Chapter Text
The bodies outside the dining room door sit heavy on your soul.
Men you have known your entire life, gone in the span of a few violent minutes. One you loved like a father. Others you had grown up beside, men who had watched you stumble through childhood and stood guard at every birthday, every holiday, every ordinary afternoon you had once been stupid enough to believe would continue forever.
All of them are your pieced together family.
All of them slaughtered.
The only thing keeping the tears from spilling over is the terror crawling slowly up your spine, winding itself around every vertebra until you can barely breathe. Your half eaten dinner still sits in front of you, steam no longer rising from the food, the silverware left exactly where you dropped it when the first gunshot cracked through the house. The normalcy of it feels obscene now. A plate arranged with care. A glass of water sweating against the polished wood. The remains of a meal you had expected to finish.
At the head of the table, your grandfather doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t look frightened. In fact, he doesn’t even look particularly surprised.
The man standing across from him is someone you have only ever heard spoken about in lowered voices. A name spoken the way people talk about earthquakes.
Or terminal illnesses.
Things you pray stay far away.
Ryomen Sukuna.
His men line the walls of your dining room, their dark clothes wet with blood, their weapons hanging loosely from their hands as though murdering their way through a heavily guarded estate had been little more than an errand.
None of them look remorseful.
None of them look particularly excited either.
And somehow…
Your grandfather still looks calmer than anyone else in the room.
Maybe because monsters don’t scare him.
Maybe because he’d been one long before Sukuna ever learned how.
Age had finally begun catching him these last few years. His hands ached when winter settled in. He’d traded the pistol that rarely left his side for the carved cane leaning beside his chair, not because he’d wanted to, but because pride eventually loses to arthritis.
He was supposed to retire.
Everyone knew it.
Everyone expected it.
That plan died with his second in command. Dragged from his car in broad daylight. Shot until there wasn’t much left to recognize. Left beneath a flickering streetlamp for the whole city to see. No one else had ever earned your grandfather’s trust after that.
So instead…
The next man simply came to take the throne himself.
Son of the Kansai oyabun.
The stories about him had spread through Tokyo for months. He could’ve waited. Could’ve inherited Kansai without firing a single bullet. He had the bloodline. The reputation. Enough loyal men willing to kneel the day his father died.
But waiting wasn’t enough.
Kansai wasn’t enough.
He wanted Tokyo.
The empire your grandfather has ruled for longer than you have been alive.
The monster standing in front of you does not spare you so much as a glance. His attention remains fixed entirely on your grandfather.
“Didn’t your old man teach you any respect?” your grandfather asks, lifting the cloth napkin from his lap and calmly dabbing the corner of his mouth.
Sukuna’s expression barely shifts.
“Respect dies with age,” he replies, his voice oddly quiet given the situation, yet the sound still sends a chill beneath your skin. “I’m not here to honor your legacy. I’m here to bury it.”
Your grandfather remains completely unmoved by the threat.
“Clearly.” He folds the napkin beside his plate. “You’ve been a real pain in my ass these last few months. Never learned how to take no for an answer?”
“You’ve outlived your reign,” Sukuna says. “Your men have lost faith in you. Flipping the foot soldiers was easy. They don’t answer to you anymore.”
He reaches for the chair opposite your grandfather and pulls it away from the table, the wooden legs dragging across the floor with a long, grating scrape, turning it backwards. Then he sits, spreading himself comfortably across the seat as though the house already belongs to him.
Perhaps it does.
“Then why are you here?” your grandfather asks.
“I’m giving you one last chance to walk away.” Sukuna settles an arm against the back of the chair. “Sign everything over to me, and you leave with your life.”
Your grandfather’s cane slams against the table leg.
The crack echoes through the dining room, sharp enough to make you flinch.
But Sukuna doesn’t move.
“I built this empire long before your mother disgraced her bloodline by birthing you,” your grandfather snaps, the first fracture in his composure finally appearing. “You think I’ll simply place it in your hands?”
“I think you don’t have a choice.”
Sukuna’s tone remains infuriatingly calm.
