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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
enlightenment
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(episode 28 — hidden inventory 4)

RIKO AMANAI WAS dead. There was no arguing about it for Naomi. A gunshot wound to the head. Even through her hazy vision, she could see half of the girl's skull was gone. Naomi trembled as she watched the assassin from the woods as he left the school. He'd made his worm curse devour Riko—it probably worked as a storage unit, and was probably how he kept all his weapons handy.

Naomi would follow him. She would. But she first stumbled over to Gojo's body. Denial that he was dead had kept her going.

She wasn't worried about losing the assassin. Even if she lost him, she knew where he was going with Riko's body. There was only one temple for the Star Religious Group in Tokyo, and that's where all of this started.

Her body trembled as she made her way to the pool of blood that soaked Gojo's body. All her denial and false hope was quickly resolved as she noted the way a fly head crawled over his unblinking eye.

So many emotions swirled through her as she slowly got to her feet, her body screaming in protest as more blood soaked her clothes.

Amanai's clothes.

A whimper escaped her as she put one foot in front of the other. Information piledrived into her consciousness, things she never knew before. She understood none of it, but she knew all of it. Whatever was happening to her, she would have to figure it out later.

One foot in front of the other. She repeated this to herself over and over until nothing else remained in her train of thought. The sound of her blood splattering on the ground was faint in her ears. Her wheezing made it feel like she had water in her fiery lungs.

The sun was beginning to set by the time she found herself outside the temple. This man—this animal pretending to be human—didn't even realize she was behind him.

"Bastard," she seethed, her hands trembling in anticipation for what she was about to do for the first time. "You're gonna fucking pay."

The man stopped in his tracks, turning around. When his gaze landed on her, his eyes widened, surprised that she was still standing despite the blood that was still gushing from her wounds.

"What?"

It was there, that thing she had been chasing. That final piece of the puzzle she didn't even know she was assembling.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you!" she yelled, her voice hoarse.

Her right hand was smothered in that familiar, volatile negative energy, writhing in anger. Red and unrefined, raw and dangerously explosive. Naomi's entire arm was beginning to shake.

She could do this. The final piece was snapping into place, the entire picture becoming clear to her.

Her left fist began to tremble. Radiant, golden light was shimmering around it, the energy almost fluid and like ice water on a throbbing burn. She could feel her bleeding begin to slow, her wounds closing at a snail's pace. Positive energy, her own form of the RCT she could never manage to learn from Shoko. She couldn't heal herself too much right now, that much she understood.

The wounds on her face throbbed as her entire body began to shake.

Her left fist slammed into the open palm of her right hand. In that moment, a surge of energy exploded from her gut, like a well that hadn't been tapped before, or like an American striking oil.

Her hands were locked in that moment and the man watched in abject horror. His muscles were tense, like he was paralyzed and forced to watch. Naomi didn't pay him any mind, not when she was so close.

She could see flashes of it in her mind. A dissonant chorus hit her ears, like the song was rolling down from the hills behind her.

She raised her left palm up to the sky, her right falling down to face the ground.

"Domain Expansion," she wheezed, her icy glare hardening as she locked onto the man, "Deus Irae."

The ground cracked and shattered. Molten black energy seeped up as a celestial sky coated the area and the pillars that surrounded the two in shadows. White lightning cracked through the air above them, that choir crescendoing its song. Naomi remembers hearing it before. Dies Irae? She knew the composer, she did, but remembering who wasn't the priority.

The man in front of her was. She didn't even know his name. It wouldn't matter—he would be dead soon anyways.

Her energy was unstable, like controlling the tides of an angry ocean. Naomi was fighting back waves of power. Through dimming specks of light, cracks of dark, negative energy were slowly overtaking everything.

This wasn't a complete domain. That picture was still in shards in her mind—the pieces hadn't come together quite right yet. This was messy and unrefined, but it should do the job for Naomi, and that was what mattered.

At least, she thought so.

The man didn't look around much before charging at her. Tripped up over the cracks in the ground, he was blasted back by a spurt of negative energy.

