It was dark, the crackle of the fire the only sound, flickering light against the wall of the structure you were in. It wasn’t a cave, it seemed like thin branches of some sort woven together and bent to make the makeshift shelter. There were other trinkets hanging along the walls, but even as you squint you couldn’t make them out clearly. You feel the pinpricks of numbness settling into your foot, as you begin to readjust you feel the softness of the ground beneath your hands and legs. It wasn’t the ground, there was a huge, fuzzy blanket type material beneath you, soft like fur in some parts and course like whiskers in others. No doubt an animal hide.

Just then you realize how cold the air is despite the fire, so you drape the large blanket around your shoulders and settle in again until your eye catches a glowing red spot in the corner.

You squint again to see through the shadows, and with a gulp you realize it’s a person – a very large man. Your body freezes and goosebumps cover your flesh as you realize with a chill that you were not alone this whole time, that you were being watched as you took in your surroundings.

The man stares at you back, red eyes pinning you, analyzing, ever watchful. He has a similar woolly blanket draped over his form, covering most of his body.

Unsure, you think he is the same man you encountered earlier, the man who took down the tiger. You don’t know whether he did it to help you or not, but you figure that he’s the only thing that currently stands between you and your death in this prehistoric era.

You take a deep breath, steel yourself, and slowly push the empty bowl in his direction.

“Can I have some more please?” You squeak.

He stares at you. Then he shifts. He slowly lumbers up to his full, gaping height, the blankets falling to the ground around his bare feet. You can barely make out his form through the shadows as he pads towards the right, reaching down to grab something before making his way closer to you.

Your breath hitches when he steps into the firelight.

Your wide eyes take in his muscular form, the extra set of limbs sprouting from just below his shoulders, the oddly placed eyes, the – the thing covering the right side of his face, the black markings all over his skin. And his height – dear lord the guy was a giant! He was easily the largest man, both in height and musculature, that you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Your gaze then meets his. He watches you take in his form, used to the fear he sees flicker in your eyes yet there’s something else there, something like fascination and curiosity.

You flinch when he steps closer and catch him rolling his left eyes, the bigger ones on the right not leaving you, not blinking.

He huffs as he squats by your bowl slightly, pouring water from some kind of clay barrel into it, and that’s when you see them.

With how nervous you’ve been, you didn’t realize until just now, legs open in front of you that he had two massive dicks hanging between his thighs.

You gulp and quickly avert your eyes, heat creeping up your cheeks but your eyes have a mind of their own and flit back to the appendages swinging like pendulums. He gets up then, shifting back to his spot in the dark and curling into his blankets once more.

This time you watch him as you gulp down your drink, trying to make sense of it all. As much as you didn’t want to breathe life into the idea, it was clear you weren’t in your own time anymore. You were in a time preceding your own, where beasts and early mankind – who once lived only in your textbooks – now ruled the land. And here you were, somehow sharing a hut with one. A beast or a man, you had yet to find out.

So then, what was he? An early caveman it seemed, but what species? How far in the past were you?

You realized with a dread then, that you would need him if you wanted to survive. You weren’t built for this period, the environment completely unfamiliar to you, and for whatever reason he hasn’t killed you yet and you weren’t eager to push your luck.

You steel yourself. “So, what’s your name?”

Silence. He stares at you.

You introduce yourself anyway, knowing he doesn’t understand a lick of your language. If you don’t speak, however, you feel you’d go crazy.

You ask him about himself, speak to him slowly while using gestures hoping he understands. You know he’s as intelligent as you, considering his use of weapons and shelter and the clay jug molded to hold water, all these were modern tools that early humans used twenty to thirty-thousand years ago. And although he didn’t speak to you, he was able to communicate, understanding your request for more water and granting it.

He was too big to be a neanderthal, they weren’t found in Japan as far as you know, and he was easily eight feet tall with the physique to rival a bodybuilder.

Your heart begins to pick up pace, flushing in excitement and cheeks stretching to accommodate your growing smile at the realization that the new species you and the team were out to discover, was here. Sitting right in front of you. Bundled up in blankets to keep warm.

