Chapter Text
The archive was a cold place.
Though, not so much in temperature. Indeed, the climate control was fine, efficient even thanks to the generators with but a single fault in modern society. No; the coldness was simply in the air, heavy with the weight of things no one had remembered anymore.
No one.
Well, all but one.
Yuuji had been coming here for years. Decades. Centuries, maybe. Time would blur when society had been built around the construct of only a tenth of his current livlihood, and today had been no exception.
He walked into the halls, steps drumming against the silence, until the pounding echochamber eventually was drowned by whispers from past centuries as he turned the sharp corner. The walls lined with letters never read, and of photographs whose subjects had long since turned to dust. Yuuji sometimes thought he could hear them if he listened closely enough. The soft hum of forgotten lives. The gentle sigh of memories with no one left to hold them.
Different names and different faces; all lives summarised into the tightness and fragility of but another box on the shelves that lined these great walls.
Each box was a lifetime. Each donation, a goodbye. He had learned to pack his grief into small cardboard containers; to label them with dates, and locations, and the faint hope that someone, someday, might find them and remember. Someone who wasn't him. Someone who could still cry.
Today's box was small; no bigger than his two hands pressed together. Inside was a pressed flower from a wedding he had attended in 2350. The petals were brown now, brittle as old skin, but he had remembered how the bride had laughed then, bright and filled with colour just like how the flowers used to look, before they had been flattened by years of weighted silences. She had thrown her bouquet directly at Yuuji, with an earth-shattering wink, a woman with dark hair who wasn't Megumi, no, it could never be Megumi, but, painfully, had his eyes. Yuuji had caught the floral projectile out of instinct, the only thing his body seemed to be good at, and everyone had cheered their celebratory song. No one had known he was already thinking about the next funeral.
Yuuji handed the box to the archivist, an elderly man with thin grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and a nameplate that read K. Ijichi. He moved with a quiet, anxious efficiency, folding boxes and labelling shelves, muttering to himself all the same. Ijichi had always been here with that same quiet devotion to preserving. Some souls found their purpose and never let go.
"More donations?" Ijichi asked, taking the box from Yuuji and delicately placing it on the counter.
"Yes."
"Personal?"
Yuuji looked at the small, careful handwriting on the lid. "Not anymore."
Ijichi nodded. He'd learned over the years not to ask about the pink-haired boy who never aged. Even if it had been strange that those hands never seemed to wrinkle as he handed over yet another box, the paper material itself aging faster than the man who carried them. Nor did he ask about the boxes themselves, how a man of such youth had acquired centuries worth of human history in a number of the same neat brown.
He just, simply, took the box, logged it, and set it on a shelf with a thousand identical others. Ijichi was good at not asking questions. It was, perhaps, his greatest skill, and his kindest gift.
Though, today, a comment had slipped, almost absentmindedly. "You look tired.”
Yuuji was no stranger to those words, combatting with his usual, "I'm always tired," because that was not too far off from the truth.
"No,” Ijichi set down his pen, and his glasses caught the light, “You look...different today."
Yuuji stared at him, his eyes tracing the familiar slope of his shoulders, the anxious tremor in his fingers. A question rose in his throat before he could stop it. "Do you know me?"
Ijichi tilted his head. "You're the gentleman who always comes with a box."
Yuuji nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat that had likely formed all those years ago. "Right," he managed, leaving before Ijichi could see his face crumble.
Behind him, Ijichi touched his chest, right over his heart, and frowned.
"Strange." He murmured to himself, then went back to work.
The sun was setting over New Tokyo, leaving behind a bruised purple sky. The glass towers caught the last light like a thousand mirrors, and hovering vehicles sped past in their traffic lanes. Yuuji had watched this city rise from ash after the first destruction of Shibuya. He had watched it burn twice since then. He had watched it rebuild. Again. And again. And again.