“Half your men have already turned. I own your docks. Your routes are compromised, your captains are scared, and what remains of your inner circle is bleeding out in your hallway.” His gaze sharpens. “You’re living on borrowed time.”
Your grandfather’s fingers tighten around the handle of his cane.
“This is your only opportunity to walk away breathing,” Sukuna continues. “The offer expires the moment I stand, and I’d rather not waste the bullet.”
Your grandfather’s jaw locks.
He knows Sukuna is telling the truth. Most of the men he trusted enough to keep inside this house are already dead only a few feet away, their blood seeping between the seams of the polished floorboards on the other side of the door.
“I have conditions,” your grandfather says slowly.
“You’re in no position to make demands,” Sukuna says harshly, the sudden edge in his voice slicing through the room.
“You’ve killed our protection,” your grandfather continues as if he did not hear him. “The moment word spreads that I have stepped down, my enemies will come for me.”
His eyes shift toward you.
“And for her.”
He gestures in your direction.
Sukuna’s eyes follows. His eyes land on you for the first time, and the weight of his attention feels almost physical.
It lasts only a second. One brief, dispassionate glance before he looks back at your grandfather, but something in his expression tells you he already knows what condition is coming. He looks annoyed rather than curious.
“I’m not interested in a wife,” he says flatly.
Your blood turns to ice. Your heart begins to pound so violently that it drowns out nearly everything else, but there is no mistaking what your grandfather is suggesting.
“It benefits you as well,” your grandfather presses. “Take her. Keep her safe. If she belongs to you, you’re protected. My remaining men won’t seek retribution. They won’t touch family.”
“You can walk away clean,” Sukuna replies, unimpressed, “or you can keep digging graves. It makes no difference to me.”
“I’ve been around a long time,” your grandfather says. “There are still men who respect me. Marry her, and they accept you. Publicly. No one questions your claim.”
Sukuna gives a quiet scoff. Your grandfather doesn’t let him interrupt.
“If you refuse, you’ll spend the next decade killing enemies you don’t even know exist.”
Silence falls over the dining room.
The old clock on the wall ticks.
One second.
Then another.
You never noticed how loud it was before tonight
“I take her,” Sukuna says at last. “And you disappear.”
Your grandfather watches him carefully.
“For good,” Sukuna adds.
Your grandfather nods once.
You sit frozen in your chair while they discuss your future as if you are not even in the room, your life reduced to a bargaining chip passed between two men fighting over a blood soaked empire neither is willing to give up.
Sukuna finally looks at you again. This time, his attention lingers. You know he can see you shaking. There is no hiding it now. Your hands tremble beneath the table, your fingernails digging uselessly into your palms in hopes that pain might wake you from whatever nightmare this has become.
He rises from his chair.
Every step he takes toward you has warning bells going off in your head. You cannot bring yourself to meet his gaze. You watch his shoes enter your peripheral vision instead, black leather stopping beside your chair. For one suspended moment, nothing happens.
Then his hand closes around the back of your chair. Without warning, he drags it away from the table and turns it sharply until you are forced to face him. The legs scrape against the floor, and a startled breath catches in your throat.
A rough hand grips your chin before you can look away. His fingers press into your cheeks, tilting your head back until your eyes meet his. He is bigger up close. Much bigger.
He towers over you even as you sit, broad enough to block the light hanging above the table. Thick black markings cut across his face. You expected tattoos; nearly every man raised within this world wears ink somewhere beneath his clothes. But Sukuna’s are impossible to hide. Dark lines frame his features and continue down his throat, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
Your gaze follows them despite yourself.
“Eyes up, girl,” he murmurs, his voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear.
Your eyes snap back to his. His eyes are as brutal as the rest of him, red and mean.
They do nothing to ease the fear clawing at your throat.
If he accepts your grandfather’s offer, you will not be the first girl traded between organizations like property. Arranged marriages are less common than they once were, but they have never entirely disappeared. Not in this world.
You know that better than most. Your childhood friend had been forced into one.
Her father controlled a smaller faction outside the city, and when a deal went bad badly enough to threaten war, he offered his daughter to preserve the peace.
