Tired, I'm falling to my knees. I'm weighted. Carry me home like you used to. When I burn my organs. Pour the Bourbon. Bear my burdens for the moment.

It feels like dying.

And it must be; a death of some kind. You remember other deaths that circled you quietly, vultures of oblivion perched just out of sight. The slither of blood out of your womb; violent hands jutting past skin. They felt like this, vast and smothering. They wrapped you in their frigid arms and gently shut your eyes. Chased off in the end by bitter eye-to-eyes with empty beer bottles and an unmarked gravestone but not this time.

This time, you're struggling to even stand. And it's crippling; who am I again? Who am I now? There is no mother to smile at, no quilted blankets at home, nothing to bare teeth and suffer with. There is only you and your death and this sinking feeling as it all fades and falls and fizzles away and there will be nothing left of you, not a single thing for him to find, when this hungry darkness is through with you.

'Hey, are you okay?'

You're going to crash, burn out, wander beyond the chasing embers but have no stones to make sparks with, have nothing, because where did you go again after he left? Deep into your own ribs, buried against the heart you had thrown away. . . The pavement is too gray with the haze of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Chewing gum clumped at the curb with the smell of wet dirt and fresh grass and speckles of wildflowers growing across the landscape.

'[F/n]? Hey? Please look at me.'

You're standing outside your high school but three months on after Sukuna and it still doesn't feel real. Numb and weightless, you are blinking back the fog until your vision clears again. The voice wasn't Sukuna but was it fright that scurried over your expression like prey? Your chest tightens like a heavy stone has settled there.

Itadori gently takes your hand. You feel a strange sensation fall over you, something you don't trust at first. It's like numbness but not the same, something that slows your rapid pulse and coaxes you out of your guard.

Relaxed, you realise. That's what your feeling. It's been so long you didn't recognise it.

And yet, it was still... horrible. A horrible, guilty, ugly feeling you've been trapped with for too long that the misery had become just enough comfort for you, like a threadbare blanket pressed against your lips. Too many people had explained it to you, as if you are an open book they penned: you're grieving, it's okay, you need a break, you need you.

Now look at you. Standing in the chilling cold, wondering where the vicious, inhuman, chittering of the make-believe monster in your head is. Not missing him but missing the feeling of being wanted or needed because now you're "normal again."

Then again, it's awkward when the words you want to say become tasteless in the thickness of the air. Said air was already so brittle it could snap and if it didn't, one of you two might. Perhaps it was because things are different now.

You left.

Jujutsu Tech is nothing more than a name on your school records, a meditation institution you briefly accquaintanced yourself with, enough to keep everyone happy. Everyone except you.

No one speaks; what is there to say?

A lot, actually. Enough for you to blurt it out and all the words would fall onto the ground and you could trace the syllables with a light hum but you worry you'll never be understood. Still, it seems Itadori does—understand, that is. That's why he's shown up out of the blue to walk you home but you feel like you're slowly dying, but hey, look at him. . . look at him.

Maybe it will be okay.

You let out a slow, controlled breath and attempt to loosen your body movements. It was like splitting flesh, cracking bone. You became stiff after It happened. Three months later, standing with your hands in your navy blue jacket, with a boy you think you love, feels more torturous than those romance novels make it out to be.

But he's still there. He's doing it, for someone like you, the same way he'd hold your hand and love how it fit warmly into his. He names every etch of himself with your breaths, heated and tempered under glass until it spins in a shine that mimics your eyes. It gradually dwells on you with the quietest pining that you had laid yourself bare of your troubles and trauma, all for him to garden the acres with kindness.

'Hi,' Since when was your voice so brittle?

The pink blush dusting your cheeks and nose, voice small, hands unable to hold still as you drummed them constantly against your thighs, rubbed your thumbs, glanced here and there and anywhere but at Itadori—it was driving you insane how badly you missed him. You wake up and he isn't in the room next to you. He isn't daydreaming in class anymore. He isn't running laps at the school sporting grounds.

'Hey,' Itadori smiles. What a pretty, fucking smile. Shit.

You could spend an eternity watching him trip over his own words, listen to the shallow dip and rise in his breaths, the husk in the back of his voice when he laughs. You feel like you could do anything, and it reminds you of back then. When his voice was a string you pulled on to reach the light, when his words were a plaster that hid the wound in your torso.

Letting go of him was harder than you thought it'd be. But now, he's back. And he pulls you in, even if the air is heavy and the sky's all wrong.

He keeps trying and losing his nerve, shifting the way his fingers are wrapped around yours. His thumb strokes the back of your hand, and then your wrist. He traces shapes up your arm until he reaches your sleeve and you lean into it. Return the favor, even.

You stare at the spaces between the clouds in the sky, hands joined together. You could do this forever, you think. Just lie here with your hand in his and do nothing but exist peacefully.

You bask in each other, a hug that might stop the hurt once and for all, until he can see through himself, until your thoughts peel outwards of your mind like a hurricane ripping across your heart and bones.

Finally, one of you relents. The moment is not timeless, after all.

