A weight lifting from his chest, shattering glass, the loves of his life being torn apart, some heartfelt words, and the roaring of flames. These all composed some hazy dream of Shohei's that he forgot the second he tried to remember it.
He laid on the hard ground of his bedroom, probably falling out of bed at night, but not flinching. He probably was too tired from staying up late, waiting for Satoru to wrap up whatever silly accident that was happening in Shibuya.
Or it was possible the second-years' might have procured some drinks for the students' halloween party they returned to after the mission was a success.
All that mattered was somehow Shohei ended up on the cold, hard ground with a stuffy nose and a massive headache.
Rather than smelling the smoke that had been lingering since he gained semi-conciousness, Shohei tasted it on his tongue, along with something wet and metallic.
"Jesus," Shohei groaned, clenching his eyes shut tighter. "How is the cafeteria burning breakfast so bad I can smell it from here?"
Shohei tried rolling over to get to his feet, but pain shot through his stomach.
"Damn!" Shohei cursed, falling onto his back again. "I guess I can just lie here till someone comes knocking. I didn't have anything planned today."
Shohei laid there, thinking back on that night, wondering if he and Yuji play fought too rough, or if he said something that made Maki stab him with a fork again. Megumi would know. Shohei thought he probably went to bed early at the first chance he got before they probably started drinking.
Maki. Megumi.
The smoke danced on his tongue again.
He tried snorting his nose clear to get a whiff of the smoke, hoping it would sober him up with its stench. Instead he choked on his snot. Really bloody snot. Really, no snot at all. Only blood.
The dull flickering of the flames danced across his loosening eyelids. The crackle of their fuel reached his ears.
They hadn't stayed up late or returned to the party. Shohei remembered giving Satoru the cold shoulder. Stepping into Shibuya with Inumaki. They split up eventually. Shohei saw Ijichi and others. Then he met Maki and that drunk bastard. They met with Nanami. They made their way through Shibuya together. They fought together. Someone helped them and they won, but then they fought with Shohei. Shohei lost.
Shohei's body caught up to his mind. Shohei felt his head throbbing and nose bashed into his face. He felt the hole through his stomach. His fingers broken and wrist dislocated. His vision was blurry in his left eye.
Thankfully Shohei felt no hole between his eyes and through his brain, but he did feel his skull as least fractured across his forehead.
Toji had only knocked him out rather than run him through just like Dagon. It felt rather personal like they had a history Shohei didn't know of. He beat Shohei senseless, but spared him right after Megumi begged him. Maki was charging the man as he beat him to death, the only one trying to fight for him.
"Maki. Megumi." Shohei recalled the last image of them. Megumi exhausted, coughing up blood. Maki, finally free of that hellish domain.
They were in Shibuya. They just fought a disaster curse. Shohei just got almost murdered by Toji.
"Where!" Shohei cried, sitting up despite the writing shooting pains in his stomach and head. Where was Megumi? Where was Maki? Where was Toji?
The atrium was a bigger mess than they left it. Broken glass was everywhere from a destroyed window. White tiling was scorched black from flames. Two fleshy, ugly volcanos protruded from support columns.
Bodies riddling the ground. Human bodies. Not curses. Not mangled and warped like transfigured humans either. The three were smoldering or smoking, long since past the peak of their blaze.
"No," Shohei mouthed an almost silent mutter, crawling to a still smoldering body at his feet. He hovered over it, not wanting to lay a hand on the already damaged flesh.
The fire had engulfed almost the whole person, burns being most evident in the upper half of the body, ash and burnt hair caking the victims face in an unidentifiable mass. The least burnt section was the victim's feet, their shoes almost wholly intact. They were boots. Maki's uniform boots. He glanced up at her face, and there were the twisted, melted plastic of her glasses fused with her ears and face.
