You made me question whether being alive is worth the emotional cost.
All my works are screen-reader friendly because I use one too. :)
I Write
This is mainly an adult-leaning space (ideally 25+), though I post general-audience work too.
A lot of my stories deal with obsession, grief, power imbalance, morally difficult choices, and loving the wrong thing for too long. I tag everything carefully, so please read the warnings and curate your own experience.
Explicit material shows up sometimes, but usually when it fits the character, emotional damage, slow burn, or the spiral.
I prefer writing canon-consistent characters getting shoved into situations they were barely built to survive.
There’s dark canon divergence, alternate universes, psychological fallout, heavy angst, and a lot of crack premises treated with a concerning amount of commitment.
i don't even have a question i'm just sitting here staring at the wall because that kind of financial stress changes how you approach every relationship
also, i feel insane but does megumi even know ANYTHING about her? he knows her train schedule and work stuff but he doesn't seem to know about anything important
uh, i haven't even met yuji yet i already know he's gonna piss me off (no hate)
That's so true.
Financial stress can really change both your perception of relationships and what you need from them. It can also create a lot of insecurities around money, dependence, and whether you're bringing more problems than value into someone's life.
And as for Megumi, he knows a lot about her routines, but whether he knows her or not is up to you to decide honestly.
Also, 😭 I've never written an evil Yuji before (at least not to his partner), so we'll have to see how that goes.
i need you to know that the whole chapter of konbini i was giggling over the konbini flirting and then megumi suddenly changed???
what an asshole
reader is so sweet i'd have gone back and given him a piece of my mind
Hiii, anon.
I agree so hard, bro. That was awful and absolutely not Gojo-raised behavior. TBH, don't hate him; hate me for writing him like that, but it'll all make sense soon.
After years of opening the tags and watching Megumi lose both his personality and several inches of height, I finally decided to become the change I wanted to see in the world.
The result is FushiIta's Apothecary.
A place dedicated to Megumi Fushiguro and his controversially young clan wife, people's princess Itadori Yuji; questionable levels of yandere; married-at-twenty allegations; and the radical belief that Megumi is capable of experiencing desire without immediately transforming into somebody's blushing twig with a three-inch waist.
Fan art, reader inserts, OCs, self-shippers, and canon shippers are all welcome.
If you've ever looked at Yuji and thought, "That boy deserves somebody who would let him be a spoiled trophy wifu who bakes cookies and is friends with every neighborhood grandma," or looked at Megumi and thought, "That one deserves to be a father of eleven children who don't leave him alone even for a second to breathe (just like his sensei-daddy Gojo)," you're among friends.
Summary: Fushiguro keeps coming back to your closing shifts with bloodied knuckles and bad excuses, but Itadori is the one who notices what Megumi never asks you.
Warnings: Bipolar Megumi, Teenagers kissing, "I'm 14 and this is deep" behavior.
Context: Reader works two jobs—one at the PC+console repair shop during the day and the konbini near Jujutsu Tech in the evenings—and is younger than both guys.
Dividers are mine; images are from anime and Pinterest.
Ch 1 - Fushiguro Megumi
WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF STRENGTH?
The essay prompt sat beside the register, trapped under the corner of a pharmacy receipt you kept turning face down.
You had written three answers and scratched through all of them until the paper started to thin under the ink. The coffee machine hissed behind you, the hot case buzzed under the glass, and at the back, the rice balls were down to six tuna mayo, three kombu, and one salmon with the label peeling at one corner.
The bell over the convenience store door rang at 10:43 PM, and Fushiguro came in with blood drying over his knuckles.
He went straight to the first-aid shelf. Picked up gauze, disinfectant, and tape. Then added bottled tea and one egg sandwich from the markdown tray.
When he set everything on the counter, his eyes dropped to the loose page by your hand.
“What’s that?”
“Something my old teacher still sends me.”
He looked at the crossed-out answers. “You still doing homework?”
You flipped the pharmacy receipt under the till slip before he could read the name printed at the top. “I don’t have time during the day.”
His hand stayed on the counter when you took the tape from him. He did that sometimes, offered up blood and silence as if both were normal things to leave with a girl working the closing shift. You wet cotton with disinfectant and pressed it into the split skin. His fingers twitched.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
You looked up. “What?”
“Strength.”
He said it with the same voice he used when asking where you kept the soy sauce packets.
“You.”
Fushiguro stopped fidgeting.
The fluorescent light caught the nick on his chin, the dried blood near his nail, and the dark under his eyes.
“Me?”
You wound gauze around his hand. “Yeah.”
When you reached for the tape, he turned his wrist.
Most people who came in this late filled the silence because they were afraid of it.
Fushiguro never did.
He stood there with barely any small talk and the store equipment humming.
You cut the tape with scissors and smoothed it down.
“That’s your answer?” he asked.
“It is, but you can complain if you want.”
He picked up the tea. “I’ll think about it.”
That was more than he usually gave you.
He paid exactly, no coins left over. At the door he stopped and glanced back once at the paper before he left with the sandwich tucked in his coat pocket.
You finished the shift, counted the till, scrubbed the milk wand, wiped down the hot case, and caught the last train with coffee smell stuck in your sleeves and solder smell still under your nails from the repair shop.
---
The next night, Fushiguro came back for bandages he did not need.
After that, he kept finding reasons—sports drink, instant ramen, replacement batteries, and once even a plastic umbrella on a night without rain.
You stopped asking about the injuries that arrived one day and faded by the next night because he lied without effort, and you were already tired of boys.
He came after ten, usually, when the office workers had gone home and the middle schoolers had stopped buying melon bread, energy jelly, and gossiping outside. He talked more than he seemed to realize during that hour.
You learned things about him—like he hated pickled plums but ate them when nothing else was left, did not trust vending machine coffee, and thought people confused ego with confidence.
He also told you, at length, about breaking a rice cooker after leaving it plugged in, then refusing to let the white-haired man he lived with replace it with some imported one that talked back.
That one made you laugh.
Fushiguro looked at you for a second too long and said, “Don’t laugh.”
“You’re funny sometimes.”
“I’m really not.”
“You are to me.”
His mouth tightened like he was trying not to react as he took the canned coffee you had made for yourself by accident and drank it.
By the end of the week, you knew the barely there sound of his footsteps outside before the bell rang, and you knew better than to name what that did to you.
---
Near midnight, after a slow Thursday and an argument with the supplier over late milk deliveries, you were on a step stool reaching for a carton of filter papers from the top shelf when Fushiguro came in.
He bought nothing at first, just stood by the counter while you climbed down with the box braced against your chest.
“You’re here late again,” he observed.
“I work here.”
“You were here yesterday too.”
“My shift is late.”
He took the box before it slipped and set it on the counter.
You wiped your palms on your apron. “You’ve been talking more to me lately than I’ve seen you talk to others.”
His eyes widened by half a degree. “Have I?”
“You have.”
“That’s bad.”
“It was kind of cute.”
He made a face. “I’m not cute.”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“I didn’t call you here.” You shot back.
He didn’t move for a long second and looked at the counter. “You still haven’t finished it?”
“What?”
“That essay.”
You glanced at the loose page hidden under the receipt tray. “Strength?”
He nodded.
You covered the paper. “You tell me.”
His gaze went to your hands—the coffee stain on your thumb, the burn near your wrist from last week’s steam accident, and the shallow cut on your index finger from a day job he didn't know about.
Then he looked at your face. “It’s doing it anyway.”
You let him continue.
His thumb brushed over the taped part of his hand. “You keep doing it tired without gratitude. Keep showing up when it would be easier to let someone else take the hit.”
“That’s your answer?”
His eyes flicked to the essay sheet, then away. “It’s what I’ve seen.”
Suddenly the air in the store felt thin—like being pressed in from every direction. Between the cigarette display and the hot case, two teenagers were standing under fluorescent lights with a sentence neither of them knew how to show.
You broke the silence. “From what I know, you’ve done all that.”
He looked away first. “You give me too much credit.”
“You’re very sweet for someone who acts like this.”
His head turned back. “Sweet?”
“And talkative.”
“Most people think I’m cold.”
“Most people aren’t here at midnight.”
He stared at you as if he could not tell whether you were serious.
You stepped closer before you could talk yourself out of it and pressed your palm to his cheek, slow enough to pretend it was a joke if he moved away.
He didn’t move away.
“There,” you said. “Cute too.”
He caught your wrist—his fingers sat over your pulse for one second too long before he let go. “Don’t do that.”
“You’re blushing.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line. “You make a habit of pushing people?”
“I haven’t done this with anyone else before.”
He stared as you turned away.
The shutter clock clicked over to 12:01. You went to flip the sign, and he followed you to the door.
Outside, the street behind the store sat empty except for the vending machines and one taxi turning the corner too fast. You bent to pull the shutter down. It stuck halfway. Fushiguro caught it one-handed and forced it the rest of the way with a metal grind.
When you locked it, the two of you were standing too close in the narrow strip between the glass and the street.
“You should go home.” He whispered.
“You first.”
“You’ll miss the last train.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen you run for it.”
That made your face warm.
“Look at me.”
He was so close that you had to tilt your head back to look at him, already taller than most men and still somehow seeming like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
You looked down at his taped hand and then back up at his face. “Do you want to kiss me?”
His eyes dropped to your mouth, then bounced back to your eyes. “Y—” He cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Yeah.”
You rose on your toes first because he was taking too long, and he bent too late, so your mouths bumped once before either of you figured out the angle.
His lips were a little dry from the cold air but warm, movements a little nervous.
Fushiguro made a small awkward sound against your lips.
You laughed quietly.
“You’re really bad at that,” you whispered.
He looked away, but his fingers caught in the side of your jacket. “Then let me do it properly.”
This time, he leaned in first.
He still missed the angle a little. Your teeth clicked softly, and he pulled back just enough to mutter something under his breath before trying again.
His lips pressed to the corner of your mouth and then found yours fully.
You forgot what to do with your hands.
Then your fingers slid to the back of his neck, and he exhaled against your lips, shaky and warm. His mouth opened carefully. When your tongue touched his, he froze, then made a low sound and chased it like he’d decided embarrassment could be tolerated.
It was messy. Both of you learning where to put the hunger.
Your mind stopped—
Just the wet press of his mouth, the quick scrape of his breath, your fingers tightening at his neck, and the dizzy little drop in your stomach every time he came back for more.
When he pulled away, he looked wrecked by it—cheeks flushed, lips damp, eyes too bright.
And then, annoyingly, a little smug, having done it right.
You leaned in again, but he caught the strap of your bag before you could.
“You’ll miss your train.”
You froze, then looked at your wristwatch.
“Oh no, no, no, no.”
Fushiguro reached down, fixed the sliding-down bag strap, and let his knuckles brush your skin before he stepped back.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the platform.”
---
The next afternoon, you were carrying a tray of replacement joystick modules from the station to the repair shop, your day job, when you saw him at the end of the Jujutsu Tech road.
He was with three first-years and one second-year, all in training uniforms half-zipped. A pink-haired boy was talking with his hands. Kugisaki was threatening to hit him with her shopping bag. Another girl, whom you knew as Zenin, walked a few steps ahead of the group with her bottle of water tucked under one arm.
Fushiguro saw you.
You lifted your chin and smiled. “Looking good, Fushiguro.”
His ears went red before his face did.
The others turned as one.
You kept walking because that was the point of doing it while moving. Hit and run. Save yourself from standing there long enough to look foolish.
Behind you, the pink-haired boy laughed. Kugisaki asked, “Who was that?”
Fushiguro had a tea can half-raised to his mouth.
“Some annoying girl from the store.”
The crossing light changed.
You walked.
The tray dug into your palms all the way back to the repair shop. One of the joystick modules slid loose in its slot every few steps. You kept your fingers tight around the handles until the back room door shut behind you and the smell of solder, dust, and overheated plastic swallowed you whole.
Your phone buzzed as soon as you put the tray down.
PHARMACY BALANCE REMINDER
Another one of your grandmother's treatment bills.
You dismissed it with your thumb, then stared at the cracked corner of your screen until the letters blurred.
Fushiguro had never asked why you worked two jobs, why your old school charm was still hanging from your phone when you hadn’t been in uniform for months, or why you folded receipts so fast when he came too close to the register.
You knew he had money around him. Parents' or benefactors' money that lets a boy move through life with expensive medicine and ugly bills treated as background noise.
You had never wanted any of it from him. Had never even hinted.
All you had done was tape his hand every time he’d let you, save him sandwiches, answer his stupid late-night questions, and let yourself believe for those nights that being the person he came back to meant something.
Some annoying girl from the store.
You pushed the tray too hard—a module jumped out and skittered under the workbench, and that was what finally made the tears come stupidly and silently, with both hands braced on the table because you still had a shift after this and crying properly would take too much time.
Summary: Fushiguro keeps coming back to your closing shifts with bloodied knuckles and bad excuses, but Itadori is the one who notices what Megumi never asks you.
Warnings: Bipolar Megumi, Teenagers kissing, "I'm 14 and this is deep" behavior.
Context: Reader works two jobs—one at the PC+console repair shop during the day and the konbini near Jujutsu Tech in the evenings—and is younger than both guys.
Dividers are mine; images are from anime and Pinterest.
Ch 1 - Fushiguro Megumi
WHAT IS THE TRUE MEANING OF STRENGTH?
The essay prompt sat beside the register, trapped under the corner of a pharmacy receipt you kept turning face down. You had written three answers and scratched through all of them until the paper started to thin under the ink.
The bell over the convenience store door rang at 10:43 PM, and Fushiguro came in with blood drying over his knuckles. He went straight to the first-aid shelf. Picked up gauze, disinfectant, and tape. Then added bottled tea and one egg sandwich from the markdown tray. When he set everything on the counter, his eyes dropped to the loose page by your hand. “What’s that?”
“Something my old teacher still sends me.”
He looked at the crossed-out answers. “You still doing homework?”
You flipped the pharmacy receipt under the till slip before he could read the name printed at the top. “I don’t have time during the day.”
His hand stayed on the counter when you took the tape from him. He did that sometimes, offered up blood and silence as if both were normal things to leave with a girl working the closing shift. You wet cotton with disinfectant and pressed it into the split skin. His fingers twitched. “What do you think it is?” he asked.
You looked up. “What?”
“Strength.”
He said it with the same voice he used when asking where you kept the soy sauce packets.
“You.”
Fushiguro stopped fidgeting.
The fluorescent light caught the nick on his chin, the dried blood near his nail, and the dark under his eyes.
“Me?”
You wound gauze around his hand. “Yeah.”
When you reached for the tape, he turned his wrist.
Most people who came in this late filled the silence because they were afraid of it.
Fushiguro never did.
He stood there with barely any small talk and the store equipment humming.
You cut the tape with scissors and smoothed it down.
“That’s your answer?” he asked.
“It is, but you can complain if you want.”
He picked up the tea. “I’ll think about it.”
That was more than he usually gave you.
He paid exactly, no coins left over. At the door he stopped and glanced back once at the paper before he left with the sandwich tucked in his coat pocket.
