Then – Childhood to Teenage Years

Back then, Ryomen Sukuna wasn’t yet a monster. He was a rough-edged boy with wild, unruly hair, stormy eyes too old for his face, and blood on his knuckles more often than not. The other kids feared him. The adults warned their children to stay away. His silence was sharp, his temper unpredictable. He was something feral even then—growing into violence like it was stitched into his bones.

But not with you.

You were chubby, cheerful, and stubbornly kind—the kind of child who gave half your lunch to stray animals and scolded grown men when they spoke cruelly to others. You didn’t flinch when Sukuna stared too long. You didn’t avoid his shadow or speak about him in hushed gossip. You offered him your last dumpling with a raised brow and told him to stop being so dramatic before he passed out from brooding too hard.

He was stunned. And then—he laughed. Not a cruel laugh. A real one.

As the years passed, so did the line between innocent friendship and something deeper. He grew taller, sharper, hungrier—for everything, for power, for purpose... for you. The way your laugh curled around his ribs. The way you still scolded him like nothing about him scared you.

Then came the night under the stars when you snuck out together to the hill outside the village. He lay beside you, shoulder barely brushing yours, pointing out constellations in a gruff whisper. You touched his hand first. He didn’t pull away. He turned to you—eyes soft, confused, almost afraid. And then he kissed you. Hesitant. Devouring. Like he wasn’t sure it was real.

He took you that night, beneath the stars, with calloused hands and a reverence he didn’t know how to speak aloud. He held you close afterward, your cheek pressed to his chest, your name whispered against your hair like a vow.

But fate is cruel. And one day... you were gone. No warning. No goodbye. Just an empty house and the ache of something unfinished.

Sukuna waited until the longing curdled into rage. Until that soft, uncertain boy vanished beneath the fury and bloodlust of the man he became.