He glanced up. Nanami's dull cleaver laid beside him as he laid as a blackened mass on the floor. Naobito's quirky little mustache was charred and twisted on his still standing body. Maki lied before him, lifeless and still.
Shohei's heart pounded so fast and so hard in his chest, he heard only blood rushing in his ears. He didn't hear his throat shredding scream. He didn't hear the glass exploding from the remaining windows in a surge of outlandishly wild cursed energy. He didn't hear the echo of his tragedy resonate through all of Shibuya louder than any hurricane or bomb siren. He only heard his broken, racing heart try breaking free of his dying, shattered body's chest as he stared at the love of his life's blackened, mangled corpse.
He gave up being gentle with her body, scooping it up in his arms, cradling it as the soot and ash stained his uniform and skin.
His own blood surged again and spilled onto her, both cooling her smoldering clothes and flesh and warming his shuddering body.
Shohei shivered again. He shook from a shiver not his own. He stared down at Maki's peeling skin, and the ash shifted on her. A cough shook her body in his arms. She was alive.
"Maki!" Shohei screamed, quickly smacking his broken hand over his mouth, not wanting to hurt her ears.
Shohei tenderly laid her back on the floor, looking over her injuries. There was nothing he could discern besides the near fully torched body. Shohei had little to no practical medical knowledge for the field. He needed to get her to the best and immediate care he could. Just like Ijichi needed on the bridge.
"Shoko!" Shohei thought in an instant. Clambering to his feet, Sho conjured up some sense of mind and will for his body to move.
Shohei enshrouded Maki in a sort of makeshift Gravity Field. One that held her firmly in a streamline position, supporting her body to make the fast flight smooth and safe for her.
Maki in toe, Shohei glanced around at Nanami and Naobito's bodies devoid of almost any cursed energy, hesitant if he could fly with them all safely. He glanced back down at Maki's fused together eyelids and without another thought, blasted off, shattering the ground he left behind.
Shohei stripped across the city top, rattling and cracking the glass of buildings he passed through and over. At his top speed from the jump, Shohei tore across the city, veered around in the correct direction, and almost made a crash landing through the door of Shoko's medical tent.
Shohei almost obliterated Yaga on impact, missing him by a hair as he stumbled through the door, Maki hovering beside him.
"Shohei?!" Yaga gasped, stumbling back from the near miss collision.
"Shoko! Shoko!" Shohei called, gurgling blood that had resurged into his throat. He spat a mouthful aside and scanned the tent.
"I'm here!" Shoko called, rushing from the back of the tent, a cigarette hanging from her lip.
"It's Maki!" Shohei failed to explain thoroughly, placing her down on a pop up bench nearest all of Shoko's supplies. "Burned alive. I don't know for how long, but the flames were nothing but a smolder when I woke up. I got her here the second I saw she was alive."
Shoko pulled on latex gloves in a flash. Yaga was already fetching her a bin of supplies without her even asking. Shoko placed a hand beside Maki's windpipe and placed her stethoscope across her chest. Yaga began laying out supplies and returning to a crate full of others.
"Good you got her here ASAP, but even if it was immediately after these burns were applied, I don't like her chances." Shoko swiped some hefty looking scissors from the stand beside her and began removing the remaining cloth on Maki.
As Shoko stripped away the cloth, along came skin that tore and sloughed off. After that she prepared a needle and syringe and returned to removing her boots and glasses.
"Yaga!" Shoko called again. "Get me the IVs for a massive fluid resuscitation. While you're over there, grab the ventilation machine and the tubes next to it. She will need help breathing after so much smoke inhalation."
Yaga returned with an armful of supplies, gently placing it all down and hanging a bag of liquids from the poll by the bench.
"Back in the smaller box, grab me some sedation in case she regains consciousness. And in the other box by it, there should be pain medication. Grab the highest dose of bottles you see. Her burn grades are shy of an entirely one hundred percent severity."
Slowing down to calmly insert the IV in Maki's arm, Shoko glanced up at Shohei, seeing the dire state he was in.
