#Hence | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

binding-vows-in-silence-crept · 2 months ago

Text

to live or not to live, that is the question: Chapter 1

Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen Characters: Gojo Satoru, Itadori Yuuji, Megumi Fushiguro, Kugisaki Nobara Genre: Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Angst Rating: Teen (for swearing) Category: Gen https://archiveofourown.org/works/64415398/chapters/165385138 Itadori Yuuji decided how he wanted to die at fifteen years old. At sixteen, he is ready to face it. In a different age, a different decade, Gojo Satoru had held the life of another soon-to-be-dead 16-year-old determined to shoulder the world. History repeats itself in bad poetry. However, Amanai Riko is not Itadori Yuuji and Itadori Yuuji is not Amanai Riko and maybe that is a good thing. Once everything is over, Gojo Satoru can only hope that he will not end up with the corpse of another child in his arms. OR Alternate summary: Itadori Yuuji is sentenced for execution. His friends won't let him angst about it. Featuring lots of hugs, lots of love, a beach episode, a birthday party and a choice.

The day Itadori Yuji takes his final breath will be a day not too warm, nor too cold. The kind of day that condemned men on death-row can only dream of. Cherry blossom petals – as pink as his hair, pirouetting on a lazy, indolent breeze. The scent of flowers and the promise of an approaching summer wafting through the forests and shrubs, past Tengen’s barrier and into the barren classrooms of Jujutsu High. The sky will be a beautiful baby blue, clear and cloudless. Spring will end, and with it, Itadori Yuji. But unlike the season, he will not be back the next year, or the year after that, nor the year after. Never again.

Spring is a good season to die, Yuji decides.

The execution date – debated, pondered over, scheduled and finally set in stone – is 21st March, despite only nineteen of Sukuna’s twenty fingers churning in his stomach, listless and leaden. Miraculously, there have been no sightings nor traces of the twentieth finger. As if it has vanished from existence at the eleventh hour.

This is, of course, ridiculous because the very reason that Yuji is being executed is because it is impossible for Sukuna’s fingers to vanish from existence.

Yuji strongly suspects where it is. Or rather, who has it. The Higher Ups know, because they always know, or maybe because the location of the final finger is little less than an open secret to everyone involved with the individuals in question.

Gojo Satoru only smiles guilelessly when pressed for progress.

Yuji is grateful – the extra months bought for him are a gift. But stalling does not work forever, and the undercurrent of impatience is a palpable living entity beneath the noses of all the ancient old men. Ages in numbers Yuji will never catch up with.

Ryouman Sukuna is nothing with a single finger , one of the higher ups had proclaimed. Yuji thinks of the King of Curses toying, provoking, teasing the special grade curse with all the ease of an alley cat playing with its food, before ripping out Yuji’s heart and leaving it thumping against unforgiving, concrete asphalt. It is wiser to have the vessel eliminated along with the nineteen fingers. Nineteen fingers in hand are worth more than the one in the bush, or so the saying goes.

The originally decided execution date had been 15th March. The Ides of March . Never let it be said that the higher ups did not appreciate theatre. Or poetry.

“No,” Satoru Gojo had announced loudly, his voice cutting through the room; the tribunal’s collective eyes snapping to him. Loud silence. No one dared interrupt and not for the first time, Yuji marvelled at how much space his sensei took up. A creature larger than life, effortlessly commanding attention and respect from everyone in the room. “Yuji-kun’s birthday is on 20th March. Let the kid celebrate his 17th year. Another week won’t hurt.”

The uncomfortable reminder of Yuji’s age and youth had the old men fidgeting nervously, looking away. Or maybe it was the weight of his teacher’s sharp smile and piercing blue eyes raking over everyone one by one, glowing angry and haunted and luminescent in the dim, indoor lighting. Satoru Gojo’s fury is a rare beast to witness, and it was strangely heartwarming to see it bare its fangs for him .

There are arguments, but in the end, it is a futile endeavor, as impossible as touching stars to refuse a request from Gojo Satoru.

This is a good death, he thinks. A proper death. More than he deserves, really. There are far worse, far less noble, far more painful, far less dignified ways to go in this world. (Junpei screaming wide-eyed and afraid before transforming into –)

Perhaps not a death his grandfather wanted for him. But a death he has chosen.

Sensei will be kind about it. Yuji is not afraid of pain, but it is comforting to know that his last moments will be swift and sans suffering.

Itadori Yuji decided how he wanted to die at fifteen years old. At sixteen, he is ready to face it.

