“Do you understand?”

You blink, eyes trailing from the window to your mother. You take in the sight before you of the beige paste in the mortar before you, before your gaze lifts to meet hers. You nod in spite of hearing little else but ‘stomach ailments’.

“Good,” she smiles, going on to explain more herbs and their uses in basic treatments, although your mind keeps dragging you elsewhere as you struggle to stay present.

You know better than to think this comes from a good place. It’s not that your mother doesn’t care, of course these lessons are, technically, well-meaning and useful, the only reason she keeps you here is to keep you away from Sukuna.

Ever since the ‘incident’ in question, stray glances have been thrown towards your friend more and more often from more and more villagers. It has your hair standing on end, and being apart from him leaves you listless. Your mind can’t shed the image of your best friend with blood trailing down his shoulders, and the strange way he holds himself sends your mind into a near-constant spiral of panic.

If you find him like that again, will Arai help? Will you be so lucky as to find him in time again?

Instinctively, your eyes wander to the spot where Murata’s house resides, an overwhelming itch to check in on him suddenly coming over you.

With a severity to her voice that makes you flinch, your head whips back around to your mother as she states your name. “You need to pay attention. Someday, you could help heal your husband’s ailments using this. It’s your duty.”

Your brow knits, your disdain obvious in spite of the fact that you obey.

Husband. Duty.

You want nothing less.

The only boy who isn’t the worst is Sukuna.

Still, you murmur a half-hearted apology and let her carry on in another lesson you can’t escape.

You would be willing to wager a bet that a part of the reason she’s left the village so little since the incident with Imai’s boys is that she doesn’t want you near your closest friend. It feels as though every chance to sneak out and every attempt to simply walk out the door is foiled. It doesn’t often stop your friend, pokes you with a wheat stalk through the window on the nights where he hasn’t seen you all day.

He can’t pull his weight through the window anymore, struggling to carry the near-dead weight of his extra arms that never recovered from nerve damage, even nearly a year later.

But he never fails to show up.

And you rarely fail to sneak out on those nights.

Your mother carries on, droning on about mugwort and perilla until your ears feel as though they’ve just about fallen off and your eyes begin to glaze over. Were you being taught under different circumstances, you’re positive you would retain more. It’s not like the information isn’t useful, even if you were to approach it from the guise of using these remedies on yourself as an archer, but you can’t bring yourself to care, staring at the mortar and pestle with hardly-feigned interest every time she lifts it.

There comes a point where you swear time must have stopped because every time you look outside, the sun is still in the same place over the horizon.

It’s like the world is just playing games with you at this point.

Your head lifts when you hear someone young yelling. It’s distant, too far to tell whether it’s your friend or another of the village boys, but it drags away any semblance of concentration anyway.

“Pay attention,” your mother scolds you. It’s not like screaming is uncommon when it comes to children playing, so you give her back the small fraction of your attention that she had to begin with. 

But it only lasts so long when the yelling turns into a full-blown scream. Not the kind that you might brush off, but the kind that turns your blood to ice. You freeze to the spot, eyes wide as you stare at the pulverized mugwort for only a split second as your nervous system goes haywire.

Your breathing picks up, every single scenario you’ve conjured over the past three years whisking through your mind like a whirlwind. Your body acts on sheer panic alone. Inaction had you nearly losing him once, and now that the wind isn’t muffling the noise, you know your best friend’s cry.

You push up to your feet in an instant, your mother’s protests lost on you as you forgo shoes and go racing out the door towards the racket. Your mother’s steps aren’t far behind as you find Imai and Arai dragging something out of the fields behind Murata’s house. Your feet carry you over the packed dirt and scattered grass so quickly you almost wish they didn’t.

Your body betrays you when the sight before you is somehow worse than anything you’ve ever conjured in your mind. Your nightmares seem easier to navigate than the cruel fate that awaits you.

Blood seeps too fast from a large hole in Sukuna’s chest, punctured all the way through by the hunting spear that usually lies behind Murata’s home. It’s lodged in his chest, too close to his heart. His head hangs. Pink hair, matted and bloodied, hangs from atop his head, enough stray strands scattered across the ground to say that he didn’t give in without a fight. He hangs limp as they drag him by the end of the spear and one of his upper arms, and you can’t say for sure whether you’re too late or not.