You finished the shift, counted the till, scrubbed the milk wand, wiped down the hot case, and caught the last train with coffee smell stuck in your sleeves and solder smell still under your nails from the repair shop.
---
The next night, Fushiguro came back for bandages he did not need.
After that, he kept finding reasons—sports drink, instant ramen, replacement batteries, and once even a plastic umbrella on a night without rain.
You stopped asking about the injuries that arrived one day and faded by the next night because he lied without effort, and you were already tired of boys.
He came after ten, usually, when the office workers had gone home and the middle schoolers had stopped buying melon bread, energy jelly, and gossiping outside. He talked more than he seemed to realize during that hour.
You learned things about him—like he hated pickled plums but ate them when nothing else was left, did not trust vending machine coffee, and thought people confused ego with confidence.
He also told you, at length, about breaking a rice cooker after leaving it plugged in, then refusing to let the white-haired man he lived with replace it with some imported one that talked back.
That one made you laugh.
Fushiguro looked at you for a second too long and said, “Don’t laugh.”
“You’re funny sometimes.”
“I’m really not.”
“You are to me.”
His mouth tightened like he was trying not to react as he took the canned coffee you had made for yourself by accident and drank it.
By the end of the week, you knew the barely there sound of his footsteps outside before the bell rang, and you knew better than to name what that did to you.
---
Near midnight, after a slow Thursday and an argument with the supplier over late milk deliveries, you were on a step stool reaching for a carton of filter papers from the top shelf when Fushiguro came in.
He bought nothing at first, just stood by the counter while you climbed down with the box braced against your chest.
“You’re here late again,” he observed.
“I work here.”
“You were here yesterday too.”
“My shift is late.”
He took the box before it slipped and set it on the counter.
You wiped your palms on your apron. “You’ve been talking more to me lately than I’ve seen you talk to others.”
His eyes widened by half a degree. “Have I?”
“You have.”
“That’s bad.”
“It was kind of cute.”
He made a face. “I’m not cute.”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“I didn’t call you here.” You shot back.
He didn’t move for a long second and looked at the counter. “You still haven’t finished it?”
“What?”
“That essay.”
You glanced at the loose page hidden under the receipt tray. “Strength?”
He nodded.
You covered the paper. “You tell me.”
His gaze went to your hands—the coffee stain on your thumb, the burn near your wrist from last week’s steam accident, and the shallow cut on your index finger from a day job he didn't know about.
Then he looked at your face. “It’s doing it anyway.”
You let him continue.
His thumb brushed over the taped part of his hand. “You keep doing it tired without gratitude. Keep showing up when it would be easier to let someone else take the hit.”
“That’s your answer?”
His eyes flicked to the essay sheet, then away. “It’s what I’ve seen.”
Suddenly the air in the store felt thin—like being pressed in from every direction. Between the cigarette display and the hot case, two teenagers were standing under fluorescent lights with a sentence neither of them knew how to show.
You broke the silence. “From what I know, you’ve done all that.”
He looked away first. “You give me too much credit.”
“You’re very sweet for someone who acts like this.”
His head turned back. “Sweet?”
“And talkative.”
“Most people think I’m cold.”
“Most people aren’t here at midnight.”
He stared at you as if he could not tell whether you were serious.
You stepped closer before you could talk yourself out of it and pressed your palm to his cheek, slow enough to pretend it was a joke if he moved away.
He didn’t move away.
“There,” you said. “Cute too.”
He caught your wrist—his fingers sat over your pulse for one second too long before he let go. “Don’t do that.”
“You’re blushing.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line. “You make a habit of pushing people?”
“I haven’t done this with anyone else before.”
He stared as you turned away.
The shutter clock clicked over to 12:01. You went to flip the sign, and he followed you to the door.
Outside, the street behind the store sat empty except for the vending machines and one taxi turning the corner too fast. You bent to pull the shutter down. It stuck halfway. Fushiguro caught it one-handed and forced it the rest of the way with a metal grind.
When you locked it, the two of you were standing too close in the narrow strip between the glass and the street.
“You should go home.” He whispered.
“You first.”
“You’ll miss the last train.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen you run for it.”
That made your face warm.
“Look at me.”
He was so close that you had to tilt your head back to look at him, already taller than most men and still somehow seeming like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
You looked down at his taped hand and then back up at his face. “Do you want to kiss me?”
His eyes dropped to your mouth, then bounced back to your eyes. “Y—” He cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Yeah.”
You rose on your toes first because he was taking too long, and he bent too late, so your mouths bumped once before either of you figured out the angle.
His lips were a little dry from the cold air but warm, movements a little nervous.
Fushiguro made a small awkward sound against your lips.
You laughed quietly.
“You’re really bad at that,” you whispered.
He looked away, but his fingers caught in the side of your jacket. “Then let me do it properly.”
This time, he leaned in first.
He still missed the angle a little. Your teeth clicked softly, and he pulled back just enough to mutter something under his breath before trying again.
His lips pressed to the corner of your mouth and then found yours fully.
You forgot what to do with your hands.
Then your fingers slid to the back of his neck, and he exhaled against your lips, shaky and warm. His mouth opened carefully. When your tongue touched his, he froze, then made a low sound and chased it like he’d decided embarrassment could be tolerated.
It was messy. Both of you learning where to put the hunger.
Your mind stopped—
Just the wet press of his mouth, the quick scrape of his breath, your fingers tightening at his neck, and the dizzy little drop in your stomach every time he came back for more.
When he pulled away, he looked wrecked by it—cheeks flushed, lips damp, eyes too bright.
And then, annoyingly, a little smug, having done it right.
You leaned in again, but he caught the strap of your bag before you could.
“You’ll miss your train.”
You froze, then looked at your wristwatch.
“Oh no, no, no, no.”
Fushiguro reached down, fixed the sliding-down bag strap, and let his knuckles brush your skin before he stepped back.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the platform.”
---
The next afternoon, you were carrying a tray of replacement joystick modules from the station to the repair shop, your day job, when you saw him at the end of the Jujutsu Tech road.
He was with three first-years and one second-year, all in training uniforms half-zipped. A pink-haired boy was talking with his hands. Kugisaki was threatening to hit him with her shopping bag. Another girl, whom you knew as Zenin, walked a few steps ahead of the group with her bottle of water tucked under one arm.
Fushiguro saw you.
You lifted your chin and smiled. “Looking good, Fushiguro.”
His ears went red before his face did.
The others turned as one.
You kept walking because that was the point of doing it while moving. Hit and run. Save yourself from standing there long enough to look foolish.
Behind you, the pink-haired boy laughed. Kugisaki asked, “Who was that?”
Fushiguro had a tea can half-raised to his mouth.
“Some annoying girl from the store.”
The crossing light changed.
You walked.
The tray dug into your palms all the way back to the repair shop. One of the joystick modules slid loose in its slot every few steps. You kept your fingers tight around the handles until the back room door shut behind you and the smell of solder, dust, and overheated plastic swallowed you whole.
Your phone buzzed as soon as you put the tray down.
PHARMACY BALANCE REMINDER
Another one of your grandmother's treatment bills.
You dismissed it with your thumb, then stared at the cracked corner of your screen until the letters blurred.
Fushiguro had never asked why you worked two jobs, why your old school charm was still hanging from your phone when you hadn’t been in uniform for months, or why you folded receipts so fast when he came too close to the register.
You knew he had money around him. Parents' or benefactors' money that lets a boy move through life with expensive medicine and ugly bills treated as background noise.
You had never wanted any of it from him. Had never even hinted.
All you had done was tape his hand every time he’d let you, save him sandwiches, answer his stupid late-night questions, and let yourself believe for those nights that being the person he came back to meant something.
Some annoying girl from the store.
You pushed the tray too hard—a module jumped out and skittered under the workbench, and that was what finally made the tears come stupidly and silently, with both hands braced on the table because you still had a shift after this and crying properly would take too much time.
Summary: Ryomen Sukuna meets the first human who is afraid of pain but not attached to living.
Warnings: Power Imbalance, Trueform Sukuna, Haien Era, Sukuna murdering people for fun while making fun of you not doing makeup.
Dividers by @cafekitsune.
Ch 2 | Ch 4
Ch 3: Catching Rats
By the time Sukuna decided to leave a blade where she would find it, the household had learned to fear empty things—rice bowls, hooks, fruit dishes, corners where a servant swore a lamp had been burning a breath ago.
The woman had become a flaw in the compound’s design. She slipped through shutters left open for smoke, vanished behind reed blinds, and folded herself beneath verandas where no court woman with rank would have lowered her body. She had the manners of a house spirit and the appetite of a rat.
Sukuna listened to the reports because killing the messengers had stopped improving them.
A guard from the west corridor claimed he had seen her at dusk near the storehouse, barefoot, hair like a scary waterfall, carrying a bundle in both arms. When he called out, she dropped the bundle and fled through the rain gutter.
The bundle contained two rice cakes, a cracked bowl, and a needle wrapped in cloth. The bowl had been washed, and the needle had blood dried at the eye.
The guard had been unable to explain why he lost sight of a limping woman between one pillar and the next. Sukuna opened him from shoulder to hip for the offense. The man kept apologizing until his mouth filled. Apologies, at least, remained abundant.
After that, Uraume took over.
They found more than the guards did. A strip of cloth snagged beneath a veranda plank. A red thread caught on a splinter by the north shrine. Thin footprints in spilled ash. A stolen rice ball tucked inside a sleeve and left uneaten until ants found it.
The girl had been moving through the compound with the care of someone afraid of disturbing others, then stole exactly what would make the servants sob with dread when the loss was discovered.
That irritated Sukuna.
A kitchen girl dropped a tray meant for Sukuna’s morning meal and froze over the broken lacquer, waiting for the roof to fall. By the time Uraume came through the room with the kitchen girl, the spilled rice had been swept into a neat mound, the lacquer shards wrapped in scrap paper, and one cake had disappeared.
No one had seen the woman.
A boy from the infirmary swore he had secured the medicine chest. By dawn, one drawer sat open by a finger’s width.
Uraume found the missing poison packets buried beneath the pond stones, unopened, pressed under mud and lotus roots with such fierce little care that the paper had barely torn. The boy wept when they were returned. The woman had taken them for herself, tried them, didn’t die, carried them, hidden them away from herself, then gone hungry long enough to steal chestnuts from the offering tray before sunrise.
Sukuna turned one packet between his upper fingers. “Does she intend to die or become a priest?”
Uraume lowered their eyes. “Neither with that discipline, my lord.”
His stomach mouth gave a short, wet huff.
---
The next incident was at the old well.
A serving girl screamed before dawn and dropped a basin of persimmons, splitting three of them across the stones. By the time the guards arrived, the well rope was swinging, the bucket lay on its side, and one persimmon had vanished. The serving girl insisted she had seen a sleeve vanish behind the low wall.
Uraume found prints in the mud.
One bare foot, the other in a torn slipper. The woman had been walking in a broken pattern, halted close to the well’s lip, and was then dragged herself backward in a mess of heel marks.
Sukuna stood watching the prints until the morning mist thinned.
She had come close enough to see the black water.
He had watched men die in heaps with less indecision, seen warriors crawl on split bellies toward dropped weapons and servants fling themselves under beams rather than be chosen for his table. Human fear had a common shape when stripped down—it reached away from pain, begged, soiled itself, lied.
This woman kept walking toward death and surviving the threshold.
She would not die no matter how much she tried.
That contradiction began to sour in his mouth.
---
The household suffered further.
Someone stole from the cabinet of imported fragrances.
The vial had come as tribute from a lord who had sent six men to carry gifts and one trembling nephew to apologize for the insult that had required gifts. Sukuna had kept the fragrance because the nephew stammered when naming its cost. It was a dense oil, dark in its small Chinese glass vial, meant for hair, sleeves, and the smug little rituals noble women performed before pretending refinement made them less edible.
It vanished from a locked chest.
Uraume found the chest unbroken.
Sukuna followed the scent of clove and aloeswood and a sweet bite beneath it, wasted in the damp dark beneath the women’s veranda.
The woman had spilled some on the boards, likely by accident. The reek lay over old dust and mouse droppings, expensive enough to ransom a minor official’s son, now soaked into a place where spiders lived.
He crouched beneath the veranda with one upper hand braced against a beam. His size made the space insulting. His lower right hand dragged a finger through the oil-stained dust.
The smear was fresh.
Beside it sat a rice bowl turned upside down.
The inside had been wiped clean.
“She was here before the last lamp burned down,” Uraume confirmed from the crawl opening.
Sukuna glanced toward the black seam between the foundation stones.
The woman had passed through a gap narrower than a dog’s ribs.
His stomach mouth clicked its teeth.
“Seal it.”
Uraume bowed. “At once.”
“Leave one gap.”
Their gaze lifted a fraction.
Sukuna stood, the beam above him cracking under one shoulder before he bothered to duck. “Rats return to familiar holes.”
They left the gap.
She did not return to it.
---
Instead, she appeared three nights later in the southern hall.
A priest saw her by the candle racks, sleeves tied back with a threading rope, trimming a lamp that had begun to smoke.
When he cried out, she startled so violently that hot oil splashed across her wrist.
He said she made no sound, dropped the trimmers, shoved two prayer slips into her sleeve, and ran.
Uraume found the slips beneath a rain barrel.
One was blank.
The other bore a clumsy line of writing, the brush too dry, the characters cramped by a hand that seemed to have once been trained better.
“No dawn comes late enough.”
Sukuna read it.
He burned it in the brazier and watched the paper curl.
Didn’t sleep that night.
---
After that, he saw her in pieces—a pale heel vanishing beneath a screen and a sleeve crossing the end of a corridor, one eye in the gap between two storehouse planks, gone before his lower hand split the wood.
He came close enough once to hear her breath.
It was the hour when servants carried basins through the east passage and kept their eyes on the floor. He had turned at the scent of stolen oil beneath the usual stink of lamp smoke and damp hemp. There, behind a screen painted with faded cranes, something trembled and went still.
Sukuna crossed the passage.
The servants flattened themselves to the boards.
He lifted the screen.
Nothing but a bowl of barley rice sat behind it, half-eaten, with two pickled plums arranged beside the rim.
He stared.
From above, in the narrow gloom between ceiling beams, a single grain of barley dropped onto his shoulder.
His upper right hand shot up.
Caught nothing but air.
A faint scrape sound was heard over the rafters.
Uraume arrived in time to see Sukuna put his fist through the painted cranes.
“My lord?”
“She climbs.”
Uraume’s gaze went to the ceiling. “Poorly, from the sound.”
“Poorly enough to escape you.”
Dead silence.
Frost crept along the nearest beam.
Sukuna smiled without humor. “Break the next thing before you freeze my roof.”
Uraume lowered their hand.
---
The woman remained uncaught.
The compound rearranged itself around her. Guards were posted near storerooms, then punished for losing sight of her near kitchens. Lamps were counted, then went missing to be found in rooms no one used.
The infirmary chest received a second lock. The second lock vanished.
