Arael(Bully+ Yandere Gojo/reader)
TW: Attempted Non-con (the author has geninuely lost the capacity to write after writing for over 1 week straight. If this gets enough notes, I'll lowkey write smut part in part 2 or something), AFAB!reader, A LOT of noncosentual touching, serveral choking attempts, accidental overdose attempt, mentions of serveral injuries (including loss of eye, broken bones, bruising), suicide ideation, serveral near-death experiences, Gojo 'I'm just a boy' Satoru, there are serveral NGE references in this if you know them I love you, minor character death, stalking, bullying, typical Asian education system trauma (including abusive parents), reader is geninuely not happy for a single fucking second in this btw (they just get severely mindraped tbh...) it's literally hurt/no comfort, gun threats, underage drinking, a lot of grammar errors and bad writing :D
If you can squint, you can see the author very much was self projecting.
none of u will probably be gooning to this one im afraid to say.
On reread, I realize how badly this was written LOL. The pacing is GENINUELY ASS. Honestly though, I can't be bothered to edit it </3. It's long enough as it is and this is pretty barebones imo once you read it. I'm actually so fucking washed at xreader HELP. Also, if u wanna read the full version (not split into 3 posts) here's the AO3 link.
Another thing, I geninuely apologize if Gojo is a little OOC. I'm really sorry to all the Gojo enjoyers out there. Like i might just geninuely be a disappointment.
In addition, shoutout to @alj0saray for telling me I could split this fic bro. Oh my lordy lord. Thank you.
wc: 43k (almost 130 pages in google docs.....)
A/N: This fic was originally inspired by this post from @yandere-daydreams (yes, this concept has been rotting in my google docs for basically a year. This draft post is also a year old 🥀🥀🥀🥀. Credits to them for the original idea.) as well as @ddarker-dreams's golden girl series. Geninuely goated writers, wish I could be like them fr </3 (lightheartedly).
im so mad that I missed the day of Gojo + geto's breakup (BY TWO DAYS) to post this.
“Himoto, are you sure we're in the right place?”
Himoto looks at you and shrugs, “Well this was the address that I was told. I'm pretty sure it's the correct one.”
“Are you sure it's supposed to be a building in an alleyway?” You hesitated for a second. “Why are you so determined to do this fortune telling thing anyways? It's not gonna be true… No one can tell the future. It’s impossible.”
“You always say stuff like that, (Y/N). Plus, this isn't any normal kind of fortune telling, I heard that this specific fortue teller can give and tell you your entire future in detail.”
You roll your eyes. “You're helpless. I mean it.”
“Cmon don't say that!”
“Am I wrong though? You're so gullible. One of these days, it's gonna get you in trouble.”
“All my classmates got this reading, how bad can it be?”
You sighed and leaned against the doorframe. Further argument with Himoto was going to be pointless. Once she had set her mind to something, there was no stopping her, and no amount of reason, negotiation, or bribing would be enough to pull her back. In a way, you suppose it wasn't a bad trait to have. At least she was determined. At least it made her optimistic.
But God, could it be infuriating sometimes. Sometimes, it felt like you were taking care of a compulsive little sister, rather than a friend. You swore that nature would be the end of her.
“Okay. In five minutes, if this so-called fortune teller doesn't come, we're going back home. I'll drag you by the wrist if I have to.”
Himoto doesnt respond, looking at the empty desk in front of her paitently. The room itself is dark. Damp. Dungeon-like. Barely any light passes through the building, except through the entrance. There were a few dimly lit lamps in the room, but just barely enough to see. A thick layer of dust covered everything inside room. It was suffocating to say the least. You didn't understand why Himoto dragged you by the arm to the outskirts for this.
Although thinking about it now, maybe it was better that you were here. At least if anything went wrong, you could get her out of here quickly
You impatiently look at your watch. It looked like whoever this was, it was going to be a no-show. You look up at Himoto, and announced, “Five minutes is u-”
She glares at you, a sign to be quiet. In the distance, you see a figure walking down the stairs.
