chapter 16: six eyes but blind

cw: death, mourning, perpetual angst and bad coping mechanisms, mentions of blood and jjk-level violence

Suguru is the one to tell her. Yuna is off school grounds, in Shinjuku for a mission that had gone as well as she could have hoped. She had stopped by a restaurant for takeout to bring back for the students when she gets the call, and from the first, "Sensei," she knows something terrible has happened. Her first thought flies to Satoru, whom she has not seen in weeks now, who does all missions alone, but who somehow still registers in her mind as fragile.

"You need to come back," Suguru's voice cracks. "It's the first-years. Their mission…the information was bad."

Yuna exits the restaurant immediately, ignoring the calls of the cook who insists that her food will be only another five minutes. The winter air bites and she shuffles through days-old snow to get to her car. "What happened? Are they okay?"

"Kento's okay. Yuu…Yuu's dead."

In the background, Kento is saying, "What the fuck was this mission, it shouldn't have gone to us, we're just first-years."

Yuna's stomach clenches. She thinks back to the mission report; she'd given it to the first-year team only two days ago, a straight-forward mission to exorcise a Second Grade Curse at a temple in Hokkaido. The winter surge of curses has been even worse than the summer's, and long has Yuna abandoned the practice of verifying the mission information on her own because she does not have that kind of time anymore. She'd told Kento to let Yuu take the lead on the mission as practice for his promotion exam.

"Nanami-kun is okay?" she says.

"Yeah. Shouko patched him up. He managed to get out okay with the auxiliary manager."

"I see. Thank you for letting me know. I'm coming back to campus now."

"Okay." If Suguru is perturbed by how calm she is, he doesn't mention it.

"Does Yaga-sensei know already?"

"Yeah, he's on campus. He's letting Yuu's parents know."

Relief floods Yuna, knowing that she does not have to be the one to break the news. It is followed immediately by guilt. "Okay. Can you please put Nanami-kun on the phone?"

"Yeah." There is some shuffling, Suguru distantly telling Kento that he is handing the phone over, then the sound of Kento's shaky breaths.

"Nanami-kun, I am very sorry. This…" She sits in her car, freezing, but does not turn on the engine. "This wasn't your fault. I am sorry for sending you on the mission."

"It…" Kento, always so blasé, sounds like he is teetering on the verge of tears or madness. "The information was wrong. The spirit…it was like some local god…there was no way we could exorcise it."

"I'm sorry." Yuna closes her eyes, welcoming the sting. "I should have verified the request. I'm sorry. This wasn't your fault."

"No, that's not what—sensei, this job is just bullshit." Kento sounds like it is taking every strand of self-control he has not to just scream in frustration. "This is such shit, how are they asking kids like us to face this shit?!"

"I don't know, Nanami-kun."

"I…Yuu, he…he just wanted to do what he was good at. But no one should be good at this."

"I know."

Kento takes several deep breaths and Yuna does not have any other words, because she is a terrible teacher, was a terrible mother. She does not know how to comfort, how to counsel solace in the face of such sorrow. She is not nurturing because she has not been nurtured, because Jujutsu High is not a nurturing place.

Suguru takes his phone back. "Sensei? It's Suguru."

"Mm."

"I'll stay with Kento. You're on your way back?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

A beat passes.

"Where's Gojou-kun?" she asks.

"He was on his way back, but Yaga-sensei called him and reassigned this mission to him to. He's going to straight to Hokkaido now."

Yuna laughs. It comes out like a sob. She looks insane, laughing alone in this car on a street full of warm restaurants and smiling families, starving but without the food she'd paid for. Her forehead rests on the steering wheel, as if she is praying, but Yuna does not pray to or thank the gods for anything anymore. The urn at the bottom of the Edogawa River contains not just the ashes of a man she'd loved but all the impulses of prayers and requested blessings he had foregone.

She is so tired.

"Nanami-kun is right," she says to herself. "Sending kids to do this. It's fucking ridiculous."

Suguru does not comment on her language. He just says, very quietly, "Yeah. It is."

Yuna straightens up, weary to the bone. She does not remember the last time she had a good night's sleep.

"I'll be back soon, Getou-kun."

"Drive safe, sensei."

She does. She drives carefully, navigating the snow and darkness with her one good eye, because somehow, undeservingly, Suguru is waiting for her back at the School. It is enough for her to go back, a willing captive to her prison, even though Yuna wants nothing more than to drive and drive and drive until her wheels kiss the coast and she plummets into the sea.

