Itadori Yuji and Ryoumen Sakuna Character Study-ish
synopsis: In the beginning, Itadori feels nothing but mild irritation with his situation. It is as if there is always a forgotten word on the tip of his tongue. The sensation of wandering into a room only to promptly forget why he had made his journey there in the first place haunts his waking hours. Itadori decides that he can live with it; the sensation doesn’t really affect his day too much. It is almost as if he is unchanged by his hasty actions.
themes: transformation, changing tenses, character study, mild body horror, religious imagery and symbolism, food, canon related, canon divergence
In the beginning, Itadori feels nothing but mild irritation with his situation. It is as if there is always a forgotten word on the tip of his tongue. The sensation of wandering into a room only to promptly forget why he had made his journey there in the first place haunts his waking hours. Itadori decides he can live with it; the sensation doesn’t really affect his day too much. It is almost as if he is unchanged by his hasty actions.
After the second finger, Itadori realises that no food satiates him. After the third finger, he starts doubling his portions at mealtimes. After the fourth, he finds himself unbearably ravenous at all times but trapped in a hellish cycle of craving without satisfaction. It is almost as though all food loses texture and taste. The mere thought of his favourite meatballs turns his stomach. But, when he gorges himself on plump round green speckled pumpkins and crisp concertinaed cabbages, it is almost as though he can taste the water and soil from which they sprung. Almost as though Itadori can smell and taste the countless hours of sunshine and toil that have grown each precocious jewel of a vegetable. Itadori feasts on toppling mounds of hatsushimo rice (much to Gojo’s chagrin) and feels his teeth crunch through the first frosts that long ago coated each grain. His mouth aches for the burn of sake, even though he has no memory of ever drinking a single drop. Meat begins to turn ashy in his mouth, apart from the succulent marbled fat of Hida beef. He thinks that it doesn't taste that much different from all the cuts of meat eaten before, but something about it makes his heart beat faster, makes his head spin. Eating Hida beef transports him to the sensation of running through the mountains. As if snow is melting in his hands and the sharp pain of the cold is waking him - awakening him.
Soon Itadori’s head begins to ache, and he finds his vision blurring. At first, Itadori panics that he needs glasses but soon realises that he can see perfectly fine most of the time. The swirling of shapes and wobbling distance is infrequent. But, when the sound of chants that he instinctively recognises as shōmyō, low and groaning, course up his spine, he feels his eye throb, pulsating as if it were bursting from his skull. A deep tugging of his optic nerve deep within his head, twisting and swaying, causing his eye to shiver within the globe of its socket. The meat of his face swells and burns under even the lightest of touches. He knows there is fettering darkness under the shining stretched skin. Itadori dreams of his eyes expanding and ever-multiplying like cells under a microscope, or as if trapped within a kaleidoscope, turning round and round, positions morphing and glinting in the light of an unseen but felt fire. One night, Itadori dreams of Sukuna’s face rising from the dirt of the earth. So many unblinking eyes stare out at him from the darkness, and suddenly the situation is overwhelmingly clear to Itadori; the stabbing pains are the plates of his skull adjusting, moving and sliding over each other tectonically and dangerously. A bodyquake building at the base of Itadori’s neck, that will shake him and make room for those all-seeing eyes.
One night, Itadori’s dreams slip into dripping blackness. The sound of limestone caves and water drip, drip, dripping within them. Itadori brings his hands together and claps, the sound resonating through the space. It is as if his instinctive actions activate the space, and rising from the thick wetness of his mind, a lotus blooms to reveal a red Tahōtō. From within the moya, he speaks. The depraved Gohonzon, who for months has been calling out to Itadori, to stare into the space and be known. To cast away his shell and reveal his inner truth. Sukuna’s words rumble deep within the pit of Itadori’s stomach and reverberate from all angels. The vibrations bubble through him, a deep bass that rocks his bones and makes him sway on his feet. Itadori feels a pull as if being drawn by a red string to the dark centre of the shrine. The voice is primal and ancient. Itadori recognises it as his own now, from a time gone by, a time that is somehow before his and his now, a time that he can feel everyone will come to know.
