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To hear unsettling stories when talking to children is quite common. Amusing even, as they try to understand the world around them. They see fairies and dancing lights above the river’s stream, odd lurking shadows behind each corner of their school when the sun’s setting, familiar voices calling them out across the street. The boring, dull shape of the world becomes a mysterious playground where their unrestricted fantasy taints reality, sometimes tied up to creativity and imagination, fears and nightmares; others, to things that aren’t supposed to be there.
To know the difference between a child’s imaginary friend or a cursed-spirit was a Sorcerer task.
Itadori Yuuji, as the long years of dwelling the Earth have taught him, can spot the difference right away: there’s something in the wavy telling of the kid that gives it away, the early but clear signs of the cold, frightening fear that only a Curse can induce.
They are rare now, at least around Yuuji’s territory. Scarce, weak, not many Curses have dared to manifest in the vicinity of the one Sorcerer that cannot die - they believe, as believing goes in the cursed world, that being Immortal is enough of a curse for him.
Spotting one in the strange stories the kids of Sendai High School have been telling stirred a sensation long forgotten in the sorcerer: curiosity.
This one seems to be new and, as the number of children being harmed is zero, quite weak too for now. Easily mistaken for another predator if not for the one thing that the kids had been telling lately, the one thing it made the sorcerer crawl out of his hideout and into the heart of Sendai: Itadori Yuuji.
A curse calling his name could have meant many things long ago, for he made quite a large number of enemies along his way but they are all dead - or exorcised - by now. No one is left to remember his name.
He's no one now, the more reason to be curious about this either bold or stupid curse.
Or both, Yuuji thinks as he makes his way into the forest.
Definitely stupid, he agrees inwardly as he spots the odd shape in the middle of the foliage, barely trying to hide. Just staying there, tall and broad like a dead trunk, swinging mindlessly at the pace of the trees around.
Yuuji stops in his tracks and watches the Curse, knowing that it imposes no risk whatsoever to him. “You were asking for me?”
The Curse stops his swinging and turns around slowly, tilting his head in a way no human could do without breaking the neck.
“Yuuji?”, a husky voice cuts the air. A pair of eyes seem to look the way the sorcerer is standing in the middle of the dark forest, the night also hiding his shape until Yuuji steps closer into the light.
“In the flesh”, the man says.
“Yuu-...ji?”, the curse repeats again and again, getting closer. Yuuji watches with tired eyes, unmoved and fist ready with cursed energy.
It’s a lame excuse of a curse.
“Yuu…ji”
Perhaps the faint echo of a sorcerer whose thirst of revenge has turned them into this monster.
“Yuuji!”
Because a Curse is nothing more than hate and loathing and fear.
“Yuuji!”, the Cursed-spirit says and Yuuji is more than ready to exorcise it.
The Curse steps closer, leaving the trees behind and exposing itself. It’s taller than Yuuji first thought but it still tries to resemble some human shape, made more of shadows on its edges than flesh, yet it has visible skin. And eyes and even hair.
Familiar.
Almond eyes hollowed, sunken in its sockets.
Brown, silky hair darkened and messy, still tied up in silly, out-of-place pigtails.
A face Yuuji thought he would never see again.
“Yuuji!”
Yuuji can’t speak. He stares in a shocked mutism as the Curse stops, close enough that no mistake can be attributed to what the sorcerer is seeing. It repeats his name as he used to and, for a moment, Yuuji is sixteen again.
“Choso”, he whispers before he can help it. The Curse tilts his head, confused, and repeats Yuuji’s name again as if it’s the only word he knows. “You’re dead. You’re supposed to be dead”.
More confusion. The Curse frowns in a familiar gesture and bends slightly, seeking Yuuji’s gaze under his hoodie.
“Yuuji”, it says and Yuuji hates how it pronounces his name. “Protect”.
-
An exorcism would be indulgence. The right thing to do, but curiosity is taking the best of Yuuji, or so he says to himself.
“Stop that. Leave it”, he orders for the ninth time. The Curse reluctantly leaves the souvenir back on the shells and picks up a book instead. Yuuji sighs. “No. Gimme that. Go there, sit and do nothing”.
The Curse doesn’t seem to understand but he doesn’t protest as Yuuji pushes him towards the couch. It sinks under the new weight and the Curse, arms folded over his knees, now waits.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with you? Why are you even here?”
“Protect”.
“I don’t need protection”.
The Curse grunts slightly in disagreement.
It doesn’t matter what Yuuji says or tries, the Curse only knows two words. It doesn’t know its own name. It holds no memories.
And it’s not, of course, human - not in the slightest bit.
“I should exorcise you”, Yuuji menaces, but he doesn’t.