The Haibaras arrive on campus late in the night, sit in Yaga's office for over an hour in stunned tears as he explains the circumstances of the failed mission, before they ask to go to the morgue. Haibara Souta's wails can be heard well throughout campus. Haibara Suzuki, a stately woman whose fine wrinkles make her appear older and wiser than her boyish husband, cries silently over the white sheet, pulled back only enough for Yuu's peaceful, pale face to peer through. Shouko does not even have to ask before Yaga dismisses her within a minute of their arrival—she has done her best to patch up Yuu's body so that it does not look so horrifically mangled, but watching the parents of her classmate weep over his body is something Yaga does not think Shouko needs to suffer through.

Yuna's return to campus is quiet. She does not greet the Haibaras until they finally peel themselves away from Yuu's body, but she appears in the corner of the morgue without fanfare and comforts them in her awkward, uncomfortable but oddly holy way that she possesses without knowing. She brings with her Suguru and Kento, whom the Haibara parents embrace tightly. Yuna gently pulls them off Kento when the embrace lasts a bit too long, because the first-year appears like he will either burst into tears or blow up the morgue if he has to endure any more kindness.

"Did he suffer?" Suzuki asks.

Kento looks at Yuna when he answers. "No."

Yuna must have coached Kento before she'd brought him here. Yaga had seen Yuu's body before Shouko had repaired what she could—Kento is lying.

Relief pools over the Haibaras' faces.

"Thank the gods." Souta's lip wobbles, but he reins in his composure. "He died a hero, didn't he? He was so brave. He just wanted to make the world better, and h-he died fighting those curses. H-his death made a difference, didn't it?"

Kento just looks at Yuna desperately. She steps forward, places a hand on Souta's shoulder and kneels in front of both of them. She bows until her forehead reaches the cold tiled ground.

"Morimoto-sensei." Suzuki tries to bring Yuna back to her feet.

"Nothing is worth the death of your son," Yuna says, head still bowed. "We are grateful to him and his dedication to jujutsu sorcery, and we are deeply sorry for your loss."

Tears leak down Souta's face, and Suzuki drags Yuna so that she is at least sitting upright again.

"He was happy here, you know," Souta sobs. "Even though the work was hard. He said he'd found good people to fight alongside. Thank you for being those people." He bows to Yaga and Yuna, then separately to Kento and Suguru. The students barely manage a response back.

Yaga escorts the parents off campus after they discuss arrangements for Yuu to be buried in a cemetery owned by the Haibara family. Yuu is one of the few with living parents who loved him and who will take care of his remains at home. So many sorcerers are orphans, by fact or by choice, that Jujutsu High has its own cemetery at the base of the mountain. Morbidly, Yaga thinks that he, Yuna, and maybe Kento will find their remains in nameless graves, minor sacrifices in a great and fruitless war. Suguru is lucky enough to have parents who will want to bring him home; he is strong enough that his parents may not even have to bury him, and he will have the honor and normalcy of laying his parents to rest.

By the time the Haibaras leave, it is nearly four in the morning, still pitch-dark outside, with the sharp nip of morning frost and slip of black ice after a recent rain. Yaga is not tired. It does not get easier, telling the parents of his students how the School has failed them, even though many of them know the risks. Yuu's parents, all things considered, had reacted well. Yaga has broken the news to parents who had screamed and promised to curse him in the afterlife, parents who had gone catatonic, parents who'd even laughed with glee and deemed the news good, so eager were they to be rid of a cursed child. To have a response of love and compassionate anguish, therefore, is always the worst to deal with. For someone who has never responded well to compassion, Yuna had handled it well.

He finds her near the frozen pond, wrapped in her bulkiest coat, and much to his surprise, smoking a cigarette. She glances up at him when he sits down next to her.

"Didn't know about this habit of yours," he remarks.

"Would you like me to put it out?"

"Nah. Do whatever you want."

She nods and takes a deep drag. Yaga, contrary to what he lets on, worries about his students. He knows Satoru is gone too much. Suguru is, too, and the suspension was proof that even the strongest kids need a break once in a while. Shouko is stealing from Yaga's whiskey cabinet at a rate that makes Yaga pray she is selling or sharing the liquor. Kento will be the only first-year now, a horrible cross to bear for the remainder of his high school years. He will be granted a week or two off, if he so wishes.

Yuna needs something, too, but Yaga isn't sure what it is.

"How did your mission go?" he ventures.

"It was fine. Just a Second-Grade."

"Good." A breath passes. "Do you need a break?"

"What?"

