A/N: Hello hi, I'm not dead, I've just been very busy. I'm doing a lot of great stuff, but it is sucking all of my writing time away.

Heads up for a time skip :))

Junpei's palm is sweaty where he's gripping Yuuji's hand as they walk across the practice field towards where Kugisaki and Fushiguro are waiting in the shade. Yuuji squeezes his hand a couple of times, and Junpei forces himself to relax his grip a little.

"You guys are late!" Kugisaki shouts as soon as they're within earshot.

"We beat Gojo, so we're good!" Yuuji yells back with a playful grin.

Junpei's grateful that he doesn't tell them that the reason they're late is because Junpei almost threw up when the nerves hit him after lunch.

"Just barely!" Gojo shouts cheerfully from behind them, and Junpei turns to see him striding across the field—with Nanami in tow. His heart jumps into his throat, and nausea starts to prickle at his stomach again.

"Nanami's going to be observing our class today," Gojo continues as he draws closer. Junpei's gaze locks with Nanami's, and a surge of anger bursts in his chest at the impassivity of his expression. He turns his back on them and keeps walking, tugging Yuuji along until they reach Kugisaki and Fushiguro.

"How exciting to have all of my students in class finally!" Gojo claps his hands together. Junpei's focus slips from Gojo to Nanami again, and then he yanks it back. "I'd like to get an idea of your current skill level, Junpei, so you'll be fighting Megumi today." Junpei's eyes widen, and his breath freezes in his chest. Gojo's smiling at him knowingly, and he can feel Fushiguro's gaze burning a hole in the back of his head, so he looks away, past Gojo, so that none of them can see how fucking nervous he is.

"Yuuji and Nobara, you'll be working with Nanami." He loops an arm around Nanami's shoulders and gives him a squeeze. "He's a smart guy, so ask him any questions you have!"

Junpei refuses, he refuses to look back at Nanami—the pretentious asshole—so he keeps his gaze fixed on the middle distance, even as the blindingly white buildings start to burn into his retinas.

"Aaand go!" Gojo claps his hands together, and Nanami immediately steps away from Gojo and moves past Junpei. Junpei scowls at being ignored, and he barely registers the hug that Yuuji gives him or the 'good luck' he murmurs. And then Yuuji's gone, jogging across the field after Kugisaki and Nanami, and Junpei's left alone with Fushiguro and Gojo.

He takes in a shaky breath and turns to face Fushiguro, hands trembling at his sides.

"This is important, Megumi, so don't hold back!"

Junpei's eyes lock with Fushiguro's, and by the way they narrow, he can tell he's not about to.

Fuck.

Fushiguro lifts his hands to make a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs, followed a split second later by Junpei making the sign to summon Moon Dregs. A giant, green, slimy toad appears next to Fushiguro, and before Junpei's gotten a good enough hold on his cursed energy to bring Moon Dregs into being, it opens its mouth and its tongue shoots out. It wraps around his waist, crushing a startled cry from his throat, and he's yanked into the air.

Three Weeks Later

Junpei hits the ground hard on his back, the impact driving the air out of his lungs. He struggles for breath for an excruciating few seconds before he can finally suck one in, and he blinks his eyes open to see Maki standing over him, arms folded but looking mildly pleased. As pleased as she ever looks when she's not with Kugisaki, anyway.

"That's the longest you've stayed on your feet so far," she says, holding up a stopwatch.

"How long?" he croaks out, pushing himself up to sit even as his ribs ache sharply with the motion.

"Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds," she replies. "Think you can do it again?"

He opens his mouth to say yes, and then he pauses and shakes his head with a wry smile. "Nah. I should quit while I'm ahead."

Her eyebrow arches. "Ahead, huh?"

"Yeah, ahead."

She holds out her hand to help him up, and he accepts it. She hauls him to his feet, says, "Dream on," and then pulls him into a headlock.

He smacks her arm, choking on a silent laugh, and she gives him a solid noogie before releasing him. He straightens and smooths his hair back into place reflexively, a smile still tugging at his lips.

