Chapter 12: The Grounding Exercise
The sky the next day was a relentless, cloudless blue that felt like a taunt. Megumi stood before the floor-length mirror in the guest room, wearing the grey dress. Her fingers traced the thin straps. It was clean, soft. A neutral garment. Yet on her body, it felt like a statement. A plea. A uniform. She stared at her reflection, at the way the fabric hung straight from her narrow shoulders, doing little to shape what was barely there. She thought of Sukuna’s t-shirt, the overwhelming comfort of being swallowed by his scent, and a sharp, familiar heat prickled behind her eyes. That was safety. This was… procedure.
She walked out to the living room. Sukuna was by the espresso machine, his back to her. Yuji was packing his school bag, chattering about a soccer match.
“Hey, Megumi!” Yuji called, grinning. “You look like a… uh…” He searched for a word, innocent and devastating. “A ghost. But a nice ghost!”
Sukuna turned. His eyes swept over her, quick and assessing. There was no reaction on his face, no flicker of approval or distaste. Just data. “Ready?”
She nodded, unable to speak past the sudden lump in her throat. Ready for what? To fail? To perform? To finally prove she was unfixable?
The car ride was the same silent pilgrimage. But this time, her body was buzzing with a low-grade, frantic energy. Her thighs pressed together under the dress. The memory of the previous session—the screaming, the snot, the humiliating confession—played on a loop behind her eyes. Whore. The word had shape and weight now. It sat on her tongue. She feared she’d say it again the moment Dr. Arisawa looked at her.
They arrived. The waiting room was empty. Sukuna took a seat, picking up a stiff-backed business magazine. He didn’t look at her. “I’ll be here.”
It was an echo of her request. A promise. It anchored her, just a little.
Dr. Arisawa greeted her with a warm, non-invasive smile. “Hello, Megumi. Come in.”
The office was the same. The fountain, the books, the lavender. But today, the large windows were open a crack, letting in a faint, cool breeze that carried the distant sound of traffic. A living sound. A present sound.
“How have you been since our last meeting?” Dr. Arisawa asked, settling into her chair.
Megumi perched on the edge of hers. “I ate udon,” she said, the words automatic.
“That’s good. Nourishment is important.” The doctor observed her, noting the tense posture, the fingers picking at the fabric of the dress. “You’re wearing the dress again.”
“It’s… easy.” The old script.
“Last time, we talked about building safety. Brick by brick. Today, I’d like to start that process with a simple exercise. No talking about the past. No analyzing feelings. Just noticing the present. It’s called grounding. Would you be willing to try?”
Megumi’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was the pivot. The new task. She gave a stiff nod.
“Okay. Let’s both put our feet flat on the floor. Feel the solid ground beneath you.” Dr. Arisawa demonstrated. Megumi mimicked her, the soles of her sandals pressing into the plush rug. “Good. Now, take a slow breath. Not to calm down, just to notice the air moving in and out.”
Megumi breathed. The air felt sharp in her lungs.
“Now, we use our senses. Look around. Name five things you can see. Don’t think about them, just see them. Say them out loud.”
Megumi’s eyes darted. This was a test. She had to get it right. “The… the window. The books. The lamp. Your… your pen. The plant.” She pointed at a small fern on a side table.
“Good. Four things you can feel. The physical sensation of touch.”
Megumi’s mind went blank for a second. Feel? All she could feel was the internal, humming panic, the damp heat between her legs that was a constant, shameful companion. She clenched her hands. “The… the chair. It’s rough.” The fabric was actually soft, but her nerves translated it as abrasive. “My dress. On my skin.” It felt like a web. “The floor. Under my feet.” She was running out. Her gaze landed on her own lap, on the borrowed item she’d almost forgotten. Without thought, her hand crept up to touch the neckline of the grey dress, but underneath it, her fingers brushed the different, softer fabric beneath. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “His shirt. It smells like him.”
The sentence left her lips and hung in the warm, lavender-scented air. It was utterly unguarded. Not sexual, not calculated. It was a child’s confession, simple and devastating. She wore Sukuna’s t-shirt underneath the dress. A secret layer of armor.
