"Smooch..." He felt the soft sensation on his lips, which almost made him blank for a second, the same sensation which reminded him of both Karin and Sakura. However, this felt different. The taste or heat or texture, it was just something different about it.
But it only were a few seconds before his mind kicked into gear, and he pulled back the instant he registered what had happened, more startled than he'd been in longer than he cared to admit.
"What the hell was that?" He asked, taking two steps back while wiping his mouth with his sleeves to hide the saliva all over his mouth.
The girl responsible for that seemed to have found it funny, as a small smirk appeared on her face, and then she blinked up at him from the hospital bed, slow and disoriented, like she was surfacing from somewhere much deeper than ordinary sleep. For a moment, she just stared, taking in the ceiling, the room, his face hovering above her, none of it seeming to fully register yet.
"Ah... that felt exhilarating..."
"You're awake... no, what's important is what was that?" Sukuna asked, recovering his composure faster than his expression suggested. "You've been out for days, and that is the first thing you pull. Did that Hyuga brat hit you harder than I thought?"
"Days," she repeated, testing the word like it belonged to someone else's vocabulary. She sat up slowly, one hand pressed to her own temple. "What days, darling? Didn't we meet like a moment ago?" A teasing smile was still lingering on her face, which made Sukuna feel something was wrong.
His eyes narrowed, and he let his awareness settle over her curse energy again, the same subtle shift he'd noticed earlier, except now it wasn't subtle at all. It had grown. Changed shape entirely, like something new had folded itself into the architecture of what used to be simply hers.
The most obvious was the increase in curse energy. It was a massive increase; she had around one-third as much curse energy as him now, which was massive on its own.
And then there was the shift in the nature of her curse energy. The earlier light feeling was tinged with a hint of something malicious... no, that wasn't the word. Something much more dangerous.
Darker, slightly, like if the earlier curse energy felt like pure water, then now we were seeing seawater. A slight change in the nature of her curse energy and texture.
A texture and nature which was actually not that unfamiliar to Sukuna, if his memories served right, that is.
"Something's different about you," he said, flat and direct, no room in his tone for pretending otherwise. "What happened to you? Are you still Kiyomi Uchiha?"
She didn't react immediately, but just looked at him, a bit too greedily, which gave him a very uncomfortable familiar feeling.
"How horrible, how can you forget me after everything you have done to me?" She pouted, followed by a fake blush, or it could be real, but Sukuna couldn't care less right now.
"Who are you..." Sukuna asked again.
"Guess... here is a hint, you promised me that you'll marry me. Think, think... I'll give you three chances, and every wrong answer, you have to let me kiss you..."
Sukuna blinked... pausing for a moment.
Yup, this was a familiar feeling alright... was she her?
'But how?' His irritation grew another notch when recalling how whenever someone had reincarnated from the JJK world in here, the previous host had died.
He looked at Kiyomi's face, Mai Zenin's face to be exact, and it's quite likely she was gone now.
Irritation snarled at him, and his curse energy flared up, jolting Kiyomi, or whoever she was now, out of her teasing phase into something which felt much more genuine.
"That felt different. I recalled it used to be much more overwhelming and oppressive." Kiyomi tapped her lips with her finger with a pout.
That made him more irritated and angry, and then he intentionally put his killing intent directly at her, which turned that pout into an elated smile, her face flushing up, and she almost let out a moan.
"Oh darling, yes... yes... that do it more... harder." She actually enjoyed that killing pressure.
Sukuna felt baffled and then anger surged in anew.
"WHO. ARE. YOU..." Sukuna once again asked, which finally stopped the girl. It seemed like even she realised that he might really attack if she didn't speak now.
"Okay, okay... I'll speak. Don't be mad." She waved her hand, and for the first time Sukuna saw that usual rational behavior and that slight reluctance in the voice which Kiyomi usually had.
Instead of talking immediately, she looked down at her own hands instead, turning them over like she was checking whether they still belonged to her. "You're right. Something happened while I was unconscious. I only just started piecing it together myself, right before you walked in. I would have mentioned it before, but I just couldn't stop myself from stealing a kiss or two, sorry..." She shrugged and let out her tongue only slightly in the way she acted cutesy.
Sukuna only found it more annoying. Now she was acting neither like Mai nor the person he suspected.
"Piecing what together?" He asked.
"Yorozu..."
As she said that, a long silence fell between them.
Yes... that was the feeling. It was exactly like that woman. But at the same time, not like her, like since when that crazy yandere was this rational on anything which wasn't her own technique?
But the name alone made something in Sukuna's expression sharpen instantly.
"So what happened to Kiyomi, the original Kiyomi died? If you're Yorozu?" This was one of the worst outcomes he had in mind.
"No, no..." She shook her head, as if already knowing what he was thinking.
"That's not how it works, at least for me, not the way the others took over when the original died." Kiyomi's brow furrowed, for a genuine moment taking a more serious look than her flirty, teasing self a second ago.
