Nanami woke up to the sound of beeping. He blinked tired eyes, then froze in realization. No, not tired eyes. He blinked a tired eye. A single tired eye that looked up at the ceiling with little emotion.
He was alive.
That should've been impossible. He was in no way suicidal, but he still remembered the severity of his injuries. He had survived Dagon's domain from a number of factors, such as his naturally strong physique and the fact that the special grade cursed spirit had been forced to split its attention between him and two others. Yet he had survived regardless. Badly injured, but whole.
Then the strange man who killed Dagon whisked Megumi away, and they were ambushed seconds later by the second special grade curse spirit, and the next thing Nanami remembered was pain. The pain of his blood boiling beneath his flesh. The pain of skin charring and muscles melting. The pain of nerves being exposed to fire and kissed by ash. The pain of an eye imploding within his skull as the squishy bulbous organ was introduced to fire.
Pain he did not want to remember, but he was a Grade One sorcerer. A veteran one for that matter. He could not let such pain stop or define him. He stretched his hands out and noted his left was immobile. Maybe missing, he wondered to himself. His right had no such problems. It grabbed onto the side of his bed and pulled him up.
He sat up straight and finally had the chance to look at himself. His left hand was still there, although it was heavily wrapped with bandages, alongside most of his chest and abdomen. His free and mobile hand reached up to his face and noted it was just as tightly bound. He turned his head to the side and observed his surroundings.
He was on a nondescript hospital bed, with white sheets and linens. On all four sides were curtains that covered him, while a light above showed him clearly. How did he get to a hospital, of all places?
His memories after the cursed spirit's ambush were a blur. He vaguely remembered waking up feeling like a nuclear bomb had gone off beside him, then in his pain-addled state, he had walked. One step after another, killing every transfigured human or curse he found. His desire to protect his students and the people overriding his desire to just lie back and die. What happened next?
A brief, sharp pain lanced through his brain, forcing him to hunch over and hiss in annoyance.
Ah, yes. He remembered what did.
He barely picked it up, the sound of footsteps. Judging by what he could hear, the person was already close. A hand stretched past the curtain and pulled it aside, revealing the suited form of a man he knew and disliked on principle.
"Nanami-san, I'm glad to see you're up."
Nanami looked up at Usami without a word of reply, leaving his lips. He looked behind the man and realized there were two others he had not heard coming. He blamed his injuries for his drop in perception. Regardless, the two other people were more familiar.
Shoko pushed past the man and moved to stand beside him immediately, and began fussing over him, her eyes dark, her hair scattered, and an unlit cigarette between her lips.
"You woke up earlier than I expected, considering the depth of your injuries," she started, as she rested a hand on the side of his head. "But you always had more resilience than any other sorcerer I know. Maybe it's why, other than Gojo, you're the only other one from our set alive."
There was a refreshing feeling as he felt her reverse curse technique go to work. Her words immediately reminded him of their objective before they had been waylaid by Dagon.
"G-go-jo?" he managed to croak out, but either his vocal cords had been messed up, or he had been out for longer than he thought.
"Here." The third figure spoke up as she slipped past the still quiet man, who had decided to simply observe them with those cold snake eyes of his.
Utahime lifted a jug and a cup from a table somewhere out of his line of sight. It took him a second to realize the lack of vision on his left side blinded him to the jug. Then a cup was filled and passed on to him, and he took a gulp, then a second, and before he could take a third, Utahime pulled the cup from his hands, her face twisted into a cute frown that not even the scar across her cheeks could turn menacing.
"Take it easy, Nanami."
"Speaking of Gojo, he is gone," Shoko finally said, answering his question. He turned to her as she eased away from him and sat down on the bedside chair. "His corpse was not recovered, so we can only assume he's alive but still trapped in what our records state is called a prison realm. The strange man-"
"Geto."
The annoyance that remained standing behind them corrected Shoko with an empty placating smile.
"It can't be Geto," Shoko replied with a shake of her head. "Gojo brought his corpse to me, and I confirmed it with my own eyes. Suguru Geto is dead."
"That is not what the recordings show, and what the higher-ups at Jujutsu Headquarters believe."