Each version was slightly different. The first rebuild had been desperate, quick and functional; a city clearly held together with the determination of battling the grief of what it once was. The second had been ambitious with towers reaching higher, bridges spanning wider, as if trying to touch something that had been lost. The third had been somewhat practical, and what it still remains today. A city that had learned not to love itself too much, because loving meant losing, and losing meant rebuilding, and rebuilding meant starting over one more time than anyone had wanted.
Looking at the city now, just like this, he felt all but nothing.
That was the thing about immortality. It didn't kill you, not physically, that is. It just... softened everything. The sharp edges of grief became smooth stones, and Yuuji had been used to carrying them with him everywhere he travelled, a pocketful of worn down sorrows. Sometimes he would reach inside and turn them over, feel the places where rage had been polished into acceptance, where despair had been worn into something almost peaceful. They were cool to the touch now. They no longer cut. He wasn't sure if that was healing or just time, senseless and indifferent, grinding down everything eventually.
But it was better this way; the screaming now a quiet hum. The faces of the people he had outlived blurred into watercolours left too long in the rain. He had been numb for at least a century now. Maybe two. Maybe three. Numb to loss. Numb to loneliness.
Numb to the strangers who sometimes looked familiar.
There was a particular ache to that one. Seeing a face in a crowd that made his chest tighten, a smile that recalled someone, a laugh that echoed someone, a gesture that belonged to someone he had buried decades ago. He would stop. Stare. Wait for recognition to bloom in their eyes.
It never did.
They would pass him by, and he would stand there, breath caught, heart suspended, until the moment passed and he remembered that he was the only one still carrying the memory.
Years and years of numbness and trying to forget, and yet he still remembered the promise, though. That was the cruel part.
"Find me again."
Their first lifetime together. Megumi's voice, thin with age, his hand cold in Yuuji's. Lying in their bed, hair white as snow, eyes as lived as could be. A distant memory. So distant, he wasn’t sure if he had made it up altogether.
Had Megumi's voice really been that soft? Had his hands really been that cold? Had the light through the window really fallen across the bed in that particular shade of gold, or had his mind filled in the details over centuries of retelling? The memory had been handled so many times that the edges were worn smooth. Like a photograph kept too long in a wallet. Like a letter read so many times the ink had started to fade. Like stress-lines of a book’s spine from so many creases.
He still believed in it. He still held it close. But some nights, lying awake in the dark, he wondered if he was cradling a ghost of a ghost, and if the original had ever been real at all.
"Find me again. I don't care if I don't remember. My soul will. Always."
Yuuji had said yes. He always said yes. He had been saying yes for four hundred years thereafter. He would always keep saying yes.
What else was there to say? No would have been easier. No would have meant rest. No would have meant letting go, allowing himself to finally stop, to drift into whatever came after immortality. But Megumi had asked him to find him again, and Yuuji had never learned how to say no to those green-grey eyes. Not in the first lifetime. Not in any of the lifetimes that followed.
Not then. Not now. Not ever.
So Yuuji continued to search, albeit unsuccessfully. He would find Megumi again, and again, and again, but with each reincarnation came none of the memories.
His feet carried him across campus without permission.
The archive was on the edge of the university grounds. The quickest way back to his apartment was through the main gate, past the history building, across the quad. But quickest wasn't the same as intentional.
Yuuji had learned that his body knew things before his mind did. His feet would take him to certain cities, certain streets, certain cafés, and only later would he realise he had been following a thread. A pulse. Something his heart had sensed that his brain hadn't caught up to yet.
It was what allowed him to find almost every reincarnation, even when travelling the world and back, trying his utmost to escape the curse that was Japan's grounds. He would always eventually bump into a familiarity. He didn't question it anymore. He just followed where his body took him, and right this very moment it was guiding him through the university.
The history building loomed ahead. Old, by New Tokyo standards. Built in 2200, renovated twice after the fires, still standing. Yuuji had watched them break ground on the original foundation. Watched the construction crews pour concrete. Watched a hundred generations of students walk through those doors.
He had never been inside. Not since his first lifetime, when this place had been called something else. Something that no longer existed.
