Work Text:
The train to Kyoto took longer than Ryoumen expected.
It was noisy and crowded. There were bodies everywhere, a sea of people crowded into whatever space they could find like an endless swarm of insects.
There were too many of them. Crawling all over, spilling over the edge and bumping into one another carelessly.
Ryoumen could feel their eyes on him, occasionally stealing glances at the large assassin when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. Out of any spot on the train, Ryoumen’s designated corner was the one spot that the cancerous mass full of business men and tourists seemed to avoid.
Ryoumen honestly preferred it that way.
Uraume warned him that his untraditional appearance may turn a few heads as they got closer to Kyoto. Ryoumen didn’t pay it any mind at the time, since he was used to the sour expression that people usually wore around town and around Tokyo whenever he’d briefly travel to the city. Even before he committed to covering his body in odd tattoos and piercings, he was tall enough to stand out in a crowd and had a mane of red hair that was completely natural.
That put an automatic target on his back ever since he was young. Rumors spread like wildfire in his close-minded hometown, which only became more and more extreme as he got older.
Yaga asked him to dye his hair once while he was still in High School.
Ryoumen, of course, refused.
He convinced himself that acceptance was the last thing that he wanted. If he was born as some kind of curse like Wasuke constantly beat into him when he was younger, then Ryoumen figured he would commit to that path whole-heartedly.
Yorozu was right. It was easier to convince himself that the rejection and isolation from others didn’t bother him. Instead of becoming bitter towards himself because of it, the acknowledgement left the King of Curses with a cold air of indifference and a fragile sense of pride.
Ryoumen stopped shying away from getting his hands dirty. Finding an outlet for that repressed anger and hurt that built over the course of his hellish life was a release that Ryoumen never knew he needed, making him more bold and violent as the years ticked by. He spent two summers climbing the ranks of a small criminal group that formed in his hometown, eventually earning his place at the top and enough respect from the locals to inspire his fearsome title.
Ryoumen stopped caring what his Father thought about him years ago.
But some small part of him hoped that the old bastard shuddered every time he heard Ryoumen Sukuna’s fearsome name in hushed whispers at that dusty store off of the highway. He hoped the pathetic man lived the rest of his life in shame, knowing that he raised the monster that Ryoumen turned out to be.
Jin moved to Tokyo last Spring for his first year of College.
Ryoumen made sure that Wasuke specifically saw the heavy envelope of Yen that he slipped to his younger brother as a graduation gift, telling him to enjoy the breath of fresh air from the rickety old shack that Wasuke raised them in with a smile that was full of teeth and petty malice.
He never gave Wasuke a scrap or sliver of anything after he moved to Yorozu’s place.
His Father could rot in hell for all he cared.
Ryoumen’s hatred towards the old man continued to drive him forward. The fact that Wasuke still refused to acknowledge him at all after the countless stunts he pulled continued to piss him off, which eventually led him to his current situation with a summons from the Zen’in clan itself.
Uraume explained it to him in detail when the tape was dropped off at his doorstep.
Something about three clans that ran rampant in Japan’s bottomless shadow for generations.
They were influential and powerful but kept strictly out of the public eye because of an old truce that they made centuries ago.
The Binding Vow.
Ryoumen recognized the eight-spoked wheel insignia that was stamped onto the tape from the assassin that broke into their home almost fifteen years ago. It came from the same bastard that Ryoumen shot and killed to protect his younger brother, which apparently confirmed that he was a lost cause in Wasuke’s eyes.
A monster.
Ryoumen and Wasuke had their share of disagreements before that. Wasuke was always harder on him because of Ryoumen’s lack of overall motivation in life. He lacked the same drive to help others that Jin seemed to naturally pick up on. He was selfish, cynical…
And overall, he amounted to nothing.
But no matter what he tried, Ryoumen was never able to fix his relationship with his Father.
He was despised and hated since the moment he was born.
There was no point in convincing himself otherwise.
