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Megumi learns that sometimes people come back.
—
Megumi is familiar with the burden of responsibility.
He knows he’s too small to bear such a heavy burden. He knows Gojo is, too.
“He won’t last a week,” Megumi mumbles to Tsumiki, the first day they meet Gojo. And he believes this, for a while. He keeps his distance, and Gojo is a bit of a wreck and is distant himself (even though Megumi can tell he’s trying); So they are unable to build a bridge, each kept back by dead hands.
Until Megumi meets you.
“What are you drawing, Megumi?” you ask hesitantly, the very first day you’re together. He’s unsure of who you are. Unsure of your relationship with Gojo. Unsure of how much he can trust you. Unsure of whether you’re good. Whether you’ll stay.
“Dogs,” he says carefully. And then because he makes the mistake of glancing at you and seeing your smile, “From my dreams.”
He scribbles harder, wonders if you notice how hard he grips the crayon. “Do you dream often?” you ask. You’re as perceptive as Gojo, unfortunately. That in itself is not so bad, but Megumi prays you aren’t as cruel with the parts of him he can’t hide.
“I guess,” he mumbles, and he’s clumsy. His frail childish heart spills out onto the table in front of him.
Megumi prays.
That night, when exhaustion has set into his bones and fear creeps in, you knock on Megumi’s door with a cup of sweetened tea. He squints suspiciously, and you laugh at his tight expression.
“Can I come in?” you ask.
Megumi doesn’t think he’s even let Gojo in, but your energy tickles his skin and he’s tired, scared of monsters yet to come, and awfully lonely. He relents.
You sit at the end of his bed, chamomile and warmth making him sink into his pillow.
“Are you tired?” you ask. Megumi shakes his head, even though he feels his muscles weigh him down. “What do you dream of?” you then ask, reproachful. Perceptive. Understanding or judging, Megumi does not know.
“Snakes,” he says quietly, because he’s allowed himself to be hopeful, just this once. To reach out a small child’s hand into the expansive darkness before him and pray someone holds on. “Big ones. Giant owls and elephants. Monsters.”
You hum thoughtfully, placing the tea on his nightstand. Taking his outstretched hand. “Hostile?”
“Not the dogs. Sometimes there are rabbits,” he adds. “They usually try to kill me.”
Megumi watches you smile sadly. After a moment's hesitation, as if to make sure he won’t bite, you run your hand through his hair, not in the obnoxious way Gojo does, but in a way that makes Megumi want to fall asleep in your care. “I’m sorry,” you say.
“It’s not your fault,” he dismisses with a shrug, but can feel the tears sting his eyes.
“It’s not yours, either,” you say. “Satoru has nightmares, too, when he gets around to sleeping. The tea helps. I can help, too, if you’d like.”
Megumi sinks, shrivels, unused to such soft hands. Unused to being held like water.
—
“Do you love him?” Megumi asks, naively, in between bites of homemade stirfry.
You look at Gojo, who is having a tea party with Tsumiki. Smile softly. “You must think I’m crazy.”
Megumi is not so familiar with love, but knows it enough to know where it exists. Especially when it exists so brightly. “Not really,” he says, shrugging. “You’re good for him.”
Because Megumi has learned more about Gojo within one month of knowing you than the two months he’d known him previously. Because his loudness is softer, does not fill the room and suffocate everyone in it. He laughs more genuinely. Is a little less frantic, a little less bitter. Because he seems more tethered. Less like he’s obligated to live and more like he wants to.
Maybe, prophets are not made to speak for God. Maybe they are there to make Him more human. Maybe prophecy lies not in grandiosity, but in a gentle kind of intimacy—a reminder that God's image, the image that the prophet Himself is moulded from, is not one of distant power, but of loving, of caring.
Months ago Gojo was untouchable. Distant. Now you’re here, and he is also here.
“I know he doesn’t express it,” you say, still watching Gojo with such fondness it makes you glow, “but this household, us, we’re his anchor, these days.”
God is divine. Some say he has no unmet need. Megumi thinks that’s silly.
—
“Did you make any friends today?” you ask.
Megumi doesn’t answer, instead choosing to eat his ice cream. When you realise you’re not getting an answer, you laugh. Not with judgement or bite, but with knowing. Megumi usually doesn’t appreciate people laughing at him, but he’s learning that maybe being known is the closest thing anybody can have to being immortal. Because to be known is to be loved is to be remembered.
Megumi feels very loved these days. It sits heavy in his gut, mixed with leftover grief and guilt. He holds it in his hand clumsily, wondering if it'll spill, wondering how to hold on.
“No one you like?” you ask again, picking at grass as you take up the afternoon sun.