"Why didn't you call?" You hear the concern in his voice, tip-toeing around the edges of his own lips as if trying to go unnoticed. He worries about you.

"Wh.. Oh," You pause, allowing yourself a moment to let the words seep into your own skin before they were projected into the world. "I don't know. I don't know what the fuck has been going on with me, lately."

I've been avoiding you because I like you and now that there's no more obstacles in my way, I have to actually digest the fact that I want to live a normal life, even if you might not able to do the same. How do you tell him that?

You can almost hear your own heart shattering, twice over, then again, and again, and again.

Itadori bites his lip, "Do you remember when you came out of Sukuna's domain?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck. You know why he's bringing that up.

Tears were starting to swell up in your eyes now—shit, am I making you cry? Itadori panicked—and you bunch your fists together, sinking into your quivering lower lip. "I... I thought I was going to die." Because it feels like dying, all. the. fucking. time.

"Walk with me," He whispers, and he starts to take you home.

Well, what else are you going to do? Run away? So, you walk besides him, not behind, as if you had always been trailing him from the get-go, but you're starting to feel at ease. Your heart is windless and gentle, which makes you feel even more vulnerable. Pain sinks to yourgut, like embers burning slow, smoldering the bitterness away. With each spare second, your mind rehearses a new letter to recite.

You blurt it out, having held it in like a bottle of your screams that was going to unwind and explode at any moment. You had prayed you would keep your feelings tucked neatly between your ribs and hide it behind the guards of false halcyon, but alas, you want him to know.

Because you are falling again, but not in underbrushes of cold touches and empty hallways, but in the arms of the boy that will be there to catch you when you stumble. And you're floating, like a lilo that's been cast at sea to rest, and you wonder if you could make what you have with him last forever. Sukuna told you that fairytales are fake but he isn't here now.

Well, as you finally look at Itadori—salmon pink hair and easy-going doe-like eyes, the colour of the woods at night—Sukuna is hidden behind that.

"I like you, more than just a friend, more than just a best friend, I love you. I love you because you care for me in ways that I have never felt anyone else do. You come back for me time and time again when I can't pick myself up. With you, I don't have to be afraid, I don't have to become someone else other than me," Tears bead at the corner of your upturned eyes, bitten back by a wobbling wall—said wall was going to be broken down by your emotions. "I love you like I love pink sunsets that match the colour of your shitty-dyed hair and freshly picked apples. I love you like the world just ended but all I can see is you. Like all I need to do is look at you and want to kiss you, hold you in my arms and run with you to the end of the earth, and I understand why people do the things they do for love. You give me the courage to say it—I love you."

And once it's out, it can't be undone, it can't be taken back and maybe it was relief that washed over you with teary eyes under the afternoon sun in Sendai. Now, the pavement with the cracked slabs and plastic litter suddenly looks like a better thing to look at than the person you have fallen for.

You hold your breath in some perverse twisted feeling that had swollen deep inside you, wanting your heart to halt, your body to still, for everything and everyone in this world to just—

Stop.

There was something magical about the shape of the vowels on your lips when you spoke every word in a way that mirrored just how Itadori felt about you. Every word. It clicks together like chains on a necklace. A needle and a thread. You loop into him like the bulb of a venn diagram.

"I love you, too," Itadori smiles, his lips gently tugged against his cheeks and it makes such an adorable, loving expression. He tucks a short strand of hair behind your ear.

Holy fucking shit, you exhale through labored breaths and a forced smile, throat tightening. "Fuck, I didn't think ahead... what now?"

What now?! You didn't have a plan for this. First, Itadori shows up out of the blue after three months passing since you woke up half-dead in his lap, collapsed in a puddle of red snow and your own leaking insides, warming your frigid skin. Second, you blurted out that you have the biggest, fattest crush on him — The L word as Sasaki-senpai would tease you with right now.

Third... Itadori gently squeezes your hand as if to say hey, it's okay.

Meanwhile, Itadori wonders if he needs to pinch himself out of this dream. That this moment has collapsed into itself like a psychedelic, let loose with colours and spirit. That the space between you and him has turned into the finest point possible, until it bends inwards inside your eyes and explodes outwards like a grand revelation. It is as if the world had ended but then it just began and everything is so new: he wants to run across it forever, anywhere and wherever. In the end, it would all just lead right back to you.

You wonder if this was what hunger for skin had felt like. Sweaty palms. Elevated heart rate. Can't keep your hands off him, always finding excuses to wrap your arms around him, card your fingers through his hair.

Your skin tingles every time he touches your hand, your fingers lingering on his just that second longer. Your heart beats so erratically in your chest it could very well fly out. With flushed cheeks, and a heavy stomach, your whole being lights up like a supernova.

"Can I walk you home?" He asks quietly, as if he really needed to. The two of you are already half way there. The dimples that indent in the corners of his embellished skin is your last coherent thought before you space out entirely, "Nevermind... we kind of already are."

He scratches the back of his head awkwardly and almost catches it, the way your irises are clear like blown-out smoke.

