Mirror Eyes & Bright Blue Skies | Jujutsu Kaisen

ⅩⅠⅩ. Shadows

Please, please help me. It hurts. It hurts so bad. Please...

I hate this job. It's so damn depressing.

It's cancer...

I'm sorry sir, ma'am, your son just passed away in surgery...

...needs a heart transplant.

Can't you do something, doctor!?

...have you fired!

But it was just a cough...

The door shuddered and creaked as the howling chorus of voices pounded against it. All at once, years of pain and misery, fear and anger, jealousy, despair, assaulted Ikuko's mind, rendering her a small, shivering child, crouched in the corner, clutching her ears in a desperate attempt to mute the cacophony. The force of her will alone, trained by years of empathing negative emotions, kept the door closed, the chorus of emotions out of her safe space. It was all she could do, and still, the door shook. She could feel it buckling.

Why did I think I could do this? she thought to herself, dry sobs wracking her body, stealing the breath from her lungs and making it difficult to breathe, Why? I can barely handle my own feelings.

But it was too late to turn back now. Ikuko's only choice was to endure the storm and hope that she emerged on the other side in one piece.

Time lost all meaning as she waited, trapped in the room in her mind. The intensity of the howling never lessened. She began to lose hope that it ever would, that it would ever end.

But then it did. Suddenly, all at once, it ended. Still, Ikuko waited, tense, unable to release her guard in case this was simply a lull, a period of rest between the first assault and an eternity of suffering.

Then, she felt herself being drawn from her mind, back into her body. There was a weight around her shoulders. What was it? Light, but also something dark in the periphery of her vision, very close to her face. A low hiss rang in her ears.

Eventually, she recognized the weight to be someone's arms, wrapped around her tightly, and a head, nestled in the crook of her neck. A black head of hair turned out to be the dark thing in her periphery. Then, her ears determined that the low hissing was, in fact, a long stream of soft whispers which sounded from right next to her ear.

Slowly, she started to make out words, "...okay, Nishimura-san. You're okay. I promise you're okay. Those voices aren't yours. Those emotions aren't yours. They can't hurt you. You're okay, Nishimura-san. I promise..."

Wanting to comfort the boy, Ikuko lifted her arms, grunting with the effort but eventually managing to wrap them loosely around his back.

This seemed to surprise Yuta, who gasped and pulled away, though he gripped her shoulders to keep her from falling over.

"Nishimura-san! Are you conscious? Can you hear me?"

She licked her lips, squinting into the light, "...yeah? I think so," she croaked out, then coughed and swallowed. It felt as if her mouth was stuffed with cotton.

Looking around, Ikuko saw that she was sitting on the ground at the back wall of the morgue, Yuta crouched next to her with a relieved smile on his face. The tree curse was nowhere to be seen, just sterile linoleum floors and metal cabinets. All that remained of the curse was her steadily pounding headache, which seemed to grow worse with every passing second; it seemed the negative emotions had set her own natural cursed energy production into overdrive.

However, despite the headache, Ikuko grinned.

I did it. I really did it.

With Yuta's help, she managed to stand, and the two of them exited the morgue and out into the hallway. They heard laughter echoing down the hall, a few doors opening and closing, but at this point, they could care less if they were spotted. The atmosphere was alive now. The dim lighting and the suffocating air were gone, leaving in their place unencumbered nurses who felt free to laugh.