Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

13 YOU ARE ONLY YOU, NOT HIM, NOT HER

I GUESS I'M HUMAN NO MORE
I CAN TELL I'VE ROTTED IN YOUR BRAIN

monster,
dodie

There is an old saying passed down in your family that when one walks after confrontation, each footprint leaves puddles of ichor and tears in their wake. One can turn around, heel digging into mud upon a spin, and look down at not their reflection but the skeletons of the old gods. Look a little closer and their gilded bones twist in the graves, pulling the violent in and tormenting the innocent. But one can look forward instead, muse on the gravity of the past but never face it. They will hear the wittering of rotten corpses and spilt ichor from the open craniums of river gods, but they shall never breathe without thinking of morals first.

The sky feels pressed down on the ridge of your spine as your thoughts are spun with that old tale. As you walk with Zenin Maki and Kugisaki, your heart feels heavy with your mother's lullaby once more. It is as if following that fight with Mai, your footsteps etch puddles into the dirt track you follow your classmates on.

"Hey, Maki-san," You muse, following her and Kugisaki, starting to think about something else. "Is what Mai said true? That you don't have cursed energy?"

You think back to earlier, how coldly the two siblings spoke with each other, haughty in their proclamations of being weak and and at the bottom, lacking cursed energy.

Maki seems dull with her own words, as if she is accustomed to the truth, "It's true. I can't even see curses without these glasses."

She takes them off, the thin frame balanced between her nimble fingers and you look at her eyes which were now unshielded. They were raven, a soft kind, kindling to the fur of an auspicious black cat not like the shadows cast by ominous deities. It was the kind of black like when your phone turned off by itself, an unfitting metaphor but you thought it was apt to describe her irises like that, especially since without those glasses, she was wandering blindly in a magical world.

"That's why I use cursed tools," She says idly, "They already have curses imbued in them. I can't pour my own cursed energy into them to do things like you all do."

You wonder if you should harness your cursed energy into a weapon or a tool. When you think about your encounters with foes, all you really have is your wits and your fists, neither of whom seem good enough in battle. Perhaps you should speak to Gojo-sensei about it when you see him next.

Kugisaki lifts her head, "Then why are you a jujutsu sorcerer?"

A short silence and then, "To spite them."

She turns around, looking at you and Kugisaki. You find her features to be beautiful; the sharpness of them were as poignant as the petals of a red spider lily, brimming with elegance in their own way. "I can't wait to see the looks on my family's faces when I become a bigshot sorcerer after all the years they've spent looking down on me."

Both you and Kugisaki stop in your tracks, eyes shining brightly as you look at Maki and then at each other. Maki calls on the two of you, "Come on, let's hurry over to see Shouko-san."

It seems the two of you have developed an earnest and high level of respect for Zenin Maki, a young woman whose perseverance and strength was more than wishful thinking.

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The grass on the field is stirred by a pleasant wind, whittled down to the faintest breeze that brushes your cheeks. Afternoon sunshine cradles the sky like a doting mother to an infant, but such a natural simile did not last long as you watch alabaster clouds writhe and suffocate. The gods seem angry at humanity again and in their own way, the well-versed lipped angels torment the Creation all over again. Honey hangs over the sky, striking the air with a deep stupor; it was as if the chalices of ambrosia were trickling down from the heavens. What poised itself as a walkthrough waterfall was as cunning as an impeding bloodbath to wade through.