Chapter Eight

"By Jujutsu Law, your execution is imminent," the jujutsu sorcerer recites, standing over my parents.

I lunge against my brother's hold, tears streaming down my cheeks, but he prevents me from running to them. He was the only one who had dared to touch me, let alone be within three feet of me. Everyone else stayed well away. "Mama," I sob. "Mama."

My mother meets my gaze with tears in her own eyes. "I'm sorry," I breathe, heaving in air and choking on another sob. "I'm sorry."

My father doesn't acknowledge me. He hasn't the entire day. I hadn't been surprised, but still…

He locks eyes with Satoru as the axe is raised over his head. My mother doesn't look away from me. "You do what needs to be done," my father tells Satoru gruffly. "And you take responsibility for when you don't."

A tear slips down Satoru's cheek. He bites his bottom lip, as if to keep his grief at bay. He seems to force himself to be the strong sorcerer the elders and our father had taught him to be, despite his age. He nods once, and my father seems to deem it as enough, since he nods back.

12. Satoru is only 12, and I'm only eight. The axe-

"Do it," I tell Ms. Ieri. I hold on to the memory, to the feeling of the blood under my feet, the tears on my face. I hold on to the image of that yukata woven from fire itself, the heads on the ground. I gather all of it in my arms.

Then when Ms. Ieri slices the pair of scissors through the lock of my hair, I let them go.

When Satoru was 16, and I was 12, I listened to a particular conversation he had with our clan leader.

"I'm leaving," he says, his hands fisted at his sides. "I'm going to attend Jujutsu Tech and become the best sorcerer on this planet."

Our clan leader doesn't look up from the book he's reading. "You're a Gojo. Anything less would be unacceptable," is all he says in return.

Satoru bristles. "I'm not doing this for you. I'm not doing this for the clan. I'm doing this because I must. It's what I need to do."

You do what needs to be done. Our father had said that.

"I'm leaving," Satoru says again, "but I'll be back next week to check on my sister. If I see even a scratch on her, I'll burn this place to the ground.

And then I was standing in the doorway of his room, watching him hastily pack his belongings, desperate to get out of this place. Do you have to go? I wanted to ask him. I didn't, because I knew what his answer would have been.

So, I had watched him trudge through the halls with nothing but a suitcase and a duffel bag in hand, plus a pendant our father had gifted him on his tenth birthday to commemorate his "skills." I had watched him walk through the gates with his head held high.

And I had watched him walk away without deigning to look back at me.

The protection of Satoru's threat had only lasted for a minimum of two months.

I remember it all clearly.

Too clearly.

I force myself to take a deep breath. "There were…hands on me," I begin, and Ms. Ieri pauses at the sound of my voice. Satoru shifts in place, listening more intently now. His arms are folded over his chest, and his head is angled slightly to the right. "There were hands everywhere," I breathe, not entirely in the present.

Let us in.

"They broke into my room," I say, voice breaking. Satoru goes utterly still.

Hold her down.

"And they wouldn't…leave," I continue.

Where's big brother, now?

I look into the mirror at Ms. Ieri, her expression one of disturbance. "They took it from me," I whisper.

Her throat bobs. "What did they take?" she asks, though I think she already knows the answer.

Still, I reply softly, "My innocence."

Ms. Ieri cuts a bigger lock of my hair this time.

Ms. Ieri looks at me in the mirror as she gathers another lock of my hair in her hands. "What else?" she asks.

I close my eyes.

Hey, look at this one.

"They hurt me in other ways," I state, and the words don't entirely feel like they're mine.

Did you know that back then, "sinners" were stoned? To death, usually, but we don't intend to go that far.

"They stoned me," I breath. "A group of kids my age stoned me, because I was a curse…I'm a curse."

Silence.

Are they even breathing anymore?

I lift my hand to brush back my hair, and I trace the scar on my right temple.

I'll take the liberty of throwing the first rock.

And then I'm there on the cold, muddy ground between two of the Gojo estate's rooms, feeling the rain fall onto me and seeing it wash away the blood that had seeped out that night.

Thud.

I hear laughing.

Thud.

They're making fun of me, I think. I can't make out their words over the roaring silence in my head.

Thug.

No one is coming for me.

No one is coming for me.

Thud.

I'm all alone, and no one is coming for me.

