In an alternate timeline, a pair of new generation jujutsu monsters grew up feral and fighting curses together in Sendai. I'm sure this will have no major ramifications for the world as a whole. AKA: What if we did Scooby-Doo hijinks with Rika because Itadori is too tough and charming to get murdered by her? (ao3) (okkoita)
When Yuji Itadori is twelve years old, he meets a ghost.
Well, okay, itās probablyĀ notĀ a ghost but it looks like a ghost. It coils malevolently and desperately like he imagines a ghost mightāclinging to something human until all its own humanity is gone. Heās too young to have a great vocabulary for what else to call this entity. Usually, he would follow Grampsā advice and ignore the spooky things he sometimes sees, but the ghost is sitting on a bus-stop bench next to a kid in a West Junior High uniform.
Yuji thinks, this time, itās kinda on his turf.
Itās the third day of the school year. Yuji struggled only moderately to remember the locations of his classes, and while he forgot where his locker was yesterday, a soft-faced girl named Ozawa helped him out and, with the certainty of a tween with mostly movies for reference, heās decided she can be his middle-school crush. (YouĀ gottaĀ have one of those.)
All and all, not so bad for the first week of middle school and he can safely tell Gramps that his success rate for Not Fighting Sons Of Bitches is at 100%.
But the ghost thing is weird for sure.
Itās like black smoke, coagulated into a sticky clot beside the kid, almost leaning on his shoulder like a big cat on its favorite zookeeper. Itās got physical weight. Yuji can see it where it rubs its face on him, his uniform ripples and deforms. The kid ignores it, but Yuji can see even from here there are bloody scratches along his inner forearms where his uniform is too short on him. Heās been crying.
āHey,ā Yuji says, stepping under the roof of the bus-stop bench. āYou go to West Junior, right?ā
The kid on the bench, wide-eyed, looks up from his shoes. His uniform doesnāt fit him very well. His sneakers look beat up, like his mom didnāt take him clothes shopping this year and heās still wearing what he had from last year. His hair sticks up the way iron-filings do under a magnet at the top, grown out shaggy at the front. Yuji thinks heās maybe a year or two older, but small for his age.
The word āunderfedā comes to mind.
Yuji points at him. āYeah. I saw you at passing period. Youāre a grade ahead of me, right?ā
āI-I guess,ā the kid stammers. āAre you, um, a first year?ā
āYup.ā He hooks a thumb and points it at himself. āIām Yuji Itadori. You wanna ride to school together? I get lost easy.ā
āOh. Okay. I think that would beā¦ that would be fine.ā He keeps glancing at the shadow on his shoulder, which ignores Yuji and continues to coil on him like a rotting calico. āIf youāre scared of getting lost, I can help. But just for a bit. Okay? We shouldnātāā he swallowsā āshouldnāt be friends.ā
āHuh? Why not?ā
āIām, uh, Iām out of school a lot. Ā Youād be better off with another upperclassman toāā
āWhatās your name?ā
āO-oh. Sorry. Okkotsu. Yuta Okkotsu.ā
āOkkotsu-senpai. Got it.ā Yuji sits down next to Yuta on the bench, opposite the dead thing thatās latched to him. āYou wanna snack?ā He digs around in his backpack. āIāve got extra.ā He produces a tuna-mayo onigiri. āGramps says I shouldnāt leave them in my bag all day. Do you buy snacks from the corner store by the park? I live in an apartment building there. Do you live nearby?ā
Okkotsu, shocked to find an onigiri in his hands before he can protest, stammers a little. Now that heās close to Okkotsu, Yuji can kind of smell himālike he hasnāt bathed in a while and his clothes arenāt washed. Up close, there are bags under Okkotsuās eyes, his nails are ragged from chewing, and the scratches on his wrists seem fresh.
Stuff his Gramps would say are ābad signsā.
