Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

EPILOGUE

Tired, I'm falling to my knees. I'm weighted. Carry me home like you used to. When I burn my organs. Pour the Bourbon. Bear my burdens for the moment. ATLAS, KESHI

27. WHO AM I?

It feels like dying.

And it must be; a death of some kind. You remember other deaths that circled you quietly, vultures of oblivion perched just out of sight. The slither of blood out of your womb; violent hands jutting past skin. They felt like this, vast and smothering. They wrapped you in their frigid arms and gently shut your eyes. Chased off in the end by bitter eye-to-eyes with empty beer bottles and an unmarked gravestone but not this time. 

This time, you're struggling to even stand. And it's crippling; who am I again? Who am I now? There is no mother to smile at, no quilted blankets at home, nothing to bare teeth and suffer with. There is only you and your death and this sinking feeling as it all fades and falls and fizzles away and there will be nothing left of you, not a single thing for him to find, when this hungry darkness is through with you.

          'Hey, are you okay?'

You're going to crash, burn out, wander beyond the chasing embers but have no stones to make sparks with, have nothing, because where did you go again after he left? Deep into your own ribs, buried against the heart you had thrown away. . . The pavement is too gray with the haze of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Chewing gum clumped at the curb with the smell of wet dirt and fresh grass and speckles of wildflowers growing across the landscape. 

          '[F/n]? Hey? Please look at me.'

You're standing outside your high school but three months on after Sukuna and it still doesn't feel real. Numb and weightless, you are blinking back the fog until your vision clears again. The voice wasn't Sukuna but was it fright that scurried over your expression like prey? Your chest tightens like a heavy stone has settled there. 

Itadori gently takes your hand. You feel a strange sensation fall over you, something you don't trust at first. It's like numbness but not the same, something that slows your rapid pulse and coaxes you out of your guard.

Relaxed, you realise. That's what your feeling. It's been so long you didn't recognise it.

And yet, it was still... horrible. A horrible, guilty, ugly feeling you've been trapped with for too long that the misery had become just enough comfort for you, like a threadbare blanket pressed against your lips. Too many people had explained it to you, as if you are an open book they penned: you're grieving, it's okay, you need a break, you need you. 

Now look at you. Standing in the chilling cold, wondering where the vicious, inhuman, chittering of the make-believe monster in your head is. Not missing him but missing the feeling of being wanted or needed because now you're "normal again." 

Then again, it's awkward when the words you want to say become tasteless in the thickness of the air. Said air was already so brittle it could snap and if it didn't, one of you two might. Perhaps it was because things are different now. 

You left. 

Jujutsu Tech is nothing more than a name on your school records, a meditation institution you briefly accquaintanced yourself with, enough to keep everyone happy. Everyone except you.

No one speaks; what is there to say?

A lot, actually. Enough for you to blurt it out and all the words would fall onto the ground and you could trace the syllables with a light hum but you worry you'll never be understood. Still, it seems Itadori does—understand, that is. That's why he's shown up out of the blue to walk you home but you feel like you're slowly dying, but hey, look at him. . . look at him.