Yuji didn't answer her.
Not because he didn't want to, but the words that would have normally come naturally to him just didn't arrive. The refusal, deflection, polite but firm 'no' that he had gotten so used to saying over centuries found itself stuck for once.
The words were still there, waiting at the back of his throat, but something had jammed them, so he was left standing in silence without a ready response.
Loki watched him. Her hand remained outstretched and steady, but she didn't press him. She didn't crack a joke to fill the gap, and instead waited as her vermillion eyes were fixed on his face with an expression that she understood exactly what was happening in Yuji's head.
She'd seen it before, when she'd first extended her hand to a Pallum boy who had been told his entire life that his race was worthless. In Riveria, when she'd offered her Falna to a high elf princess who had left her kingdom and had othing left to lose. And in Aiz, when she'd knelt before a seven year old girl who couldn't remember how to cry.
The best ones always hesitated.
"... I need to think about it." Yuji finally said, and the words had come out rougher than he had intended.
Loki lowered her hand, her grin returning but softer than usual.
"Take your time, fossil. I ain't goin' anywhere."
She patted him on the shoulder once, and then turned to walk back towards the main street, her hands clasping behind her back as her usual carefree posture and gait returned to her.
"You know where to find me." She called over her shoulder without looking back, and she disappeared around a corner, content with herself as she had played her hand. Next was up to Yuji.
Yuji stood alone in the small garden for a while, surrounding by nothing but silence.
-------------------
He didn't go back to the boarding house.
Instead, he walked. He didn't have a set destination in mind, just moving his body aimlessly. His feet carried him through the Western District, past the residential streets and small plazas where children played and old men sat on benches arguing about nothing.
The sun descending across the sky as the afternoon deepend and Yuji's thoughts turned inward.
'Join my Familia.'
Three simple words echoed in his mind. An offer that, on the surface, was straightforward. Loki grants him her Falna, he becomes a member of Loki Familia, and the bureaucratic machine of Orario would recognize him as belonging to something.
But it wasn't straightforward. Nothing involving a God's blessing ever was.
A Falna was a connection. It was a God's blood inscribed onto your back, becoming a bonk that linked your growth, potential and your very soul to the deity who gave it. It could be read, updated, and to some degree, influenced, he surmised. It was the foundation of every Familia relationship in Orario, becoming the thread that tied children to their divine patron.
It was also, in every sense of the word, an attachment.
And attachments were what Yuji Itadori had spent centuries learning to live without.
He found himself on the wall at the edge of the Western District, overlooking the inner city of Orario and everything beyond the district. The sun was lower now, painting the city in an orange hue as he sat down on the edge of the wall, his legs hanging freely over the side as he took in the soft breeze.
'When did I start being afraid of this?'
He had asked himself this question before, many times over many centuries, so the answer came easily.
It started with Junpei.
He'd known the boy for barely a week. A quiet kid with a cruel home life who liked movies and had a mother who cared too much and not enough at the same time. Mahito had twisted Junpei's body into something unrecognisable right in front of Yuji's eyes, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He'd begged Sukuna for help and had been laughed at.
That was the first time Yuji learned that wanting to save someone wasn't enough.
Then came Shibuya.
Nanami.
The man who had taught him what it meant to be professional about violence, who had treated him like a colleague rather than a child, who had turned to him in his final moments, half his body burned black by Jogo's flames, before leaving the rest to him.
Then Mahito ended what was left while Yuji watched.
He remembered the exact sound, even if he wished he didn't.
Then, Sukuna had taken his body. Ten fingers forced down his throat and the King of Curses had used Yuji's hands, his arms, his legs, to slaughter thousands of people in Shibuya. Yuji had been awake for all of it, a passenger behind eyes that wouldn't close as Sukuna wrecked havoc against Mahoraga, regardless of who was in the crossfire.
He'd wanted to die after that. He said so out loud, kneeling in the ruins with blood on his hands.
'If I die now, I'm just a murderer.'
The words from back then echoed in his mind.
So he kept going. Through the Culling Games, through battle after battle, through the slow process of clawing back his will to live one fight at a time.
Choso died for him.
His older brother, the Death Paiting who had once tried to kill him before learning the truth of their blood, and who had thrown himself between Yuji and Sukuna's flames. Choso burned alive, and in his last moments shared between them, he had smiled at him.
'"Thank you, Yuji. For being my little brother.'"
Yuji had carried that moment with him ever since. Choso, who had spent his entire existence fighting for his brothers, chose to die so that his youngest would live. It was the kind of selfless, absolute love that Yuji had never felt worthy of receiving.
Gojo fell in Shinjuku. The strongest sorcerer of his time, the man who's very birth shifted the balance of the Jujutsu world. He had fought Sukuna and lost. He died doing what he'd always done, standing at the front so everyone behind him could survive.
They won in the end. Not through one person's overwhelming power, but together. Nobara came back, one eye gone but her spirit unbroken, and her Resonance through the last finger had cracked Sukuna's hold on Megumi.
They had won.
Then the world moved on.
Consuming the Death Painting Wombs had changed his biology permanently. The curse-human hybrid than Kenjaku had designed him to be had one final joke, a ridiculously extended lifespan.
Megumi went first among the core group. He died of old age, peaceful, surrounded by family he'd built after learning how to live again in the years following Sukuna's defeat. Yuji had been there, standing at the back of the room, his appearance having barely changed over the decades. Megumi's grandchildren didn't know who the pink haired man was.
