Cut, pain, heal, repeat.
That had been my entire morning. I was prepping for the evening mission with Megumi and I was running on fumes. When I went back to bed after our 3AM meeting, I could barely sleep a wink. I couldn't stop replaying the scene in my head.
His fucking laugh.
My mind was totally distracted and I was hurting myself and healing without even thinking of it, till Yuuji pulled me out of my daydream.
"Yo, Ayane!"
"Hey," I smiled.
"You prepping for tonight?" he asked excitedly, coming over to where I was sat in the training room. He was always so eager to see me and it made my soul happy.
"Yep, doing the Gojo special," I said as I motioned to my pocket blade.
"Don't you think it's kind of fucked up that he makes you hurt yourself for training?"
I laughed, "I think most things that he tells us to do are a bit fucked up. But it helps, I've gotten a lot better."
He nodded but there was a slight frown on his face, "I still don't like that you do that. It seems messed up."
"I guess it is. You wanna do it for me?" I smirked and he looked absolutely horrified.
"No way! I could never hurt you!" he exclaimed, offended at the mere thought of it. I swear I could've saw the slightest tinge of pink at his cheeks too. "You know, you're so different from when we got reunited, Ayane. In fact, you're so different from how I remember you from being young."
I looked at him whilst wiping my blade with my rag and setting it down next to him on the floor, "Yeah? How's that?"
"Well, when we got reunited that night, you were like...terrified. I mean - rightfully so!" he laughed sheepishly and I nodded, "But I mean, like, even when you first got to the dorms, you were so jumpy and I remember you being like that as a kid. But now you're like, a certified badass."
I couldn't help but giggle at his recounting, "I guess that's true. I've found myself being less jumpy these days. I feel safe here. I never felt safe before."
He smiled but it was quickly replaced with a slight frown, "That sucks, man. I wish we could've went to middle school the whole time together. We would've had a blast."
I grinned and nodded, becoming nostalgic for virtually the only time in my life I remember being happy in childhood. "We sure would have. But we can have a blast now, right? Curses and all?"
"Definitely."
We sat for a moment in silence and soaked up the atmosphere. Something about his presence was just so comforting to me.
"It kinda feels like fate, you know, meeting back up with you, Yuuji."
He looked at me with wide eyes, "How do you mean?"
"It's just that, I remember as kids - and it's okay if you don't - that I told you about the curses I could see. Although, I think I referred to them as monsters or something back then," we laughed together, "But you were the only kid I ever told that went along with it. You pretended and played with me and acted as if they were really there. There's something about that that just seems fitting. Like, you ended up being the first person I knew that could see them too."
"When you put it like that, it is pretty crazy," he smiled, "So you've just seen them your entire life? As far back as you remember?"
"Yeah. I've never actually had the chance to ask you though, when did you see your first?"
He scratched the back of his head sheepishly and recounted the tale of how he happened upon Megumi one night and they went looking for a cursed object together and it ended with Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger.
"That's honestly something out of a book, man," I laughed, "And he's just in there? All the time?"
"Unfortunately," he replied honestly, "Some days he's loud and some days he's quiet."
"That takes impostor syndrome to a whole new level," I said, trying to remain light hearted, "Does he ever talk to you about us?"
"Well, right now when you asked that, he said that that was a very ego-centric comment to make."
I covered my mouth and held back a laugh, "He said that or you did?"
"I promise he did. But yeah, you don't wanna know what he says about you."
That was all he had to say to get me to stop questioning things. I tried to make the atmosphere a little less weird, "You know, when I first met back up with you, I thought the little marks on your face were makeup."
Yuuji immediately burst into laughter, wiping the tears from his eyes, "You did not!" he shouted.
"I swear, I swear!" I said laughing back with him, "I thought it was a trend or something, give me a break! I hadn't wore makeup until I met Nobara like two months ago!"
After we were done laughing about my ridiculous comment, we settled down and got back to talking about the mission.
"Are you nervous?" he asked genuinely.
"Hm...probably a little. I feel like it'll go okay, I'm just scared in case I fuck up."
He nodded his head in understanding, "Megumi's super strong and smart, so you'll be fine."
I smiled at his praise of Megumi and replied, "I don't doubt that. I'm just scared I've not trained enough and I'll let him down somehow."
"You? Not train enough? Ayane, if you're not in this room, you're asleep or in class. You train more than anyone."
"You got me there."
"I know what you mean, though. I mean most of the other guys, I guess aside from Yuuta, they've all known about this stuff since they've been born. We kind of just got thrown in somewhere along the way."
"Yeah, I think that's what I'm most insecure about."
"Don't be," said Megumi who was standing, leaning against the door frame. "Let's go, Ayane."
I stood up and brushed off my legs, heading to the door. "Bye Yuuji," I said as I waved at him and he waved back.
"Good luck guys, you got this!"
And to the mission we went.
---
The sky was dark and gloomy the whole car ride to the destination. Crows cawed the whole way. Ijichi was the driver and Gojo accompanied us, something about how he wanted to be there for my first mission or something.
There had been calls from nearby residents stating that the old mill factory had some strange things going on at night. There were eerie noises and what sounded like human screams, apparently.
It didn't take long for us to get there as it was in an industrial area of Tokyo. Megumi and I made quick work of getting out of the car and heading to the front, Gojo right behind us. Ijichi set up the barrier so that no residents could see if anything were to go down.
