Chapter Text
There are stories about Fushiguro Megumi’s home town - rumours mostly, rambling old wives-tales that grandparents spin to keep their grandchildren from wandering too far, of creatures that devour flesh and drink blood. A monster that would snap you up and take you away in the middle of the night, leaving beds cold and houses empty.
They talk of how this place was once ruled by this monster, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. A beast with two faces and four arms, that strikes terror into the hearts of men before tearing the muscle from their chest; whispers of how the brave people of the town were able to seal him away, banding together with fire and sickles and hatchets to trap him beneath the sun and watch him burn into the Earth.
These tales are accompanied by a promise from that creature, to one day return. He would rise up from the ground, crack it like an egg in his palm, to claim the town and people within. He would drag everyone screaming - especially boys with green eyes, their dogs, and even their scary dads - beneath its surface.
Or so Megumi has been led to believe. By his useless, awful, shitty teenage babysitter, Gojo Satoru.
With his older sister Tsumiki permanently hospitalised, Gojo was enlisted by his father - Fushiguro Toji - to look after Megumi on those late, dark nights in his absence.
When Megumi was a kid, Gojo would recount these stories with glee, delighting in Megumi’s reactions. He would chase Megumi around the house with wriggling fingers, yelling proclamations of “I’m going to suck your blood!” until Megumi cried.
What an asshole.
“Kuro and Shiro will protect me.” Megumi would say, but his aging dogs just chased him too, following after Gojo and nipping at his ankles in play. It would always be as Megumi was getting ready for bed that Gojo would torment him, don’t go by the cemetery, Megumi, you don’t know what’s lurking out there.
Megumi had laid awake in bed for night after night, fear and anxiety heavy in his gut, and traced the patterns of his bedsheets for comfort. He never turns his back to the window - even now - eyes fixed on the gap in the curtains above his bed, so he’s ready for whatever prowls in the darkness. But as he gets older, the fear lessens, even if Megumi still takes some of the same precautions. Gojo went off to university, although he still finds ways to get under Megumi’s skin, Shiro and Kuro passed away and Megumi’s dad left him to fend for himself.
Megumi’s curtains are kept open some nights now. He basks in the moonlight and watches the magpies nesting in the tree outside his window during the spring.
He makes friends, too. He meets Itadori Yuuji on his first day of class that year, a loud boy with a smile so bright he doesn’t think a vampire could even get close, despite his weird fascination with the occult. Megumi also meets Kugisaki Nobara not two days later, who imposes herself into his life rather than befriends him naturally.
“You’re my project partners,” she announces with an infectious kind of confidence, before loudly dragging a chair across the floor to him and Itadori, dumping a mountain of brightly coloured gel pens on their desk.
He’s glad she did.
As summer grows into Autumn, his time is filled with his friends: trips with Itadori and Kugisaki to the local conbini after class, bike rides to college in the morning just before the sun breaks over the horizon, watching cheesy films and giggling over them together in the dead of night and even goofing off in the nearby woodland.
Gojo’s stories - of the vampire scorched into the soil who promised to destroy them all - became what they always should have been: silly lies told by some smug teenager who wanted to make a little kid cry.
Megumi even recounts them to Itadori and Kugisaki during one of their horror movie marathons in the lead up to Halloween. Itadori always insists on picking the flick.
Itadori makes an enthusiastic sound at his story, before pointing his thumb at his own chest with a grin. “You should enlist the help of the Occult Club, Fushiguro! Sasaki-san loves vampires and all that stuff as well, so she can help investigate, too.”
“Lame!” Kugisaki contradicts, before shoveling popcorn into her mouth. She continues with a crunch, “Who’d believe something like that?”
She was right, it was just a silly story. Itadori’s belief in the occult has been something of a fascination but it helps to ground him; none of this stuff is real, proven. He should just forget it and deal with it for what it is: a scary myth like the Blaire Witch in the movie Itadori chose for them to watch tonight.
So, Megumi tries not to think about it anymore.
He tries not to think about it when Itadori pulls him by the hand to the woodland behind the local cemetery on that chilly Friday night a couple of days later. The place was dark and tangled in branches, but familiar to Megumi; it was somewhere Megumi frequented in middle school to smoke cigarettes with his old gang and talk shit, even if being there was a test of bravery he’d set himself to spite Gojo’s warnings.