---

Within Yuji’s mind, Ryōmen Sukuna remains uncharacteristically silent.

—

oOo

—

Itadori Yuji doesn’t have many plans for the last week of his life. He does, however, know for certain that arguing with Kugisaki Nobara is not one of them.

This is irrelevant because Kugisaki Nobara does not care about plans or intentions. Especially those concocted by people named Itadori Yuji

“A cheesecake is not real cake!” She yells.

“Who cares if it is not real cake!” Yuji yells back. “I want to eat cheesecake on my birthday, what’s wrong with that? ”

Your shift ends in an hour , Cashier Hinaka thinks, counting bills behind the counter of the small bakery. She has lost count of the money thrice, owing to all the shouting coming from table seven.

“Cheesecake is pie.” Kugisaki informs him, matter-of-fact, like a priest explaining sacred ancient commandments to a child. “Nobody eats pie on their birthday.”

The bakery is empty because it is 3:00 am. The three shouting kids–or rather, two shouting kids, the third one seems to be playing some game on his phone – are not disturbing any customers. This is tragic, because Cashier Hinaka cannot remove the kids from the premises for disturbing staff. Her brother smirks at her from the kitchen.

“It’s my birthday! I can eat whatever I want! Besides, who says cheesecake isn’t real cake anyways ? It has cake in the name!”

“A strawberry has berry in its name! That does not make it a berry.”

“How did we get to strawberries – we were just talking about cake–”

Cashier Hinaka wonders if she can file noise-cancelling headphones as a business expense.

“You are a menace to society! I bet you eat pineapple on pizza too!”

“So what if I eat pineapple on pizza? You shouldn’t be gatekeeping pizza. Also, excuse me, but I am a menace to society! That's why I am being executed!”

Hinaka is very out of touch with modern generation slang. The kitchen continues to snicker at her suffering. She had thought her brother was getting the short end of the stick when he had been assigned dish-washing duty.

“Guys,” Fushiguro Megumi and Cashier Hinaka’s personal savior interrupts, finally looking up from his phone. The Snake onscreen dive-bombs into its own tail and dies violently with a loud splat. “You two idiots! You realize that you can get both cheesecake and cake for your birthday right? And buy whatever you want to eat in the week preceding it?”

“We… can do that?”

Fushiguro shrugs, then goes back to playing Snake. “Gojo-sensei’s credit card won’t mind.”

The two idiots blink. The concept of buying multiple desserts for a special occasion is novel to both Itadori Yuji, raised in expensive Tokyo and supported only by an elderly grandfather’s frugal pension and Kugisaki Nobara, raised in the rural countryside too isolated to find any bakeries or fast food chains within easy access.

They both look at Fushiguro, (raised and spoiled rotten by a teenager with too much money and no qualms about spending it) as if he has hung the stars in the sky and told them the secrets of the universe.

“You are a genius Fushiguro,” Itadori Yuji states. It would be more of a compliment if it was said by anyone other than Itadori Yuji. Then, he wraps himself around Fushiguro like a silken scarf and nuzzles against his cheeks.

Fushiguro does not pull away, and endures the assault with the stoic stillness of a warrior who knows how to pick his battles.

Cashier Hinaka sighs in relief for the blessed silence and thanks her guardian angel.

Kugisaki snaps a photo with a grin.

----

It strikes Yuji that this is the last chance he may have to eat cheesecake. Or cake. Or pineapple on pizza. Or anything really. Suddenly, he has the incomprehensible urge to drive by every single fast food restaurant he knows to try out their entire menu. Memorize the tastes and textures and sounds and… Does he remember what the first bite of a McDonalds burger taste like? This feels like important information he ought to know. Ought to remember. He will never eat another burger after all.

Belatedly, he realizes he is still clinging onto Fushiguro. Fushiguro, who is pointedly not returning his hug. Who is pointedly playing Snake on his phone. Who is pointedly making no attempts to remove him.

He will never share barely-tolerated hugs with him again. He will never have another dumb argument with Nobara again.

Yuji can admit that he is prone to wishful imaginings of the future. But his daydreams have never been tinged with melancholy, like the one he has now. Perhaps it is a symptom of realizing one’s mortality.

Both his friends, twenty five years-old, shopping together. It is a familiar enough sight for the teenage version of them too, thanks to Kugisaki. Except not familiar at all. His own absence is glaring in his vision.

He wonders who will be around to carry Kugisaki’s plethora of shopping bags. Maybe Fushiguro. Odds are 50/50 on him indulging her whims, or leaving them behind for some poor cashier to find. It depends on the weather, his mood, and how much Gojo-sensei has annoyed him that day.