"Ayane, I want you to take these blades. I know you've been working closely with kunai's in your training, so hopefully this will suffice if you need to come into any sort of combat. Megumi, do your thing."
Inspired speech.
"Got it," I smiled and followed behind Megumi who had both hands in his pockets, not a care in the world. I gripped onto the kunai blades provided for dear life.
We spent a little bit of time poking around in silence, not much to be seen. Old machines, broken down equipment and dust. A lot of dust.
"You ever think there's been a sorcerer that's died, not from curses, but dust inhalation?" I queried.
Megumi just scoffed and continued to look, "There's a high probability of that."
Shit, you can do better than that, Ayane.
"Megumi, why did Gojo not come in to investigate as well?"
"He probably just wants to see how you fare on your first mission, I imagine."
That was a logical answer that I kicked myself for not thinking of, too caught up in the need to try and make any conversation with him.
There was only two floors left to investigate as we had found absolutely nothing on the lower floors, and that's when Megumi suggest we split up. I reluctantly agreed.
He took the top floor and I the one just below. The whole building was practically falling apart, but it seemed to be a lot worse up here. I could only imagine what Megumi's floor looked like. Peeking through doors and standing still to hear things was only so fun for a certain period of time, but I was truly starting to get bored. That was until I heard a rather loud crash up above me, making me run straight for the stairwell.
"Megumi?! Megumi, are you okay?!" I called out, the thudding still occurring, "Where are you? Megumi!"
I frantically searched the top floors east side, kunai blade cemented to my palm. I was cold-sweating from the adrenaline. I could sense something just up ahead, that was until...
SMACK
I hit the floor unceremoniously, Megumi falling on top of me. He got up quickly and readied himself in a fighting position, "Watch out!" he screamed, pushing me over to the wall as a figure approached. I hit the wall with a gentle thud, steadying my eyes onto the curse that he was fighting.
It was almost human-like. Skin peeling, flesh decaying, it smelled awful. It had fresh scars, probably from whatever Megumi had done to it before I got there.
"Where is master, I want master," it chanted.
"That thing...is fucking creepy," I said, throwing one of my kunai's directly for it's head but it managed to miss it completely. Suffice to say I was embarrassed.
"Nice one, you gave it a haircut. And it's angry," Megumi retorted, grabbing my wrist and dragging me to the other end of the corridor we were in, the curse following closely behind. It seemed to be walking slowly, but it was definitely trying to approach us.
"What do we do?" I asked Megumi, slightly panicked.
"You stand right there. I'm going to exorcise it."
Megumi stood in front of me, arms out and hands readied, revealing a large, fluffy black dog. If I weren't so distracted with the curse, I would've definitely tried to clap him.
"Let's go," he said to the dog and they charged in unison toward the curse. Megumi brought out a blade he had with him and aimed for the curses neck, but it was to no avail as the second it brushed it's skin, the thing multiplied in size tenfold and grabbed a hold of Megumi's neck in turn.
Holy shit. Okay. Breathe. You can do this.
"Megumi!" I screamed, charging towards the curse and throwing my kunai's at it, which definitely didn't miss due to the sheer size of the thing, but it didn't appear to do too much damage.
fuckfuckfuck!
It's grip on Megumi just got tighter and tighter, it used it's free arm to whack me out of the way, my back pounding against the mouldy wall.
"Ay-ane! S-hit!" I heard Megumi say through my hazy vision, I tried to heal myself as quickly as possible and as soon as I'd regained balance, it looked like he wasn't breathing.
Thump.
What's happneing to me?
Thump.
"MEGUMI!"
Thump.
Suddenly, the entire floor was covered in a deep, deep red.
Fire.
Coming from me.
I used my arms to direct the fire toward the curse, feeling the flames absolutely engulf me. The curse dropped Megumi with a thud and tried to back itself against the wall for protection.
I'm not burning.
The sensation was euphoric. I began laughing, continuing to burn the curse until it was left as nothing but cindered flesh.
That was all well and good, job done, except I couldn't stop.
I could see Megumi's face through the flames, staring at me helplessly.
"You need to stop, Ayane!" he shouted through the cracking of beams and floorboards, "We'll die!"
"I don't know how! I don't know what's happening!" I screamed back, half laughing and half crying, "What do I do? Megumi?! What do I do?!"
"Fuck, I don't know, Ayane! Think...Yeah, think of the fish! Of the air stone we need to buy! They'll be so happy!"
My mind got puzzled.
"Huh? The fish?"
The fire subsided and my hands were left aglow, but the building was still raging on with fire.
"Yes, the fish. Think of them. They wouldn't want you to take care of them with your hands on fire, would they?" he shouted, clutching his side, which he had clearly hurt in the fall.
"No!" I shouted back, "They wouldn't!"
"Exactly, now calm down and come over here. This building is gonna go any minute."
I nodded and looked down at my shaking hands which had stopped burning. I immediately ran over to him.
"Can you move?" I asked Megumi who was still on the floor clutching his side.
"I-I don't think so. We might just need to jump, hopefully Gojo will see and help."
I shook my head, "No, let me," I said, lifting up his shirt slightly and putting my hands on his deep wound. He must've gotten it from the debris when he fell. I could feel his deep blue eyes staring at me, but now wasn't the time. I willed with all my power for him to heal, and he did.
"Let's get fucking out of here," he said, standing up and looking for the safest exit in the raging fire. "This way," he gestured to me to go in front of him, but before I could, the loudest creak sounded in my ears.
Then everything went black.