Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

09 A LONELY, LOVELESS CHILD

A MOTHER'S PRIDE, I WANT TO TAKE YOU DOWN
A DEGUTTED CHILD THAT DIDN'T SHOW

lilitu,
blueneck

     Masamichi Yaga was waiting for you - he knew you would come at the crack of dawn, and you did. You had steadied yourself before the mirror, looking back at someone else with an unwaveringly sad reflection. You had walked without meaning over to his office, the rubber soles of your converses scraping the sharp rocks. You had broken yourself, with the tosses and turns of a sleepless night, your room next to his, knowing it was empty. The events of that night paralyse you like God's fist hurling a lightning strike at the carapace of your body.

     Even now, as you stand before the principal, legs shaking, he can see in your eyes just how lost your soul is. You wade through thick mists clouding your happiness and fight against the tide of the River Styx, desperately seeking rebirth from the trauma of yesterday. Moonlight sticks to the web of your palms as you chase after the night sky, wandering the depths of the universe like a lonely, loveless child. They say eyes are the windows to the soul and the more Masamichi stares at the dull orbs of yours, he realises they are steeped in acetone, polished with the wit of a saddened angel. Cradled and tethered to the temptation of death, you had mercilessly succumbed to it, lacking the potent strength needed to overcome it.

     Itadori Yuuji's death had, quite simply put, broken you.

     Your hands haven't stopped shaking since yesterday, trembling fingertips turned cold from the lack of his tepid warmth and shimmering brown eyes. Sukuna's power that slithered across your neck like a noose around your throat, crushing your lungs and even hours later, you still can't breathe without feeling bits of them. Itadori... and Sukuna... Two sides of a coin that viciously flashes and flips in the blink of an eye, bending the laws of nature.

     Masamichi is stitching together the back of one of his dolls, his wit sharpened by the thin fragility of the needle. He doesn't need to look up to know you are there before him, legs buckling and backpack full of the little you could call your own.

     "[Last Name], [First Name]," He begins stoically, unfazed by the way the tapestry of your persona unfurls and unwinds from misery. Finally, he looks up, a dark expression etched onto the outline of his face, like ink sinking into the purity of paper.

     You lower your head, unable to meet his eyes, craving a bullet to your head, "I'm withdrawing from Jujutsu Tech."

     Withdrawing, Masamichi thinks, lips curling bitterly at that word. He had underestimated the potency of your weaknesses, how they devoured you in this dark world, a world he had dropped you mindlessly into when he accepted you into this school.

     "Taking it all back? Why?"

     He knew why, of course; Itadori's death invoked the wrath of the heavens with the sorrow echoed out in the universe from when his body fell. Masamichi cast the doll to the side, hands folding over each other as he looks you.

     You bite your lip nervously, "I'm not cut out for this. I did nothing... nothing... if I was better, if I was strong, I could have saved him."

     "You desired this in the first place," Masamichi pushed further, knowing he could not afford to lose someone as intrepidly special as you - your skill set, your ancestry, your power... "Saving people because you couldn't save your mother."

     The mention of your mother makes your hands ball into fists, "She died because of how horrible this world is."

     Unperturbed by your stirring anger, Masamichi continues, "I don't need you to repeat the same words I told you in this room weeks ago. This world is the devil's world. People die every day, [L/n]."