He didn't plan to go in. He was just passing. Just walking.
He turned the corner.
And the world stopped.
His feet froze. His lungs forgot how to work. His heart, that ancient, tired thing he'd been dragging around for five hundred years, slammed against his ribs like it was trying to break out of his chest.
Oh.
The word wasn't a thought. It was a sound. A physical thing that pushed past his lips without permission.
Oh.
There was a boy twenty feet away.
Dark hair. Really dark. It spiked up in all directions. A sharp jaw that looked like it had been carved from something harder than bone. A mouth that had never learned to smile, or had forgotten how.
And his eyes.
Green-grey.
The most beautiful colour in the world. The most devastating colour in the world.
Yuuji knew that colour like it was the only thing he had ever needed to survive. He had spent four centuries trying to forget it. He had spent four centuries failing.
He had tried to describe them once, to a woman who had Megumi's laugh but not his eyes. She had nodded politely, not understanding. There were no words for that colour. No paint that could mix it. No screen that could display it. It existed only in memory, only in that face, only in the quiet spaces between heartbeats when Yuuji closed his eyes and reached for something he was terrified he had lost forever.
The boy was reading. A book held loosely in one hand, his weight shifted to one hip, his expression bored and distant and familiar in a way that made Yuuji's knees buckle.
Impossible.
Yuuji had seen that face before. Not in this lifetime. Not in this century. In a photograph. In a wooden box. In a memory so old it had frayed at the edges like a letter folded too many times.
He had watched Megumi's soul reincarnate nine times across a variety of faces, ages, bodies. Women, men, old, young. He had learned to recognise the feeling of him. The particular slant of a smile, the warmth behind tired eyes, the way he tilted his head when he was thinking.
But this.
This face.
This was the face. The one he had woken up next to for eighty years. The one he had watched grow old. The one he had held as it slipped away. He tried to capture this face during their first lifetime together with hundreds of photographs, just so he could never forget, only to then print them desparately after mobile incompability only tangled its web.
This was the face that had plastered the walls of his soul; the one he had genuinely, and dejectedly, thought would never come back to him after nine tries.
The boy looked up, and their eyes, oh so finally, met.
Time fractured. For one impossible instant, Yuuji was fifteen again, standing in a different schoolyard, under a different sun, and Megumi was looking at him for the first time as he ran past. The same furrow between his brows. The same suspicion. The same something softer underneath, waiting to be found. Then the moment passed, and Yuuji was ancient again, and Megumi was a stranger who felt like home.
Green-grey. Long lashes. Yuuji forgot how to breathe.
The boy frowned. A small, familiar furrow between his brows. His head tilted, just slightly, just enough.
"Do I know you?"
His voice. His voice.
Low. Dry. Impatient. The same voice that had said "Find me again" four hundred years ago. The same voice that had laughed at Yuuji's terrible cooking, terrible jokes, terrible everything. The same voice that had whispered "I love you" again and again and again over a lifetime. Their first lifetime. Together.
Four centuries of silence, and then this. The sound he thought he had forgotten forever, playing out in front of him like a lost melody. Like the universe had been keeping it safe for him, tucked away in some cosmic archive, waiting for the right moment to play it again.
He wanted to record it. To bottle it. To carry it with him like a lullaby, proof that some things didn't disappear entirely, that even after four hundred years, even after nine reincarnations, even after everything, Megumi's voice still existed in this cruel, cruel world.
Yuuji opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
His brain was static. His hands were shaking. His chest was caving in.
Say something, you idiot.
And the something he conjured up could be none other than, "Oh, maybe from class?" The words coming from somewhere outside his very being. Some desperate, panicked part of him that knew he couldn't say 'yes, and I have been looking for you for four hundred years' as a first impression.
It was a lie. A terrible, stupid, desperate lie.
The moment the words left his mouth, he wanted to take them back. Not because they were wrong, they were desperately wrong, but because they were small.