Megumi thinks about the kids in his class and peers at the sky. “Dunno. I guess.” You stay quiet, giving him a small soft glance. “I’m only there for a couple more months, anyway.”
“And that doesn’t make it worth it?” you say with a smile. Knowing. Loving.
Megumi tries to evaluate worth in his head, but then realises it’s a strange concept. Does he want it?
“And, if it isn’t worth it in the end, what will you regret, Megumi?”
The time? The pain? The could haves? The should haves?
“And what if it is worth it? What if it is?” you say, and Megumi is starting to know you too. Something tells him that underneath your words and playful expression is a harshness from before.
“I can try,” Megumi eventually mumbles. His hands are sticky with sugar and the sun taints his cheeks pink. The world has been harsh. Today it isn’t. Yesterday it wasn’t.
His edges are rough and battered. But he is known well. They’re working on it.
Today he is loved. Tomorrow he’ll love just a little more, just a little easier.
Tsumiki is generous with her love, but she does not love recklessly. Megumi knows this. He knows it because she wouldn’t give Gojo hugs until he learned all the names of her empire of stuffed animals. He knows it because neither of you were on the family tree in grade seven, but you were by eight. He knows it because he used to find Tsumiki crawling into his bed when she was upset or lonely, and now he wakes up to find her cuddled with you on the couch.
Megumi thinks that he gets attached to certain people too easily. He is not generous with his love, but when he loves, he does love recklessly. Megumi thinks that, with a little bit of trust, a little bit of respect, and a little bit of admiration, he creates himself a slippery slope which may just end up killing him.
(Sometime in the future, Megumi looks at Yuji with a fondness that squeezes his poor man’s heart.)
Gojo, despite his loudness, does not love loudly
Megumi thinks about how they all love a little easier, with your help. Maybe that in itself is loving.
—
“Are you a sorcerer?” Megumi asks you one night, waiting for the kettle to boil.
“Not occupationally,” you hum, flicking through their tea bag collection that only ever seems to grow (with Gojo being the main contributor from his many adventures across the four corners).
Megumi frowns. “Then what do you do?”
“I study archaeology,” you say simply, and Megumi almost thinks you’re joking. You turn to him, smile at him knowingly. “Does that surprise you?”
Megumi thinks about your cursed energy. How, sometimes, when it spills over from where you’ve contained it, it crashes into him like a freight train. How it feels teasing, when you will it to be, but can be invasive and cruel. He thinks about those late nights when you have your hands against Gojo’s cheek, cursed energy pulsing and vibrant while, passed out and leaning against you, Gojo’s is reduced to a meek whisper.
If Gojo is the strongest, then you are his heel. Physically, spiritually, emotionally.
“You don’t want to be a sorcerer?” Megumi asks, brows pinched together.
“Not if I can help it,” you say with a little more bitterness than Megumi expects from you.
In his world, sorcerers become sorcerers. That’s just what he assumed, from the handful or sorcerer’s he’d met. From what Gojo has told him about his predestined future.
“Do you not want to save people?” he asks, frowns, because you wear your morality on your sleeve, because apathy does not suit you.
“I do. Of course I do,” you say. “I think that’s why I’d be so miserable if I were a sorcerer. I don’t want to spend my life fixing problems at the will of old men. I’d much rather work toward preventing them.”
The kitchen quiets, the murmur of the kettle hanging between them. Megumi supposes that makes sense. He’s older now, he knows more now, and he’s certainly old enough to see the futility of saving, saving, saving with no foreseeable end. They’re not all Gojo Satoru, and even he’s weighed down by the dead, by the living.
You can’t save everyone. Megumi knows this.
But, “How are you going to do that? Prevention?” he asks, because this was not an option given to him.
At his question, you glance toward the window at something distant, something beyond Megumi’s eye. Guiltily, excitedly, a precarious balance between the two.
Megumi frowns, trying to discern your thoughts. He’s never been very good at that. Not if you don’t let him.
Noticing his contorted expression, your distant look fades and you let out a quiet laugh. “Sorry, Megumi. I zoned out. Lavender or ginger?” At this, Megumi sours even more, and your laugh strengthens. “Sorry, that was a silly question. Lavender, it is.”
Megumi knows less out of curiosity and more out of survival. But he hasn’t had to prioritise survival in a while. He is safe. He can afford to not be serious. He laughs.
—
Megumi is used to low murmurs in the hallway that slowly escalate to yelling. Megumi is used to the tension that fills the house like static.
Megumi is not used to seeing you angry. To seeing Gojo this upset.
He’s very attuned to conflict, however, and he can tell tonight's the tipping point.
“I just don’t understand why you have to leave.”
“So, what, it’s ‘save people’ until it’s me, is that it?”
“Become a sorcerer!”