It's a old woman. She sees you and Himoto and nods. Himoto bows in response, and you look away.
You couldn't tell what, but something felt off about this woman. Her presented felt unnerving. You couldn't quite tell what it was that was off about her. You felt scared.
Maybe not scared. Threatened, might have been a better word. What you didn know, however, is that you needed to get out of here.
You tapped Himoto on the shoulder. “Hey let's get out of here,” You whispered.
She shakes her head. “We'll be okay. We're safe.”
“No. I mean it Himoto. Something is wrong here.”
Himoto doesn't budge.
“Do you want to get us both killed?” You hiss. “C'mon. Move it.” You look at the woman, and tightly grab your friend's arm, ready to drag her out. You stare at the woman one last time before turning around and taking a step. You can feel Himoto digging her shoes into the hardwood floor, but you drag her harder than she can resist.
“There is no need to fear,” the old woman croaked. “I will not be harming you or your friend.”
“I can't trust you on that.”
“How can a weak old woman like myself harm you?”
There's something wrong about you. Terribly wrong. You could kill us. I can feel it.
The tension in the air is enough to choke someone. For a good second, none of you move. Himoto then pushes you off. You're pushed aback as she deeply bows.
“I'm terribly sorry about my friend. She's well… not the most trusting person out there. If it would not be too much of a hassle to you, could you please… decipher my future?”
You open your mouth to protest, but Himoto shoots you a dirty look to shut you up.
“Not a problem. Please have a seat at the table.”
Himoto calmly walks down and sits in front of the large wooden desk in the center of the room. She didn't hesitate at all, as if it were all so normal. As if she were late to class and the teacher was telling her to sit at her desk.
Your hand grips on the small knife in your pocket.
There was something horribly wrong about this entire thing. About the woman. About the building. You look at Himoto. She seems absolutely clueless. You wonder if she’s always had such little survival instinct.
“Place your hand on the table.”
Himoto does as she's told.
“What is your name?”
“It's Himoto, miss.”
“Himoto,” the woman repeats, slowly. “I'm going to touch your hand, and I want you to close your eyes, okay? Just do as I say.”
You can't see the front of Himoto's face but you assume she does what she's told. Your knuckles turn white gripping the knife in your pocket.
You can't hear what the old is saying to Himoto, but she inspects there hand first, before touching touching it. Himoto remained perfectly relaxed and still.
You stand there awkwardly, watching. Bewildered by what could possibly be going on.
When the woman looks up again, she's horrified. She looks at you, wide-eyed, but immediately looks down again. She smiles at Himoto.
You felt a weird eerieness creep up on you. Your feet felt glued to the ground. You couldn't move. Why did she look at you like that? What happened?
You couldn't help but wonder.
Did you do something to Himoto in her future? Could you? You could never hurt her. You found that idea ridiculous.
… or did she see you had the intent to threaten her with a knife? You couldn't be sure.
The woman smiles sheepishly and tells Himoto she couldn't tell her future, and Himoto looks visibly disappointed. Then she whispers something in her ear. Himoto nods, stands up, and walks towards you.
“She wants to read your future.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I don't know! She couldn't find a future for me so maybe…?” Himoto shrugs. “It's whatever.” her voice is laced with disappointment. You look at her with a “I-told-you-so” look, and she rolls her eyes.
“Tell her I said no.”
“She says she has to. It's urgent.”
“What does she need to look at my hand for? The blisters I have on my hand from holding a pencil?”
“Just go. Okay?” She snaps. Himoto pushes you in the direction of the table. “I'll be waiting outside.”
“Hey! No wait–”
“You're not gonna die!” She calls out.
You look at the table.
Well, I guess it won't hurt.
You drop your bag at the doorframe, and slowly walk towards the table. Your footsteps echo with each step you take. The lady eyes you up and down and motions for you to sit down.