-
Itadori Yuuji never had a peaceful life but during the last eighty years he had managed to set on a balance of sorts. He mourned all people that needed to be mourned, buried bones and ashes, prayed all nights for the souls of their beloved ones and, in time, his wounds ached less.
Like a numb limb, his heart is still there but he doesn’t feel it - no joy, no pain.
He learned to live that way, a solitary life. Silence. Void. Inevitably it all became peace.
The Curse came to shatter that peace.
-
“OUT”, he screams for the fourth night in a row in which the Curse tried to sleep next to him. Like the other seventh time, it doesn’t work.
The Curse stubbornly remains in the surroundings of Yuuji’s room. Like a guarding dog, it stays in a corner, under the bed, inside the closet or behind the TV, watching, ‘protecting’, its never dull eyes two beacons in the middle of the night. Unblkinging.
Itadori Yuuji wasn’t the scared type; If anything, curses were afraid of him but a fact remained that he couldn’t sleep with the Curse’s creepiness.
“You’re not staying with me tonight”.
The Curse doesn’t move.
“Out”.
“Protect…”, the Curse whines.
“You can do that from the outside of my room”.
The Curse doesn’t seem to understand the sentence. In fact, it doesn’t seem to understand anything that foreshadows the chances of it leaving Yuuji’s side.
“C’mon, just for tonight, let me sleep!”, he pushes the Curse outside and locks the door, only for its face to crawl back from the nearest shadow.
“Yuuji”.
Yuuji sighs and runs a hand through his face.
After a week of sleepless nights, ‘out’ eventually became ‘scoot over’.
To Yuuji’s disgrace, he never slept as well as he did from then on.
-
Before Yuuji knows it, his cottage starts to grow small. Kitchen, bedroom, living room, even bathroom - all the spaces he inhabited are soon taken over by the Curse.
Its grim figure waits for Yuuji at every threshold, behind each door, morphing into Yuuji’s shadow more than once, patiently waiting for Yuuji to speak to it.
When Yuuji ignores it, the Curse grows impatient and starts to seek ways of making itself known - the ways of which always end up in rearranging the place to surprise Yuuji, or moving things constantly from the accustomed places; in trying to do laundry or cooking despite not knowing how; or in handling Yuuji objects it thinks the man might need: a fork, a toothpick, a brick.
When Yuuji starts to shout and scolds it, the Curse smiles. “Yuuji!”
Yuuji’s patience grows thin, but can’t deny that it’s endearing. “You’re driving me mad. Stop moving the couch, please!”.
“Yuuji!”
“And no, I do not need a spatula now. Thanks”.
“Yuuji…”
“No, thanks”.
“....”
“Fine, give me that. Happy?”
-
Yuuji spends the whole season with the couch stocked in the kitchen - it was easier to simply let it there than constantly putting it back in the right place, before finding a solution.
Words are meaningless to the Curse - it wanted attention, his attention.
“Come”, he says, dragging the couch from the kitchen to its rightful place one last time. If it doesn’t work, he would have to get rid of it or stumble upon it every time he wanted to open the fridge. “Movies”.
The Curse tilts its head.
“I’m not gonna scream at you, come. Sit next to me”.
The Curse does and, like the first time, the couch sinks under its weight. It makes Yuuji slide closer.
Yuuji turns on the TV, puts on a horror movie and prays that the Curse remains still.
They watch in silence, closer to each other than they ever had in their waking moments.
There are screams and blood and people dying, but Yuuji seems happy.
So that’s what couches and TV’s are for, the Curse thinks and scoots over closer.
Yuuji doesn’t push away.
-
It started with him watching movies again.
Cooking again.
Backing again.
Cleaning again.
Sharing stories.
Smiling again.
Without realizing, Yuuji starts to unlearn all the tricks his solitude had taught him.
“Yuuji” “Yuuji” “Yuuji”, the chant of his long forgotten name, spoken with love, feels like peeling off a bandage, the wound beneath sensitive but smaller, better.
It hurts to heal, but Yuuji learns to trust in his own name again: a word filled with love and adoration again.
-
“Choso, would you like to-...?”, he bites his tongue, realizing his mistake.
The Curse’s lurid shadow is promptly in front of Yuuji, noticing the grim look in his face.
The Curse doesn’t understand what happens and his hands quickly shoot to cup the man’s face. “Yuuji?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”, he looks up. The Curse is frowning, his eerie eyes holding so much concern it pours out of him in stings of black slime across the familiar cut on his face, but he doesnt… he doesn’t seem to mind. “Can I call you that?”
“Yuuji”, he says, his thumbs running soft circles on Yuuji’s cheeks.
“Yeah, that’s me…”, he mumbles, “but do you care if I… call you that?”
