In your defense — which, is to say, you have absolutely none — you'd waited for Shoko to find you for all of five minutes, before you'd decided screw it, I'm going in.
Not your smartest decision.
(You must have left the brain cell back in Jujutsu High with Megumi.)
But you do it.
You step into the cloying blackness anyway. For a moment, you're blind and utterly vulnerable, and it reminds you of your last time in a veil, where you'd almost died. Terrible contortions of Getou Suguru and his followers run on an unending loop in your mind. Panic makes your heart race and your palms sweat.
Things don't get better once you pass through the veil.
You don't know what you'd expected to see, really. Screaming civilians? Getou Suguru's bloated, lifeless corpse? A massive hoard of curses?
No.
It's just —
A girl.
She could be about your age, wearing a wool sweater over a button-down shirt and a pleated skirt, just like one of those teenaged girls who'd been with Getou when you'd first met him at the school. For a span of a heartbeat, you stare at her, trying to see if she's friend or foe, a silent question written in your eyes, all over your face. Then an explosion sounds, catching you off guard.
The pain is sharp and sudden, beginning in your stomach and spreading outward with electric fingers. A scream stops in your throat, and you collapse in a tangle of limbs, watching as the ground is splattered crimson with blood.
Your blood.
Not an explosion after all, then.
You stare at the still-smoking barrel of the gun, and the girl holding it, before your eyes flicker over to the bloodied, gaping hole in your abdomen. An icy tingle races up your spine, the urge to activate your Technique overwhelming — but something stops you. No. Let her think you're weak. Let her underestimate you.
"Good. Let's talk." The girl eyes you with no small amount of satisfaction once she sees that you're submissive and pliant, only moving once to press a helpless hand to the wound, the blood seeping out from in between your fingers and onto the grass. "Okay, so I'm Mikina, and our family sent me to bring you back home, yada yada yada . . . Does any of this make sense? Hellooooo?"
So that's what this is about. If your family can't acquire you by legal means, then they'll resort to illegal ones when Gojo's not around. How cliche. You can taste bile in the back of your throat. Mikina's false smiles, her artificial words, these twisted plots — it all makes you want to be sick.
You manage to find your voice, surprisingly dry. "You shot me in the chest, not the brain. Yeah, I heard you clearly the first time."
Foot, meet mouth. Why, oh, why did you say that? You've just given her an idea. And not the good kind.
Mikina throws back her head and laughs. Her smile glitters like poisonous water. "Tempting, but no. Naoya Zenin's a lot of things, but I don't think he's a necrophiliac . . . Hopefully. Ah, well. You'll find out soon enough."
Him again. You haven't even met the guy yet, but you're already sick of hearing his name.
And it's horrible. She keeps talking, her lips keep moving, all while you drift in and out of consciousness, crumpled in a bloodied heap on the ground. Her face blurs, like a camera losing focus, and you can't see her anymore. Her words are drifting away too — a nonsense-language, a dream-babble.
"Soooo . . . Any last words to your friends before we go? Maybe say goodbye to lover boy?"
Yuta. She's talking about Yuta.
"He's cute, in a kicked-puppy kind of way. You have good taste, I'll give you that much . . ."
It hurts to breathe, it hurts so so badly; even shallow gasps feel akin to new wounds tearing you apart. But Yuta's name brings with it remembrance, and a clarity to your once clouded mind. The dark blue of his eyes, the soft translucence of his skin, the wash of pink on his cheeks when you'd said that you'd liked him . . . Slowly, your hands inch towards the gaping wound in your abdomen, feeling the icy familiarity surge under your skin.
You wait.
And wait.
And then you lunge.
Mikina offers little resistance; you doubt that she was expecting you to attack. Rage seethes through you, the most deadly, hot-blooded fury you've ever known, giving you the strength to tackle her to the ground. Unfortunately, all of Maki's training goes out the window in favor of a good, old-fashioned cat fight. There's a lot of scratching, hair pulling, and definitely a lot of punching. Your fingers open up, begin to bleed from the impact, matching the blood running down the sides of Mikina's face and onto the ground next to her cheek.
You don't have the stamina to keep it up for long. And eventually, you have to stop, gasping and panting so hard for air that it makes you dizzy. And Mikina — who apparently isn't unconscious and is in much better shape than you are — wriggles free and kicks you. You feel something crack in your chest when you fall to the ground, blinking, sluggish and slow and hot.
Mikina's face swims into view. It is swollen, and contorted with anger. Her eyes flash dangerously.
Then —
A bright explosion of pain, a bang echoing in your brain, and then you collapse forwards into blackness.