Stumbling over his own two feet, he quickly recovered. His speed was unmatched—one second he was on one end of the pillars that stood tall on either side of them, and the next he was in front of Naomi with his blades.

Before he could drive his weapon into her chest, Naomi felt a pull in her gut and she was gone in a blink of an eye. A flash of white light had her now where he once stood.

Disoriented, she blinked, looking for the assassin. He was in front of her again but at a distance, spinning around, trying to find her.

She couldn't hold onto the domain much longer. A blast of white light hit her. Her wounds stopped bleeding, but her vision was hazy again. Naomi was running out of energy and losing steam. The celestial sky began to flicker and the cracks in the ground began to fade, returning to its normal concrete flooring.

The assassin seemed to understand what was happening and charged at her again. Naomi tried fighting back, tried swiping at him with her knife, but it was knocked out of her hand faster than she could blink, a blade lodged deeply in her gut.

The entirety of the domain collapsed as she coughed up blood. Naomi looked up at the man, her eyes wide as she felt the true fear of dying.

So helpless and unable to do anything.

When he ripped the blade out, she coughed again, noting the way her blood splattered on his face. He shoved her aside, forcing her to crumble and skid across the ground. Her body slammed up against a stone pillar, making her groan.

She was going to die. She could feel it as more blood oozed out of her like a waterfall.

"You sorcerers just don't get it, do you?" The assassin's rough voice was raspy as he chuckled, "You keep underestimating non-jujutsu monkeys like me and you get yourself killed because of it."

Naomi spit out a mouthful of blood. She glared up at the man, her heart racing despite the fact that it was losing blood to pump.

"You bastard," she sneered. Her heavy breathing was gargled with the iron flavor of her blood. "I don't... I... can't..."

She couldn't put her words together, her reality starting to lose its shape. This beast of a man began to walk off, clearly satisfied with the fact that she was dying. He stopped in his tracks shortly after, his eyes widening as he glanced back at her before looking ahead again. The sun was starting to shine through the clouds—the sunset was extraordinary.

He was there, on the other end, parts of his white hair stained red with blood, his clothes ripped and also dyed red. His bright blue eyes were wide as they glowed, his smile crazed.

"Hey there," Gojo said. "It's been a while, huh?"

"Are you for real?" the assassin asked. It was barely a whisper. Naomi wouldn't have heard it if she wasn't so close.

"I'm for real, real." Gojo lifted his bloody hair to reveal the wound on his forehead closing. "I'm still alive and kicking!"

"Reverse cursed technique." The assassin glanced back at Naomi, his glare hardening as he noticed more of her smaller wounds had closed already, her gaping ones having stopped bleeding entirely.

She was healing herself with her positive energy. But it was still draining what was left in that well she tapped into for her Incomplete Domain Expansion.

"Exactly!" Gojo tapped the side of his head with his thumb. "When you stabbed me through the throat, I gave up on counter attacking and poured all my focus into the reversed curse technique. Cursed energy is negative energy. While it can enhance the body, it can't regenerate it. So, you multiply that negative energy against itself to create positive energy. That's the reversed curse technique. Easier said than done! I could never do that 'til now! And I couldn't understand anything..."

Naomi's arms gave out, her torso collapsing on the ground. Gojo was still giving the assassin a lesson on cursed energy and how one would use it if they had it. She didn't think the man was listening too hard. She wouldn't.

Her wounds were slowly closing, but she was missing so much blood, her lungs still had some that she was coughing out. It wasn't good.

"I finally grasped it on the verge of death!" Gojo was crazed. He looked like he was in a manic state of euphoria. "The true essence of cursed energy! The reason you're going to lose is because you didn't chop my head off! And because you didn't use that cursed tool when you stabbed me in the head!"

"I'm gonna lose?" the assassin asked, reaching up to the mouth of his worm curse to pull out a blade. "Our fight is just getting started."

"Oh? Is that right? You could be right." Gojo threw his hands out to the sky. His cackling laughter was unsettling to listen to and his face was haunting to look at right now, but Naomi couldn't tear her gaze away. "YOU'RE SO RIGHT!"

In a blur, the assassin charged at Gojo, faster than light, but Gojo was different now, beyond anything Naomi had ever seen before. He dodged the swipe of the assassin's blade with ease and in a second, he was gone.