He tries not to think about it when they start giggling and messily making out against a tree. This isn’t the first time he and Itadori have fooled around somewhere they shouldn’t, with Kugisaki’s absence being the only difference from the norm.
He still tries not to think about it, when he slices his hand open on a piece of metal sticking from the ground as they sink to the clearing floor. Itadori breaks their kiss as soon as he hears Megumi’s yelp; he tries to stem the flow with the sleeve of his, thankfully, red hoodie. It was a waste in the end - of Itadori’s hoodie, of their good mood.
Megumi’s blood seeps from his palm with a steady drip, drip, drip, gleaming in the light of the full moon and is absorbed by the parched soil below.
With their light-hearted mood thoroughly diminished, they leave and say their goodbyes quickly. It’s like his body moves on autopilot as he drifts through the night into an equally dark house - he cleans his hand and goes to bed with a warm feeling in his chest, curtains open.
And he still tries not to think about it. The story of the vampire sleeping within the earth.
Until he hears that Itadori didn’t make it home that night.
The morning follows in a blur, he’s awoken by a knock at the door and the news that Itadori is missing from local Police Officer Nanami Kento.
Everyone knows everyone in this town, so it’s not surprising to Megumi when he receives a visit. Megumi can’t even begin to process the news before Officer Nanami follows up with, “Is your father home, Fushiguro-kun?” He isn’t, but Nanami probably already knows that. This wasn’t the first time he graced the Fushiguro household asking after Megumi, on a Saturday no less.
After stammering out an invitation inside, Megumi recalls the previous night, searching his brain for all the information he has. Nanami asks him a couple more questions before he leaves: what had Itadori been wearing, any unusual behaviour, did he indicate where he might have gone.
Megumi has a moment to himself, once Nanami is gone, to process the news. Itadori is missing, Itadori is missing, Itadori is missing, missing-
There was nothing ominous about last night, no foreboding pressure, just the cool evening air brushing across his face as Itadori had waved goodbye, cheeks flushed. He sits with his head in his hands, the edges of his mind frayed from the news. He doesn’t cry, not yet, but maybe it hasn’t quite sunk in. Reality doesn’t let him steep in his feelings though, as his ringtone begins to blare out in the room.
“We’re organising a search.” Kugisaki greets as soon as he answers his phone, voice unchanged from when he last heard it. “Put on your fucking coat.”
So he does.
And it’s late in the evening when Megumi finally takes off his coat. Parking his bike at the side of his home and kicking the dirt off his shoes, he drifts inside his home after handing out fliers. They say the first 48 hours are the most important, when someone goes missing, and Kugisaki intends to pull out all the stops.
When Megumi arrived at her place, she thrust a stack of flyers into his arms. Kugisaki didn’t ask about the previous night and didn’t let him dwell on his feelings either. As far as she’s concerned, they have one objective - “So don’t go wasting brain power on anything else”, she said.
Megumi hollowly places the remaining fliers he has onto his desk when he gets to his room. Everyone in town already knows Itadori’s face, what are these fliers even going to do?
Kugisaki has the unstoppable force of a bullet train though. If she says they will find Itadori, then they will.
So Megumi quickly makes his way upstairs and settles in his bedroom. His curtains open, moonlight pouring through, like so many of the previous nights.
But then, he sees it. A shape at his window. A palm against the glass. Red eyes in the darkness.
But a moment later, when he blinks, there’s...nothing.
A cold feeling trickles down Megumi’s arms, settling at the tips of his fingers as he looks through the window pane. It’s just the normal view, the outline of houses opposite, dim street lights and the empty magpie nest from before they flew off for winter. He remembers Kugisaki talking about how annoying they were, when she and Itadori stayed over to celebrate her birthday. Megumi likes them, though.
It must have been a trick of the shadows, his tired eyes and weary brain. His friend is missing, of course he’s on edge. He kicks the frame of his bed, fucking Gojo and his stupid stories - he should be entitled to compensation for his deep-seated childhood trauma.
He pauses at the window, reaching out tentatively with his hand to the curtain like the fabric is made of live wasps.
Just for one night, he decides, before sweeping the curtains shut.
After that, things begin to meld together a little, each day becoming a sad puddle of mush spent searching with Kugisaki who starts to look exactly like he feels.