"I don't give a damn about your recordings or what the higher-ups say."
The man replied with a simple smile and moved to say something else, but was cut off by Nanami's hoarse voice as he finally addressed the elephant in the room.
"W-what are you doing here, Usami?"
The dark-haired man turned back to him, eyes thin slits, hair slicked back, and with a snake-like smile that said all Nanami wanted to know about the man. A man commonly called the hound of the higher-ups.
"Internal Investigations, Nanami-san," Usami started with a calm and soothing tone that spoke of camaraderie, but there was no camaraderie between them. Usami had not earned his grade, title, or skills by hunting cursed spirits like Nanami. He had earned it by strictly hunting rogue curse users and registered jujutsu sorcerers that had defected for one reason or another.
Nanami would've smiled if his face were not so heavily bandaged. After all, Usami's track record of efficiency had been shaken by a single loss. He had been the second person to be sent to capture or kill Geto shortly after he defected, and the other man had barely escaped with his life. It seemed like he held a grudge.
"The incident in Shibuya has been tragic, and following the announcement of the ritual known as the Culling Games, the higher-ups have endeavored to make certain decisions and investigations regarding the major players of the incident."
"What does that have to do with Gojo?" Nanami asked, regaining the strength in his voice slowly.
"Jujutsu Headquarters claims Geto is still alive, and that Gojo is an accomplice of the Shibuya Incident, so Satoru has been officially exiled from the jujutsu world, and any action or plan that involves releasing him from the seal has been declared a criminal act," Utahime said.
Nanami turned to her and waited for her to laugh, to show that it was just a mistake or a joke. Her somber features put that thought to rest. He turned to Shoko and realized, sometime during the speech, the woman had lit her cigarette and was in the midst of taking a drag, so he turned back to Usami and saw he was giving him a smile.
"Of course, that is neither here nor there at the moment. I suppose you're wondering why I'm here, then?"
Nanami simply stared at him, and Usami lost part of his smile but continued speaking with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Tough crowd, but fine. As I stated earlier, Headquarters has instigated an internal investigation, one in which I've been given the burden of leading, so I have a simple question. Tell me everything that happened in Shibuya from your point of view."
Nanami turned to the others, and they simply gave him discreet nods, so he spoke. He told the snake of a man about his dispatch to Shibuya, about hunting down Haruta Shigemo, who had made it his job to kill the managers. Then he spoke about joining up with Naobito Zenin, Maki, and Fushiguro Megumi-
"And how did Fushiguro-san seem at that moment?" Usami cut him off, and Nanami looked down and realized the other man had been jotting his words down in a book.
"Fine?" Nanami half asked, half said in confusion.
Usami nodded his head, then waved him along. Nanami gave the man a look that spoke of what would happen if he was interrupted again before he continued.
He spoke of the strange man who had killed Dagon, then whisked Megumi away shortly after. He spoke of the ambush by the special grade curse spirit immediately after that, and from there, his recollection was a mess. He had walked about, destroying as many curses and transfigured humans as he could, while rescuing the few people that had not managed to evacuate in time and who had remained hidden around the underground station, and then they had stumbled across monsters fighting.
"Ah, ha. Now we get to the meat of the story." Usami broke in, and Nanami gave him a glare in response, forcing the other man to raise his hand in a pleading motion. "Forgive me, Nanami-san, but further questions must be asked. The shikigami identified as the Divine General, the pinnacle of the Ten Shadows technique, an uncontrolled and unshackled creature, was believed to have crossed paths with Sukuna in a fight that rendered a sizable portion of Shibuya a wasteland, and you, Nanami, were one of the few people to witness that fight and survive. The regular humans' words could hardly be taken for it. So my questions are, how was the fight? What did the shikigami do? What was its role in the structural damage, and how did it act in general?"
Nanami stayed quiet for a second. His mind was slow, slower than it usually used to be, but he was not stupid. It had taken him a few minutes longer than usual, but he immediately figured out Usami's angle. Why he was forcing an interrogation on a man who had just barely woken up and should have been allowed to rest. Why he had been so curious about Megumi earlier.