He appeared behind the man while floating upside down, his arm outstretched and fingers fixed in a strange manner. A flash of red light slammed into the man, sending him flying back.

The assassin crashed into the wall of the temple, but Naomi wasn't too concerned with his wellbeing. What she was captivated by was the fact that Gojo continued to float in the air. He'd been able to do it for small periods of time, but this was different now. He seemed more... awakened.

His limbs dangled below him as he looked up at the sky, pure bliss on his face.

The assassin stood up. A resolved look on his face told Naomi that he wasn't messing around anymore. That only made her feel more insignificant, considering they'd fought not even five minutes ago and he'd kicked her ass again.

He started stretching, flexing his biceps and his back and sides. He could be a bodybuilder from the amount of muscle on him. Blood was dripping from a cut in his hair line as he pulled a chain from his worm's mouth, attaching the end of it to his blade, giving him more reach with the weapon. If Naomi was any stronger, she would do something, but as it stood, she couldn't.

The assassin started swinging the blade around, cutting into the concrete floor they all stood on. He had a smug grin on his face as he looked up at Gojo, spinning the chain around faster and faster, creating a faint silver orb around him.

"You're dead!" he called out before swinging the blade around, narrowly missing Gojo's face.

In the setting sun, Gojo didn't look real. With the golden rays of light shining down on him, he looked... almost like a god. Naomi's heart and gut made strange movements. She chalked it up to healing her wounds as she watched Gojo.

With his left arm over his head and his right outstretched in front of him, he looked down at the assassin and smiled.

"Throughout heaven and earth," Gojo said aloud, "I alone am the honored one."

Naomi was sure that if it wasn't so quiet here, she wouldn't have heard him call himself the Buddha. Although, watching him with his glowing eyes and bright white hair shining like a halo around his head, she wasn't sure if he was wrong.

The assassin swung his blade around again, using a pillar to force the blade to change its trajectory and hit Gojo from behind. It didn't matter. Gojo had rubble hover in front of him and act as a barrier. At first, Naomi thought he was using it as a shield, but now she realized that it was to hide whatever he was doing behind his stone wall.

Naomi tried to stand. Most of her wounds had healed—the only one left was the giant hole in her gut. She faltered, her elbows crashing into the concrete. She groaned from the bruising pain, but found her breath pulled from her lungs when a spectacular burst of purple light columned through the air, striking the assassin where he stood.

It was blinding, how bright the light was. Naomi lifted a hand to shield her eyes, wincing from the pain her retinas felt.

The sound of chains hitting the ground made Naomi open her eyes and drop her hand. Her gut roiled at the sight before her.

The assassin's left arm and most of his left torso was missing, oozing blood and other human debris. How he was still standing was beyond Naomi. His worm had gotten hit too; most of its lower half was gone, collateral for being wrapped around the man's body.

The assassin reached over, looking for his body only to draw back with blood on his hand.

Gojo's feet finally touched the ground as he stared the assassin down.

"Do you have any last words you would like to say?" he asked.

Blood began to dribble from the assassin's mouth. He looked so defeated.

"Not really—" The man stopped himself, his eyes widening slightly as he glanced between Gojo and Naomi. "Two or three years from now, my kid will be sold off to the Zen'in clan. Do what you will with that."

The man collapsed, his worm crawling away from the body. Naomi stumbled, her knees buckling.

"Nao—"

"Go get Riko's body." Naomi looked up at Gojo, her words raspy. "I need a minute."

"You have a hole in your gut, you need—"

"I can heal myself," Naomi snapped as she looked up at Gojo. "She has a hole in her head and she should be buried with her family, go get her body."

Gojo stopped. He frowned as he looked down at her, an unrecognizable look on his face. He nodded, turning away.

"Fine," he muttered, his tone icy and distant.

Naomi looked down at the wound, trying to concentrate on it and not his retreating footsteps. Her vision was hazy again. No one ever told her how draining it was to heal themselves. He made it look so easy.