He finds his dad has returned home one night, grunting at Megumi when he steps through the door. The radio in the kitchen is buzzing with talk of Itadori, calls to action and requests for information.
About Itadori, who helped Megumi learn how to ride that stupid bike over the summer when his father wouldn’t.
Toji is home rarely, but he might as well not be at all for the fat lot of good he does. So Megumi carries on as usual - without him: he goes to class, eats a quiet lunch with Nobara, rides his bike across every corner of the town and desperately thrusts fliers into the hands of passers-by. Nothing pops up at his window again, there’s no scary face or supernatural creature conjured up by Megumi’s brain like on the first night of Itadori’s disappearance.
There’s a shift in the air today when he sits down for lunch with Kugisaki. She’s pulling apart a dry looking Melon bread like it’s done her a personal wrong, turning it to crumbs between her fingers.
“We’re going through the woodland tonight, by the cemetery,” she greets, turning her gaze to Megumi. The heavy bags under her eyes match her tone. “Not gonna pussy out are you?”
Going to the woodland now, after Itadori went missing causes those childhood fears he wished and hoped to forget bubble up in his mind.
Kugisaki’s words ring through him. Who'd believe something like that?
Megumi, apparently.
So he nearly does pussy out in the end, anxiously typing and then re-typing a message to Kugisaki telling her he can’t make it. But he spends so long thinking it over that Kugisaki just turns up at his door and then they’re on their way. Pedalling through the town with Kugisaki standing on his back wheel spokes, it’s an eerily quiet journey, only the clink of the chain fills the air.
After pulling up by the cemetery, Megumi props his bike up against the stone wall outside and they make their way in. The sun is still shining, albeit dimly; those rays chase away some of the anxiety Megumi is feeling. He still grabs Kugisaki’s hand before they go any further, though; she makes an annoyed sound in the back of her throat.
The woodland itself is dense, dark trees curling into one another that form a maze above the patches of moss and fallen leaves that decorate the ground. It’s exactly the same as Megumi remembers from that night, untouched.
Until they make it a little further in. The air becomes heavy, the atmosphere oppressive, Megumi’s breaths become laboured as they enter a clearing. The soil looks fresh, like it's been dug up recently and picked at by birds; branches are trampled and broken. The air smells damp, muggy and it clogs his nostrils.
A bead of sweat runs down the back of his neck, his palms become clammy. Kugisaki pulls away, seemingly unaffected, “Gross,” she mutters before wiping her hand on her pants.
“Let’s focus on this area.” Kugisaki says. “It looks like someone’s been here recently, maybe squatting or something. It coulda been Itadori.”
Megumi complies.
The clearing is fenced off by trees and thick brambles, they’ll be hard to search without getting his hands dirty, so he starts by combing through the grass and soil at their base to find something - anything.
A shoe, a phone, any sign of Itadori.
Kugisaki is quiet as she searches, pulling back bushes with gloved hands. “Did Itadori say anything to you, about where he might have gone? I went over and over our messages to see if there was anything he’d said.” She asks, somber. But then she tuts, “The police think he ran away to his brother’s place.”
Choso, Itadori’s older adoptive brother, was a four hour train ride away; it’s a possibility, and that was the story the police had been sticking with for now. So there’s no formal missing persons case. It would be too unsettling to their quiet, folksy town if someone had really disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
“I spoke to him and he hasn’t heard shit. Not from the police either.” Kugisaki continues, before turning to him. “So they’ve left the heavy lifting to me. Do you know anything else?”
Megumi stops for a moment, guilty, but decides to tell her. “This is where we were that night. We were just fooling around.” Kugisaki pauses at that before turning to look at him expectantly and he recounts the story.
“So that’s why this place scares the shit out of you again.” Kugisaki scoffs. “What, do you think the vampire took him?”
“That’d be stupid.” Megumi says, forcing a small laugh; he’s not even convincing himself with that one. “It’s just, I don’t know what happened afterwards. I told the police everything.”
“Well, that’s why we’re up to our ankles in cigarette butts and raccoon shit.” Kugisaki says, before ending the conversation with. “Maybe he dropped his phone and came back, so keep looking.”
The hours they spend searching crawl at a snail's pace: they’ve barely covered any ground, quickly realising how tangled and deep the woodland goes. They orbit around the clearing, the only recognisable place in the morose forest.
