𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮 | 𝗷𝘂𝗷𝘂𝘁𝘀𝘂 𝗸𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗻

𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲

You roll around in your bed, which had always been hard but has recently become unforgiving. You haven't left your bed—except to pee, or brush your teeth, or pick up your food or a new (already-read) book—so the mattress has formed an deep-set imprint around the curves of your body. You'd think that would make it more comfortable—you would think—but it only makes your body ache worse, because the rusty springs are angled perfectly to cut into you.

You've never wanted to hold a smartphone so badly in your entire life. Hell, you'd be grateful for cable.

You'd wondered, briefly, because there is nothing else for you to do but rot and reread and think, why you'd never been offered or allowed a smartphone, since the students and teachers all used them religiously. You hadn't noticed at first, not until you'd realized how much your archaic brick had stuck out against Nobara and Fushiguro and Itadori's more modern models. You'd tried not to linger on it, but your thoughts had wandered again and again until you thought, maybe, a curse couldn't use a cell signal to track you. Of course they couldn't. Maybe they—the higher ups, and Gojo of course—hadn't trusted you with a smartphone. The sight of Nanami, drenched in blood, floods your vision. You wouldn't trust yourself either.

Eventually, your battered body refuses any more of this awful treatment. It starts by rejecting sleep, which you've been catching up on handily. When there's nothing else to do, at least sleeping makes the time pass by faster. Until you can't fall asleep, no matter how long you lie still with your eyes squeezed shut. Great. Even your body is punishing you now.

At least you haven't cried. You haven't cried since you'd left the bridge, so snotty that you'd barely been able to breathe through your salt-stung nose. (That had been for a different reason though.) This kind of pain you've experienced in the third person, like you're a ghost floating over the carnage you revisit over and over again. It helps to distance yourself.

The third person perspective tells you a lot. For one, someone wants you dead, and they are coming back to finish the job. Gojo had told you, and so had Nanami and Maki, that you were being kept at Jujutsu Tech for your own good. You hadn't realized how deeply they'd meant that. You also realize, with embarrassingly bitter clarity, how stupid this entire debacle had been. Couldn't you have ordered moisturizer and new pajamas online? From the third person perspective, dying outside of a steakhouse would've been a laughable end.

You couldn't cry. All you could do was cringe, embarrassed by your carelessness, and swear to yourself over and over again that it would never happen again. You'd craved time in the real world, away from jujutsu fights and Gojo Satoru, and ended up running back into the clutches of both. You don't think you've ever been so close to either.

Your thoughts start to take a dark and scary twist. You can't sleep through them either, not anymore. You're scared, and admittedly weak, so you end your forced solitude early, but only for a walk. It's the middle of the day—prime hours to be spotted, though you doubt anyone would speak to you if they'd gone this long without a wellness check—but you'll make it quick. It'll just be a short walk, so your thoughts can go back to punishing instead of frightening.