She wasn't sure when she fell asleep next to the man's body, but she vaguely remembered someone scooping her up, hoisting her up in their arms. She didn't care who it was anymore. They were warm, and she was exhausted. She turned her head, resting it against her carrier only to be met with a familiar cologne.

Suguru. So he was alive. Naomi had feared the worst when the assassin left with Riko's body. But he was alive, and probably just as haunted as her.

At least they had something in common still.

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"IS SHE DEAD?" The voice was indistinguishable from the haze Naomi was desperately trying to pull herself out of. Her eyes were refusing to open as she listened to everything around her.

"No, she's just unconscious." Shoko. She could recognize Shoko's voice now.

That was Haibara who had asked the question. She remembered it now. She remembered a lot, now that she'd gotten some of her strength back. Naomi wanted to turn her head, wanted to open her eyes and say something.

She'd been injured plenty of times now. She knew what Shoko's reversed curse technique felt like. She could feel the hole in her gut closing, and she could feel her body gaining its strength. It was like everyone in the room was holding their breath as Naomi stirred, managing to peek one eye open.

Yu Haibara's face was all she could see the second she had enough willpower to look. An unrecognizable noise escaped Naomi's throat as she flung her arms out, pushing him away from her face. She sat up, her head spinning as she looked around.

"Where's Suguru? Where's—"

"They're alright. Gojo learned RCT and Suguru only had mild lacerations," Shoko assured her. "They're both resting right now. They asked me to call them when you woke up."

"Riko." It was all Naomi could get out. She looked over at Yu, whose face faltered. The cracks in the dam behind her eyes shattered, and soon, she was clinging onto Shoko, burying her face in her friend's shoulder as she sobbed.

"We were supposed to protect her!" Naomi cried out. "She was fourteen—a child! And I couldn't save her."

Shoko stroked the back of Naomi's hair, probably desperate to get her to stop crying, but Naomi couldn't hold it in any longer. She was sniveling and wiping her eyes, unable to hold anything together.

"Okay!" Yu clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "I know just what you need!"

He was swift with pulling Naomi out of the bed she was laying in, successfully managing to get her off of Shoko. Still sniffling, she looked up at her underclassman with wide eyes, unsure of what he thought she needed. She didn't even know what she needed.

After five minutes of convincing, Naomi was dragged out of the tattered school by Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara. Shoko had to stay and submit her report for treating Naomi and Suguru, and she— as always— just wasn't interested in Haibara's plan.

Naomi wasn't ready to admit that Yu was right either. After twenty minutes of walking, Naomi complaining, and Kento huffing in his broody way, they were sitting in an Udon noodle shop, looking over menus and chatting among themselves.

She was under strict instructions to not talk about what had happened in the past two days before eating. Kento was a strict rule follower, so she didn't dare try to disobey Yu's orders.

Staring into her bowl of noodles, Naomi couldn't get the image of Riko's splattered brains out of her head.

Naomi felt sick. Really sick. Especially since she was still able to bite, chew, and swallow without a second thought. What kind of monster was she to be able to eat after witnessing what she saw?

What would Riko think? What would Yukine think?

"Okay," Yu sighed, pulling Naomi's attention up to him from across the booth. "Talk. What happened?"

Naomi swallowed her food and the lump in her throat, looking down. She grabbed a napkin from the table dispenser, anticipating the waterworks when she looked to the guys again.

"It went wrong almost every step of the way," Naomi admitted, a frown on her face as she recounted everything that had happened in the past two days, explaining the original plan to convince Riko to not assimilate with Tengen—to live a full life.

She also apologized for making the boys stay in the airport while they toured around Okinawa and got a hotel. It was immediately forgiven, both boys just wanting her to finish.

Then she explained what happened with the assassin, her awakening, and the horrid sight of Riko's body.

Yu had to stop eating his rice for a moment when she got to that point. Kento wasn't faring any better.

The three of them sat in silence for what felt like hours as the boys processed what she'd told them.

"Tengen shouldn't have asked them to do this," Kento finally said, "and Yaga definitely shouldn't have made you join them."

"I think the most important thing is to remember that you can't save everyone," Yu chimed in. "It sucks that happened. She sounded like a really cool girl, but this guy was a professional. The fact that you're alive right now is already amazing. Don't beat yourself up about hypotheticals. It'll only drag you down."