"See you tomorrow," she says, waving over her shoulder as she walks off.

He watches her go, and then he bends to pick up one of his short swords, which he'd dropped when she had slammed her polearm into his chest just now. He glances around for his other sword, which he'd dropped at least a couple minutes before the end of the fight, to see Yuuji jogging up to him with it in his hand.

"You did so good!" he says, pulling him into a tight hug and giving him a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek.

An embarrassed grin splits across Junpei's face, and he ducks his head as Yuuji releases him from the hug. "Thanks."

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

Junpei looks up to see Gojo striding toward them, a smile on his face. "I have a mission for you," he says, producing a tablet from behind his back and waving it.

Junpei's heart leaps into his throat. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing too serious. Just a couple of grade four curses. You'll be going with Nobara." He hands the tablet over to Junpei, who shifts his grip on his sword to accept it.

His eyes flick over the information on the screen without retaining anything, and then his breath catches in his throat when he sees the words "Tachikawa Child Guidance Center." His gaze darts back up to Gojo's face, brows pulling together.

"You're the best one for the job since you already know the place," Gojo says, his inane expression unchanging. "The higher ups disagreed with me, but what can they do?"

Junpei looks back down at the tablet, stomach souring. "Okay."

"Wonderful! Go meet Kugisaki at the foot of the stairs, Nitta will pick you up from there."

Junpei nods, his throat having gone too dry to speak. Gojo turns to walk off, and over his shoulder, he says, "Work on getting that poison flowing! I'm hoping this will give you the incentive you've been lacking!"

Junpei's brows pull together into a scowl. Gojo keeps insisting that because his cursed technique is poison, he should be able to produce it without using Moon Dregs as a conduit. He took him at his word at first, but now he's starting to doubt it because he hasn't been able to produce a single measly drop.

Yuuji turns to look at Junpei, grinning widely. "Mission number two! How do you feel?"

Junpei scans over the tablet screen again, and he wets his lips. "The first one didn't count," he replies.

"I think it does."

"I didn't kill any curses, I just pointed Panda and Inumaki in the right direction."

"So? Still counts."

"It felt like a test more than anything." Junpei holds the tablet up so Yuuji can read it, and he points to the first sentence in the second paragraph.

Six grade four curses have been confirmed at the site, with another curse of a higher grade potentially present.

Yuuji's eyes widen slightly. "That's more than a couple."

"Yeah." Junpei tries to ignore the way his stomach twists.

"Kugisaki'll take good care of you, though," Yuuji says, regaining his good humor.

Junpei huffs out a small sigh. "Hopefully I won't need taking care of."

"I'm sure you'll do fine."

Junpei doesn't answer, just brushes past Yuuji to walk to the fence, where his equipment bag sits slumped. He takes his double scabbard out and straps it around his waist, then slides both blades home.

"Ooh, are you going to use the killer cracks?" Yuuji asks from over his shoulder, tapping the hilt of one of his swords.

Junpei's lips twitch in spite of himself. "Probably, yeah."

"I'm sure Maki'll be excited to hear how well it works," Yuuji says. "Since she designed them."

"Yeah, I'll tell her all about it," Junpei replies, and he turns to leave, but Yuuji grabs his arm.

"Hey."

Junpei's eyes flick up to Yuuji's, and his chest loosens a bit at the warmth he finds there.

"You got this."

Junpei takes a deep breath and meets Yuuji's gaze squarely, then nods sharply. "Thanks."

Yuuji closes the distance between them and gives him a gentle peck. "See you when you get back."

Nitta drops the two of them off at the front doors of the center, the same doors Junpei had walked through with Yaga what feels like months ago. The sky above them darkens and turns a muddy green hue as she casts her curtain, and Kugisaki watches it descend with narrowed eyes. The moment it's far enough along for her taste, she turns on her heel and pushes the door open. Junpei follows, heart pounding. Kugisaki walks right past the front desk to the locked door behind it.

"Through here?" she asks, looking through the narrow window in the door.