A servant confessed to leaving a side door open after the woman placed a stolen persimmon on his sleeping mat, the fruit pierced with a sewing needle to pin a scrap of cloth over the bruise beginning to rot.
She stole food with one hand and covered servant mistakes with the other.
She mended her own robe with thread scavenged from ceremonial banners—red stitches crawled across black cloth, ugly and uneven, bright as small wounds.
Sukuna began to recognize the repairs too—a flash of red near the granary, red at the edge of a sleeve beneath the women’s veranda.
Red thread caught under his claw the night he struck through a screen and found only fabric, dust, and the lingering warmth of a body that had been there a breath before.
He held the thread close to one lower eye.
The oil scent clung to it.
He huffed a laugh.
The sound sent both guards at the far end of the corridor to their knees.
---
Sukuna looked toward the old shrine room.
It had belonged to whatever soft family had held the estate before him. Their ancestral papers had been removed, then torn, then fed to the fire when a surviving uncle tried to protest the indignity.
No one used the room now except servants sent to sweep around the empty altar and prisoner priests who whispered warding chants under their breath as if Sukuna’s hearing ended at the walls.
The room had one outer door, one inner screen, and a narrow veranda facing the garden.
Moonlight entered there before dawn.
A woman seeking an end would see anything left on the altar and would wait until no guard stood nearby.
By the deep hour before dawn, when even the worst men in the compound had run out of lies to tell themselves, Sukuna set the trap himself.
He chose a short sword from the tribute rack—silver inlay ran along the scabbard in a pattern of waves and cranes. The blade had never earned its ornament. Its former owner had carried it into Sukuna’s hall with shaking hands and died before drawing it.
Sukuna drew it now.
The edge caught the lamp flames.
He held it between two upper fingers and inspected the polish. His lower left hand took the hilt, testing the balance—uselessly pretty but light enough for a courtier, so light enough for her.
He laid it near the empty shrine where moonlight would find the silver and make an invitation of it.
Then he opened the outer door, breathing in the garden-damp earth, old moss, and the faint sweetness of plum leaves under cold dew. Beneath it, from somewhere in the compound, rice steaming for men who deserved hunger more than breakfast.
Sukuna dismissed the guards.
One opened his mouth.
Sukuna looked at him.
The man remembered silence and left with the others.
Uraume remained by the corridor until Sukuna turned his head.
“No one enters.”
“As you command.”
“If you catch sight of her first, you will keep walking.”
Uraume’s expression did not change, but the frost in their lashes did. “As you wish, my lord.”
He watched them go.
Then he climbed up.
The room had been built for human bodies, which meant every beam objected to his size. Sukuna folded himself into the shadow above the lintel, one lower hand braced against the wall, one upper palm flattened to the ceiling beam. His back pressed against old wood, the second upper hand hung loose. His stomach mouth rested half-open beneath the fall of his robe, tasting dust, lamp oil, and the insult of waiting.
The sword lay below.
Moonlight made it pale.
Sukuna watched the hours thin by the lamp changes.
A guard was incessantly chatting with another somewhere beyond the hall.
Then a floorboard creaked.
A mouse crossed behind the altar and stopped when Sukuna’s lower eye shifted toward it.
Sensible creature.
It reversed and vanished through a crack.
The moon moved over the roof tiles.
Near the garden, a reed blind touched wood with a dry scrape.
Sukuna did not move.
Another scrape.
Then the faintest breath.
The woman came into view in the outer doorway.
She stood half inside the moonlight, half swallowed by the eaves' shadow, a small, damaged thing with one shoulder held higher than the other. Her hair tied back with a strip of torn cloth, loose strands clung to her cheeks. Her left foot wore a slipper with the heel crushed flat, while her right was bare.
Muddy footsteps marked the arch.
A cut had scabbed near her ankle.
The black robe hung badly on her frame. The red stitches crossed her sleeve, her side, and the torn fall near her knee. In the cold light, they looked even worse—the knots were placed for reach rather than beauty.
She paused at the threshold.
Her gaze went to the sword.
Every part of her stilled.
Sukuna watched her throat swallow.
She stood as if the blade had spoken her name from the altar.
Her fingers curled into her sleeve.
The scent of stolen oil came with her, faint now, worked into cloth and skin until it had soured under hunger and rain.
She had kept the vial, then, or spilled enough on herself that she had carried his property through half the compound for days.
His stomach mouth smiled.
The woman took a step, and bare foot touched the mat without sound.
Then another.
She limped more than before. Uraume’s almost-capture in the storehouse had cost her something.
Good. Pain taught honesty where rank failed.
She came close enough for the moon to show her face.
Hollow beneath the eyes, mouth chapped, cheek smudged with soot. She had not painted herself or arranged her sleeves for modesty. Some old court training still kept her chin lowered, though no one she respected remained to see it.
She knelt beside the altar.
Her hand hovered above the sword.
Sukuna waited.
Her fingers touched the hilt.
He dropped from the lintel. “Pathetic.”
She jerked and her shoulder struck the altar.
The sword clattered against the floor, then flashed into her hands as she scrambled back. Her bare foot slipped on the mat. She caught herself against the screen, breath breaking harshly enough to satisfy him.
Sukuna landed between her and the door to the garden.
Wood groaned beneath his weight.
Moonlight cut across his body: four arms, four eyes, markings over muscle and skin, the ruined side of his face pulled into something close to amusement. His stomach mouth opened wider as the woman stared at it, then at his hands, then at the door blocked by him.
She raised the sword.
Sukuna looked at it. “You picked that up backward.”
Her grip changed at once. Clumsy but obedient to correction even now.
That made his upper lip curl.
The sword tip lifted toward his throat. It wavered so badly that it threatened the shrine tablets more than him. Her hands were white around the hilt. Her shoulders shook under the red-stitched robe.
“Stay away.” Her voice came out scraped thin.
Sukuna stepped forward.
She stepped back and hit the screen. The wooden frame rattled against its track.
“Months,” he growled. “You have crawled under my floors, stolen from my stores, fouled my fragrance cabinet, frightened servants into incompetence, and carried half the infirmary into the pond.”
Her eyes darted toward the veranda.
He moved one lower arm, blocking that line.
The sword jerked higher.
“You come here for that.” He glanced at the blade. “Now you hold it as if it might bite into you.”
Her lips parted.
No answer.
Sukuna took another step.
The room shrank around her. Her body knew the truth before her face could pretend otherwise—knees bending, weight shifting toward the veranda, fingers failing around the hilt, then tightening again because the blade was still the only object in the room that offered her a choice.
A choice she feared.
Interesting.
He had thought her cowardice simple at first. Court women were full of it just as much as priests and governors. Soft hands, soft tongues. Silk over weak bones.
But this fear had roots running in opposite directions.
The old well.
The buried packets.
The stolen needle.
The prayer slip burned in his brazier.
She came looking for death the way starving dogs came to kitchen doors—low to the ground, ready to flee, offended by the hand that opened.
Sukuna’s lower mouth drew in the air—salt, fear, old oil, and blood from the scab at her ankle.
“Now you want to live?”
The snarl struck her harder than his step had.
The sword lowered a fraction.
Her gaze snapped to his face.
For one breath, she looked almost offended as if he had placed a hand over something private and dragged it into moonlight.
Good.
She feared him. Her body bent itself toward survival even while her hands kept reaching for death.
He saw the contradiction settle into her limbs.
Sukuna smiled.
She swung.
It was a miserable attempt.
The blade came at him in a wild arc that would have opened the air beside his shoulder if he had respected it enough to dodge. He caught the blade in the gap between two fingers.
Her arms jolted.
For a moment they were joined by the sword—he shaking hands at the hilt, his fingers at the blade, moonlight running silver between them.
Her eyes dropped to his fingers.
Then to the blade.
“You came to die,” he mused.
She pulled.
He held.
“You threaten me to leave alive.”
The sword trembled between them.
A tear slid down her cheek and fell onto the hilt.
She made no sound with it.
Sukuna leaned down.
All four of his eyes fixed on her face. His upper right hand reached toward her chin. His lower left hand shifted toward her wrist. Slow enough for her to see each choice, to show her the room had transformed into his palm.
“Do not bed me, my lord.”
For a moment Sukuna only stared.
Then he laughed.
The stupid creature thought that was why he had cornered her.
“I have not asked you to bed me.”
Her breath stopped.
Then her fingers opened.
The sword dropped.
Sukuna caught it by the hilt before it touched the floor.
She moved under him.
Her body folded low, almost to the mat, and she shot beneath his lower arm toward the open veranda. A court woman should not have been able to move that way. Hunger had made her narrow, and fear made her faster than sense.
His upper hand shot out.
Black cloth brushed his claws.
Red thread snapped.
For a breath, he had the sleeve.
For a breath, she was within reach.
Then the fabric tore free, and she was over the veranda lip, one bare foot striking stone, the other slipping so hard that any sane creature would have cried out.
She did not and vanished into the garden.
Sukuna straightened.
The shrine floor creaked around him, ruined by his weight.
In his upper claws, a red thread clung to black cloth.
Uraume appeared at the corridor entrance, still as winter.
Sukuna looked at the torn stitch caught on his nail.
Then toward the garden, where no branch moved.
Uraume waited.
His stomach mouth gave a low, displeased sound.
Sukuna closed his fist around the thread.
“Again.”
Ch 2 | Ch 4
A/N: The woman is living rice bowl to rice bowl, and his pompous ass is complaining about her not having her face beat like other court women.
Lawyer!Megumi Fushiguro x Editor-in-Chief!Pregnant Reader
Summary: You find your husband's search history.
Tags: Soft!Megumi · Slice Of Life · Fluff · Established Marriage · Pregnancy After Infertility · Implied Fertility Treatments · Pregnancy Anxiety · Mentions Of Negative Tests · Early To Mid-30s Megumi And Reader · Alaska Move · Big Built Megumi · Domestic Caretaking · Emotional Crying · Food · Nausea Mention.
A/N: Idk, I was bored and wrote this in December '25 but never got around to posting it because I haven't been well since and also lost the plot like five times while editing.
Playlist
Things people can do in Alaska with their pregnant wife.
You stop behind the couch with one hand braced under your belly, the other still holding the empty water glass you came to refill.
Megumi is asleep under the low amber lamp, his laptop open on the coffee table, one large hand hanging off the edge of the cushion. He’s still in his dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearm, tie pulled loose and abandoned somewhere near his collarbone, glasses sit crooked on his face.
He snores mildly due to the crooked angle, which he would deny in court.
You look back at the screen.
He has six tabs open.
Alaska Railroad, Girdwood resort, prenatal massage, Northern Lights heated dome, wildlife conservation drive-through, best calm-water coastal cruises for motion sickness.
Your throat closes.
He had spent dinner pretending to care about the acquisition scandal your imprint was currently circling like vultures. He had cut your salmon into smaller pieces without asking, slid your water closer every time you forgot to drink it, and looked tired when he smiled at you, but you’d thought it was work.
You hadn’t known he was planning how to make Alaska soft for you.
The article is still open below the search bar.
Low-impact comfort, beautiful scenery without grueling logistics, heated cabins, wide windows, warm drinks, and places where she can stay inside the car if she gets tired.
Your hand moves to scroll.
The Alaska Railroad—a heated train car with panoramic windows, no bumpy roads, and no hours on your feet.
Girdwood—aerial tram, fire pits, indoor saltwater pool, avoid hot tubs, book prenatal massage.
Fairbanks—heated dome under the northern lights, so she can watch from bed.
You press your lips together, but it doesn’t help.
Megumi shifts at the whimper you fail to swallow. His brows draw together before his eyes open.
He looks at your face. “What happened?”
You shake your head.
He’s upright in a second, glasses pushed up into his hair. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Cramping?”
“No, Megumi.”
“Dizzy?”
“No.”
He reaches for you anyway, palm careful against your side, then the underside of your belly. “Then why are you crying?”
You set the glass down before you drop it. “You looked really sweet sleeping.”
He stares at you.
You sniff.
His mouth flattens. “That’s creepy.”
A laugh breaks out of you. “You looked very sweet, husband.”
He stares at you confused.
You wipe under your eye with the heel of your hand, and he catches your wrist before you can be rough with your own face, his thumb rubs softly over your skin.
The baby shifts, a slow roll under your ribs.
Megumi feels it.
Neither of you speaks.
That’s the thing nobody had told you about finally getting what you begged science, money, bloodwork, calendars, injections, and your own tired hope to give you after years of trying. Joy would not arrive alone but would bring fear with it in the nursery boxes you were both too superstitious to fully unpack. It slept between you when the baby was too still for thirty minutes.
Megumi lowers his forehead against your belly.
“Hey,” he murmurs there. “Don’t scare your mother.”
The baby kicks him.
You laugh again.
He looks up at you, offended in the sleepy, handsome way that made you marry him. “She’s already disrespectful.”
“She gets that from her father.”
“I’m a respected attorney.”
“You fell asleep researching.”
His face changes. It’s not noticeable.
But you know him.
You pretend not to see the laptop. “Come to bed.”
He closes the laptop with one hand and stands, heavier than he used to be, broader through the shoulders, softer only where your hands liked him best. Then he bends, picks up your glass, and guides you toward the kitchen first.
“Water,” he says.
In the kitchen, you drink because he watches until you do.
The next morning, you dress like you have no idea—a nice long wool coat, a loose turtleneck, hair pulled back, gold earrings, a long wool skirt, and boots that Megumi had already checked twice for traction.
He comes out of the bedroom holding a scarf.
“No, I look editorial.”
“You look cold.”
“I’m seven months pregnant and still better dressed than half the state.”
“You’ll be warm.”
He wraps the scarf around you himself, careful with your hair, then crouches to zip your boot when the zipper catches.
You look down at your stern, overbuilt husband on one knee in the entryway.
Your chest does that dangerous thing again.
He glances up.
Then winks.
Your soul leaves your body. “Did you just—"
“No one will believe you.”
You smack his shoulder with your glove.
He catches your hand, kisses the knuckles through the wool, then stands.
Later, the train is warm.
Megumi has gotten you seats by the window, tea in a paper cup, ginger candies in his coat pocket, a folded blanket he bought outside in case you got cold, and a printed reservation schedule marked in his neat handwriting.
You sit beside him and watch snow catch on black spruce, mountains shouldering up through the morning, the whole world cold and enormous while your husband keeps one hand under your coat, palm spread over your belly.
The baby kicks after the train starts moving.
Megumi looks down.
“She likes it,” you say.
He smiles that small smile and kisses the side of your head
You lean your head against his arm.
After a while, he opens his coat so you can tuck closer without asking. His chin rests briefly on your hair. Outside, Alaska rolls past in white and blue and dark green, and inside, Megumi checks your tea temperature before handing it back.
You take one sip.
Perfect.
At the wildlife conservation center, he drives the loop slowly enough that a four-year-old toddler in a stroller passes you.
“Megumi.”
“You said your back hurt.”
“A moose is judging us.”
“The moose can mind his business.”
