Of What Remains - Chapter 1
SUMMARY: Violence at this school is brief, ugly, quickly forgotten. To Megumi, it's familiar. Inevitable. But for reasons unknown to him, someone doesn't look away. And for reasons he doesn’t care to name, he notices.
NOTES: a more concise summary: megumi x reader, lots of reader backstory lore, bucketloads of angst, and cool new jujutsu techniques!
first fanfic, so all feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
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This is your calling, to rule over the monkeys of the world.
He had never said it explicitly, but everyone had known you to be his heir. The next leader of the association.
You knew it too, because there were signs. Sometimes, he would take on missions he only trusted himself to fulfill. And without fail each time, you were seated at the head of the table in his stead.
You saw it in the way those monkeys coveted you. His heir, indeed. Oh yes, they would revere you as such. Quite young. Young enough, they thought, to be easy—easier, at least, than the cold-hearted leader they worshipped. Young enough to be governed by their sweet words and empty promises.
They were wrong. You were glad to do the dirty work for him, extort the money-grubbing animals in his place. It only took a simple threat—a mention of a beloved wife or daughter—to leave the sweaty herd clamoring for your favor.
The curve of your lips, the gleam of your eyes. You thought absently that the reflection that greeted you in the mirror looked quite similar to Geto-sama.
You are his spitting image, they told you.
You are his spitting image, you tell yourself.
The noise dies out as you take center stage.
The microphone emits a shrill screech as you take hold of it, inciting pained noises from your audience. You wait patiently for them to subside, unflinching.
“Monkeys are always impatient. Easily agitated,” he had said.
“Hello, everyone,” you say, perfectly melodic. The stage lights above blur their faces into senseless blobs.
You force your lips to curl upwards.
“They easily fear what they don’t understand. We use that fear to breed idolatry.”
“There have been many rumors regarding the absence of Geto-sama circulating within the organization.”
The air thickens with murmurs. You can taste the fear on your tongue, bitter. There’s also something sour—a tang of barely restrained excitement. You don't allow your eyes to stray to the greedy, peach-palmed hands beginning to claw at your feet.
“The world must be rid of the weak and useless,” you imagine him saying. “The strong must take their place at the zenith of society.”
“Shh,” you say, tapping an outstretched finger to your lips.
“Let me clarify those rumors,” you say pleasantly, ignoring the acid rising to your throat.
You take a moment to survey the rows and rows of ordinary humans that make up the Time Vessel Association, whose faith is unknowingly their own demise. You think of Geto Suguru’s blood staining snow. His smile, once the warmest thing you had ever been given. His last breath, curling into the cold air—then gone. He had hated them until the end; so should you.
You break into a blinding smile that makes you want to die.
“Our revered leader is dead.”
Megumi hates gluttonous bastards.
There’s the harsh clang of a metal can colliding with wooden table and clattering to the floor. “Then you must be blind, because this says fucking grape.”
“Hey, man, ease up on the swearing. Suzuki-sensei will hear,” someone says easily.
A disparaging scoff. “Fuck her. I want my lemon soda.”
“Dude, you wish. Did you see the skirt she was wearing today?” This earns a round of snickers.
This is why Megumi can’t stand people like Tsumiki.
People like her deal in absolutes. No violence. No shades of grey. For the scum that feed only their own egos and leave the rest to starve, no real punishment. Because: it’s not right, Megumi.
He hears a shout. “Don't talk about Suzuki-sensei—"
The sniggering fades away abruptly.
Uesugi's voice crumples along with it. "—like t-that…!”
The few students loitering around the classroom tense.
A gasp of air whistling through a closing throat, strangled by a fist wrenching it forward by the collar.
Several gazes flit towards the back of the class; some disgusted, a few caught crinkled mid-laugh, others guilty. The only heads that stay still belong to previous victims.
All notice, none intervene.
Megumi’s grip tightens on his pen.
“Now I must be going deaf. Did the shitlicker just tell me what to do?”
He zeroes in on the voice. Maybe, he thinks—
“—there’s only 7 minutes left until lunch ends.”
Megumi doesn’t know what he expected.
“You think she notices you? Acting like that?”
“Son of a bitch. If you’re so proud, let’s see how big it is down there.”
Silence replaces the rustling chip bags and the flwip of textbook pages turning. The air becomes heavy with the weight of looking away.
Megumi barely registers his pen has left paper, ink stretching from the sentence he was underlining to across his desk’s synthetic wood. 7 minutes, 30 seconds, he repeats to himself. The clock hand shivers above. Then it’s over.
More snickering. “Yo, I bet 500 yen that he’s hiding an anaconda.”
Fighting doesn't solve anything, they say. Apparently, their punishment isn’t his to decide. Instead, he should forgive, because fate is good to the good and bad to the bad.