Begrudgingly, you follow the gesture, and sit.
The lady motions for you to put your hand on the table.
You do as you're told, and splay your right hand on the table.
“Close your eyes.”
You do as you're told. You doubt anything worthwhile would really happen out of this. It was a waste of time to begin with, and both your parents would be worried if you weren't home by curfew.
“Open your eyes.”
You open them. Immidieately you retract your hand.
“Tell me. How did you and Himoto meet?”
You clench your left hand. You want to wash it now.
“Why do you need to know that?” You snarled. “Listen if you're trying to hurt her-”
The old woman looks at you dead in the eyes.
You immediately shut your mouth. “We met last year. She was a new underclassman, and I helped her with schoolwork.”
“I see.”
“Well? Are you going to tell me my future or not?”
The old woman retracts her stance, and closes her eyes. You can’t tell if this was all a bad joke or not.
“Himoto is going to die. Soon. Likely within the next three weeks.”
Your ears must be playing tricks on you. It takes a few seconds to process what she's saying, and even so… it seems so unbelievable.
“What… you're kidding right? Listen if this is some sort of joke, you need to cut it out-”
“And you'll be the one to set her soul free from this earth.”
At the time, it seemed so unbelievable that you could've laughed. “Why are you telling me this? You should've told her so she can avoid her own death!” You hissed.
“It's against my policy to do so. Otherwise half my clients would go mad.”
“You call these people that come to you clients?” You scoff. “Don't make me laugh. Fortune telling is always a load of bullshit.”
The old lady leans into you. “There's never been a single future I've seen that hasn't become a reality.” It’s in a quiet, yet smug voice. “Himoto will die. It is inevitable. And she will cause all your future misfortunes.”
“My… what?”
“Oh? You want to hear YOUR future now don't you?”
You glare at her. Angrily.
She smirks. You can't help but want to punch her. You want to leave. You don't want to be here anymore. You want to go home. You want to go home and pretend this never happened.
It's quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
“A man. A terrible man will fall for you. A man that will take everything from you. He’ll strip you of all your future, your freedom, and eventually he'll take your dignity away from you in the end.” The old lady pauses, you’re not sure whether to catch her breath or to relish in your fear. You assume the latter, but you could never tell. “You'll try running from this man… you'll try to get far away from him as possible, but you know in the end its futile. He’ll always find you no matter how far you run or how well you hide. And when you know who this man is… it’ll be too late for you.”
You scoffed. “What? You're being serious?”
The woman just continues staring at you. You realize she looks at little crazy, come to think about it. She looks at little wide-eyed. A little rabid.
A little bit like a lunatic.
Come to think about it, Himoto mentioned she lived here. We're these even suitable conditions to live in? The walls looked damp, and there were barely any lights. The building itself was worn down.
You decide not to push it further.
Himoto standing, holding her book bag in both her hands when you leave. She makes a teasing grin at you, and you smack her on the head.
She scowls, “Ow, what was that for??”
“Let's go home, idiot.”
“God, you're such a killjoy.” She scoffed. “Did she say something to you? You look a little scared~”
“It-It's nothing-”
“Are you sureee? Did she say you were gonna marry an ugly guy in the future?”
You purse your lips and stare at her until she stops giggling. “She didn't really say anything. At least, not anything that probably would happen”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean it sounds ridiculously far fetched, Himoto. Anyways-”
“Oh cmon I wanna hear”
“Its not that interesting.” You snapped. “Im not saying.”
“It cant be that bad…”
“I dont care what you think she said. I’m NOT saying what she said.”
“Fine, whatever.” She groaned. “Be boring.”
You roll your eyes, sling your bag over your shoulder. “Cmon, let's go home and get out of this creepy place.”
You gently hit your book bag against her. “Survival skills of a literal coconut.”
“Hey!”