You watch bison move through snow, a brown bear sleeps in the distance like a dropped coat, and wolves pace beyond the fence, pale and elegant and uninterested in the people whispering from warm cars.
Megumi keeps the heater low because you said the air made you nauseous when it got too dry. He opens your Sailor Boy Pilot Bread packet with his teeth when your gloves get in the way, then holds the bag out without looking, eyes on the road.
Then you take one and hold another toward him.
Megumi glances over once, only long enough to see what you’re offering, then opens his mouth. His eyes go back to the road before his teeth close around it.
You chew faster than he does.
By the time he finishes, you’re already digging around in the bag again.
Another for you.
Another shoved toward his mouth.
He takes it with the same tired patience people use around unstable explosives.
Snow crunches softly under the tires as the sanctuary road curves ahead. Megumi keeps one hand steady on the wheel between bites, shoulders forward, attention fixed like the whole world has narrowed to the road, your seatbelt, and the baby in your belly.
You finish yours first again.
Then immediately pick another cracker out and push it against his mouth.
You feed him half the packet over the next ten minutes through pure insistence. Crackers, then dried fruits, then the weird little ginger-infused wild berry jam you bought at the station because the old woman at the register said they helped with nausea.
Megumi eats every single thing you hand him, his jaw moving slowly while his attention stays fixed on the icy road ahead.
Then you stare at him again.
“What?” he says finally.
“You’ll survive in captivity.”
He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“You eat whatever I hand you with no questions. Totally domesticated.”
He flings your blanket over your head. “Nap time.”
You remove it with a chuckle, stare at the side of his face while he drives, at the small crease between his brows, at the careful set of his mouth, at the man who packed three kinds of snack foods and still forgot to eat until you put food directly against his lips.
“What?” he asks, quieter this time.
You reach over and brush a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “You’re my home, Megumi.”
His hand tightens on the wheel.
For a second, he says nothing.
Then he pulls into the next viewing spot, parks, and turns to you. “We moved here because you wanted quiet.”
You nod, because you had wanted distance from elevators full of people who stared too long, from office bathrooms where you had cried over negative tests, from family calls that turned every question into a pressure point. You wanted snow, locked doors, slow mornings, a place where no one knew how long it had taken.
Megumi looks down at your joined hands.
“I can’t make your head quiet,” his voice softens. “I know that.”
Your mouth trembles before you can stop it.
His thumb moves once over your knuckles.
“But I can make the day smaller.” His voice stays low, almost careful. “I can check the road before you wake up. Keep food where you can reach it. Find places where you don’t have to stand too long.”
He glances briefly toward the back seat, where your blanket and spare gloves sit folded beside the bag he packed without mentioning it.
“I can bring you home the second you’re tired,” he tells you. “Even if you say you’re fine.”
You laugh once, but it comes out ruined, and then you’re crying.
Megumi unbuckles his seatbelt, turns as much as the car allows and reaches for your face, thumb catching the tear before it gets past your cheek.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s the pregnancy."
“I know.” His hand stays on your cheek. “I read the books.”
Outside, the moose keeps chewing through a mouthful of brush, calm and enormous and uninterested in the fact that your husband has just cracked your chest open in a parked car.
You cover his hand where it rests against your face. “You make me feel like we’re going to be okay.”
His expression shifts into something small and full of hope.
Then he leans across the console and kisses you, slow and careful.
When he pulls back, his ears are pink. “You knew about the search.”
You keep your face very still. “I don’t know what search you mean.”
Megumi stares at you.
You stare back with grave composure.
His thumb brushes under your eye again. “You’re bad at lying.”
You look out the windshield, pretending to study the moose. “I only saw the title.”
“That’s the worst part.”
You press your lips together.
He watches you try not to smile, and something in his face loosens. “I wanted to get it right.”
The sentence is low enough that it almost disappears under the hum of the heater.
You look back at him.
Megumi’s gaze has dropped to your belly again. “You’ve had to be careful for months.”
Your hand finds his over the curve of your coat.
The baby shifts under both of your palms.
Megumi breathes out slowly, as if she answered him.
“You got it right,” you say.
He nods, eyes still too soft.
Then he turns back, puts the car in drive, and eases out of the viewing spot.
A few minutes later, when the lodge comes into view and you spot the low orange flicker of fire pits through the snow, you gasp a little too early.
Megumi doesn’t even look at you. “Awful acting.”
You smile into your scarf. “I was surprised.”
This time, his mouth moves first, almost a smile.
“Stay there,” he says when he parks.
You do, watching him come around to your side through the windshield. He opens your door, blocks the wind with his body, and wraps the blanket around your shoulders before your boots touch the ground.
A/N: I can be persuaded to do a Yuji one in the same AU.
Masterlist
Images are from Anime (S3)/Pinterest; the sparkling divider is from @pixopix, the trees are from @firefly-graphics, and the engagement banner is from @saradika-graphics.
Lawyer!Megumi Fushiguro x Editor-in-Chief!Pregnant Reader
Summary: You find your husband's search history.
Tags: Soft!Megumi · Slice Of Life · Fluff · Established Marriage · Pregnancy After Infertility · Implied Fertility Treatments · Pregnancy Anxiety · Mentions Of Negative Tests · Early To Mid-30s Megumi And Reader · Alaska Move · Big Built Megumi · Domestic Caretaking · Emotional Crying · Food · Nausea Mention.
A/N: Idk, I was bored and wrote this in December '25 but never got around to posting it because I haven't been well since and also lost the plot like five times while editing.
Playlist
Things people can do in Alaska with their pregnant wife.
You stop behind the couch with one hand braced under your belly, the other still holding the empty water glass you came to refill.
Megumi is asleep under the low amber lamp, his laptop open on the coffee table, one large hand hanging off the edge of the cushion. He’s still in his dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearm, tie pulled loose and abandoned somewhere near his collarbone, glasses sit crooked on his face.
He snores mildly due to the crooked angle, which he would deny in court.
You look back at the screen.
He has six tabs open.
Alaska Railroad, Girdwood resort, prenatal massage, Northern Lights heated dome, wildlife conservation drive-through, best calm-water coastal cruises for motion sickness.
Your throat closes.
He had spent dinner pretending to care about the acquisition scandal your imprint was currently circling like vultures. He had cut your salmon into smaller pieces without asking, slid your water closer every time you forgot to drink it, and looked tired when he smiled at you, but you’d thought it was work.
You hadn’t known he was planning how to make Alaska soft for you.
The article is still open below the search bar.
Low-impact comfort, beautiful scenery without grueling logistics, heated cabins, wide windows, warm drinks, and places where she can stay inside the car if she gets tired.
Your hand moves to scroll.
The Alaska Railroad—a heated train car with panoramic windows, no bumpy roads, and no hours on your feet.
Girdwood—aerial tram, fire pits, indoor saltwater pool, avoid hot tubs, book prenatal massage.
Fairbanks—heated dome under the northern lights, so she can watch from bed.
You press your lips together, but it doesn’t help.
Megumi shifts at the whimper you fail to swallow. His brows draw together before his eyes open.
He looks at your face. “What happened?”
You shake your head.
He’s upright in a second, glasses pushed up into his hair. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Cramping?”
“No, Megumi.”
“Dizzy?”
“No.”
He reaches for you anyway, palm careful against your side, then the underside of your belly. “Then why are you crying?”
You set the glass down before you drop it. “You looked really sweet sleeping.”
He stares at you.
You sniff.
His mouth flattens. “That’s creepy.”
A laugh breaks out of you. “You looked very sweet, husband.”
He stares at you confused.
You wipe under your eye with the heel of your hand, and he catches your wrist before you can be rough with your own face, his thumb rubs softly over your skin.
The baby shifts, a slow roll under your ribs.
Megumi feels it.
Neither of you speaks.
That’s the thing nobody had told you about finally getting what you begged science, money, bloodwork, calendars, injections, and your own tired hope to give you after years of trying. Joy would not arrive alone but would bring fear with it in the nursery boxes you were both too superstitious to fully unpack. It slept between you when the baby was too still for thirty minutes.
Megumi lowers his forehead against your belly.
“Hey,” he murmurs there. “Don’t scare your mother.”
The baby kicks him.
You laugh again.
He looks up at you, offended in the sleepy, handsome way that made you marry him. “She’s already disrespectful.”
“She gets that from her father.”
“I’m a respected attorney.”
“You fell asleep researching.”
His face changes. It’s not noticeable.
But you know him.
You pretend not to see the laptop. “Come to bed.”
He closes the laptop with one hand and stands, heavier than he used to be, broader through the shoulders, softer only where your hands liked him best. Then he bends, picks up your glass, and guides you toward the kitchen first.
“Water,” he says.
In the kitchen, you drink because he watches until you do.
The next morning, you dress like you have no idea—a nice long wool coat, a loose turtleneck, hair pulled back, gold earrings, a long wool skirt, and boots that Megumi had already checked twice for traction.
He comes out of the bedroom holding a scarf.
“No, I look editorial.”
“You look cold.”
“I’m seven months pregnant and still better dressed than half the state.”
“You’ll be warm.”
He wraps the scarf around you himself, careful with your hair, then crouches to zip your boot when the zipper catches.
You look down at your stern, overbuilt husband on one knee in the entryway.
Your chest does that dangerous thing again.
He glances up.
Then winks.
Your soul leaves your body. “Did you just—"
“No one will believe you.”
You smack his shoulder with your glove.
He catches your hand, kisses the knuckles through the wool, then stands.
Later, the train is warm.
Megumi has gotten you seats by the window, tea in a paper cup, ginger candies in his coat pocket, a folded blanket he bought outside in case you got cold, and a printed reservation schedule marked in his neat handwriting.
You sit beside him and watch snow catch on black spruce, mountains shouldering up through the morning, the whole world cold and enormous while your husband keeps one hand under your coat, palm spread over your belly.
The baby kicks after the train starts moving.
Megumi looks down.
“She likes it,” you say.
He smiles that small smile and kisses the side of your head
You lean your head against his arm.
After a while, he opens his coat so you can tuck closer without asking. His chin rests briefly on your hair. Outside, Alaska rolls past in white and blue and dark green, and inside, Megumi checks your tea temperature before handing it back.
You take one sip.
Perfect.
At the wildlife conservation center, he drives the loop slowly enough that a four-year-old toddler in a stroller passes you.
“Megumi.”
“You said your back hurt.”
“A moose is judging us.”
“The moose can mind his business.”
You watch bison move through snow, a brown bear sleeps in the distance like a dropped coat, and wolves pace beyond the fence, pale and elegant and uninterested in the people whispering from warm cars.
Megumi keeps the heater low because you said the air made you nauseous when it got too dry. He opens your Sailor Boy Pilot Bread packet with his teeth when your gloves get in the way, then holds the bag out without looking, eyes on the road.
Then you take one and hold another toward him.
Megumi glances over once, only long enough to see what you’re offering, then opens his mouth. His eyes go back to the road before his teeth close around it.
You chew faster than he does.
By the time he finishes, you’re already digging around in the bag again.
Another for you.
Another shoved toward his mouth.
He takes it with the same tired patience people use around unstable explosives.
Snow crunches softly under the tires as the sanctuary road curves ahead. Megumi keeps one hand steady on the wheel between bites, shoulders forward, attention fixed like the whole world has narrowed to the road, your seatbelt, and the baby in your belly.
You finish yours first again.
Then immediately pick another cracker out and push it against his mouth.
You feed him half the packet over the next ten minutes through pure insistence. Crackers, then dried fruits, then the weird little ginger-infused wild berry jam you bought at the station because the old woman at the register said they helped with nausea.
Megumi eats every single thing you hand him, his jaw moving slowly while his attention stays fixed on the icy road ahead.
Then you stare at him again.
“What?” he says finally.
“You’ll survive in captivity.”
He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“You eat whatever I hand you with no questions. Totally domesticated.”
He flings your blanket over your head. “Nap time.”
You remove it with a chuckle, stare at the side of his face while he drives, at the small crease between his brows, at the careful set of his mouth, at the man who packed three kinds of snack foods and still forgot to eat until you put food directly against his lips.
“What?” he asks, quieter this time.
You reach over and brush a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “You’re my home, Megumi.”
His hand tightens on the wheel.
For a second, he says nothing.
Then he pulls into the next viewing spot, parks, and turns to you. “We moved here because you wanted quiet.”
You nod, because you had wanted distance from elevators full of people who stared too long, from office bathrooms where you had cried over negative tests, from family calls that turned every question into a pressure point. You wanted snow, locked doors, slow mornings, a place where no one knew how long it had taken.
Megumi looks down at your joined hands.
“I can’t make your head quiet,” his voice softens. “I know that.”
Your mouth trembles before you can stop it.
His thumb moves once over your knuckles.
“But I can make the day smaller.” His voice stays low, almost careful. “I can check the road before you wake up. Keep food where you can reach it. Find places where you don’t have to stand too long.”
He glances briefly toward the back seat, where your blanket and spare gloves sit folded beside the bag he packed without mentioning it.
“I can bring you home the second you’re tired,” he tells you. “Even if you say you’re fine.”
You laugh once, but it comes out ruined, and then you’re crying.
Megumi unbuckles his seatbelt, turns as much as the car allows and reaches for your face, thumb catching the tear before it gets past your cheek.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s the pregnancy."
“I know.” His hand stays on your cheek. “I read the books.”
Outside, the moose keeps chewing through a mouthful of brush, calm and enormous and uninterested in the fact that your husband has just cracked your chest open in a parked car.
You cover his hand where it rests against your face. “You make me feel like we’re going to be okay.”
His expression shifts into something small and full of hope.
Then he leans across the console and kisses you, slow and careful.
When he pulls back, his ears are pink. “You knew about the search.”
You keep your face very still. “I don’t know what search you mean.”
Megumi stares at you.
You stare back with grave composure.
His thumb brushes under your eye again. “You’re bad at lying.”
You look out the windshield, pretending to study the moose. “I only saw the title.”
“That’s the worst part.”
You press your lips together.
He watches you try not to smile, and something in his face loosens. “I wanted to get it right.”
The sentence is low enough that it almost disappears under the hum of the heater.
You look back at him.
Megumi’s gaze has dropped to your belly again. “You’ve had to be careful for months.”
Your hand finds his over the curve of your coat.
The baby shifts under both of your palms.
Megumi breathes out slowly, as if she answered him.
“You got it right,” you say.
He nods, eyes still too soft.
Then he turns back, puts the car in drive, and eases out of the viewing spot.
A few minutes later, when the lodge comes into view and you spot the low orange flicker of fire pits through the snow, you gasp a little too early.
Megumi doesn’t even look at you. “Awful acting.”
You smile into your scarf. “I was surprised.”
This time, his mouth moves first, almost a smile.
“Stay there,” he says when he parks.
You do, watching him come around to your side through the windshield. He opens your door, blocks the wind with his body, and wraps the blanket around your shoulders before your boots touch the ground.
A/N: I can be persuaded to do a Yuji one in the same AU.
Masterlist
Images are from Anime (S3)/Pinterest; the sparkling divider is from @pixopix, the trees are from @firefly-graphics, and the engagement banner is from @saradika-graphics.