"Shohei, you need immediate attention too," Shoko demanded, pointing him to sit on the bench immediately by Maki.
"No," Shohei insisted, truly hearing his speaking voice sound askew with his damaged nose. He did however take the seat. "I'm fine for now. Just focus on her."
"Please, Shohei," Shoko countered, switching sides of the bed to examine him while uncoiling the intubation tubes.
"I can stop my bleeding," Shohei offered, applying pressure with Gravity Conductor sandwiching his pierced torso. His nose however still dripped in a steady flow and a drop or two leaked from his left eye like red tear drops.
"Here," Shoko waved a hand surging with white and black reversed cursed energy over Shohei's head, face, stomach, and hand.
His eye, nose, stomach, and hand all returned to proper shape and lack of bleeding. The lightheadedness and lack of focus he hadn't even noticed cleared from his mind. What was likely a concussion he didn't even register was resolved.
"Not even three seconds of service and you're not a mess anymore. Look at that. It's almost like it's my job," Shoko chuckled weakly as she injected Maki with a generous dose of clear liquid.
"My body still kind of aches, but thank you so much." Shohei stood up with a little strain.
Shohei looked back at the doctor and patient, and immediately aimed for the door, unable to watch Maki get poked by more and more needles and hooked up to a bunch of machines.
"I figured as much. Don't push it. You're shy of full steam, but still exhausted," Shoko informed.
"You're going back out there then?" Principle Yaga asked, joining Shohei at the entrance to the tent.
"Of course. I can't sit here and watch her fight for her life." Shohei wiped a sudden stream of tears flooding his cheeks, mixing with the drying blood still caking his skin and clothes. His nose was still tender as he wiped the dribble from it.
"Supporting a loved one on their sick bed isn't a bad thing, Shohei," Yaga said, placing a large hand on Shohei's shoulder. Principle Yaga didn't look like the most sensitive person around with his large frame and serious demeanor, but he was one of the most emotionally sound adults Shohei knew.
"I know Principle Yaga," Shohei assured, stifling his blubbering and placing a hand on Yaga, thankful for the gesture. Shohei briefly prayed it was only her sick bed and not her death bed. "But Maki moved me to act earlier tonight. She'd be pissed at me if I sat here crying over her when some bastard is out here on the loose. The one who hurt her, Nanami, and even that old Zenin prick. Sitting by doing nothing while bad people hurt others is one thing I promised her tonight that I refuse to compromise."
"Good to hear she's keeping your head on straight." Masamichi adjusted his glasses and stared off into the distant city.
"She's my rock, Yaga," Shohei whispered. They glanced over their shoulders back into the tent. Shohei stole one last glance at Maki. "And she's as tough as rocks too, so I know she'll be fine."
"I pray whoever did this is tough as rock." Yaga turned back and sucked in a cold breath of night air. "For their sake when you get your hands on them."
"I pray they are so this can last a while," Shohei muttered, resolute he would be taking his revenge.
The boy took off in flight, crashing through the veil and back into Shibuya, leaving his love's life in the hands of another.
The moment Shohei's sensing was centered on Shibuya again, an overwhelming evil washed over him. An evil on the magnitude of only Satoru's strength. Sukuna was in play there in Shibuya, and more powerful than ever.
"Perfect," Shohei spat, sweat surging from every pore.
The fear Shohei felt when faced with Toji was primal and natural, but the fear Sukuna radiated was like nothing else in the world. Not even Satoru radiated malice like that.
Shohei once stood up to challenge Sukuna when he first manifested in Itadori, but that was only as a fraction of his power and with Satoru at his side. Another time he was ready to take Yuji's head off as he dove across the sky from another side of the country when Sukuna took control on a mission with Fushiguro. Shohei gauged from the mass amounts of cursed energy alone, it was anywhere near fifteen times more than the first night he manifested. Sukuna had now consumed at least fifteen fingers total.