Four hundred years of devotion, four hundred years of searching, four hundred years of carrying a promise across centuries, and all he could offer was a casual mention of a class. Megumi deserved more. He deserved poetry. He deserved the truth, laid out in all its impossible, painful, beautiful glory. But Yuuji was a coward. Yuuji was tired. Yuuji had tried the truth before, in other lifetimes, and watched Megumi's eyes go wide with disbelief, then narrow with fear, then turn away in rejection.
So he lied. He would always lie. Because the truth was too heavy, and Megumi was too new, and Yuuji couldn't bear to see that look on this face. Especially, not this face. No, not ever to this face.
The boy's frown softened. Just a fraction, and Yuuji was quick to notice it, physically screaming against his every being's urge of lurching forward to this not-so-stranger-but-technically-stranger's personal space and kissing that beautiful frown away.
"Oh," Megumi sounded almost disappointed in Yuuji's response, which he couldn't determine if that was favourable or not before the next question from those beautiful lips bubbled out, "so, what are you studying?"
Yuuji's eyes instantly flickered to the spine of the book that Megumi held. Creased and weathered. He just about comprehended one word, "history," he heard himself say, then reassured himself once that word indeed matched the book and the answer to the question. "Yeah. History."
Megumi, or more like the guy who looked astoningshly identical to his megumi, had nodded. "Same. That's probably it." He then tucked his book under his arm. The cover was visible for just a moment: The Secret History of Cursed Techniques.
Yuuji almost laughed. Almost cried. Did both, internally, where no one could see.
"I'm Megumi, by the way." The boy, no Megumi, said, introducing himself with what was the most beautiful thing Yuuji had ever heard.
Megumi.
The name hit him like a physical blow. He hadn't heard it spoken aloud in… when? The last reincarnation had been called Rita. The one before that, Levi. Before that, Mai. Different names for different faces. He had stopped expecting to hear Megumi ever again, even if their soul had been shaped exactly the same as the blessing that had been his first and true love,
But here it was. Falling from those familiar lips like it had never left.
Megumi. Indeed a blessing.
The syllables settled in his chest like something warm. Something alive. After so many years of different names, he had forgotten what this one felt like. How it started in the teeth and ended in the lips. How it sounded when spoken by the person who wore it. How it made him feel, hearing it again. Like drinking water after a drought. Like seeing colour after the grey. Like maybe, just maybe, all of the waiting had been worth it.
"I’m Yuuji," he barely managed to spill out, because introducing himself anew to someone he knew the ins and outs of was beautifully cruel.
Megumi's eyes flickered. Something passed over his face, too quick to name. Recognition? Déjà vu? Or just the strange discomfort of looking at a stranger who felt like something else? Yuuji could only hope. He had seen that same look a thousand times before, though never quite like this before.
"Yuuji," Megumi repeated. Like he was tasting it. Like it meant something, and Yuuji wanted so badly for more. "I'll see you in class, Yuuji."
He nodded once, a short and sharp gesture, before walking away.
And Yuuji stood there for a long time, not long in the perspective of his life but still long enough. He had been unsure if he should've ran after the boy of his dreams, or stayed afoot, or what would even be the rational thing to do anymore?
The sun finished setting. The sky turned from bruised purple to deep blue to black. Campus lights flickered on, casting long shadows across the quad. Many students walked past him, young and old. Some glanced at the strange man standing frozen in the middle of the path. Most didn't.
Yuuji didn't move.
His heart was still pounding. His hands were still shaking. His chest was still aching, a deep, hollow ache he hadn't felt in at least a century.
Him.
It was him.
The same face. The same name. The same voice.
He didn't have an answer. He had stopped asking how a long time ago. The soul did what the soul did. He was just grateful. Terrified. Shattered. Hopeful.
Yuuji closed his eyes, thinking back to a time where he still believed he could meet Megumi again and had came up with a plan on what to do in that case. It was useless information for the past however lifetimes, until now.
He needed to integrate into Megumi's life naturally. Yes. That was the answer.