You snickered and ran outside. Himoto ran after you laughing.
-
“Can I tell you something?” Himoto asks, “Earth to Y/N,” she pokes your cheek, trying not to laugh as you slump over, with your notebook sliding down your face. “What?” you groaned. “God, I REALLY hate school.”
“You’ve said that 20 times in the past week,” she rolls her eyes. “You’ll probably ace your exams. Do your parents really want you to go to a top high school that badly?” You stare at her and roll your eyes. “Don’t YOUR parents want you to go TOO?”
Himoto quietly makes a ‘ugh’ sound.
“You should enjoy the free time you still got this year. It’s getting brutal out here.” you sighed. You stare at the blackboard in front of you. You can tell it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. There were streaks of chalk across the dark green board, and residue was left on the ledges. Someone had been neglecting the boards for a long time.
“Anyways, what did you want to ask? What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s not really a question…” she twiddles her fingers. “Actually it is. What do you do when you think someone likes you? And maybe you don’t like them back?”
“You’re asking me as if I’ve ever had to reject someone,” you answered sarcastically. Himoto opens her mouth, but you cut her off. “Honestly, I don’t know. Do you know them that well? Or is it like…”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know it’s more like I sit beside him in class and he’s kind of there I guess…”
“Then HOW would you know he liked you?”
“It’s… It’s just a feeling yknow? Like I see him staring at me all the time and he keeps asking me for pens and what not. But it’s like he never gives me them back. The one time where I only had an eraser, we had to share it and like… he stole it at the end. Maybe he keeps losing them I guess?”
You grimaced. “How long has he been doing this for?”
“I don’t know. It’s only started to ramp up in the past few weeks.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
“No, I’m only telling you right now, cause I'm a little scared. Also, he might find out if it’s anyone in our grade. He’s not even that strong, even I could probably fight him off. He’s just like. He looks a little creepy. It freaks me out.”
“Has anyone else observed anything?”
“Ame did the other day, and she said something, after getting back all my stuff from him, but I was kind of grossed out y'know? I threw them all away after.”
“Can you ask to switch seats with someone? I mean it might not solve everything, but it’s probably gonna be better as long as he’s not oogling you the whole time.”
“Ame offered to switch seats, and I think we’re just gonna switch for now. I don’t know what else to do.”
“It’s okay, just switch seats and at least you won’t have to see him anymore. Hopefully, that’s the end of it.”
Himoto’s face lights up. “Okay! I’ll do that.” She hugs you from behind your chair. “I don’t know WHAT I’d do without you.”
The bell rings. You begin to stand up, and Himoto starts packing her bag. She begins stuffing everything in hastily, and she runs out of the classroom. “See you soon!”
As she runs out of the classroom, a piece of paper falls from her bag. It’s neatly folded into thirds and taped.
You quickly unfold it, and there’s only a few words on there.
Meet me by the train tracks tomorrow.
You quickly fold up the paper again, and throw it in the trash. You wondered who wrote it. Maybe you’d follow Himoto to the train tracks tomorrow, if she went. Yeah, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
-
Himoto quietly excused herself the next day after school.
She was acting different, you noticed that. Although she was smiling, and joking around as per usual, she looked scared. Like something had happened to her. You wanted to say something about it, you should’ve said something about it, but you decided against it. Maybe her parents were acting up again. Maybe something happened in class? You weren’t the best person when it came to reassuring and comforting people, and most likely it wasn’t anything, so you decided against it.
You were waiting for her in the usual spot when she quickly sprinted up to you and hugged you. She’d never done that before. She’d never done a lot of the things she did today, before, actually. As she hugs you, you awkwardly pat her on the head.
“What’s up?”
She doesn’t really say anything but grabs you tighter. Sometimes, you still wonder if she’s still a toddler on the inside. After a few moments, she lets you go.
“I’m REALLY sorry but I can’t go home with you today.” A twinge of guilt is in her voice. “I wish I could, but I have something I need to do.”
