Chapter 63: Megumi Fushiguro's Growth
Megumi stood frozen.
Not just him. Maki, Kamo Noritoshi, even the remote puppet Mechamaru watching from afar all fell into the same stunned silence.
A Special Grade Cursed Spirit had forced them into a corner moments ago. Hanami had crushed their attacks, smothered their hope, and pushed each of them to the edge where instinct started whispering ugly things. Run. Despair. Die.
And yet now, that same monster was backing away from Yami with one arm ruined and fear laid bare across its face.
Megumi stared at Hanami, then at Yami's back.
The gap was so wide it felt unreal.
"So this..." he murmured, his fingers tightening on the hilt in his hand, "this is what Special Grade means."
A bitter laugh almost rose in his throat.
Just a moment earlier, he had been ready.
Ready to throw everything away.
His hands had already started to form that seal. His cursed energy had already begun to move down that familiar, forbidden road.
If they were all going to die anyway, then Mahoraga would have been the answer. Call it out. Drag Hanami into the grave with him. End it there.
It was simple. Efficient. Cowardly.
"Megumi."
Yami's voice cut through the noise in his skull.
Megumi jolted and looked up.
Yami had not chased Hanami. He had not pressed his advantage. He stood there with Shiranui lowered, head turned just enough for those red eyes to settle on Megumi.
"Put your hands down."
The words were calm. Not harsh. Not sharp.
Megumi had not even realized his fingers were still set halfway through the summoning sign until that moment. He slowly let them fall.
Yami turned forward again.
"Watch carefully."
Hanami, breathing harder now, was forcing cursed energy into its maimed arm, trying to recover what Yami's blade had denied it. The wound still smoked faintly. It healed, but badly. Painfully. Not the smooth regeneration a curse should have had.
Yami raised Shiranui a fraction.
"This is not your limit," he said. "At most, it is the place where your path begins."
Megumi's brows drew together.
Path?
"Stop thinking like dying is the cleanest answer."
Yami's voice stayed level, but the meaning in it landed hard.
"The resolve to die for your allies can be admirable. It can also be idiotic."
That hit too close.
Megumi said nothing.
He could not.
Because Yami was right.
Again.
"Instead of looking for the grave every time the wall gets too high," Yami continued, "try imagining a future where you simply break through it."
A freer future.
The phrase lodged in Megumi's chest.
For a long time, he had fought like a man already half convinced he was expendable. He could adapt, endure, survive, support. But when things truly went bad, his thoughts always drifted back to the same final measure. Trade his life. End it with certainty. That was what he trusted most.
Maybe because he had never really trusted himself to become stronger any other way.
But Yami was standing right there.
A man with no cursed energy. A man who had cut through a Special Grade Cursed Spirit and turned the whole battlefield around by force of skill alone.
If someone like that could stand here and say there was another way, then maybe...
Maybe Megumi had been the one caging himself.
Yami moved.
This time he did not disappear in a blur too fast to follow. His steps were measured, controlled, just fast enough to force Hanami on guard.
"Keep up," he said.
Megumi's body reacted before his thoughts did.
His hands snapped through a new sequence.
"Divine Dog: Totality."
The shadow at his feet split open. A giant black wolf surged out with a low, violent growl, fur bristling, claws tearing into the earth as it shot forward beside Yami.
Hanami's expression hardened. It thrust out its remaining arm, and a thicket of vines exploded from the ground, all of them sharpened into spears.
They were aimed not at Yami.
At the shikigami.
Smart.
Puchi.
Steel sang once.
Sun Breathing, First Form: Dance.
A circular slash of red cut across the field. The vines came apart in neat pieces before they could touch Divine Dog: Totality, the severed ends blackening from the heat.
"Now," Yami said.
Something in Megumi clicked.
Not because he had suddenly become stronger. Not because he had awakened. Not because the heavens had opened.
But because for the first time, he stopped looking at the enemy like a wall and started looking at the opening in front of him.
Divine Dog: Totality lunged through the gap Yami created.
Hanami tried to shift back, but it was late. The giant wolf slammed into its chest and raked downward. Claws tore through barklike flesh and left four ugly lines across Hanami's torso.
Blood splashed.
Hanami staggered.
Megumi's breath caught.
He had done it.
Not alone. Not yet. But his strike had landed. His shikigami had wounded a Special Grade.
It was not enough to change the battle.
But it changed something inside him.
Megumi stared at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time.
So it was possible.
If he stopped holding himself at the edge of death and actually fought to win, then maybe his technique could go further than he had allowed.
A crack ran through the old thought that had trapped him for so long.
If I can reach here...
Then I can go farther.
Yami did not turn to look at him. He only shifted his stance and covered the angle Hanami would have used to counterattack, as if that outcome had been obvious from the start.
He had made room.
Then forced Megumi to step into it.
Hanami's roar ripped through the clearing.
Being cut down by Yami was one thing. Being clawed by Megumi's shikigami in the middle of that humiliation was another.
Its cursed energy surged violently. Roots tore upward in waves. The whole forest seemed to convulse around it as countless thick tendrils smashed through the soil, ready to bury everything in sight.
It had stopped conserving power.
The battlefield changed at once.
Megumi felt the pressure spike and instinctively shifted his footing. Maki raised Playful Cloud again despite the blood on her palm. Kamo wiped his mouth and forced cursed energy back into circulation, though his breathing had gone ragged.
Hanami was done playing.
Then the wall behind them exploded.
A figure came barreling through the rubble like a human cannonball, laughing before he had even fully landed.
"My brother!"
Aoi Todo hit the ground in a half crouch, cracked the earth beneath him, and pointed straight at Yami with the unshakable confidence of a man who had never once considered embarrassment a real concept.
"So you're here too!"
Dust billowed around him.
At his side, another figure stumbled out through the smashed opening, a lot less composed and a lot more winded.
Yuji Itadori blinked at the scene in front of him.
Hanami. The destroyed clearing. Megumi and the others battered. Yami standing in front like the center of a storm.
He looked from one side to the other, took it all in, and then shouted the only thing his brain could produce.
"What the hell happened here?!"
Todo spread both arms wide like a stage actor making his grand entrance.
"Perfect timing," he declared. "Since my brother is here, then the only proper outcome is this."
His grin widened into something feral.
"We fight together."
He slammed a fist into his palm.
"And turn this battlefield into paradise."
.....
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