"A break," he repeats. "You…You haven't looked too good. Since…"

His voice trails off. Since the failed merger, really, none of them have looked good, but there's something different about Yuna. She's thinner and gaunt, as if an invisible curse gnaws at her soul every night. She doesn't sleep, because sometimes Yaga passes by this veranda and sees her just lying on it in all hours of the night, talking to people only she can see. He knows it is not significantly different for the other students, but at least they have each other—Yuna does not confide in anyone, unwilling to burden others, and Yaga worries that he is overestimating Yuna's reliability.

"I'm fine, Yaga-sensei. There isn't a lot of leeway given the mission volume."

"I know, but I've been talking with the Kyoto School about redistributing mission territories. I think that will help."

Yuna just hums, clearly not believing him. "We can prioritize the students, then."

"I know," he says hesitantly, "but…"

Now that Yuu has died, Yuna remains the weakest sorcerer at Jujutsu High. Kusakabe in the third-year class will be promoted to semi-Grade One at the end of the following semester and will likely finish his fourth year as a serious candidate for Grade One. Kento is on track to do the same. Utahime will graduate a semi-Grade One, and Mei is flourishing as a Grade One sorcerer in a time where demand for her skillset is at an all-time high. On the other hand, since the failed merger, Yuna has stopped training. While she completes her missions with fairly little trouble, Yaga thinks that one day, her own mission information will be wrong and Yuna will encounter a curse far stronger than she, and she will not try terribly hard to fight her fate.

"Please do not worry about me. There are other people more deserving."

"Yuna—"

"Thank you for disclosing the news to Haibara-kun's parents." Yuna's hands are gripped in her lap. "I…don't think I could have done that."

"That wasn't your job."

"It was, Yaga-sensei. I am just not good enough to do it."

"Yuna," he sighs. "You're barely an adult. You don't need to act my age."

"I don't know how else to act." The night is moonless and Yuna's face is hard to make out in the dark.

"Just be yourself," he murmurs. "Do what you want."

"I don't…" She swallows. "I'm afraid to do that."

Yaga thinks, if he could go back in time, he would have ignored the fact that Yuna could see the Flyhead that summer, at the picnic in the park. He would have let her live with Hana, even if his divorce would have happened anyway. Yuna would have been an excellent high school student. She would have surely gone to college, would have specialized in a field that suits her: literature, or Japanese history, or maybe she would have even ventured abroad, expanded her horizons. Past all her trauma, Yaga thinks she could have been happy. Some people are simply not meant to be jujutsu sorcerers, because being a sorcerer requires having a will to do something, anything, and Yuna barely knows how to want, let alone will her wishes into existence.

"Yaga-sensei," Yuna says very, very quietly, "I did something really terrible."

"Hm?"

"I was being myself. I…I did something I wanted to. And I made an awful mistake." Her fingers, nails with chipped polish, pick at a loose feather of her coat. "I don't think I can ever undo it."

"What did you do?"

She shakes her head. "I can't tell you. If I do, the students will never forgive me."

"They will, Yuna."

"I can't risk that." She pulls at the feather, hard, and a string of them slips through her jacket's seams. "I don't want them to hate me. They're…they're all I have."

Yaga puts his arm gingerly around Yuna's shoulders and rests his palm on her head. She sounds like a child who broke a communal toy at the playground. Yaga has no children, and even though he has been a teacher for so many years, comforting them at their most vulnerable has never been his strong suit. The words tumble cumbersomely, jagged rocks skirting down an avalanche.

"It's always hardest when you lose your first student."

Yuna stiffens. It's a very limited movement, indiscernible if Yaga were not touching her. It is as if she has to ponder over this statement and deem if it is true. When she looks at him, it is through the haze of her cigarette smoke. She merely nods, the resigned agreement of one who has decided that her truth is much worse, and Yaga knows that he had not found the right words to say after all.

Satoru knows something is wrong with him. Well, maybe not wrong per se, but abnormal, in the way that the Honored One among humans is because he is not bound by the same measly emotions. Satoru is not sad when Yuu dies. He knows he should be, and he knows better than to say that he is not sad aloud, but it does not change the fact that when he sees Kento mope and Suguru quieter than normal, Satoru has to rein in the impulse to laugh. Who cares, he wants to say. Yuu was weak. Satoru had completed the first-years' mission without a single scratch on him, now that he can leave Infinity on nearly indefinitely. Was this not the way the world worked, with the weak imminently dying?

