I WAS SHY AT FIRST, BUT THEY WELCOMED ME

THERE'S WAY TOO MANY REASONS TO STAY HERE

leave me alone!

You sit with Sasaki and Iguchi, legs folded one over the other, huddled around the table.

The talisman in Sasaki's hands reminds you of the sky above a bloodied prairie. It heralds something soulful but at the same time, something utterly devoid of hope. Skin devours skin, bones crack under searing hell, an entity endowed with spine-chilling aura.

"I can't get it off," Sasaki-senpai murmurs, a little annoyed as her thin eyebrows knit together.

She's trying to peel back whatever tape was used to mask the contents. It felt ancient, and even though you weren't holding it now, as you had carried it back to school after parting ways with Itadori, your hands still shake from the omen.

It's one name. Carved onto the chest of samurais and soaking graves with venom. Ebbing death just from a loose tongue.

Ryoumen Sukuna.

A name you had never heard before but it crawled into the crevice of your head and you hear the echoes of his shrieks, a lone wolf's howl that lingers in the gaunt air.

"You look like you're going to throw up," Iguchi-senpai notes, arms crossed as he leans over on the table the three of you are huddled around.

He spots your discomfort through the illumination of your eyes; the candle on the table is the sole source of light in the clutches of darkness.

A plethora of emotions run rampant in your veins and you are hugging your stomach from the nausea that creeps up your throat. Bile at the remembrance of warm blood. But when had you ever seen warm blood?

You sigh, "It's been a long day, Iguchi-senpai."

A flat response. But they don't push you any further.

Iguchi-senpai also sighs, "Did we really have to sneak into school to do this?"

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

She's still trying. You don't deny the fear pulsing in your veins, trepidation at the thought of curses. It's something that interests you, of course, but not in the way that it might do for others.

Because you're scared.

And yet, you still do it anyway. You try to look away from the talisman but it's like looking away from a train wreck. Impossible.

Humans are drawn to violent destruction in the same way an angel is drawn to God.

"I'm turning on the lights," Iguchi mumbles, standing up and his chair creaks as it moves against the wooden floor.

Sasaki retorts instantly,"No! The atmosphere's important! Enjoying the thrill is in the spirit of the Occult club, isn't it?"

"Mm," You nod weakly.

That's why you're there, right? You want to know the secrets, what lies behind the veil of deities' eyes. You want to hunt down the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle to feel whole again, soothing an addiction to knowledge made impossible to dwell on for infinity.

"It's not like anything's going to happen, anyway," Sasaki mumbles.

And just then, as if she jinxed it, the sound of tape unravelling filled the air.

How quaint that such a mundane sound could instill such fear and interest.

"Oh, it came off!" Your eyes widen.

The tape has a litany of unreadable symbols which unwind as Sasaki's pulls it off with her index finger. It has the faintest sense of a tapestry, a tale to tell.

She keeps unwinding it, and unwinding it, and unwinding it, until a pile of old, bronzed tape sits next to the burning candle.

And as you lay your eyes on the item, you find your throat clamping shut as if a wave of terror drenched you.

It disappears after the initial surprise, but it was almost like someone had their hand around your neck, ready to squeeze the final droplets of life from your tired soul.

A terrifying feeling to say the least.

But even more terrifying, was what was in Sasaki's hands.

A human finger.

"Is it real?" You murmur in interest, "It's nail game is quite good, you know."

Iguchi-senpai chops the back of your head, but just then, the candle stops flickering.

It dies unexpectedly, not even leaving a wisp of smoke behind.

"Give me it," You whisper, not knowing what came over you in the moment.

Sasaki hands the finger over to you and your thumb traces the indents on the sacred and frail thing. At the same time, it felt like the earth was cracking open.

The ground starts to shake violently, enough to throw you off balance.

"What's...this?" Sasaki clutches the tape with both of her hands, terrified.

Everyone is looking at the table, frozen in place. But you can all feel it. The breath of the creature hanging from the ceiling.