Summary: Ryomen Sukuna meets the first human who is afraid of pain but not attached to living.
Warnings: Power Imbalance, Trueform Sukuna, Haien Era, Sukuna murdering people for fun while making fun of you not doing makeup.
Dividers by @cafekitsune.
Ch 2 | Ch 4
Ch 3: Catching Rats
By the time Sukuna decided to leave a blade where she would find it, the household had learned to fear empty things—rice bowls, hooks, fruit dishes, corners where a servant swore a lamp had been burning a breath ago.
The woman had become a flaw in the compound’s design. She slipped through shutters left open for smoke, vanished behind reed blinds, and folded herself beneath verandas where no court woman with rank would have lowered her body. She had the manners of a house spirit and the appetite of a rat.
Sukuna listened to the reports because killing the messengers had stopped improving them.
A guard from the west corridor claimed he had seen her at dusk near the storehouse, barefoot, hair like a scary waterfall, carrying a bundle in both arms. When he called out, she dropped the bundle and fled through the rain gutter.
The bundle contained two rice cakes, a cracked bowl, and a needle wrapped in cloth. The bowl had been washed, and the needle had blood dried at the eye.
The guard had been unable to explain why he lost sight of a limping woman between one pillar and the next. Sukuna opened him from shoulder to hip for the offense. The man kept apologizing until his mouth filled. Apologies, at least, remained abundant.
After that, Uraume took over.
They found more than the guards did. A strip of cloth snagged beneath a veranda plank. A red thread caught on a splinter by the north shrine. Thin footprints in spilled ash. A stolen rice ball tucked inside a sleeve and left uneaten until ants found it.
The girl had been moving through the compound with the care of someone afraid of disturbing others, then stole exactly what would make the servants sob with dread when the loss was discovered.
That irritated Sukuna.
A kitchen girl dropped a tray meant for Sukuna’s morning meal and froze over the broken lacquer, waiting for the roof to fall. By the time Uraume came through the room with the kitchen girl, the spilled rice had been swept into a neat mound, the lacquer shards wrapped in scrap paper, and one cake had disappeared.
No one had seen the woman.
A boy from the infirmary swore he had secured the medicine chest. By dawn, one drawer sat open by a finger’s width.
Uraume found the missing poison packets buried beneath the pond stones, unopened, pressed under mud and lotus roots with such fierce little care that the paper had barely torn. The boy wept when they were returned. The woman had taken them for herself, tried them, didn’t die, carried them, hidden them away from herself, then gone hungry long enough to steal chestnuts from the offering tray before sunrise.
Sukuna turned one packet between his upper fingers. “Does she intend to die or become a priest?”
Uraume lowered their eyes. “Neither with that discipline, my lord.”
His stomach mouth gave a short, wet huff.
---
The next incident was at the old well.
A serving girl screamed before dawn and dropped a basin of persimmons, splitting three of them across the stones. By the time the guards arrived, the well rope was swinging, the bucket lay on its side, and one persimmon had vanished. The serving girl insisted she had seen a sleeve vanish behind the low wall.
Uraume found prints in the mud.
One bare foot, the other in a torn slipper. The woman had been walking in a broken pattern, halted close to the well’s lip, and was then dragged herself backward in a mess of heel marks.
Sukuna stood watching the prints until the morning mist thinned.
She had come close enough to see the black water.
He had watched men die in heaps with less indecision, seen warriors crawl on split bellies toward dropped weapons and servants fling themselves under beams rather than be chosen for his table. Human fear had a common shape when stripped down—it reached away from pain, begged, soiled itself, lied.
This woman kept walking toward death and surviving the threshold.
She would not die no matter how much she tried.
That contradiction began to sour in his mouth.
---
The household suffered further.
Someone stole from the cabinet of imported fragrances.
The vial had come as tribute from a lord who had sent six men to carry gifts and one trembling nephew to apologize for the insult that had required gifts. Sukuna had kept the fragrance because the nephew stammered when naming its cost. It was a dense oil, dark in its small Chinese glass vial, meant for hair, sleeves, and the smug little rituals noble women performed before pretending refinement made them less edible.
It vanished from a locked chest.
Uraume found the chest unbroken.
Sukuna followed the scent of clove and aloeswood and a sweet bite beneath it, wasted in the damp dark beneath the women’s veranda.
The woman had spilled some on the boards, likely by accident. The reek lay over old dust and mouse droppings, expensive enough to ransom a minor official’s son, now soaked into a place where spiders lived.
He crouched beneath the veranda with one upper hand braced against a beam. His size made the space insulting. His lower right hand dragged a finger through the oil-stained dust.
The smear was fresh.
Beside it sat a rice bowl turned upside down.
The inside had been wiped clean.
“She was here before the last lamp burned down,” Uraume confirmed from the crawl opening.
Sukuna glanced toward the black seam between the foundation stones.
The woman had passed through a gap narrower than a dog’s ribs.
His stomach mouth clicked its teeth.
“Seal it.”
Uraume bowed. “At once.”
“Leave one gap.”
Their gaze lifted a fraction.
Sukuna stood, the beam above him cracking under one shoulder before he bothered to duck. “Rats return to familiar holes.”
They left the gap.
She did not return to it.
---
Instead, she appeared three nights later in the southern hall.
A priest saw her by the candle racks, sleeves tied back with a threading rope, trimming a lamp that had begun to smoke.
When he cried out, she startled so violently that hot oil splashed across her wrist.
He said she made no sound, dropped the trimmers, shoved two prayer slips into her sleeve, and ran.
Uraume found the slips beneath a rain barrel.
One was blank.
The other bore a clumsy line of writing, the brush too dry, the characters cramped by a hand that seemed to have once been trained better.
“No dawn comes late enough.”
Sukuna read it.
He burned it in the brazier and watched the paper curl.
Didn’t sleep that night.
---
After that, he saw her in pieces—a pale heel vanishing beneath a screen and a sleeve crossing the end of a corridor, one eye in the gap between two storehouse planks, gone before his lower hand split the wood.
He came close enough once to hear her breath.
It was the hour when servants carried basins through the east passage and kept their eyes on the floor. He had turned at the scent of stolen oil beneath the usual stink of lamp smoke and damp hemp. There, behind a screen painted with faded cranes, something trembled and went still.
Sukuna crossed the passage.
The servants flattened themselves to the boards.
He lifted the screen.
Nothing but a bowl of barley rice sat behind it, half-eaten, with two pickled plums arranged beside the rim.
He stared.
From above, in the narrow gloom between ceiling beams, a single grain of barley dropped onto his shoulder.
His upper right hand shot up.
Caught nothing but air.
A faint scrape sound was heard over the rafters.
Uraume arrived in time to see Sukuna put his fist through the painted cranes.
“My lord?”
“She climbs.”
Uraume’s gaze went to the ceiling. “Poorly, from the sound.”
“Poorly enough to escape you.”
Dead silence.
Frost crept along the nearest beam.
Sukuna smiled without humor. “Break the next thing before you freeze my roof.”
Uraume lowered their hand.
---
The woman remained uncaught.
The compound rearranged itself around her. Guards were posted near storerooms, then punished for losing sight of her near kitchens. Lamps were counted, then went missing to be found in rooms no one used.
The infirmary chest received a second lock. The second lock vanished.
A servant confessed to leaving a side door open after the woman placed a stolen persimmon on his sleeping mat, the fruit pierced with a sewing needle to pin a scrap of cloth over the bruise beginning to rot.
She stole food with one hand and covered servant mistakes with the other.
She mended her own robe with thread scavenged from ceremonial banners—red stitches crawled across black cloth, ugly and uneven, bright as small wounds.
Sukuna began to recognize the repairs too—a flash of red near the granary, red at the edge of a sleeve beneath the women’s veranda.
Red thread caught under his claw the night he struck through a screen and found only fabric, dust, and the lingering warmth of a body that had been there a breath before.
He held the thread close to one lower eye.
The oil scent clung to it.
He huffed a laugh.
The sound sent both guards at the far end of the corridor to their knees.
---
Sukuna looked toward the old shrine room.
It had belonged to whatever soft family had held the estate before him. Their ancestral papers had been removed, then torn, then fed to the fire when a surviving uncle tried to protest the indignity.
No one used the room now except servants sent to sweep around the empty altar and prisoner priests who whispered warding chants under their breath as if Sukuna’s hearing ended at the walls.
The room had one outer door, one inner screen, and a narrow veranda facing the garden.
Moonlight entered there before dawn.
A woman seeking an end would see anything left on the altar and would wait until no guard stood nearby.
By the deep hour before dawn, when even the worst men in the compound had run out of lies to tell themselves, Sukuna set the trap himself.
He chose a short sword from the tribute rack—silver inlay ran along the scabbard in a pattern of waves and cranes. The blade had never earned its ornament. Its former owner had carried it into Sukuna’s hall with shaking hands and died before drawing it.
Sukuna drew it now.
The edge caught the lamp flames.
He held it between two upper fingers and inspected the polish. His lower left hand took the hilt, testing the balance—uselessly pretty but light enough for a courtier, so light enough for her.
He laid it near the empty shrine where moonlight would find the silver and make an invitation of it.
Then he opened the outer door, breathing in the garden-damp earth, old moss, and the faint sweetness of plum leaves under cold dew. Beneath it, from somewhere in the compound, rice steaming for men who deserved hunger more than breakfast.
Sukuna dismissed the guards.
One opened his mouth.
Sukuna looked at him.
The man remembered silence and left with the others.
Uraume remained by the corridor until Sukuna turned his head.
“No one enters.”
“As you command.”
“If you catch sight of her first, you will keep walking.”
Uraume’s expression did not change, but the frost in their lashes did. “As you wish, my lord.”
He watched them go.
Then he climbed up.
The room had been built for human bodies, which meant every beam objected to his size. Sukuna folded himself into the shadow above the lintel, one lower hand braced against the wall, one upper palm flattened to the ceiling beam. His back pressed against old wood, the second upper hand hung loose. His stomach mouth rested half-open beneath the fall of his robe, tasting dust, lamp oil, and the insult of waiting.
The sword lay below.
Moonlight made it pale.
Sukuna watched the hours thin by the lamp changes.
A guard was incessantly chatting with another somewhere beyond the hall.
Then a floorboard creaked.
A mouse crossed behind the altar and stopped when Sukuna’s lower eye shifted toward it.
Sensible creature.
It reversed and vanished through a crack.
The moon moved over the roof tiles.
Near the garden, a reed blind touched wood with a dry scrape.
Sukuna did not move.
Another scrape.
Then the faintest breath.
The woman came into view in the outer doorway.
She stood half inside the moonlight, half swallowed by the eaves' shadow, a small, damaged thing with one shoulder held higher than the other. Her hair tied back with a strip of torn cloth, loose strands clung to her cheeks. Her left foot wore a slipper with the heel crushed flat, while her right was bare.
Muddy footsteps marked the arch.
A cut had scabbed near her ankle.
The black robe hung badly on her frame. The red stitches crossed her sleeve, her side, and the torn fall near her knee. In the cold light, they looked even worse—the knots were placed for reach rather than beauty.
She paused at the threshold.
Her gaze went to the sword.
Every part of her stilled.
Sukuna watched her throat swallow.
She stood as if the blade had spoken her name from the altar.
Her fingers curled into her sleeve.
The scent of stolen oil came with her, faint now, worked into cloth and skin until it had soured under hunger and rain.
She had kept the vial, then, or spilled enough on herself that she had carried his property through half the compound for days.
His stomach mouth smiled.
The woman took a step, and bare foot touched the mat without sound.
Then another.
She limped more than before. Uraume’s almost-capture in the storehouse had cost her something.
Good. Pain taught honesty where rank failed.
She came close enough for the moon to show her face.
Hollow beneath the eyes, mouth chapped, cheek smudged with soot. She had not painted herself or arranged her sleeves for modesty. Some old court training still kept her chin lowered, though no one she respected remained to see it.
She knelt beside the altar.
Her hand hovered above the sword.
Sukuna waited.
Her fingers touched the hilt.
He dropped from the lintel. “Pathetic.”
She jerked and her shoulder struck the altar.
The sword clattered against the floor, then flashed into her hands as she scrambled back. Her bare foot slipped on the mat. She caught herself against the screen, breath breaking harshly enough to satisfy him.
Sukuna landed between her and the door to the garden.
Wood groaned beneath his weight.
Moonlight cut across his body: four arms, four eyes, markings over muscle and skin, the ruined side of his face pulled into something close to amusement. His stomach mouth opened wider as the woman stared at it, then at his hands, then at the door blocked by him.
She raised the sword.
Sukuna looked at it. “You picked that up backward.”
Her grip changed at once. Clumsy but obedient to correction even now.
That made his upper lip curl.
The sword tip lifted toward his throat. It wavered so badly that it threatened the shrine tablets more than him. Her hands were white around the hilt. Her shoulders shook under the red-stitched robe.
“Stay away.” Her voice came out scraped thin.
Sukuna stepped forward.
She stepped back and hit the screen. The wooden frame rattled against its track.
“Months,” he growled. “You have crawled under my floors, stolen from my stores, fouled my fragrance cabinet, frightened servants into incompetence, and carried half the infirmary into the pond.”
Her eyes darted toward the veranda.
He moved one lower arm, blocking that line.
The sword jerked higher.
“You come here for that.” He glanced at the blade. “Now you hold it as if it might bite into you.”
Her lips parted.
No answer.
Sukuna took another step.
The room shrank around her. Her body knew the truth before her face could pretend otherwise—knees bending, weight shifting toward the veranda, fingers failing around the hilt, then tightening again because the blade was still the only object in the room that offered her a choice.
A choice she feared.
Interesting.
He had thought her cowardice simple at first. Court women were full of it just as much as priests and governors. Soft hands, soft tongues. Silk over weak bones.
But this fear had roots running in opposite directions.
The old well.
The buried packets.
The stolen needle.
The prayer slip burned in his brazier.
She came looking for death the way starving dogs came to kitchen doors—low to the ground, ready to flee, offended by the hand that opened.
Sukuna’s lower mouth drew in the air—salt, fear, old oil, and blood from the scab at her ankle.
“Now you want to live?”
The snarl struck her harder than his step had.
The sword lowered a fraction.
Her gaze snapped to his face.
For one breath, she looked almost offended as if he had placed a hand over something private and dragged it into moonlight.
Good.
She feared him. Her body bent itself toward survival even while her hands kept reaching for death.
He saw the contradiction settle into her limbs.
Sukuna smiled.
She swung.
It was a miserable attempt.
The blade came at him in a wild arc that would have opened the air beside his shoulder if he had respected it enough to dodge. He caught the blade in the gap between two fingers.
Her arms jolted.
For a moment they were joined by the sword—he shaking hands at the hilt, his fingers at the blade, moonlight running silver between them.
Her eyes dropped to his fingers.
Then to the blade.
“You came to die,” he mused.
She pulled.
He held.
“You threaten me to leave alive.”
The sword trembled between them.
