𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐄 [JJK x OC]

19: Blossoms, Adrift in the Wind ①

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Ayako Pov

???

I sat alone in a dark room. My room. The one that I'd been given when I enrolled at Jujutsu High. How long ago was that? Two years now?

'That long, huh?' I hummed a tune none could hear in the space between dream and death, wandering the endless futures that unfurled before me. Every death, every word, and soul laid bare. Eternity at my fingertips and yet... I turn away.

My fingers reach for the eyes, gleaming and iridescent in my skull. I felt them moist and soft, dancing with light as a million futures appeared unbidden. My blessing, my curse.

Is it that surprising? In the face of the infinity that lies before you, what was it that you experienced that was special?

No, I suppose not. It was all perfectly ordinary, the world as it has always been, even if people try to deny it.

Countless futures lie before you, ready for you to pluck them from the sky and turn them to reality. Anything you please exists at your whim, doesn't that please you?

No, I suppose not. When faced with the outcome of every decision, things begin to lose their flavor. What is the purpose of choosing when I've seen a version of me that made each choice?

What is it you lament? Is there some desire in your heart left unfulfilled?

No, there isn't. Is it strange? The purpose of strength nor the nature of fulfillment never crossed my mind. I never sought to be understood... yet I was. I... I thought those ephemeral days of spring would last forever... yet it all faded like a blossom... adrift in the wind.

Are you saying that none of it ever mattered?

Yes. Yes, that's right. None of it meant a thing; it was temporary. I should have known, seen from the start. There's no way such a fleeting thing could ever matter.

And yet...

And yet...!

Images flashed in my mind. Memories that can't be buried, a dream I always dream that manages to blot out the futures that once hounded me. The scent of salt in the air, the feeling of sand between my toes, laughter like music dancing in the sky. The four of us at the beach smiled, shrouded in shadow. A moment lost in time, and yet it aches.

My finger caresses my eye, softly prodding it as I saw the three of them asking me to join them in the water. I squeezed the fleshy orb within my grasp. Warmth pooling as crimson that then wept from empty sockets.

Nothing changes. The future, the past, I see them still. I knew it was pointless, of course. I foresaw it after all.

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Tengen Pov

When I first arrived on this furtive island nation, I knew at once it had the characteristics to become the very crux of the world's cumulative curses. Thus, I made it so. A barrier to seclude us, to concentrate those malevolent feelings towards this place. So years passed as I sat at the throat of this country and as the cursed energy swelled until it bloomed forth a most auspicious fruit even as the barrier was in its nascent stage. An era... the golden age of sorcery, the time of Heian.

In those days, genius abounded; people of such cunning that their knowledge was able to match my own, even in their comparatively short lives. Those days over a millennium ago, I still remember as though it was happening before me in this instant. The people, those places, I hear them even now. That tyrannical king, who lived a life of sin to satisfy none but him self, a furtive woman who wore the face of countless others in search of that which may fill her heart, the onmayoji skilled beyond his years, the model upon which modern sorcery was founded, whose fate lay within the stars. Only I remember those people as they were, and then there was...