“Are you serious?”
Megumi crawls under his bedsheets, layers blanket upon blanket and burrows into his pillow. Because, maybe tomorrow you’ll both still be here. Because his heart has been softened and isn’t ready to be hurt, to be carved open by a tender butcher's knife.
But the door slams and the house stills, silence layering onto them oppressively.
Megumi finds Gojo on the kitchen floor, head buried into his hands, trembling.
Megumi is left often. He has an inkling Gojo is left often, too.
Neither of them thought you’d also leave them.
He sits next to Gojo, leans his head on his shoulder.
There is solace in loneliness. The sun rises, pale yellow streams across the kitchen floor, and Megumi and Satoru are together, holding onto leftover love.
Megumi is good. Megumi is kind. Megumi does not know why he’s so incapable of being loved.
Tsumiki admonishes him, because she loves him. It’s easy to love him, she says.
Megumi thinks so too, sometimes.
But your bed is empty, Gojo’s rarely home, and the warmth that curled around Megumi’s body like gentle petals has begun to shrivel .
It’s not so bad. He goes to school, plays, paints, does basic maths, comes home, eats, watches TV, sleeps. It could be worse. He has a roof over his head, he has a benefactor; Gojo is a little quiet, sure, but he still comes back. He still watches Barbie movies with them, still takes them out to the zoo or the park.
He has a tendency to hold Megumi like a knife. Megumi doesn’t mind. At least he’s held.
It’s not so bad.
Megumi doesn’t think you’ll come back. He’s used to it.
But five months after you leave, you do.
It’s a rainy day. It murmurs and drums and croons against the window. Megumi’s heating up leftovers when you open the door with the telltale jingle of your keys.
He doesn’t so much as crash into you, but tackles you. Unabashedly. Shamelessly. Lovingly.
You laugh, familiar and warm, if not tainted on the edges by guilt. Megumi does not need your guilt, because he has your presence. He does not need your remorse, because you’re here.
“I’m sorry,” you say, hands combing through his hair. He thaws and melts, once again grateful to be held like water. “I’m sorry.”
Gojo comes in from behind you, preening as if he had just won the lottery. You’re both wet, Megumi notes, hair flat with water and clothes drenched. He squints suspiciously, his heart dancing playfully inside his ribcage with childish joy.
Gojo sticks his tongue out at him and hums happily as he skips his way to the shower, but not before planting a loud kiss on your ear.
“Where did you go?” Megumi asks, still clinging onto your cold wet sweater with his small hands.
You smile down at him, still stroking him like a pleased cat (which he really, really is), “Mexico, then Guatemala, then Peru. Morocco, for a bit.”
“Why?”
“Research. Artefact hunting, mostly. But you’d be surprised at how different Japanese sorcery is to the world, Megumi,” you say, eyes dancing with light, smile stretching across your face.
Something in his chest skips, sinks, stabs. “You’re going back,” he asks, more so as a statement. Because your joy is unmissable, because your passion burns bright. Megumi knows Japan has always been too small for you, and yet part of him wants to cling onto your sweater forever.
You use your thumb to smooth down his furrowed brow comfortingly, a gesture Megumi has seen shared between you and Gojo a thousand times. You look at him softly, thumb still brushing against his temple. “But I will come back, Megumi. I’m sorry I didn’t communicate this earlier, but I promise I will always come back.”
Megumi thinks back to how you said their household was an anchor for Gojo. Megumi thinks about how much he trusts you. “Ok,” he says meekly, but with a soft exhale of relief.
It is strange, to trust someone to come back. Though, he supposes he’s been doing that with Gojo for years now. And if Gojo, one of the pettiest, most stubborn, least trusting people he knows, clearly forgives you, clearly believes that your presence is guaranteed, maybe Megumi can too.
When Tsumiki comes back from ballet, after many tears and many apologies, they go out for dinner. You tell them about the pyramids and the monkeys and the altitude. Gojo’s laugh–the real one–is a welcome return. The absence felt like a lack of air is instead your telltale summer breeze of energy.
Megumi forgets his leftovers in the microwave. But it’s not so bad.
They’re all learning to love a little easier, trust a little more, resent a little less.
—
Megumi doesn’t know how he hasn’t been expelled. He thinks it’s partly due to his top grades (thanks to you) and his very charismatic caretaker (go figure).
He is, however, suspended. Many times.
Usually, because you’re off who knows where, Gojo picks him up. This constitutes one of the few times he welcomes Gojo’s presence, because he tends to laugh and congratulate him for winning.
You, on the other hand…
“I understand you have very strong values, Megumi, but seriously?” you say, and he does his best to brush past you and walk away from the school gate as fast as he possibly can.
“I thought you were in Iran,” he says, trying, failing, but trying.