When your body freezes a second too long, your mother grabs a hold of your arm, trying to drag you away from the sight.

“NO!” You scream, the sound wrenching from so deep within your chest that pain rips through your throat. You throw your full force in the opposite direction of her grip, nearly barreling you both into the dirt as you physically claw at the ground to keep her from dragging you away. “RYO!”

Arai shifts, continuing to hold the back of the spear as he steps between you and Sukuna in an effort to prevent you from the gruesome sight as though he isn’t the very cause of it. One of the lower arms hanging awkwardly from Sukuna’s torn sleeves twitches against the ground where he’s been dragged.

With one goal and one goal only in mind, you dig your nails into the earth, pulling with all of your might against your mother. “LET HIM GO!” You screech, tears gathering in your eyes as you fight your instinct to wail and cry for help when you’ve already witnessed the reality of Sukuna’s life. The only help coming to aid him is you, and you alone.

The adults fail to acknowledge you as anything more than a nuisance. They’re tearing your world apart in broad daylight, and they talk about you as though you’re not even there.

“Get her out of here.”

“I’m trying!”

More footsteps follow, but everything else is a blur when your mind clings to your friend. It holds on for dear life, your grip on the ground so desperate that when you drag yourself forward, your knees scraping harshly over rock, the pain doesn’t even register.

“RYO!” You plead again, clinging to a thick root in the mud that sticks under your nails. “Please,” your voice breaks into something harsh and jagged as tears spill, the sobs tearing through your body. The words that spill from your lips next don’t sound like you. “I need you.”

Your friend twitches again, a movement you barely manage to spot from around Arai’s figure. It doesn’t give you hope, but it’s all you have. It’s the last thread that keeps you from losing yourself, too, in that moment.

“Get,” Imai grits far more harshly this time, “her out of here.”

Your mother’s grip shifts long enough for you to surge forward, but Arai grabs you by your collar, keeping you out of reach of your friend.

You can only catch another mere glimpse of him, and it sends your stomach into a nauseating spiral. The dizzying sensation throws you off-balance and your mother catches you beneath your arms, dragging you back.

“No. NO!” Fighting against your body’s flighty instincts and your mother, you take everything you’ve learned from your limited time spent sparring with Sukuna to launch your weight straight into the ground. The impact is sudden and immense as you shake your head and attempt to pick yourself up, not having expected to successfully pull from her grip.

She scolds you, calling your name repeatedly on top of every consequence she can think of, but it’s nothing more than noise to you. Every scream attracts more attention, and for better or for worse, her words fall in amongst the rest of the chatter.

“Is that the boy I keep seeing around Murata-san?”

“Does it have four arms?”

“Stop fighting!”

“What’s wrong with his face?”

“We’re better off without it.”

“We must return home!”

“STOP!” You screech through the onslaught of overwhelming commentary as your mother drags you by the arm again.

Your chest heaves, vision blurred by tears as you fight with every last piece of iron will in your body to save your friend.

To your surprise, your scream silences much of the gathered crowd’s chatter. The shrill nature of it catches even Arai off-guard and he recoils from the noise, the tip of the spear he was holding stabbing into the ground and holding Sukuna in place at an awkward angle. Arai steps aside just enough that you finally can face your friend. Your mother still attempts to drag you away but you hang as a deadweight to prevent her from doing so with ease.

Your chest heaves, but with every inch you’re dragged further from him, your nervous system is sent into a frayed panic. Your heart pounds, the overwhelming sensation that it’s been torn by hand from within its cage like sawing through steel. Your breathing picks up, eyes burning as every inch you’re dragged backwards betrays everything you’ve spent the last three years building up since Saya’s passing.

“NO!” You cry out again, wrenching at your mother’s grip hard enough to pin yourself to the dirt again. Blood slowly wets the ground where gravel digs into the skin under your nails, but it’s the least of your worries as you’ve finally anchored yourself, tiring both yourself and your mother, and you can see Sukuna at last.

Really see him.