Ryoumen’s thoughts were interrupted when the signs overhead began to change, his red-tinted eyes catching the switch in the tracks as the train automatically began to slow down when the station came into view. His attention drifted to the large city on the skyline, gloved fingers curling around the metal pole in front of him to steady himself and to keep himself grounded.
Ryoumen’s dusty boots were obnoxiously loud when he finally stepped off of the train, the harness full of knives cutting into him from underneath his leather jacket when he twisted his head to glance back in the direction he came from.
It was his first time travelling so far away from home.
And Kyoto’s first station was loud. There were somehow more people shuffling about the small space than there were on the train, stuck waiting in designated areas by the tracks until someone standing off to the side finally told them it was safe to board.
Ryoumen watched the process with a raised and pierced brow, slowly making his way towards the wall of payphones on the other side of the wall when the train pulled out of the station a few minutes later. He had to duck into one of the booths and squint to make out the numbers on the dial, wrestling for the loose change in the pockets of his studded leather jeans. They were tight fitted and made with black leather, which matched the belt on Ryoumen’s hip that was purposefully skewed off to the center.
The bands tattooed around Ryoumen’s wrists flashed as he reached for the phone and put it up to his right ear, the same one that was full of metal studs from when Yorozu pierced it in her bathroom several years ago.
She was also the one who pierced his eyebrow and his lower lip, though Ryoumen got the rest of his piercings professionally done in Tokyo when she almost made him lose his tongue after trying to pierce it with a sharpened metal chopstick.
The stupid and useless thing swelled like a balloon, preventing Ryoumen from eating or being able to say anything properly for a solid month.
Ryoumen rolled the small metal ball between his teeth in thought, waiting for Uraume to pick up on their end as he tapped his painted black nails on the counter in front of him.
A Mother and a sizeable armful of brats passed him with a disapproving scowl on her way to the phone next to him, gently getting the youngest of her brood to settle down as one of the stray ones looked up at Ryoumen curiously.
The kid glanced at the extra eyes tattooed underneath his regular ones and the lines on the back of his wide neck, which followed his spine all the way down past his red hood and shaggy mullet.
Ryoumen pretended not to notice.
But he subconsciously checked to make sure the concealed knives in the zippers of his sleeves were completely hidden, facing the wall of the booth next to him with a stiff frown and a displeased sigh.
“Sukuna? You’re calling early. Is something wrong?” Uraume’s voice came through the speaker and immediately made Ryoumen somewhat relax, his hands curling tighter around the spiral cord as he cleared his throat and shook his head.
“I’m just checking in. Are you sure you can handle things while I’m gone?” Ryoumen did his best to sound calm and unbothered, quickly pulling a cigarette out of his jacket to hopefully shake off some of his nerves.
Uraume seemed to sense the root of his anxiety, their icy tone melting into something patient and understanding as they hummed softly in acknowledgement.
“Of course. I’ll have everything in line for when you get back from Kyoto. I promise, Sukuna. Leave it to me.”
“Good. I know you’ll do fine. But if there’s any issue besides the usual, then give it to Yorozu or Kashimo. Keep yourself out of it. I don’t want you involved in anything dangerous, especially with the Zen’in clan sniffing around.” Ryoumen glanced over his shoulder, hesitantly taking one of the cheap cigars out of his back pocket to chew on for a minute. “I won’t pry into anything personal, kid. But how’d you know them anyway? Anything messy I should be aware of?”
Uraume was quiet on the other end of the line. Their silence told Ryoumen all that he needed to know, which made it easy to piece together what a Zen’in assassin was doing in that dusty hometown of his over a decade ago.
Uraume moved in during that same year. Yaga brought them into town, saying something about their folks going missing. The old principal didn’t seem to question it all, but Ryoumen did the very first time that he saw the white haired boy.
If he killed his parents and ran, then it would make sense for the Zen’in clan to be on his trail for a while.
