Floating Like a Lilo ── Itadori Yuuji (✓)

21 THE FRAIL TRUTH OF HAPPINESS

IT'S ALRIGHT, IT'S OKAY,
IT'S ALRIGHT, IT'S OKAY
YOU'RE NOT A MONSTER,
JUST A HUMAN

it's alright,
mother, mother

     The repressed memories were like a hallway full of locked doors - banging on them and clawing your way in wouldn't work. But, reading that diary somehow opened them all. And suddenly, you're ten years old again.

     You're haunted by all things you did not say, unable to forgive yourself for all the words you didn't utter until it was too late - the I love you's, the I'm sorry's, the I forgive you's. But then again, you're so young, so mindless; you don't believe anything other than the words out of Mother's mouth because Mother knows best, even if you don't like the taste of blood or cry at the curses in the depth of the dark.

     "Why do I have to drink this? Dad says it's not good for me," Your lips are pursed, holding back when wobbly eyes look at all the crimson blood. You'll have it coming out of your ears and through all the cracks in your teeth and the creases on your palms. And then the Demon King rises - you see him from a distance and you can't look away.

     Her face is so blurred, so unclear; it used to be exact, still like a photograph pressed into the cranium. Is she smiling? Is she sad? Are there tears on your cheeks that you can smudge away with the pain. Her palm is soft and warm; you like holding her hand, but not when there's blood on it and now? Now, there's so much blood.

     Mother's voice is a slow echo tucked into your ear like the ocean in a seashell, "It's who we are. I did it, your grandfather did it and his father and his mother before."

     It's who we are. Because you were perfected after generations. You're the vessel.

     "Tell me a bedtime story," You blink slowly, a wave of drowsiness washing over you like a violent tsunami, sending you straight to the threat of slumber.

     Her lips go wryly, twisting when she thinks and then, she decides on one, "I'll tell you a story about a human god, our god - Sukuna-sama. He wanted to rule the world and our family loved him for all the riches and good he promised us. We prayed to him to give us the same power as him. Because this world has loads and loads of evil, mean spirits and only Sukuna-sama can help us control them. That's why, when Sukuna-sama went away, he asked us to drink his blood to keep his memory alive. So one day, he'll come back to us, and since I'll be too old by then, you're going to be the martyr."

     She presses a small kiss onto your forehead, thumb gently brushing the strands away from your cheek. And her words seem so far away, an echo buried from religion onto lips. Because... if you love somebody, they turn into a God. But you can't control what kind of God they turn into. In a way, that's what happened to Mother.

     She neither killed you nor let you live. Instead, she gave you false hope, "I'm counting on you, [F/n]."

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     Two days go by - no, fly by - and everything only ever seemed to go downwards. You're in this spiral that doesn't seem to stop and all you can do is practice your jujutsu on empty beer cans that your father throws away, crunching them all up doesn't help; the sound of the metal collapsing feels eerily like your heart breaking.

     The only time it does seem to get better is when Gojo-sensei returns. And this time, he brings Itadori with him.

     Itadori wonders about who the person in front of him is. He knows it's you, and yet, he is heartbroken when he looks at you. You with this indestructible, passive aura about you, tired eyes with a mirage of sadness arranged about them. He can feel all the power that screams inside you; his hands almost shake just stirring from the jujutsu, not even his jujutsu, because the entire black hole devouring this room is coming from you.