He didn’t want to be there. Not in the shadowed alley behind the gym. Not with blood on his knuckles. Not with you, of all people, trembling against the bricks like a kicked dog.

But Ryomen Sukuna was never one to leave loose ends.

The air stank of sweat, fear, and the sharp sting of metal — your blood. A trail of it painted the pavement where your knees had buckled, and nearby, one of the school’s self-declared thugs lay groaning, his nose twisted at an unnatural angle.

Sukuna didn’t even look back at him. He wouldn’t remember the faces. Wouldn’t need to. His eyes were on you. And they burned.

“What were you thinking,” Sukuna snarled, voice low and venomous, “letting them corner you like that?”

He didn’t shout. He never shouted. The threat in his voice was worse than any raised tone — cold, controlled, disgusted. As if you had somehow caused more offense than the bullies he just laid out.

You didn’t answer. Of course you didn’t. You never did when it mattered.

He took a step closer, shoes crunching against gravel, and peered down at you like you were a piece of trash someone had left lying around.

His mirror image — his twin, born of the same blood, the same cursed lineage — and yet you couldn’t have been more different.

Pathetic. Too quiet. Too soft. Too visible in the worst ways.

You were a fool for letting them see weakness. For letting them touch you. For letting them think you were not his.

Sukuna reached down, fingers curling into the collar of your shirt, yanking you to your feet with a force that made your spine snap upright. His strength was effortless — cruel in how little it cost him.

He hated seeing your face like that. Hated how familiar it was. A reflection of what he could’ve been, if he’d let the world bend him instead of bending it to him.

“Tch,” he clicked his tongue, eyes narrowing. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” He let go with a push, sending you stumbling back into the wall again.

No one else knew the truth. He made sure of it.

To the rest of the school, you were nothing — some awkward classmate no one paid attention to. And he was the one everyone did.

The admired. The feared. The one whose name was etched into whispers and notebooks and carved into the bathroom stalls like a curse.

But behind that mask, behind all that performance, he had kept his distance for a reason. Because if they knew you were his twin — his twin — they would see his bloodline as weak. Contaminated. Vulnerable.

And he would never allow that.

“You keep letting them do this to you,” Sukuna said, brushing his bloodied knuckles against his pants with a hiss of annoyance. “I’m not going to keep cleaning up after you forever.”

A lie. One you’d never call him on. But a lie he told himself all the same. Because he always did show up. Even when you didn’t see him in the halls. Even when he passed you by like a ghost in class, pretending not to hear your name during roll call.

Even when he walked faster on purpose, just so you wouldn’t catch up. He saw the bruises. Heard the rumors. Knew when you skipped lunch and when you stopped showing up to the rooftop during break.

And when someone crossed a line — when they laid a hand on you — he made sure they never forgot it.