He knows it's wrong (the Honored One begs to differ). He leaves Kento alone for the most part, annoys him the bare minimum, just enough to get a little bit of a rise, to remind Kento that Satoru exists. He listens to Suguru, even though Suguru doesn't have much to say and they just sit in silence a lot of the time, even though Satoru is bursting to tell Suguru about all the cool things he can do now, about how he has come up with the framework to short-distance teleportation and may even be able to take people along with him. Satoru can learn, too, how to be a human even when all his natural instincts tell him otherwise.

It is with Shouko that Satoru even ventures to admit the parts of his worst self out loud.

"You didn't even like him." He is disproportionately disappointed to find out that Shouko does not have the same degree of apathy as he.

"I didn't hate him, Satoru. He just annoyed me."

"So then why are you sad?"

"I'm not sad," she says sourly. "But I'm not happy either." She takes Bloodless Edge, the knife Satoru had gifted her from that asshole's repository of weapons, and slices through the corpse of a layman whose skin is covered with green bubbles, the most recent victim of a curse sighting in Ebisu. The auxiliary managers are out surveying the scene and gathering information. Satoru will likely get the official mission request later.

"Suguru's sad," comments Satoru offhandedly, as if it hasn't been nagging him all day. He doesn't know what to do when Suguru is sad, nor does he like it. He prefers Suguru when he's being a shithead, challenging and confrontational, just enough to make Satoru irritated, only to then to soothe that irritation away with a knowing smirk, maybe a quick kiss.

"Of course he is. He was actually friends with Yuu."

"He'll get over it, right?" Satoru pokes at the severed edge of the victim's hand and Shouko slaps him away. Neither the corpse nor Shouko really touch him.

"Eventually, yeah."

"But what should I do in the meantime?"

"Just go hang out with him," she sighs. "You're never on campus anymore, Satoru. Just go be with him."

But Satoru doesn't know how to be with someone who is mourning, and he thinks—no, he knows that the moment the silence between them grates him too much, he'll say something stupid. He tries, though, he sits in Suguru's bedroom, playing on his phone while Suguru finishes showering after getting dinner with Yuna. Satoru tries not to be too hurt that he hadn't been invited.

"What'd you guys get?" he asks when Suguru emerges from the showers, hair still dripping wet.

"Huh?"

"For dinner."

"Oh. Italian, I think."

"You think?"

"Didn't eat much, honestly." Suguru towels his hair dry, flecking water everywhere. Satoru lets the droplets hit him, finding that he doesn't want to keep Infinity up around Suguru.

Satoru pokes Suguru's stomach, and he jolts back, startled.

"Ticklish?" Satoru guesses impishly.

"Bastard." Suguru throws the damp towel at him and Satoru catches it with his head. The towel hides his grin.

"Maybe you should've eaten more. You've lost weight, Suguru." Satoru reaches out from underneath and pinches Suguru's waist. This time, Suguru sees it coming, grabs Satoru's wrist and spins him around, pressing his face into the mattress with his arm pinned behind the small of his back.

"Not enough to make you think you can take me," Suguru snarks back.

"All right, all right," laughs Satoru, flexing his fingers in an odd form of surrender. "Lose all the weight you want."

Suguru releases him and Satoru sits up. He watches as Suguru slips on his pajamas and a sweatshirt over it; it's too cold to sleep shirtless anymore, with each word expelling a small puff of smoke in the dimly lit room, though he misses the skin-to-skin contact. He misses Suguru in general.

"You all right?" Satoru tries.

"Huh?"

"Just." Satoru gestures aimlessly in the air. "In general. With everything."

Suguru serves him an odd look, as if he hadn't expected Satoru to ask. "I dunno. Are you?"

Satoru chews the inside of his mouth. Yeah, duh, his impulse says, but he knows that isn't the right answer. He feels like he's being tested, and he wants desperately to pass, but even if he knows what he is supposed to say, something inside resists saying it aloud. It is as if he is cheating, and he doesn't want to cheat because doing so means hiding the worst but also truest parts of himself.

Suguru's expression edges icy. "Yeah. Thought so."

"I just wasn't that close to him," Satoru tries to explain, but he knows the damage has been done, just like he'd predicted, he'd say something stupid.

"He was a fellow student and sorcerer, Satoru, how can you not be upset—"

"I just don't feel that way, Suguru, he's not you!" Satoru blurts out. "He's not you, and if I think it'd been you then it's a whole different story but you wouldn't have ever been in that situation."

"Because I couldn't die?" Suguru's eyes have gone cold. "Did you forget what happened this summer?"