“I was,” you answer, “and I brought home sweets!”
You catch up to him easily and hand him a little box of toffee that he takes sheepishly because he’s not a strong man, and Megumi’s proud posture–he’s trying to maintain his dignity–shrinks a little. He eats one miserably while you scold him.
Megumi is a little more bitter than he should be, a little more angry than normal. You know this, and thus try to still his resentment with kind hands and soft words and time and love. But you are one person against the world. Even if you are a force to be reckoned with, you cannot change everything, and certainly not the past.
What’s worse for him is that you were a model student at school: student council president, top grades, more contributions to the school than any other student before. At least Gojo got into trouble every other day. At least Gojo’s just as bad.
Usually, he saves his bitterness for those who deserve it. Sometimes he can’t help but direct it at you. He gives you the cold shoulder, still gnawing on toffee, and at his icy silence, you grow quiet.
Megumi was hoping it would make him feel better.
“You know, I never finished middle school,” you start.
Megumi frowns, stares at the ground with a concentration that takes all his might.
“I’m a very resentful person, actually,” you say with a seriousness that catches him off guard. He looks up from the pavement and you give him a small, sheepish glance. “I mean, how can’t you be angry?”
There are lots of bad people in the world that Megumi can’t stand. He thinks back to the bitterness he once felt from you when you spoke of jujutsu society, about the harshness that grips your shadow and bites your heels–he’s begun to suspect that you’re more similar than he once thought.
“I used to be the angriest person I knew,” you say lightly. “From the moment I’d wake up, I’d feel it like bile in my throat. Like bitterness was an inherent illness I was born with somewhere in my heart, or maybe my gut, and it spreads and taints everything until I’m not a very good person anymore.”
Megumi swallows heavily. He feels the sourness like a rock.
“But you can’t let it fester, Megumi,” you say, and Megumi thinks that you’re not exactly entirely here. That you’re somewhere in that mysterious past of yours.
“What do you do with it, then?” he asks, kicking a rock off the sidewalk so that it skips into the grass.
“Put a little bit of it into something productive–and that does not mean beating people up,” you say, glaring at him. He closes his open mouth sulkily. “A little bit of hope. A lot, a lot, of care. I can’t say it’s all gone away.”
“Did Gojo help?” he asks, and already knows.
“Satoru helps,” you nod, “My mum helped. You help a lot, too.”
Megumi blushes and stuffs another piece of toffee in his mouth.
“Think about the systems that exist right now, the ones that we’re all so angry with,” you continue, letting him blush in peace. “Has pointless violence ever changed any of them?”
Megumi thinks about “curse-users”. About his hate for them. About your sympathy for them.
You give him a short glance. “You’re fighting the wrong man, Megumi.”
—
Sometimes Megumi looks at Gojo and thinks that maybe he’s lost a lot of people in his life too.
He stares at Gojo’s closed door for the third time today, and he thinks back to the fact that, for a little too long, he couldn’t sleep in a room separate from Tsumiki. Maybe you’re Gojo’s constant in the same way Tsumiki is his.
Maybe, in a life ridden with loss and abandonment–the ebb and flow of love like waves–it’s easy to cling onto whatever's there, whatever’s most likely to always be there.
Megumi wonders what he’d do if he lost Tsumiki. Would he be like Gojo and retreat into his room, frantically sending jujutsu satellite signals across the world? Would he be angry? Go mute?
He sighs and steps away from the haunted door, hoping that, wherever you are, you send a little sign to let Gojo know you’re okay. For his sake and the sake of the entire household.
Because if Megumi has to sit through one more dinner with Tsumiki’s anxiety rolling off her in oppressive waves while she anxiously glances at Gojo’s locked door, Megumi might just have to find you himself.
Megumi’s only just turned on the TV to stifle the silence when you crash through the door and collapse into the genkan, blood pooling across the floor.
“How do you know it’s her?” Megumi asks quietly, playing with the corner of the bedsheet that’s draped over you. He glances at the steady rise and fall of your chest, bandages crawling with talismans still wrapped around your neck despite Gojo’s best attempts to remove them.
Megumi’s learning jujutsu, but he certainly knows how to identify people based off of their cursed energy. Whether that’s Gojo’s onslaught, your steady flow that brushes against his skin like prodding waves, Tsumiki’s faint spark, he can tell who’s who before they’re even in the same room as him.
He remembers how strange it is for there to be nothing. To feel only the absence of cursed energy.
You are not Megumi’s father. This is not your cursed energy.
There are many people who would benefit from Gojo’s death who would not hesitate to use his loved ones to do it.