His breaths are shallow but present as he hangs limp on the spear. You can barely make out movement of his chest at all, thanking every god that might listen that his robes shuffle just enough to call it breathing at all. The protruding part of the right side of his face is covered in blood, as though one of the men holding your friend hostage has attacked his face, drawing blood as it drips from his scalp and an exposed area at the top of the cartilage.

His shoulder doesn’t hang right. In fact, most of them don’t. The bottom two remain damaged, hanging limp, while the upper arm Imai still has a grip on is twisted wrong. It must be completely out of the socket. Blood pours without stopping from a slice that starts at the same arm’s palm, jagged when it reaches his wrist, only ending midway up his forearm. The crimson pooling beneath him is unrelenting, staining the burlap of his robes from the waist down into something earth-shattering.

But the worst part is the spear whose sharp stone end protrudes from the upper left of his chest, angled into the dirt. On the off-chance it didn’t scathe a vital organ, it may have only narrowly avoided it.

“Ryo.” Your voice is frail, scraped over rocks as a sob wracks your body. Ignoring the pain in your fingers, you dig your nails further into the dirt-packed ground. You’ve lost faith in the onlookers to help, the most you can do now is hope. Pray. As if your dearest companion was ever protected by a god.

Fingers on the better of his two lower arms twitch again. His lashes flutter, and you find immediate relief in the fact that, by some greater force of good, he lives still. It’s not much, but it’s something.

“Ryo,” you continue desperately, something uncomfortable churning in your stomach like stones. It’s heavy and nauseating, but you cling to the fact that he’s listening. He can hear you. Over your mother’s yelling, over Arai and Imai trying to navigate the situation. He hears you. You suck in a breath through your sobs, your chest heaving as the sensation rips through you like a wildfire. “You can’t leave too.”

His lashes flutter once more, remaining a crack open this time. His head still hangs, and it’s only the slight tilt to the way he’s positioned that allows you to get a glimpse of one of his upper eyes. When your breathing picks up as he responds, the upper eye positioned on the protrusion from his face slowly opens as well. It’s red, far beyond just the natural hue of his irises or even the strain of tears. A blood vessel has burst, flooding the eye with a deep, unnatural crimson.

Your mother drags you by your torso, but your grip on a stone in the mud is unrelenting. You hear her call out for someone to help her, further flooded with anger when movement stirs behind Murata’s house. Saya’s mother, proving that she’s not an onlooker, but a perpetrator of the violence, too. You grit your teeth, steeling yourself as your attention returns to Sukuna.

He doesn’t look at you, but he’s aware of you. It’s all you need. “Please,” you hiccup as you inhale sharply. “I need you.”

Like an axel lodging back into place, your words jolt something in his mind. The fog splits as though it’s been sliced, and his pupils rise to meet you.

You’re hunched over, dirt and mud clinging to your nice pink kimono. You fight tooth and claw, giving everything you have to be there with him.

Even as you fight, he hates the way your eyes flicker across his face, cataloguing every last detail you can before he becomes nothing more than a memory in the mantle of your mind. He pictures himself as a whittled carving, similar to the toys you once played with together. He’s sure his lower arms would be whittled with less care than the upper ones, a distant memory given that even you rarely see them. His lower eyes would be barely an indent, a remnant of what was, and what you can recall.

His mind cruelly conjures the image of his best friend, not even thirteen, alone in the world. Hunched over, your knees pulled to your chest as everything you’ve ever known is torn from you by forces out of your control.

He hates the anguish twisting every feature on your face out of place. He hates the temperature of red as it boils under his skin. His fingers twitch again, the muscles of his lower arms protesting when he tests them.

Familiar static lingers at the tips of his digits, little slices that barely divot the dirt at first. Sensing his defiance, Imai grabs the spear again, giving it a hateful and harsh jolt. Sukuna’s head hangs again, blood crawling up his throat to spill from his lips.

“RYO!” Your fighting grows more frantic, less controlled, as Saya’s mother bends over to tear your fingers from whatever it is you’re clinging to.

Sukuna’s jaw hangs ajar as he adjusts to the sharp seizing of torn musculature and chest pain that bleeds red. Imai spits cold words at him, but his mind swims with the only warmth he knows.