Junpei swallows thickly. "Yeah." There are fuzzy bright spots darting around in his vision, like will-o'-the-wisps. There are several of them, but none of them seem very bright.

Kugisaki taps her hammer against the glass twice, winds up, and smashes right through, leaving only a few jagged chunks embedded in the window frame. She reaches through the hole to turn the handle on the other side. The door swings open to reveal a silent, empty hallway, the ceiling lights flickering intermittently.

Glass crunches under their feet as they walk down the hallway. Kugisaki pauses again when they reach the door to the stairwell and looks down the hall to their right. "Which way?"

"Both, I think," Junpei replies, looking up at the ceiling, through which more of the wispy glowing dots are visible.

"We'll split up, then. I'll take the first and second floors, you take the third and fourth. Start at the top and work your way down towards me." She turns down the hallway to the right without waiting for an answer.

Junpei huffs out a shaky breath and opens the door to the stairwell. He eases it shut carefully behind him, but the click of the latch sliding home still echoes. With his back against the door, he lifts his swords out of their scabbards with shaking hands and lifts the hilts so he can look at them closely. At the juncture between the hilt and the blade, there's a tiny catch that releases poison to flow down the blade, where it collects in grooves that run along both sides of the blade edge. When Maki had first proposed the design, Kugisaki had dubbed them "killer cracks," and the name had stuck.

He thumbs both catches and tilts the points downward, watching closely as the tiny rivulets of poison slip down the length of the blade. He has to admit, it's pretty fucking cool. He flicks the swords, and droplets of poison spatter onto the concrete floor, hissing and steaming on contact. Gripping the handles tightly for courage, he starts up the stairs.

He pauses at the door that lets out onto the third floor and counts two, maybe three blobs of light level with him. By the time he's halfway up the stairs to the fourth floor, he can confirm with relative certainty that it's vacant of curses.

I guess Kugisaki got the busy floors.

He bounces his swords in his grip as he walks back down the stairs, wishing his palms weren't so sweaty. He peeks through the door's window into the hallway, and at first he sees nothing, but then he shifts forward to look down, and his heart leaps into his chest when he sees an ugly green centipede, bloated to the size of his forearm.

He blows out a breath and shoves the door open, swords raised. The curse's head snaps around towards him, and it rears up on its back pairs of legs to reveal a bellyful of mouths, each one with a set of pointed, gleaming teeth. It launches itself forward, and he flinches hard, swinging his sword blindly and backing into the corner next to the door. His blade doesn't make contact, and he only has time for a split second of gut-wrenching panic before he feels it wrap around his calf. It starts gnawing away, and all he can think is oh god this is it, I'm about to lose my whole fucking leg. It takes his brain, frozen with panic, a full three seconds to realize that he's not actually in pain.

He looks down to see the uppermost mouth chomping furiously at the fabric of his pants, the teeth not even sharp enough to put a hole in them. He bends down to look closer, fascinated in spite of himself, and then hisses sharply as one of its sets of jaws clamps down hard on the back of his leg. He kicks his leg out and wiggles it a few times, but the stupid thing is stubborn and it won't let go. Belatedly, he remembers his swords and raises one before slicing the curse's head clean off. The head hits the carpet and rolls, spilling black goop from its severed neck. He reaches down and grabs the body firmly around its middle, then wrenches it free from his leg. It dissipates into black dust in his grip.

He puts his back to the wall and sucks a few breaths in, heart pounding in his chest. See? Piece of cake.

There's a distorted snarl from the other end of the hallway, and he turns his head to see another bloated caterpillar coming for him, its tiny legs propelling it across the floor at an alarming rate. When it comes within a yard of him, it starts to rear up, and Junpei swipes his sword through its proffered neck. With satisfaction, he watches it hit the floor in two separate pieces and then crumble into dust.

Totally a piece of cake.

The floor isn't clear yet, though. There's another glowing source of cursed energy in his peripheral vision, bigger than the other two. He turns towards it and finds himself face-to-face with the door to his old room. Feeling maybe a little too confident, he reaches out and pushes the door open.

