December pressed itself against the estate like a living thing.

Snow fell in thick, relentless sheets, erasing paths, swallowing the stone lanterns, burying the outer walls until the daimyo-yashiki seemed less built and more revealed—the only structure stubborn enough to remain warm, breathing heat into a world intent on freezing solid. Beyond its borders, the land was silent and white. Inside, the air held.

Yuji Itadori slept.

The bed was absurdly large, built for a body that no longer used it but had never ordered it changed. Yuji lay at its center, naked only in the most technical sense—buried beneath layers of expensive, impossibly soft blankets, their weight distributed with unconscious precision. Pillows had migrated during the night, surrounding him in uneven barricades, one half-fallen to the floor, another crushed beneath his shoulder. His breathing was deep and unguarded, the slow rhythm of someone untouched by urgency.

It was nearly afternoon.

Cold always did this to him. It settled into his bones and dulled the edges of waking, stretched sleep into something heavy and adhesive. There was no bell to rouse him here, no schedule demanding obedience. The world beyond the estate could wait.

The room bore evidence of his presence in ways the rest of the yashiki did not. A folded sweater abandoned on a low chair. Socks discarded without ceremony. The faint, lingering warmth of a human body that belonged here now, however unlikely that once seemed.

Outside, on the engawa, Sukuna stood unmoving.

Snow gathered on the wooden railing, melting only where his cursed energy distorted the air. He was bare from the waist up, skin marked and scarred, breath unbothered by the cold that gnawed at everything else. A simple black hanfu—high quality, unadorned—hung loose over his shoulders, fabric stirring faintly with the wind but never slipping.

Before him stretched the nihon teien, reduced to stark geometry by winter. Rocks crowned with white. Pines bowed but unbroken. The pond sealed under ice, its surface dull and opaque, hiding all movement beneath. It was orderly. Restrained. Beautiful in a way that required nothing from him.

Sukuna gazed out at it with impassive attention.

The estate was quiet, but not empty. The warmth within it pulsed steadily, fed by wards older than the modern world and something older still—his presence anchoring the space against the season’s cruelty. The snow could rage all it wanted. It would not cross the threshold uninvited.

Behind him, walls enclosed a room where a human slept without fear.

Sukuna did not turn.

He did not need to look to know Yuji remained there, tangled in silk and fur, stubbornly alive, breathing warmth into a place once built for silence. The boy’s existence registered like a constant pressure, not distracting, not irritating—simply there. A variable the world had failed to remove.

Snow struck the edge of the roof and slid away.

Sukuna remained on the engawa, uncaring, unyielding, a figure carved against winter itself. And within the only warmth left in the estate, Yuji slept on, untouched by the cold, as the King of Curses stood watch over a season that could not claim what was already his.