three.
kissing the stars goodnight.

.

From the moment he turns twenty one he knows three things exactly; in order of importance they go like this:

He hates his niece-sister from the moment she is born .

He is the oldest, the next in line.

His name is spelled heroic, child.

That woman who lives in the house, in the same room as his little brother- is not really his sister. She is some false imitation of his family, and she is treated like she's welcome. Like she is to be pampered and praised for marrying into the clan, like his father did, like his aunts did- she is o different yet, still. Still. They treat her sweet and easy while they have a knife to his back, one that they twist when his guard goes down.

Flyaway comments pierce through his skin, his bones, carved into the sot side of his stomach- but he is not a child so he does not flinch. They say cutting words and his younger brother and the other kids leave notes under his pillows of apologies, one hit's him hard because he is not a child, he is strong he-

The family clan he is in right now, his line of succession has been only boys and men, strong willed, strong bodied, and strategists; his mother rules through an iron fist and his sister-in-law is sweet and she is not one of them. She is soft; like winters first snow. She is treated like a messiah, as though she bears something stronger than even he. She is not family, though, so it makes sense that a daughter is born. He, blessed one-the next in line when his mother passes, because she is the one keeping this clan together and she knows enough technique to kill them all before they set foot into her room- is the first to be there when the first daughter since his mother's birth wails.

The woman who is not his sister dies upon impact, bringing this stain to the family name.

Good, he thinks, quietly and to himself. He can see the way people look at the daughter. Like she is a prized pig to sell to the highest bidder. His mother comes into the room, she is all silk hanfu and cold eyes. She looks at the girl and her posture becomes soft, pliable. She picks up the child and holds it. His little brother, only seventeen when they were wed- so was she, but this is how it goes- looks to his black hanfu sleeves and bows.

His mother picks up the baby. Clears her throat. And-

(He finds then, that his name means nothing, that he is not heroic nor a child because the anger that spills like lave through his skin is ice cold, his brother's describe hate as something warm, something that lets them sleep outside when they misbehave in winter because it keeps them hot. It doesn't make sense because he is cold, he thinks to himself, so clean cut and pure, like a knife through his tongue, the character's spill out, ugly, why don't you just die?)

"Héshùn." She says warmly. He thinks to himself why am I not enough but this newborn is, the only thing she can do is whine. "Her name shall be Kuàng Héshùn. Water lily and obedience, she is perfect." His mother says kindly and the child calms and begins to laugh, blurbing up something. And he- he- he feels that cold slip into his chest so harshly he would have mistaken it for an early winter.

Jiérú cannot do anything to gain the favor of his mother, but this girl who did nothing but tarnish the clan legacy has become her favorite. He truly does hate his little sister.

_

You are not someone easy to anger. You find yourself slipping in the dark when your emotions flare up; dragging your bones to dust like some cruel imitation of a mask. Some crude imitation of a joke. A plagiarized knockoff of something real.

"You liar!" Kugisaki screams, outraged. "Messing with country folk like that!"

"There's a cemetery as well as an abandoned building and that kind of combination attracts curses." Gojō-sensei informs.

"So are graves hot-spots for curses?" Itadori asks. "Dead people attracts spirits, right?"

"Not necessarily, it's the fear, hate, and despair that humans have toward these bodies." Fushiguro says. "Humanity does not know of the dead, so fear is born of it."

"Nē- he doesn't even know that?"

You pipe in now, voice smooth and as baritone as it can be when you're on the cusp of puberty like this, "He swallowed a special-grade cursed object, he's a vessel."

(A vessel as long as he can be, a vessel to a monster long-lived and violent, the King of Curses rests on his mortal soul until he breathes his last breath. A flicker of life snuffled out by a cruel fate with four arms and a king more akin to a tyrant, akin to a god. He is alive- so long as he acts as a gate, a keeper, the house, the resting place, the vessel of Ryōmen Sukuna and nothing more. Once he has outlived his purpose he will be slaughtered. His worth will have run dry and he will find himself as you always have, replaceable. You wonder if he's accepted it, really.

You wonder if he every wakes up at night screaming. You know the answer to that one because you can't sleep these days. You keep thinking that your family will find you and send you back to Miyagi, to zhōngxīng -where you are nothing more than a ghost haunting a house.

The spirit of someone nobody wanted there.

You do not get to hold any other name but that of the father you do not know the given name of, you as stuck with something cut and dry; a whisper, Itō. It's not something to be associated with. You are not zǐténg, which symbolize good luck and success; you are not fuji, that symbolize love and longevity. You are a bastard born to a mother who died and you have run away to do a job that seats you in deaths face at every turn.

Your name should not be Itō.)

"Gaah- I can't believe it-how unsanitary! Gross." Kugisaki makes a show of creeping away from Itadori and shivering like she touched something slimy. It snaps you from your daze and your brain refocuses itself in a slow, mind numbing sort of way.

"Wha-"

"I'm with Kugisaki." Fushiguro says.