Megumi looks up at him. He hasn’t bothered to tear his eyes away from you since he frantically burst out of his bedroom. He's been tempered since Shoko’s visit to heal you. In fact, Megumi would argue that he looks better than he has all week, despite his bloodshot eyes and tousled hair.
“Six eyes says otherwise, but I guess I just…” Gojo trails off, and shrugs with a small, soft smile reserved for only you.
Megumi gets it. Because jujutsu isn’t everything. Because it is only an extension of man.
Megumi learns jujutsu. Maybe Gojo unlearns it.
Megumi is a child. He’s beginning to understand what that means, with your help. He no longer pours over water bills and gas bills and on and on with Tsumiki. He doesn’t do the groceries alone anymore. Worrying about next winter is no longer his main concern.
You’ve made it a point that clan politics and the complexities of jujutsu society are not his problem, not yet, not while he’s still a child. Gojo protests. Gojo yields to you very quickly.
In many ways Megumi is very grateful for your insistence, especially when he has to have obligatory meetings at the Zenin estate where he frightfully clings to your skirt. You tend to keep the meetings short, at the Zenin’s great displeasure, Gojo’s endless amusement, and Megumi’s reluctant gratitude.
But Megumi is also curious. He has roots he does not understand. There are systems at play that will prey on him for his birthright.
So he listens, pressed up against his bedroom wall.
He was stirred awake by the familiar sound of your voice, the soft hum with a static undercurrent of perpetual planning that catches him off guard now and then.
He listens. There are systems at play and its two largest disruptions live in this house.
“Ancient stuff,” Gojo murmurs, and Megumi feels the pulse of cursed energy try to chip away at the talismans. “A curse-user?”
You hum affirmingly. “She wasn’t supposed to be there. I was collecting a cursed object off of these merchants, and she just… She stole the cursed object, in the end.”
“Do the talismans seal off your cursed energy entirely or just contain it within your body?” Gojo asks.
“Entirely. It’s strange. I can’t even pry into your mind, anymore,” you say, huffing out a light laugh.
“I don’t think you need any cursed energy to know what I’m thinking,” he says with a tenderness Megumi forgets he’s capable of. Megumi can tell he’s relieved; that the days of lost sleep are catching up to him but with a comforting softness now that you're home.
Megumi wonders if you know the extent of the effect you have on this poor, yearning man.
“Only because you let me,” you point out.
“No,” Gojo says. “I don’t think I can help it.”
There’s a silence, then, and Megumi wonders if you’ve fallen asleep.
He’s just about to retreat back to bed when Gojo calls, “You can come out, Megs. Unless you want to stay there and eavesdrop?”
Sometimes Megumi forgets about Gojo’s all-seeing eyes. He supposes he’s used to all six of them being on you, as is normally the case whenever you’re around.
If not in the same room, even across the globe, it's common knowledge that part of Gojo–mind, eyes, soul–will always be for you.
He steps out bashfully. The two of you are curled up on the couch, your feet tucked under Gojo as he tries to pry off the talismans, long fingers grazing your neck where the bandages wrap around and around before dipping under your sweater.
You blink at Megumi, surprise unmarred from your face.
Gojo doesn’t even look up from where he’s intently fixed on the talismans. “You couldn’t feel his cursed energy?”
“No,” you say, giving Megumi a soft, comforting smile. “I’ve been shut out.”
Megumi pads over to the couch, Santa socks you had gifted him a year earlier sliding against the hardwood floor. Bashfully, he sits himself on the armchair, hugging the pillow that was on it like a safety blanket.
“Do you guys always know I’m there?” he asks.
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Satoru.”
Megumi huffs and sinks into his chair, thinking about the many many times he’s eavesdropped into your conversations.
“It’s important for you to know about the world,” Gojo says, still running his fingers over your neck in what appears to be a futile attempt to try and pry the bandages off. You seem entirely unbothered by this intrusion.
“What you want to know, you can know,” you add with stern glare at Gojo. “But I trust you understand that your only job now is to grow up happily. Jujutsu can wait.” Gojo lets out a small noise of disagreement, but he’s been surprisingly placid since you’ve come back.
“Toji didn’t have any talismans. He was just born like that,” Megumi says, a statement that’s a question because that’s how it always seems to be whenever it’s about Toji.
You nod your head. “It’s strange. I kinda feel like I’m drowning, but to Toji moving through an energy-less world must’ve been like moving through air.” As if to make your point, you brush your fingertips over Gojo’s cheek, eyes widening at how your hands cut through his energy–or, in your eyes, lack thereof.
Megumi tries not to roll his eyes at the blush that crawls up Gojo’s neck.
“I could get used to this,” you hum, eyeing your hands with interest, oblivious of the flustered man whose energy has come to a stutter.