Satoru doesn't like the direction the conversation is going, a lengthy train of dominoes tumbling over when he didn't even notice the first he'd knocked down.

"Of course not." Satoru reaches for him, tugs him by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "I…look, man, you know I'm not good with words. I know it's fucked up I don't feel what you're feeling, but I just…I'm here if you want me here, Suguru. That's all. I…I don't know how to be more than that."

Suguru just looks at him, and while his eyes have lost the glint of a blade ready to cut through Satoru's biggest fears, he doesn't say anything. Satoru blabbers on.

"I'm just saying I'm glad it wasn't you. I…if I think about that, then maybe I get just the slightest idea of what you're feeling and it feels awful and I don't want you to feel that so I…"

His voice trails off. His ears are hot. Everything in the room is so bright, he can see each molecule in the air floating and dissipating as he speaks. He could split each particle in two, or combine them in unnatural combustion, but he doesn't know how to make Suguru feel better because he was never taught that it is a skill that matters.

Suguru sits down next to him. With Infinity off, he can feel Suguru's body heat. He inches closer to him, hesitant because he doesn't know if Suguru is really offering it. The Curse User wraps his arm around Satoru's shoulders, and immediately Satoru's anxiety deflates like a balloon.

"Sorry I don't get it," says Satoru quietly. (The Honored One sneers at his anxiety, at his apology, at his feeble attempts to nurse that flicker of his humanity into a flame.)

"Nah." Suguru presses his lips to the back of Satoru's ear. "It's okay."

"If it makes you feel better, if it'd been you," the Honored One and Satoru say, their eyes alight with power and possibility, anxiety withered and quarantined, "I'd burn the fucking world to the ground."

Suguru's lips curl. Even though his eyes don't fully soften, secrets behind onyx locks, he kisses Satoru, long and slow, and Satoru knows his ignorance has been forgiven, and he is still allowed to stay.

It is the early springtime when Yuna, at long last, clears out that apartment in Edogawa. It has become difficult for her to stay on Jujutsu High's campus for long periods of time. No matter how she patches up the Barriers, how much stronger she makes the incense, the campus has lost the security it used to contain. She feels like a baby bird kicked out of its nest, buffeted by cruel winds of the world when she does not know how to fly, only to return and find that the nest is empty and just as cold as the open air. She knows she is not the only one feeling the same way. Kento has offhandedly brought up the option of non-shaman colleges or directly finding a job out of high school. Shouko's fingers are permanently stained with nicotine. Suguru hasn't gone back home all year, but he doesn't linger on campus either even when he's not on missions, and Yuna doesn't have the heart to ask him why because she does the same thing.

She runs, because Yaga has told her to be herself but she does not know how to do that. She retreats to the last place she remembered how, shuts the door behind her and re-sets the Barriers and hidden in this space away from anyone else, she tries. She shapes the apartment like she does her lessons on a chalkboard, erasing Toji's notes as she sees fit. Spring deluges overrun the first floor and the ceiling is always leaking somewhere, but Yuna still makes the trek out to the apartment, sometimes in the dead of night when she cannot sleep at Jujutsu High. She throws out the moldy towels and the near-empty jar of multipurpose shampoo-bodywash, deep cleans the grout of the mismatched bathroom tiles and cracked bathtub, rips up and burns the horserace schedules and brochures to local pachinko parlors, as if Toji's vices are so strong they may raise him back from the dead. The bathroom and kitchen contain little of his personality—really, the whole apartment does, because Toji was a man of little personality, a man who did not really live on earth and was not bound by its necessities. She feels an odd sort of redemption with each item she destroys, like she is committing some charitable act by erasing a man who was already so committed to being unseen, despite how the aftershocks of his actions will reverberate for decades to come.

For how easy cleaning out the anonymous kitchen and bathroom are, the bedroom feels insurmountable, even if to a stranger, it is just as spiritless as the rest of the home. She avoids it, instead spending the rest of her free time in the spring cleaning the living room, fixing the holes she'd picked in the couch cover, reviving what she can of the house plants. She avoids the bedroom as much as possible, even choosing to sleep on the couch when she stays the night, a stupid penance because it is not as if Toji had preferentially fucked her in the bedroom.

"Toji-san, have you thought about getting a real bed?"

"Why? You havin' problems sleeping, pillow princess?"

She goes pink. "I-I'm not—I put in effort, too."

He rolls his eyes but doesn't fight her on it. "I don't usually get bedframes."

"Why?"

He smirks. "'Cause if we get one, we're gonna break it, hummingbird."