Ryoumen only accidentally helped him cover his tracks.
But even then, he didn’t regret it.
Uraume was several years younger than him. He was a freshman when Ryoumen was repeating his senior year for a third time, a kid that Ryoumen naturally took under his wing because of the like-minded sheep that they lived with. They were scorned just like he was, but for other petty reasons.
Because Uraume was a stranger and wasn’t born and raised there. But it also had to do with how he presented himself. For some reason people cared about that too, refusing to respect Uraume even when they cut their hair shorter and used Ryoumen’s old uniform instead of a skirt.
Uraume seemed to follow him around naturally, like a baby bird that he accidentally shook out of its nest. He went to all of the concerts that Ryoumen managed to break into with Yorozu, and he was the one that held down the bastards that Ryoumen beat down until his knuckles were permanently stomped flat.
The kid followed him into a life of misery and loneliness like it didn’t bother them at all.
And Ryoumen simply appreciated the company. Even if he didn’t say it out loud, he was grateful that someone was at least there to stand next to him through it all.
“… just do what they say, and you should be fine.” Urauma answered softly, seeming to set something down as their voice came a little further from the mouthpiece. “It’s better that you go and see what they want. But you probably should’ve taken one of us with you.”
“Absolutely not.” Ryoumen shook his head, his voice rumbling with a low growl. “Listen, Uraume. If I’m not back tomorrow-”
The phone suddenly cut off into a long winded dial tone, making Ryoumen huff in annoyance as he tried to find spare change in his pocket to extend the time. He came up empty handed, which made his forehead thud loudly against the wall in frustration.
—
Ryoumen found the temporary residence that the tape asked him to meet his unnamed Zen’in client at after almost two hours of searching Kyoto’s wealthier districts, which was a whole hour later than the time that they agreed on.
Already fed up with the whole ordeal, Ryoumen approached the fenced off property with a deep scowl and an irritated glare. He eyed the heavy wooden gate with a raised brow, arms crossed and posture stiff as he tried to appear as unimpressed as possible.
Even if it was undoubtedly the most luxurious and ornately carved gate that he had ever seen in his entire life.
Ryoumen silently appreciated the fearsome monsters depicted on the stone walls and the bolted doors, distantly wondering how old they were and how they might have looked freshly polished in their prime.
Ryoumen briefly wondered what it was like to have an ancestral stake that someone might be proud of.
He wondered what it was like to be wanted.
Ryoumen’s sharp eyes flicked to his right side when a shadow suddenly moved, his entire demeanor shifting as he reached for the curved blade that was strapped to his back. The weight of his weapon was familiar and balanced, like he didn’t have to think about drawing it at all.
The black metal flashed dangerously, the character for “Dismantle” carved with red strokes near the hilt.
Metal crashed against metal, the tip of a much sharper weapon pressing into the harsh lines tattooed underneath Ryoumen’s jaw.
Green eyes stared at Ryoumen blankly from underneath a shaggy mop of sleek black hair, sharp and cutthroat like a dagger. Instead of openly searching him like any other assassin would for an opening, those eyes were pressed to a certain point. Cutting him open in one concentrated area, like they already knew what Ryoumen’s weaknesses were and what exactly he was about to do.
There was a certain confidence in the way the other man was poised. He was low to the ground, his center of gravity held above his knees to make him stand strong. His shoulders were wider than Ryoumen’s, frame muscular and lean at the same time in a way that didn’t come across as natural.
That was Ryoumen’s first indication that something was off.
The strange man had also managed to block his weapon with one hand, grabbing onto Ryoumen’s jagged and serrated blade with an iron fist despite the blood that pooled underneath the dark sleeve of his Yukata. He seemed unbothered when the metal bit into flesh like a pair of fangs, expression unbothered and placid like he wouldn’t mind losing that damn hand at all.
The man was around Ryoumen’s age. Maybe a couple of years older, judging by the harsh lines underneath those cat-like eyes. He was a few inches shorter and thinner around the waist, but he made up for it in raw strength and speed.