“Let’s just focus on getting these off you before you decide to become a sorcerer killer, yeah?” Gojo says with an exasperated huff, which comes out less annoyed and much more tender that Megumi thinks he intended.
You give him a smile. “Alright. But only because I miss my RCT.”
Gojo lets out a dramatic guffaw, followed by your own airy laugh, and despite Megumi’s disgust at your obnoxious displays of affection. He can’t help but be lulled to sleep by the comfort of the sounds of home.
Maybe death will be this kind.
He burrows further into his chair, closing his eyes as he hugs the pillow close.
He thinks about how, when Gojo sleeps, he unconsciously hugs whatevers closest to him–a pillow, the blanket, you.
Megumi is not Gojo’s son by blood, but maybe by circumstance.
—
One summer–in that comfortable lull where coming and going (and coming, of course) becomes normal, where someone’s always home, and sometimes everyone is, where they’re perpetually stocked with foreign goods and leftovers, and Megumi’s biggest priority is whether you’ll make it to Tsumiki’s ballet recital (you will)–you take the two Fushiguro’s to Cambodia.
“You’re going on a family vacation without its most important member,” Gojo had whined.
“That’s not true,” Megumi said to him, holding up Tsumiki’s penguin plush. “Mr. Flappers is right here.”
“It’s only for the weekend, Satoru,” you had chided, neatly folding Tsumiki’s dresses into a suitcase. “Besides, I don’t think you’ll have lots of fun hearing me ramble about temples.”
At that, Gojo sulked even more and Megumi gave him a pitying look–Gojo would listen to you talk about accounting if it meant spending time with you.
“Guess you’ll just have to kill that curse extra-quick tonight, huh?” Megumi teased, because he’d been excited and especially playful. Little did he know that he’d be eating those words.
In Narita’s International Airport, he paces the terminal anxiously.
He’s never left the country before. In fact, they’d only just gotten their passports yesterday (“Do you know how hard it is to get passports for kids who aren’t even registered?!”), which had left both of them bouncing off the walls with excitement.
Tsumiki has been so agitated that she’s had to abstain from having anything sugary in case she short-circuits.
You smile softly at their anxiety, trying to (unsuccessfully) quell their worries with reassurances that the plane won’t crash and that they will, in fact, be let into the country again.
“How do you do this so often?” Tsumiki asks, looking a little green.
“I don’t always fly, that would be terrible for the environment,” you chide, calmly sipping your coffee. “Sometimes Satoru teleports me, sometimes I’m lucky enough to encounter the odd sorcerer who can also teleport or fly or summon a dragon–take your pick. Sometimes you can use a talisman, too, though those are far less common in Japanese sorcery.”
At the thought of teleporting–Gojo has been banned from teleporting anyone other than himself without explicit consent–both Megumi and Tsumiki baulk.
“I think I’d rather take a plane,” Megumi says, oddly comforted knowing that an alternative option may have been a dragon. He glances at Tsumiki, who nods furiously and seems to have regained her colour.
After a terrifying take off, the darkness that spills across the horizon lulls Megumi to sleep. Next to him, you’re typing away softly–you are still a student, after all–and with the cold air-conditioning and late-night flight, he passes out easily.
When you arrive, you barely let them leave their bags at the hotel lobby before setting off again in the dark. Bleary eyed and still fatigued, Megumi wonders what you can possibly do so late at night–or, better yet, so early in the morning.
After unenthusiastically getting out of the tuk tuk, you take them onto a stone path. Megumi has no idea where they are, and underneath the fatigue he can still feel the steady thrum of excitement that tingles at his fingertips.
“Do you believe in anything, Tsumiki?” you ask as they walk along, a single flashlight lighting up the two metres in front of them.
“Uhm… I don't not believe,” she offers after a pause, and this seems to satisfy you. With you, it's always like a game—a chase to grasp your thoughts, to catch up and comprehend the conclusion you try to lead them to. Megumi hates it, sometimes.
“And you, Megumi?”
He kicks a rock sullenly. He doesn’t want to play. “I think believing in God or some stupid divine being is just shifting your responsibility onto something else. To try and avoid accountability.”
He can’t discern your expression, in the dark, but your bright eyes reflect the flashlight eerily, like a predator with an unknowing rabbit in its claws. You always go easier on Tsumiki. Favouritism, Megumi thinks.
“I think so too, sometimes,” you say surprisingly, because Megumi had expected some anthropological admonishment and not your concurrence. “I have met Gods who have only ever been boys, heard death that I caused called magic, a fated one who hates carrots and can’t eat his sandwiches with the crust.”
Megumi glares at you, and even though he can’t discern your expression through the dark, he knows you’re smiling.