"These bastards just have to make everything worse don't they." Shohei gathered himself as he approached the station he just left.
He touched down through a broken window, scanning the scene with a clearer, but still rattled mind.
Naobito stood charred to a black crisp between the cross sections of the two spawned volcanos. Another mass of charred tile was where Nanami lied before Shohei left, but Nanami was nowhere to be seen.
Shohei reached out to sense all around him. Fushiguro was on the run from Toji, in an intricate chase through the city. Nanami was several buildings over, slowly trekking along, still lacking any remnants of cursed energy, but still dispatching any enemies he came across.
Curse users were nearly all but gone, Shohei only seeing about half a dozen still in the city. Cursed spirits were all but exorcized entirely, with traces of Inumaki's cursed speech in several locations near a few stragglers. He must have relocated the bulk of the remaining citizens and handled many curses and transfigured humans.
For a brief moment, Shohei felt conflicted. Should he go help Megumi and maybe together they could devise a plan for Toji using Megumi's intellect and diverse skills and Shohei's strength. Should Shohei go to aid Nanami, as he was on his last leg. Sho could quickly pick off the last remaining enemies wandering the streets.
Shohei rationalized that Megumi could deduce a solution on his own better than Shohei could try bulldozing the situation, even without pulling his suicidal trump card. And if Shohei was right about a certain thought he had about Toji and Megumi's relationship, Megumi could be even better off.
Regarding Nanami, he knew when to call it quits. He was a logical man. Until then, there was no threat in his course, unless he made an u-turn to battle Sukuna or dove deeper into the city.
The remaining curse users and curses were nothing more than gnats and cowards hiding in basements of Shibuya. They'd be dealt with in due time or disappear into the night, not to be seen again.
"And then there is you," Shohei grumbled, strolling up to Naobito's still standing body. Still and dark as a wrought iron statue.
Shohei could race him back to Shoko for care just as fast as he got Maki help.
"But then Shoko's attention would really be divided. Did she have enough supplies for such grievous wounds on two people? She could give Shohei a quick one over, but could she keep both Maki and Naobito alive? If it came down to it, would Shoko prioritize the head of the Zenin Clan, or a grade-four jujutsuless student?" Shohei thought, his mind offering endless questions.
Deep down Shohei knew Shoko was the keenest medical mind in Jujutsu Society. She could assuredly tend both Maki and Naobito. Her reversed cursed technique alone was enough to keep them both stable. She almost single handedly saved every injured and dying sorcerer during the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.
But Shohei didn't want Naobito to necessarily live. He surely didn't want to waste his time flying him to safety, even if it were only a few seconds. Maybe Naobito would survive his injuries and live on as clan head. He'd never know Shohei left him to die here and life would move on. If he didn't survive his injuries, then that was one less old man drilling his immoral flawed opinions on the world to others, and one less person in Maki's path of reforming society into an acceptable world for her and Mai and any others kicked down by the current world. He had mentioned to Yaga that Naobito was attacked to, but he was old and far from his prime. He could slip away to death any moment now. Shohei thought the world would be better if he did so.
Shohei stepped closer to the unconscious, charred man and placed a hand across his heart. Shohei stood their for several seconds, searching for a pulse, and after another moment, a meek beat reached his hand.
"So you're still kicking?" Shohei asked, knowing full well the man couldn't respond. Shohei's hand rose from the mans chest to his neck. His grip tightened as his fingers wrapped around his throat. "With all this ash and scaring, no one is gonna see the bruising."
Shohei stood there, choking the remaining life out of the conservative, ignorant drunk. There was no struggle, the man too weak to even breath consistently. Soon, as quiet and forgetful as a breeze, Naobito's life slipped away in Shohei's hand.
"Good riddance," Shohei scoffed, wiping the soot from his hand on his pants. "The world is one step to being a better place without the likes of you, and I'm gonna go rid it of your would be murderer now."