Itadori’s dreams begin to invade his waking hours. The whispers in his mind grow darker, more scintillating and scandalous. He craves earth and heat, mountains and fresh, crisp cold water. His hands twitch under tables when he sits to eat with his friends. The tickling sensation of long slender stalks of dropping rice plants dance across his palms. The sensation of a King running his hands through the harvest that is awaiting its turn to be threshed. His voice changes. Deeper. And the way he speaks becomes less joyful, less of a swell of emotion and more of a teasing lilt. He snaps. He finds himself quick to anger more. He feels his eyes roll sharply when people speak out of turn.
Itadori doesn’t remember when he starts thinking that others are speaking out of turn. He does remember every instance of bubbling irritation when the sound of air being sucked into someone's mouth to read them to speak. One day, Itadori realises he can no longer bear to listen to another word. He finds his hair tangled in his hair more and more often, hating the way the strands fall about his forehead and towards his eyes. Itadori begins habitually pushing it back, hand lingering on his cheek afterwards to give himself somewhere to rest as he surveys everyone around him. Itadori finds himself walking ahead of everyone, often at a docile pace. He never carries Nobara’s bags anymore, flicking his eyes to hers when she asks and turning away. Itadori finds himself coveting Inumaki’s voice, wishing to feel that power in his throat. One day he catches himself daydreaming about the method he could use to capture the technique for himself. Itadori violently shakes himself to rouse himself from his rumination. His breath is heavy, and his eyes blink rapidly with confusion over the feeling of saliva pooling in his mouth. That night in the dark quiet of his bedroom, he drags his teeth over the wriggling flesh of his tongue. Pulsing the pressure as if the bouncing motion would relieve the overwhelming urge to bite into the softness of Inumaki’s arm when they train together tomorrow.
Within the last dream Itadori remembers as his own, it is not a disembodied voice that speaks from deep within the moya, but himself. The sound of taiko drums pulse around him, and fire licks him from an unseen pit. He can’t register the flames visually, but he feels their sweet heat lap around his ankles. He remembers thinking, the Tahōtō will be set ablaze. Sometime later, he thinks maybe that’s the point. The acala mantra echoes seductively around him, low and droning. Root out, root out every obstacle.
Itadori feels the words as invocation, as invitation, and whilst the sound rumbles around him and enters his chest through his gaping mouths, his real body shifts restlessly in his bed. Mouths? The concept of a multitude of mawing holes, each opening and closing in the rhythm of the matra, feels so normal to him now. The itching of his palms subsides, and in his bed, Itadori ignores the feeling of cracking and breaking, like branches in the dark Tadasu no Mori. Itadori’s nails dig into his palms, tearing the skin. Blood pools like thick syrup under his nails. In the burning moya, Itadori raises his hands to his face and sees grinning mouths staring back at him. He closes his eyes and feels the stretch in his cheeks as his face is painted with a peaceful smile. Under the thin sheet he sleeps under, ribs begin to give way, drawing further and further apart, and the distant sound of bells chime within his skull. When he wakes, he stares longingly at his bruised and bloodied palms, as if he was holding something moments ago that has just slipped, like the ash of incense through his fingers.
He dreams of the burning moya, of splitting ribs and his cracking sternum every month, like clockwork, for as long as he can remember. It becomes his ritual, and as the months glide by, he yearns to dream of his temple, the dark and dangerous goma writhing within his soul. Each morning he wakes to the taste of ash on his tongue, the sting of smoke in his eyes, blood under nails, and a deep ache in his sides. Bruises kiss the lengths of his torso, and the itching becomes unbearable. The skin of his hands' breaks and cracks and flakes, but no amount of soothing creams and expensive moisturisers borrowed from Nobara soothe the burning flesh. It is always hot to the touch, and when he applies the salve, it feels as if it melts, like so much ice.
Eventually, Itadori realises that his ribs must widen to make space for his third and fourth arms. He realises that the skin of his hands must peel back and flake away as if they were strips of thin paper to reveal his hidden mouths.
And in the depth of the night, he feels relief one day. When the arms spring free like tentacles, like the primaeval trees of ancient forests, he can see, so clearly, so exquisitely like staring through cool mountain streams of crystal clear water. The taste of ash leaves his mouth, and instead, the steady hum of craving appears. He thinks of the amber nuggets of hoshigaki, sweet and tender in his mouth and crystal with blooms of sugar. He thinks of mochi and sake of the toasted warmth of sesame seeds. He thinks of his many mouths and how he must satisfy their conflicting desires.
And in the haze of craving, his name leaves him, like tendrils of thick smoke rising from the ever-burning flames that ignite his Tahōtō.