"I'm still me... but just not anymore, just me. It's like being two people at the same time."
That confounded Sukuna even further.
Choosing her next words carefully, like she was translating a feeling she barely understood yet into something coherent. "Let's say we merged, yeah, that makes more sense. Both of us exist in this body now. At the same time. But not like how you existed with your previous host or how Angel does it. It's a merger at a much deeper level. I am still Kiyomi, but I no longer am Mai Zenin. I mean, those parts which made me Mai still exist, it's just that I am also part Yorozu now, and her memories and her feelings and her thinking and..." She trailed off like she was confused herself.
"Let's say I'm a combination of both Mai and Yorozu, and that person is Kiyomi." She said after a few seconds of thinking how to word it.
Sukuna went very still. That was so much like his own condition if he thinks about it. The original Sukuna's power and memories, then the soul from Earth who knew both Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen as nothing more than anime stories.
Two entities together to make a new one.
"You don't expect I'll just take you at your word, right..." Sukuna growled.
"I'm aware," Kiyomi said. "I don't have an explanation for you. I don't fully have one for myself yet, but I know I was Mai Zenin, I also know I was Yorozu, and I know that now I'm Kiyomi. That's all I know..."
"That and the fact that I finally have a chance to be with my beloved again." She grinned, winking at him, which he outright ignored.
"About that as well... you just woke up and decided you like me, that's not how it works," Sukuna asked, voice low, edged with something between suspicion and genuine helplessness.
"Hmph... how can you say that? I love you wholeheartedly. In all three times I have been alive." She pouted, almost looking angry.
"Yorozu liked Ryomen Sukuna, if you're not just her then how come you like me, who isn't exactly Ryomen Sukuna either? Just like you, I too am more than just Ryomen Sukuna, you know."
"I don't know," She shrugged.
"I just know that I love you, and honestly, the fact that you're not the old Ryomen Sukuna is actually a relief. I doubt the current me would have liked him that much. You're much more appealing. Strong, dependable, but also kind and protective. Eaaa... just my kind of man." She almost let out a squeal at the end...
Sukuna pursed his lips... he wasn't expecting that answer.
But his mind kicked in. A combination of both Mai and Yorozu. Now he felt it did make sense. How come he felt the behaviors were a bit like both, but neither exactly completely.
Yorozu liked Ryomen. Mai, if he wasn't wrong, actually liked someone like Megumi. So if both were combined, they would look for a combination as well.
'Troublesome.'
"Okay... dating and casual flirting aside, answer my second question first..." Sukuna pressed. "Why? Why now, why like this, and why Yorozu specifically?"
Kiyomi's confidence faltered there, just slightly. "I don't know," she admitted with a shrug.
"I woke up and it was already done. There wasn't a moment I can point to where it happened. It just... was, by the time I opened my eyes."
Sukuna didn't answer right away. He studied her instead, the way someone studies a variable that had just changed shape without warning in the middle of an equation he thought he understood.
It didn't take long to notice the rest of it. The way she held herself now carried an edge that hadn't existed in the Kiyomi he'd spent months training beside — something hungrier, more willing to lean into violence without the hesitation Mai's original personality had always carried like a weight. It was still recognizably her. Still controlled, still calculating in the way Mai had always been. But underneath that control sat something far less patient, something that looked at a fight and saw opportunity rather than obligation.
Looking at him staring at her so intently, she almost let out a purr... "W-why, don't look at me like that, you'll make me blush."
Irritation flared up inside him again. He liked teasing Kiyomi now and then, it was almost therapeutic, now he doubted the moment he joked like before, she might actually drag him to bed, or knowing her, create one on the spot to get into action immediately.
Sigh...
"Anything else you can tell me, anything at all," he asked.
She scrunched up her face, like thinking hard. After a minute or two of silence, she finally spoke.
"Well, it's rather significant, but I guess I woke up now and not immediately because your Reverse Curse energy was keeping me from gathering my curse energy. It healed my body, but it also dragged down my consciousness from awakening completely, as if affecting my curse energy itself..."
Sukuna paused...
Reverse Curse Energy!
His mind raced a million miles a minute, and as if a light bulb lit inside his head, his eyes widened in sudden realisation.
"I have to be somewhere. You wait here and don't move," he said and hurriedly got up.
"But, darling, I don't want to be separated from you anymore. I'll come with you." She huffed, already getting up, tangling her hospital gown a little too much in the process, so that Sukuna could see a little too much skin.
"No... You stay here."
"But..."
"YOU STAY HERE..." He repeated strictly.
Her face flushed up at that, "...Hmmm, okay, geeze, you don't know how sexy you look when all worked up and commanding like that, I love it."
Sukuna let out a groan and just left with teleportation, leaving behind a pouting Kiyomi Uchiha.
xXx
A/N : AH... honestly I intent for Hinata to take this role but 4 girls are just a little too much, specially when there is not much development of Hinata in this fic. Low key I also didn't felt like killing my Lolinata...
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