“Like…?”
“I can’t really tell you…” She looks away. “It’s something top-secret.”
You’re taken aback. Himoto always told you everything about her. She never hid anything from you. Whenever there was something going on, you’d always be the first to hear. You were genuinely convinced she never kept any of her experiences to herself. It annoyed you to no end at the start, the way she’d talk so much, but over the years, you came to enjoy it. Was she mad at you? Maybe she was. But that wasn’t like her.
None of this was.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” You’re cut off from your own thoughts. “Oh uh… yeah.”
Himoto gently smacks you on the head before running off. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal.”
You watch her run away, before sighing and beginning to walk. Putting Himoto at the back of your mind, you began to make a mental list of whatever you needed to do before tomorrow, and what order you were gonna do them in.
You stop in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what Himoto's up to. I really wanna know what she’s doing. I really wanna know what she’s going to do. No wait, that’s creepy. What am I doing? I have better things to do. But…
Your mind cuts back to the note you saw yesterday.
Meet me at the train tracks tomorrow.
She was going to the train tracks. You immediately turn around and start running in the other direction. Himoto was going to be at the train tracks. She was going to the train tracks, and meeting someone. And judging by how scared she was, you could assume that she was probably in danger maybe? Were those two things even related? You couldn’t be sure, but you had a hunch they were.
It didn’t take you long to catch up to her. You couldn’t tell her you were there. Clearly, she didn’t want to tell you what was going on, but at least if you were near her, you’d understand what was going on, and it’d bring you some peace, so you’d stop overthinking. You felt guilty. Like you were seeing something you weren’t supposed to. But you couldn’t help yourself. Maybe you were too nosy. Maybe you should just go back.
No. I’m already this deep, I might as well find out for myself.
Himoto kept looking back behind her, watching if someone was following her, so you did your best to keep yourself obscured. You kept hiding behind objects every few steps, doing your best to keep yourself out of her field of vision.
I gotta look like some creep right now… I shouldn’t be doing this…
You shake your head. Maybe you were imagining everything, but you swear you felt her gripping your uniform a little harder than usual.
She had to be in danger right? You’d deal with the disgust you felt towards yourself later. That wasn’t important right now.
You knelt behind a power box across the street from Himoto. She had stopped walking, and there was another guy leaning against a wall, waiting for her there. You take a few small steps closer, to be able to hear them, trying your best to stay out of sight.
He was skinny. He had dark hair, he was pale and he had really dark eyebags. A gaunt-looking guy who was slightly above average height. You tried to wrack your mind and figure out who that was. You’d never seen him before but clearly Himoto knew him, and judging by the way she was standing, she was evidently scared of him.
It was the creepy guy Himoto mentioned yesterday.
What’s he doing here? You thought to yourself. So HE wrote that note, and he asked her to come out here? Why did Himoto actually meet him? So she knew that I threw out the note but then…. So that’s why she was…
You physically feel your heart skip a beat. She must’ve known. She had to.
You listen to their conversation. You quickly pull out your phone to audio record the entire thing, in case you needed evidence later. A wave of relief washes over you, realizing that you probably did the right thing.
Maybe you’d ask her tomorrow what happened here, and hopefully she’d give you some more context. You quickly erased that thought from your mind. You couldn’t be weird about this.
“Listen, I don’t know what you want from me but just…”
“I don’t want anything from you! Don’t you understand? I…”
“Can you just… please leave me alone? You’re weird. You’re creepy. I don’t know what the hell you did to my stuff, I don’t know why you were stealing my stuff- In fact. I don’t know how the hell you thought I wouldn’t notice you’ve been stealing my stuff. You’re digusting you’re weird, you’re-”
He cuts Himoto off by covering her mouth. You want to stand up and pry him off her, get Himoto away from this freak, but you can’t move your legs. You feel glued to the ground.
