“Yuta!” Maki’s voice breaks through the night like a gunshot. Her heart is thumping so fast it's beginning to make her sick.
There’s a car pulled over on the road in front of her flashing its hazards, a fancy one—a Ferrari, candy apple red, smooth and shiny like glitter. The driver’s side door hung open, bleeding light onto the side of the road and in the puddle cast by the car’s lights crouched Yuta, phone in one hand and head in the other, tearing at his hair. He always does that when he’s stressed, the worst was right after Rika, crouched on the ground sobbing his eyes out. He looks nearly just as bad now as he did then, though the worst seems to be over. Just hiccuping gasps, sniffling for want of a tissue.
Maki is furious. Maki is terrified. She’s a swirling mass of different emotions, blood pounding in her ears as she reaches out with shaky hands that grab Yuta by the arm and yank him up with more force than strictly necessary. She can smell the sour tang of alcohol on his breath.
“Come on,” she says, trying to keep the anger out of her voice, deadly level. “Get in the car.”
Before she gets him in her own car she yanks the keys out of the Ferrari and locks it. Yuta makes a drunken grab for the keys and she shoves them in her pocket, “No.” Like an angry mother in the supermarket, “get in the car.” He goes in the back with Panda and Inumaki, Panda small enough to set in his lap like a beloved stuffed toy.
Maki fumbles with his seatbelt. “Try not to sleep,” she says, trying to be gentle. She wipes a stray lock of dark black hair from his face, fingers brushing against the stitches somehow still fresh on his forehead. He whines then, voice rough, “Maki—” “—I know.” And she’s so angry, she’s so f*cking mad, and her hands are shaking as she buckles him in, what were you thinking? “Try not to sleep yet, we’ll be back home soon.”
At least he called, she thinks to herself, at least he didn’t try to drive himself home. He called. She’s glad she’ll be able to bring him home in one piece.
“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Panda says from Yuta’s lap, and beside him Inumaki nods, “Salmon.”
She slams the door shut, again with more force than necessary. She walks behind the car where no one can see her and tries to collect herself before coming around to the driver’s side, taking deep breaths. Grief does strange things, she thinks to herself, grief does strange things. She killed her mother for her sister. She killed her father for her sister. Everyone who was in the compound when she was there, everyone that stood by and watched as her father tossed her and Mai into the discipline pit, useless women, she could hear them saying. She couldn’t save her, and in the moment her vision went red and her mind went blank—what had Yuta seen? What had he thought? What brought this on? It’s been weeks.
Grief does strange things.
A loud beeping right next to her head, VEEP, VEEP, VEEP.
She rolled over and covered her ears. VEEP, VEEP, VEEP.
Squeezes her eyes shut and tries to go back to sleep. VEEP, VEEP, VEEP.
Finally with an exasperated sigh, Maki’s hand shoots out from the blankets and snatches up her phone. A call screen greets her, too bright against her eyes in the dark. Blinking back sleep, she squints and doesn’t catch the caller ID, just hits the bright neon green button and presses the phone to her ear, “What?” She snarls.
Sniffling on the other end. A familiar voice asks; ”Maki?”
Suddenly very awake, dropping sensation in her stomach and ice in her veins, Maki pushes herself up against the headboard. “Yuta?”
”Maki?” Comes the weak voice once again, hoarse. ”Could you come get me?”
Maki gets in the driver’s seat. The car is silent and the sound of the door slamming shut as she puts her seatbelt on is like the first lightning strike in a storm. In the back, Yuta continues to sniffle and she can hear someone shuffling with something. A quick glance in the rearview shows Inumaki offering a tissue. Oh f*ck—she just shoved him back there, didn’t she? It’s a good thing she brought Inumaki and Panda…
“Mustard leaf?” Asks Inumaki, but he’s not talking to Yuta. No—he’s looking right at her, making eye contact through the rearview mirror. Maki quickly looks away and sets about pulling the car out of park and back onto the road. They’ll come back for the Ferrari tomorrow, maybe. She’s fine with leaving the damn thing by the side of the road.