Shohei examined the room once more, searching for a lead on where to start searching for Maki's attacker. Shohei stepped up to the strange volcanos protruding from the pillars behind Naobito. He examined the energy that once fueled them, then the room around him where there were still singe marks and ashes.
Shohei reached out to search, and sadly, the cursed energy responsible for the fire attacks matched perfectly with a cursed spirit directly at the feet of Sukuna in that exact moment.
"Well," Shohei sighed, weighing the value of his life quickly. "If love doesn't make you want to dive head first towards the clutches of the King of Curses for revenge, nothing will."
Shohei summoned up Iguana Talon from where Toji beat him within an inch of death, and took off soaring through hallways, tunnels, and bridges, advancing on the cursed spirit and Ryomen Sukuna.
Gliding down an escalator stairwell of another section of Shibuya Station, Shohei was upon Sukuna, the curse, and two others in an instant. Shohei landed at the base of the escalator and proceeded to slowly approach on foot.
Sweat perforated his uniform. His bangs would be sticking to his forehead if he had Gravity Field up. The pit in his stomach twisted tighter and tighter like it had just been stabbed all over again. As soon as Shohei turned a corner to face the small hallway of bathrooms, he would be face to face with them all.
"Could one mask their cursed energy more sloppily while sneaking up on me?" a voice like the devil's echoed through the station.
Shohei could not try to hide or flee if he wanted to now. He gave up suppressing his still flaring cursed energy and approached with a slow shuffle rather than a stalking.
Shohei turned the corner, and there stood Itadori's body, decorated with endless black tattoo-like markings. Four deep red eyes stared through him. The King of Curses was before him, fully in control.
His head hung staring over his shoulder in a simultaneously bored and disgusted look.
"Oh," he chirped, his four eyes brightening a little. "It's you. The Gojo brat."
Shohei wanted to nod or acknowledge the partial greeting so as to appease Sukuna from taking his head off at any moment.
"Well," Sukuna turned back forward, waving his hand over his shoulder. "Don't hold yourself so high in front of me. Come join the others in kneeling so I can hear whatever it is they have to say. I want to have a word with you anyway."
The boy obeyed, creeping past Sukuna with his head hung to the floor and eyes scanning the three before them. All three looked surprised to see him voluntarily approach Sukuna.
The first two he recognized were Suguru Geto's twin daughters, Mimiko and Nanako. They both were curse users who followed Geto's faction and seemingly were adopted by him as early as Satoru adopted Shohei and Megumi.
Mimiko had a shoulder length, dark brown bob. She wore a black sailor uniform with a white ascot. She carried a pink doll with several stitches and a noose around its neck.
Her twin, and the more outspoken of the two, was Nanako. She had caramel hair in a bun with two strands hanging in her face. She always had a fake tan when Shohei had met her. She wore a light colored sailor uniform. At her knees she had her smart phone in a green case with large rabbit ears.
Then there was the curse that Shohei recognized purely off of its signature alone. Now face to face and not entirely overshadowed by Sukuna's aura and cursed energy, Shohei recognized the curse as a disaster curse. The power of an unregistered special-grade and their mass amounts of cursed energy, humanoid shape, derived strength from the fear of the natural world and intelligent behavior were all signs. Jogo, Dagon had said his name was.
Even kneeling, the curse carried himself as a smaller old man, the way his shoulders rounded and the skepticism he had permanently etched into his one, large, square eyeball as Shohei approached. His head was shaped like a volcano, hole at the top and all.
He had gray-blue skin except his volcano head, which was brown. He had corks in gaping holes for his ears. Behind his furled lip were teeth as black as volcanic rock. He wore a little black outfit with a green spotted cape draped over his shoulders and a puffy white scarf around his neck.