A tear slid down her cheek and fell onto the hilt.
She made no sound with it.
Sukuna leaned down.
All four of his eyes fixed on her face. His upper right hand reached toward her chin. His lower left hand shifted toward her wrist. Slow enough for her to see each choice, to show her the room had transformed into his palm.
“Do not bed me, my lord.”
For a moment Sukuna only stared.
Then he laughed.
The stupid creature thought that was why he had cornered her.
“I have not asked you to bed me.”
Her breath stopped.
Then her fingers opened.
The sword dropped.
Sukuna caught it by the hilt before it touched the floor.
She moved under him.
Her body folded low, almost to the mat, and she shot beneath his lower arm toward the open veranda. A court woman should not have been able to move that way. Hunger had made her narrow, and fear made her faster than sense.
His upper hand shot out.
Black cloth brushed his claws.
Red thread snapped.
For a breath, he had the sleeve.
For a breath, she was within reach.
Then the fabric tore free, and she was over the veranda lip, one bare foot striking stone, the other slipping so hard that any sane creature would have cried out.
She did not and vanished into the garden.
Sukuna straightened.
The shrine floor creaked around him, ruined by his weight.
In his upper claws, a red thread clung to black cloth.
Uraume appeared at the corridor entrance, still as winter.
Sukuna looked at the torn stitch caught on his nail.
Then toward the garden, where no branch moved.
Uraume waited.
His stomach mouth gave a low, displeased sound.
Sukuna closed his fist around the thread.
“Again.”
Ch 2 | Ch 4
A/N: The woman is living rice bowl to rice bowl, and his pompous ass is complaining about her not having her face beat like other court women.
Summary: Ryomen Sukuna meets the first human who is afraid of pain but not attached to living.
Warnings: Power Imbalance, Trueform Sukuna, Haien Era, Sukuna murdering people for fun while making fun of you not doing makeup.
Dividers by @cafekitsune.
Ch 2 | Ch 4
Ch 3: Catching Rats
By the time Sukuna decided to leave a blade where she would find it, the household had learned to fear empty things—rice bowls, hooks, fruit dishes, corners where a servant swore a lamp had been burning a breath ago.
The woman had become a flaw in the compound’s design. She slipped through shutters left open for smoke, vanished behind reed blinds, and folded herself beneath verandas where no court woman with rank would have lowered her body. She had the manners of a house spirit and the appetite of a rat.
Sukuna listened to the reports because killing the messengers had stopped improving them.
A guard from the west corridor claimed he had seen her at dusk near the storehouse, barefoot, hair like a scary waterfall, carrying a bundle in both arms. When he called out, she dropped the bundle and fled through the rain gutter.
The bundle contained two rice cakes, a cracked bowl, and a needle wrapped in cloth. The bowl had been washed, and the needle had blood dried at the eye.
The guard had been unable to explain why he lost sight of a limping woman between one pillar and the next. Sukuna opened him from shoulder to hip for the offense. The man kept apologizing until his mouth filled. Apologies, at least, remained abundant.
After that, Uraume took over.
They found more than the guards did. A strip of cloth snagged beneath a veranda plank. A red thread caught on a splinter by the north shrine. Thin footprints in spilled ash. A stolen rice ball tucked inside a sleeve and left uneaten until ants found it.
The girl had been moving through the compound with the care of someone afraid of disturbing others, then stole exactly what would make the servants sob with dread when the loss was discovered.
That irritated Sukuna.
A kitchen girl dropped a tray meant for Sukuna’s morning meal and froze over the broken lacquer, waiting for the roof to fall. By the time Uraume came through the room with the kitchen girl, the spilled rice had been swept into a neat mound, the lacquer shards wrapped in scrap paper, and one cake had disappeared.
No one had seen the woman.
A boy from the infirmary swore he had secured the medicine chest. By dawn, one drawer sat open by a finger’s width.
Uraume found the missing poison packets buried beneath the pond stones, unopened, pressed under mud and lotus roots with such fierce little care that the paper had barely torn. The boy wept when they were returned. The woman had taken them for herself, tried them, didn’t die, carried them, hidden them away from herself, then gone hungry long enough to steal chestnuts from the offering tray before sunrise.
Sukuna turned one packet between his upper fingers. “Does she intend to die or become a priest?”
Uraume lowered their eyes. “Neither with that discipline, my lord.”
His stomach mouth gave a short, wet huff.
---
The next incident was at the old well.
A serving girl screamed before dawn and dropped a basin of persimmons, splitting three of them across the stones. By the time the guards arrived, the well rope was swinging, the bucket lay on its side, and one persimmon had vanished. The serving girl insisted she had seen a sleeve vanish behind the low wall.
Uraume found prints in the mud.
One bare foot, the other in a torn slipper. The woman had been walking in a broken pattern, halted close to the well’s lip, and was then dragged herself backward in a mess of heel marks.
Sukuna stood watching the prints until the morning mist thinned.
She had come close enough to see the black water.
He had watched men die in heaps with less indecision, seen warriors crawl on split bellies toward dropped weapons and servants fling themselves under beams rather than be chosen for his table. Human fear had a common shape when stripped down—it reached away from pain, begged, soiled itself, lied.
This woman kept walking toward death and surviving the threshold.
She would not die no matter how much she tried.
That contradiction began to sour in his mouth.
---
The household suffered further.
Someone stole from the cabinet of imported fragrances.
The vial had come as tribute from a lord who had sent six men to carry gifts and one trembling nephew to apologize for the insult that had required gifts. Sukuna had kept the fragrance because the nephew stammered when naming its cost. It was a dense oil, dark in its small Chinese glass vial, meant for hair, sleeves, and the smug little rituals noble women performed before pretending refinement made them less edible.
It vanished from a locked chest.
Uraume found the chest unbroken.
Sukuna followed the scent of clove and aloeswood and a sweet bite beneath it, wasted in the damp dark beneath the women’s veranda.
The woman had spilled some on the boards, likely by accident. The reek lay over old dust and mouse droppings, expensive enough to ransom a minor official’s son, now soaked into a place where spiders lived.
He crouched beneath the veranda with one upper hand braced against a beam. His size made the space insulting. His lower right hand dragged a finger through the oil-stained dust.
The smear was fresh.
Beside it sat a rice bowl turned upside down.
The inside had been wiped clean.
“She was here before the last lamp burned down,” Uraume confirmed from the crawl opening.
Sukuna glanced toward the black seam between the foundation stones.
The woman had passed through a gap narrower than a dog’s ribs.
His stomach mouth clicked its teeth.
“Seal it.”
Uraume bowed. “At once.”
“Leave one gap.”
Their gaze lifted a fraction.
Sukuna stood, the beam above him cracking under one shoulder before he bothered to duck. “Rats return to familiar holes.”
They left the gap.
She did not return to it.
---
Instead, she appeared three nights later in the southern hall.
A priest saw her by the candle racks, sleeves tied back with a threading rope, trimming a lamp that had begun to smoke.
When he cried out, she startled so violently that hot oil splashed across her wrist.
He said she made no sound, dropped the trimmers, shoved two prayer slips into her sleeve, and ran.
Uraume found the slips beneath a rain barrel.
One was blank.
The other bore a clumsy line of writing, the brush too dry, the characters cramped by a hand that seemed to have once been trained better.
“No dawn comes late enough.”
Sukuna read it.
He burned it in the brazier and watched the paper curl.
Didn’t sleep that night.
---
After that, he saw her in pieces—a pale heel vanishing beneath a screen and a sleeve crossing the end of a corridor, one eye in the gap between two storehouse planks, gone before his lower hand split the wood.
He came close enough once to hear her breath.
It was the hour when servants carried basins through the east passage and kept their eyes on the floor. He had turned at the scent of stolen oil beneath the usual stink of lamp smoke and damp hemp. There, behind a screen painted with faded cranes, something trembled and went still.
Sukuna crossed the passage.
The servants flattened themselves to the boards.
He lifted the screen.
Nothing but a bowl of barley rice sat behind it, half-eaten, with two pickled plums arranged beside the rim.
He stared.
From above, in the narrow gloom between ceiling beams, a single grain of barley dropped onto his shoulder.
His upper right hand shot up.
Caught nothing but air.
A faint scrape sound was heard over the rafters.
Uraume arrived in time to see Sukuna put his fist through the painted cranes.
“My lord?”
“She climbs.”
Uraume’s gaze went to the ceiling. “Poorly, from the sound.”
“Poorly enough to escape you.”
Dead silence.
Frost crept along the nearest beam.
Sukuna smiled without humor. “Break the next thing before you freeze my roof.”
Uraume lowered their hand.
---
The woman remained uncaught.
The compound rearranged itself around her. Guards were posted near storerooms, then punished for losing sight of her near kitchens. Lamps were counted, then went missing to be found in rooms no one used.
The infirmary chest received a second lock. The second lock vanished.
A servant confessed to leaving a side door open after the woman placed a stolen persimmon on his sleeping mat, the fruit pierced with a sewing needle to pin a scrap of cloth over the bruise beginning to rot.
She stole food with one hand and covered servant mistakes with the other.
She mended her own robe with thread scavenged from ceremonial banners—red stitches crawled across black cloth, ugly and uneven, bright as small wounds.
Sukuna began to recognize the repairs too—a flash of red near the granary, red at the edge of a sleeve beneath the women’s veranda.
Red thread caught under his claw the night he struck through a screen and found only fabric, dust, and the lingering warmth of a body that had been there a breath before.
He held the thread close to one lower eye.
The oil scent clung to it.
He huffed a laugh.
The sound sent both guards at the far end of the corridor to their knees.
---
Sukuna looked toward the old shrine room.
It had belonged to whatever soft family had held the estate before him. Their ancestral papers had been removed, then torn, then fed to the fire when a surviving uncle tried to protest the indignity.
No one used the room now except servants sent to sweep around the empty altar and prisoner priests who whispered warding chants under their breath as if Sukuna’s hearing ended at the walls.
The room had one outer door, one inner screen, and a narrow veranda facing the garden.
Moonlight entered there before dawn.
A woman seeking an end would see anything left on the altar and would wait until no guard stood nearby.
By the deep hour before dawn, when even the worst men in the compound had run out of lies to tell themselves, Sukuna set the trap himself.
He chose a short sword from the tribute rack—silver inlay ran along the scabbard in a pattern of waves and cranes. The blade had never earned its ornament. Its former owner had carried it into Sukuna’s hall with shaking hands and died before drawing it.
Sukuna drew it now.
The edge caught the lamp flames.
He held it between two upper fingers and inspected the polish. His lower left hand took the hilt, testing the balance—uselessly pretty but light enough for a courtier, so light enough for her.
He laid it near the empty shrine where moonlight would find the silver and make an invitation of it.
Then he opened the outer door, breathing in the garden-damp earth, old moss, and the faint sweetness of plum leaves under cold dew. Beneath it, from somewhere in the compound, rice steaming for men who deserved hunger more than breakfast.
Sukuna dismissed the guards.
One opened his mouth.
Sukuna looked at him.
The man remembered silence and left with the others.
Uraume remained by the corridor until Sukuna turned his head.
“No one enters.”
“As you command.”
“If you catch sight of her first, you will keep walking.”
Uraume’s expression did not change, but the frost in their lashes did. “As you wish, my lord.”
He watched them go.
Then he climbed up.
The room had been built for human bodies, which meant every beam objected to his size. Sukuna folded himself into the shadow above the lintel, one lower hand braced against the wall, one upper palm flattened to the ceiling beam. His back pressed against old wood, the second upper hand hung loose. His stomach mouth rested half-open beneath the fall of his robe, tasting dust, lamp oil, and the insult of waiting.
The sword lay below.
Moonlight made it pale.
Sukuna watched the hours thin by the lamp changes.
A guard was incessantly chatting with another somewhere beyond the hall.
Then a floorboard creaked.
A mouse crossed behind the altar and stopped when Sukuna’s lower eye shifted toward it.
Sensible creature.
It reversed and vanished through a crack.
The moon moved over the roof tiles.
Near the garden, a reed blind touched wood with a dry scrape.
Sukuna did not move.
Another scrape.
Then the faintest breath.
The woman came into view in the outer doorway.
She stood half inside the moonlight, half swallowed by the eaves' shadow, a small, damaged thing with one shoulder held higher than the other. Her hair tied back with a strip of torn cloth, loose strands clung to her cheeks. Her left foot wore a slipper with the heel crushed flat, while her right was bare.
Muddy footsteps marked the arch.
A cut had scabbed near her ankle.
The black robe hung badly on her frame. The red stitches crossed her sleeve, her side, and the torn fall near her knee. In the cold light, they looked even worse—the knots were placed for reach rather than beauty.
She paused at the threshold.
Her gaze went to the sword.
Every part of her stilled.
Sukuna watched her throat swallow.
She stood as if the blade had spoken her name from the altar.
Her fingers curled into her sleeve.
The scent of stolen oil came with her, faint now, worked into cloth and skin until it had soured under hunger and rain.
She had kept the vial, then, or spilled enough on herself that she had carried his property through half the compound for days.
His stomach mouth smiled.
The woman took a step, and bare foot touched the mat without sound.
Then another.
She limped more than before. Uraume’s almost-capture in the storehouse had cost her something.
Good. Pain taught honesty where rank failed.
She came close enough for the moon to show her face.
Hollow beneath the eyes, mouth chapped, cheek smudged with soot. She had not painted herself or arranged her sleeves for modesty. Some old court training still kept her chin lowered, though no one she respected remained to see it.
She knelt beside the altar.
Her hand hovered above the sword.
Sukuna waited.
Her fingers touched the hilt.
He dropped from the lintel. “Pathetic.”
She jerked and her shoulder struck the altar.
The sword clattered against the floor, then flashed into her hands as she scrambled back. Her bare foot slipped on the mat. She caught herself against the screen, breath breaking harshly enough to satisfy him.
Sukuna landed between her and the door to the garden.
Wood groaned beneath his weight.
Moonlight cut across his body: four arms, four eyes, markings over muscle and skin, the ruined side of his face pulled into something close to amusement. His stomach mouth opened wider as the woman stared at it, then at his hands, then at the door blocked by him.
She raised the sword.
Sukuna looked at it. “You picked that up backward.”
Her grip changed at once. Clumsy but obedient to correction even now.
That made his upper lip curl.
The sword tip lifted toward his throat. It wavered so badly that it threatened the shrine tablets more than him. Her hands were white around the hilt. Her shoulders shook under the red-stitched robe.
“Stay away.” Her voice came out scraped thin.
Sukuna stepped forward.
She stepped back and hit the screen. The wooden frame rattled against its track.
“Months,” he growled. “You have crawled under my floors, stolen from my stores, fouled my fragrance cabinet, frightened servants into incompetence, and carried half the infirmary into the pond.”
Her eyes darted toward the veranda.
He moved one lower arm, blocking that line.
The sword jerked higher.
“You come here for that.” He glanced at the blade. “Now you hold it as if it might bite into you.”
Her lips parted.
No answer.
Sukuna took another step.