She was barely sixteen. You kept in contact after the wedding, long enough to learn that the man she married was every bit as cruel inside his home as he was on the street. She began covering bruises with makeup. She stopped answering calls when he was nearby. Her messages became shorter, then infrequent, then desperate.
Eventually, they stopped completely. Her husband cut her off from everyone she had ever known, and to this day, you don’t know what happened to her.
Looking up at Sukuna now, you are not optimistic.
Not about peace, or safety, or anything.
A tear slips free. You weren’t even supposed to be here tonight.
Your grandfather invited you to dinner because he claimed he wanted to hear about school, about your classes and the semester you had spent living outside the suffocating walls of his estate. You’re studying Art History. You had wanted law, but he shut the idea down immediately, insisting it would draw too much attention and put too many dangerous questions in your head.
He made you choose something more fitting. Something harmless. Allowing you to leave for university had already been a concession, a compromise he had agreed to only after months of arguing and promises that you would never be alone.
So when he called and asked you to come home for dinner, to tell him everything you had been doing, you jumped at the opportunity.
Now you are sitting at his table while he trades you like currency.
Sukuna’s eyes track the tear as it moves down your cheek.
His mouth tightens.
When the drop falls from your jaw and lands in your lap, he releases you and turns back toward your grandfather.
“She’s young.”
“She’s old enough.”
Another tear follows the first.
One word seals your fate.
“Fine.”
You bite down on your lip hard enough to taste blood. The pain barely contains the sob building behind your teeth.
“You’ll receive the holdings after the ceremony,” your grandfather says.
Sukuna’s jaw tightens as though the delay irritates him, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he turns toward one of the men stationed along the wall.
The man is nearly as large as Sukuna, with thick black hair hanging loose around his face and clothes chosen for function rather than display. There is more blood on him than any of the others. It has soaked through one shoulder of his shirt and dried in dark splashes across his chest. A scar divides the corner of his mouth, deep and uneven, pulling faintly when pressed his mouth together as he steps forward.
Sukuna glances at you. The movement draws the other man’s attention. For a moment, both of them stare you down.
“Take the girl to the car.”
Panic finally breaks loose.
“Wait!” Your grandfather pushes sharply to his feet. “You cannot take her until after the union.”
Sukuna laughs. It is the first sound from him that resembles anything human, though there is no warmth in it. It is low, mocking, and cruel enough to make your stomach twist.
“So you can fuck me over?” he asks. “No. She stays with me.”
He looks at your grandfather with open contempt.
“You gather your loyalists. I want every one of them at the ceremony while you publicly and willingly hand over your position.”
“You’re forcing my hand. This was not our agreement,” your grandfather argues. “They’ll know something is wrong.”
“Well, I’m sure you can convince them.”
Sukuna’s tone turns almost light.
“Because if you can’t, if there is so much as a whisper of rebellion, I’ll decorate your loyal dogs with her blood.”
The sound of the safety clicks off beside your head.
You didn’t even see him pull out a gun.
You only feel the cold barrel press against your temple.
Something inside you shatters. A sob tears from your chest with enough force to fold your body inward, but Sukuna’s hand catches your jaw and holds you upright. Your entire body begins to shake violently as tears blur your grandfather’s face across the table.
His expression has changed at last. His jaw is locked so tightly that a muscle jumps beneath the skin. His eyes burn with rage, but he makes no move toward you.
“To ensure a smooth transition,” Sukuna continues calmly, “she comes with me. Nanami remains here with you until the wedding. Until you have handed everything over.”
Through your tears, you barely notice another man step away from the wall.
He is blond, dressed more cleanly than the others, though a thin line of blood has dried across the side of his neck. His expression is grave and controlled as he takes his place near your grandfather.
“Put the gun down,” your grandfather says.
The command lacks its earlier force. His hand extends across the table as though the gesture might somehow reach you.
“I give you my word.”
Sukuna presses the barrel harder into your temple. The metal bites painfully into your skin.
“If you break it,” he says quietly, “her death is on your hands.”
His grip clamps around your jaw and yanks your head backward until your skull rests against the solid wall of his chest.
You can’t escape the gun.
You can’t escape him.
