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It takes a while for Megumi’s eyes to get used to the darkness that surrounds him. His body feels heavy and sore, bruised from the impact of Mahoraga’s fist against his head, from the steel of the roll down gate against his flesh. He slowly moves a hand to his forehead, but he feels no blood or even sweat. Megumi groans as he sits up, fingers scratching at his cheek as he looks around, still so miserably dark— no, there’s a source of light, flickering in the distance. This bothers him, uneasiness settling in his stomach; he thought that he was in some kind of limbo, waiting for Mahoraga to kill that blond bastard until he himself died, too. Alone.
His body screams at him in agony as he gets to his feet and stretches, bones cracking all over, and Megumi wonders how long he’d been asleep or unconscious, or whatever the hell his status was. He squints at the fire from afar and looks around to check for enemies, caused by a small part of him that wants desperately to live. A bigger one does hope it’s a curse luring him out.
A shape gains form once he’s a bit closer to the bonfire, once he can tell it’s a bonfire, and Megumi freezes in place, heart so loud he can barely hear the man speak when he looks up to him. The light of the bonfire heightens the sharp features that look familiar yet completely alien to Megumi, from the single scar that strikes through the corner of his lips, the way his bangs fall over the eyes that Megumi recognizes, now much clearer but without a doubt belonging to the man he had nearly died to only a few minutes (hours?) before. A shiver runs through him and he can’t tell if it’s due to how dangerously cold this mysterious place is, or because of those eyes looking up at him, wide in recognition, the same dark brown Megumi sees when he stands in front of the mirror. He feels his eyebrow twitch and his mouth goes dry when the man speaks up again, cold sweat dripping down Megumi’s neck.
“It’s you.” A rumbling voice, something that stirs Megumi’s childhood memories, the ones that he forces himself to not think about, that he keeps behind a very solid wall, that he refuses to go back to. He only realizes he’s grimacing when the man laughs, and this too, sends Megumi’s brain into overdrive.
It's nothing.
“Who…” Megumi’s words are scratchy and so he clears his throat and collects himself, straightening his back and gently raising his hands should this guy be any danger. Then, he tries again: “Who the fuck are you?”
“Huh.” The man sighs deeply and rolls his head, his neck cracking a little from the movement. “I guess that’s only fair.”
“Can you answer the question?” he snaps, far too unnerved and plain irritated with how non-chalant the man is being.
He only gets a hum in response, at first, and so he opens his mouth to demand an actual reply, but he’s a bit too late. “Your father.”
You look just like him, is all.
It hits Megumi like a slap to the face, like a curse digging its sharp claws into his side, and his eyes widen as he glares down at the man who left him with nothing, who left Tsumiki to die, who never showed his face for longer than a day, who refused to talk about his mother, who would leave him cold convenience store bought boxed lunches on occasion, who named him with no care for his gender, who would never spend the night, who so clearly had a preference for gambling over his own child. Megumi blinks and tries to settle his breathing; maybe he was lying, for all Megumi knows his father is alive and enjoying himself in some random Japanese city that Megumi has never been to, this is just his subconscious tricking him. “My dad is alive,” he grits out, but he can tell he’s not completely convinced of that anymore. “My dad, that man is just…”
“You really look like your mom.” Another punch to the gut that has Megumi’s knees buckling and he turns his gaze to the fire, eyes burning as much as it. “Sit, sit.”
“Don't tell me what to do,” he murmurs despite allowing himself to do so, though on the floor, as opposed to the log that materialized—though perhaps it's always been there and the shock stopped Megumi from noticing—and that the man was gesturing to. He brings his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around his knees, eyes unfocused as he stares at the scorching logs.
“Megumi… right?”
“Right?” He looks up so fast it's a miracle he doesn't get whiplash. “You claim to be my dad and you don't even know my name? Are you serious?”
“Not a first.” He doesn't apologize for forgetting. Megumi feels his heart break in two, as if he shouldn't know better by now, and bile rises up his throat and lays heavy on his tongue.
“What are you doing here? Why am I talking to you?” Why can't it be mom? goes unsaid, though Megumi truly wishes he could have seen her at least once in his short life.
The man shrugs and Megumi rolls his eyes; not even Gojou is this irritating! Is this really the man he has to call a father? Is this really who he's been missing, deep down in his soul? He kicks at the ground just a little and hangs his head low. “…You've grown. How old are you, now? Thirteen?”
“Fifteen,” he answers despite himself. He supposes it doesn't matter: not whether this guy is the real deal or not, nor the conversation they have, because Megumi is going to die soon and that alone is a reprieve.
“Really… Wow. How's, huh, the other kid?”