Acutely aware of the sun dipping behind the trees and the darkness beginning to squeeze him, Megumi clears his throat not-so subtly and says, “We should go.”
Kugisaki fixes him with a look, before walking past Megumi and replying. “It’s not like we’re going to be able to search much in the dark, anyways.”
The final rays of the day filter through the trees, catching the edge of Kugisaki’s silhouette as they limp back down to the trail. But through that bright yellow of the sun, something red catches Megumi’s eye.
His body moves before he realises, it’s a piece of cloth. He clutches it without thinking; it’s red, the same red of Itadori’s hoodie from that night with a darker patch on there. Megumi’s blood.
The red in his vision blurs as his hands tremble.
“Kugisaki.” He chokes out, turning wide eyed. How could they have missed this?
“What, Megumi?” She says, drained. She must be so tired. “What is it?”
Seeing his expression, she’s there in an instant, mirroring his shock before clicking her tongue and throwing down her purse. He barely has time to do anything before she pulls a plastic bag from her pocket.
The fabric is taken from him carefully, but quickly. Kugisaki makes pains not to touch it herself.
“As much as I hate to say it, we gotta hand this over to the police.” Kugisaki turns away, and when Megumi doesn’t immediately follow, says, “Come on.”
They scramble up the trail to Megumi’s bike filled with a kind of giddy, manic energy pushing them forward. It’s something.
Only to find the chain broken; the bike isn’t that old, but maybe having Kugisaki on the back did it.
In any case, they’ll be walking.
That dampens their spirits a little, and their trek to the station is subdued but still tense. Megumi can tell the jingling of the chain as he pushes his bike is irritating Kugisaki.
But they get to the station in the end just as the orange of the sunset peeters into a deep blue, Kugisaki slamming the bag on the front desk triumphantly. Megumi can almost hear the I told you so threatening to pour from her lips like a leaky faucet.
Now the police have to help with these searches.
The desk clerk isn’t someone Megumi recognises - they’re petite with a white bob and dark coloured eyes that fix onto Megumi - but nevertheless, they take the fabric and a few notes as Kugisaki reels off how they found it. It’s only as he leaves that Megumi realises the clerk didn’t ask for a name. They simply warned to not get involved further and let the authorities take it from here.
Predictably, this does not happen, Kugisaki tells him. The police do nothing, Itadori remains missing.
And they carry on.
Each trawl of the woodland seems to roll into the next, the flyers are forgotten and sit untouched on his desk. It’s hard to settle at night with the feeling of Itadori watching him from that stack of paper, urging him to do something, to find him.
The searches themselves are tiring, long and gloomy. Kugisaki enlists the help of a couple of their seniors who are familiar with Itadori - Inumaki, Yuuta and Maki. They need all the help they can get; you can’t achieve an impossible task alone. So Megumi goes each night, he wraps up tight and steals himself against the cold, and never strays too far from the group.
There’s a nasty bug going around the town that catches up with Inumaki and he nearly passes out during one of their searches, so understandably doesn’t show up for a while. Yuuta has commitments too, kendo practice and family dinners to attend; Megumi is surprised when he learns that Yuuta is Gojo’s cousin. Turns out he’s back in town for a little while. Megumi ought to pay him a friendly visit, now's as good a time as any to enact some retribution for the childhood trauma he’s living through.
As November rolls into December, it’s just him, Nobara and Maki spearheading their efforts. Even then, Maki flakes most of the time with the excuse of visiting her sister in the next town over.
But they keep trying. What else can they do?
It’s not a surprise that they don’t find Itadori. Or anything really. But it is sad.
There’s plenty of animal bones, old toys and shoes to uncover, sure, but nothing like what they found during the first search. Megumi’s time is filled by endless darkness - cold hands and running noses and returning home late everyday to an empty house.
Megumi is so consumed by it all that he never notices the red eyes following him each night.
There's something at Megumi's window.
He arrives home after another evening of searching, to find a shadow in the shape of a person at his window. The shape hovers in the tree outside and he can’t make out a face at his current distance, but he can see their eyes.
Red.
He pauses in his doorway, briefly considering hitting himself. He doesn’t move, or blink and simply says “Hello?”.
The figure shifts forward and the artificial light of Megumi’s room illuminates their face. It’s a man.