He wasn't a student. He had never been a student. Not since the first lifetime. He had just been passing through, donating old memorabilia, trying to lighten the load. And now, because of a lie, a desperate, stupid lie, he had to become one.
He opened his eyes. Looked at the history building. At the doors Megumi had disappeared through.
Four hundred years, he thought. You've waited four hundred years. You can wait a little longer.
But you can't let him disappear.
The words echoed in his skull like a mantra, a prayer, a command. He had let Megumi disappear before, never intentionally, but death was cruel and time was crueler, and there had been moments when he had looked away for just a second, and the thread had gone cold, and the reincarnation had slipped through his fingers like smoke. He had spent years searching for some of them. Decades. He had found tombstones instead of greetings. He had found empty apartments and unclaimed belongings. He had found barely a fraction of a life spent before their untimely passing.
He would not let that happen again. Not this time. Not with this face. Not with this name. Not with these green-grey eyes that held the weight of every promise he had ever made.
He started walking. Pacing. Running. Towards the registrar's office.
"You're not a student.” The girl spat.
Yuuji looked up. She was standing in the doorway, a stack of files in her arms, a name tag clipped to her shirt: Nobara, Student Worker.
Long brown hair. Sharp eyes. Her left eye foggy.
Yuuji's heart stopped.
"I processed your file." She continued, walking past him to a desk in the corner. "It's good, like really good. But I've been doing this for two years, and I know a forgery when I see one."
She dropped the files. Turned to face him.
"Who are you?"
Yuuji stared at her.
Nobara.
Slightly different face. Younger. Softer. Longer, darker hair. But the eyes, the same fierce, unimpressed, I'll kill you if you lie to me eyes.
He had seen those eyes soften once. In the original timeline. In a quiet moment after a battle, when she had looked at him and told him he wasn’t that annoying, which was Nobara-speak for "I love you and I would die for you and please don't ever leave." He had laughed then. She had punched him in the arm. He had carried the bruise for a week, smiling every time he saw it. That was over four hundred years ago. The bruise had faded. The memory hadn't. It sat beside all the others, smooth and worn and precious, a stone he reached for when the numbness got too loud.
"Itadori Yuuji.” He remarked, returning back to the present.
"Yeah, I read the file. I meant who are you actually."
"I'm a student. Or I will be. If Dr. Eto approves-"
"Dr. Eto's out sick. I'm in charge." She crossed her arms. "So. Try again."
Yuuji didn't know what to say. He hadn't planned for Nobara. He had seen her reincarnated maybe twice in four hundred years, and never this close. Never like this.
"I'm looking to transfer schools.” The lie he came up with during the walk in.
"Transfer from where?" Nobara flipped through his file. Her eyes scanned the pages, too fast, like she already knew what she was looking for.
"A small school. You wouldn't know it."
"Try me."
Yuuji hesitated. "It closed."
Nobara looked up. Her good eye. The left one, the foggy one, seemed to pierce through him anyway.
"Closed when?"
"A long time ago."
She stared at him. Then back at the file. Her finger traced a line of text.
"Your last academic history lists a 'Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School’. Is that right?”
"Yes."
"Sounds fake. I've never heard of it."
"It was very small."
"And very secret?"
Yuuji didn't answer.
Nobara set down the file. Crossed her arms.
"I ran the name through the system. It doesn't exist. Hasn't for at least three centuries."
"I know."
"So how did you graduate from a school that closed before your grandparents were born?"
Yuuji was quiet for a moment.
"I was homeschooled.” Another lie. "The paperwork is an approximation."
"An approximation."
"Yes."
"Stop lying."
Yuuji didn't deny it.
"Please, Nobara." His tired eyes, still hopeful. "I want to study history here. I need to. It's important to me."
"Well, that's too bad." She slid the file back across the desk. "I'm not approving this."
She rejected him three more times.