“Beyond jujutsu’s buddhist ethos, as an industry they’re more institution than guiding hope or explanatory lore. And I think it’s really harmed my relationship with religion,” you say openly. Transfixed by your words and the path ahead of him, Megumi only just notices that the stygian nothingness before him has begun to take on a blue disposition. “But my world is not Japan anymore.
I have met fanatics and atheists and priests and self-proclaimed prophets. I have met tribes who eat strange fruit to see spirits and monks who starve themselves to see God. My professor believes in a religious instinct–that belief, the faith we place into something larger than us, is inherent. She thinks most of us are quite optimistic, actually.”
“Do you?” Tsumiki asks, taking your free hand.
You swing her hand back and forth teasingly, and Megumi realises he can see the smile on your face now. A deep twilight blue that stretches out across empty fields and joins the sky at a discernible point.
“I know that no matter where you are–societies that have developed on opposite ends of the earth, a village so isolated you can see the milky way, smack in the middle of metropolitan Tokyo–we place our hope in something better,” you answer with a playful smile and a nod to something in front of you.
Angkor Wat is a 900 year old Hindu turned Buddhist temple complex–the largest religious structure in the world in the biggest city of the pre-industrial era. It has survived the testament of time and weather and war. Survived state atheism–was the very flag of state atheism, and known to be one of the best sunrises on the planet.
Megumi, short of breath, has to agree.
Dawn breaks, and the shadow of tall spires looms before him; giants in size and age and wonder. Sunlight spills like warm honey down the temple and dances on the moat, stretching long and wide like an ocean of gold.
Humans yearn. Sometimes in silence, sometimes with greatness so loud that it echoes, 900 years later.
Next to him, softly, you say, “I also know that while we live in the same house with who some might say is the closest we’ve come to God, we are not above a little hope.”
Megumi is in a great mood. After walking around an empty temple complex (“How is it so quiet?” “I have my ways.”) with your ever-enthralling commentary, stuffing his face with good food, and then spending the evening relaxing by the pool, Megumi is more than content.
“Someone once told me that putting your faith in God and putting faith in yourself are not all that different,” you tell him, sipping your cocktail while you flick lazily through a book that Megumi thinks is an ancient tome that looks seconds from turning into dust. “I don’t quite know whether I should believe in the words of a criminal. But do you agree?”
“Dunno,” Megumi hums, eating his fifth mango of the day. “Not really. I don’t believe in karma or God or whatever. My life is my responsibility.”
“Just yours and yours alone?”
“Not God’s. Friends and family, maybe.”
Still flicking through your ancient text, pages so dusty he doesn’t think you can actually read anything, you smile brightly. “Good point.”
Megumi looks over to Tsumiki doing handstands in the pool to impress the cute bartender who is a solid decade older than her. “I do want to be strong, you know,” he says contemplatively. “I don’t care about destiny all that much, but I want to be able to protect those I love.”
He looks back at you to find you staring at him intently.
He finds the courage to keep going, despite your gaze. “I don’t believe in fate, but I guess I’ve been dealt a strong hand here. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing yet. And I hate the word potential. But I want to use it. Maybe not for the world. But for her. For you.”
Still inscrutable, you say, “You aren’t responsible for me.”
“I want to be,” he says, firmly, trying not to break eye contact because then he knows he’ll lose.
He is not a good person. But he loves strongly. He doesn’t have to–you’ve taught him that. But what you’ve also taught him is compassion. He doesn’t have to, but he wants to.
“MY DARLING FAMILYYYY!” your eyes tear away first, slightly bewildered features turning toward the all too familiar voice.
Megumi deflates. His good day sours.
“Satoru,” you say, not unpleasantly, as Gojo approaches from behind you dressed to match the occasion in a flowy shirt and designer sunglasses. “I thought that was you.”
“Thought?” he repeats cheerfully, though the possessive hand he places on your bare shoulder does not go unnoticed by Megumi.
“Mm. Cursed energy’s all muddled here,” you say plainly, and Gojo deflates slightly at your lack of enthusiasm. Megumi gloats.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. More than anything, he’s just grateful Gojo hadn’t brought that Hawaiian shirt he knows he owns. Okay, maybe he’s gone soft on the old man.
“Well, I took your advice and finished the job quickly!” Gojo says. “You happy to see me, Megs?”
“Delighted,” he drawls flatly in response, going back to his mango in what is supposed to be dismissal but might have come off as shyness.
Gojo sits at the end of your deck chair, extra-cheery when you rest your legs on his lap. Megumi doesn’t know why he couldn’t just take the deck chair next to you–the hotel is near empty either way–but sometimes he thinks that, like some strange amplifier, your touch alone gives Gojo life. The way he squishes next to you on the bus or train so that your shoulders are pressed together, or the way he sometimes links your pinkies together when you’re walking, or the way he finds excuses–a hair out of place, a leaf, a speck of dust–just to brush against you even if it's just for a second.