His features are sharp, a cut jawline and angular nose; it’s slightly crooked though, Megumi notices, like it’s been broken in a fight.
Handsome, his mind supplies.
The man chuckles, tilting his head to the side. there’s marks on his face, delicate strokes of black along his jawline. Four eyes, Megumi notes - could they be tattoos? They seem to follow Megumi as he steps tentatively forward. There’s almost something mesmerizing about him, if only his expression, the narrowed shape of his eyes, those lips and a wicked slip of fang, didn’t scream danger.
Megumi isn’t quite sure what expression bubbles to the surface of his face, but it seems to please this stranger. He’s the one who speaks first, “Fushiguro Megumi. At last we meet in the flesh.”
A cold bead of sweat rolls down the back of Megumi’s neck.
There’s a stranger at his window. A stranger sat in his tree with four red eyes and a hungry expression, who knows his name.
“How did you get up there?” Megumi manages, before cringing a little. Both out of fear and also because what a stupid fucking question to ask.
This man just looks at him, eyes boring a hole through Megumi’s head. He should probably yell for help or something. When Megumi doesn’t get an immediate response, he opens his mouth to say something else, or maybe cry out, but any noise he attempts is cut off.
“Ryomen Sukuna.” He says, 2 of his 4 eyes closed in a wink. “Although, as my future bride, I’ll permit you to use any pet names you feel appropriate too.”
Megumi stares blankly and then blinks once, twice. Did he just say “Bride?”
Ryomen Sukuna, apparently, replies. “I’ve come to collect you.”
Ah. So he’s insane. There’s an insane person with four eyes sitting in his tree who coincidentally happens to know his name. It does not go deeper than this. Megumi lets his posture relax, the window is locked anyways, so now it’s time to call the police.
“Leave or I’m calling the cops.” Megumi moves further into his room, with every intention of calling them regardless of what this guy says or does.
“Now, there’s no need for that.” Sukuna smiles, all teeth. “Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?”
“Not in the slightest.” Megumi responds, and begins typing in Officer Nanami’s number from memory.
“You’re searching for that boy.” Sukuna gestures to the flyers on Megumi’s desk. He continues, thoughtful, bringing a taloned hand to trace along the edge of his jaw. “Perhaps I could help, you seem tired.”
This isn’t happening. Megumi’s head snaps up to look at Sukuna, phone clenched in his hand. “What are you talking about?”
Sukuna hums and decides not to answer that particular question. Instead, he continues with, “I’ve been asleep for so long, fatigue is but a stranger to me now. I’m grateful to you, Megumi, for awakening me; your service will be rewarded.”
Megumi is tempted to repeat his question, but isn’t certain that will have much effect. Instead, he just stares with brows furrowed, stressed, scared and confused. Sukuna must see some of that on his face because he pauses thoughtfully, like he’s deciding what to order at a restaurant, and then says, “It seems I’ve been too forward. I’ll return to you the next night when you are refreshed.”
Throwing his arms out in a gesture that says now hold on a second, “Listen, don’t come back here. I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” He takes out his phone and begins dialing, grumbling, “Who even are you?”
“My kind used to be rife in this town. But we’ll have eternity to discuss that later.” Sukuna replies. He smiles again, it should be pleasant to see that expression on a face so handsome, but it isn’t. “For now, rest.”
Pausing, Megumi turns cold and breathes out, “Your kind.”
It’s not a question, but it doesn’t need to be. Megumi can’t bring himself to say anything else after that because he knows.
Sukuna’s leer turns animalistic, fangs gleaming at the prospect: a predator kept at bay with a brittle window frame and glass that would shatter with a flick of his wrist. He leans closer to the glass, but his breath doesn’t make it fog. “But worry not, Megumi, I’ll take you as mine soon enough.”
Megumi opens his mouth, floundering for some kind of response. Or even just the power to will his fingers to keep dialling.
The front door slamming open jerks him back to awareness, head flicking instinctively from Sukuna towards the upstairs landing. The rustling downstairs, the heavy clunk of his fathers boots and a loud cough, relief laps at Megumi like the tide of the sea coming in.
Dad’s home, thank fucking god.
Every bone in his body tells him to go, leave the room as soon as possible and don’t look back. So Megumi goes, but not without sparing one fleeting glance back at the window.
And just like that, Sukuna is gone.