Each rejection was a small death. Not the dramatic kind. No blood, no screaming, no last words whispered into uncaring air, but a quiet one. A door closing. A hope dimming. He had learned to live with small deaths. He had collected so many of them over the centuries that they filled entire rooms in his heart, stacked floor to ceiling, leaving only narrow paths to walk through. He was good at small deaths. He was less good at the hope that preceded them, the treacherous little spark that refused to be extinguished, no matter how many times it was stomped out.
Each time, he returned with something new. A letter of recommendation (forged). A transcript (also forged). A birth certificate (not forged. He had kept the original from 2003, and it was technically real).
On the fourth day, Nobara looked at the birth certificate and frowned.
"This says you were born in 2003."
"Yes."
"That would make you almost five hundred years old."
"Yes."
"That's impossible."
"Yes."
She set down the document. Rubbed her temples, an intense look on her face.
"You're not funny. You're not clever. Maybe idiotic, in fact.” She sighed. “But you’re annoyingly persistent, and I'll give you that."
"I've been told that before." Yuuji pressed his lips together.
"By who?"
"Someone I used to know."
The words felt inadequate. "Someone I used to know" implied distance, implied separation, implied a relationship that had faded naturally over time.
What he meant was: someone whose soul has been woven through mine for over four hundred years.
What he meant was: someone I would tear apart the whole universe and beyond to find again. And again. And again.
What he meant was: someone I love so deeply that the word "love" has lost all meaning, because what I feel is larger than a word, larger than a language, larger than the centuries that have tried and failed to erode it.
But he couldn't say any of that. So he said "Someone I used to know," and watched Nobara's eyes flicker with something that might have been recognition, and hated himself for being a coward one more time.
She looked at him. Really looked. At the pinkish-white hair. The old scars on his hands. The way he held himself like someone who had learned to take up as little space as possible.
"Why this course?" She asked quietly. "Why does it matter so much that you would go through all of the effort to lie?"
Yuuji thought about the boy with green-grey eyes. The promise he had made four hundred years ago.
"Someone told me to find them.” He said. "I've been looking for a long time. I finally did. They're in that class."
Nobara was silent for a long moment. A long moment, but minuscule in the grand scheme of all things Yuuji.
Then she pulled out a form. Stamped it. Slid it across the desk.
"Approved.” She grunted. “Not because I trust you. Because I'm intrigued."
She snapped a photo, printed his student ID, and held it out. All within an instant.
"Welcome to the University of New Tokyo, transfer student. If you do anything out of line, I will ensure Dr. Eto expels you. Once she’s back, that is.”
Yuuji took the ID. His hands were shaking.
"I won't. I would never." He bowed profusely.
"Good." She turned back to her screen. "Now leave before I get in trouble."
He walked to the door. Paused.
"Nobara?" The name rolled off his tongue, strange and unfamiliar after centuries of disuse.
"What?"
"Thank you."
She didn't look up. But her voice was softer. "Don't thank me. I'll be watching you."
Yuuji nodded. Walked out.
Behind him, Nobara sat very still. Her hand touched her chest, right over her heart.
A deep inhale. “That was so weird.” She muttered to herself.
She pulled open a drawer. She didn't know why she had expected to find something there.
She just felt like she had lost something. A memory. A face. A name.
The drawer was empty, but her chest was not. Something lived there now, like a small and insistent presence that had not been there before. It felt like a question. It felt like a key without a lock. It felt like the moment before a sneeze, the anticipation of something that wouldn't arrive, leaving her suspended in a state of almost.
She closed the drawer, but the feeling did not close with it. It lingered in her fingertips, in the hollow of her throat, in the strange weight of her voice as she whispered to herself.
"Who are you really, Yuuji Itadori?"
The room didn't answer.
Yuuji held the student card tightly in his hand. He stared at it. A strong sense of longing filled him. This was the longing of a soul that had been separated from its other half for so long that it had started to forget what wholeness felt like.
It had been a long time.
Not since the first time. Not since Jujutsu High. Not since 2018. Not since he was sixteen years old and didn't know what immortality meant had he held something that marked him as a student. A card. A name. A place.