He doesn’t respond to anything you say, but his brows furrow at your changing expression. He shoots you a final side eye before grunting and turning over to finally sleep, and you think maybe you creeped him out with your leering – that or you talked his ear off.

At least he doesn’t think I’m a threat, you think, if he’s comfortable enough to turn his back to me.

It’s then you feel your own eyes get heavy. You stifle a yawn and curl into your own furs, trying to get some much-needed rest.

You awaken the next morning after some fitful sleep. Even with the blankets, sleeping on the ground was not at all as comfortable as a bed, or even a sleeping bag. Not to mention despite the warmth from the fire and furs, the coldness of the night still seeped into your hands and feet. You would need to get used to it.

When you sit up, the fire is already out and you are alone. You blink away the last of your fatigue and stretch, day light pouring in from the front entrance of the structure. You take a moment to take in your surroundings now that you can actually see them.

You’re inside some type of hut, big enough to fit three or four people, with a sloped, cone-shaped roof tapering off above you, not sealed off all the way. Definitely to leave an escape for the smoke from the fire. The wall beside you is made up of some thin, bamboo type shoots woven together, and when you press against it, its firm to the touch, unmoving. You guess there is some material on the outside of it stopping any breeze from flowing through the cracks, maybe some clay or something to help its firmness and retain heat better.

The firepit is in the center, and there’s an assortment of items leaning against the walls and hanging from them too: different knives and tools, stone and wooden trinkets, the large clay jug of water from earlier in one corner and towards the opposite end of the entrance of the hut… bones?

You can’t help your curiosity and slowly inch closer, only to step on something. You glance down and gasp in elation. It’s Suguru’s toolbelt! 

In all the hubbub you completely forgot about it again, and this time you take full inventory of his stash of essentials. Aside from the excavation tools and flashlight, he also kept:

a lighter

a match kit

some travel Advil and bandages

gauze

a mini sewing kit

some mint funny enough

a collapsible water bottle

a little three-inch switchblade

a whistle

protein bars

and a pencil and notepad.

How he kept all this stuff in a tiny little toolkit, you’d never know, and frankly you didn’t care! You squeal in happiness at your treasures, packing them back up and thinking how you could just kiss him when you see him again for indirectly keeping you alive.

You secure the belt back onto your hips and walk over to the different bones you noticed earlier. They’ve all been dried thoroughly and are clearly in the process of being repurposed. Some are shaved down into blunt ends, others into sharp points. You touch the smooth ivory tusks of mammoths, big rib cages still intact and reach forward to feel the heaviness in your palm when a shout from the entrance makes you yelp and drop it.

Your head flies around to see a little pink-haired boy at the entrance dressed in nothing but some woven underpants, eyes wide and finger pointing at you accusatorily. He shouts something again until a large hand appears from behind him and grabs him by the hem of his garment and plucks him up, the kid flailing about in the air before disappearing.

You blink at the cartoonish interaction, and that’s when you pick up the sounds coming from outside. It sounds like chatter, like people and hustle-bustle. You walk closer to the entrance, closer to the sounds of civilization and you pull your cap lower over your eyes to shield yourself the glare of the sun briefly when you exit.

When your eyes adjust, you see the community before you. Huts no different than your own sprinkled around a huge clearing, the forest line not too far from where you stand, maybe a hundred meters away. People dressed in leathers and furs, men and women and children, trickling in and out of different huts, some sitting around fires, busy in their activities and others running around. There can’t be more than forty or fifty people here, but you could feel the synergy in the system they built, the community. You notice the hut you came out of is situated a little differently than the others, a bit further away, almost on the outskirts of the encampment. You wonder if it’s because you’re an unknown outsider or for some other reason.

You hear struggling from behind you and turn to see the four-armed giant from last night. The little child who was yelling at you just moments before – who you notice eerily resembles the larger fellow – is thrashing around in his grip upside down, held simply by his ankle. The man looks almost bored, ignoring the kid completely as the arms on his other side cradle a large woven basket. You notice a couple more kids idling around his legs, staring up at you in curiosity and you gulp in nervousness, not used to having so many eyes on you.