A monster that brings with him, a soul of civilisation so terrifyingly inhuman.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Did those fairytales Mother used to let you dream about make reality wilt away like an old flower? Were those curses and nightmares that whispered into your ears on pitch black nights ever born from an imaginative mind?

You have felt fear. But you have never felt this. Whatever this was, it wasn't fear. You can't call yourself scared because part of you is addicted to the monsters in the dark and the curses spilling out of the dead.

The finger in your hand emits more than just power; you're not sure how you can even channel or bother to understand what kind of demonic measures are being taken around you. Somehow, it feels familiar though.

Instinct tells you to fight but your head is set on cowering in a corner. You're trying to take your mind off your last happy memory but it's hard. It's hard to walk to your death but it's even harder to walk away.

So, it's a mindless decision really. Flight or fight, they had said.

Did you choose one? Or did the monster choose it for you?

A hand reaches out from the echoes of darkness, only to plunge you into the same thing, it's vile and cold touch slithering across your cheek and it pulls you into the shadow like a piece of meat.

You can hear someone running up the stairs. You're not too sure who it is.

But you can feel the stench of death ripping apart the fragility of your mind. It's probably too late, isn't it? You are trying so hard to fight, struggling against your head and your fears and this curse.

Hm, if you die here.

Mother's image comes floating back to you. White knuckles. Bloodshot eyes. A choking blackness, a soul-destroyer hurrying across the plane between life and death.

No, you think. I can't die.

And it's that one thought that saves you. One. Just a remnant of your mother and her smile and the twitching lips and blinking eyes.

"Back off!" You scream, lunging forwards. Your hand balls into a fist and it feels like you've built everything up to this moment.

The monster reaches out as if thinking you were measly to devour like a stick snapping in half. It dissipates instantly before your very eyes, not even standing a chance. A bright translucent wall bridges the space between you and it.

Your hands are shaky as your index finger lightly touches this hallucinatory yellow shield, watching the final bits of the monster fall to the ground like snow.

Your first thought was something along the lines of 'Did I just Thanos snap it?!'

But there's virtually no time to waste, you can hear Sasaki's screams down the hallway. And ignoring every thought running through your head, every instinct threatening to stitch itself to the skull of your thoughts, you bolt towards death instead of away.

There are more of them, those monsters. Of course, it was not going to be like those happy fairytale endings and if this was a nightmare, then it sure as hell was a good one.

Each one leaves you with an injury, because escaping unscathed sounds like a dream too far away. You're only human for so long. Blood trickles down itching skin like the transparent tears on a weeping angel.

"Hey!" The pain from your fingers is searing like hell; they're definitely broken. You scream as loudly as you possibly can.

Fear is painted into the hollowness of your eyes so easily, but that's the one thing forcing you forwards. You're shaking so hard you might throw up, your vision is blurry and you can feel the nightmares building up in your head but you are just one soul in millions.

A soul of civilisation, trampled on and withered, a dot in the never-ending flow of time, lost, forgotten, meandering.

Yet, somehow not meaningless. Not to these people at least. Itadori's smile floats to the surface of the pool of your memory when on the brink of equal death and salvation.

Someone is shouting behind you, but their words are muffled. Turning on your heel, you see them.

A step back, startled. It's the same person you caught hanging around the rugby field. Well, not nessecarily caught. It was more like you observed from a distance at what he was doing.

He'd been murmuring all kind of things, like curses and dead bodies and jujutsu, whatever that was.

You blink, looking at him, soaked in his features. Dark-coloured hair, a midnight blue almost, seemed to frame his face. It reminds you of the way the world falls away around the shore of a lake. They hold depth to them more merciless than the vines entangled at the heart of a jungle, memories entwined at the tendrils of his iris. How dark does the darkness venture?

They say eyes are the window to the soul. But you don't want to learn the magic behind this world that you have being rushing head-first into.

"Get back!" He yells, and he lifts hands to form some symbol.