The first thing he sees is a massive white worm coiled in the center of the floor, its segmented body pulsing as it makes slow progress across the room.

The second thing he sees is a boy pressed up against the wall, wide eyes fixed on Junpei's face and a kitchen knife clutched in his hand. It takes Junpei a moment to place him, but then he remembers—Shikichi. The guy with the Switch. And there's a glowing, flickering aura of cursed energy around him.

The curse is inching its way towards him, blunt head bobbing back and forth, its own cursed energy dim and weak in comparison. It looks slow and stupid. Another piece of cake. Junpei takes a few leisurely steps towards its front end, reading his swords in his grip. Its thickest at the head, coming up to his thigh, and up close, he can hear the slight squelching noise it makes as its slimy skin rubs against itself. Lip curling in disgust, he raises his swords and stabs down, directly into where its skull would have been if it had had one.

He plunges his swords in almost up to the hilt, the curse's flesh yielding easily. Its entire body tenses into a tight coil, and then it rears its head back, jerking Junpei along with it. He loses his grip on his swords and stumbles face-first into its coiled body. He pushes himself off of it and turns his head just in time to see its maw opening wide to swallow him, toothless and gummy except for where his swords are stabbed straight through to poke out the bottom.

I'm hoping this will give you the incentive you've been lacking!

Squeezing his eyes shut, Junpei sticks his arm out and a split second later, a slimy, warm mass closes around it. His stomach lurches at the sensation, but he pushes his focus into poison, into imagining it coursing through his blood, pushing out through his pores, seeping into the flesh of the curse.

Nothing.

The curse's body shifts around him, and he opens his eyes to see its flesh desiccating as it fills with purple patches of poison that emanate from where his swords entered its head. He's pulled forward onto his knees as it slumps to the floor, his arm still firmly inside its mouth, and then it disintegrates, leaving his swords to fall to the carpet.

He sits back onto his heels, chest heaving with shaky breaths, and he looks down at his hand. Completely fucking useless. Scowling, he picks up his swords and shoves them back into their scabbards as he gets to his feet.

"God, that thing was ugly," Shikichi says, stepping away from the wall. "I'd never seen anything like it until a couple weeks ago, and now they're everywhere."

Junpei's eyes flick over to him, and for some inexplicable reason, he's still glowing with cursed energy.

"Long time no see, by the way," Shikichi continues. "Are you in on all this weird monster stuff, then? No one else seems like they can see them."

Junpei just keeps staring at him, thoughts spinning. That's what I—after Mahito, I started seeing curses all over the place, little ones. I'd never seen them before.

"You're also…glowing?" Shikichi says, taking a step closer to him, eyes narrowed. "Which I've seen people do before, but only on drugs. And I'm stone-cold sober right now."

Junpei's chest rises and falls shallowly. What the fuck is happening here?

There's the sound of a door slamming open down the hall, and then Kugisaki shouts, "You done yet? I'm hungry."

"She glows, too," Shikichi says from behind Junpei.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

Junpei turns away from Shikichi without a word and heads out the door towards Kugisaki.

"Aren't you going to explain anything?"

Junpei stops short, hands curling into fists at his side. He remembers being in Shikichi's position. He remembers the joy of finding out he was special, the euphoria of Mahito's undivided attention, the rush of his newfound power. But then the very thing that had given him hope had destroyed his life.

"No."

A/N: The short swords Junpei's using are called wakizashi. The blades on his are about a foot and a half long. Traditionally, a single wakizashi would be used in conjunction with a katana, but I decided to repurpose them a bit :) The scabbard is designed to look like Moon Dregs' tentacles, and it's dark blue with the design engraved in gold.

I'd love to write some fluffy one-shots for the three-week time skip, so if you guys have anything you'd like to see (cute dates, interactions with other characters, etc.), let me know! Coming up with fluffy material is way harder than it should be lol. (I will, of course, also accept angst prompts XD)