His friends, thirty years old. Laughing and watching movies together. Maybe they’ve got partners. Maybe they’ve got kids. Maybe they’re planning on kids. It is hard for Yuji to imagine what the thirty-year old versions of his friends will do in their spare time. Jujutsu? What do thirty-year old people even do as a hobby?

His friends, fifty. This is even harder to imagine. Wrinkles and grey hair. They kneel under a warm kotatsu table, playing mahjong in a candlelit, old-fashioned lounge. Happy reminiscing about their lost childhood friend.

Their friend who will never grow older in their memories. Who will be pink-haired, forever etched with a baby face and clear skin.

Yuji pinches his cheeks and wonders if there is a procedure to grow wrinkles in two days.

Fushiguro shifts, as if sensing his roiling, storm-brewn thoughts. He puts an arm around Yuji, who wonders if Sukuna has somehow escaped and overturned the cosmic order of the world. Because Fushiguro is hugging him back . A little awkwardly, with one arm. Then he remains in the awkward pseudo-one-armed-hugging position while playing Snake with one thumb.

Yuji breathes.

… This is okay. He can be content with the image of his two favourite people in the world talking about him decades after he is gone. Hopefully with fond memories, even as he becomes a blip in their infinite, ever-expanding lives. Maybe Fushiguro will play Snake at fifty too.

Never maturing. Never aging. Forever sixteen in their heads.

“Say, Itadori-kun,” Kugisaki calls out, snapping him out of the spinning thoughts in his head. “What do you want to do for your birthday anyways?”

Oh right. Forever seventeen. He keeps forgetting.

---

Ryōmen Sukuna’s silence is louder and says more than his annoying, bloodthirsty chatter ever did.

---

Gojo-sensei does as Gojo-senseis tend to do in their natural habitat. He teleports to Yuji’s dorm and perches on his window-sill like a canary in the middle of the night and nearly scares Sukuna out of him.

“I’m taking a week off!” Sensei says cheerfully, with the backdrop of Jujutsu High’s rippling, endless grasslands and the backdrop noise of Yuji’s racing heartbeat. The moon hiding behind his head casts a white rim light on his white hair. His dark violet uniform blackens most of outside . From Yuji’s bed in the darkened room, he almost looks like a floating head.

This visual would not be flattering on anybody except Gojo Satoru. Gojo Satoru, on account of being Gojo Satoru, pulls it off.

A moment of calm after he finally processes the floating head and his heartbeat slows down. Another moment where he processes what has been said. Then his heartbeat races even faster.

“A–A week?” Yuji squeaks out, desperately trying to convince his own heart that it is running a marathon, not a sprint. Despite Sensei’s reputation as lazy and irresponsible, it is a well known fact about the jujutsu world that Gojo Satoru never takes a day off. Something about single-handedly shifting the balance of the war against curses and humans. Something about endless cajoling, bribes and deals and job benefits and stipends. Something about unbreakable terms of contract and stipulations and clan politics. They went over the topic with a substitute teacher in Jujutsu-history when Kugisaki had asked why Gojo-sensei was so rarely around to teach them actual theory.

“A week!!” Gojo-sensei speaks in exclamation marks, as if he has not broken a dozen terms of service and doomed all of jujutsu society to a week of pain and misery and death.

“But…But why?”

“Because you are going to die!” Sensei says, not answering, with all the tact and sensitivity of a bulldozer hurtling face-first into a pregnant woman. Or those Hollow Purples he had demonstrated to Yuji in one of his practicals. The man’s abilities are an apt metaphor for his personality.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“They want to detain you! Tie you up in a chair and lock you in a room for the week. Something about being dangerous and a flight risk I don’t know! I didn’t pay attention” Sensei is still speaking in exclamation points and not answering the question. His smile is a little scary. Yuji thinks if he removed his blindfold, his eyes would be glowing a terrifying ocean blue, like they do when he is mad.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Yuji asks, partially because he is genuinely curious and partially because he would like to avoid thinking about the ramifications of that statement.

“Mmm!” Sensei hums in exclamation marks too and continues to not-answer. “Do you really want to spend your last days in that room Yuji-kun?”

They both know what he means by ‘that room.’

Yuji thinks about the dark, candle-lit cell he had first awoken in, surrounded by walls and towers of talisman. The scent of incense, salt, grief and terror. Cruel, coarse rope lashing red wrists rubbed raw behind his back.