You. You. You. You.

The static grows sharp.

He doesn’t know how to unleash it with accuracy. It’s never been a blessing. It’s always been something dark that simmers like hot oil beneath his skin. An energy he can’t quite wield, yet it seems to draw some people to him like a beacon and he has yet to understand it. He sees creatures you don’t. He knows different of the supposed folklore you’ve both heard stories of.

He knows the horned beast with a long curled tail and spikes along its back, the entity so demonic for tearing down an entire village in one fell swoop is no demon at all. He knows there are no claws, no fangs, and no venom.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” You cry out in defiance as the two closest things he’s ever had to a motherly figure both try to pull you away without so much as a glance at him.

His head lifts again. He blinks as viscous crimson seeps between his lashes, temporarily blinding him in one eye. With the stronger of his lower arms, he drags it to the best of his ability to the spear, but before he can even grab it, Arai’s foot comes down hard on his wrist.

He’s never been more grateful for the severed nerves in his arms, but his jaw still hangs loosely in pain. It’s dull, but not gone.

You scream at the sight as Saya’s mother frees your hands from whatever it was that you were holding so steadily onto. The sight has your fear turning ugly. Both the maw on Sukuna’s stomach and face grit their teeth in kind. Tears flood your face as you pull, writhe, and scream against your mother’s wishes. You attract more attention that Sukuna has never shown himself to and it brings a startling thought to his weakened mind.

He wants peace. He wants to be normal.

But if not normal, he just wants to see you smile again.

“RYO!” Your voice is ragged, tearing through him in a violent wave. The hurt wavering your voice is more painful than any spear through the chest. He sucks in a shallow breath as he grits his teeth, both men above finally distracted enough that he’s able to reach for the spear with his good hand. The stone blade is sharp against his palm, but the static of tiny slashes provides enough friction that it doesn’t touch him.

He tries to push himself up, to maneuver his body in a way that it pulls the spear from the dirt, but his strength is miniscule. He shuffles uselessly against his assailants, but he’s left with no sensation in the lower half of his body. “Stop,” he sputters through the blood, not for his sake, but yours.

“Grab a dagger. Finish this,” Arai ignores him.

The man’s words are lost on him. “Stop,” Sukuna coughs. The way his body wracks sends pain like a jolt up his spine. He groans, giving a weak tug at the spear to pull it from the earth, but it only serves to bloody his palm.

Imai and Arai move around him like a mission as your mother and Saya’s drag you away. You dig your heels into the ground, you claw, you scrape, you bite.

But it’s the screaming that finally gets through.

“DON’T HURT HIM!” His heart wrenches. “LET HIM GO!” It twists, and he has to grit his teeth to bear the pain. “RYO!” You’re almost out of sight when he hears you cry out in pain as you’re dragged away wrong. “I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU!”

His blood runs cold as something inside him tilts. The static erupts into furious slices as he cries out for you. They travel over the ground, leaving harsh divots in their path. They sit in the air like a storm, cutting through tension, thick, hot, and no longer figurative, but undeniably real. He falls out of Imai’s grasp at last as the man steps away, allowing Sukuna to catch himself on the one good arm he has before his torso slides further down the spear. His attacks die down as he catches his breath when he startles both men.

“Get the dagger!” One of them yells with more urgency.

He can’t say which one of the men it is that moves first, but his good arm lifts as he cries out in fury and rage and in mere moments, the man has halted, bones sliced through so cleanly that the way he falls apart is unnatural. It doesn’t phase the child. His hand lowers back to the spear as he unlodges it from the ground with a harsh pull in the midst of the terrified screaming surrounding him.

Someone moves towards him, wrenching one of his bad shoulders. He recoils immediately, and with one look, they pay the price for touching him. His hand whips up and redirects his anger in a series of slashes. Their arm meets the ground as Sukuna falls back, the spear pulling more blood from his mouth as its weight shifts. He grabs the weapon again, his movements panicked as he feels the only gaze that matters searing into him.

He runs on adrenaline, fueled by an innate need to survive. He can’t let the image of you, alone in the world, become reality.

