Chapter 1: Nii-chan's Little Princess
The key scraped in the lock with a sound like a breaking bone. Sukuna shouldered his way into the penthouse, the door thudding against the wall. He reeked—whiskey, the cloying sugar of some girl’s perfume, and beneath it all, the old, familiar scent of violence, copper and sweat.
“Fuckin’ hallway light’s out again,” he muttered to the empty dark, his voice a gravelly rasp.
He kicked his boots off, not bothering to line them up. The neon sign from the sushi joint across the street bled through the half-closed blinds, painting the room in pulses of sickly red and blue. It illuminated the debris of his life: a discarded jacket, an empty glass, a plate with congealed ramen noodles on the scarred coffee table.
He was halfway to the kitchen, intent on water and aspirin, when the neon glow caught on a shape on the black leather couch.
He froze.
For a second, his drink-addled brain refused to process it. Just a shadow, a trick of the light. Then the shape moved, and a sob hitched, thin and desperate in the thick air.
“Megumi?”
He said her name like a curse, and a prayer.
The pulses of light showed him everything in cruel, strobing fragments. The spill of long black hair across the armrest. The pale, trembling line of her thigh. Her little black dress, the one he’d told her made her look too old, was shoved up around her waist. Her free hand was clenched in the leather, knuckles white. The other…
The other was buried between her legs, fingers moving in a frantic, shameful rhythm. Her chest heaved with silent cries. Her head was thrown back, tears carving silvery paths through the makeup on her cheeks. Her lips were parted, and as another pulse of red light washed over her, they formed the word again.
“…Kuna… nii…”
The sound of his name on her lips, in that context, in this room, hit him like a physical blow. It wasn’t desire he saw. It was agony. A raw, humiliating, chemical need that had her in its teeth.
All the whiskey in his system turned to ice.
“Megumi.” He said it louder, stepping forward. His own shadow fell over her, blocking the neon.
She flinched violently, her eyes flying open. They were huge, glassy with tears and something else, something unfocused and terrifying. Recognition flooded them, followed by a wave of pure horror. She tried to scramble back, to pull her dress down, to hide, but her body betrayed her, a fresh tremor wracking her frame. She curled in on herself, a wounded animal.
“Don’t… don’t look,” she whimpered, the words slurred and thick. “Please, nii-chan, don’t look at me.”
Sukuna crossed the room in three strides. He didn’t touch her. Not yet. He crouched down, bringing his face level with hers. The sneer was gone, wiped clean. In its place was a blank, terrifying stillness. His crimson eyes scanned her—the dilated pupils, the flush on her neck, the sweat-slicked skin, the trembling that wouldn’t stop.
“Who gave you something?” His voice was low, flat. Deadly calm.
She shook her head, fresh tears spilling. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to… it just… it burns. Everything burns. I can’t… make it stop.” Her hand twitched toward her core again, a movement she fought with a sob of shame. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
A cold, precise fury began to crystallize inside Sukuna’s chest, sharpening every sense. The fog of the night was gone. He reached out, slow, telegraphing his movements, and caught her chin. Her skin was fever-hot. He turned her face gently, forcing her glazed eyes to meet his.
“Listen to me, you stupid little princess. Was it a drink? A pill? Who.”
She swallowed hard. “A-at the bar. After my study group. Taro… Taro from my econ class. He bought me a drink. It tasted funny but I…” She trailed off, another wave of sensation making her gasp, her back arching off the leather before she collapsed again, crying harder. “He… he followed me to the bathroom. He tried to… his hands… I pushed him and ran. I ran home. But then it started… and I thought of you and I…”
She couldn’t finish. The confession, the admission of what she’d been doing when he walked in, thinking of him, hung in the air like poison.
Sukuna’s jaw tightened so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek. Taro from econ class. He filed the name away in a very dark, very permanent place.
“Okay,” he said, the single word final. He stood up.
He moved to the kitchen, his motions efficient. He filled a glass with cold water, grabbed a clean dish towel from a drawer. He came back and sat on the edge of the couch near her hips. He didn’t look at her nakedness, not like that. He looked at her face, at the child-like terror in her eyes.
“Sit up,” he said, not unkindly, but with an authority that brooked no argument.
Whimpering, she managed to pull herself up, using her arms to hold her shaking torso upright. She kept her legs tightly together, her face a mask of mortification.
“Drink.” He held the glass to her lips. She took a few small, obedient sips, water trickling down her chin. He wiped it away with his thumb, a rough gesture that was somehow tender.
He dampened the corner of the dish towel in the remaining water. “This is for the fever. Not for… that.” He clarified, his crude vocabulary suddenly careful. He pressed the cool cloth to her forehead, then her neck. She shuddered, a full-body convulsion.
“It’s not working,” she cried, her composure shattering. “Nii-chan, it hurts. It feels so wrong. Make it stop. Please, just make it stop.”
She was begging him. For what, neither of them dared to say.
Sukuna looked down at his baby sister, this fragile thing he’d built his entire fucked-up kingdom to protect. He saw the doll-like beauty twisted by chemical torment, the innocence violated before he could stop it. The icy fury in his chest ignited into a white-hot inferno.
He made a decision.
“Alright,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a register she’d only heard when he was about to do something irreversible. “Alright, princess.”
He set the glass aside. Then, with a surprising gentleness, he hooked his hands under her knees and lifted her legs, swinging them up so she was lying lengthwise on the couch. Before she could panic further, he pulled the heavy cashmere throw from the back of the sofa and draped it over her, covering her from chest to toes, tucking it around her shoulders. He was bundling her up, containing the chaos.
He sat on the floor beside the couch, his back against it, his shoulder pressing into the leather near her hip. He reached back, fumbled until he found her hand under the blanket, and pulled it out. Her fingers were like ice. He enveloped them in his own, his grip firm, anchoring.
“You listen to me now, Megumi,” he said, staring straight ahead at the glowing neon across the street. “You’re gonna ride this out. It’s just a chemical. It’s poison. It’s gonna feel like you’re dying. But you’re not. You’re here. With me. And I am not letting go.”
He squeezed her hand. “You squeeze back if you understand.”
A moment passed. Then, her small, cold fingers tightened weakly around his.
“Good girl,” he grunted. “Now shut up and fight it. Cry if you need to. Scream if you have to. But you fight it.”
He sat there, a silent, immovable monolith in the half-light, as the tremors began to seize her in earnest. He didn’t let go of her hand. He just stared at the pulse of the red sign, counting each beat like a countdown.
Every sob that tore from her throat, every frantic shift under the blanket, every muffled cry of his name was a fresh coal thrown onto the fire inside him. The names glowed in his mind, white-hot. Taro. The bar.
The night outside was quiet. But in Sukuna’s head, it was already ending in screaming. He just had to get his princess through the hell first. Then he could go to work.