That car was Gojo’s, she thinks to herself as they roll past the red. They have to pass it twice, actually—she turns around and heads back down the road the way they came, back towards Jujutsu Tech. That car belonged to Gojo-sensei. She had never seen him drive it. It was one of a mass of untouched possessions that were transferred to Yuta upon the reading of his will. He died and all they had left of him was stuff.
The numbers 1:31 blink back at her in neon red from the car dashboard. Yuta continues to sniffle in her backseat.
They need to get home.
“I’m good, Inumaki,” she says, “just a little tired.”
Something inside of Yuta is wrong.
He’s dizzy even though he’s sitting down. Darkened scenery is passing by outside the car, shapes distorted and it’s making him dizzy.
He hopes they go back for his cousin’s car. He didn’t mean to drive it out this far, he just—he needed to go somewhere. He didn’t really know where, he didn’t have a plan when he got behind the wheel. He just knew he needed to be somewhere else, somewhere far away. Somewhere it didn’t matter.
The stitches on his forehead are itching and he reaches up a hand to scratch.
“Hey, don’t do that!” The stuffed animal in his lap cries, coming to life in his arms, wiggling and squirming. Inumaki stirs too, sitting next to him with a small pack of tissues in-hand.
“Mustard leaf? Fish flakes—”
“‘M okay, just—itchy—” he keeps scratching, and now both Inumaki and the panda—wait, that’s Panda—are trying to pull his arm down.
“Everything okay back there?” Maki, from the front seat, driving them home. Maki, who he woke up and could tell by the way she slurred what angrily into the phone, and he had been so nauseous he had to pull over, could you come get me? he had asked. I don’t feel good.
“He’s scratching at the stitches.”
“Salmon.”
”Where are you?” Her voice got so much clearer. Yuta had opened the car door and spilled out onto the side of the road, crawling on his hands and knees in the grass and muck, away from the car and into the dark. Just need to get away for a second, he had thought. He shouldn’t have woken her up. He’ll be fine in a second, he just needs to pull himself together.
”Are you drunk?”
”I—I think I can make it back, actually—”
”Absolutely not. Stay right there, do not f*cking move. I’m coming to get you.”
Yuta puts his arm down.
“Here, why don’t you just keep your arms around me, alright?” Panda asks, already easing the arm Yuta just lowered around his fluffy body.
Yuta doesn’t say anything. He looks back out the window and feels dizzy. His stitches itch. He can just barely see his face in the reflection of the window—his own nose and mouth and eyes, no longer blue and glowing. This is his body, and his reflection feels strangely distorted. Like his flesh doesn’t quite fit right anymore.
He’s made everyone worried and he’s abandoned Gojo-sensei’s car on the side of the road. It’s unbecoming behavior for someone who was meant to be his cousin’s successor. He’s supposed to be the strongest, to be the monster when Gojo couldn’t—when he can’t, anymore. I’m sorry, I should’ve joined you sooner. Why did he let him go alone? Second only to Gojo Satoru, and he let him go alone.
”I’m coming to get you.” Said Maki.
I wish I was more like her, Yuta thinks.
Maki holds Yuta’s hair back while he vomits.
It makes her nervous, holding his hair or running her fingers through it. She’s afraid his entire skullcap is going to come off in her hands.
Yuta spits, white knuckles turning fleshy again as he finally releases the toilet seat, breath coming in greedy huffs. Maki releases his hair and she watches as he slumps, whole body seeming to deflate as he goes limp against the toilet, cheek resting on the seat. Maki rests a hand on his back, warm and sweaty through his shirt.
“You done?” She asks.
He answers her with a groan, slurring, “Mmnyeah… ‘think so.”
“Think you can get up?”
Yuta peels his head back up off the toilet seat. Not quite sober yet, but close. He downed half a bottle of water when they first got back to Jujutsu Tech in a scant two seconds and promptly threw it all back up, and they’ve been in the bathroom ever since.
What the f*ck is wrong with you? She wants to scream, what the f*ck were you thinking?
“‘Think so.”
“Alright.”
She helps him rise on shaky legs. She tries to keep the shake out of her hands, the urge to grip his arms in an iron-tight grip, tight enough to bruise. He’s taller than her, but she’s stronger, and when he crumples back to the floor she just picks him up and carries him out of the bathroom and into his dorm, dumping him on the bed.