Megumi raises his head and breathes in deeply in order to not start screaming at this bastard, blood boiling at how little he cares, has ever cared. They have to have a name for someone like that, right? Though, on second thought, the mere idea of calling himself a neglected child hurts more than any actual neglect inflicted upon him. “Tsumiki,” he spits out, poisonous and mean and retaliating, to which his father only nods, “is in a fucking coma.”
“Ah?”
The whirlpool of emotions that Megumi has let fester like a wound since this man had last shown his face to him begins to take over him, the anger that is always bubbling underneath his skin making him bear his teeth like a threatened, abandoned street dog, and he swallows down tears. “She's in a coma, she—” He stops himself because this might only be a dream but he shouldn't break Jujutsu rules by revealing the existence of curses to a non-jujutsu user. The silence, and the way those eyes bear into him, remind him that this man belongs to the Zen’in clan. “She got cursed before I was in Jujutsu High, before… I was strong enough to do anything to protect her.” Tears sting his eyes and he blinks them away aggressively, refuses to cry in front of anyone, especially not him.
“I see.”
Quiet, only the crackling of the fire filling that stillness, only the too loud sound of Megumi's heavy breathing. “Is that all you have to say?”
“I didn't know her that well,” he excuses himself and Megumi wants to jump over the bonfire and strangle him to death.
“You just can't be assed to care about your children.”
“Hey. I do care.”
Megumi laughs, loud and hysterical and mad, so hard his body begins to shake, the sudden movements easy to mistake for sobs. “Right. That's why you were never there. ‘Cause you care so much.”
The man lets out a repressed sigh and he rubs at his neck the same way Megumi does when he's frustrated; the sight makes him wither.
“Why did you leave?” he murmurs, anxious that the answer is what he's always been afraid of.
“I wasn't built to be a father,” he says like it makes everything okay.
“Seriously?” Megumi lets out a skeptical little laugh, nearly inaudible even to him.
He ignores Megumi, though he looks him straight in the eye before lowering his head. “Your mom died when you were, uh… two, or something.” Megumi sighs. “Look, I'm not a family man.” He can tell by the look in his father's face that he wants to say more and can't—the realization that Megumi’s repression doesn't come from himself alone dawns on him and makes his stomach churn with shame and pure, unaltered hatred. “I did want the best for you. I've never wanted anything else.”
How is Megumi supposed to believe that? How is he supposed to just nod his head and stretch out his hand to take his father's and shake it, like they've just finished discussing a deal that will save their company, their relationship?
“You would have come out worse if I had been there.”
Megumi laughs again and the tears flow silently, razor sharp against his cheeks not unlike knives, and he gasps before shaking his head in utter disbelief. “You don't know how bad I have it, you deadbeat.”
He doesn't react to the insult and that only serves to make Megumi angrier. “Didn't that Gojou kid take care of you?”
Megumi doesn't reply; he doesn't know what to say, if he should say anything at all, if by admitting to having had a proper father figure, he'd be admitting defeat. “I didn't need a teenager to raise me,” he decides on saying. “I needed my father.”
“Right, right.”
“How come you care so little? What's wrong with you? Do you know how miserable it was to be fucking four years old and have no one to go to when I had nightmares? Tsumiki wouldn't even let me clear your room, she was so goddamn convinced you'd come back. ‘He always comes back, Megumi. Don’t worry, Megumi. My mom does this too, Megumi.’ But you never did! Why would you just leave?! That woman fucked off on us, too, you know?! Tsumiki had to raise me because you were too much of a coward to do it yourself! What is wrong with you?! Shit.”
“I was trying.”
“Bullshit.”
“I sold you off to the Zen’in because I knew you had potential.” The word makes Megumi flinch. He despises it by now, having heard it from Gojou and Maki so often it makes him sick. What does he care about his potential? Why should that mean he has to sacrifice so much? Why should that mean he had to have no parent to hold him? “They'd treat you like royalty, I knew it'd be the best for you. …I thought as much, at least.” His father sniffs but he doesn't sound sad, or anything near the verge of tears. “I thought maybe Gojou could do what I couldn't.”
“I don't want, I did not, I…” Megumi groans in frustration, exasperated with his father's words and actions and thought process, with his father in general. “I never wanted some random off the fucking street to be my father! I never wanted to be so thirsty for love and affection that I'd take it from a teenager! You were supposed to be there, you were supposed to teach me how to deal with curses and see my Shikigami and guide me and love me and—”
“I do,” he murmurs.
