-Play OST JJK Memories [Jogo's Death]-
Yuji Itadori POV
It's strange I've had dreams before most that were just so random that I couldn't really remember it.
But this one and the others that will come to follow are one's I'll always remember.
I was standing in the middle of what looked like an old looking village with nothing modern in sight.
It's weird how in control I am of myself in this dream when usually it feels like I am just a watcher.
A man walks by me with a bundle of wood on his back, a dog trotted along the road's edge passing right through my ankle.
Seeing this I decided to just walk in a random direction.
I don't know why it was just a random feeling to go the way I was.
I walked and walked until I finally made to a home that was a bit farther away from all the other homes and stalls.
I stopped at the open doorway.
A thin looking young woman with dirty brown hair was kneeling on the ground grinding something. She looked rather unnaturally thin and her hands moved with a mechanical rhythm that had nothing joyful in it.
Suddenly a smaller and softer voice came from the corner of the room, but it sounded off like the voice was trying not to be noticed.
I walked over to where the sound was coming from.
It was a kid who looked younger than me, around 3 or 4 years old if I had to make a guess.
The unsettling thing about this other kid though...was the fact that he looked exactly like me.
I don't mean the vague resemblance you sometimes notice between strangers that makes you do a double take. I mean I was actually looking at my own face if only with different eye colors and some differences to our facial features.
The most differential thing though was that the left side of his face was wrong.
It was as though something beneath the skin had decided it wanted to be something other than skin.
Harder, paler, and structured differently. It covered the left side of his face from temple to chin like a mask that had grown there rather than been placed and from its surface looked out two extra eyes, red, and lidded.
Then there were the four arms.
The lower two of the arms were folded in against his body as though he as afraid of something and across every visible surface of his skin. The arms, the neck, the hands, and even his face were all covered in black markings that looked disturbingly fresh.
That was the only other detail that kept pulling my attention back no matter how many times I tried to take in the whole picture.
The markings looked fresh the way a bruise looks fresh, like someone had personally gone out of their way to inflict it upon him.
The woman at the center of the room kept grinding.
She hadn't looked at him once since I'd walked in.
'Mother hates me,' I could suddenly hear his thoughts 'she has always hated me. My brother's gone because I wanted to live. He's the one who should have lived instead. She knows it and I know it and there is no version of this room where that stop being true.'
I feel an uncomfortable twinge in my chest and decided to take a seat beside him "I don't think that's really your fault whoever you are..." I trailed off thinking about my friends and the others I couldn't save.
Out of all of them only I survived.
Out of all of them only I had the strength and power to escape Giles.
I felt the familiar feeling of tears well up and a deep uncomfortableness inside of me just remembering it all over again.
The memories and thoughts of it tasted like ash.
I hadn't chosen to survive.
I hadn't been smarter or more deserving or more worthy of continuing. I've always just been stronger in the specific physical way and now magical way that the situation had required.
So, was it my fault they died, just like how this other kid thought it was his fault that his brother died? Did I really have the right to say that it wasn't his fault?
Gramps told me I shouldn't let the idea of not being able to save someone swallow me whole because I would break otherwise...but aren I already broken now? The very idea that I couldn't save any of those other kids with me was swallowing me up from the inside. Heck it's only because I kept myself distracted with Nanamin that I haven't broken down again.
The longer I thought about it the more I realized that I couldn't answer any of my own questions, so I don't properly finish my response to the identical boy beside me and kept myself quiet.
I focused my attention back to the fresh markings all over his body "who did this to you?" I wondered but as expected I received no response back.
His Mother suddenly stood up, revealing a bowl full of crushed grains. I only knew that because of the textbook that my school had.
She took the bowl and walked past her son toward the back of the house with the steady deliberate trajectory of someone navigating around a piece of furniture.
She didn't look at him not even once all while he sadly watched her go with those four red eyes if his.
'Before,' his thought came, 'I used to try to grab her attention by doing things that I thought would make her happier. Like cleaning up the house or coming back with herbs that she might have needed. Yet every time she ignored me or hit me. From then on, I realized nothing I ever did for her or anyone really....didn't matter. They would all continue seeing me as an unnatural monster.'
I felt something crack open in my chest.
"You deserved better than this," I suddenly said to him, "whoever you are, whatever you become you deserved better than this as a starting point."
His two red eyes tracked to the doorway where she'd disappeared.
He said nothing.
The dream suddenly twisted and changed.
I suddenly saw flames consuming everything and the familiar sight of death.
The village was burning.
I was standing in the road and the houses on both sides of me were consumed.
The air tasted of ash and heat pressed against my face from three directions.
Then I found him in the center of it.
He was now bigger and slightly muscular than he'd been in the house. I'd even say he was a couple years older than me now actually, like one of those high school guys I'd see sometimes.
Presently he stood in the road with the firelight moving across the bone-mask side of his face and all four hands at his sides and he was breathing hard.
His mother was on the ground behind him.
I understood what happened without being needed to be told.
'She didn't run from the fire, he thought, 'she ran toward them. She told them where I was. She thought...she thought they'd let her go after. That she could finally be rid of me once and for all. Yet they did not in fact let her go.'
'This was wrong, everything about this is wrong,' I inwardly thought with disgust and anger.
The villagers came out of the smoke in a group.
Ten.
Fifteen.
More than I could actually count were all armed to the bare teeth.
The nameless young man watched them come while not even moving an inch.
'This is the part,' the man's thought moved through me like a current, 'where a normal kind of person would run. A normal person who had been given reasons to want to continue. A normal person with something behind them worth the direction of away. But I have four arms, a face that is hideous, and a brother I consumed before either of us had a name. There is nothing behind me...only Ryomen Sukuna now.'
The person at the front of the group raised something and before I even realized it I found my point of view changed.
I was now the one standing in front of the crowed.
I could feel everything the man felt and did.
A familiar heat rush through 'us' and 'our' arms begin to move "Dismantle," is the word that leaves 'our' mouth.
In less than what could possibly be a second, they were all sent flying into the air.
Heavy amounts of blood dropped back down upon 'us' like pouring rain.
Limbs of all sizes and shapes landed down with a hard thud.
With horror 'we' try to scream but what comes out instead is the sound of 'our' laughter.
Yes, it's fitting now 'we've' now truly embraced the embodiment that is now Ryomen Sukuna.
In these last moments of thought all I could sadly think was '...I am sorry.'
Not out of pity but because this was now the road, he'd be forced to tread forever more.
-end of chapter seven-
Next chapter we switch back to Nanami, and we see some of the stuff he's discovered, we'll then go over to the next day and have Yuji learn some hands-on stuff, then we can jump back into main events/action stuff.
I've got a question for some of y'all how do you think Teen Shirou/and EMIYA would react to Teen Yuji in the 5th Holy Grail War and how would Teen Yuji react to Teen Shirou/and EMIYA?
Similarly, how would Teen Shirou/and EMIYA feel about Yuji Modulo?
Answering of these questions would be helpful for how I write out their interaction once I get to Stay Night.
Lastly before I end this is a friendly reminder that positive comments help with my motivation and usually helps me in writing my chapters.