“I won’t resist,” he says, which is also not an answer.

“Mmm, I’m sure you won’t.”

Yuji has no idea what his teacher wants from him, or why he has shown up at his window at midnight to tell him about his vacation plans and his future prison or why he keeps waiting patiently and looking at him with that blindfolded teacher-gaze of his, like how he looks when he is waiting for Yuji to figure out a lesson by himself. Yuji resists the urge to say I don’t know like a child.

“What does that have to do with –” Yuji starts to repeat for the third time before he gets it. “... Oh. ”

Sensei’s scary smile morphs into a more genuine one. He makes a finger gun with two hands and points them both at him, “Bingo!”

“You don’t need to do that for me, Sensei.” Yuji says, earnest and wide-eyed. Arguing against himself spawns a lump in his throat suspiciously shaped like fear, but he does not stop. “I’ll be okay.”

Sensei laughs like that is the funniest joke he has ever heard. “For you? I do nothing for other people. Only myself,” he says, like a liar. “Besides, when they heard that I was volunteering for guard duty, the old geezers quickly changed their minds and were all ‘ sukuna’s vessel has demonstrated exemplary control so far’ and ‘ such extreme restraint is not necessary’ and ‘ Gojo Satoru you’re so awesome’”

“Really?”

“ Eh. Maybe they didn’t say that last one. But they were all thinking it!”

Yuji blinks, “So… you’re taking a vacation because you feel like it?”

“Yep!” Sensei says, continuing to talk in exclamation points. At least he gave him an answer that time.

Yuji thinks about Sensei’s fierce protectiveness at the tribunal. The bristling and sharp smiles and predatory, luminescent blue eyes. Thinks about bits and pieces of jujutsu gossip, muttered secrets through Shoko and the second-years and thinks about his latest lesson in jujutsu history. Thinks about how maybe Sensei is the only one strong enough to execute certain people (certain people like him ), even when he doesn’t want to.

…Atleast he gave an answer that time. Even if it wasn’t a truthful one.

“People will die…” he says half-heartedly. Wondering if maybe his teacher came to him so Yuji could dissuade him against his vacation idea. That does not sound like Gojo-sensei at all.

He still has many questions for the man. What do you plan on doing with a vacation? Why at this time? Is it my fault? Will you regret executing me? He thinks he can figure out the answer to half of them.

Gojo-sensei pulls both legs over the window sill and invites himself over into his dorm. Effortlessly navigates through the pitch black dark until he is leaning over Yuji’s head, nose-to-nose. Sensei is not in the habit of respecting other people’s personal space, especially for someone hoarding an infinite amount of it for himself.

He ruffles his hair, then drapes himself around Yuji’s shoulders like an affectionate cat. Sensei is all about physical touch, just like Yuji, who melts in the embrace.

His teacher makes a thumbs up gesture with the hand not around Yuji’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry your soon-to-be-executed head about it Yuji-kun! I have many very competent students covering for me you know! On account of how great of a teacher I am! Students who are not scheduled to be executed. Well, most of them anyways! The world will be fiiinee without me for a bit.”

…And… Yuji, despite popular opinion, is not actually dumb and he can see what his teacher is trying to do and…

“Okay,”

He lets him do it anyway. Just this once.

Gojo-sensei grins wide-toothed. “We are going to give Yuji-kun the best last days of his life!”

More exclamation points. One statement. Yuji had not asked a question that time, and yet all of the ones in his head have been truthfully answered.

---

Ryōmen Sukuna does what Ryōmen Sukunas tend not to do in their unnatural habitat. He lays still and sleeping and dormant. This development continues to be as reassuring as it ever was. Which is to say not at all.

—

Seconds go by with the tortuous, gliding pace of a garden snail, lingering on each tick for too long a moment, waiting for a beat, a sign, a pin-drop, before reluctantly moving on to the next instant. Minutes are quicker, but still too slow. Hours whittle away, weathered and faded, while days upon days disappear into oblivion, Seconds too soon, and days too fast.

Time is one of those things. Too short and too long. Viscous and unyielding when watched and a katana through butter if not lavished with attention.

Itadori Yuji wonders where it all went.

15th March comes and Yuji’s lifespan slips into the negatives. Like a child who has had his final exams postponed, Yuji is pathetically grateful for the days his teacher stole.

#i already posted this on my main blog #but #i kind of want to create another one focused specifically on jjk #hence #jjk #gojo satoru #itadori yuuji #fushiguro megumi #fanfiction

10 notes · View notes