“Fuck off! How can you say that? You skipped town on me, left me with nothing but a sister I never asked for and a total stranger of a woman as my caretaker. Are you serious? You never cared about me! At least be honest, it'd be so much easier for us to just move on. I…” Megumi rubs at his eyes with his fingers, hard and fast, and it irritates him how wet they get. “I was just a kid. I just wanted my dad. I just wanted you to never say ‘see you later’ again. I just wanted you to talk to me like I'm your child, I just wanted you to be there. But God forbid you did fucking anything that wasn't dwindling women out of their money and betting that shit on boats or pachinko or whatever bullshit you loved so much.”
His father doesn't reply and Megumi feels something much too similar to guilt gnawing at his innards.
“I never asked to be a Jujutsu sorcerer. I never wanted to be one. Why didn't you just stay with me?” He rests his forehead against his knees and cries—like he cares what this excuse of a parent thinks about his emotional state, now. “We could have been a normal family. I never wanted to become a Jujutsu sorcerer, I hate it. I hate it. But I have to go out and protect people I never cared to protect, people I don't know, who just… don't matter to me, because you decided I wasn't good enough for you and Tsumiki would be in danger if I didn't. How is an ultimatum an act of love?”
“What are you talking about?”
Megumi sniffles and throws his head back, bumping it against the log he'd forgotten about. “Gojou-san said if I went to the Zen'in clan, she'd be in danger. I either put her in danger or I became a stupid fucking sorcerer. And for what? She still got cursed. I still couldn't protect her.” He lowers his gaze from the endless sky to the man in front of him, who seems to actually look remorseful. “It's your fault,” he doesn't say, letting the words die on his tongue, behind his sharp teeth. “Why wasn't I enough?” he murmurs instead.
“It's not about you,” his father replies and Megumi is almost relieved to hear it. “I really thought I was doing the right thing.”
“By leaving your four year old behind?”
“By making sure you weren't affected by me. I don't know how to raise a kid.”
“Why the fuck did you get a second one, then? Why even let people in if you're just going to leave them?” No response and Megumi runs his hand over his face and sighs deeply. His crying has settled down by now, chest no longer heaving with angry sobs. “I don't think Gojou-san knew how to raise a kid, either. How come he actually tried? Why should you just get to run away? How is that any fair?”
“It's not, but that's just how it is.”
“Don't shut me down,” Megumi snaps, closing his hand into a fist, his nails digging into his flesh. “If I'm stuck here with you, I at least want answers I've never had the luxury of.”
“Sometimes there are no answers.” Megumi scoffs and flexes his fist before rubbing his palms over his knees. “It's just what it is. I couldn't raise you, so I stopped.”
“You gave up on me, is what you did.” Megumi realizes he can't truly comment on that kneejerk reaction to adversity—God knows how many times he's just fallen pliant to whatever was about to end his life, forgetting how to fight at all in order to fulfill his duty, winning by dying as he does best.
“No,” his father says, curtly and leaving no room for arguments. “I ran out of options and turned to my shitty family and a strong sorcerer. People who would help you get better.”
“Why couldn't you do it?”
“I could have never helped you with your Cursed Technique. I can't see curses, Megumi.”
He sits up straight, blinking at the man as he processes he's just like Maki. He supposes that makes sense, but then again, what are the odds of two people who can't see curses to be born in one of the big three clans?
“It was either my relatives or that Gojou kid. …I'm relieved he went out of his way to train you.”
“Raise me.” Megumi glares at his father who maintains eye contact before nodding once, then rubbing his hand over his shoulder and clearing his throat. Megumi almost cares that he looks uncomfortable. “I really didn't want any of this,” he murmurs, moreso to himself. “I just wanted you to be there. I just wanted my dad.” He lowers his head and rests it against his knees, throat constricting around a sob as he tears up. His heart is torn to pieces and Megumi blames no one but himself—why would this ever have helped him? Why would answers ever make sense to him? He deserves nothing but self-sacrifice and self-immolation. “I just wanted us to be a normal family.” He scoffs and settles his hands on his head, his fingernails scratching at his scalp. “I just wanted my dad,” he repeats and his voice cracks with misery and loss.
“I'm sorry.”
It doesn't feel like an apology, rather salt rubbed on Megumi's open, infected wound. It's a reminder that nothing will ever be enough to scar it; nothing will ever be enough for Megumi, just as Megumi will never be enough for anyone. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is that supposed to stand for leaving me every night, or for leaving me for good, or for handing me over to a stranger you met on the street? Is that supposed to make it okay?”
“…I don't know what you want from me,” his father says, only worsening the rawness and bleeding.
