Unholy!

Until It's Gone

We often come to know what we truly want only when it begins to slip from our grasp.
Only when we remember that all things are temporary do we understand what we were afraid to lose.
And however cruel a life may be, the loss of one is crueler still.

---

They are not allowed inside.

The door shuts in their faces before Megumi can even think of protesting, as though the building itself has decided it wants no part of them, no witnesses, no questions, no lingering traces of what has just been dragged through its halls half-conscious and bleeding and kept alive by sheer stubbornness alone.

So they end up outside.

Megumi sinks down onto the low concrete ledge near the entrance because his legs no longer seem particularly interested in holding him upright. His elbows brace against his knees, his hands hanging loose between them, still faintly stained despite the rough attempt he made to wipe them clean. The blood has dried into the lines of his skin anyway. Under his nails too. A cruel reminder.

The world has gone still except for the faint hum of the wind against the building's frame and the sharp echo of Megumi's heartbeat in his ears. He keeps his gaze on the ground, but it doesn't stop the thoughts. The fear sits in his chest like a second pulse. He wants to believe Sukuna will walk out of that door untouchable as always. But there's a small, desperate voice inside him whispering what if not this time?

His leg trembles with a nervous rhythm he can't control. He doesn't even notice the restless movement until his father's shadow shifts beside him, but knowing Toji is there does nothing to still it.

They sit there for what feels like half a lifetime.

At some point, Megumi stops pretending he has any real sense of how much time has passed. The hours smear into each other beneath a washed-out sky, while the stale ache of adrenaline slowly burns itself down into pure exhaustion. Night has passed. The next day has come, and even that seems to be slipping toward its end now.

Or maybe it has been even longer. That feels possible too. It's certainly been long enough for the pavement beneath Megumi to start feeling like part of his body.

Toji disappears at one point without explanation. The man simply gets up and leaves, as if abandoning his only son is an entirely normal thing to do.

Which, for him, maybe it is...

When he returns, he has two coffees in hand.

Megumi barely reacts at first. He just takes the cup automatically, fingers stiff around the warmth of it, and lifts it to his mouth because by now he's desperate enough to accept comfort in almost any form.

The second the liquid hits his tongue, he chokes and spits it back into the cup. He jerks his head up and stares at his father in disbelief. „Is there alcohol in this?!"

Toji's mouth twitches. „Milk was out."

For a moment Megumi just looks at him. Then he turns away with a small, disbelieving shake of his head.

Toji lowers himself onto the step beside him, unbothered as ever, like spiking coffee in the middle of a crisis is just another practical solution in a long list of practical solutions.

For a while neither of them says anything.

The city lies quiet around them, hidden away in some remote, unremarkable district that stands out for nothing. One grey concrete block rises beside the next, and the whole neighborhood gives the impression of being crushingly uneventful. Every now and then, a van passes by, and life goes on as if nothing ever happened.