Shohei lowered himself to both his knees like the twins next to Nanako, wanting to be as far from the little gray curse as he could. Despite them being long standing enemies, their respective parent or brother fighting and or dying at one another's' hand, Shohei gave a reassuring nod to them and they returned one back. Shohei took it as a sign of an alignment with one another should it come to it and a temporary peace treaty while amongst powerful enemies.
"Now," Sukuna called to order. "You, girls. I'll start with you. You wished to speak to me, yes? I'll give you one finger's worth of audience. Now speak."
Either tears or sweat fell from Nanako's face, Shohei couldn't tell as she bowed so low again, but she spoke with deep panting breaths from being near Sukuna alone.
"B-Below us, there's a man in monk's robes with a suture across his forehead. P-Please kill him."
And quietly after that, almost to herself, Mimiko said, "Please free Geto-sama." She and Nanako bowed even deeper at that final request, foreheads to the ground.
"We know the location of one other finger," Nanako continued. "If you'll kill that man for us, we'll tell you where it is. So please…"
Sukuna interrupted. "Raise your heads."
The girls didn't dare disobey, so they sat up. They looked up to the man, and Mimiko's head was gone. Blood splattered across Nanako's face as Mimiko fell back to the ground with a wet, limp splat.
"Mimiko! Mimiko! Mimiko! Mimiko! Mimiko!" Nanako cried her heart out, grasping at her sister's slack body, shaking her to no end.
"Did you think a measly one or two fingers would grant you the right to order me around?" Sukuna plainly asked, his voice almost not carrying over the girl's yowling.
The curse incarnate looked down upon the manic girl gripping her sister's jacket and a small frown plagued his typically smug face.
"No! Mimiko! No way! No way! Mimiko! Mimiko!" the girl went on, not a thing Sukuna said registering in her mind.
"How offensive," the man scoffed.
Finally tearing away from her sister's body, Nanako roared, "Sukuna!"
She raised her eared phone, an application of her technique, and cried, "Sukuna!" before her head was severed below her eyes. Her phone hadn't even fallen from her clenched hands when she was diced to pieces, cubed and cast to the ground like she was just a piece of meat.
Shohei was ready to vomit when Mimiko had her head lobbed off, not because he was affronted by gore, but because he knew these girls. He had chatted with them as casually as anything while at war with Geto.
He was sick to his stomach seeing their sinful and led astray, but still young, lives snuffed on a whim. As a chunk of Nanako brushed his lips, it sent him over the edge.
Shohei threw himself to the side, puking up all that was left in his stomach onto the floor, the twin girls' blood pooling at his feet and mixing with his vomit.
Shohei wiped clean his face and returned to kneeling towards Sukuna. Sukuna had snatched Nanako's phone from the air, examining it.
"Hmm, a cell phone? No, the photo function, huh? Probably some ability to do something to whatever was pictured in the photo."
He crushed the phone in hand and cast it aside, just like the two lives he had taken.
"You're next, cursed spirit. What do you want?"
As calm as a cucumber like he wasn't as rattled as Shohei by Sukuna, the cursed spoke up. "I want nothing."
"What?" Sukuna questioned, still very collected, but genuinely taken aback.
"Our objective, Sukuna, is your complete resurrection," the curse explained, first only glancing up to Sukuna, but eventually turning his whole head to meet his gaze. "Currently, you only have temporary freedom while Itadori struggles to adapt. I'm sure you're the most aware of that yourself."
The curse paused, and Shohei glanced over at him, perplexed on what motivations were driving his faction of curses. What did they have to gain from setting Sukuna free and rampant even when he kills them just as indiscriminately as humans and sorcerers.
"Adapt?" Shohei thought. "The girls must have fed Yuji a finger, but that wouldn't push him to lose control. This curse must've fed him the rest and that's what caused the switch. There's probably no hope of waiting for Yuji to take control any time soon."
Shohei looked back to Sukuna. Through his four, blood red eyes, the thoughts could be seen turning in his brain as Jogo spoke, probably wondering the same thing Shohei was.