She is now strawberry red, not just because he is probably right, but because she likes that he said "we" and because she is a lost cause. "We can get a nice one. Something sturdier."

"You buyin'?"

"I can."

"Not gonna turn down a gift pony then."

"The saying is that you will not look a gift horse in the mouth, Toji-san."

The season passes and the second school year draws to a close. There is supposed to be a new crop of first-years, but Yuu's death has made sorcerer parents understandably skittish and they have sent their students to the Kyoto Institute instead, where Utahime is starting her teaching apprenticeship (because apprenticeships are supposed to happen before launching into full-fledged teaching, but Tokyo Jujutsu High has terrible ratings for a reason). The summer surge is awful, with the School even more short-staffed than before after the seniors graduate. Everyone, Yuna included, is sent on days-long missions to address the curse volume. It is in the unbearable humidity of late summer, almost a full year since Toji's death, when Yuna finally cleans the bedroom.

She returns from a mission commissioned by a politician plagued by visions of disembodied heads gnawing at his insides. Only after Yuna dispels the curse, a single Grade Three that lived over his bed, giggling as it drained his Cursed Energy each night, does she find out that the man possessed and distributed child pornography. The curse had been sent by a victim who'd bought a voodoo doll online.

It is after this mission that Yuna returns to Edogawa, wondering about the pointlessness of her work, and she is struck with the realization that it has been nearly a full year since Toji's death, that her avoidant mourning and weird penance are equally pointless as dispelling curses for pedophiles. She launders the bed, carefully dusts out and washes the mattress, wipes down the frame, brings in new sheets. The work is mindless, nearly meditative, and she finds that even though her sweat soaks through her T-shirt and her hair clings uncomfortably to her neck, she is at peace for the first time since Toji died. She does not know what she was dreading so much, as if cleaning the bedroom would unearth some awful memory or secret about Toji, but it is as emotionally sterile as she could have hoped for.

The dresser drawers protest horribly as she opens each one, most of them a disorganized concoction of gadgets: scissors, coins, a compass, locks without keys, an old cellphone without a charger. There are scraps of papers with phone numbers scrawled in Toji's surprisingly neat handwriting, though no names are attached to them. He kept his clothes in the closet. Toji wore the same three shirts in rotation: all black, with varying sleeve-lengths, and two pairs of pants. There is one old gray T-shirt that he'd grown out of from his teenage years, with three small moth-eaten holes in the armpits, superbly soft in the way only old, well-worn T-shirts too raggedy for public wear could be. Yuna had repaired the holes and worn it to sleep, like a school girl crush with her first boyfriend, (never mind how Toji made fun of her for it, he liked seeing her in it too).

His wardrobe is nondescript, the last thing that Toji ever cared for or was defined by. Yuna tries very hard to throw everything out or donate them or burn them out of existence. Instead, she washes his clothes, wraps them in tissue paper as if they're made of silk, and tucks them carefully into the bottom drawer of that broken dresser, promising herself she will throw them out when she is ready, allowing herself this indulgence because clothes and memories aren't hurting anyone except for herself and she is such an expert at that already.

The rest of the closet is a collection of dust bunnies, old moth balls that Yuna knows Toji did not purchase, and random weapons parts that Yuna is careful not to injure herself on as she sifts through hilts without blades, guns without barrels. It is odd how many vehicles for destruction Toji had stored away that are bereft of the element that made them dangerous, like bodies without souls, and she wonders why he had not thrown them away. Some of them have the Zen'in family crest engraved on them somewhere, but she doubts Toji kept anything out of sentiment. She makes two separate boxes, one for the scrapyard, the other to take back to Jujutsu High to see what can be salvaged.

In the corner of the closet, tucked so deeply away on the topmost shelf that Yuna surely would have missed it if she hadn't used a chair to intently clean the room in full, is a battered old gray shoebox. Its lid is so worn that most of its edges are torn through and it sits more like a flat covering. There is no decipherable brand to the box, not that Toji was ever one to care about such things. Yuna opens it, expecting a stack of legal documents: sales deeds to expensive weapons, maybe an announcement formalizing his dismissal from the clan, or his marriage certificate. Instead, all she finds is a single photograph and a videotape.

Her heart drops to her stomach like the urn of Toji's ashes to the bottom of the river. The photo is of a woman with shoulder-length black hair smiling softly down at a sleeping infant, set in a hospital. She is not stunning in the way Mitsuko is, but there is something regal about her that is typical of all Zen'ins even if they are not made up or trying.

Yuna knows instantly that this is Megumi and his mother.

