If only

"When Maleficent appeared at the window and smiled lovingly at that baby, you hugged your copy of Sleeping Beauty, so happy you were moved to tears.

But when fairy tales fell into reality, when human lives were tossed through the ravines, you discovered that witches never smiled. From then on, you swore never to believe in fairy tales again.

Yet fairy tales lay buried deep in your heart, never letting you forget.

If the Fairy Godmother really existed, if she really could love you, you needed to be saved from all those relationships devoid of feeling, incapable of returning familial affection.

Then when would she come?

The answer lay in countless moments of cruel refusal, of heads shaken no.

It was when you wanted a hug and were awkwardly pushed away.

It was your waiting in that empty house, day after day.

It was the frown she wore as she turned her face away when you called her Mother.

You should have understood: no one would come. You had to understand: no magic could turn a cold witch into a fairy godmother."

-A fool's monologue

(I) Interlude

One afternoon among so many bright, sunny days.

The heat of summer mixed with the chill of winter, and that was autumn.

Dazzling sunlight streamed into the house, bringing with it a faintly chilly autumn breeze that effortlessly drew out Megumi Fushiguro's memories.

He sat on the sofa Yuanli had just bought, wearing the pure cotton pajamas Yuanli had bought, his eyes on Yuanli as she stood in the kitchen holding a cup. But Yuanli wasn't the one on Megumi Fushiguro's mind.

He was thinking about Tsumiki Fushiguro, his only sister.

Some people could never be replaced. Some memories must never be forgotten.

The once gloomy, mire-bound Fushiguro house, and Yuanli's home, now bright with sunshine.

Tsumiki Fushiguro, who had gone hungry with him, endured abandonment by everyone alongside him, only to end up unconscious, and Yuanli, who now lived in a comfortable house, whose family had never left, who wanted for neither food nor drink, whose future was bright.

Faced with such an enormous contrast, anyone would instinctively favor the one with the bitter life.

That raised a question.

-Now that I've been reborn, what can I do for that unfortunate sister of mine?

That was the question Megumi Fushiguro pondered as he looked at Yuanli.

People who had been reborn instinctively saw themselves as saviors, and he was no exception. Besides, hadn't he died in his previous life by sacrificing himself on the road to saving the world?

The boy, so utterly righteous, had personally hoisted an enormous, crushing burden onto his own shoulders.

He began thinking about what to do, began feeling that time was running out, began disregarding everything in the present, slowly overlooking the people he lived with every day.

When Yuanli silently left home in the middle of the night, he had been awake. What had he done, then?

He had done nothing. He had merely rolled over and continued thinking about how to save his teacher, his friends, and his sister. He hadn't even noticed his blanket falling off.

When Yuanli began leaving home for no apparent reason, he noticed. He had even been worried enough to want to go out searching with Toji Zenin, but once he saw them return home on time, that tiny trace of concern was immediately swept aside by more important thoughts.

He saw less and less of what was right before him, sinking ever deeper into that grand, heavy plan to save the world. The burden nearly suffocated him, but whenever he thought that his friends would die, his teacher would be sealed, and the world would be destroyed, all because he was doing nothing now-

The boy was utterly terrified.

So when Toji Zenin left home and didn't return, Megumi Fushiguro's first reaction was, It's over. The timeline is starting to converge. I have to act.

Not, This family is already falling apart.

Don't blame him.

Don't blame him for failing to see Yuanli's struggles. Don't blame him for always treating Toji Zenin as an enemy. Don't blame him for never thinking of himself.

Because before this child had ever experienced warmth among his closest family, before he had ever tasted the pleasures of life, he was already living through separations and deaths among his friends, parted from his only sister by life and death.

Even after all those lives and deaths, he was only fifteen.

His grip on Yuanli's hand was pulled apart, and the thoughts in his heart were spoken aloud. Megumi Fushiguro looked at Yuanli, listening as she spoke the most final words in the gentlest tone. What she put into his hand was a bank card worth two billion.

An equal split. One billion each. Didn't that sound familiar?

The assassin whose face he had forgotten, yet who had appeared in Shibuya. Toji Fushiguro had sold him to the Zenin Clan like merchandise in exchange for one billion.

His teacher, wearing sunglasses beneath a head of snow-white hair, had spent another billion to buy him, treating him as a reserve force in the fight against the rotten Jujutsu Society.

And now Yuanli, who had comforted him time and again, who had given him respect and choices, had spent one billion simply to let go of his hand and let him live a better life.

Megumi Fushiguro didn't understand.

He didn't understand why he had long since been given a clearly marked price. He didn't understand how someone could be willing to spend one billion without needing him to do anything or become anything, simply to let him let go.