The lower half of his face was masked with a black sleeve.
Ryoumen could barely make out the shape of his mouth. His ever-present frown and something to the right corner that looked like a recent scar…
Ryoumen blinked once, keeping the hand that was reaching for one of his bigger knives out in the open and visible. He stayed still, deciding against escalating things further despite the clan insignia stamped on the back of the man’s Yukata like a brand. He normally would have jumped at the promise of a decent fight, especially since he was more than a little curious about the other assassin in front of him.
But he managed to pull in his own reins.
Keep himself calm and somewhat collected.
“I’m here to meet someone.” Ryoumen said simply, trying to withdraw his sword to put it back inside of its sheathe. He expected the other man to let it go.
But he didn’t.
The Zen’in assassin held onto the blade like a machine, grip only squeezing tighter when Ryoumen attempted to pull it free until he was in danger of actually losing some of his fingers.
Ryoumen stared at the other assassin with a furrowed brow. The way he was staring ahead at nothing made Ryoumen’s skin crawl, that unresponsive and glassy expression almost reminding him of a corpse.
It was like the strange man wasn’t even listening.
Like he wasn’t there at all.
—
“I apologize for the mutt’s overzealous reaction. He’s only ordered to kill designated targets now, but even that has been difficult to drill into his thick skull. As soon as they ship him off to the pits again, the better if you ask me. Assigning him to the Kikuru, even temporarily, was a massive oversight on Lord Naobito’s behalf.” The older Zen’in commander said while holding the elegant sheath of his katana, his obnoxiously styled hair and curled eyebrows immediately reminding Ryoumen of a balding peacock with a tacky wig. “But that’s besides the point. You’re the King of Curses…. Ryoumen Sukuna, is that right? Well, you’re certainly younger than we were expecting. Most of the fresh meat that we hire are well past their prime. With a name like that, I thought I was waiting for someone from the Heian era.”
Ryoumen didn’t respond.
Instead, he stood in the courtyard with his arms crossed.
He was displeased. Pissed off.
His hackles were raised, blood rushing in his ears as the masked assassin from before was “disciplined” behind the screen door just a few feet in front of them.
Ryoumen could hear the wood cracking against flesh. He knew the wet sound of blood splattering on the floor that occasionally followed all too well, which left him even more disgusted and stone-faced overall.
“But as you can see… we can’t afford to be picky. The bastard proves that Ogi’s idea won’t make it past a single trial, which makes that venture an utter failure and a dead end. Now we’re left with that… disappointment. At least he can clean decently well, which is better than paying someone to do it.” The man chuckled like he said something that was actually funny, but Ryoumen wasn’t amused by any of his idiotic remarks at all.
His patience was running thin.
“Anyway. In order to see Kotopi, I’ll need you to keep your weapons out here. As the commander of the Kikuru unit, I’m tasked with keeping the young Lord away from harm. I’m sure that even a brute such as yourself can understand something as simple as that.”
Ryoumen rolled his eyes, hesitantly unzipping his jacket and undoing the latches of his harness underneath. It would be easier to remove the entire thing than individually surrender his weapons and remove the dozens of knives hidden in the sleeves of his jacket.
The scandalized look on the proud peacock’s face was well worth it anyway.
Ryoumen removed all the straps of his heavy harnesses and gently set them on the porch, torn white crop top doing nothing to cover the tattoos along the dip of his lower back and the pierced wall of muscle in his abdomen. Ryoumen shamelessly rolled his neck, thick black bands and circle-like patterns tattooed on his shoulders flexing as he smoothed his hair back and shot the older man a glare.
“If you move my weapons at all, then rest assured that I will know. And I will kill you.”
—
The “young” Zen’in lord was a man a year or two younger than Ryoumen. No more than twenty-four or twenty-five with a pure silk pink and blue kimono and armed members of the “kikuru” unit standing guard outside of his door.
