( the span of life, death, and the grisly interstitial tissue that connected the two was the domain of the jujutsu sorcerer. there is a give and take between the two that cycles with a morbid kind of circuitousness: in life, human beings suffer and despair, generating the cursed energy that gives birth to spirits which would drag unwitting innocents into death, thereby instilling more of the same negative emotions in their surviving friends and family. it's not a problem that jujutsu sorcerers can solve — it is a symptom of the world that they live in, and they are only surgeons attempting to staunch the flow of blood before it became mortal. there's a sort of clarity that one can gain over these things that would otherwise be towering in their inexplicable obscurity. yuuta no longer fears death. really, he hasn't feared it for a long time. what he fears now is being torn away from this world before he can accomplish what it is he feels he has to accomplish, to leave behind close friends to mourn him as an unfinished statement and not as someone who had truly lived to the fullest extent of his life.
in the end, it's not something he has perfect control over, so he puts everything he has into everything he puts his mind to. single-handedly taking on the sendai colony on behalf of jujutsu high, then, was one of those things.
they'd been inseparable (both figuratively and literally) for so long that it's still stranger to feel himself in her absence than remember how their camaraderie had felt. as kids, she had been a mystery that he had never felt any pressure to solve — yuuta had been terminally shy and fumbling with his words, making it difficult for him to make friends while simultaneously making himself a beacon for meaner-spirited kids. it hadn't really seemed an option for him to become rika's friend, though; she had pursued him aggressively from the day that they had met, and then they had structured their childhood days around when they would see one another next. all the way up until the day that —
even all these years later, with all that's come to pass, he still doesn't like to think about it.
so when something catches at the edges of his extrasensory perception, something so heart-achingly familiar that it startles him from a periwinkle state of semi-sleep to electric wakefulness, he just knows. he knows it with the same unswerving bone-deep assuredness that a mother would know her child, that pain would one day pass, that the sun would always come to rise from the east and herald a new day. whenever this happens, he feels the irrational desire to reach out and grab hold of the intangible, to once again pull her to him in a fit of selfish grief. he doesn't make the same mistake twice. he welcomes her beloved specter with a faintly sad, worn smile and a thin rime of tears forming between his eyelids.
his lips part at her reply, as clear and present in his mind as if it were one of his own thoughts, though perfectly distinct in just how hers the voice was. he holds onto that for a moment, his thoughts lulled and his breath suspended in his lungs as he wills it to extend past just these few fleeting seconds. then he exhales in a soft chuckle, one that sounds as dry as fall leaves rustling underfoot. )
That wouldn't change, no matter what. ( his free hand tracks up to his chest, to press his palm into the fabric of his uniform which covered where her ring hung from a chain around her neck, presently resting just a short distance above his beating heart. ) I promised you, remember?
( he never knows how long their luck will last. he doesn't question or challenge it — he had been ready to never speak with her again when he had severed her curse entirely, and the fact that their bond still manages to persist between the realms of the living and the dead was a mystery that he refused to search out, fearful that it would vanish the second he shone light onto it. he continues, conversational, with steady yet eager warmth, ) I think you would have liked everyone. All of my classmates. (because they love and care for me, just like you do. even if they got on your nerves, that fact would soften it. ) And I miss having you at my side for real when fighting.
( the rika that he summons is like a phantom limb — he can recall with such clarity what it had felt to be tethered to her as a curse that he can manifest it through cursed energy and sheer force of will. but it's like a shed skin, a shell which had long since lost its inhabitant, and yet — he still reaches for it instinctually when in combat, partially due to a yearning for what was lost to him but also because it still managed to feel right.)
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in the end, it's not something he has perfect control over, so he puts everything he has into everything he puts his mind to. single-handedly taking on the sendai colony on behalf of jujutsu high, then, was one of those things.
they'd been inseparable (both figuratively and literally) for so long that it's still stranger to feel himself in her absence than remember how their camaraderie had felt. as kids, she had been a mystery that he had never felt any pressure to solve — yuuta had been terminally shy and fumbling with his words, making it difficult for him to make friends while simultaneously making himself a beacon for meaner-spirited kids. it hadn't really seemed an option for him to become rika's friend, though; she had pursued him aggressively from the day that they had met, and then they had structured their childhood days around when they would see one another next. all the way up until the day that —
even all these years later, with all that's come to pass, he still doesn't like to think about it.
so when something catches at the edges of his extrasensory perception, something so heart-achingly familiar that it startles him from a periwinkle state of semi-sleep to electric wakefulness, he just knows. he knows it with the same unswerving bone-deep assuredness that a mother would know her child, that pain would one day pass, that the sun would always come to rise from the east and herald a new day. whenever this happens, he feels the irrational desire to reach out and grab hold of the intangible, to once again pull her to him in a fit of selfish grief. he doesn't make the same mistake twice. he welcomes her beloved specter with a faintly sad, worn smile and a thin rime of tears forming between his eyelids.
his lips part at her reply, as clear and present in his mind as if it were one of his own thoughts, though perfectly distinct in just how hers the voice was. he holds onto that for a moment, his thoughts lulled and his breath suspended in his lungs as he wills it to extend past just these few fleeting seconds. then he exhales in a soft chuckle, one that sounds as dry as fall leaves rustling underfoot. )
That wouldn't change, no matter what. ( his free hand tracks up to his chest, to press his palm into the fabric of his uniform which covered where her ring hung from a chain around her neck, presently resting just a short distance above his beating heart. ) I promised you, remember?
( he never knows how long their luck will last. he doesn't question or challenge it — he had been ready to never speak with her again when he had severed her curse entirely, and the fact that their bond still manages to persist between the realms of the living and the dead was a mystery that he refused to search out, fearful that it would vanish the second he shone light onto it. he continues, conversational, with steady yet eager warmth, ) I think you would have liked everyone. All of my classmates. ( because they love and care for me, just like you do. even if they got on your nerves, that fact would soften it. ) And I miss having you at my side for real when fighting.
( the rika that he summons is like a phantom limb — he can recall with such clarity what it had felt to be tethered to her as a curse that he can manifest it through cursed energy and sheer force of will. but it's like a shed skin, a shell which had long since lost its inhabitant, and yet — he still reaches for it instinctually when in combat, partially due to a yearning for what was lost to him but also because it still managed to feel right. )