Human Adjacent - Megumi Fushiguro x READER

Chapter 12

We stopped hearing the screams three minutes into our mad sprint from the countryside school building. Fushiguro kept us running for ten more.

The air I sucked into my lungs was thick. I peeked up at the overcast sky, and it was solid dark gray, flashing blue occasionally. Mother Nature warning for the storm that was approaching...

but it wasn't raining.

Not yet.

I panted heavily as I stumbled onto the dirty wooden bench, Fushiguro kept a few feet of distance, but eventually, slid down next to me.

It was hardly 4 PM but the world around us was dim under heavy clouds and it already felt like dusk.

"What did you do?" The voice next to me was softer than I'd expected. Not quite kind, but curious. I turned my head to my knees and buried my face in my palms. "Nothing- I think? I hope. God I-I just- I only touched him, but I saw it in his eyes. I felt it. It hurt. It hurt so bad. Even when we were running away, you heard it didn't you?" Fushiguro sat silent for a moment and I heard him shift to rest his elbows on his knees. "Yeah." He sighed. "Yeah I heard it."

I shake my head and feel the spinning sensation really start to kick in. I can't seem to force myself to catch one of the thoughts flying through my head for long enough to form a coherent sentence. I didn't even notice I had stopped breathing until I felt a cold grip gently pry my wrist away from my face, turning my palm up between us. I let my other hand fall limp.

His gaze was locked on my traitorous hand as he turned and inspected it from all angles. "I can feel it," he muttered the words so quietly I half wondered if he'd meant to say them out loud at all. "Feel what?"

His skeptical eyes met mine and he returned my hand to the palm up position, angling it towards him in a way that made the tendon on the inside of my wrist ache just a little.

   He focused back on my hand and continued explaining."The cursed energy around your hand. It's festering here, you've never had this before."

"Your cursed energy is usually so. . . dim. I guess. Evenly distributed- and it's small. It's not like this. This is powerful. Bright."

I heard the word he didn't say in the way his eyebrows knotted and his lips pursed.

Angry.

This is angry.

He gently raised his hand to hover over mine and laid the pad of his thumb at the tip of my ring finger, but the pressure was gone before it ever really appeared, as he reared back like he'd been burnt, hissing in pain biting his tongue to hold in any louder of a sound.

He removed every part of himself from me where we were touching, down to tucking his legs away from me. I flinched back in time with his intense gaze turning back to mine, I couldn't read the emotion that was swimming there. He wasn't thrilled with me, but he wasn't angry. He wasn't afraid, maybe shocked.

It took me two whole minutes to gather myself and open my mouth, but instead of my voice I heard the monstrous hiss of the bus's airbrakes grinding it to a stop before us. And without saying a word, or dragging me along like usual, Fushiguro boarded, swiping his bus card twice through the scanner and swinging into a seat before I could even shut my mouth.

The bus was cold. Outside it had been stormy, warm in the sticky way that made you want to crawl out of your own skin and lay under the air conditioning. But the problem with wishes like those is they lead you into stupid hopeful fantasies. And right now, I would pay every cent I have to my name for my mind to take me anywhere but crammed into a crowded bus seat, shoulder to shoulder with Fushiguro during rush hour as everyone on this east-Jesus-nowhere countryside was getting out of school for lunch. And judging my the skeptical glances he kept sending my way, he felt exactly the same.

I straightened my uniform jacket and settled back into the seat. Fushiguro had handed me his phone about ten minutes into the ride, a text from Gojo telling him the address of a school that matched the name of a bus stop that happened to be an hour away.

Great. Trapped in a metal box with this asshole for an hour.

Such fun.

"So why are we going?"

"Special grade cursed object, it's extremely dangerous so don't be an idiot and just do what I tell you."

Electing to ignore his obvious jab I press him further.

   "Why would it be at a school in the middle of nowhere?" He sighed and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms. "Sometimes places like this with little protection are actually rather prone to attracting curses, like this school. So they'll keep some kind of powerful cursed object there with a protective talisman to keep the area safe for people. But as time goes on the talisman begins to ware, and instead of protecting from curses, the cursed object begins to draw them in with the energy it radiates."

"And that's what's happening at this school?"

The exasperated look he casts my way answers for him.
"Right. That makes sense, but if they really wanted-"
"Y/N!" He snapped. "Would it kill you to let me think for two seconds?"
Anger bubbles somewhere in me. And I try to make myself consider that maybe he really is just beating himself up for not knowing where the Special Grade is.
  "If you have questions, ask Maki after the mission. Just do what I tell you for now."

As usual.

I choose, benevolently, to drop it.

I rest my forehead against the window, puffing up my cheeks and exhaling, leaving a spot of fog over the cold glass. He'd told me once before. Teaching me was a waste of his time. He'd made that plenty clear.

••
The storm faded into a dusty blue evening as we rolled up to the school. The air was clear and the only vestiges of the monstrous looming thunderhead were thin whispy clouds dancing in the dark blue sky. The thick humidity should've cleared by now, but the second we stepped out of the bus I felt it. Mixed in with the warm sweet air was a scent like a rotting animal, and the air was hanging thick, almost visible with the amount of cursed energy clinging to it.

I refused to let it make me shiver.

"Straightforward, we head in, get what we need and go, got it?" I toss him a mock salute followed by a middle finger, glaring

He rolled his eyes and for a split second...

all I could see were the whites.

••

The air grew thicker as we strolled around the campus, to the back of the school, past roving students who didn't seem to care too much that we were blatantly outsiders on their grounds.

     We carved a path that eked suspiciously close to aimless wandering until we came upon a tall, stilted box. A Stevenson Screen. Being so close to this thing, the pressure made me feel like my chest was going to cave in, but I forced my breath to even out and tried to separate the tangible feeling from the panic.

"They're keeping a cursed object in a place like this?" Fushiguro murmurs. "Could they be any dumber? 

He unlatched the door, pulled it open, and removed a small, coffin-shaped box from inside. It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, but his face dropped in horror when he opened it.

     I rounded to his side, his eyes not even bothering to trace my path as the inside of the container came into my view. I felt the same stabbing fear I'd witnessed in him in my gut. The empty red velvet bed looks impossibly deep inside the box, gaping back at us.

"Please tell me it's supposed to be empty."

A/N

1394 words

Hey besties...

so my break was a little longer than I intended.

Thanks for Reading ;)

-Chaos