Naomi looked up at Yu with wide eyes, noting  the way his already soft gaze melted even more when she locked eyes with him.

"You guys are great." Naomi gave them a weak smile, softly nudging Kento with her elbow as she looked over at him. "Thank you both."

"I think that our next order of business should be finding more Udon noodle shops that have better rice options." Yu straightened out his back as he locked his hands together across the table. "That way we can find something we all like."

"What's wrong with your rice?" Naomi asked, furrowing her eyebrows as she looked down at his bowl.

"It's too dry!" Yu frowned. "I've had better."

Naomi grabbed a bottle of soy sauce off the table and opened it up, dabbling a little bit on the side of his bowl and turning it toward him.

"Try that," she commanded, nudging it toward him.

Yu did it with no complaints, and when he lit up after, Naomi anticipated the green light to douse the rest of his bowl with soy sauce. She left the bottle next to his bowl just in case he wanted more.

Another glance at Kento made Naomi do a double take when she noticed the pensive expression on his face. His mind seemed to be everywhere all at once. She reached up, letting her fingers lightly tap and graze the exposed skin of his forehead in a soft dance.

The guys both stared at her for a moment, clearly confused.

"Sorry, it's something my mother would do when I would be overthinking," Naomi chuckled. "It was her quiet way of asking what's on my mind."

Kento nodded, letting the smallest hint of a smile graze his lips for a moment before he frowned again, his eyebrows pinching together.

"Do you like being a sorcerer?" he asked.

Naomi blinked, taken aback by the question. She had never given too much thought about it—she hadn't afforded herself the time to even think about stuff like that.

"I... don't know," she admitted, shaking her head. "No, I don't. I... I hate it."

Yu furrowed his eyebrows after that, leaning forward as he gave her an incredulous look. "Why—"

"I've only been a sorcerer for a year and two months," Naomi reminded them. "Before that, my biggest worry was if I would get accepted into the high school I wanted, if I would make the soccer team when I tried out, what my classmates would be like, if any of them would know my sister. But now, every day I wake up and I wonder if that'll be the day I die. Everyone keeps telling me I'm supposed to be powerful to protect the non-sorcerers, to protect the weak..."

Naomi scowled as she looked down at her unfinished Udon. It was getting cold.

"I hate myself even more every day, because it feels so selfish of me to wonder why I couldn't be the one that was killed, instead of my sister." Naomi covered her mouth, almost shocked that she'd let those words come out at all, because they didn't stop. "Why couldn't she deal with all of this instead of me?"

Tears sprung up in her eyes as the weight of what she'd said hit her. Her left fist clenched tight on the table, gripping her chopsticks so furiously that her knuckles turned white and threatened to burst.

"Oh my god, I'm a horrible human being," she whispered, trying desperately to not make a scene in the restaurant. Yu left his side of the booth and slid into Naomi and Kento's. He pulled her into a hug, holding her tightly as she wept into his jacket.

"Everyone has dark thoughts," Kento pointed out. "They're called intrusive thoughts for a reason. Yours are just darker than the average person's because you've experienced more trauma in a year than most people do their entire lives."

The words, although comforting, just weren't enough at the moment. Naomi was grateful for them either way, because she knew that in time, she'd think back on them and feel better about whatever she was going through.

Everything was horrible, and right now, her life was a string of terrible events happening one after the other. But having Kento and Yu, Suguru and Shoko, and Utahime...

There was a tiny sliver of hope that she would survive high school. The real world? It was uncertain, but that would have to be tomorrow's problem.

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4.3k words

omg HI GUYS how are we doing?

it's been a lil minute but im hoping you guys can see why. this chapter was ROUGH. emotionally lol.

so yes, Riko is dead, Gojo is not. To the readers who haven't watched jjk— are you seeing why everyone is so insane all the time now?

stay tuned because if you thought this hurt??? lol. I should have never touched jjk.

I want to thank you all for reading and aNOTHER special thank you to togeez  for third eyes NEW COVER !!! WOOP!

— greta!