“I want you to have loved me enough! I want you to mean it when you apologize, I want you to be someone who cares about me! It doesn't matter…” Megumi gulps air into his lungs as he cries in frustration and hurt. “I don't give a shit that you did it because you thought you were right. I still…” He takes a second to regulate his breathing before he begins hyperventilating, his fingers already losing feeling. “I still think everyone else's needs are above my own. You taught me that. You not being there taught me I have no choice, I don't get to ever be the priority in my life, I exist for others, I exist for Gojou-san to train, or, or for the Zen'in to do that, I exist for other Jujutsu sorcerers to live even if I kill myself. How fucked up is that?”
“Megumi.”
“Why'd you even name that, anyway? Did you really not care that I was a boy? Did you give so little of a shit that it didn't matter what I was named?”
His father sighs as Megumi keeps sobbing, though quieter now, and he pokes at the fire before speaking. “You were a blessing to me.”
Megumi desires so badly to shut him up, to yell at him, to make him react.
“Your mother was how I left that god awful clan—”
“Which you fucking sold me to.”
“Don't interrupt me,” is all he says. He must be quite tired of Megumi's repetitive arguments, by now. “She was how I managed to settle down, to live a normal life, and having you made us beyond happy. …I named you that because you're a blessing to me and your mom.”
There's more silent, heavy and thick that Megumi's trembling, weak voice cuts through like a sharpened knife: “I feel like a curse.”
“Tell me about it,” the man says with a cynical little laugh that only makes Megumi want to take a cursed tool to the wrists more.
He chooses to ignore it, to rummage through the debris of his emotions that he's been shoving far, far down for much too long, and to keep talking. “Tsumiki is in a coma ‘cause she got cursed and I couldn't do anything about it. Itadori died in front of me and he might end up killing people if Sukuna comes back ‘cause I…” What was the word again? It's too scary, too serious, too heavy, too real for him to utter. “I didn't want him to die, he's a good person, he shouldn't… They're all good people and they're all suffering and it's all because of me. What kind of fucking name is this? I'm just like the shit I exorcise every day. All I do is bring misery to everyone I know.”
“You blame me for that?”
Megumi doesn't know. His gut is telling him to scream at him: “Yes! Fucking obviously! Maybe if you'd been there, I would know what being loved is like! Maybe if you'd been there, I would know what loving someone properly is like!” But that isn't the entire truth, not by far. It's too complicated, Megumi thinks as he clears his throat and stares at the harsh shadows cast by the bonfire. “I blame you for never being there. I don't think I'll ever be loved. I don't understand when someone likes me.”
“I see.”
“Fuck, you are a shitty parent,” Megumi comments with a laugh, and he is taken aback to how alike they sound. He presses his lips into a thin line and worries at his bottom lip with his front teeth. “Is that really it?”
“What is?”
“You left me alone with strangers ‘cause you didn't wanna learn how to become a dad?” Megumi knows he’s being unfair, now, and while his heart weighs down a bit with guilt, the adrenaline caused by talking back that pumps through his veins drowns it out.
“I left you with someone who would help you because I couldn't.”
“And before that?”
His father frowns and Megumi feels his heart shrink when he recognizes the face he sees whenever he looks in the mirror, or photos his friends have taken of them together. What a cruel joke. “What do you mean ‘before that’?”
“When I was little.” Megumi massages his shoulder a little too intensely, fingers digging into the tense, sore muscle over his uniform jacket. He closes his eyes and lets out a sigh through his nose, then wipes at his Cupid's bow. “When I was, huh, three. I had forgotten your face by the time I thought about this, I could just… see you as a vague shape.” He opens his eyes and sets his gaze on the fire again, picturing the old, faded image as he spoke. “But, when I was three, I think it was the day before my birthday, it was cold and I had two blankets wrapped over me and I was…” He screws his eyes shut and then opens them. “I was reading a picture book, I think. And you were making a lot of noise, just, I don't know, I think you were walking around and opening drawers.” Megumi sniffles, then clears his throat to avoid his voice breaking when he continues. “You walked past me, and I remember you bumped into this empty boxed lunch I hadn't thrown out yet. You got annoyed but didn't say anything, just kind of mumbled. Then,” he swallows again, “you called me. You were in the genkan, and you said ‘Megumi’. And I just looked up at you and I couldn't even see you that well because you didn't ever turn on a light by yourself. It was just this, this mass of a giant,” Megumi makes a vague gesture with his hand stretched out, trying to depict how his father had looked to him. “And I didn't say anything, ‘cause it never really mattered if I said anything, I guess. I don't know, I don't really… remember what caused that. Maybe it's just because I'm your son. Maybe I'm just predisposed to emotional repression.” Megumi lowers his hand and then shakes his head. He’s getting ahead of himself, losing the point completely. So, he clears his throat and