Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

18 WRETCHED WOMBS, STRETCHED TO DEATH

AND I GO CRAZY 'CAUSE HERE ISN'T WHERE I WANNA BE
AND SATISFACTION FEELS LIKE A DISTANT MEMORY

r u mine?
artic monkeys

You remember it still, the image of murder screaming so loudly inside his eyes that you felt your insides turned out at such inhuman glory. He had said it himself, "The next words that spilled from my lips came from so deep within my gut that it nearly made all the things I've ever said feel like a lie."

     And the blood.

     There was so much blood.

     You don't know if you regret it or not, staying behind with Ijichi, listening and heeding to Nanami's orders because being a child is not a sin. But then again, Itadori didn't listen. Does he ever listen? Maybe only to you because...well, it's you.

     In the perilous darkness, you wish you told him to stay.

     Although, you're a fool for thinking that. You've always been a fool. Too naive to even think about the darkness to come, too bliss-heavy with that tongue as you laugh along in the small speck of happiness. Not going to that high school doesn't change what happened.

     Just because you didn't go doesn't mean Junpei never dies.

     'Cuz Junpei Yoshino is dead. And nothing you can do will change that.

     It was already terrible having to stand in that cemetery and hold back tears in front of a grey slab, Nagi Yoshino etched onto it with such forlorn. It was already painful to hold Junpei's cold hand as he hugs the collar of his mother's black jacket because it's the only black clothing in the house.

     You were already hurting, so why do people have to make it worse?

     Why must every waking moment feel like a forcefed lie by the cold touch of a god? One hand hugging you with almighty wisdom and the other driving a knife through your heart. 

     Nanami's expressionless eyes elicit a silent sort of pain, the kind that aches for too long, a strain on the heart, a crack in the wall. He had returned with that somber expression, specks of blood staining his business suit, and he had looked at you.

     He looked at you.

     No, don't say it - don't say it. (Because if you say it then it's true. Because Junpei isn't here with you.)

     His lips part and the ringing in your ears swallows you up and you close your eyes to feel the darkness, the darkness that is the only thing Junpei knows. You can't hear them - Itadori, Nanami, Ijichi.

     But you know as you reopen your weary eyelids that Junpei's crying expression weeps in the reflection of Nanami's eyes when he explains what unfolded, what went down.

    And hours later, the truth is hard to digest. Probably because the truth comes in the form of slinking in the morgue silently behind Shouko, eyes staring at the rows of mottled bodies on slabs in the morgue, veiled by sheets of reflective black plastic.

     You are still and unmoving like a light-hearted ghost trapped in one place, eyes greyed from reflecting on the events from today. Thoughts blur inside the cave of your mind, smeared between the thumb and index finger of some violent piety. You can't decide yet about anything, if you're (not) fine, if you're angry or sad, if you're mad at Itadori or mad at yourself.

     Your knuckles are white from how hard you grip the metal handle, nails digging earnestly into your palms, gentle crescent-shaped marks left as a patient bruise. There's even a slight tremor within you, the slightest mess of mania, a hurricane threatening to tear you apart from the inside out.