“Look at your granddaddy,” Sukuna murmurs beside your ear. “And beg him to let you live.”
A broken sound leaves you.
“Put the gun down,” your grandfather says again, more pleading in his tone.
“Say it.”
Your lungs seize.
“Pl—please.” The word catches on a sob. “Please don’t m-make him kill me.”
Your eyes remain locked on the man who raised you.
For the first time in your life, your grandfather looks old. Not because of the cane or the wrinkles, but because of the lack of light in his eyes.
“Atta girl.”
The gun clicks.
For one horrible second, you think he’s pulled the trigger. Then the pressure disappears. Your body sags in the chair, breath hitching uncontrollably as Sukuna’s hand finally leaves your face.
“I think we’re all on the same page,” he says, stepping away from you.
He signals to the black haired man.
A thick hand closes around your elbow, and you are pulled unsteadily to your feet. Your knees nearly buckle beneath you, but the man’s grip keeps you upright as he begins guiding you toward the door.
“Wait,” Sukuna says.
The single word stops you cold.
The hand around your arm stills.
You don’t turn around, you’re too afraid to see his face again.
The dining room is so silent that you hear every one of Sukuna’s approaching footsteps. He stops close behind you, his presence pressing against your back.
He touches you only as much as necessary, sliding one hand into the pocket of your jeans and pulling out your phone.
The screen lights up in his palm.
The lock screen is a picture of you and your roommate at a festival several weeks earlier, both of you grinning beneath strings of paper lanterns, her arm thrown around your shoulders as you leaned into her.
You look happy.
Alive.
Like someone from another life.
Sukuna studies the screen for half a second.
Then he lets the phone fall.
It hits the floor with a sharp crack. His heel comes down on it. Glass splinters beneath his shoe. The frame bends, the screen collapsing beneath his weight as he grinds it once into the floor, destroying whatever remains. He doesn’t bother picking up the pieces.
The man beside you pulls again, dragging you toward the door while your eyes remain fixed on the broken glass scattered behind you, your last immediate connection to the outside world crushed beneath Sukuna’s heel.
The dining room doors open.
“Shut your eyes,” the man beside you says, his voice deep and rough.
You don’t listen and you regret it instantly.
The hallway is soaked in blood.
Bodies lie crumpled against the walls in grotesque, unnatural positions, limbs folded beneath them or stretched across the floor where they fell. One man is slumped beside a shattered display table, his throat opened so deeply that you can see pale flashes beneath the blood. Another lies facedown farther along the corridor, a dark hole blown through the back of his skull.
Pools of red spread across the polished floor, joining together in wide puddles.
Then you see him.
Yaga.
The man who raised you almost as much as your grandfather did. He lies twisted near the doorway, one arm bent beneath his body, his head resting at an angle no living person’s head should rest. Blood has soaked through the front of his shirt and spread beneath him in a dark halo.
A scream tears from your chest. It doesn’t sound human.
A massive hand covers your face before you can look any longer, fingers spread just enough to leave your nose and mouth uncovered while blocking the sight of your slaughtered family.
“I tried to warn you,” the man says quietly.
There is something in his voice that does not belong to men like this. It sounds almost like pity. You stumble forward because he forces you to. Your bare feet step into something warm.
Blood gives beneath your soles and pushes between your toes with every step, thick and slick enough to make the floor an ice rink. Your stomach lurches. Bile burns the back of your throat as you fight not to vomit into the hand covering your face.
The silence feels heavier now, broken only by your ragged breathing and the wet sounds of your footsteps slipping through blood. You try not to imagine who it belongs to.
After what feels like an eternity, cool night air brushes against your skin. The hand drops from your face. A sleek black car waits at the curb with its engine running. One of the rear doors is already open.
You slide inside without being told, too numb to resist. Your wet feet stick to the protective plastic mats, leaving red smears across the clear surface.
The door closes behind you.
The man who escorted you out circles the car, opens the opposite door, and folds himself into the seat beside you. He taps the back of the driver’s seat twice and the car begins to move.
Your childhood home disappears behind you.
You wonder whether you will ever see it again.
Probably not.
