Chapter Text
The rain came down in sheets that day, darkening the skies and flooding the streets. It didn’t let up from the early hours of the morning and into the silence of the night, its stubborn onslaught making Yuji fussy and squirmy the whole day long.
It wasn’t what Jin had imagined for Yuji’s first birthday, but it was what he had to make peace with as no amount of cake or toys or music could help in soothing his son. In the end, all Jin could do was sigh in relief once Yuji finally fell asleep, the sky outside deep and dark, still accompanied by the persistent murmur of the rain.
“He’s finally down,” he said as he slipped back into the living room, finding Kaori on the couch with her journal. “Hopefully he actually sleeps through the night this time, today was exhausting.”
“It wasn’t the most ideal day for the occasion, that’s true.” Kaori opened her arms in an invitation which Jin gratefully took, collapsing onto the couch and crawling until he could bury his head in her breast. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing a kiss against his head. “I know you were really looking forward to today.”
“His first birthday and it went horribly.”
“He’s only one year old, he won’t remember it.”
“Babies remember a lot more than you think, Kaori.”
“Not that well, my dear.”
“You never know and I don’t want the first memories he has to be sad. Yuji should be a happy child.”
There was a brief moment of silence which for her was a rather regular occurrence. For whatever reason related to her origins or her make, Kaori was prone to these bouts of sadness and anxiety. Maybe it just came with being something related to that other side, a well of worry Jin could never see or access, which he was more than glad not to partake in.
“Do you really think, Jin, that Yuji will start forming memories this early?”
“Maybe he already has, I’ve read somewhere babies start forming memories at nine months old.”
“I see. It would be worrying if clear memories are formed this early.”
“I knooow. That’s what I’m worried about too. His first birthday and he cried the whole day, what a disaster.”
“What would you give, Jin, to make sure his early memories are happy ones?”
“Do you even have to ask? Anything at all. Though I suppose today it wasn’t enough.”
“I suppose it wasn’t.”
Her fingers stroked gently through his hair, untangling waves of worry and stress and laying them by the wayside. Jin closed his eyes, allowed himself to melt into her soft touch, the caress of her finger against his earlobe, the calm rise and fall of her chest. Like this, holding each other, all the uncertain things just melted away. The house was quiet and at peace, Yuji sleeping serenely in the other room, future all cotton and certainty.
Despite the hard day, despite the disappointments and the frustrations, it was in moments like these that Jin felt most at peace. When he could most appreciate the journey he has taken and the destination he has acquired. Not many could boast that they had achieved their dreams so early in life, but Jin was one of the lucky few. He had it all, everything he had wished for. A home, a child and of course—
Kaori.
She shuffled under him and he allowed them to change places, for him to slip on under her while she straddled his waist, leaned down, kissed him. A smile broke on to his lips. He rested his hands on her hips, rubbing slow circles there as her hands went up his cheeks and into his hair.
“What did I do to deserve this?” he teased as she broke away and there was something almost mournful in the shadows of her smile.
“Exist.”
Her hands wrapped around his throat.
In a second Jin’s heart flipped from fluttering love to a deathly march. A violent drum against his ribcage. His fingers on hers, pulling, scratching. Her hands like steel. Way stronger that she looked. Her name, her name, her name, always on his lips but lost between croaks and wheezes, ugly, ugly noises. His body felt ten times as heavy, as if the gravity itself was pressing in through her hands, pining him to the bed. He tried to kick her off, but his legs were led. He tried to cry, but his voice had been stolen. He tried to meet her eye, but all he could see were sharp sparks of white nerves, Yuji’s face flashing in the intervals.
Something hot and wet splashed against his cheek. Only once.
“Don’t misunderstand, Jin. I didn’t want it to come to this so soon.” Her voice, her voice, her voice. Still as cool and composed as ever. But maybe, just maybe, there was the slightest tremor in it, the slightest tinge of regret. Or maybe that was the wishful thinking of his imploding mind. “I didn’t expect you, not at all. You silly, strange man. I would have loved to study you more, to understand you longer. But, I do have a schedule to keep, sad as it is. I need Yuji not to remember any of this. Only like that will he grow up right.”