The question is silly - the Curse doesn’t care about a name. An identity he needs not to protect Yuuji, but he understands that the question it’s not about him granting Yuuji permission. It’s about Yuuji permitting himself to chant that name again.
The Curse understands that that’s what names are for - to call each other, so he nods and smiles.
Yuuji can call him whatever Yuuji likes, for he likes everything Yuuji does or says. He likes touching Yuuji’s hair. Likes to be where Yuuji is at all times. He likes when Yuuji speaks to him. He likes cuddling with him.
He likes holding Yuuji when he’s happy - the name comes with joy.
He likes holding Yuuji when he cries - the name comes with the fear of losing him again.
-
“Cho”, he calls from the living room. “Listen carefully”.
The Curse nodded.
“I have to get out this afternoon and, this time, I really, really need you to stay here”.
“Protect”.
“I know, but I’m not going to the market or shopping. I have work to do. You can’t be seen. Please”.
The answer, unadulterated, is the same. “Protect”.
“Choso, c’mon, for once! Can you do what I tell you just for once?!”, the Curse doesn’t answer. It’s been quite a while since Yuuji screamed at him. “Please, just this once. Stay here. Do not follow me”.
“Yuuji”.
With his hand on the doorhandle, Yuuji halts. “I’m sorry”, he mutters.
The Curse senses his distress immediately and crouches to Yuuji’s eye level, eyes worried. “Yuuji?”
Yuuji turns around.
So familiar. So different.
“You protected me… once”, he says, “when I was young. You died protecting me”.
“Yuuji?”, the Curse furrows, weary of the tone rather than the words, and seeks to cheer Yuuji up. Turns on the TV. Brings a book and food. The things Yuuji likes.
Yuuji declines it all. Turns off the TV.
Distressed, the Curse’s shadows darken the living room, his eyes conflicted.
Yuuji approaches and reaches a hand - strange, the Curse thinks, Yuuji never did that before, but he does it now. Yuuji cups his face, then steps closer.
The Curse is cold but the hug is warm.
“I have a long, very long life ahead…”, Yuuji mutters. “Don’t leave me alone again, Choso. Stay here, please”.
The Curse doesn’t answer, but his arms seek Yuuji.
“You taught me to protect whom I love. Let me protect you, too”.
Yuuji isn’t sure if the Curse understands it all, but when he leaves for the mission, he doesn’t follow.
-
When Yuuji returns, Choso’s there to greet him.
There’s an anxiety around him that makes his shadows look depressed; he himself is standing in the middle of the living like a kid - a two meters tall, gloomy kid, fidgeting with his unnaturally long fingers.
The table is set for two, despite him not needing to eat. He waits as Yuuji stares at him, unsure if he did it all right - the food, the drinks, the waiting.
Yuuji finally smiles - bright, warm. “I knew you could do it!”
Choso’s breath hitches - he did right?! He did it right! He protected Yuuji! He made him smile!
“Let’s eat, Aniki!”, Yuuji chants.
Choso beams at his side.
-
Years passed, so many of them to kept track. It was a surprise, to say the least, when Itadori Yuuji understood that death was near.
It took it so long to come he already had forgotten about it.
That he can, and will, die.
Luckily
Death, Itadori Yuuji feared not.
Regrets, he held none.
But
“I’m not as immortal as others said I was, Choso”, he whispers. “What’s gonna happen to you?”
“Protect”.
“I know…”, the idea of exorcising Choso came back to his mind after so, so long. It would be the only way of spearing him the sorrows of staying behind. “But soon I’ll be leaving to a place where you cannot follow, Cho”.
“Yuuji”, Choso looks at him with a crooked smile, amused. “Protect”.
“I know! I’m saying that-!”
Choso shushes him. He takes Yuuji’s hand on his and guides it, slowly taking the wrinkled and tired limb to point at the sky.
Yuuji waits from the single words he knew all too well, waits for them for so long that it takes him a while to understand that the Curse has learned a new one.
“Brother”, it says.
Yuuji allows the Curse to keep holding his hand, pointing at the sky, before holding it into his own. They’re cold, yet it feels warm.
It dawns on Yuuji that his worries are feeble.
A new peace courses through him.
“Right… how silly of me”, Yuuji coos and smiles, “to think that something like death would stop you”.
Choso smiles with him, his edges slightly ashy unlike the dense darkness of before, as if curses could age, too. It was close to vanishing.
“Don’t take too long, brother”.
Choso envelopes him whole, his shape allowing Yuuji to sit, rest, sleep, in him - and in his hold, Choso starts to count their last breaths.
-
It happens peacefully.
Itadori Yuuji didn’t live or die alone. It says so in his grave.
No one knows who carved it.