The man beside you looks almost absurdly large in the back seat, shoulders crowding the space, one knee angled toward the center console because there is not enough room for his legs. He pulls out his phone and begins typing, his thumbs moving with surprising precision for someone with hands that could nearly close around your skull.
A moment later, he powers the phone off and slips it into his pocket.
Then he turns toward you.
For reasons you can’t understand, he does not scare you the way Sukuna does.
“How old are you, kid?” he asks.
His gaze moves over your face, checking you for injuries, before drifting briefly down your body. There’s nothing creepy in the look. It feels more like assessment, as if he’s trying to determine whether you are even old enough to be caught in the middle of this.
“I turned nineteen last month,” you answer quietly.
Your hands twist together in your lap.
He grunts and nods.
“Got a kid your age.”
He looks to be in his late thirties. If not older. He must have had his kid young.
The thought sparks another, uglier one. Your breath catches, causing him to shoot you a questioning look.
“What?” he asks.
“Is he…” Your tongue feels too large inside your mouth. “Is Sukuna your age?”
The man chuckles.
“Nah. Don’t know exactly how old he is, but I don’t think he’s thirty yet.”
A sigh of relief escapes you. It’s not good news. None of this is good news. But it’s not as horrible as it could have been. He says your name, his voice attempting to be calming.
“You’ll be okay. It’ll just take some getting used to.”
Your eyes flick toward him.
“How do you know my name?”
He laughs again, but there’s little humor in it.
“He did his homework. Knew everyone who might be in that house tonight.” His eyes rest on you for a moment. “You weren’t supposed to be there, though. Bad luck, kid.”
Your jaw clenches hard enough that pain radiates into your temple.
“What’s your name?” you ask, needing something human to call the mountain of muscle beside you.
“Toji.”
Something about him reminds you faintly of Yaga.
Maybe it’s his size. Maybe it’s the casual roughness in his voice. The resemblance is not strong enough to survive scrutiny, but it eases the panic just a bit.
You cling to that feeling, even knowing it will vanish the moment Sukuna appears again. For now, sitting beside Toji, you feel marginally safer.
“I have school tomorrow,” you say, barely above a whisper. “I was supposed to go back tonight. After dinner.”
Toji simply nods and pulls his phone from his pocket again.
“Okay. We’ll get you withdrawn.”
Your head snaps toward him.
“What? No. I’m supposed to go back.”
He looks at you then, and something in his eyes softens.
“Oh, kid.” He exhales quietly. “You didn’t really think you were going back to school, did you?”
Panic rises again, sharp enough to hurt.
“Why not?”
“Honestly, I’m surprised your grandpa let you go in the first place. That’s a long way from home to be wandering around without protection.”
“I wasn’t without protection,” you argue. “One of the inner circle’s sons was with me.”
Toji’s expression darkens.
“Then I’m guessing he’ll be six feet under before sunrise.”
Your chest contracts.
Your cheeks sting from tears that have not stopped falling all evening.
You had been so focused on Yaga’s body that you never thought to look for Inumaki.
He had been at the house tonight too. It’s probably safe to assume that everyone in that hallway, aside from you and your grandfather, is dead.
You don’t have time to grieve him. Not properly, anyway. Your mind grasps blindly for any thread of normalcy still within reach.
“Someone else can be assigned to come with me,” you say quickly. “I won’t go alone. I’ll stay on campus. I’ll call whenever I leave. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Waste of manpower,” Toji mutters.
You stare at him.
“It’s not like you’ll need the degree anyway,” he continues. “You won’t be allowed to work.”
“What?” Panic gives way to anger so abruptly it makes your voice shrill. “Why not?”
He exhales through his nose and answers slowly, in a tone used to explain something obvious to a child.
“What would be the point? We’d have to post men around you all day, every day, just so you could earn a paycheck smaller than what one guard costs for a week. You won’t need the money. Sukuna will make sure you’re taken care of.”
“I’m not a child. Don’t talk to me like that.”
You jab a finger toward his face before you can think better of it.
Toji snorts, catches your finger between two of his, and gently lowers your hand back into your lap.
“Well, you ain’t a grown up either.”