He slices clean through the spear’s wooden handle, holding the stone tip in a shaking hand. The situation around him has grown dire with many running to protect their families while others scream to kill him. To kill the two-faced curse.

One of his weaker arms drags off the ground, a modicum of strength and feeling returning to it. He doesn’t know where it comes from, but the energy within him shifts in ways he’s never felt before. In the same way your words stirred something within him, a grasp on the energy curling within fell into place out of sheer need.

His head lifts, bloodshot eyes searching the commotion for you. He looks past the stack of severed limbs at his side where you’re still fighting with every fiber of your being to get to his side.

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” You cry, being dragged by one arm. With his senses on high alert and a new understanding of something within, he can practically feel your pain. In spite of the fact that your arm is at an odd angle, it’s the fear and desperation in your chest that he feels the strongest.

He wonders briefly if it’s the innate understanding of the energy in the world around him beginning to fall into place, or if your places in one another’s lives has simply connected you as such.

“STOP!” You sob again, your head whipping around to look back at him. You don’t see the limbs. You don’t see the blood. You don’t see the people running in fear.

You see your best friend.

You see a man with a dagger ready to plunge it into his back.

“RYO! LOOK OUT!”

One by one, every scream knocks something into place until his systems all begin to function once more. It’s fragmented and broken, it’s not the smooth motion of a waterwheel, but something far more cobbled together.

He twists awkwardly, plunging the tip of the spear into his assailant’s knee before they reach him. As they recoil, he reaches for the spear’s handle in his chest, gritting his teeth as he pulls it through his chest. Inch by painful inch, the bloodied handle gives way until he’s able to release it onto the ground before him. A hole runs clean through his chest, blood pouring from it in waves without the spear to cauterize the wound.

Your chest heaves with exhaustion as you kick and scream, yelling protests for the world to hear. Your calls and prayers are met in tandem with Sukuna’s ability to fight back, grateful to see life in his eyes, in spite of the ensuing violence.

When you see him free of the spear, his lower body slowly beginning to move as he gathers himself, your movements pause as you can only pray that by some miracle he isn’t left with horrible injuries. Saya’s mother takes the opportunity to reposition her grip, unaware that you’re paying avid attention. You twist your wrist, turning towards her as you free yourself. With your free hand, you pry your mother’s hand away and dart through the mess towards Sukuna.

What they might do to him, you can only hope they won’t do to you.

It’s the last ditch effort you can possibly think of that might stop this mess from ending in the only way you see it going.

Your arms wrap around him, blood soaking and staining your kimono as you collapse on top of him on the ground. His entire body heaves, his breathing laborious and his heart in a fit of uncertainty.

He wraps one weakened lower arm around you. The other remains limp, the effort of channeling his energy not worth it in the moment, and one upper arm remains out of the socket. He’s not quite sure how to fix that one with his limited understanding of his abilities. The other holds him up on an elbow, just out of his own pooling blood, cool and viscous against his skin.

The pressure and weight of your embrace doesn’t soothe the pain, but the world’s action quiets down for a moment.

Because you were right.

What they might do to Sukuna without worry, they will not do to you.

You sob endlessly into his shoulder while his head spins. His brain function is barely put together, unable to fully wrap his head around the concept of forcing the energy he wields to heal his chest when he’s running on fumes and lost an immense amount of blood. He can’t begin to tell where your tears end and his start. At some point, he became numb to the very sensation of his own.

The world is an overwhelming uproar of voices and yells, questions about the origins of the unknown boy and calls to find Murata. Between the noise, the sun, the wind, and your warmth all pressing down on him, he can’t make sense of the way the energy within him curls and bends. It may have clicked for long enough to pull himself away from death’s door, but now as he tries to stitch himself back together and reverse the damage of his injuries, he’s losing himself in the fog.

Imai’s voice rings out over your ragged breaths, grave and furious as he favors the knee without a sharp stone lodged into it.

“Move aside. This doesn’t have to do with you.”

You flinch, your grip tightening. Sukuna’s chest protests the movement, his jaw hanging open as a groan of pain parts his lips. He coughs, blood sputtering from his mouth as he struggles to hold himself out of his own pooling blood.