Trembling, he pulled his hand away from her own. It traveled up, up, up. Unseeing, in sparks of white and black, but even like this he knew his course by heart. He cupped her cheek in his hand. Gently, so gently, because he had no strength left in his body for anything else, he pulled her down, pulled her towards.
“Oh, Jin.”
Once again, their lips met. Aside from that one tear, her cheeks were dry, her touch sure. With his last dying breath, he kissed her. With her infinite living ones, she kissed him back.
He knew that even without words, she would understand.
His brilliant, lovely, lonely Kaori.
The rain came down in sheets that day and Itadori Wasuke wasn’t expecting any visitors. Jin had been hard to get a hold of lately. Calls unanswered, doors unopened, messages unreturned. It was as if with each passing day his son had sealed himself more and more with that…
Creature.
Wasuke had no other word for it. Something deep and raw in his bones screamed an alert whenever he so much as caught a glance of that woman. He hadn’t liked her from the start, when Jin first introduced them, he just knew there was something off with her. Something he couldn’t point his finger to but felt intensely. Something alien and strange and bordering on malicious.
And that had still been when she was alive.
That creature wasn’t the girl his son had first introduced him to. He wasn’t sure how that was possible but he just knew it. It had been almost a year since Jin had called him, panicked, in tears. Telling him that something had attacked Kaori, that she was in a bad state, that they were going to the hospital.
That was the moment she had changed, Wasuke knew it.
The worst of it was that Jin knew too. His stupid, shortsighted son who only ever seemed to care about happiness and not the price of it. Jin for sure knew what his wife had become. But he didn’t care. Stupid, shortsighted.
But still his son.
The doorbell rang.
Itadori Wasuke wasn’t expecting anyone.
“Who’s there?” he barked as he walked towards the door. As he walked towards the door. As he walked towards the door. Why did it feel so infinitely far away, as if he was walking through molasses? Why did his fingers hesitate as they wrapped around the handle? How did his heart know to start grieving before the door even clicked open?
The door clicked open.
“Good evening, father-in-law.”
The creature stood in front of the door, cloaked in a black mantle, Yuji peacefully sleeping in her arms. She smiled a smile far too bright for the face it possessed, far too bright for that rainy evening, for that cruel world.
“Where is Jin?”
Those words left him before anything else did. The rain crashed down around them, almost deafening in the muteness of the night. His hand was still firmly on the doorhandle, squeezing tight, tight, tight as the monster's smile turned sour. Regretful.
“Where is my son?”
His voice was a cry of pain more than it was the roar of anger he wished it would be.
“Where is my son?”
He shouted again, even though he knew, he knew, he knew. As if a parent wouldn’t know, couldn’t feel that kind of thing. A sudden, world shattering disappearance of half of his heart.
“Where is my son, you monster!”
His hand left the door handle, reached for her, he didn’t even know why. To strike her or to push her or to grab her and not let go, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. His hand reached Yuji instead.
“Father-in-law.” She pushed Yuji forward, into his arms, loosening her hold. Yuji stirred, whined, blinked up at him with those big brown eyes. Just the same as Jin’s. “I would appreciate it if you took care of Yuji for a little while. Just until I come and pick him up again.”
His arms wrapped around Yuji, on instinct more than anything. Holding him close to his chest like he had once held Jin. How small and frail Yuji was. How small and frail Jin used to be. It was Wasuke’s job to protect him, to put a single sensible thought in that daydreaming head of his. To make sure he grew up happy. To make sure he grew up.
“Good bye, Yuji.”
She was gone. Between one tear drowned blink and the next, she was gone. Just as quickly as she had appeared in their lives now she had left them, leaving nothing but disaster behind. Nothing but disaster and a little boy. A little boy with round cheeks and his father’s eyes. A little boy that started squirming, protesting, unused to Wasuke’s arms. The son of his son. The last family Wasuke had left.