It was one thing to hate and resent Mitsuko, whom Yuna is jealous of but pettily does not believe Toji loved either. In this sense, Mitsuko and she are the same: stupid women duped by the same man, a man who was "difficult to love" and complicated, who had gone through hardships and therefore did not know how to love. They are women who lost, not because of deficits of their own, but because that was the way Toji was.

It is an entirely different thing to hate Megumi's mother. It is akin to hating a saint, someone who did the impossible, who taught a feral man to love her, because there is no way that Toji, who loved so few things (gambling, wagyu, his son) did not love this woman, too.

Yuna wants to throw up. She wants to tear the photo in two, wants to crush the tape with the nearest hilt in reach, and pretend that Toji was just the manipulative, coldhearted killer she has taken the last year to convince herself he was. He was not a man who kept unlabeled pictures and videotapes of a family he yearned for, hidden away in his closet. The only footage she needs to remember of him is the one she's watched a thousand times, after he cut down Satoru in the courtyard and looked up at the camera and grinned. The Sorcerer Killer was all that he was, no nuance, no details, no mercy.

Instead, because Yuna is an expert in self-flagellation, she places the photograph back in the shoebox and takes out the videotape. In the living room, she slides the tape into the old VCR machine, sits on her clean sofa, and rewinds through static until she finds footage.

It's set in a small living room of an apartment not unlike the one she is currently in, with peeling yellow wallpaper and a hanging lamp that is missing a bulb. Snow is piled on the windowsill, and a space heater revs in the corner of the room. Though spartan, the room is clean and clearly lived in, with a miniature artificial Christmas tree in the corner opposite the space heater and holiday lights lining the window.

Toji sits on the ground at a kotatsu much too small for him, wearing the same familiar clothing of a long-sleeved black shirt and sweatpants, even though the wintry outdoors suggests he should be wearing more. His face is contorted like he is supposed to diffuse a bomb, not balance the wailing infant on his knee. He looks younger than Yuna remembers him, not quite so harsh in every line on his face, though the scar cutting down his lips is still as sharp and clear as ever.

"Oi, Shizuka," he snaps, and something in Yuna lurches at his expression, exasperated but fond and so rarely soft, "now is not the time to figure out that gizmo, get over here and figure this thing out."

"He's a baby, Toji," comes a laughing voice behind the camera, mellow and lower than Yuna's. "Not a thing."

"Why," Toji grits his teeth and bounces his knee, moving the baby up and down with it like he's on a pogo stick, "is it crying, didn't you change it?"

"Him," Shizuka corrects, audibly annoyed. "He is your baby. Maybe hold him to you, instead of acting like you're gonna drop him off the edge of a building."

Toji obeys and holds the baby, swaddled in an evergreen blanket, to his chest. The baby wails louder, and with the volume swells with Toji's obvious anxiety.

"Shizuka," he says urgently.

"It's been five minutes, Toji," she says, but she sets down the recorder on the arm of the sofa—an ugly brown one, different from the one Yuna sits on—and enters the frame. She is wrapped in a fluffy blue bathrobe, her hair damp, bags under her smiling eyes, and she takes the baby from Toji and holds him to her breast. She sits down next to Toji, their backs against the couch, and Toji draws the blankets from the kotatsu over her. The baby has already stopped crying. "See? You just have to be gentle."

Toji looks both miffed and relieved at the same time. "He knows you got tits and I don't."

She rolls her eyes. "I mean, we could always try squeezing your pecs and see if milk comes out."

"I'd be even more of a freak than I am already."

"Toji."

"What?"

"You're not a freak, we've been over this, the majority of people in the world don't have Cursed Energy—"

"No, the majority of people have little Cursed Energy—"

"I did not marry a freak," Shizuka says loudly, her eyes narrowing. "My son's dad is not a freak and my son is not a freak and if you could just stop fucking calling yourself that, that would be great."

Toji grins. "Whoa, babe. Watch your language."

Shizuka colors. "Sorry."

"I was just kiddin'."

"And I really hate when you kid like that."

"Okay, okay." He uses his pinky and taps the baby on the head, as if he needs to use the smallest part of himself to interact with this very tiny, very fragile creature. Shizuka notices.

"You can hold him, you know."

"Nah. I think he likes you more. Makes sense."

The comment is more loaded than Toji's offhandedness allows for, and Shizuka softens. "Toji, you're not going to break him."

"Yeah, yeah."

She does not push him, just nudges the child a bit closer to Toji as if they will bond through proximity. "Did you come up with a name?"