You nod with them. "Yeah, I mean, you ate a finger, that's kinda gross, Ita-chan."

"Not you too Itō-chan." He bemoans, like it isn't insanely gross to eat a finger.

"Do you have a hand kink or something, Ita-chan?"

"No I-Gojō-sensei why are we here? "

"Amazing deflection." You say.

Gojō-sensei takes the bait though, "Think of it like a field test. Nobara, Yūji, and Itō-chan-"

"That somehow feels more invasive than my given name." You grumble and Itadori snickers at your pain. You glare at him.

"The three of you go into that building a expel any curses, okay?" He says, grinning feverishly.

You wonder if this is how he will teach you to control the dark; the dichotomy between yes and no splits your head in half- left brain and right brain unevenly split like a pomegranate someone cracked open, or a watermelon rind with a jagged opening. You take the hate in your chest that sits there, eternal, and wonder if you can move it.

"I though only curses could expel curses." Itadori says. Right, he doesn't have a cursed technique at all (he does not think about cigarette smoke and the bright summer sky and weep). "How am I s'posed to do anything?"

His voice is thick with Sendai-ben. The same way your voice curls off when you're confused; like it's regrown the tongue you tried so hard to cut out. Like you didn't carve yourself with that blood. Remade your mouth so you could fit two languages even if you can only understand the first by tongue.

"You're basically half-curse." Gojō-sensei says. "You've got cursed energy in abundance, the hard part is controlling it. Here," He pulls out a knife wrapped in seal paper, the same kind that Ryōmen Sukuna's finger was wrapped in when you were left falling for an eternity, for a moment, you smell cigarettes-

"Whoa!" Itadori says, eyes wide.

"It's called slaughter demon." Gojō-sensei says. "It's a weapon imbued with cursed energy. It'll work against curses." Kugisaki nods and starts walking to the building, you stand beside Itadori when Gojō-sensei whispers, "Don't let Sukuna out, got it? If you do that- it'll wipe out all the curses in an instant but-" he tilts his head toward you, then Kugisaki. "-the same would happen to any humans in the vicinity."

You wonder why he looks to you first, you're replaceable.

_

"What a pain." Kugisaki grumbles as you three walk into the building. "I came all the way to Tokyo to deal with some curses?" She says, like her entire future won't be in an incredibly sexist job doing just that. Like she'll probably die killing a curse only to be called weak- that's how this works, you're aware. You're only strong if you dominate.

Your ōoji always said women are not fit to rule, and you think he deluded himself; was it not your sōsobo-san who let her second husband throw you to the closet only to ignore his death the next day, as if it had never happened at all?

"Let's make this quick and split up, yeah? Itō, Itadori. You guys start from the bottom and come up, I'll start form the top and come down." Kugisaki turns away, already nodding to herself, as if you had agreed. You are used to orders though. "Let's get over this and head to Ginza for some sushi."

"Hey!" Itadori says, climbing a couple steps before her. "Take this more seriously," you see the exact moment Kugisaki takes her future actions into account. "curses are dangerous!"

She kicks him down, flaring her nostrils and grinding her teeth. "The hell're you to tell me off newbie!?" She marches up the steps. "Get moving!"

"I can't read her at all." Itadori confesses to you. She must've heard, though, because she leaves the flyaway comment that Itadori isn't popular- which is only kind of true in the sense people are deeply intimidated by him and generally fear approach.

Itadori does not know this. "How'd you know that?" He listens though, and you follow him as he heads down the stairs, he doesn't stop until the basement. "Bet she's not popular either, you know Itō-chan?"

"I guess." You respond. You pause as a claw-hand falls in front of you. A curse. Itadori uses slaughter demon to cut one of it's hands off. This lets it fall back and-

You take that rage you feel and pulse it around your fist before you punch the cursed spirit. It flies back, but gets up; Itadori runs over and stabs it. It does not get up again. He runs at you for a high-five, which you return.

"We should go to head up to wherever Kugisaki is, now." You say. He nods.

You walk up the stairs, checking each floor for cursed spirits. You find one on every other floor, and that's when you hear it, feel it, deep in your bones. You've been at this for a few hours but- you're sure of it. There's a curse behind that wall. You tell as much to Itadori. He curls his eyebrows down and asks you where.

You can't feel for an exact spot. The curse is behind the wall. Close.

(Please.) something rings in your head, an echo, a memory. (It hurts.)

You tap the wall. Feel for it.

(Please, your voice comes out distorted, like your throat is full of paper cuts- it feels like a memory, something you've said before; you have never begged, though. Help me, it hurts, please.)

"It's here." You tell Itadori.

He proceeds to punch in the wall with his superhuman strength. "Huh?" Itadori murmurs at you. "I missed?"

So he cracks the wall open, like the Cool-Aid Man, if the Cool-Aid Man was a teenager with a death warrant on his head and eyes so blank and cold they could make a monster freeze in place, Itadori would suit the role perfectly.