Shoko let out a smoke-filled breath, blocking the view of the room for a few seconds, then she tapped the cigarette against the edge of his bed, allowing the ashes to fall, but Nanami had not missed it. The tempo of the tap. Morse code. Something they had taught themselves as teenagers, out of boredom. Something he, Haibara, Geto, Satoru, and Shoko only knew.
'Be careful.'
Usami waved away the smoke with a single hand, his voluminous kimono dispersing the smoke in a second. He gave a half-hearted glare at Shoko, one she replied to with an uncaring shrug and a hand wave for him to go on.
"As I was saying-"
"Mahoraga is the white giant with wings for eyes." Nanami cut the man off, both for a need for clarity and to rankle him, and just as he expected, the man frowned at being cut off but nodded gamely.
"It saved us."
"Are you sure of that, First Grade Sorcerer Kento Nanami? Should I take that as your official word?" Usami said with a stare that told him to retract that statement. The snake had dropped the vague pleasantness. Good. Nanami hated a few things, but that was one of them.
"Yes," Nanami continued. "I remember that part clearly because of how strange and how fast it had happened. The ceiling broke, sending tons of stone and sand down, and Mahoraga and Sukuna had appeared shortly after with another cursed spirit who might have been following us. A curse I had encountered before, alongside Yuji Itadori. Special grade cursed spirit Mahito."
Usami frowned but waved him to continue.
"Sukuna saw us and determined we were a distraction, so he swung his hand, activating what I believe was his cursed technique towards us, but it was invisible. The only person who seemed to see it was Mahoraga. The shikigami stood in the way and deflected the curse technique somehow, an act that broke the path that led to where we were and protected us from the rest of the fight. After that, we retreated."
"Are you certain of the intent behind the act?"
"It turned and looked at me," Nanami replied, his gravelly voice slowly going hoarse once more. "It saved us."
Usami made to speak further when he was cut off for the second time, and this time he did not bother hiding his anger. He glared at Shoko as she spoke over him.
"That's enough, Usami-san. This is as far as your orders and jurisdiction go. We allowed you to be the first person to speak to Nanami so nothing would be hidden, but I can only watch you speak to a man waking up from a multiple day old coma for so long without shoving a cigarette into your eyes."
Cold brown eyes, shadowed by dark circles, stared at Usami's pitch black orbs, and there was a tense standoff for a few seconds before Utahime spoke.
"Of course, you can come back another time and continue, but you can clearly see the toll this is taking on Nanami-san as well."
Usami let out a breath and straightened his robes, and gone was the aggression and anger, and back was the snake smile that never reached his pitch black eyes. He smoothly slipped his book back into his kimono.
"I understand. That would be all for now, Nanami-san. Rest well." With his part said, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving the three of them alone.
"Is this what I'm suspecting?" Nanami let out in a hoarse voice, prompting Utahime to pour him a cup of water once more.
Shoko crushed what was left of her cigarette, picked another from her white coat, and lit it. She took a long and deep drag first before replying to him.
"Yes, it is. With Gojo Satoru gone, the higher-ups and elders over at headquarters are looking for who to blame for most of the problems that have occurred during and after the incident. So far, they're leaning on Megumi and his shikigami because they know he doesn't control it, not completely at least." She took another drag. "However, it's been hard to make anything stick so far, not when multiple testimonies speak to the fact that the shikigami saved multiple people. Then there's Itadori Yuji as well. There's been talk of reinstating his execution order, but that has stalled because of the overwhelming strength that Megumi's shikigami has shown."
Nanami chuckled as he leaned back into his bed. "So they're worried Megumi and the shikigami are turning into another Gojo Satoru, then."
"That was what Satoru was training and preparing them for, wasn't it?" Utahime added with a fond smile as she looked outside the window.
Nanami looked outside as well, past the glass window and into the city that came alive past it, with its honking car noises and skyscrapers. It was not the Malaysian beach he had envisioned as he bled and died while fighting, but it wasn't so bad either way. Sleep called to him, and just as his eyes flickered closed, he remembered he had wanted to ask a question.
What was the Culling Games ritual?