You hum, wondering how to blot out the uncomfortable emotions pitted in the air. "Would you... like to watch a movie with me tonight?" Your words spill out slowly, as if the truth can take its time. As if there is a force behind them, yet the kind that is respectful and quiet—a determination that's observant and patient.

Was that overkill? Were you jumping to conclusions? Are you guys dating? You realise very quickly that you had always immortalised Itadori in the fragments of his happiness, for it had then become yours to share with—laughs, smiles, simply being. There was no wider yearning trapped inside your ribs and blood that wanted nothing more than to bring him that joy. Happiness would catches on his face with a starlit luminescence and laugh lines crease into dimpled cheeks. You dwell on that desire, a husk hungry for warmth, to be clambered into and nested. For him to make you as happy as he makes you. (You wonder if you could ever do that.)

"Hell yea," Itadori grins from ear to ear, which gently guides the conversation back to something normal..ish.

He gives you something you had long since forgotten what the taste of it was—hope. and you cannot tell anymore how to understand it, the good from the bad, the happy from the sad. Hope had always been a wretched womb that was birthed into death the moment your mother breathed her last in this terrible world. It crushes you beneath your feet like a building's collapse, your heart anchoring itself to the floor in some pitiful weighted burden. But then it moves like a tsunami in bits and pieces, sweltered and relentless, fluid and freely. It gathers calamity and kills it with a breeze, sweetens a smooth surface and revels in the peace. It exists in the might bitingly refreshingly way out of the darkest hours.

You press your lips into a thin line, "Cool... I was thinking we could rewatch something we both like. Human Bloodworm 3, maybe?"

What was it with you? Are you growing anxious at the thought of a date? Is this a date? You don't quite know what word to attach to your feelings at this moment, in fact. You aren't obsessed.

Itadori's eyes are soft to look at. He understands now, having spoken to you in earnest, that the soul of a lover is constantly troubled, and can only be stilled when it comes to an end. You are probably feeling the same way.

"I'll bring snacks. Gojo is making me finish his pile of candy he bought from Kyoto," You smile at that. Your lips twinge at the mention of Gojo. You had been particularly sad to see your new friends go. But Gojo's words are unforgettable and so is his impression. You'll remember how cold the skin of a curse is, how easy it is to strike murder. But your mind will echo with the laughter of silly teenagers playing around on the field, of a grown blindfolded man complaining about how height, of a mother that could have been and a father that is growing.

The sun reminds you of a coaxing, white light. The wrath that Sukuna invoked. Your lips part before you realise your thoughts were being spoken aloud, "He wouldn't stop. . ."

"Sukuna?" Itadori falters. It is a taboo word, is it not? Even if Itadori can hear Sukuna in his head. Even if Itadori cannot shut up the demon king's words (said demon king was complimenting your fight style).

You nod, "Mm. He kept... killing me. Over and over again." Silence, and then, you let out a sigh, "But I came back each time. And then, I stopped it. I ended it. . . By killing her."

You turn. You cannot bring yourself to say her name. Mother. You must leave her where you did, six feet under, buried on the hill half a mile out from your home.

"You heard what I said to you, right? When you were in his Domain?" Itadori cups your cheeks in your hands. His palms are warm and it reminds you of the way a fire flickers in the early stages of winter.

You nod, "Without you... I don't think I could have done it." Embarrassed, you turn away. "I used to think of myself as weak. The more I did so, the more I actually became it. It was hard to break myself away from a pattern of thought I didn't question for sixteen years. I wonder why," You look down at your scarred hands, "Why now?"

Itadori gently takes your hand, "Because you're not alone. I'm here for you. Hell, everyone is here for you. And you are stronger in ways that no one else can ever be. And I'll always be there when you're at your lowest, just like how I ran those laps with you back in school."

His words bring about a tinge of red on your cheeks. You quickly put it forth to the winter weather but the blush is evident.

"I don't care anymore," You say dreamily, thinking about what happened across that year, "I used to. About being strong or weak. About having power or not having power."

Itadori is silent, almost mulling it over. You continue, a smile briefly graces your lips, "It was the fight at the end that mattered the most. Even if I couldn't hold my own in the beginning, I eventually did."

And you lift your shirt, revealing a long and thin scar from when your mother stabbed you. Because, even if it was all in your head, it was still real. And it was a battle-scar, an old wound, nothing more than the eternal remnant of a horrible and frightening memory. Never fleeting, never entirely gone. But you won't let the pain of being who you are become tattooed into your head. You may be your mother's daughter but that didn't make you nothing more or nothing less.

Itadori grimaces but then he lifts his finger and begins to trace, to which you quickly pull down your shirt, "H-hey, that's ticklish! Help! We're not even ten minutes into our relationship!"

Maybe that's what the two of you needed to heal from the trauma of the past year. A laugh or two in the middle of street, followed by a chase all the way to your own house. And your now-sober father asking Itadori a million questions about you and him.

You will never forget the way your dad's face broke into a smile when he saw how happy you and Itadori were.

Sure, sometimes, the scar will flesh out and hurt again, and it will feel like dying. But you suppose that's what makes moment like this, walking home together holding each other's hands, more bittersweet.

epilogue is DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!