Mirror Eyes & Bright Blue Skies | Jujutsu Kaisen

Ⅲ. Last Day on Earth pt. 2

"Hm? What's this?"

A man with white hair stood in front of the doors to a funeral home which he'd been told would be filled with all sorts of nasty curses and cursed energy. But here he was, and the place looked absolutely spotless, without even the levels of cursed energy normal to such things as funeral homes, hospitals, and the like. It was like a baby fresh out of the womb: new, innocent, and untainted.

"Excuse me, sir," came a voice to his right, "Can I help you?"

The white-haired man had turned to tell the newcomer that he was just fine, thank you, when he was stopped short.

Oh? A grin stretched across his face, Oooh, well this is going to be exciting.

"Why yes, actually. I just have a few questions I'd like to ask you..."

---

Ikuko shivered. She hadn't even bothered taking her coat off at the door as the one-room apartment was always dim and cold and smelled strangely of sawdust, and it wasn't like the puncture wound on her arm was bleeding. Consequently, a mess of bandages lay abandoned on her kitchen counter beside a not-so-abandoned bottle of headache medicine.

After the day's events, Ikuko had been tempted to give up on any sort of birthday happiness. But her coworkers had surprised her with a gift when she returned to the shop. So here she was, at her one-person dinner table, huddled over a fast-burning candle haphazardly poked into the icing of an admittedly sad-looking cupcake.

Ikuko giggled. It was a small act of kindness, clumsily put together and obviously made last minute, but it filled her with the warmest feeling. Like butterflies on the tip of your finger, or a rainbow on a stormy day. Like the sun's rays had peaked out from behind the clouds just long enough to catch its light in the curtain of water droplets.

"Happy birthday, Ikuko," she whispered, a smile tugging at her lips, "Make a wish!"

She closed her eyes and pressed her palms together as she interrogated her brain. What should I wish for? Enough money for next month's rent sounds nice. Oh! Or a giant table full of sweets or some yakitori...

But her head seemed to have other ideas. Ikuko doubled over, head cradled in both her hands, and gritted her teeth against the throbbing pain. It was as if someone had drilled a bike pump into her head and was slowly pumping it full of air, just pumping and pumping and pumping until eventually it would burst like a balloon filled with too much helium.

Ikuko felt as if hours passed before her head finally decided to calm down. However, one look at the birthday candle, which thankfully hadn't burned down her apartment yet, told her that it probably hadn't been much more than a minute or two.

Ikuko laughed nervously, hoping to push down the rising annoyance and worry, "Maybe I should wish for a new head, yeah?"

The words had barely left her lips when the candle's flame snuffed out. For a moment, Ikuko could only stare at it dumbly, watching as a tendril of smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

That's weird, she thought, I didn't feel any wind.

And besides, for all its faults, her apartment had never suffered from drafts before, so why would it start now?

But she wasn't given any time to process the phenomenon further as a horrible feeling washed over her, a feeling that was so pure with malicious intent that it caused every hair on her body to stand on end and her skin to crawl, no, ripple, with fear.

Ikuko ran. Before she even knew what she was doing, her body had thrown itself out the apartment door and nearly tripped itself down the stairs, fear and pure adrenaline chasing her into a blind flight across the busy streets of Tokyo. She just ran and ran and ran, without a single thought in her head, until the squeal of tires and a blaring taxi horn snapped her rational self back into the driver's seat.