Dr. Arisawa didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t explore it, didn’t analyze it. She simply acknowledged it as a sensory fact. “Okay. That’s four. Three things you can hear.”
Grateful for the redirect, Megumi listened, her ears straining past the blood pounding in her head. “The fountain. The… the air conditioner. A car. Outside.”
“Two things you can smell.”
“Lavender. And… paper.”
“One thing you can taste.”
This was hard. Her mouth was dry, metallic. “My mouth. It tastes like… toothpaste. And panic.”
Dr. Arisawa offered a small, genuine smile. “That’s remarkably observant. You did that very well, Megumi. How do you feel in your body right now? Just a quick scan.”
Megumi hesitated. The exercise had momentarily short-circuited the louder narratives. She was here, in the room, not entirely in the past. But the silence it created inside made space for other sensations to rush in. The physical awareness of her body, in this chair, under this gaze, was acute. The familiar, traitorous warmth pulsed. Her face flushed. She squeezed her thighs tighter.
“I feel… present,” she said, which was true. Then, the compulsion, the horrific need to be honest in the most damaging way, spilled out. “And I feel… wet. I’m sorry. I’m trying not to. I’m trying not to touch myself in front of you.”
The confession was delivered with a flat, clinical despair. She stared at the doctor, waiting for the disgust, for the professional mask to slip. This was what she did. She ruined safe spaces by introducing the rot she carried inside.
Dr. Arisawa’s expression remained calm, but her eyes held a deep, unwavering seriousness. “Thank you for telling me. That is a bodily sensation. It is not a choice, right now, for you. It is a conditioned response. We are not going to act on it. We are going to notice it, and let it be. Can you do that? Just let the sensation be there, without judging it or acting on it?”
Megumi shook her head, a tiny, frantic movement. “It’s screaming at me. It’s telling me to… to make it useful. To offer it. So you’ll… so you’ll think I’m cooperating. So you won’t get angry.”
“I am not angry. I will not get angry. Your value here is not in your utility. It is in your presence. The sensation can scream. We can hear the scream, and we can choose not to obey it. That is the beginning of building a new pathway.” Dr. Arisawa leaned forward slightly. “This is the hard work, Megumi. This moment, right here. Sitting with the unbearable urge, and doing nothing. This is you reclaiming territory. Brick by brick.”
Tears welled in Megumi’s eyes, not of sadness, but of sheer, overwhelming effort. It was like holding a live wire. Her entire history, every violated moment, was compressed into that single, insistent physical urge. To use it was to speak her only known language. To not use it was to be mute, powerless, and terrifyingly alone.
“I don’t know how,” she gasped.
“You are doing it. Right now. You are sitting there, feeling it, and you are talking to me. That is how.”
They sat in silence for a full minute. Megumi trembled, her knuckles white where she gripped the chair. The urge didn’t vanish, but it became a separate thing, a storm outside a window, rather than the air she was breathing. She was inside, watching it. It was agony. It was also, faintly, something else. A form of control.
“Would you like to try another round of grounding?” Dr. Arisawa asked softly. “We can focus on the breeze from the window.”
Megumi nodded, desperate for the structure. They went through it again. Five things. Four things. Three. Two. One. Her voice grew steadier. This time, when she named something she could feel, she said, “The breeze. On my arms.” She didn’t mention the shirt.
When the exercise ended, the atmosphere in the room had changed. It was charged, but with a different energy—the exhausting, clean energy of a battle fought and held, not won, but not lost.
“That was exceptionally difficult, and you did it,” Dr. Arisawa said. “We will need to build this muscle. It will be your primary tool. When you feel overwhelmed, when you feel the past pulling at you, or when you feel that… compelled physical response, you ground yourself. You come back to the chair, the fountain, the lavender. You come back to his shirt. To any anchor that is solid and present.”
His shirt. The doctor had named it, normalized it as an anchor. Megumi felt a wave of profound, confusing gratitude. She wasn’t being chastised for the attachment. It was being used as a tool for her survival.
