squeezed his arm gently before stepping away again.

When the nurses had finally stepped out, taking his grandpa’s body with them, Yuuji stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty space where his grandpa had been only a few seconds ago.

He blinked, forcing himself to move. He began to gather his grandpa's things, his fingers fumbling with the zipper, as if he had forgotten how his hands were supposed to work. The metal teeth caught halfway, forcing him to pause and try again. 

He had forgotten how much paperwork he needed to do. “Please fill this out. Could you complete that section as well? Do you happen to have this document with you?” The forms seemed to appear one after another in front of him.

At some point, someone placed a cup of water near him, he didn’t remember thanking them, and he didn’t remember drinking it either, but when he turned around, he saw the empty glass.

A nurse flipped through one of the completed forms before nodding gently.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “That’all of the necessary paperwork.”

Yuuji nodded and pushed the pen back across the desk.

“Thank you for everything,” he said quietly.

The nurse hesitated before taking the clipboard. She studied him for a moment.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He wasn't, because no matter how many people he lost, he had never learned how to live with the hollow feeling that opened in his chest afterwards.

But he couldn’t say that.

“I will be,” he said instead.

“If you need a moment before leaving, you’re welcome to stay,” she said. “Take as much time as you need.”

Yuuji gave another small nod.

“Thank you.”

She gave him a small, reassuring smile before gathering the last of the paperwork and disappearing down the hallway.

The bag with his grandfather’s belongings rested beside the chair where he had set it earlier. He slung it over his shoulder beside his own backpack, adjusting both straps before walking towards the exit, his footsteps echoing against the cold hospital floor. 

Outside, the evening air was colder than he expected. He tilted his head back, looking up at the night sky. Only a few stars were visible above the city lights, faint points of white scattered across the darkness. They flickered quietly in the distance, small and impossibly far away from one another and for a moment, they reminded him of how he felt standing there. 

Alone. 

The night air brushed against his face, cooling the heat gathered around his eyes. They still felt tight and sore from crying, the skin stretched and aching in a way that made every blink uncomfortable. He was pretty sure they were swollen. When he squinted slightly, he could feel the puffiness pulling at the corners, the lingering warmth where tears had dried across his cheeks.

He rubbed his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, dragging the fabric clumsily across his eyes and nose in an attempt to wipe away whatever remained.

When he finished, he let his arm fall back to his side and shifted his shoulders slightly. The straps of both backpacks had slipped lower while he stood there, so he reached up and tugged them back into place. The movement reminded him of something else.

Right. Sukuna's finger.

Yuuji exhaled slowly through his nose. What exactly was he supposed to do with it now? Fushiguro should already be looking for it by this point, but since this time Yuuji never made it to school, it meant Fushiguro had never followed him there. 

Part of him was relieved. He wasn’t sure he could handle seeing him again. If he ran into Fushiguro now—if he saw his face, heard his voice, saw him standing there alive and breathing—Yuuji was sure he would fall apart the same way he had with his grandfather. Or maybe even worse, because to Fushiguro, they were still strangers, but to him, Fushiguro was everything.

Maybe it was for the best. Everything that had gone wrong had started with him. If they had never met, none of it would have happened. If he hadn’t swallowed that finger that night, Fushiguro wouldn’t have been dragged into danger after danger because of him. He would have stayed the same distant, stubborn sorcerer Yuuji had first met and most importantly, he would have been safe.

Maybe that was the answer. Yuuji couldn’t save his grandfather. No matter how badly he wanted to change that moment, it hadn’t been enough. Some things were still beyond his reach, but that didn’t mean everything had to stay the same. There were still people he could save.

Yuuji exhaled slowly, the cool night air filling his lungs and raising the hairs along his arms. The chill helped steady the frantic rhythm of his thoughts, grounding him just enough to think clearly. Now the only thing he needed to do was to return the finger where he found it. Fushiguro would find it eventually and he would take the object into custody and seal it somewhere safe, far away from anyone stupid enough to swallow it.