With one eye watching you, the man lowers the kid before dropping him on his bum and muttering something to him. The kids all scatter away and run towards the main encampment, glancing back at you every now and then.

The man now has his undivided attention on you but you don’t notice, eyes glued to the countless blueberries in the sack in his arms. Your stomach growls, hands clamping onto your belly in embarrassment and hunger as you eye the fruit. The caveman sighs through his nose before reluctantly holding the sack out to you, and you dive in without hesitation, bringing handfuls of the berries to your lips. The man watches you munch away, mind at work behind his furrowed brows.

Much of the questions you had about him, he wondered about you as well. And his current question was why the heck you were so scrawny and small. He’s never seen a woman look like you before: you were easily a foot shorter than the smallest women in their band despite being clearly fully grown. Your build was comically miniature, less sturdy, and you certainly didn’t seem very durable. Yet despite this, there was no indication of illness or malnutrition. You just looked like a smaller version of the normal person.

Whatever, he had other things to do.

You startle at his abrupt movement. He begins walking towards the rest of the community and you blindly follow him. Whether you follow him or the berries, he can’t tell.

You glance around your surroundings behind his big, burly back, and awkwardly note the way most of the people stop what they’re doing and stare. The beast leading you pays no mind, no doubt used to the looks and truth be told, he finds it refreshing that he’s not the object of their stares for once.

Typically, they’d be wary of outsiders and threats, ready with spears and weapons but since Sukuna was the one to bring your unconscious body into their space himself, they deemed you safe enough.

Just then, the delicious aroma of cooking meat hits your nostrils, causing you to salivate and whip your head around to the source of the smell. All your nervousness and shame gone, you forget about the man you were following like a puppy and all but float over to where a muscular woman sits roasting some type of meat on skewers over an open flame. Like a hawk, she watches you approach, ready for anything, hand tightening on a makeshift poker out of sight. Others watch too, flabbergasted that the puniest stranger would approach one of their most lethal warriors.

When you reach her, there is an almost audible pause as you raise your hand and point to the cooking meat like a toddler. The woman stares, but this time her expression drops from guarded to dumbstruck.

Your cheeks heat as she eyes you with an unimpressed gaze, but c’mon, a handful of blueberries would never have filled you. She slowly reaches for a skewer and awkwardly passes it to you. You thank her, happily blowing away at the sizzling meat before taking a bite, turning to look around for your companion.

You find him sauntering back over towards the treeline, already out of the main camp so you rush to catch up to him, the eyes of the others following you. You see a long spear, almost trident-looking, resting loosely over his shoulders, top set of arms dangling over it. A set of eyes glance your way as you catch up to his side, but he otherwise pays you no mind.

You two find yourself back at the river bank. He reaches for a little sack tied around the top of his weapon, and tosses it into the water. It looked like the carcass of a small animal.

He meanders his way to a large set of flat boulders perched perfectly in the sun and plops himself down. He reclines back on folded arms behind his head, natural eyes closed. The eyes on the plate on his face remain open and unblinking, shifting around his environment every few moments.

You stand off to the side for a bit, unsure what to do since your unofficial tour guide decided to take a break so early in the day.

Deciding on exploring your surroundings, you wander around the riverbank poking and prodding at shells, getting bored very quickly. Huffing, you plop down some ways away from the dozing caveman and stare at his incredible body.

You’d only seen muscles like that in bodybuilding videos on social media. Body taut even while relaxing, strange markings – tattoos – marking lines on his chest and bands around his wrists and biceps.

Your head tilts in perplexity. How the fuck was he maintaining this physique? Certainly not on wild berries. You know that humans in this time period were more herbivorous than they were carnivores, owing mainly to the fact that meat was sparser and tougher to catch than plant-based foods.

In that moment, a lightbulb goes off above your head. Why not document this? All your questions, all your observations, everything?

You reach into your toolbelt and pull out the little notepad and pencil, flipping through to a new page passing by Suguru’s neat handwriting.