He looks away from her. "Yeah, but it may not work."

"Why?"

"'Cause he's a boy."

"What's the name?"

"Megumi," he mutters, still looking away.

"Megumi," she repeats, the syllables rolling over her tongue like in song. "Blessings. Aren't you sweet?"

Toji just grunts in the way he does when he's embarrassed.

"It works beautifully," Shizuka presses her lips to Toji's shoulder. "Our beautiful boy, Megumi."

He snorts. "He's gonna have a great time at school."

"Well, any son of yours will be able to defend himself, mm?"

"You better fucking bet on—"

There is a rapid series of beeps, the battery is dying, and then the footage cuts out to static. Yuna is back in the summer heat, sweating alone in the apartment. Outside the cicadas buzz and someone hurls into an alleyway. This is worse, so much worse, than the aftermath of Nightmare's Whim, which she has not used in months now but wishes desperately to now.

Yuna's throat is dry. She swallows down her pride and removes the tape from the VCR. She may watch it again, or may not, she may throw it into the fucking river so that Shizuka and Toji can be together for-fucking-ever, she hasn't decided.

(One day, Megumi-kun will ask her if she'd known his father, and she will half-lie in the way she is most comfortable and say, "No." He will look disappointed and relieved all at once, because, "Yeah, what would Yuna-san know about a guy who didn't even think about his kid's gender before naming him" and the tape will come to mind and before she can take it back, she will say, "He thought about it" with the conviction of only the stupid and true.)

But Yuna does not know the future, she still has never met Fushiguro Megumi despite that she has been protecting him for over a year, even though now she is tempted to let her Barriers expire and for curses to devour the last bit of evidence proving that Fushiguro Toji had ever existed.

She does not, of course. She puts the tape back in the shoebox with the photo and tucks it back in its hidden corner of the closet. She sits back on the couch with Nightmare's Whim in her palm, its deep black hilt and the oni's grin gleaming up at her, and she lifts up her blouse and readies herself for the familiar first sting and maybe this time she'll win an argument against one-armed, gut-spilling Toji—

Yuna's phone rings right as the dagger's tip is about to pierce through the first layer of her skin. She looks down at the caller ID.

Gojou Satoru.

She puts down Nightmare's Whim. She has told herself this already. She cannot afford to wallow like this. The students are all she has left.

She sheathes the blade, takes a deep breath, and answers.

Suguru has always been a little envious of Infinity. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty, but he has always hated the way blood feels on his skin. Curse blood burns a bit but evaporates once the Curse is exorcised. Human—no, monkey—blood does no such thing, even as the light of life evaporates from the monkeys' eyes. Its blood just congeals and grows thicker and tacky until it pulls on each hair of his skin and he can feel the weight of each follicle with a shudder.

He hides all of his disgust, though, tucks his bloodied hands behind him and smiles down at the two tiny, emaciated girls he released from the village's cage.

"You're safe now," he tells them. Behind him, his dragon nudges at the torn leg that used to belong to the village priest. "They won't hurt you anymore."

"Y-you killed them all?" stammers one.

"Yep." The admission is so easy. Suguru doesn't even feel bad. His mind feels fuzzy, almost like he's drunk or high, and he feels so pleasant. The unbearable itch that had grown inside him for the last year, maybe even longer, finally has been scratched, satiated for the time being. He knows it's an addiction, and the yearning will rebound like a hangover with a vengeance.

"You're a…sorcerer?" says the only twin, the bolder one, the one that had mouthed off first.

"Yep. You are too. These guys," Suguru mimics his dragon and kicks a dismembered limb near him, "shouldn't have even been allowed to touch you. They can't even see curses. They're just…"

Through the fog, there's a sneer, the voice of a man Suguru does not know, Even with all your blessings, you lost to a monkey like me.

"Monkeys," echoes Suguru.

He turns around and sees the expanse of the destruction he has wrought. Blood soaks through the dirt roads, seeping into the tracks left by a cart. The air is dense with humidity and swarms of flies that are already descending on the corpses littering the ground. The caws of crows circle above, punctured by the groan of either a cow or a dying monkey, Suguru isn't sure. The sunset is blood-orange and bright as its rays lick the horizon, stretching as if it is not ready to descend, not ready to say goodbye to this sight. Suguru can't blame it, because after what has been the most horrible year of damage and death wrought by these monkeys, it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

If it'd been you, Satoru says in his ear, I'd burn the world to the fucking ground.

Suguru hadn't needed him to. He had identified the possibilities, had found his truth, and he had burned it down himself.