Death Won't Come Easy

Hey!
First of all, I'm a non-native English speaker, so I'm sorry if there's any mistake.

It's my first JJK fic and also the first time I'm writing something in present tense so I hope it won't sound too weird!

Anyway, I listened to

"To Be Loved" by Askjell ft. AURORA while writing this so you should maybe listen to it while reading the fic!

Please, be aware that this is taking place between chapter 136 and 137.

See you at the end!

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Yuuji wants to die.

In this instant, there's nothing Yuuji wants more than this.

He feels angry. Though this anger is mixed up with pain, and is so far from the initial rage he'd felt at first when all of this started.

He's angry at the higher ups for taking advantage of Gojo's sealing to discredit his sensei. And yet, this anger is fading. The more days goes by, the more it's dulling, and the more he's losing his initial will to fight them.

Instead he fights curses, everyday long. He doesn't really have a reason anymore. So many people died because of his inability to hold Sukuna back inside him, and yet he's not even killing these curses to atone for his weakness that allowed this to happen.

Exorcising is the only thing he does now, it's become mechanical, his fists striking continuously just as if he was doing assembly-line work. Sometimes it lasts for hours, until his body falls from exhaustion. He does it because right now, it's the only thing he knows how to do.

He could almost feel bad about it, his inability to fight for a cause, if he hadn't stopped thinking about it days before. He's killing curses and sometimes he gets hurt, but it doesn't make him feel as alive as he'd thought it would.

He once heard someone say that one wasn't truly alive until they felt the true nature of pain. Yuuji's never been one for pretty turns of phrases and quotes, but he remembers distinctly thinking, the first time he'd heard it, that it might be true. He now knows that it's not. It's pure bullshit. Or the sentence just doesn't apply to the kind of pain he's experiencing.

He even has tried to get hurt during a fight, deliberately, to see what it would feel like. To feel the pain and maybe react to it. But it didn't work. It didn't make him feel alive. In fact, it probably just reinforced his wish to die. And to make the pain stop, too. To put an end to this existence that feels so meaningless right now.

There's a void in his chest but Yuuji's too tired to be afraid of it now, to be scared about how much he changed in the span of a few months only.

He doesn't remember ever wanting to die before this moment.

And now that's the only thing he wants. The only thing he yearns for. And yet he can't.

When he fights until exhaustion, his body just drops, not caring that he's standing on concrete. His body decides for him, even if Yuuji doesn't want to, even if he tries to get back up each time until even his eyelids are just too heavy for him to lift and so he can only fall in a dreamless sleep.