Pickles ||Inumaki x Reader||

Twenty-One || Blood

-Art by Purplegrey_ink on Reddit-

[Reference to chapter 137]

When I came to, I was instantly greeted with pain washing over me in long and excruciating waves. Every movement seized through my body, causing my grunts to be carried in the air as I lifted myself to my feet.

It took a long time for me to gain my balance. A splitting headache weighed me down along with all the other injuries I had attained. But most of all the root of my agony was my legs. God. It felt like every muscle had been torn to shreds.

I didn't remember what happened after Toge told me to live but I could put two and two together from the fact I had woken up in the middle of Shibuya, far away from where the boy and Sukuna had their showdown, and the feeling in my legs that I recognised all too well.

The only way for me to have actually survived the encounter with the King of Curses was if I got away from him without being chased. Toge's command must have made me use my remaining cursed energy to run as fast and as far as possible.

Grimacing, I took slow and heavy steps in the direction where the whole occurrence took place. I didn't know how long I had been out. I didn't know if I even had enough stamina in me to make it all the way without collapsing. The only thing driving me at that point was the sheer urge to find Toge. 

The longer I walked, the more thoughts fogged my mind thus leaving me to push myself faster. Toge could be dead. He could have been dead for a long time. The very idea scared me and that said a lot because I was afraid of nothing. What would I do if I got there and saw him? What if I couldn't see him at all? Or what if I saw him in a state that far exceeded my deepest dread?

Get a grip, I told myself, get a grip.

I had completely run out of cursed energy so it felt like an hours were passing by as I limped through the disturbingly quiet city, not an ounce of reassurance that any of my teammates were even alive at that point.

When I finally got there, I had to take a moment to catch my breath and look around. Megumi was gone. His dried blood still remained on the wall and floor of where he previously sat but there was no sign of himself at all. I couldn't sense Sukuna's presence either. In the distance, I could spot the slashed corpse of the skinny blond man from earlier still in the same place.

But there was no sign of Toge.

That was when, to my utter horror, I noticed something up ahead that shook me to my core. It couldn't have been what I thought it was. There was no way it could have been that.

I won't go into detail. But it was grim. 

When I tripped over to that thing and identified it immediately as Toge's severed arm, I lost all the composure I did have. When I saw the bruised skin on his hand so grey and lifeless, I couldn't bare it.

But I had no other choice but to accept and move on, to go look for him, hoping that at least the rest of him was in one piece and alive.

Among the tear-stricken calls of his name and the rushing around, I did eventually find him. He had been thrown into a building just a few streets away and was trapped under a pile of rubble and ruin. I pulled his cold body out desperately like a mother would her child.

"Why did you have to do that," I sobbed, gripping the unconscious boy tightly in my arms. "Why did you have to try to save me?" My ear was pressed against his chest, listening intently to the single, shaky heartbeat that would sound after long pauses. "You better not die on me, idiot!"