He wanted to kill someone from a rival clan. Someone his age, who double crossed him on a random drug deal.
The “Gojo” clan head, who Kotopi believed recently sired an heir.
A boy who was making ripples in the three clan’s closed-minded world by being born an outsider.
Gojo apparently broke a rule. He fell in love outside of his clan’s arranged titles and pissed off someone important, someone that Kotopi also seemed to take orders from too.
“Why not send one of your masked soldiers to finish this? Why go out of your way to hire a nobody like me?” Ryoumen demanded flatly, chewing on another skewer of glazed beef that kept getting replaced in the middle of the table. Someone was constantly changing the platter out, which meant Ryoumen felt obligated to keep eating it.
Not that he was about to complain.
The hot food made him briefly forget why he was so upset in the first place.
“I circulate goods. Offer protection to the folks who pay me on time, and I put down the ones that piss me off. But I don’t entertain rich pigs with an itch to scratch. If that’s what this is, then forget it. I’m not going on a wild goose chase so that you can have a good laugh.” Ryoumen let some of his temper escape the cracks of his composure, just enough to simmer on the surface as he snarled his insults and tried to keep his accent from making itself too obvious.
At some point, the platter was replaced again.
But it wasn’t the girl that Kotopi kept smirking at like a creep every time she meekly scurried past with her head bowed.
Instead it was the man from the gate.
He was wearing the same bunched up gray Yukata with the sleeves tied into his obi belt, his injured hand wrapped in bloody bandages and scraps of torn cloth that looked like they were fastened with his teeth.
Ryoumen sat up a little straighter when he saw him.
The red haired assassin stopped lounging around and tucked his long legs underneath himself like Wasuke would always scold him to do so when he was still a brat, trying to subtly make out the Zen’in assassin’s uncovered face with a curious glance.
The other man’s head was bowed, features obscured by those long and uncut bangs and the long strands of dark hair sticking to the back of his neck. The angle made it impossible to see much of anything, which the other man almost seemed to do on purpose.
Like he was trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible.
“The truce between the big Clans prevents them from using resources against one another. While I can place a hit on the target, I can’t delegate it to a member of the Zen’in clan. That would be… a breach of the vow. Lord Naobito simply wouldn’t allow it.” Kotopi poured himself another glass of sake with a loud sigh, sitting cross legged on a pleated cushion in a slouched and relaxed posture. He was fanning himself with his sharply cut chin propped up on a pale fist, pretty and fair features reminding Ryoumen of the women in those brightly colored renaissance paintings that he used to laugh at in art class. “He’s got a son on the way now as well. A proper heir. That means smaller Lords such as myself don’t have much longer to lavish in his… allotted resources. The point I’m trying to make, Sukuna… is that money isn’t an issue here. If the price is too small for you to take seriously, then I’ll double it. Surely that would make my intentions seem more faithful?”
That made Ryoumen pause.
It wasn’t intentional. But the extra money attached to the hit would help things move easier in town with their increasingly limited operations.
It might also help things back at the house.
Wasuke wasn’t doing well.
Ryoumen didn’t live with the stubborn old fool anymore. But he could tell.
—
Ryoumen waited at Kotopi’s main gate with the Gojo bastard’s detached and bloody finger in his pocket a few days later, feeling a looming sense of exhaustion in his bones and… hollow somewhere deep inside of his chest.
Even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud, he wanted to get back to Uraume and the others as soon as possible.
It was why he finished the job so quickly. He only stopped to ditch his bloody clothes and dump the rest of the corpse in a dumpster in the back of some shitty bar, keeping his head down and his kill as discreet as possible.
If he were a decent person, then maybe he would have felt some semblance of regret or guilt for what he had done.
But all Ryoumen felt when he plunged his knife into the Gojo bastard’s chest was a sickening amount of jealousy.
Then, when the blood dried, he just felt nothing.
Wasuke really was right about him.