“You’re all sexist pigs.” Your voice rises. “Just because I’m a woman, I’m not allowed to work?”
“No,” he says flatly. “It’s because you’re a liability. If you die, it’s open season on Sukuna. Not that he gives much of a shit about tradition, but it would still create a monumental waste of time and resources.” Toji shifts in his seat. “So yes, you’ll stay inside the estate, where you’re easier to protect.”
You glare at him.
“So I’ll never get to do anything again?”
“You’ll have everything you want,” he replies evenly. “Except freedom.”
“Well, what I want is freedom.”
Toji shrugs.
“Sukuna doesn’t care whether you’re happy. He cares whether you’re alive. My advice is to learn to live with that. You’ll have more inside that estate than most people see in a lifetime.”
You are furious. Your arms cross tightly over your chest, your jaw clenched and brows drawn together, and you make no effort to hide any of it.
Not that Toji seems concerned. He returns to his phone and begins typing as though he hasn’t just informed you that the rest of your life will be spent inside a guarded cage.
Technically, you had always been in danger.
But you had also been free.
As long as Yaga was nearby, you were allowed to move as you pleased. He followed at a respectful distance, pretended not to notice when you wanted privacy, and frightened off anyone stupid enough to make you uncomfortable. When you left for university, Inumaki inherited the role.
Protection had always existed at the edges of your life.
It had never swallowed it whole.
So why did everything have to change now?
You sit in simmering silence for another fifteen minutes, anger thick in your chest and grief pulsing beneath it. Then, without looking up from his phone, Toji speaks.
“Ya know, I don’t mind the attitude, but you’re gonna want to knock that shit off around Sukuna.”
“I’m not throwing a fit,” you snap.
You are. Toji lets out a low laugh.
“Told you, I’ve got a kid your age. I know a tantrum when I see one.”
If you were angry before, now you are livid.
Who the hell does he think he is?
Your entire life has been ripped out from beneath you. Men you love are dead. A stranger pressed a gun to your head and forced you to beg for your life while your grandfather watched. You have been promised to a murderer, dragged barefoot through the blood of your family, and informed that you will never return to any form of normalcy.
And he calls your grief a tantrum.
“I’m sorry that having emotions is childish,” you bite out, your voice shaking with rage. “My life is over, and you’re telling me to suck it up before my husband gets home?”
You spit the word husband like it burns your tongue.
That gets his attention. Toji finally looks up from his phone. The air inside the car shifts.
“Hey,” he says, his voice low. “I’m gonna need you to listen to me now.”
You don’t answer, but you don’t look away.
“If you think this is about control or pride or some old school bullshit about women knowing their place.” He shakes his head once. “It’s not.”
He leans back against the seat, his broad shoulders pressing into the leather.
“You’re leverage. That’s it. A living, breathing pressure point.”
Your stomach turns at his words.
“If you behave, you’re useful. If you stay alive and predictable, you keep people in line. Your existence gives your grandfather a reason to cooperate, and later, it gives his loyalists a reason to keep their knives out of Sukuna’s back.”
He pauses, his eyes locking onto yours.
“But if you become a problem—if you attract attention, make waves, give enemies opportunities, or become more trouble than you’re worth—then you stop being useful.”
Your chest tightens.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it plainly so you understand me.” His voice doesn’t rise, and that makes the words much worse. “If the risk you create outweighs the benefit you provide, there’s no reason to keep you alive.”
You swallow against the pressure building in your throat.
“You’d kill me?”
Toji exhales through his nose.
“I wouldn’t enjoy it.” His expression does not change. “But yes. Someone would.”
Tension fills the space between you, making it hard to sit still.
“You need to understand something,” he continues. “No one here is invested in your happiness. Not me. Not the men assigned to watch you. Not even Sukuna.”
Your fingers curl into fists in your lap.
“They’re invested in stability,” he says. “And stability doesn’t hesitate to cut dead weight.”
Your voice comes out smaller than you intend.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
Toji studies you for a long moment before answering.
“You stay quiet. You stay where you’re put. You don’t run. You don’t rebel. You don’t try to prove a point just because you’re angry.” His gaze hardens. “And you never forget that everything you still have is conditional.”