Imai calls for your mother, trailing behind as she watches in horror with Saya’s mother. “Get her out of here!” He hisses, his fingers clutching the back of your kimono as he attempts to drag you from Sukuna. The boy’s grip on you tightens, but even so, he prepares himself for disappointment.

But you only cling harder to him, burying your face into his shoulder. His heart pangs.

“NO!” You scream as your mother wrenches on your shoulders. Sukuna offers enough weight that pulling on you means trying to drag him along with you, an effort that can’t be accomplished with only one person. Asking someone to get near the equal parts terrified and furious boy is a big ask when they’ve seen what he’s capable of.

But with you this close, he doesn’t even know what he’s capable of and fears it altogether.

But even more so, he’s tired. The fight is leaving his body with your comfort tied to his side in a bloody bow.

As your mother fails to pull you from him, Imai takes matters into his own hands, the dagger in his hand suddenly held unsteadily at your jugular.

Sukuna’s eyes, bloodied and blurred, rise to meet Imai pleadingly. “Don’t,” he manages to rasp through the fog, “please.”

Imai’s lips curls. “You have no authority to make demands here. Let her go or–”

“How dare you?” Your mother roars furiously, her grip on you loosening on your shoulders as she makes a move to protect you. In the effort to do so, she staggers Imai’s stance, and the dagger lodges itself into Sukuna’s shoulder. He groans, inadvertently digging his nails into your side as it drags more of his blood to the earth below.

Your mother rounds Imai until she can separate him from you and Sukuna by the shoulders. She gives his hunched shoulders an adamant tug, sending him back and his hand flying outward, still tightly wound around the weapon’s handle. The dagger drags heavily over Sukuna’s shoulder, opening his wound further. Blood spills from his lips again, his eyes fluttering as he struggles to keep conscious under the weight of blood loss and brain fog.

He doesn’t even hear your yelp, it’s the way you jolt that makes him open his eyes again.

His clouded vision goes red at the sight that meets him. The cut from his shoulder drags straight into yours, the two forming a single, long slice telling of the misfortune that comes with being friends with the creature of nightmarish tales.

He swallows hard, pupils flickering across your shoulder until he finds your face. Contorted in pain, you look like another person.

His breathing comes hard. Every breath is purposeful when he pours every last ounce of harnessable energy into one hand, turning to shield you from the onslaught of slashes he lets out in the air.

Imai’s guttural cry makes you flinch.

But it’s your mother’s shocked gasp that has you looking up.

Regardless of how frustrated you’ve been with her, she’s still your mother. Some part of you hasn’t fully registered what Sukuna is capable of, in spite of the dismemberment and blood surrounding you. You don’t fully have a grasp on the damage he’s wrought and the choices he can’t come back from anymore, too caught up in anguish and anxiety.

But when you look up, your vision glazes over as you lift your head past the remnants of Imai to your mother, her chest heaving and eyes wide with fear. Sukuna’s arm falls into the pooling crimson beneath him, no longer only his own blood, as his consciousness begins to fade. Your mother’s scratches are only surface-level, a decision Sukuna made through fog and iron.

But she still breathes fury and desperation as she raises hell to pull you two apart, begging for help from villagers unwilling to come any closer. You can feel Saya’s mother’s fury burning into your back as she’s forced to watch Imai succumb to the violence that she already blames for the loss of her daughter and husband.

“What’s going on?” Murata’s voice rings out in the midst of your mother’s cries. You can hear Imai’s boys sobbing in the distance. Arai’s wife cries with them. No one dares to speak ill of the child whose very existence is calamity. The guardian locks eyes with his own child, his lips pressed into a thin line as he’s backed into a corner.

He doesn’t need any replies to his question, because through your sobs as you cling to Sukuna, Murata knows. He’s likely always known it would come to this.

Even as Sukuna– a few days from thirteen– stares up at Murata from over your shoulder, he knows already that there was never any question in what decision his guardian would choose. He’s seen it all before and he knew from the start that he would see it again.

“Forgive me, Ryomen.”

Crimson irises fall, rolling to the side as he willingly gives in with no fight left in him. He lets his head fall back into the bloodied dirt, matting his hair with the remains of those lost as he prepares for death, protecting you with what last energy he has and praying that when his world goes black, yours remains intact.