The room shrank around her. Her body knew the truth before her face could pretend otherwise—knees bending, weight shifting toward the veranda, fingers failing around the hilt, then tightening again because the blade was still the only object in the room that offered her a choice.
A choice she feared.
Interesting.
He had thought her cowardice simple at first. Court women were full of it just as much as priests and governors. Soft hands, soft tongues. Silk over weak bones.
But this fear had roots running in opposite directions.
The old well.
The buried packets.
The stolen needle.
The prayer slip burned in his brazier.
She came looking for death the way starving dogs came to kitchen doors—low to the ground, ready to flee, offended by the hand that opened.
Sukuna’s lower mouth drew in the air—salt, fear, old oil, and blood from the scab at her ankle.
“Now you want to live?”
The snarl struck her harder than his step had.
The sword lowered a fraction.
Her gaze snapped to his face.
For one breath, she looked almost offended as if he had placed a hand over something private and dragged it into moonlight.
Good.
She feared him. Her body bent itself toward survival even while her hands kept reaching for death.
He saw the contradiction settle into her limbs.
Sukuna smiled.
She swung.
It was a miserable attempt.
The blade came at him in a wild arc that would have opened the air beside his shoulder if he had respected it enough to dodge. He caught the blade in the gap between two fingers.
Her arms jolted.
For a moment they were joined by the sword—he shaking hands at the hilt, his fingers at the blade, moonlight running silver between them.
Her eyes dropped to his fingers.
Then to the blade.
“You came to die,” he mused.
She pulled.
He held.
“You threaten me to leave alive.”
The sword trembled between them.
A tear slid down her cheek and fell onto the hilt.
She made no sound with it.
Sukuna leaned down.
All four of his eyes fixed on her face. His upper right hand reached toward her chin. His lower left hand shifted toward her wrist. Slow enough for her to see each choice, to show her the room had transformed into his palm.
“Do not bed me, my lord.”
For a moment Sukuna only stared.
Then he laughed.
The stupid creature thought that was why he had cornered her.
“I have not asked you to bed me.”
Her breath stopped.
Then her fingers opened.
The sword dropped.
Sukuna caught it by the hilt before it touched the floor.
She moved under him.
Her body folded low, almost to the mat, and she shot beneath his lower arm toward the open veranda. A court woman should not have been able to move that way. Hunger had made her narrow, and fear made her faster than sense.
His upper hand shot out.
Black cloth brushed his claws.
Red thread snapped.
For a breath, he had the sleeve.
For a breath, she was within reach.
Then the fabric tore free, and she was over the veranda lip, one bare foot striking stone, the other slipping so hard that any sane creature would have cried out.
She did not and vanished into the garden.
Sukuna straightened.
The shrine floor creaked around him, ruined by his weight.
In his upper claws, a red thread clung to black cloth.
Uraume appeared at the corridor entrance, still as winter.
Sukuna looked at the torn stitch caught on his nail.
Then toward the garden, where no branch moved.
Uraume waited.
His stomach mouth gave a low, displeased sound.
Sukuna closed his fist around the thread.
“Again.”
Ch 2 | Ch 4
A/N: The woman is living rice bowl to rice bowl, and his pompous ass is complaining about her not having her face beat like other court women.
Summary: Ryomen Sukuna meets the first human who is afraid of pain but not attached to living.
Warnings: Power Imbalance, Trueform Sukuna, Haien Era, Sukuna murdering people for fun while making fun of you not doing makeup.
Dividers by @cafekitsune.
Ch 2 | Ch 4
Ch 3: Catching Rats
By the time Sukuna decided to leave a blade where she would find it, the household had learned to fear empty things—rice bowls, hooks, fruit dishes, corners where a servant swore a lamp had been burning a breath ago.
The woman had become a flaw in the compound’s design. She slipped through shutters left open for smoke, vanished behind reed blinds, and folded herself beneath verandas where no court woman with rank would have lowered her body. She had the manners of a house spirit and the appetite of a rat.
Sukuna listened to the reports because killing the messengers had stopped improving them.
A guard from the west corridor claimed he had seen her at dusk near the storehouse, barefoot, hair like a scary waterfall, carrying a bundle in both arms. When he called out, she dropped the bundle and fled through the rain gutter.
The bundle contained two rice cakes, a cracked bowl, and a needle wrapped in cloth. The bowl had been washed, and the needle had blood dried at the eye.
The guard had been unable to explain why he lost sight of a limping woman between one pillar and the next. Sukuna opened him from shoulder to hip for the offense. The man kept apologizing until his mouth filled. Apologies, at least, remained abundant.
After that, Uraume took over.
They found more than the guards did. A strip of cloth snagged beneath a veranda plank. A red thread caught on a splinter by the north shrine. Thin footprints in spilled ash. A stolen rice ball tucked inside a sleeve and left uneaten until ants found it.
The girl had been moving through the compound with the care of someone afraid of disturbing others, then stole exactly what would make the servants sob with dread when the loss was discovered.
That irritated Sukuna.
A kitchen girl dropped a tray meant for Sukuna’s morning meal and froze over the broken lacquer, waiting for the roof to fall. By the time Uraume came through the room with the kitchen girl, the spilled rice had been swept into a neat mound, the lacquer shards wrapped in scrap paper, and one cake had disappeared.
No one had seen the woman.
A boy from the infirmary swore he had secured the medicine chest. By dawn, one drawer sat open by a finger’s width.
Uraume found the missing poison packets buried beneath the pond stones, unopened, pressed under mud and lotus roots with such fierce little care that the paper had barely torn. The boy wept when they were returned. The woman had taken them for herself, tried them, didn’t die, carried them, hidden them away from herself, then gone hungry long enough to steal chestnuts from the offering tray before sunrise.
Sukuna turned one packet between his upper fingers. “Does she intend to die or become a priest?”
Uraume lowered their eyes. “Neither with that discipline, my lord.”
His stomach mouth gave a short, wet huff.
---
The next incident was at the old well.
A serving girl screamed before dawn and dropped a basin of persimmons, splitting three of them across the stones. By the time the guards arrived, the well rope was swinging, the bucket lay on its side, and one persimmon had vanished. The serving girl insisted she had seen a sleeve vanish behind the low wall.
Uraume found prints in the mud.
One bare foot, the other in a torn slipper. The woman had been walking in a broken pattern, halted close to the well’s lip, and was then dragged herself backward in a mess of heel marks.
Sukuna stood watching the prints until the morning mist thinned.
She had come close enough to see the black water.
He had watched men die in heaps with less indecision, seen warriors crawl on split bellies toward dropped weapons and servants fling themselves under beams rather than be chosen for his table. Human fear had a common shape when stripped down—it reached away from pain, begged, soiled itself, lied.
This woman kept walking toward death and surviving the threshold.
She would not die no matter how much she tried.
That contradiction began to sour in his mouth.
---
The household suffered further.
Someone stole from the cabinet of imported fragrances.
The vial had come as tribute from a lord who had sent six men to carry gifts and one trembling nephew to apologize for the insult that had required gifts. Sukuna had kept the fragrance because the nephew stammered when naming its cost. It was a dense oil, dark in its small Chinese glass vial, meant for hair, sleeves, and the smug little rituals noble women performed before pretending refinement made them less edible.
It vanished from a locked chest.
Uraume found the chest unbroken.
Sukuna followed the scent of clove and aloeswood and a sweet bite beneath it, wasted in the damp dark beneath the women’s veranda.
The woman had spilled some on the boards, likely by accident. The reek lay over old dust and mouse droppings, expensive enough to ransom a minor official’s son, now soaked into a place where spiders lived.
He crouched beneath the veranda with one upper hand braced against a beam. His size made the space insulting. His lower right hand dragged a finger through the oil-stained dust.
The smear was fresh.
Beside it sat a rice bowl turned upside down.
The inside had been wiped clean.
“She was here before the last lamp burned down,” Uraume confirmed from the crawl opening.
Sukuna glanced toward the black seam between the foundation stones.
The woman had passed through a gap narrower than a dog’s ribs.
His stomach mouth clicked its teeth.
“Seal it.”
Uraume bowed. “At once.”
“Leave one gap.”
Their gaze lifted a fraction.
Sukuna stood, the beam above him cracking under one shoulder before he bothered to duck. “Rats return to familiar holes.”
They left the gap.
She did not return to it.
---
Instead, she appeared three nights later in the southern hall.
A priest saw her by the candle racks, sleeves tied back with a threading rope, trimming a lamp that had begun to smoke.
When he cried out, she startled so violently that hot oil splashed across her wrist.
He said she made no sound, dropped the trimmers, shoved two prayer slips into her sleeve, and ran.
Uraume found the slips beneath a rain barrel.
One was blank.
The other bore a clumsy line of writing, the brush too dry, the characters cramped by a hand that seemed to have once been trained better.
“No dawn comes late enough.”
Sukuna read it.
He burned it in the brazier and watched the paper curl.
Didn’t sleep that night.
---
After that, he saw her in pieces—a pale heel vanishing beneath a screen and a sleeve crossing the end of a corridor, one eye in the gap between two storehouse planks, gone before his lower hand split the wood.
He came close enough once to hear her breath.
It was the hour when servants carried basins through the east passage and kept their eyes on the floor. He had turned at the scent of stolen oil beneath the usual stink of lamp smoke and damp hemp. There, behind a screen painted with faded cranes, something trembled and went still.
Sukuna crossed the passage.
The servants flattened themselves to the boards.
He lifted the screen.
Nothing but a bowl of barley rice sat behind it, half-eaten, with two pickled plums arranged beside the rim.
He stared.
From above, in the narrow gloom between ceiling beams, a single grain of barley dropped onto his shoulder.
His upper right hand shot up.
Caught nothing but air.
A faint scrape sound was heard over the rafters.
Uraume arrived in time to see Sukuna put his fist through the painted cranes.
“My lord?”
“She climbs.”
Uraume’s gaze went to the ceiling. “Poorly, from the sound.”
“Poorly enough to escape you.”
Dead silence.
Frost crept along the nearest beam.
Sukuna smiled without humor. “Break the next thing before you freeze my roof.”
Uraume lowered their hand.
---
The woman remained uncaught.
The compound rearranged itself around her. Guards were posted near storerooms, then punished for losing sight of her near kitchens. Lamps were counted, then went missing to be found in rooms no one used.
The infirmary chest received a second lock. The second lock vanished.
A servant confessed to leaving a side door open after the woman placed a stolen persimmon on his sleeping mat, the fruit pierced with a sewing needle to pin a scrap of cloth over the bruise beginning to rot.
She stole food with one hand and covered servant mistakes with the other.
She mended her own robe with thread scavenged from ceremonial banners—red stitches crawled across black cloth, ugly and uneven, bright as small wounds.
Sukuna began to recognize the repairs too—a flash of red near the granary, red at the edge of a sleeve beneath the women’s veranda.
Red thread caught under his claw the night he struck through a screen and found only fabric, dust, and the lingering warmth of a body that had been there a breath before.
He held the thread close to one lower eye.
The oil scent clung to it.
He huffed a laugh.
The sound sent both guards at the far end of the corridor to their knees.
---
Sukuna looked toward the old shrine room.
It had belonged to whatever soft family had held the estate before him. Their ancestral papers had been removed, then torn, then fed to the fire when a surviving uncle tried to protest the indignity.
No one used the room now except servants sent to sweep around the empty altar and prisoner priests who whispered warding chants under their breath as if Sukuna’s hearing ended at the walls.
The room had one outer door, one inner screen, and a narrow veranda facing the garden.
Moonlight entered there before dawn.
A woman seeking an end would see anything left on the altar and would wait until no guard stood nearby.
By the deep hour before dawn, when even the worst men in the compound had run out of lies to tell themselves, Sukuna set the trap himself.
He chose a short sword from the tribute rack—silver inlay ran along the scabbard in a pattern of waves and cranes. The blade had never earned its ornament. Its former owner had carried it into Sukuna’s hall with shaking hands and died before drawing it.
Sukuna drew it now.
The edge caught the lamp flames.
He held it between two upper fingers and inspected the polish. His lower left hand took the hilt, testing the balance—uselessly pretty but light enough for a courtier, so light enough for her.
He laid it near the empty shrine where moonlight would find the silver and make an invitation of it.
Then he opened the outer door, breathing in the garden-damp earth, old moss, and the faint sweetness of plum leaves under cold dew. Beneath it, from somewhere in the compound, rice steaming for men who deserved hunger more than breakfast.
Sukuna dismissed the guards.
One opened his mouth.
Sukuna looked at him.
The man remembered silence and left with the others.
Uraume remained by the corridor until Sukuna turned his head.
“No one enters.”
“As you command.”
“If you catch sight of her first, you will keep walking.”
Uraume’s expression did not change, but the frost in their lashes did. “As you wish, my lord.”
He watched them go.
Then he climbed up.
The room had been built for human bodies, which meant every beam objected to his size. Sukuna folded himself into the shadow above the lintel, one lower hand braced against the wall, one upper palm flattened to the ceiling beam. His back pressed against old wood, the second upper hand hung loose. His stomach mouth rested half-open beneath the fall of his robe, tasting dust, lamp oil, and the insult of waiting.
The sword lay below.
Moonlight made it pale.
Sukuna watched the hours thin by the lamp changes.
A guard was incessantly chatting with another somewhere beyond the hall.
Then a floorboard creaked.
A mouse crossed behind the altar and stopped when Sukuna’s lower eye shifted toward it.
Sensible creature.
It reversed and vanished through a crack.
The moon moved over the roof tiles.
Near the garden, a reed blind touched wood with a dry scrape.
Sukuna did not move.
Another scrape.
Then the faintest breath.
The woman came into view in the outer doorway.
She stood half inside the moonlight, half swallowed by the eaves' shadow, a small, damaged thing with one shoulder held higher than the other. Her hair tied back with a strip of torn cloth, loose strands clung to her cheeks. Her left foot wore a slipper with the heel crushed flat, while her right was bare.
Muddy footsteps marked the arch.
A cut had scabbed near her ankle.
The black robe hung badly on her frame. The red stitches crossed her sleeve, her side, and the torn fall near her knee. In the cold light, they looked even worse—the knots were placed for reach rather than beauty.
She paused at the threshold.
Her gaze went to the sword.
Every part of her stilled.
Sukuna watched her throat swallow.
She stood as if the blade had spoken her name from the altar.
Her fingers curled into her sleeve.
The scent of stolen oil came with her, faint now, worked into cloth and skin until it had soured under hunger and rain.
She had kept the vial, then, or spilled enough on herself that she had carried his property through half the compound for days.
His stomach mouth smiled.
The woman took a step, and bare foot touched the mat without sound.
Then another.
She limped more than before. Uraume’s almost-capture in the storehouse had cost her something.
Good. Pain taught honesty where rank failed.
She came close enough for the moon to show her face.
Hollow beneath the eyes, mouth chapped, cheek smudged with soot. She had not painted herself or arranged her sleeves for modesty. Some old court training still kept her chin lowered, though no one she respected remained to see it.
She knelt beside the altar.