āYou should come over after school,ā Yuji declares, kicking his heels on the sidewalk. āMy gramps is always working so he leaves the fridge super stocked and puts lots of movies in the entertainment system for me. Itās awesome.ā
āW-What?ā
āYou live close by.ā Yuji beams. āWe should be friends.ā
āIāā Okkotsu looks over his shoulder again.
Yujiās starting to suspect the Thing On Okkotsuās Shoulder is dangerous with how heās acting. That or it messes with him so bad it makes him seem crazy. Yuji, only then, wonders how smart it is to invite something like that into his house or if OkkotsuĀ isĀ crazy from having something like that glued to him. Yuji wonders if, maybe, he should be more scared. Maybe he shouldā
āOkay. Weāre neighbors. We can be friends.ā Okkotsu balls his sleeve up over his hand and uses it to wipe his face. āYou should make friends in your own grade though.ā A pause. āAnd donāt tell people your grandpa is working all the time. If youāre home alone sometimes, like, you shouldnāt tell people that.ā
āWhy?ā
āYou could get your grandpa in trouble? They could take you away from him?ā
āOh. Heās just out for the week. Itās fine. I havenāt punched anyone at school even once so no parent-teacher conferences!ā Yuji flashes a thumbs up.
Okkotsu blinks owlishly. āHuh?
āI donāt like bullies.ā Yuji gestures with his food, rolling his eyes. āGramps says punching people is bad.ā
āUh, yeahā"
āBut some peopleĀ needĀ punching,ā Yuji quotes. āGramps said that too.ā
Okkotsu snorts, tries to hide the laugh with his hand. His laugh sounds funny, cracks in his throat and wheezes, like maybe heās out of practice with it. āUm, arenāt you young to talk that way?ā
āGramps says youāre never too young to learn a hard lesson.ā
Okkotsuās face does something funny. āIā¦ I donāt think that. I think you can be too young forāā He pauses. āNever mind. Itās nice to meet you, Itadori.ā
āThis is awesome. I have a middle school crush picked out. And I have an upperclassman mentor. Iām killing it.ā
My uncle is really into warhammer and would win every miniature painting competition he was in. I have not very steady hands and he saw me messing up my nail polish for prom. He sat with me and carefully painted my nails and that moment meant so much to me all these years later.
there was another post on here about how all the little tiny brushes and tools and such for cosmetics are both comparable to the tools for painting and finishing minis, not to mention WAY cheaper, like the little trimmer clippers and nail files and such
If you ever, and I mean EVER think that you fucked something up royally, remember that the organizers of the 1904 Olympic marathon:
- Had zero stations for water on the 26 mile (42 km) course
- Accidentally gave North American competitor Tom Hicks a cocktail made of egg whites, brandy, and actual fucking rat poison
- Had a guy come into the race late wearing a beret and cutoff slacks, sneak into an apple orchard during the race because no food had been given to him for 40 hours, eat rotten apples, projectile vomit onto the track, fall asleep for hours, and finish in fourth place OVERALL because most of the other runners collapsed of exhaustion or injuries
- Conducted the race on a dusty road, which caused so much dust to be kicked into the air that an American runner somehow inhaled enough to tear his STOMACH LINING open
- Accidentally released feral dogs onto the track
- Fucked the other competitors up SO BADLY that Tom Hicksāthe guy who ate RAT POISON and was HALLUCINATING the entire runācame in first place
Actually, no, I don't think that friendships dropping like flies in your late 20s and early 30s because no one has time for that between overwork and family obligations and marriage and kids and partners and the ritual of the time slayer is normal and ok. No I don't think deep conversations and spontaneous adventures being replaced with a tired coffee every six months is a normal part of growing up. I don't think that emotional intimacy and soul bonds disintegrating in the face of practical inconvenience is a fact of life. I think that means something is deeply deeply wrong with our society and I will never forgive it for the friends I've lost
i feel like a big part of the appeal of dungeon crawler carl is that it is fundamentally a story where a man is told "through complex legal and technological processes we have completely fucked over the lives of you and everyone you care about to enrich ourselves" to which the man asks "what if i killed you with bombs" and it turns out the answer is they forgot that was an option