You jot down everything that comes to mind so far: the settlement, the huts, the structure and tools used, what the people were wearing, the community dynamic – everything.

You glance up towards your companion, still lying there sunbathing like a cat. On a fresh page, you start sketching out his frame, trying to capture everything with your limited artistic ability and labeling his body like a diagram. You’re so absorbed in what you’re doing, you don’t notice him rousing from his light slumber, all eyes now trained on you.

His keen hearing picked up on you fiddling about earlier while he relaxed, splashing slightly on the shore and muttering to yourself in your strange tongue. Then you went silent, and stayed silent.

Peeking an eye open to see if you managed to die in the five minutes he left you to your devices, he sees you some distance away, a face of intense concentration on something in your lap. Sukuna sits up now, wondering what you’ve found that’s captured your whole attention.

You don’t notice the large body approaching you until he’s stood directly before you, his shadow falling over your sitting form. You look up at him and watch as he slowly crouches down before you, eyes not leaving the pencil and notepad in your hands.

Your ears heat as you remember the last time he crouched before you, eyes flitting to the now clothed place between his legs before you gulp and shake your head to clear your mind of such thoughts.

He’s very close. Leaning forward into your personal space with a suspicious look in his gaze as he eyes your writing utensil, you slightly lean back to give yourself some much-needed room.

“Uh… I’m just writing what I’ve observed so far. Like your shelter and stuff…” You wince at the awkwardness of your explanation, knowing he doesn’t understand a word.

His stares at the pointed lead, so you hold it up in front of his face. “Pencil”, you say, “to write.”

With a cautious hand, he reaches for it and with surprising gentleness, grasps it between his thick fingers. You watch his expression change from suspicion to curiosity as he twists and prods at the item. His eyes flit to the notepad next, and you have a feeling he wants it next but won’t ask.

You can’t help but laugh lightly at his curiosity, likening him to a demanding toddler. He glances up at you at the sound, catching the smile on your face. You show him the notepad, describing and motioning how it’s used in tandem with the pencil. He gets comfortable, crossing his thick legs as he replicates your writing motions with jerky hands, scribbling a line into the paper.

Given the chance to be so close to him for the first time, you finally get a closer look at his face and notice how handsome he is despite his peculiar anatomy. He has a blunt, strong nose that looks like it’s been broken a couple times. All four eyes were red, the smaller, ordinary left eyes were slightly hooded, giving him a perpetually bored look while the bulging, vertical eyes on the right seemed sharp. The markings on his face were like a map, leading your eyes from his cheekbones to his lips to his chin. You eye the plate covering the right side of his face, and without thinking you reach out to touch it.

Your fingers are just an inch away from brushing his skin when you feel his rough hand clasp around your fingers, stopping you. He doesn’t stop doodling, and while his focus is still on getting his grip on the pencil right, both right eyes peer at you with a warning before letting go.

You gulp. You want to touch him but he’s clearly still wary of you. What you don’t know is that Sukuna would have sliced off your hand with his spear had it been anyone else, but even he cut you some slack knowing you’re just a dumb outsider who doesn’t know any better.

You have an idea. Maybe you can barter with him, a sort of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours type of thing. You reach into your toolbelt and pull out your flashlight, holding it up to his face with an impish smile. He forgets about his doodles as his attention zeros in on the new toy. You press the button with a click and the bulb inside illuminates. He flinches and his eyes widen in alarm, a lower hand tightening around his spear. But when nothing else happens, he settles down and reaches for it. You go through some other tools with him, pulling item after item out of your toolbelt like a magician fascinating a child. Sukuna looks both mesmerized and overwhelmed at the same time, and you snicker as he lays out the items in front of him on the ground, but you decide to cash in as you snatch them up quickly and put them away.

He shoots you a look and you just shrug, pointing to his spear.

Ah, he gets it.

He begrudgingly picks it up and drops it in front of you. You go to excitedly pick it up, but holy crap it’s heavy. You manage to lift it, but not without effort. He chortles at your struggle, eye brow raising at the realization that you really are weak, and he wonders if you’d even be able to take on the kids in the group (you wouldn’t).