Megumi's last words to him had been simple. "Stop standing in the corner, Yuji. Come sit down."
He hadn't.
Nobara was the last of the original three. She'd lived a full life, fierce and unapologetic to the very end. A few years before the end, she'd tracked him down to whatever corner of the world he'd retreated to and told him to stop being an idiot.
"You're not honouring anyone by hiding." She'd said, sitting across from him in a café, her long grey hair pulled back and her remaining eye still sharp enough to make most men flinch. "You don't have to bear it alone, idiot."
He'd laughed, she'd punched his arm. They spent the afternoon talking about nothing, the way they used to when the world was simple and they were young, angry and alive.
A month later, she was gone.
After that, the pattern locked in. He would find people, connect with them for however brief it was, watch them age, watch them leave. Every connection became a countdown. Every friendship became a funeral he hadn't attended.
So he stopped.
Not all at once, but gradually, like a river changing course over decades. He was kind without being close, generous without being involved, and present without being permanent.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped noticing the difference between being alone and being lonely.
----------------------
The memory came to hime without warning.
Gojo Satoru, standing on the roof of Jujutsu High, blindfold pulled down around his neck. A few weeks before Shibuya.
"Sensei, do you ever get lonely?"
Gojo had laughed. Not at him, but at the question itself with an honest tone.
"All the time."
"But you're surrounded by people."
"Surrounded, sure. But there's a difference between being surrounded and being understood." He'd turn to look at Yuji, and for once there was no joke behind those imperceptible blue eyes. "When you're the strongest, people don't see you. They see what you can do for them. A weapon, a shield, or a problem. The ones who actually see you, the real you, the messy, stupid, scared version underneath all that power…" His words trailed off for a moment as he seemed to be looking at something far out of reach for him. "Those are the ones worth keeping. And they're the ones you lose first."
Yuji hadn't understood then. He was seventeen, still raw from his grandfather's death and coming to terms with what he was.
He understood now.
Near the end, Gojo had told him something that lodged into his memory permanently.
"Someone like me, whose singular strength drives everything, should not exist in the new era. The next generation should be strong together, so no one has to stand alone at the top."
Gojo had achieved that. His students had defeated Sukuna together, through their power and the willingness to die for each other. Everything Gojo wanted for the future, he'd built with his own hands before they lay still.
And Yuji, the last one left standing, had spent centuries doing exactly what Gojo warned against. Standing alone, carrying everything himself, and refusing to let anyone share the weight.
'"Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honoured one."'
Gojo had said those words in triumph. Yuji had lived them as a prison.
----------------------
The sky had turned dark by the time he opened his eyes.
The stars were now visible above Orario, faint behind the city's glow and the air had cooled down.
He sat up and looked at his hands.
These hands had killed more things than he could count. He used them to heal people, built shelters, held dying friends, dug graves, and carried the six cursed souls in him without faltering.
They they hadn't held anyone's hand in a very long time.
His grandfather's voice echoed, as clear as the day it was spoken.
'"You're a strong kid, Yuji. Use that strength to help people. It doesn't have to be all the time. Just whenever you can. You may feel lost. Don't expect gratitude. Just help them.'"
He'd done that, over his long life he had done just that.
But the final part of his grandfather's words was what he'd been running from.
"'When it's your time to go, make sure you're surrounded by others. Don't end up like me.'"
Wasuke Itadori had died alone in a hospital room because he'd been too stubborn to let people in. His dying wish was for Yuji not to repeat that mistake.
And Yuji had been failing at it for centuries.
He'd told himself it was different. That outliving everyone made attachment cruel rather than kind. In a way, it was true.
Gojo knew what he was. Choso had died believing in connection despite everything, Nobara tried to drill it into his brain that he was being an idiot.
Now, Loki had extended her hand towards him.
She wasn't asking him to be invulnerable, just to be present.
He didn't know how long he'd be in this world. He didn't know if the people here would age and die while he remained unchanged. He didn't know if Sukuna would tear everything apart.
He'd told himself it didn't matter.
But he knew what his grandfather had asked of him, what Gojo taught him, what Choso died for, what Nobara had told him, and what centuries of solitude had actually earned him.
Nothing.
A cold hearth. Any empty house. A man dying alone.
He wouldn't say it outloud, but a tiny portion of his self from a long time passed resurfaced. The familiar bright smile and eyes that had long since disappeared.
'Is it wrong to want it to matter? Even just a little?'
Yuji stood up, brushed his clothes and looked down at the city below.
Twilight Manor's towers were visible in the distance, with the trickster's emblem catching the lamplight.
He took a breath and let it out.
Then he started walking.
---------------------------
Edel looked up as Yuji pushed through the front door.
"You missed dinner."
"I know. Sorry."
"There's leftovers in the box."
Yuji merely nodded, grabbing the box and stood silent for a moment.
"I might be moving out soon."
Edel's hands paused, with one eyebrow barely lifting.
"That right?"
"You can keep the excess amount."
She resumed wiping the counter, turning away from him. "Don't track mud on your way out."
Yuji made his way up the stairs and entered his room. He sat on the edge of the bed in the dark room and looked at the box in his hands.
He'd leave things for tomorrow's Yuji to settle.
For now, he wanted to rest.
----------------
Authors notes:
Something funny I found out recently, but there's been signs of danmachi becoming lobotomised now too, with people called Lefiya, Fraudfiya