I'm-

A cold hand on my elbow has me snapping my eyes open. Ms. Ieri gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze as a reminder that I'm here, and not back there.

I take a deep breath and meet her gaze in the mirror once more. "Not one came for me," I tell her, voicing what had haunted me that day. "It was cold, and wet, and every inch of my body had hurt, but no one came for me.

"There were people passing by, but they didn't stop for me. They were all too scared, or hated me for what I was." A pause of hesitance. "What I am."

"'People fear what they don't know,'" I recite, Inumaki's past, typed-out words rising to the surface of my mind. His kind eyes flash in my vision as well. I add on to his wisdom. "They didn't know what to do with my cursed energy. They couldn't understand it, and they wouldn't even try because they didn't want to." Another pause. "And they didn't want to because it all tied back to their fear.

"They hated me for my unknown technique to conjure curses of my own. They turned their fear into anger, because they didn't like their fear. It made them feel weak, and they couldn't have that. No. A Gojo doesn't fear anything. So they were angry, not scared."

I drop my hand back to my lap and stare down at it. "I crawled. I crawled all the way to the infirmary through the mud and rain, because I didn't want to die. The only time I have ever wanted to live was when I was on the brink of death."

I swallow. "I don't know why I felt that way. I barely had anything to live for. Even now, I'm not sure what I'm holding on to. But I crawled anyway, because all I knew was that I didn't want to die. That was all that went through my head. 'I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.'"

"It's human nature," Ms. Ieri offers. "Many sorcerers who have tried to end themselves tell me that it turned out to be the hardest thing they had ever tried to do. Your body wants to live. It was programmed to live. You were programmed to live."

I feel her words sink in to me. "Perhaps it is human nature," I muse. "Though I wonder what I was programmed to live for."

Ms. Ieri readies her scissors. "Perhaps that's our purpose," she suggests, glancing at me in the mirror. "To find out."

To find out what to live for, find out why I don't want to die, find out why I crawled through mud, rain, and rocks just to live for a little longer.

"Cut it," I tell her, and she does.

This time, I let that fear of death, of dying alone, go.

Though I feel the remnants of it stick to me.

"I snapped one day," I recall, drawing up the next daunting memory. Ms. Ieri readies another matted lock of my hair. "When I was 12," I continue.

"What happened?" she inquires.

"They tried taking more of it again."

Satoru stiffens. Yes. It happened more than once, I wanted to tell him. "Was this…the second time." Ms. Ieri asks hesitantly.

"No. It was the third," I correct.

"I remember being in my room, waiting for Satoru to visit." I pause. "I was always waiting."

Satoru's lips purse. "There was this man," I say, "who thought he could come into my room and take what he wanted from me. I was angry at the thought of that. I was angrier at myself, however, because I had forgotten what it was to fight for myself, no matter how worthless my life was. I had forgotten what it was to preserve myself, to hold even a shred of dignity and pride, even if all I had left were the fragments of my heart."

Let go.

"I kept telling him to 'let go,'" I continue, suddenly seeing the memories as if I was there again.

Let go!

"He dug his nails into my leg." I reach down to pull the hem of my yukata up enough so they could see the rugged lines that ran down the outside of my left leg. Ms. Ieri comes around the chair to inspect it. She sucks in a breath when she does. "I was so angry it hurt," I go on. "I couldn't even see straight anymore, but maybe that was because I had been crying. I think I was…"

LET GO!

"Then curses started coming out of…everywhere. The walls, the floors…me.

"That's when he let go."

My hand shakes, and I fist it into the towel. "They killed him."

Ms. Ieri can't seem to look away from the scars, but she hears me. I know from the way her own hand closes tightly into itself.

"All the elders fond after were his bones," I finish, reciting the reports they had filed on it to the elders of the jujutsu society. My breathing isn't even anymore. "I didn't…" I could feel tears coming. "I-I didn't mean to…to kill him. I just wanted him to let go, because I was scared and angry." It was getting harder to keep my voice hidden, especially as my vision blurred. "I never meant to-"
"Yuna."

I look away from my lap to my brother, who has never been afraid of me. His arms are still crossed, and his body is much more relaxed now, though he's not shifting around in the slightest. "If you hadn't killed him, I would've," he offers. Ms. Ieri glares at him. He shrugs. "He was a dead man either way."