"The stakes are too low, dude! 1000 yen it's tiny—" A few of sardonic boos.
Megumi believes this until the universe proves him wrong on Tuesday afternoon at five years old, when he realizes that his father’s face is nothing but disjointed fragments from his sister's stories. If people really reap what they sow, the skies would have struck the man down for washing his hands of his own children and selling his own son to a world of monsters.
Still, good people spend their whole lives letting others get trampled over while waiting for punishment to be sent down from the heavens. The hypocrisy of it all makes him want to vomit.
So Megumi decides to forget karma. He’ll just drag them to retribution himself.
The world as he sees it finally tunnels at 1:33 pm. 7 minutes left.
Aniba’s laughing, hands digging into the waistband of Uesugi’s slacks. The flock of boys around him jeer hotly, egging him on. Aniba grins, languishes in it, and turns to survey the class for submission—
A sickening crack sends him sprawling off his seat and onto the floor. The circling crowd scatters backwards, colliding with each other and setting off a deafening domino chain chairs and tables crashing. Megumi thinks someone screams behind him.
It’s quiet. So quiet that he distantly hears the door slide open, and Suzuki-sensei’s urgent, “Fushiguro-san!”
Aniba stares in shock at Megumi’s fist as it lowers back down to his side, covered in his blood. Megumi’s eyes flick over the dispersed arc of boys, memorizing their shocked faces.
“Get up,” he repeats. “We’ll finish this outside.”
It starts inside, and ends outside.
He manages to get to the stairwell before the first one rushes him. Megumi steps aside and lets the body tackle the floor headfirst, sending students rushing out of the way as he sends another crashing into a corner. The crowd clears a path for him to the doors towards the courtyard. The last thing he hears before he steps outside is the approaching stampede of shoes squealing on burnished floors.
There’s no pre-brawl rush, but this is the most awake Megumi’s felt in days. He thinks it’s the honesty of it. No more pretending like he’s not sick and tired of sitting pretty, letting those bastards act like they can do whatever they want, forgiving them for every misstep as if he’s a good person.
Fighting feels natural—it feels right. So when a yell sounds behind him, then the dissonant beat of many rapid footsteps, Megumi knows the foregone conclusion.
The skies are blue today.
Are you watching? He asks them.
He turns and breaks the nose of the first boy to charge.
The sound of every hit is the universe falling back into place. Towa, Sota, Kenji. He ticks each face off the list as their bodies crumple to the ground.
Then comes a thought, disconcertingly dissonant: he’ll be late to his next class.
Tsumiki’s voice submerges as his foot meets the hand gripping his pant leg with a sharp crunch, inciting a broken howl, and reemerges as his fist meets another cheek. He can already hear her disapproval at another tardy mark (you can at least get to class on time, you knucklehead!).
Megumi also becomes aware of the fact that he has also been counting down until the end of lunch break, which is a little ironic considering he’s disregarding her telling him not to fight for the millionth time. Honestly, what does she even expect anymore—
A flash of air. He pivots sharply as a swing grazes his jaw. Ducks and tackles, pushing Tsumiki into the farthest corner of his mind. Stupid sister and her distracting words, he thinks distantly, before abandoning thinking at all.
He steps off the mound of bodies with 40 seconds to spare.
“Next time you do it, I’ll kill you,” he tells the pile, customarily.
Uncustomarily, he catches himself searching for a flash of brown ponytail in the school windows. He ignores the tinge of annoyance at himself when he finds none. The hallways are largely empty, most students having abandoned watching the weekly debacle for the next period’s classes.
Megumi starts towards the entrance when the hollering starts. He knows Hozumi-sensei before even seeing him because this is about the fiftieth time he's lectured him for fighting this year. Still, he allows himself one last look at the windows.
He first notices that you’re standing at the west end of the building where Tsumiki takes her afternoon classes.
The second thing is that you are alone. He can't remember the last time he saw someone alone in this school.
The third thing—you’re looking at him, too. Aside from Tsumiki, he can't remember the last time someone's done that for this long, either.
The glare of the midday sun exposes the slight upward angle of your chin: a sliver of throat and set jaw. The planes of your face, relaxed but strangely immobile. Calm.
After that comes into focus the subtle curl of your lip and the barely perceptible antipathy in your gaze.
His eyes narrow. What’s her deal, he thinks.
There’s the sound of shuffling on brick ground, then a dry retch. “Did we do something to you?” a voice asks unsteadily from behind him. Aniba.
The bell sounds distantly, signaling the end of lunch. A girl appears at your side, tugging your arm. Your gaze flicks back to him a final time before following her.
Megumi turns back to the pile. “Figure it out yourself," he says, "or just die."
As he enters the school building, he considers your long hair. Your straight-backed posture. Then he drops it.
He expects that to be the end of it.
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my ao3, if you'd like to see the full story in the future
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