Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

11 HALO OF RED

I WAS ONCE A MAN WITH DIGNITY AND GRACE
NOW I'M SLIPPIN' THROUGH THE CRACKS OF YOUR COLD EMBRACE

let me down slowly,
alec benjamin

Gojo Satoru was undoubtedly the most mysterious person you had ever encountered. Shrouded by a thick veil of the unknown, it felt like he was a moment's touch away yet eternally distant at a glance. It feels like your eyes play tricks on you whenever you are in his presence; your heart is being carved out to hollow the old instincts and give rise to the deities.

His arrival traps your head in a tornado, leaves it spinning at the panging luminous light that blinds you from the sheer velocity of his actions. It happens as quickly as it stops. All you feel in that ear-splitting moment is the hood of one of your many loosely comfortable hoodies being tugged at your hand and suddenly world blurs.

One moment you're watching the saddest scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, listening faintly to the snores of your doting cursed doll, who hasn't punched you in the last two hours. And the next? Gojo-sensei's words make your head turn.

"We're heading out on an extra-curricular lesson," He smiles as he looks at you and Itadori. Neither of you have relented yet in your progress, and he seems pleased. "I'm going to teach you about the pinnacle of jujutsu battles, Domain Expansion."

You furrow your eyebrows, "Wha? Sensei?! Where are we going?!"

"Gomen!" He smiles again. You don't know how to feel about that smile anymore; it reminds you of a crowing god and you are just a speck of dirt too poor and meaningless to feel special anymore.

"What the fuck?!" You exhale, letting the curses fly unguarded out of your dry lips. The colours that unfold across your vision tell you that Gojo-sensei has dragged the two of you outside by the mountains at Jujutsu Tech.

It is grizzled and chalky, like the white-gloss high walls of your mother's hallways where you can still hear your childhood screaming but it doesn't sound happy.

Itadori's struggling clears that clutter burdening your mind in that moment, but only for a split-second; after that, the swell of anxiety that typically peruses your heart returns with a mighty soul.

"Hey, where are we?!" The fellow teenager makes a pouty face and his expression would be humourous were it not for the fact that you, him and Gojo-sensei were hovering an inch over the lake.

Your stomach drops with a gut-wrenching feeling you only ever experience when back in school. Oh how red did your face turn in class when the teacher picked on you and suddenly sixteen years of literacy flies out of your mouth into stutters before you can even think.

You press your eyes shut, feeling overwhelmingly sick. The wave of fear and surprise drenching you feels like it is pulling your heart only to nimbly and painfully stitch it back into the gaping wound. This kind of fear was natural, of course, but it would only steadily deter you from every other thing in the world.

Almost like your fear would leave you detached and reeling in lonesome, a lonely desire pocketed by your loveless past.

Your eyelids flutter as you listen to the water, hues of [eye colour] settling on the crystalline lake which was composed of this ultimately perishable endless stillness. The vastness of the universe is riveted by the undisturbed surface of the lake you were literal centimetres away from being dropped in.

Flailing, arms and limbs hurry to scramble away but Gojo remains comparatively calm. "Were you waiting?" He asks; his tone is riddled with nonchalance you cast your gaze in the same direction he is facing.