Like now, Gojo reaches over to you to smooth down your furrowed brow with his thumb. “Something on your mind?” he asks, letting his touch linger before pulling back.
You quickly glance at Megumi, so brief the untrained eye wouldn’t have caught it, before shaking your head. “No, I’m fine. I'll let Tsumiki know you’re here. Do you want a drink?” you say, standing up from your chair.
“A porn-star martini, please!” Gojo smiles. You give him a slightly exasperated look before making your way over to where Tsumiki has now changed tactics and is instead doing backflips.
Megumi frowns as Gojo watches your retreating figure with less-than-good intentions, before his all-seeing blue eyes snap toward him.
“So,” Gojo starts, intimidating despite his cheery smile, “what have you been up to?”
Megumi stays nonchalant, eating his fruit calmly because he will not let Gojo and his creepy eyes unnerve him. Or won’t show him that they unnerve him, at the very least. “We saw Angkor. We ate noodles and I tried fried tarantula. I swam.”
“And what have you been talking about?”
“God, our spiritual journeys, the ways that we take care of each other and why,” Megumi answers flatly, both trying to maintain his impassivity and ease Gojo’s stern look with humour.
Gojo lets out a laugh, but Megumi knows he can’t have been let off so easily. “So your typical small talk, then?”
Megumi shrugs, looking at him from the corner of his eye. Eventually Gojo’s gaze drifts away from Megumi, latches onto you like a ship to a lighthouse. Whether alone or in a room full of people, he knows where you are and seeks you out–begs, kneels, gives you the knife that kills him.
“She’s too selfless for her own good. A lot like you, actually,” he eventually says, tearing, tearing, his eyes away from you to give him a deadly look, masked by an amused smirk. “She would die for you, you know that?”
“I would die for her, too,” Megumi says unhesitatingly, not backing down, refusing to back down.
“It doesn’t really matter what you’d do,” Gojo says plainly with a sharp, sharp edge. “Because neither of you are dying.” He states it, plain fact, with the confidence of a man who has the power to back it up.
Megumi bites his tongue. Stuffs a piece of papaya into his mouth instead. Because–and when you’re not there? No one is infallible. If there’s anything he’s learned today, empires rise and fall, even Gods can be forgotten, and Gojo Satoru is not a God.
And then, softly, Gojo reaches out and presses against the wrinkle between Megumi’s brows with his thumb. “You two are a lot more similar than you’d think,” he says, mostly to himself, with a tender laugh. “She’s smart, but I wouldn’t take everything she says to heart. She’s a bit of a self-sacrificing hypocrite, actually, with a heart too big for her own good.”
Megumi relaxes in his chair, softening under Gojo’s warm touch. He follows Gojo’s distracted gaze to find you–always you–sitting on the pool’s edge with the water up to your shins, smiling brightly at Tsumiki’s dance routine she’d been showing you.
Megumi is a product of many things. A cursed man with a cursed name. A power beyond him, and the power he can learn to control. A mother he does not know. An almost-God with a frail heart. Tsumiki, Tsumiki, and her heart that knows no bounds. The politics of old men who believe he is special.
He does know he is special. He’s slowly gathered a distaste for anything divine because of the chain and ball tied to his name. To his roots. To his future. He is not a religious man, but he is faithful.
Because Megumi is most certainly a product of your kindness and your patience, and of your bitterness and anger, and of your love. Of your faith in him, in your family, and even in your cruel, cruel world.
There is faith everywhere, if you look for it in the right places, the right people.
—
Gojo’s apartment was a hollow shell when Megumi and Tsumiki first moved in.
“Did you just buy this place?” Tsumiki asked with a hesitant smile, tracing her finger over a counter layered with dust.
Gojo gave her an odd look. “Nah. I’ve lived here for years.”
Megumi snorted, dropping his belongings–which fit fairly easily into a single box–onto the floor. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
The walls were bare, cupboards devoid of food, fridge empty except for a single tub of toffee ice cream in the freezer. It was certainly a nice place, way above what’s normal for a high schooler, but Megumi has known the distinction between a house and a home for a while.
Gojo shrugged, “I have places to be. I'm in high demand, after all.”
If Megumi didn’t know Gojo was a sorcerer, he’d assume he was a prostitute.
It’s only after Megumi sees Gojo with you that he realises maybe home was somewhere else.
But home is here now.
Home has drawings of Megumi’s shikigami that he constantly dreams about taped on the walls. Home smells of good food with an oven that’s used so much that it’s probably half the electricity bill.
Home does not have dust but fresh mud from the park.
Home is not cold.