The session concluded soon after. As Megumi stood, her legs shaky, Dr. Arisawa spoke. “Next time, we will practice again. And perhaps, we can explore what ‘safety’ might begin to feel like, in small ways. Think about that. One small thing that might feel safe, that isn’t a person.”
Megumi walked out. Sukuna looked up from his magazine. His eyes searched her face. She looked drained, pale, but her eyes were clear. There was no fresh devastation, just a deep, weary stillness.
They drove home in the now-familiar quiet, but it was a different quality of quiet. Not a barricade, but a processing one. She kept her hands folded in her lap, consciously not fidgeting.
Back in the penthouse, Yuji was home, his energy a welcome shockwave. “Dad! Megumi! We won the match! I scored!” He launched into a play-by-play, his small body vibrating with excitement.
Sukuna listened, grunting in the right places. Megumi stood in the entranceway, watching the domestic scene, feeling like a ghost again, but a ghost that was slowly remembering it had a shape.
Later, after Yuji was in bed, Sukuna found her on the balcony. She was curled in a wicker chair, hugging her knees, watching the city lights. She had changed into sweatpants and the now-familiar black t-shirt.
He handed her a mug of tea. Chamomile. She took it, her fingers brushing his. They didn’t speak for a long time.
“She didn’t… try anything,” Megumi said finally, her voice quiet against the city hum. “The grounding.”
“Did it help?”
“It was hard. It’s like… holding a wild animal inside your own skin and telling it to sit still.” She took a sip of tea. “She said the shirt was an anchor.”
Sukuna leaned against the railing, looking out, not at her. “Is it?”
“Yes.” The word was definitive. Then, a fragile addition. “But she said I need to find an anchor that isn’t a person.”
He nodded. That was smart. Healthy. It sent a strange pang through him—a mixture of relief and a foolish, primitive disappointment. He was a crutch. Crutches were meant to be discarded.
“I don’t know what that would be,” she whispered.
“You’ll find it.”
Another silence settled. Then, Megumi spoke, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it over the wind. “I didn’t… act on it. The feeling. I wanted to. My body was… screaming to. But I didn’t.”
It was the first time she had reported a victory to him. Not a breakdown, not a confession of pathology, but a small, monumental act of resistance. Sukuna turned his head to look at her. The balcony light cast her small features in soft relief, the shadows under her eyes pronounced. She looked young. She looked brave.
“That,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended, “is the hardest thing a person can do. To disobey their own wiring.”
A single tear escaped, tracking a clean line down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “It feels empty.”
“It’s supposed to, at first. You’ve been filling that space with poison for years. The emptiness is progress. It means there’s room for something else.”
“What else?” The question was plaintive, lost.
“I don’t know. Tea. Quiet. A night that doesn’t hurt. That’s for you to find.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him, and for a second, he saw not the obsessive, not the shattered victim, not the calculated seductress, but the profoundly lonely girl underneath all those broken layers. It was a glimpse of the person she might have been, before the world got to her. It was devastating.
“Thank you,” she said, “for being nearby.”
He gave a single, sharp nod, unable to voice the storm that simple thanks stirred in him—a protectiveness so fierce it bordered on violence, and a grief for all the times no one had been nearby for her. He pushed off the railing. “Get some sleep. Brick by brick, right?”
A faint, almost-smile touched her lips. “Brick by brick.”
He went inside, leaving her with the tea and the city lights. In her room later, Megumi changed for bed. She took off the sweatpants, but kept the t-shirt on. She lay in the dark, her body aching with the exhaustion of the day’s internal combat. The compulsive thoughts circled, the old pathways glowing like neon signs in her mind. But beneath them, a new, faint signal was trying to broadcast. It was the memory of her own voice, in the quiet office, stating a simple fact: The breeze. On my arms.
It wasn’t safety. But it was a point on a map. A place that was here, and now, and hers. She held onto that point as she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, one where her body, for a few precious hours, was just a body at rest, and not a weapon or a wound.