Yuji Itadori never thought much about death.
He was good at running, good at helping people, and good at pretending that tomorrow would look the same as today.
The hospital room proved him wrong.
The machines were too loud for a place where someone was supposed to be resting. His grandfather lay still, smaller than Yuji remembered, his presence fading even before the final moment arrived. Yuji stayed because that's what he always did—he stayed until there was nothing left to do.
When it was over, the room felt hollow. Not dramatic. Just empty.
What lingered were the words left behind—not instructions, not comfort, but a weight. A reminder that strength meant nothing if it was used for the wrong reasons. A warning disguised as concern.
Yuji left the hospital carrying more than grief. He just didn't know it yet.
At school, the world stubbornly refused to stop.
Classes continued. Clubs argued over attendance. The Occult Research Club met like it always had, surrounded by nonsense and curiosity, treating rumors like games.
Yuji smiled, laughed, and went along with it. Normalcy was easier than thinking.
Until it wasn't.
A strange object surfaced—old, wrapped, wrong in a way that made the air feel thicker. Yuji didn't understand it, but something about it unsettled him. Still, he handed it over, brushed it off, and left.
That night, the rules changed.
The school after dark felt unfamiliar, like it had been rearranged while no one was looking. Fear crept in quietly, without explanation. When Yuji realized his friends were in danger, instinct took over.
Strength came easily to him. Too easily.
And when a monster appeared—something that should not exist—Yuji understood, for the first time, that the world was larger and crueler than he had been told.
Help arrived in the form of a stranger: calm, sharp-eyed, already resigned to violence. Megumi Fushiguro didn't explain much. There wasn't time.
There was only a choice.
The object Yuji had ignored.
The danger in front of him.
The people behind him.
Yuji didn't think about plans. He didn't think about consequences. He thought about saving someone—anyone.
So he acted.
And in doing so, Yuji Itadori stepped into a world that would never let him leave unchanged.Megumi arrived too late.
That was the first conclusion he reached, and it stayed with him the rest of the night.
The cursed object had already been moved. The residue was weak but careless, like something dangerous handled by people who didn't know what they were touching. That alone told him enough. Civilians. Students. A mistake waiting to finish itself.
He followed the trail to a school that looked ordinary in the worst way—too quiet, too clean, pretending nothing could go wrong there.
It always went wrong in places like this.
Inside, fear lingered before the curse appeared.
Megumi felt it settle into the building, feeding on panic that hadn't fully formed yet. By the time he found the students, the situation had already deteriorated. They were trapped, shaking, alive only because the thing hunting them was still playing.
Megumi assessed the options quickly.
There were never many.
Exorcise the curse.
Recover the object.
Minimize casualties.
Simple rules. Brutal math.
Then someone broke the equation.
The boy appeared suddenly—too loud, too fast, and completely out of place. He moved like someone who had never been taught to be afraid. Megumi noticed it immediately: the unnatural strength, the lack of hesitation, the way danger didn't slow him down.
Civilian, Megumi decided at first.
A problem, at best.
And yet—
The boy didn't run.
Didn't freeze.
Didn't look away.
Megumi told him to leave. He meant it. Civilians weren't supposed to stay. They weren't supposed to choose anything at all.
The boy didn't listen.
When the curse fully revealed itself, Megumi prepared for the worst outcome. He always did. That was how he survived—by accepting loss before it arrived.
But the boy moved again, reckless and untrained, driven by something Megumi didn't recognize as logic. He fought with his body instead of technique, instinct instead of rules.
It was stupid.
It worked.
For a moment, Megumi wondered if the world had made a mistake.
Then came the decision Megumi hadn't planned for.
The cursed object—Sukuna's finger—was no longer just evidence. It was a solution. A terrible one, but effective in the way disasters often were.
Megumi knew what it meant.
He knew the consequences better than anyone there.
He didn't expect the boy to understand.
He expected fear. Refusal. Panic.
Instead, the boy chose.
Just like that.
Megumi watched the line cross itself.
Power answered immediately. The air warped. The presence that emerged was vast, violent, and unmistakably wrong. Megumi recognized it on instinct alone. He had been trained to.
Ryomen Sukuna had returned.
And the boy—Yuji Itadori—was still standing.
Later, as the chaos settled into something resembling control, Megumi replayed the moment again and again. Not the curse. Not the violence.
The choice.
Yuji hadn't weighed lives.
Hadn't calculated value.
Hadn't decided who deserved saving.
He had simply refused to let anyone die.
Megumi didn't know whether that made Yuji strong—or doomed.
All he knew was this:
Nothing had gone according to plan.
And the shape of the future had already begun to change.