Her hand hovered above the sword.
Sukuna waited.
Her fingers touched the hilt.
He dropped from the lintel. “Pathetic.”
She jerked and her shoulder struck the altar.
The sword clattered against the floor, then flashed into her hands as she scrambled back. Her bare foot slipped on the mat. She caught herself against the screen, breath breaking harshly enough to satisfy him.
Sukuna landed between her and the door to the garden.
Wood groaned beneath his weight.
Moonlight cut across his body: four arms, four eyes, markings over muscle and skin, the ruined side of his face pulled into something close to amusement. His stomach mouth opened wider as the woman stared at it, then at his hands, then at the door blocked by him.
She raised the sword.
Sukuna looked at it. “You picked that up backward.”
Her grip changed at once. Clumsy but obedient to correction even now.
That made his upper lip curl.
The sword tip lifted toward his throat. It wavered so badly that it threatened the shrine tablets more than him. Her hands were white around the hilt. Her shoulders shook under the red-stitched robe.
“Stay away.” Her voice came out scraped thin.
Sukuna stepped forward.
She stepped back and hit the screen. The wooden frame rattled against its track.
“Months,” he growled. “You have crawled under my floors, stolen from my stores, fouled my fragrance cabinet, frightened servants into incompetence, and carried half the infirmary into the pond.”
Her eyes darted toward the veranda.
He moved one lower arm, blocking that line.
The sword jerked higher.
“You come here for that.” He glanced at the blade. “Now you hold it as if it might bite into you.”
Her lips parted.
No answer.
Sukuna took another step.
The room shrank around her. Her body knew the truth before her face could pretend otherwise—knees bending, weight shifting toward the veranda, fingers failing around the hilt, then tightening again because the blade was still the only object in the room that offered her a choice.
A choice she feared.
Interesting.
He had thought her cowardice simple at first. Court women were full of it just as much as priests and governors. Soft hands, soft tongues. Silk over weak bones.
But this fear had roots running in opposite directions.
The old well.
The buried packets.
The stolen needle.
The prayer slip burned in his brazier.
She came looking for death the way starving dogs came to kitchen doors—low to the ground, ready to flee, offended by the hand that opened.
Sukuna’s lower mouth drew in the air—salt, fear, old oil, and blood from the scab at her ankle.
“Now you want to live?”
The snarl struck her harder than his step had.
The sword lowered a fraction.
Her gaze snapped to his face.
For one breath, she looked almost offended as if he had placed a hand over something private and dragged it into moonlight.
Good.
She feared him. Her body bent itself toward survival even while her hands kept reaching for death.
He saw the contradiction settle into her limbs.
Sukuna smiled.
She swung.
It was a miserable attempt.
The blade came at him in a wild arc that would have opened the air beside his shoulder if he had respected it enough to dodge. He caught the blade in the gap between two fingers.
Her arms jolted.
For a moment they were joined by the sword—he shaking hands at the hilt, his fingers at the blade, moonlight running silver between them.
Her eyes dropped to his fingers.
Then to the blade.
“You came to die,” he mused.
She pulled.
He held.
“You threaten me to leave alive.”
The sword trembled between them.
A tear slid down her cheek and fell onto the hilt.
She made no sound with it.
Sukuna leaned down.
All four of his eyes fixed on her face. His upper right hand reached toward her chin. His lower left hand shifted toward her wrist. Slow enough for her to see each choice, to show her the room had transformed into his palm.
“Do not bed me, my lord.”
For a moment Sukuna only stared.
Then he laughed.
The stupid creature thought that was why he had cornered her.
“I have not asked you to bed me.”
Her breath stopped.
Then her fingers opened.
The sword dropped.
Sukuna caught it by the hilt before it touched the floor.
She moved under him.
Her body folded low, almost to the mat, and she shot beneath his lower arm toward the open veranda. A court woman should not have been able to move that way. Hunger had made her narrow, and fear made her faster than sense.
His upper hand shot out.
Black cloth brushed his claws.
Red thread snapped.
For a breath, he had the sleeve.
For a breath, she was within reach.
Then the fabric tore free, and she was over the veranda lip, one bare foot striking stone, the other slipping so hard that any sane creature would have cried out.
She did not and vanished into the garden.
Sukuna straightened.
The shrine floor creaked around him, ruined by his weight.
In his upper claws, a red thread clung to black cloth.
Uraume appeared at the corridor entrance, still as winter.
Sukuna looked at the torn stitch caught on his nail.
Then toward the garden, where no branch moved.
Uraume waited.
His stomach mouth gave a low, displeased sound.
Sukuna closed his fist around the thread.
“Again.”
Ch 2 | Ch 4
A/N: The woman is living rice bowl to rice bowl, and his pompous ass is complaining about her not having her face beat like other court women.
Lawyer!Megumi Fushiguro x Editor-in-Chief!Pregnant Reader
Summary: You find your husband's search history.
Tags: Soft!Megumi · Slice Of Life · Fluff · Established Marriage · Pregnancy After Infertility · Implied Fertility Treatments · Pregnancy Anxiety · Mentions Of Negative Tests · Early To Mid-30s Megumi And Reader · Alaska Move · Big Built Megumi · Domestic Caretaking · Emotional Crying · Food · Nausea Mention.
A/N: Idk, I was bored and wrote this in December '25 but never got around to posting it because I haven't been well since and also lost the plot like five times while editing.
Playlist
Things people can do in Alaska with their pregnant wife.
You stop behind the couch with one hand braced under your belly, the other still holding the empty water glass you came to refill.
Megumi is asleep under the low amber lamp, his laptop open on the coffee table, one large hand hanging off the edge of the cushion. He’s still in his dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearm, tie pulled loose and abandoned somewhere near his collarbone, glasses sit crooked on his face.
He snores mildly due to the crooked angle, which he would deny in court.
You look back at the screen.
He has six tabs open.
Alaska Railroad, Girdwood resort, prenatal massage, Northern Lights heated dome, wildlife conservation drive-through, best calm-water coastal cruises for motion sickness.
Your throat closes.
He had spent dinner pretending to care about the acquisition scandal your imprint was currently circling like vultures. He had cut your salmon into smaller pieces without asking, slid your water closer every time you forgot to drink it, and looked tired when he smiled at you, but you’d thought it was work.
You hadn’t known he was planning how to make Alaska soft for you.
The article is still open below the search bar.
Low-impact comfort, beautiful scenery without grueling logistics, heated cabins, wide windows, warm drinks, and places where she can stay inside the car if she gets tired.
Your hand moves to scroll.
The Alaska Railroad—a heated train car with panoramic windows, no bumpy roads, and no hours on your feet.
Girdwood—aerial tram, fire pits, indoor saltwater pool, avoid hot tubs, book prenatal massage.
Fairbanks—heated dome under the northern lights, so she can watch from bed.
You press your lips together, but it doesn’t help.
Megumi shifts at the whimper you fail to swallow. His brows draw together before his eyes open.
He looks at your face. “What happened?”
You shake your head.
He’s upright in a second, glasses pushed up into his hair. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Cramping?”
“No, Megumi.”
“Dizzy?”
“No.”
He reaches for you anyway, palm careful against your side, then the underside of your belly. “Then why are you crying?”
You set the glass down before you drop it. “You looked really sweet sleeping.”
He stares at you.
You sniff.
His mouth flattens. “That’s creepy.”
A laugh breaks out of you. “You looked very sweet, husband.”
He stares at you confused.
You wipe under your eye with the heel of your hand, and he catches your wrist before you can be rough with your own face, his thumb rubs softly over your skin.
The baby shifts, a slow roll under your ribs.
Megumi feels it.
Neither of you speaks.
That’s the thing nobody had told you about finally getting what you begged science, money, bloodwork, calendars, injections, and your own tired hope to give you after years of trying. Joy would not arrive alone but would bring fear with it in the nursery boxes you were both too superstitious to fully unpack. It slept between you when the baby was too still for thirty minutes.
Megumi lowers his forehead against your belly.
“Hey,” he murmurs there. “Don’t scare your mother.”
The baby kicks him.
You laugh again.
He looks up at you, offended in the sleepy, handsome way that made you marry him. “She’s already disrespectful.”
“She gets that from her father.”
“I’m a respected attorney.”
“You fell asleep researching.”
His face changes. It’s not noticeable.
But you know him.
You pretend not to see the laptop. “Come to bed.”
He closes the laptop with one hand and stands, heavier than he used to be, broader through the shoulders, softer only where your hands liked him best. Then he bends, picks up your glass, and guides you toward the kitchen first.
“Water,” he says.
In the kitchen, you drink because he watches until you do.
The next morning, you dress like you have no idea—a nice long wool coat, a loose turtleneck, hair pulled back, gold earrings, a long wool skirt, and boots that Megumi had already checked twice for traction.
He comes out of the bedroom holding a scarf.
“No, I look editorial.”
“You look cold.”
“I’m seven months pregnant and still better dressed than half the state.”
“You’ll be warm.”
He wraps the scarf around you himself, careful with your hair, then crouches to zip your boot when the zipper catches.
You look down at your stern, overbuilt husband on one knee in the entryway.
Your chest does that dangerous thing again.
He glances up.
Then winks.
Your soul leaves your body. “Did you just—"
“No one will believe you.”
You smack his shoulder with your glove.
He catches your hand, kisses the knuckles through the wool, then stands.
Later, the train is warm.
Megumi has gotten you seats by the window, tea in a paper cup, ginger candies in his coat pocket, a folded blanket he bought outside in case you got cold, and a printed reservation schedule marked in his neat handwriting.
You sit beside him and watch snow catch on black spruce, mountains shouldering up through the morning, the whole world cold and enormous while your husband keeps one hand under your coat, palm spread over your belly.
The baby kicks after the train starts moving.
Megumi looks down.
“She likes it,” you say.
He smiles that small smile and kisses the side of your head
You lean your head against his arm.
After a while, he opens his coat so you can tuck closer without asking. His chin rests briefly on your hair. Outside, Alaska rolls past in white and blue and dark green, and inside, Megumi checks your tea temperature before handing it back.
You take one sip.
Perfect.
At the wildlife conservation center, he drives the loop slowly enough that a four-year-old toddler in a stroller passes you.
“Megumi.”
“You said your back hurt.”
“A moose is judging us.”
“The moose can mind his business.”
You watch bison move through snow, a brown bear sleeps in the distance like a dropped coat, and wolves pace beyond the fence, pale and elegant and uninterested in the people whispering from warm cars.
Megumi keeps the heater low because you said the air made you nauseous when it got too dry. He opens your Sailor Boy Pilot Bread packet with his teeth when your gloves get in the way, then holds the bag out without looking, eyes on the road.
Then you take one and hold another toward him.
Megumi glances over once, only long enough to see what you’re offering, then opens his mouth. His eyes go back to the road before his teeth close around it.
You chew faster than he does.
By the time he finishes, you’re already digging around in the bag again.
Another for you.
Another shoved toward his mouth.
He takes it with the same tired patience people use around unstable explosives.
Snow crunches softly under the tires as the sanctuary road curves ahead. Megumi keeps one hand steady on the wheel between bites, shoulders forward, attention fixed like the whole world has narrowed to the road, your seatbelt, and the baby in your belly.
You finish yours first again.
Then immediately pick another cracker out and push it against his mouth.
You feed him half the packet over the next ten minutes through pure insistence. Crackers, then dried fruits, then the weird little ginger-infused wild berry jam you bought at the station because the old woman at the register said they helped with nausea.
Megumi eats every single thing you hand him, his jaw moving slowly while his attention stays fixed on the icy road ahead.
Then you stare at him again.
“What?” he says finally.
“You’ll survive in captivity.”
He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“You eat whatever I hand you with no questions. Totally domesticated.”
He flings your blanket over your head. “Nap time.”
You remove it with a chuckle, stare at the side of his face while he drives, at the small crease between his brows, at the careful set of his mouth, at the man who packed three kinds of snack foods and still forgot to eat until you put food directly against his lips.
“What?” he asks, quieter this time.
You reach over and brush a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “You’re my home, Megumi.”
His hand tightens on the wheel.
For a second, he says nothing.
Then he pulls into the next viewing spot, parks, and turns to you. “We moved here because you wanted quiet.”
You nod, because you had wanted distance from elevators full of people who stared too long, from office bathrooms where you had cried over negative tests, from family calls that turned every question into a pressure point. You wanted snow, locked doors, slow mornings, a place where no one knew how long it had taken.
Megumi looks down at your joined hands.
“I can’t make your head quiet,” his voice softens. “I know that.”
Your mouth trembles before you can stop it.
His thumb moves once over your knuckles.
“But I can make the day smaller.” His voice stays low, almost careful. “I can check the road before you wake up. Keep food where you can reach it. Find places where you don’t have to stand too long.”
He glances briefly toward the back seat, where your blanket and spare gloves sit folded beside the bag he packed without mentioning it.
“I can bring you home the second you’re tired,” he tells you. “Even if you say you’re fine.”
You laugh once, but it comes out ruined, and then you’re crying.
Megumi unbuckles his seatbelt, turns as much as the car allows and reaches for your face, thumb catching the tear before it gets past your cheek.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s the pregnancy."
“I know.” His hand stays on your cheek. “I read the books.”
Outside, the moose keeps chewing through a mouthful of brush, calm and enormous and uninterested in the fact that your husband has just cracked your chest open in a parked car.
You cover his hand where it rests against your face. “You make me feel like we’re going to be okay.”
His expression shifts into something small and full of hope.
Then he leans across the console and kisses you, slow and careful.
When he pulls back, his ears are pink. “You knew about the search.”
You keep your face very still. “I don’t know what search you mean.”
Megumi stares at you.
You stare back with grave composure.
His thumb brushes under your eye again. “You’re bad at lying.”
You look out the windshield, pretending to study the moose. “I only saw the title.”
“That’s the worst part.”
You press your lips together.
He watches you try not to smile, and something in his face loosens. “I wanted to get it right.”
The sentence is low enough that it almost disappears under the hum of the heater.
You look back at him.
Megumi’s gaze has dropped to your belly again. “You’ve had to be careful for months.”
Your hand finds his over the curve of your coat.
The baby shifts under both of your palms.
Megumi breathes out slowly, as if she answered him.
“You got it right,” you say.
He nods, eyes still too soft.
Then he turns back, puts the car in drive, and eases out of the viewing spot.
A few minutes later, when the lodge comes into view and you spot the low orange flicker of fire pits through the snow, you gasp a little too early.
Megumi doesn’t even look at you. “Awful acting.”
You smile into your scarf. “I was surprised.”
This time, his mouth moves first, almost a smile.
“Stay there,” he says when he parks.
You do, watching him come around to your side through the windshield. He opens your door, blocks the wind with his body, and wraps the blanket around your shoulders before your boots touch the ground.
A/N: I can be persuaded to do a Yuji one in the same AU.
Masterlist
Images are from Anime (S3)/Pinterest; the sparkling divider is from @pixopix, the trees are from @firefly-graphics, and the engagement banner is from @saradika-graphics.