"What do you mean get back?!" You splutter, feeling a wave of dread overwhelm you. "There's no where to run, my friends are being killed by some freak monster, and you're a fucking perv!"

The teenager narrows his eyes, "Perv?! I'm a jujutsu sorcerer in training. Just rest in a corner."

Shakily, you move closer towards the monster, not knowing why. This monster looks exactly how you think a monster looks, which somehow, reduces the sickening feeling in your stomach by a little - just a little.

It's large and a feverish chartreuse, skin so rough it looks like it would be a thousand times more painful than the leather on a whip. And it's slowly pulverising Sasaki-senpai as she struggles against it.

There's not even wrath present in it's squeamish eyes, the colour of dried blood stuck on wooden walls. Just nonchalance.

Oh my god, I'm gonna throw up.

And, well. What happens next? You lurch over and your jaw unhinges like something out of a poorly directed horror movie.

"You're throwing up?!" Moody Teenager (Perv?) yells wearily, almost unfazed at the cruelty of the situation.

The worst bit was, even as you were letting your lunch slither out along with bile from your throat, you were still trying to help. The wall or whatever that you conjured earlier, appears very faintly, stopping the creature from absorbing you next as a victim.

You can feel the pull of the talisman in your pocket, drawing all the evils in the world towards it. It has the taste of a withered sakura blossom, a gilded soul that can't be caged.

"Fuck... I'm not going to get there in time," Moody Teenager murmurs. ( You're gonna have to ask him for his name afterwards. )

And then, everything stops. The world melts away when he appears, a glint of courage heartily ready in his brown eyes. The window opposite the monster cracks glass comes crashing down on the floor.

It's a blur of that iconic bubblegum-pink hair and you realise that you're not actually delirious because Itadori Yuuji has somehow jumped through a window on the 4th floor of the school.

...4th floor.

Please, anyone, just sign him up for the Olympics. God knows we need it.

The monster is destroyed almost instantly upon impact, surprising you because there was such a doleful expression on Itadori's face. It was very brief. But your mind draws back to how he said he had to be somewhere earlier this evening.

Part of you wants to ask him about it, because curiosity is making your head hurt with all sorts of things.

Why was he here? Was he with the other guy?

A wolf hurries past you and sinks its fangs into a leftover of the monster, it's skin as white as the lilies blooming beneath snowy mountains. A white too emotional to comprehend. Just full of devoured hope and more.

"What... was that?" You sit upright, feeling too many emotions to even bother comprehending.

Itadori sits breathless on the ground close to you, Sasaki in his arms. "[L/n]-san?" He swivels his head and see you looking very strangely at your hands.

What a principled deranged look in your eyes, as if you had caught the last breath of a nightmare to relish all over again.

You blink, "I need a minute. I'm gonna pass out."

The boy furrows his eyebrows, "So, you can see curses too?"

"This was a curse?" Itadori turns and looks at the piles of flesh in the corner, "Not what I was expecting."

Your face pales.

"A... curse?" Shivers run down your spine upon hearing this, memories of Mother floating to the surface of a dark mind. A lake with too many depths. Too many monsters and too many secrets.

You turn to face him, "Okay, Mr. Moody Teenager Perv Question Mark, what the hell is going on?"

"M-moody teenager what?! Did you say the question mark out loud? I'm your age, you know."

"Well, who are you?! You're not wearing the school uniform, that's for sure."

"Fushiguro," He says blankly, lips curling like he's tasted something bitter. You feel a little better now you can place a name to the face.

Itadori tilts his head, "By the way, what's that munching on the curse?"

You nod along with him, pointing to the wolf, whose pupils have turned rather horrifying black, endowed with hunger.

"My shikigami," Fushiguro says calmly, hands in his pocket. "You two can see them, then? Normally, a curse can't be seen. Not unless you're on the verge of death or in special places like this."

You have to arch an eyebrow at this.

Seeing curses like this have made you tired of jumping at your own shadow, tired of all the made-up fairytale endings when monsters like that are actually real.