He was stupid. He was so stupid. Why was he so stupid? What was he thinking?
She wants to punch something. She needs to punch something. She needs to put her fist through the wall, or in a dummy or in someone’s face, hard enough she could feel the bones break—
“Tuna mayo?” Inumaki is sitting by the closet, furthest from the bathroom. He looks over at her, his brow furrowed. “Mustard leaf?”
“He’ll be alright,” she says with a sigh, shoulders dropped. Yuta has already laid himself down on the bed, curled in on himself. As mad as she is, she can’t help the wave of concern that passes over her, chewing at the inside of her cheek. (Curled up like Mai, curled around her in the disciplinary room and she wouldn’t wake up no matter how much Maki yelled or shook her, and the last she ever saw her was walking away from her in that strange other-place, into the dark, and now she was alone and—)
Inumaki nods and asks her again, “mustard leaf?”
“I’m fine.”
Jujutsu Tech had its own ceremony in honor of Gojo-sensei, but Yuta made it his business to attend his cousin’s actual funeral, the funeral hosted by the Gojo clan.
Though his cousin’s gaze had always been the heaviest, the stares of his clanmates were an unwelcome weight against his back. Gojo-sensei’s had been uncomfortable at first, the feeling that he was looking through rather than at, especially with his eyes uncovered; but these were like knives. They glare at him in silent judgment; if all it took were looks then Yuta would surely have been dead ten times over before they even got halfway through the service.
All of his cousin’s assets had been transferred to him a few days prior; his house, all the cars he kept in his garage, his bank accounts. All of it was in Yuta’s own unworthy name now, and they weren’t happy about it.
He’s my cousin, he tells himself as he fidgets in his seat, he was my family too.
Gojo saved his life, Gojo took him under his wing and taught him, introduced him to people who would become some of his closest friends. Everybody scram! You don’t need to see this. He always tried to do everything alone, even when he took Yuta aside, we’re special grades, you and I. That means something, whether you want it to or not. It was a warning, though he didn’t know it at the time.
He saved my life, he thinks to himself as he looks to the picture of his cousin in the corner, framed in black. And I couldn’t save his. Instead he wore his face to kill Sukuna. The least he could do is see him laid to rest.
The stitches on his forehead start to itch.
He did it. He helped to save everyone—he couldn’t save his cousin, but he avenged his death. Why does he feel like he’s accomplished nothing?
Gojo-sensei is interred and Yuta sits alone in his car for fifteen minutes.
The stares of the Gojo clan were the leering gazes of his classmates when he flinched at dark corners—what’s wrong with that guy? I don’t know, he’s kind of a freak—the cruelty in the eyes of his bullies. It’s been years. He’s a different person now—that boy who cowered from those three upperclassmen was gone now. And yet a part of him remained—uncovered now, a broken bone exposed to the air, ruptured abruptly through the flesh. The man who saved his life is dead and Yuta couldn’t save him. We’re special grades, you and I. He could save so many people, and he couldn’t save the one person who needed it the most.
Yuta swallows back a sob and starts the car.
Not his car.
Gojo’s car, one he took out of his cousin’s garage. Overwhelmed once with excitement and shaking hands he had pulled the keys down, this is really all mine? He wanted to take the car for a spin. Now it just makes him nauseous. Now Panda’s words ring in his mind, ”it’s a little f*cked up, don’t you think?” and Inumaki’s accompaniment, ”Salmon.” Maki said nothing.
He gets on the road and he doesn’t go back to Jujutsu Tech.
When Yuta wakes up, he finds himself not in Gojo’s house but in his dorm back at Jujutsu Tech. He’s too warm—someone has pressed themself up against his back and left the lights on, the smell of spray air freshener so strong it was making the ache in his head worse, from a hammer falling to an icepick chiseling away. How did he get here? He remembers the funeral, being on the road and then…
Embarrassment floods him then, and shame, as he remembers the phone call he made to Maki on the side of the road last night, can you come get me?
