Alternate Title: "He ain't dead, he just emotionally marinated."
Darkness wasn't empty.It was thick. Muffled. Like drowning in velvet soaked in spit and blood.
Junpei floated through a black ocean of voices, each one shaped like his own thoughts but twisted, warped, unfinished. They looped in fragments.
"They laughed at you.""She died and no one cared.""Even Yuji will leave.""You were never meant to be saved."
Each word wasn't a curse—it was a hook. And they dug into the softest meat of his memories, reeling him deeper into the abyss. Mahito's fingers had reached too far, reshaping the borders of his soul. He wasn't dead. Not yet. Just… rearranged.
But there was noise now. External. Crashing through the cracks.
Laughter. Screaming. Someone yelling about a churro.And—music?
No… not music.A soundwave shaped like raw emotion, battering the walls of his mental prison.
The static wavered.
Then he heard it.
Yuji.
Screaming his name. Cursing the world. Refusing to give up.
Junpei's fingers twitched in realspace. The hooks inside him rattled, unsure. His soul shook.
And something broke free.
A name.His."I'm still Junpei."
Outside, everything was sideways.
Thorne's cursed tuning fork had slammed the domain into a lull—Mahito and his soul-muck freak parade frozen in momentary stasis. But the aftershock of that emotional frequency had fried the squad.
Juno was twitching. Spillglass was crying and punching a wall with a flask. Flint had passed out standing up with a victory pose. Yuji hovered over Junpei, whispering desperate "bro don't die" energy into the void.
And then Junpei moved.
Everyone froze.
He sat up. His spine cracked in three places. His hair steamed. One eye was still cursed-over, twitching like it was buffering.
"I had the weirdest f*cking dream," he muttered.
Yuji grabbed him and shook him like a salad.
"YOU'RE ALIVE!"
Junpei blinked. "Why does it smell like churros and unresolved trauma?"
Then Mahito screamed.
The bastard had regenerated mid-hug moment and wasn't having the redemption arc.
"YOU STUPID LITTLE SPINELESS—YOU SHOULD'VE BEEN MINE!"
He lunged—
And caught a flaming broom handle directly to the jaw.
Flint was back.
"YOU DON'T INTERRUPT TRAUMA REBIRTH, YOU SOUL-STITCHED RAT."
Juno launched another spell, but it misfired and turned a sewer pipe into a cursed saxophone. It began playing smooth jazz at volume 999.
Spillglass rode the wave of jazz energy into battle like it was a surfboard made of mid-life crisis. "FOR THE BOTTLED FEELINGS!"
Mahito howled in rage and warped the space around him. His body rippled, skin splitting into cursed mouths, hands turning into blades. "I'LL KILL EVERY LAST—"
Junpei stood up, slow.
His cursed eye snapped into focus.
He snapped his fingers.
A spark of cursed energy flickered from his hand—weak, sloppy, but personal. It didn't come from Mahito.
It came from him.
Yuji's eyes widened. "Did you just—?"
"Don't ask me what I just did," Junpei said, standing wobble-legged. "I'm doing this on instinct and spite."
Mahito hissed, lunging one last time.
And Thorne stepped forward, still holding the cursed tuning fork.
He looked at Mahito like a man too emotionally bankrupt to care about consequences.
Then he muttered:
"Let's tune this freak back to silence."
And swung.