"Forge a pact with Yuji Itadori before he returns!" the curse implored.
Shohei felt words of protest lurch in his throat, but he strangled them silent in fear of being reprimanded like the poor twins.
"A pact to grant you perpetual authority over his body! Many of Itadori's allies are already here." Jogo glanced over at Shohei. "There are plenty of ways you could do it."
"Ugly frog bastard. Offering me up as a sacrifice," Shohei cursed in thought, his already choppy energy surging at the sight of Jogo meeting his gaze.
"There's no need."
Jogo and Shohei both looked back to Sukuna with confusion plastered across their faces.
"I already have my own plans. But I see…" he chuckled to himself. "You all are desperate, too. And now you, brat with the ugly hair. Did you have some reason to come wondering into my presence or are you just suicidal or dumb."
Shohei wished he had the gaul to muster a joke to tell himself to ease his nerves, but Shohei only could collect enough cohesive thought and confidence to say, "I didn't come here for you. I came for that one."
Shohei turned his head to his right, meeting Jogo's gaze with nothing but sold, seething malicious intent.
"So that was your little outburst we felt," Sukuna cooed, connecting some dots like a little puzzle. "Why, you would have thought it was a second coming of me the way this cursed spirit flinched at your surge of energy. I actually thought it was someone strong. Did he hurt your feelings earlier little boy?"
Shohei turned back to Sukuna, sure to not direct his malice at him. He had to pause a second and soften his tone again.
"No, sir. He just hurt some people of mine," Shohei answered.
"Oh." Sukuna then again looked disinterested all of a sudden. "Is that all? Well, how dull."
Sukuna spun on the spot, rubbing his face and pondering something.
"How about this," he said, not asking for their input but simply telling the two remaining alive. He pointed to Jogo and said, "This is your reward for the fingers. Come at me. If you manage to land even a single blow on me, I'll work under you all."
Jogo knelt stun struck, mouth hanging limply open and massive eye hanging wide at the opportunity.
"For starters, how about I slaughter every human in Shibuya? Except for one."
Jogo rose from his knees, half ready in his stance. In that moment, his cursed energy and demeanor shifted. He was no longer belittling himself in Sukuna's presence. The cursed spirit showed his true strength and colors as a disaster cursed, sending a shiver down Shohei's spine, raising his heart rate, hitching his breathing.
The impact on his life these curses had weighed on Shohei tremendously, and here another was, possibly the strongest and overwhelming in their ranks before him. Sukuna was horrifying. Toji was imposing. These curses that left Shohei touched in the mind were worse than both to him.
"You're true to your word, yes?" Jogo asked, ready to accept the deal right then and there.
"That's one half," Sukuna assured, turning back to Shohei on his knees, sweating and hyperventilating in a second wave. "You, for showing me a good welcome back scuffle the first night I was manifested, I offer you this. If you lay a finger on me first, you can kill this curse. Your precious Satoru Gojo seems to be sealed off somewhere and he can't swoop you out of danger now. You've dared to step up and defy me twice now and I want to test your mettle. To see if you are foolish or if you are strong."
As sobering as Maki's voice, this honest promise of revenge struck a chord in Shohei. His surging panic and fear shifted and molded. Still shaking the boy to his core, but now funneled. Like all negative emotions, his distress fueled his strength, but now a promise of revenge laid itself out before him.
One touch was all he needed. One hit and vengeance was his. One strike and he could dominate one of these plagues on his life. One blow and Shohei could take some semblance of control over his emotions and end the life of one of his tormentors with his own two hands.
His malfunctioning body tried dragging him down with retribution at the tips of his fingers. His fear and anxiety mingled in a hot mess. Panic and stress plagued his mind, but his stifled furry and hate bubbled over. The teeming hatred in his heart silenced his mind and body, and Shohei rose up.
"I would love nothing more."