He was a curse. He was born that way.
There was only one path destined for something as vile as him.
Ryoumen passed that same green-eyed man on his way into the estate, who he suddenly understood just a little more. He was sitting on the porch, the air around him dark and heavy and miserable. His hair was a dark and greasy mess, sharp gaze vacant and unresponsive as he only moved to swat off the flies that kept swarming too close to him.
Those empty eyes flickered up to Ryoumen one last time.
But Ryoumen was already ducking inside of Kotopi’s room, not wanting to see his own bleak expression reflecting back at him.
—
“What are you doing here, brat? I thought I told you not to bother coming back!” Wasuke pushed at Ryoumen’s chest with a snarl, wrenching himself out of the way and almost thrashing off of the couch entirely.
“... just open up for your damn pill.” Ryoumen sighed tiredly, holding Wasuke down and wrenching his thin mouth open. His hands were shaking as he did so, eyes darting back and forth as he tried to identify which one of the white pharmacy bottles Wasuke was supposed to take.
Wasuke couldn’t climb up the stairs anymore. Ryoumen used that to his advantage to keep the old man in the basement, since he was less likely to break his hip falling up the stairs than down them.
He wasn’t a good caretaker.
He knew that.
But Jin was still studying in Tokyo, and Wasuke’s condition was a lot worse than he thought it was at first glance…
“That was years ago. I’ve been here for almost two weeks, old man. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” Ryoumen hissed between clenched teeth, wrapping Wasuke’s thin and fragile frame in layers of knitted blankets. It was the only way to keep him still long enough for Ryoumen to grab one of the white capsules and prepare it, which he shoved into Wasuke’s mouth with a sneer.
He didn’t let up until he was sure the older man swallowed it.
Then he took a step back, giving Wasuke some space so that he could breathe.
“Where’s… where’s Jin?” Wasuke rasped, hands clutching at the front of his chest as genuine confusion clouded those bloodshot brown eyes.
Ryoumen set his jaw, his large nose wrinkling in a deep growl.
“Don’t get your hopes up. He’s not coming back, you old bastard. You finally scared him off.” Ryoumen rubbed the back of his neck with a tired frown, wearing a loose fitting black shirt that revealed red and purple bruises all along his tattooed forearms. The ones on his stomach were worse. The job he took on last night was a rough one, since his target was protected by a large entourage full of armed men that Kotopi failed to warn him about beforehand.
Ryoumen still got it done, of course. But word was starting to spread of a dangerous assassin that all three of the clans were eager to keep on their side, the King of Curse’s brutal reputation only making the other lords more desperate to protect themselves.
They were cowards. But they paid well, which forced Ryoumen to keep going back to them despite his hatred towards every single one of them.
Wasuke seemed to notice that something was different about him. His treatment towards Ryoumen became more and more extreme, his distaste whenever he saw the bullet wounds lodged into Ryoumen’s skin and the harness full of weapons hidden in the master bedroom upstairs immediately obvious.
“... but I’m here.” Ryoumen muttered with a frown, sitting on the floor in front of Wasuke’s couch with a grimace. His tired eyes were pointed up to the ceiling, his breathing painful and labored and bruised. The sour taste of hope blossomed in the back of his throat, expecting praise that he knew would never come. He reached out for one of Wasuke’s hands and immediately drew it back, choking on the words that he refused to say out loud like vomit.
He stayed there for a couple minutes longer.
Counting the slats of wood over their heads that made up the kitchen floor.
Like the notches of ribs inside of a skeleton.
It felt just as cold and empty in that room as it felt inside of his own chest.
Ryoumen’s eyes started to burn.
He took a shaky breath through his nose, the silence that stretched further and further sealing something deep inside of the gruesome shrine made of splintered bone and mangled corpses in Ryoumen’s soul.
He told himself that he didn’t mind it.
That he really didn’t belong anywhere else.
The sooner he accepted his crown of thorns, the better off he would be.