Pushing himself up into a sitting position, he winces as light bursts at the edges of his vision and he feels someone’s arm slide from around his waist. Dizzy, he props himself against the headboard and turns to see Maki laying next to him, still asleep. The shame flares again, along with the hammerstrike pain in his head, face hot and eyes watering. How is his hangover this bad? He remembers standing in front of Gojo-sensei’s liquor cabinet, looking over the selection—and then he thought better of it for a moment, he turned away. He was going to go back out to the car and head back to the school.
Just a little. He thought to himself. To take the edge off. He went back inside, and then his memories rapidly began to blur.
He’d never felt so f*cking alone before. He never felt as alone as he did when he had been in Gojo’s body. He never felt as alone as he felt at that funeral, as he felt the day he was informed of an inheritance he didn’t even know had been willed to him.
He blinks his stinging eyes and brings a hand up to rub at them until he saw static, and when he opens them again he realizes he and Maki aren’t the only people in his room; Inumaki and Panda are here too, tucked away in his bed, large enough to accommodate them all. Yes, that’s right—she brought them too. Panda sat in his lap while Inumaki pried his hand off of the stitching on his forehead.
They’ve been itching a lot lately.
”They might not heal,” he remembers Ieiri-shishou saying to him, ”from what I can tell, it was a part of Kenjaku’s technique.”
Maybe the itching is a sign his were healing. He isn’t sure how he feels about that.
The first thing Yuta does when he’s finally able to work himself up to standing is stagger across the room and turn off the lights. The second thing he does is venture into the bathroom.
He grabs the cup beside the sink and gets himself a drink. He didn’t realize just how thirsty he was when he first woke up, dizzy and sticky with sweat in his bed. His skin feels filmy, he needs a shower—in a second. This is the best water he’s ever tasted. He fills the cup up again and guzzles it down, finishing with a gasp once it’s all gone.
The springs on the bed creak as someone shifts. Maki is up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Hey, careful. You already made yourself sick once doing that.”
Mercifully it seems that was something he forgot, and her warning has come too late. “Oh—” right before he hiccups, feeling acid splash dangerously in the back of his throat, stomach sloshing. “—f*ck—”
The cup is gently pried from his hand and set back on the counter. “Here, sit down.” Yuta sits down. “Head between your knees; breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Yuta does as instructed, dropping his head between his knees. Maki sits with him on the floor in the dark bathroom, hand on his back while he tried to breathe through the sudden cramps that wracked his abdomen. Maki sits there and pats his back.
Please stop being dumb, he thinks to himself, you already woke her up in the middle of the night.
“You can go back to bed,” he says, as soon as he thinks it’s safe to talk. He pulls his head back up, elbows resting on his knees. “I know I woke you up late last night.”
Maki sighs, something deep and laborious before she replies, “yeah, you did, and I’m actually really f*cking mad at you right now.” She brings a hand up and swipes a stray hair out of his face. Her voice is calm. She’s always been good about being calm under pressure. Yuta looks away. “You were so f*cking stupid last night. You could have gotten hurt—you could have died. What the f*ck were you thinking?”
“Maki, I—” his voice catches. She’s right. What’s happened to me? It’s been a long time since he’s acted like such a baby. “I’m sorry. I—there was the funeral, and I just—” he remembers their glares and remembers the glares of classmates long past. He remembers a version of himself far weaker and far more helpless, whose only weapon was isolation. He’s the most powerful sorcerer in the world and people died and he can’t bring them back. He couldn’t even save his cousin. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking at all.” She tells him, voice low, just beginning to shake towards the end. “Don’t you ever do something like this again.”
Yuta looks up at her then, stricken face to her own. Mouth set in a hard line, brow furrowed and angry. And deep in her eyes, he can see the hurt. “I’m sorry, Maki. I won’t.” He doesn’t want her to worry—he was through being a burden, he left that behind years ago.
Maki sighs again, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “Listen, I am glad you called me. I just—f*ck, you scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she tells him, “just—try to remember to talk to me—or any of us—next time, okay? Before you do something stupid?”
Yuta wraps an arm around her in return, turning his face into her shoulder. Maki’s other arm comes to wrap around his waist, pulling him close. “Okay, okay—I’ll try.”