It’s the least the gods above could do for smiting him in such a cruel way.

–

When you wake, your head pounds. You shut your eyes tight, praying that the light won’t harm you, but it’s that same familiar sensation from when you slammed your head against the tree last year when facing Imai’s boys. The sun’s light furthers the sensation of something rattling in your brain and your memory is fuzzy.

You can’t recall falling asleep, nor can you recall passing out, if that was the case either.

There’s nothing but fog in every direction, and no discernable way out.

Your limbs are heavy as you lift them towards the sun, blocking its rays from hitting your face. Your throat is dry, raw, and you sputter out a cough as you attempt to sit up in your bed.

The noise attracts your mother’s attention, who kneels in front of you without niceties. You try to shake your head of her grip as she grabs your cheeks and turns your head this way and that, seemingly looking over your vision as though it isn’t swimming.

“Stop,” you rasp, clumsily swatting at her.

She grabs your wrist in her palm, her grip tight. Your brow furrows on instinct as you squint up at her, trying to make sense of your surroundings. When you shift your gaze, the back of your head begins pounding.

“I am not playing around,” she states, punctuating the phrase with your name.

You try to shake your head, but it just results in harsher pounding. You hiss, reaching for the back of your head to find swelling, but you can’t recall how it happened.

“I’m not playing,” you mutter, tugging on your arm, but her grip is without relent. “My head hurts.”

“I would imagine it does.”

Confusion clouds your mind as you stare at her, attempting to blink away the incessant onslaught of sunlight on your senses. She doesn’t grace you with a reply, though she finally drops your wrist.

It’s then that you notice that her arms and parts of her chest are bandaged, though you can’t recall why. Had she burned herself?

She gets back up to her feet, shaking her head at your father as they speak in a low tone you can’t quite make out. Your head drops, gaze fixating on your blanketed lap where your hands reside. Blinking, you flip one over, staring at your palm. It’s not just dirty from the day’s usual grime, it’s dry and cracking, a deep and stomach-churning crimson dried into the cracks. You lift your other hand, finding the same of both, with dried blood packed beneath your nails and a noticeable sting when you pick at it.

Your mind swims, cloudy as you trudge through memories in search of what happened.

Dried blood clings to you in all of the spots that aren’t so easy to clean, but what really strikes you is when you look down at your shoulder and find blood soaked into the hemp material of your clothes. You lift a hand, pushing them aside and staring blankly at a tightly wrapped bandage, soaked in deep crimson as it wraps from your clavicle to your shoulder and across your chest to secure it.

In true childlike manner, your first instinct is to touch it, taught an instant lesson when your body fights back with a stinging sensation. You wince, staring down at it in confusion.

“Do not touch your shoulder,” your mother reprimands you with little care in her tone as she physically wrenches your hand away. You whine in protest, resisting the way she pulls your arm.

“That hurts.”

You don’t even get a snarky reply this time.

“What did I do?” You query, completely at a loss as to what’s happened recently when something strikes you. “Where’s Ryo?”

Her eyes flash with something dangerous. “Do not ask about that boy.”

You can only watch in confusion as your stomach churns uncomfortably when she crosses the floor to whatever she has cooking over the fire. “What? Why?”

Her head whips towards you with enough venom to make you shrink away. “He’s gone.” The word sits before you like the ill omen they always considered him to be. You swallow hard as your stomach threatens to throw up the limited amount of food that’s already in it. Your body runs cold, a horrifying sensation settling into the tips of your fingers and toes as though they’ve already gone numb.

Your chest feels as though a weight presses down on it and in a horrifying burst of panic, you throw your blankets off and make for the door. Your mother calls for you, but you’re too fast as the door slams open and you’re met with a horrific sight.

The iron in the wind hits you first. A low metallic tang that grips you by the throat has you bringing a hand to your lips as there is no fresh air to save you. It’s the still-bleeding remains that finally wrench your stomach into full unease. Whatever food you had managed to eat in the last day is emptied from your stomach as you clutch it uncomfortably, unable to tear your eyes from the spot where the pooling blood is just that– still a pool. Not dried.