The school wasn’t that far from the hospital. He had walked the route plenty of times before, and his feet seemed to remember the way because they moved on his own. A couple walked past him on the sidewalk, talking softly between themselves. A man stepped out of a convenience store nearby with a plastic bag swinging from his wrist, pausing to check his phone under the harsh white glow of the storefront lights. Somewhere farther down the street, a bicycle rattled past, the rider pedaling lazily as the wheels hummed against the pavement. A group of students crossed the street ahead of him, laughing loudly about something one of them had said. One of them shoved another playfully, nearly knocking him off balance before they all burst into louder laughter.

He lowered his eyes as he passed them, his hands sliding into the pockets of his hoodie. This was how things were supposed to be. People living their lives without ever realizing what surrounded them. If he did this right then maybe it could stay that way. If he somehow stopped Shibuya from ever happening...He shook his head quickly, forcing the thought away. One thing at a time.

The school gates eventually came into view in the distance, the familiar silhouette of the building raised quietly against the dark sky. He slowed as he approached, his heart beginning to beat a little harder in his chest.

He stopped in front of the fence, glancing around the street out of habit. No one seemed to be nearby. He reached up, grabbing the top of the fence and pulled himself up easily, swinging one leg over the top before dropping down onto the other side.

At night the school really did feel like something out of a cheap horror movie. The empty windows stared down at him like eyes who were following him wherever he went, and the wind pushed softly through the trees at the edge of the yard, making the branches scrape together with a whispering sound.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and pulled the hood up as he began walking across the yard. At the far end stood the small shed where he had found Sukuna’s finger the first time.

Now that he thought about it, the whole thing still didn’t make sense. If someone was going to seal away a cursed object—especially something like Sukuna’s finger—why hide it in a place like this? Honestly, it almost felt like they had been waiting for someone to come along and take it. There were no barriers strong enough to keep someone out, just a flimsy lock and a piece of paper talisman that had clearly stopped working long before Yuuji ever showed up.

He stopped in front of the shed and slipped his backpack off one shoulder. The zipper slid open as he reached inside, his fingers brushing against it. Even now, he could feel the faint, unpleasant pulse of cursed energy leaking from it. 

Yuuji pulled it out and let it rest in his palm. For a moment, he just stared at it.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “this is probably the first time you’ve been this quiet.”

He slowly turned the finger over in his hand, watching the cloth shift under his thumb as if he were examining something fragile instead of something that had once been the most dangerous thing inside his body. 

“You were a terrible roommate, you know that?” he continued quietly. “Always yelling, always complaining… no respect for when it was my turn using our body.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, glancing up briefly at the dark school building before looking back down at the fragment of Sukuna's soul.

“But I guess I wasn’t the best roommate either.”

A quiet sigh slipped from his chest as his shoulders sank a little.

“Don't hate me for this, okay?” 

His thumb pressed lightly against the wrapped finger, almost absentmindedly. “I know you always said you didn’t care,” he continued. “But you also hated being alone. Even if you lied every time I asked you.”

His gaze softened slightly.

“I’m sorry for leaving you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck again, a little awkwardly.

“You’d definitely call me pathetic for saying that,” he muttered. “Or laugh at me for talking to your finger like you can hear me.”

For a moment, he almost expected to hear that familiar voice in the back of his head, but of course, nothing came.

“We were talking about doing everything different,” he said quietly after a moment. “Maybe that's why I’m here.”

He stared at the finger for another second before letting out a small breath.

“I kind of wish you got that chance too,” he admitted, voice softer now. “To do things over.”

Sukuna would probably hate hearing that. The thought pulled a faint, crooked smile from him.

“Or maybe you already did,” he added after a moment. “Maybe somewhere you got another life. A long and peaceful one, and now I’m just standing here talking to myself.”

He exhaled quietly and reached for the shed door, pulling it open. The hinges groaned softly at the same time. He placed it back inside the container exactly where it had been before, adjusting the wrapping as best as he could. 

“Try not to get eaten by anyone else, okay?” 

He closed the door and stepped back, letting out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

For a few seconds, he simply stood there, staring at the closed door.

It was done.

Sukuna’s finger was back where it had been. The moment that had changed everything—swallowing it, meeting Fushiguro, getting dragged into the world of curses—wouldn’t happen now.

At least, that was the plan.

“What are you doing here?” 

Yuuji’s entire body went still.

It had been years since he had heard that voice anywhere outside of his dreams, but he would have recognized it instantly.

Fushiguro.