• the feeling still deep down

The first time he sees it, he chases the color across campus, eyes settling on the person it belongs to. A color he thinks he’s imagined, a glimpse of pastel tufts against lush green grass, not yet browned by autumn.

The moment lasts only seconds. A boy laughing in a large group of friends, haloed by sunlight and smiling faces. He might as well be an ocean away.

Megumi continues on.

• Chew On My Heart

Fushiguro Megumi watches a boy who deserved to live more than most die, it haunts him.

• here and where you are

It’s in the middle of scanning the last bottle of green tea that Itadori properly looks up. Eye contact with him is a physical, unexpected shock, a crunch of imaginary static snapping through Megumi and leaving his hands twitching at his sides.

"Hey." Itadori blinks, wide and earnest. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

The tea sloshes backwards in the bottle he’s holding. Megumi focuses on this until his vision steadies.

"No," he says. "I don’t think so."

• built your walls around me

(I can keep it. Fushiguro’s hands move. I can hold onto it, if you want.)

Maybe Sukuna’s definition of ruin wasn’t all that wrong from what Fushiguro wanted after all. Maybe that did make him just as wretched.

• don't have to wait on me

The screen door closing behind Megumi isn’t enough to muffle out Gojo’s last mused words.

“Movies like that aren’t much to guys like you and me, but everything to people like Yuji, huh?”

Megumi doesn’t even know the other half of the movie. He’s seen enough to know what it’s basically about.

(People like Yuji.)