apologizes. “Whatever. I mean, I just looked at you and you didn't say anything for a while, I think you were just staring. I don't know, couldn't tell,” he murmurs. “And then, you just said ‘see you later’. And you closed the door without looking back at me and I sat there… for three hours. I stared at the door for a while and then I turned back to the book and my stomach started rumbling, but I was convinced if I didn't stay where I was you’d never come back. I listened as I waited for you. Every neighbor’s footsteps sounded like yours but… I don't remember when you came back. I know you did, because you kept doing this, but I don't know when.” Megumi glances up at his father, who's avoiding eye contact like a child who had been caught doing something utterly immoral, like Megumi when Tsumiki first found him smoking one afternoon after her school club. “Why couldn't you stay with me? I don't, I don't remember anything about you. I remember that and I remember you giving me a bath when I must have been four or something, before Tsumiki was there.” He ponders his next words but figures it doesn't really matter. “You felt so distant. Like you were forced to take care of me, like I wasn't anything to you. Did you ever care about me?” Megumi rests his forehead against his knees again, much too aware of how childish he is being, how utterly selfish. Why does he care so much? It's been years, he was over it, he didn't give a shit about his father, he had compartmentalized it a very long time ago. He can't wait for Mahoraga to finish its job so he can finally die.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don't believe you. I don't… If you were sorry, you would have been there. You wouldn't have left a fucking three year old all by himself.”
“I sent in Shiu, sometimes,” he defends himself, and Megumi raises his head to glare at him.
“I don't even fucking know who that is. My childhood is a big gap, there's just… this wall, and I don't know why.” He groans. “Look, I don't… I don't hate you. I don't even dislike you. And I know, logically, that you don't feel like that towards me, either. I just really, really wanted my dad. All I ever really wanted in my life was for you to have been there, instead of pachinko or whatever it was. That's it.”
“I see.” Megumi is beginning to get frustrated with the lack of emotional response coming from his father, that thing that they both seem so alienated from, so incapable of tapping into. It's in his blood, isn't it? Everything that is Megumi isn't himself, at all. It's his father and his absence and his presence, and this doesn't help Megumi in the slightest.
Megumi's sight begins to get blurry, so he wipes at his eyes, only to realize it isn't from tears. He understands he's coming to the end of this little conversation, this unsolicited therapy session that only leaves him feeling worse. “I think my time is up. …I'm going to die, you know?”
“What do you like to do?”
Megumi frowns as his father morphs into the same fuzzy, dark shape as the one in his earliest memory. “What do you mean?”
“Hobbies.”
Is this man serious? Megumi is going to be dead for good, and he's asking him about his hobbies? Is he trying to be a father, now? Why can't he understand? It's too late, the damage has been done, Megumi's wound might close but it will never scar, and a nail digging into the cut will be all that's needed for him to start bleeding again. “I like to read,” he says despite himself, some small flame of hope desperate for a connection he's told himself time and time again he does not need. “I like non-fiction, but not memoirs. I don't care enough about others to read about them.” He speaks quickly, too aware of the silent clock ticking. “I have friends and they mean a lot to me, but I could never say it out loud because I don't know how to. I like dogs and I wish I could have been a vet.”
“Megumi.”
He sobs into his hands and then looks up. He feels so small, like he's back in that cold, tiny living room, and he doesn't know any better and he thinks his father loves him.
“See you later.”
Megumi groans as he stirs awake, his body sore but not as in much burning pain as he remembers before losing consciousness. He blinks his eyes open and frowns, processing the very visible ceiling above him, the curtains that surround him.
That isn't right. He should be dead.
He rubs at his eyes and sits up, then looks around, finding himself at the infirmary in Jujutsu High, Ieiri flipping through pages on a clipboard by the foot of the bed. A dull headache splits his forehead down the middle and he raises his hand to massage the skin; as he does this, he remembers a strange man and a heated conversation, no doubt the product of an overactive imagination with nothing better to do. Still, he turns to Ieiri and asks: “Was there anyone here?”
She jumps and he apologizes quietly for startling her, though she just dismissively waves a hand in front of her face. She lowers her mask and lights a cigarette before answering. “Maki came to check on you once, but that was it. Glad you're finally up.”
Weird. He remembers it was a man that he talked to, someone close to him in some way. There's no use prodding at it, now. If it had really mattered, then Megumi surely will remember it, soon.
He never does remember. He never understands why, when Shouko says “see you later” as she leaves to take care of something else, tears fill his eyes and his heart drops out of his chest onto the bedsheets covering his legs, bleeding and beating.