If he was honest with himself, he hadn't regarded Yuanli as family. Even Tsumiki Fushiguro had never truly taught him what the concept of family really meant.

In the study of familial love, the first lesson he had learned was actually rejection. Rejecting the family that blood gave you, because they merely shared your genes and had no bonds with you.

He rejected Toji Zenin, rejected the Zenin Clan, rejected Maki Zenin. Because one was an enemy, one was something that ought to be destroyed, and the last was an upperclassman.

Naturally, he rejected Yuanli, because she...

Sitting on the steps outside the door, Megumi Fushiguro suddenly couldn't make sense of it.

What was Yuanli to him?

Was she someone like his teacher, Gojo? Or someone like Itadori and Kugisaki?

Neither seemed right, because he wouldn't hold their hands, nor would he secretly hug them under the guise of being Megumi Zenin.

Only one possibility remained.

He had grasped the second lesson in familial love: learning to acknowledge the existence of family.

Megumi Fushiguro raced after Yuanli as she left.

He had to catch up to her. He had to tell her that he didn't want the money, that he had figured it out now. He knew he had been wrong. So please wait for him a little longer, wait for him. Give him one last chance to choose.

(II)

Climbing this mountain again, I no longer fell in such a sorry heap. The flashlight in my hand was experience, and something that had survived a catastrophe.

Stepping on the solid stone paving slabs, I tried to empty my mind, to make myself seem a little calmer. But my mind refused to obey, churning like a stampede of ten thousand horses.

This mountain path beneath my feet should have held only my memories, yet two opposing sides stood at its beginning and its end. Our family was like a set of scales, with Yuanyin at one end and Toji and Megumi Fushiguro at the other, while I was the beam that could no longer bear the weight.

Whichever way these scales finally tipped, in the end, they would be destroyed when I, that beam, shattered.

The more I thought, the sadder I felt. I simply hurried off the path and arrived at Yuanyin's grave.

The moonlight was truly beautiful tonight. The moon shone over the mountain ravine, a silver river of light flowing through it. I sat before the stone slab and closed my eyes, listening to the evening wind blowing through the pines.

I remembered a poet I had met in the Free Country in one of my previous lives. On a night just like this, he had sat on the ground with a flute in his hands. He played along with the wind, the music, the wind, and the rustling leaves blending into a wondrous composition.

Perhaps he admired Yuanyin, because he asked her whether she would stay just a little longer for this moment.

Unfortunately, Yuanyin wasn't the sort to listen to pine nuts falling in an empty mountain. She tilted her head and picked at her ear, saying impatiently, "It doesn't even sound good. Why should I stay?"

Yuanyin was that kind of unromantic "vulgarian." She loved money, she loved weapons, she loved shootouts, she loved any outcome she could conquer through force.

And me?

Sitting here, I suddenly understood how that poet had felt. At this moment, as the night wind stirred the coniferous forest, he must have been just like me. What he had most wanted to ask was actually,

Can I make something beautiful stay for me?

Lifting the stone slab, I took out the urn and set it before me. I pressed my forehead against its side and began rambling to myself.

"Yuanyin, have you been waiting for me... Is there a light where you're waiting? If there isn't, what if you can't see me when I get there... Maybe... you don't want to see me either, do you?"

"I've actually been living really well lately... But do you know... I've been anxious all this time... I've never had that kind of kindness... So... so I've always treated it as a temporary gift that could be taken away at any moment... It's strange... I feel like I'm strange... As though I can only feel safe when someone treats me the way you did... I feel like... only if someone needs me will they not abandon me again..."

"Toji is gone... I know why... Because I need him... I've become the one who takes, and what I give has started falling short of what he gives me... Yuanyin, I'm really too greedy... I should have given more... Is it money... Could that money not have been enough... No... Maybe it's something else... Something I don't have, something I can't give..."

"Your son is really wonderful... Megumi... It means a blessing... He's like someone who stepped out of a fairy tale... Gentle and warm... But a child from a fairy tale should be with the other characters in the same book... I'm not in that fairy tale. We aren't in it... Yuanyin, I'm an outsider... I'm a petty person who slipped in through a moment of weakness... Reason tells me to keep my distance, then wait for the day I hand him over... But there's something frantic screaming in my heart... Get close to him, win him over, make him save me... How am I still waiting for a character from a fairy tale to come save me..."

"...Yuanyin, let me tell you a secret... I can't feel things like friendship or romantic love for anyone... And familial love... I don't know whether I have it... But my longing for it makes me feel... that I'm still human..."

Releasing my hold on the urn, I pulled Quasar out of the void space and pressed it beneath my chin. My finger found the trigger, and then...

"Bang."