He had been a student once. Multiple lifetimes ago. His first lifetime. The one where he had met Megumi. The one where they had fought side by side, survived impossible things, and fallen in love in the quiet moments between battles.
The memory surfaced unbidden. Jujutsu High. The old classroom, sun slanting through dusty windows. Megumi in the seat beside him, pretending to take notes but actually doodling small animals in the margins of his notebook.
Yuuji had watched him draw two dogs. Then three rabbits. Then an elephant.
"What is that?" Yuuji had whispered.
"Shut up.” Megumi had whispered back, slamming the book closed and elbowing him.
The elbow had stayed there, pressed against Yuuji's arm, for the rest of the class. Neither of them had moved. Neither of them had mentioned it. Neither of them had forgotten.
That was over four hundred years ago.
Yuuji still remembered the weight of that elbow. He still remembered the warmth. He still remembered the faint animal drawings on those margin lines.
His shikigami.
As if it were right in front of him.
He turned the card over in his fingers. The plastic was cool, smooth, unremarkable. His photograph stared back at him. Same face. Unchanged. His hair had been pink then. Bright, loud, impossible to miss. Now it was white with a faint pink hue, like the last traces of a sunset after the storm had passed.
He still looked nineteen.
Nineteen when the immortality settled. Nineteen when Megumi died for the first time in his arms. Nineteen when he watched Megumi die again. And again. And again.
He would always look nineteen.
But his eyes, those were different. Older. Tired. Carrying the weight of four hundred years of almost.
Nine reincarnations. Nine times he had found Megumi's soul in a different body, a different face, a different life.
Some he had befriended. Some he had watched from a distance. Some he had loved, or tried to. But none of them had been his Megumi. Not really.
They were echoes. Fragments. Beautiful, but not the same.
This reincarnation was different. Same face. Same name. Same voice that still echoed in Yuuji's dreams.
And now, for the first time since the first lifetime, Yuuji was going to be a student again. Sitting in a classroom. Taking notes. Pretending to learn things he had lived through centuries ago.
For him.
For Megumi.
He pressed the card to his chest. Closed his eyes.
Four hundred years. Four hundred years of waiting. Of watching. Of loving.
He was tired. Exhausted. Fatigued.
But he was never one to give up.
He opened his eyes. The campus sprawled before him. Glass towers, sky bridges, students rushing between classes. A world that didn't know curses had ever existed. A world that had forgotten Jujutsu sorcerers, forgotten Sukuna, forgotten everything Yuuji had sacrificed.
But Megumi was here.
Somewhere on this campus, breathing the same air, walking the same paths. A twenty-year-old boy with dark hair and green-grey eyes. The exact same face. The exact same voice. The exact same name as the boy he fell in love with centuries ago.
The boy he loved. The boy he still loved. The boy he could never truly forget, no matter how many lifetimes passed.
Yuuji tucked the student card into his pocket. Close to his heart.
Then he started walking.
Toward the history building.
Toward the class he didn't need.
Toward the boy he'd been looking for for four hundred years.
For the first time in centuries, Yuuji felt something other than numbness.
Hope.
It was small. Fragile. Terrifying.
But it was there.
It flickered like a candle in a storm, threatened by every memory, every loss, every certainty that the universe would find a way to take this from him too.
He had held hope before. He had watched it die before. He had buried it in shallow graves and marked the spots with stones that weathered smooth over centuries. But hope was stubborn. Hope was stupid. Hope kept coming back, no matter how many times he gave up on it.
He didn't trust it. He didn't welcome it. But he couldn't kill it either. It was there, small and fragile and terrifying, burning in his chest alongside the student card. And for the first time in centuries, Yuuji let himself believe, just a little, that maybe this time would be different.
Maybe this time, the universe would be kind.
Maybe this time, the promise would be kept.
Maybe this time, he wouldn't have to say goodbye.
"I will see you in class too, Megumi." Yuuji finally got to respond.