"Yeahhh, that makes sense!" Itadori replies, "I've never seen a ghost or anything before tonight."

His stomach must be made of steel for him to have a mild reaction, your eyes widen.

Even Fushiguro has some sort of reaction to this, "You're not scared, are you?"

"Well, I was scared for a bit. But did you know? People really can die." Itadori looks away, but your eyes linger on him with a sombre sense.

"People really can die," You murmur in repeat.

"So I at least want the people I know to have proper deaths." Itadori admits, slowly moving to lift Sasaki up, "Not that I really get it myself."

Proper deaths, you blink. Did Mother have a proper death? You shun the memory of her corpse away. It's too late for her, but not too late for everyone else.

The tape covering the human finger falls out of Sasaki's finger and Itadori fumbles to pick it up.

"This it?" He inquires.

Your eyes widen and you stumble forwards, pulling out the finger from your own pocket.

"No that's the tape," Fushiguro says, still rather relaxed. He points to what you hold in your hand, "That's the special-grade cursed object, Ryoumen Sukuna's finger."

"Ryoumen Sukuna?" You ask, faintly familiar with it. It was a name carved heartily in your mind and soul. Some semblance of the devil was attached to the syllables stringing his name together.

Itadori lifts his head as if to ask, 'Are you familiar with it?'

"It's a miracle it didn't get swallowed," Fushiguro admits.

You furrow your eyebrows, still reeling from the nausea of the earlier hours, "Why would anything eat it? Does it taste good?"

"Don't be stupid. You'd do it to gain stronger cursed energy. It's dangerous so hand it over already."

"Gladly."

But as you move to hand the finger over to Fushiguro, he suddenly pushes you away and you realise why.

A sinister feeling looms over you like a funeral shroud.

"Run!" He yells but he's just a tad too late and whatever entity had broken the ceiling had pushed everyone away, including you.

You lose the finger as you feel the debris and dust overwhelm you.

Clouds of dust huddle in the air as you have your arm covering your face but when it clears, another monster reveals itself.

And it has Fushiguro and you trapped in it's grip.

"Fushiguro! [Last Name]!" Itadori yells, horrified.

The monster is already opening it's ( freakishly human-looking ) teeth as if going to bite Fushiguro's head off. The mere image of that sends you into a frenzy.

But just as you hear him attempting to summon one of his shikigamis, the monster instead throws him at the wall, creating a sound that reverberates across the air. You can hear Fushiguro slump and grunt in pain.

And then it does the same to you.

It's weirdly endorphin-inducing to be thrown out of a window and across the school balcony. The rush of air, right before death. Was this a tranquillity few could savour because it being squandered by the pioneers of your demise?

"Dammit," Fushiguro's hands look crooked as he struggles, "I can't think straight."

You've lost a filter on your thoughts at this point, "Not surprised given the blood leaking from your head."

"Oh, shut up," He snaps, rolling his eyes at your crooked humour. You're bleeding too, but only because the wounds the monsters left have just enlarged by a tiny bit. Just a little. A smidge.

Ok, you need a miracle not be hospitalised forever. Why must your bones be so fragile?

Unsurprisingly, Itadori fights the monster, which is easier said than done. But everyone seems to have blurred away, a shrill ringing voice replaces everything.

You can't hear the words ebbing from Itadori's mouth nor really see him, just watching from what feels like an ethereal plane. His figure is hazy and everything hurts in the moment and your heart swells just watching him in awe but the world is simultaneously spiralling.

But then, you have to rub your eyes to double check what you had just seen.

It kind of looked like he had eaten the finger.

No, not worth it. Go to sleep. Your brain pleads.

So you close your eyes, hoping that whatever pain in your bones would die out before dawn arises and that the world would feel safe again.

But Ryoumen Sukuna's hysterical laugh echoes in the back of your head like the whisper of a sea in a seashell. The soul of civilisation is reincarnated once again.