You write down everything about his weapon too, the weight, shape, material – some type of ivory shaved into a fine point, and move onto your next specimen.

You point to his face. Specifically the plate.

His face immediately falls, expression now averse. He hesitates, but you hold up the pencil as a reminder of all the cool new things he can play with, and with an overwhelming reluctance and a grimace, he dips his head towards you.

He watches your gleeful face with annoyance as you reach out to gently grab at the skin. He bristles, arms folded across his chest and teeth grit while you feel up his face, fingers running along the edges in wonder. The skin spread taught over what seems to be a plate of overgrown bone attached to the front of his skull. You pull and push at the plate, watch how his head follows the motion before shaking it with both hands. He grunts and swats your hands away at that, huffing as he gets up and stalks towards the shore, spear in hand.

Welp, you think, playtime’s over.

He sheds his furs before slowly wading into the water, and you admire his strong, round ass as he lifts his spear high into the air, waits, and then strikes with lightning speed. Your eyes widen when he flings three large fish towards where you sit, all speared through with the same strike, all lethal efficiency. He repeats the same motion a couple more times and you watch with a dropped jaw, amazed at how effortless he makes it look. You realize the carcass he flung into the water earlier must have been bait, and he wasn’t just lounging around wasting time earlier, he was waiting for enough fish to gather to have a sizable haul. You do what you can to help, wincing in disgust as you slowly gather up the scaly fish and huddle them into a pile for him to take care of.

You ogle him as he wades out of the shallows, water dripping off his muscled arms and chest heaving from the exertion. You clear your throat awkwardly and turn before your eyes betray you and ravage his lower half, allowing him a minute to redress. He walks over to where you neatly piled the fish, and with some woven string wrapped around his staff he begins to weave it through the puncture wounds, binding the fish together and hauling it over his shoulder. You begin following him back to the direction of the camp, but he abruptly stops causing you to bump into his back and subsequently – the fish.

“Blegh – Ew,” your face is scrunched as you wipe the dampness on your cheek left behind by tonight’s soon to be dinner, not noticing the man’s eyes following what stopped him in the first place. His head turns, body slowly following like a man possessed.

“Hey, wait!” You scramble to catch up with his long strides, but it’s easy this time as he walks erratically passed the treeline, pausing and then resuming in the opposite direction of the camp. “What are you doing?”

He pays you little mind, eyes honed in front of him, and you follow his gaze to a flower. The fattest, fuzziest bee you’ve ever seen in your life sits collecting pollen, before buzzing off on paper-thin wings that you know defy the laws of aerodynamics. In a blink, your caveman is off, following the bee so as not to lose sight of it and once again leaving you to scramble behind.

The two of you silently follow the bee for a few kilometers through the forest, and you fall into an easy rhythm beside him after a while, anticipating his movements.

Finally you stop at the base of a tall, nimble tree and both your eyes drift up, up following the buzzing as the bee rejoins his companions high above your heads. The beehive hung in beautiful, layered honeycombs, all golden and uneven.

He licks his lips, gazing wistfully up at the beehive. You watch him scale the base of the tree, hands gauging the strength of the lower branches before deciding they wouldn’t be able to hold his weight. Recalibrating, he leans back and lifts his spear, aiming at the hive to see how much force he’d need in his swing. Sighing, he sets it down knowing his brutish method would lead to ruined honey and the two of you being swarmed by the pests.  

He mutters in defeat and turns to head back, glancing over his shoulder this time to make sure you’re there.

He seems more relaxed on his way back, so you try talking to him some more.

You say your name while pointing to yourself, and motion to him next with a questioning look. He blankly looks back at you.

You try again, saying your name slowly, even fishing the pencil out and repeating what it’s called, then motion towards him once more.

He stays silent for a bit, letting you babble on. When you approach the clearing past the treeline by the camp, he finally speaks.

“Sukuna.”

You turn and tilt your head, tasting the word on your tongue. “Sukuna?” You question.

He nods once and confirms, “Sukuna.”