It hits you hard, yesterday’s events. The blunt force of the memory is more painful than whatever blunt object Murata made the decision to knock out not only Sukuna with, but you as well.

Which leaves you with one bitter question. He’s gone. That’s inevitable. But how gone? For as cruel as Murata could be, you don’t believe him to be a killer. You can’t. So you can only hope the hate harbored towards your friend wasn’t enough to spear him through the chest yet again.

The mere thought leaves you dizzy as your mother pulls you back inside. You stumble back, falling over your feet and onto your knees as you try to gather yourself, but nothing feels right. Anxiety grips every muscle in your body, stuck in a permanently tense sensation like your nervous system doesn’t know how to let go.

Struggling to suck in a breath from where you’ve fallen to the floor, you stare up wildly at your mother. “Where is he?”

Not an ounce of care stares back at you. Your father doesn’t even glance over his shoulder as you struggle to put together the missing pieces of the puzzle. “He’s gone.”

“Where is he?” You cry with increasing panic. White encroaches on the edges of your vision as your body goes into full-blown paranoia. “I can’t–” You shake your head wildly, pushing to your feet and taking a couple of steps away from your mother in the midst of your anxiety. “I need him, I can’t–” Your breathing picks up, every gasp serving to send your body in the wrong direction as you stumble away from the figures you can barely make out anymore. “Not Ryo too,” you cry out, tears spilling over.

Your mother calls your name, taking both of your biceps as she holds you in place. Your nervous system goes haywire, your body tipping over the edge as you’re sent into fight or flight. She tries to explain that you don’t need him. She tries to explain that you’ll be a good daughter. She tries to explain that someday you’ll be a good wife to a husband who you’ll take care of.

But nothing registers as all you can picture is your brute of a friend, cast away if the blood loss didn’t take him first. He didn’t even get ten years at your side before being sent out into the forest again to scavenge for rabbits and search for warmth in the sort of places most people don’t dare look.

And that’s only if you can hope he’s still alive.

“Where is he?” You repeat your question as she outright refuses to give you a real answer.

There’s no hope in your mother’s scream when she finally raises her voice past the disappointment she’s been holding over you. “HE’S GONE!” She moves you to a chair, your feet moving clumsily over the ground as she drags you across the floor. Your shoulder protests every movement and your mind can’t make out the difference between your left and right, caught between panic over Sukuna and the sickly feeling that comes with the complete and utter shutdown of your body.

Spiralling into a complete manic state, you stare through her as you barely manage to scrape a reply past your lips. “He can’t be. He can’t– I can’t–” You swallow hard in an effort to quell the uneasy feeling in your stomach as your head swims, the white ring around your vision closing in on you.

“You can and you will.”

But your world is dark again when your body and mind protest that sentiment with a complete and utter shutdown.

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➴ a/n ; it hurts my heart to put these poor babies through so much :'( i promise things won't be quite as intense going forward! thank you for the support on this series though, i appreciate you all <3

➴ taglist ; OPEN. age must be visible in bio. 18+ only. @lilrosyhaven @tiny-mimi @grimm3r @yujisredkicks @knittybritty98 @sukunahs @saezzi @epicderpface @ynishalee @pandabiene5115 @silibiliballs @ane5e @feyrinnn @jkslvsnella @maomimii @megumuro @gojosoups @sukunas-one-n-only-peach @beaniesayshi @ryomeowie @suguusatoo @sukubusss @matchaenthusiast1111 @peachhiz @seellove @msrinnnn @amenabiii @jasontoddscumslut @asimpinamillion @rottenrange @ricktastix @indiewritesxoxo @cosmotoic @berry-marys @eli54sa @lovers-roq @arcanelusttt @cheol-lies @scarletcachecyclone @bam-boozledx @icebearcucumber @meatboy167 @t4ters @slushycoookie @yarimarjane @dishs0pe @martianzmars @tohru-tales @loijkiupo0 @crimzie129

the main reason that the title fye stuck for the series has to do with the mess of emotions that comes with being in the arrangement with sukuna (in a sukuna-centred fic where i'm sure we can all make assumptions that feelings are inevitable LOL) while having a crush on satoru