(Please, help me, that thing chokes in your head, it's in your voice, when it was still broken teeth trying to piece together words from one language with the tongue of another, it hurts.)

You don't even realize that the child is here until Itadori snatches it from under the creature. He cuts off the curses are with slaughter demon as it runs away; a voice cuts through your brain and the hissing stops entirely. "Get back here!" She looks at you, eyes wide and pupils shrunk, "Itō give me that arm!" She lifts up a straw doll- there's a faint noise of Itadori's confusion. "Straw doll technique!"

You watch as the monster that jumped through the window becomes a ball of spikes as they spill from his heart.

"See!" Itadori shouts when it's all over. "I told you it was dangerous to go alone!"

"No you didn't!" Kugisaki shouts back.

"Yeah he did." You say. Calm.

"Shut up Itō!" She shouts, louder somehow. "Besides, what the hell are you eating to bust through a wall like that?"

"Wha? It's not like it was a cement wall!"

"That's not the point it should still be impossible!"

"You've been asking all theses questions but you-!" He shouts, then his voice rings quiet. "Why did you come to Jujutsu High?"

"I didn't like living in the middle of nowhere so I came to the city!" She doesn't calm down at all. Then she pulls a complete one-eighty and says, dreamily, "This was my only way to come to Tokyo."

You scrunch your eyebrows together. "You'd risk your life for that? Really?"

"Sure," she grins, loud and bright and obnoxious. "to stay true to myself." She walks up to Itadori, to the child. "On another note, I'm glad you survived." She messes up his hair with the affection only someone raised in the countryside can have. "If you hade died- or if I'd be the only to to live," she closes her eyes, smiling. "the future wouldn't be as bright." She looks at Itadori, then. "Thanks!"

"Well," Itadori mumbles. "everyone has their reasons, right?"

"Okay! I said thanks!" Kugisaki goes back to being aggressive, you feel as though this will be. A pattern. "Now we're even!"

You relax your face for a minute and let out a bark of laughter.

"Hey, Kugisaki," you say. "you're really awesome."

She grins at you with the teeth of a wolf, eyes shrunk and body stiff like a rock. "Obviously." She says, it should so well thought out, so confident, like there was no other option.

You head out of the building and Gojō-sensei greets you happily- you wonder if he was watching; he can see with the mask on, you assume it's something more powerful.

"We should get steak!" Itadori exclaims.

"No, sushi!" Kugisaki says.

_

In the end you all sit squished at a restaurant. It's pretty busy, and everything on the menu is pricey as fuck- you remember how your family, despite having enough money to buy a few small countries, gave you enough money a month to rent a shitty apartment under the condition you forgo a couple days worth of food.

The numbers make you anxious, Fushiguro seems nonplussed, and Itadori and Kugisaki are checking off items together, they had to share one of those order cards and they're arguing or- Kugisaki is arguing about something and Itadori is arguing back. You look up at the ceiling for a little bit and giggle. Itadori turns to you.

He says nothing.

"Hey, Fushiguro, did you wanna pick some things?" Itadori asks when he takes a good look at you to realize you aren't quite in your own body. "Me and Kugisaki already finished and Itō-chan hasn't even opened his chopsticks yet."

"Sure."

(Something about him seems untouchable but- he's squished between the wall and you- his arm reaches over awkwardly and you think- how human. How human. You think there is nothing special about these people, they don't hold some infinite power, like Gojō-sensei. They are not special on their own.

Replaceable, that is what it means.)

When Fushiguro is done he hands the little sheet over to you. His face is leaned against the wall and he's staring at his phone- you realize with a small amusement that Gojō-sensei is supposed to be last- so you time your things well enough that you finish mulling over what you want when the server comes. You say, "All done here." And Gojō-sensei looks at you with a blank hesitation; he wasn't expecting petty.

He was expecting replaceable, worthless, useless, but you let your anger burn out a little bit. It's harmless. If they can get away with it, replaceable. They are a vessel, a refuted clan child, and a girl from the boonies. They have as much worth as you and you are-

Replaceable. So is money.

"Aw! My students already ordered for me, how sweet!" He says, confidently.

(There's a mocking in his voice, something so very cruel and above it all, does he think he's a god? You wonder if he can hear that ringing too, under his bed I'm scared, a whisper of his own voice coming back in distortion.)

You smile, all teeth, something cold closes around your throat, "Hey, Gojō-sensei?"

He smirks wolfishly. "Yes, my cute little student?"

You crack open your chopsticks and rub them together to remove the splinters. You think to yourself that the people you know wouldn't have stood for this- they would lock you in the dark, hoping a curse would swallow you; you are cursed, they told you. You are a monster. You tell your kin to play nice.

"Just how much money do you have?"

He hums, the smile never leaves his face. "I never thought to count it."

"Gah!" Kugisaki exclaims. "Holy shit, really? Hey, sensei, can I pretty please have your credit card?"

"Of course." There is no hesitation in his voice , "anything for my cute students."

_

Im 80% this isn't coherent but yolo lmao