The car slows as it turns, tires humming across the road.
Toji looks out the window.
“Do that,” he adds, almost gently, “and you’ll live a very long, very expensive life.”
He leaves a beat of silence before finishing.
“Do anything else, and you won’t.”
You stop listening. Not on purpose. It simply happens.
Toji continues speaking, but his words slide past you like water moving over glass. Your ears still work. Your mind has simply refused to follow.
The car hums beneath you. You focus on that instead. The way the seat belt cuts diagonally across your chest. The faint scent of leather, tobacco, and something metallic clinging to Toji’s clothes. The rhythmic clicking of the turn signal as the car moves through the night.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Your hands no longer feel like yours.
They are still there, folded in your lap, but they seem distant, attached to another girl in another car, a girl whose life is not collapsing around her.
Memories move through your mind in broken flashes.
Yaga’s laugh.
Festival lights glowing above the street.
Your roommate’s arm around your shoulders.
Your phone lighting up with her name.
No.
You force the memories away.
Don’t go there.
You choose something smaller.
The thin trail of condensation running down the car window. The way it distorts the street lights into long streaks of gold and white. You follow them with your eyes as the city moves past, faster and farther away.
By the time you realize you have left Tokyo behind, you no longer know how long you have been in the car.
It feels like hours.
It feels like minutes.
You are desperate to get out, yet terrified of whatever waits on the other side of the door.
Your thoughts drift despite your efforts to keep them still.
Is your grandfather safe?
Is Sukuna still at the house, standing among the bodies of the men he ordered killed, or is he already on his way to wherever they are taking you?
Will your grandfather keep his promise?
Will Sukuna keep his?
As the car approaches a towering set of gates, you cannot stop yourself from wondering whether you will ever be allowed outside them again.
You wish you had never come home for dinner. The thought is selfish. You know that. There is nothing you could have done to save the men who died inside that house. Not really. Retirement is a luxury in their world, one few survive long enough to earn. Every man who served your grandfather understood what their loyalty might eventually cost.
But if you had stayed at school, you would still be free. You would have learned about the attack through a guarded phone call, mourning them from several cities away instead of walking through their blood.
And Inumaki might still be alive.
The thought tightens painfully around your chest. He was there, because you were.
You are suddenly, brutally aware of the blood drying against your skin.
The tacky pull between your toes.
The dark splashes staining Toji’s shirt.
Did he kill Yaga?
Did he kill Inumaki?
How are you supposed to live among the people who murdered everyone you loved?
You know the outrage is hypocritical.
You grew up in this life.
You always knew what your grandfather was. You knew the men guarding your bedroom door had blood on their hands. You knew the businesses your grandfather owned were fronts and that the respect he commanded had been built through fear, money, and violence.
But it had always been distant.
Hidden.
Cleaned away before it reached you.
The brutal men who protected your house also made you laugh. They taught you to ride a bicycle and carried you inside when you scraped your knees. They smuggled you candy when your grandfather said you had already had enough and brought gifts on your birthday, pretending they hadn’t spent weeks arguing over what to buy.
Yaga would come home with blood dried beneath his fingernails, scrub his hands clean in the kitchen sink, and then tuck you into bed as gently as any father.
The violence had always existed on the other side of a closed door.
Tonight, Sukuna opened it. Now, in less than a week, you will be legally bound to the man who took all of that away. A man who held a gun to your head and smiled while you begged not to die.
The gravel beneath the tires crunches loudly as the car begins to slow.
You sit forward slightly and look through the tinted window.
Armed men stand at even intervals along the perimeter wall, stone faced and unmoving beneath the harsh security lights. There are more of them than your grandfather ever stationed visibly around his estate.
You wonder whether those men would shoot you if you ran toward the gate.
You don’t realize Toji has gotten out until the rear door swings open beside you.
Cold air rushes into the car.
He stands outside with one hand resting on the top of the door, looking down at you.
Beyond him, the compound stretches into the darkness, enormous and unfamiliar, illuminated windows scattered across the grounds like watchful eyes.
Toji’s face gives nothing away.
“Welcome home.”