I sniffle, looking back down at my hands. "I don't like hurting people," I say softly. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. They just come out when I'm stressed, or scared. I can't…I can't control it. Or them. I can't control what to do, and I think-"
"They're fear became yours," Ms. Ieri finishes for me, understanding evident in her tone.

I nod in agreement. "They locked me up after that. The clan leader burned my geta, both, so I couldn't walk around without hurting my feet on the rocks and twigs. They confined me to my room."

Satoru pushes off the door and walks over to me, choosing to lean back against the wall the mirror is set against. He watches me, and I watch him. I can never tell what he's thinking, and it irks me at this moment. He's my brother. I should…have that ability, right? Even if it's just a little.

"I couldn't do anything about it," I continue. "I couldn't find it in me to fight anymore. I had killed that man, just as I had killed my parents. So, were they really in the wrong to lock me away for it?"

Satoru opens his mouth to likely say 'yes,' but I continue speaking before he can. "I stayed in my room, and by the time I turned 13, I had lost the energy to do anything, let alone get up from the floor. Having the back door open, watching the courtyard…that was a good day. The worst of it…I don't even remember. I never knew what was real or imagined. I always had this curse over my shoulder, taunting me. And anyone who got too close died. I was a curse. I was a disease. I had killed my parents, and that man, and I would continue to kill if I was alive.

"I wanted to die."

Satoru looks away and brings a hand to his mouth, breathing a curse. Ms. Ieri looks inclined to do the same.

I stare at myself in the mirror, my hair uneven, but gradually getting shorter with each lock of hair Ms. Ieri cuts. "I was drowning inside of myself," I continue," with only Satoru's stories to keep me company. I fell, and I hit the bottom hard. Enough so that I couldn't even stir until-"

I stop myself, my eyes widening at what just hit me. At what I had been about to say.

"Until what?" Satoru presses.

My mouth hangs open in shock. I try to form words, but none roll out of my mouth like I want them to. Because only excuses want to tumble out, and for some reason, that isn't what my body wants me to do.

It wants me to tell them that though I had stirred when Satoru embraced me, I didn't get up until amethyst eyes had pretty much swept me off my feet. If I had been standing during our first encounter, I'm sure I would have.

I hadn't risen until typed-out words had become my lifeline.

Until the warmth of a quilt had drawn me from a dust, stone-cold floor, I had remained still and void of life.

All of it. I had felt all of it, lived through all of it, suffered alone until…

Until Toge Inumaki.

It's my turn to bring a hand to my mouth, though it's for a different sort of surprise than my brother's. This is cheek-burning, heart-in-my throat kind of surprise.

This is a I-think-I-almost-confessed type of surprise.

I am surprised, because I once swore off all boys and men as entitled rats who took what they wanted and left nothing of me behind. Who thought they could just touch me without paying the consequences for it.

It seems…I was proven wrong, though a trickle of worry, of hesitance, flows through my veins at the thought of…ever letting someone in like that. Even Inumaki.

"Nothing," I answer after clearing my throat. "Just…cut the rest of it."

Ms. Ieri looks at me for a long moment. Then she picks her scissors back up from where she had discarded them on her portable tray-on-wheels and stands behind me once more. She takes the rest of my hair into her hands. "If you ever have nothing to fight for," she says, positioning the strands between the blades, "choose to fight for what you will always have: yourself, and the possibility of your future, of what it could be. Make yourself enough to live for. Envision a future so bright that it's worth fighting for. "

You are allowed to live as who you are.

I think that is the cause your parents died for.

I doubt my father did, but my mother…

You are allowed to live as who you are.

I close my eyes.

Yes, I want to live. I want to be able to live and not feel guilty about it. I don't want to ever feel pressured to shove a knife into my heart again, just because everyone else won't try to even understand what I am.

You are not bad, Gojo-san. They cannot decide that for you.

I'm not bad. I don't want to be bad, and I've never wanted to be. I want to be kind and loved. But if there's one thing I've realized on my own, it's that not even all the love in the world will ever feel like anything if I don't…

"I love myself," I say softly.

If I don't love myself, first. If I don't put myself first. If I don't fight for my worthless life. If I don't even try to.

"I love myself," I state again, louder this time.

And when Ms. Ieri cuts the rest of my hair, the rest of the chain that's kept me rooted to my bed, the floor, I let the guilt of saying that, of feeling that, completely go.

I let go and fall into something entirely different and new.

I fall into my beginning.