There’s a few seconds of pause between when he talks again, and you can see his face getting visibly red. “… Himoto I… I really like you… I think I might actually be in love with you…”
From a distance you could tell that Himoto was visibly angry. She looked like she wanted to give this guy a complete beatdown. And you were sure she could, he was so weak, you didn’t know why Himoto hadn’t pried his hand off yet.
“It really… It makes me sad you’re always trying to avoid me. I liked sitting beside you in class… You made my day better just by seeing you. And when I couldn’t see you, I’d follow you around from a distance.”
He pauses, you can only assume he’s trying to catch his breath before he starts speaking again. “When I didn’t know where you were, I followed you to your condo… sometimes when you were trying your best to avoid me, I’d just stay outside the door, hoping to hear your voice… it’s just a shame everyone in our grade loves you so much… I mean how couldn’t they? You’re literally… you’re literally perfect.”
He slinks one arm around her waist. “But it’s really a shame… cause they all love you so much… but only we should be together…”
Almost the second after he says that, Himoto immediately stomps on his foot, causing him to lose his grip over her, and she slaps him across the face. You silently cheer for her, hoping that she could get rid of this guy once and for all.
“Get away from me you freak!” She yells, “god… I knew you were stealing my STUFF but you were doing all that? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”
You watch him cower in front of Himoto. Good. You thought to yourself.
She begins to stomp away, and the guy grabs her hand. She smacks his hand and pulls it away but he’s faster. He grabs onto her hair this time causing her to to fall back this time. She manages to catch herself before having to land the fall.
“Let go of me” she snapped. “Let go of me, or else I’m going to scream so loud so this entire neighbourhood will hear.”
“Try it,” He mutters. “It won’t stop me.”
Himoto grabs his wrist once again, and kicks his knee, causing him to kneel down. She then almost succeeded in kicking his crotch before he grabs her other ankle causing her to fall down for real this time.
“I’ll let you go, if you answer this one question. I’ll leave you alone. Forever if you answer this one question.”
Himoto stares at him angrily, but she doesn’t protest. “Go on.”
“Do you like Y/N?”
She immediately turns red. “What?”
“You heard me. Do you have a crush on Y/N?”
“What kind of question is that? What does this have to do with anything? Why the fuck would that matter to you?”
“Uh, no. We’re just friends. Listen I don’t know what the fuck you want as an answer but-”
“You’re always around them. That fucking bitch. You’re always hugging them, and touching them in some way. You’d only do that with someone you love right? Why couldn’t you do that to me? Why do you like her so much? You’re always running to her. What does she have that I don’t? Why did you tell them and then throw out the note I gave you?”
Himoto rolls her eyes. “Listen I don’t know what you’re talking about. I read the your stupid note and then I put it in my bag.”
He raises a crumpled up piece of paper. You feel as if you want to die. That you’d rather be struck by lightning right now. Himoto’s eye twitches and she backs a step away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was probably dropped and then-”
“Shut up. You know what you did.”
“No I actually don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“I just want you to admit it. Say you’re sorry. And then I’ll let you go.”
Himoto glares at him. “I’m sorry for absolutely nothing.” She stands up and leaves. This time the guy doesn’t follow him. You begin to stand up and follow her.
Suddenly the alarms begin to beep and the train gate slams down. It happens in a flash.
Himoto decides to make a run for it but as the train is in the distance so she steps back.
It flashes right before your eyes. The guy catches up to Himoto, pushing her onto the tracks, as the train gets closer.
She stumbles and falls.
You can’t look away.
The train gets closer and closer and closer until… you hear a terrible sound.
The crushing of human bones.
Maybe not even that. It was beyond your description. The sound of what could only be described as a horrific cracking sound before the train continues running along the tracks.
You don’t remember what you did next. You only remember reaching for the guy and beating him until you saw a big puddle of blood on the sidewalk.
-
There was someone, or something haunting the school, after Himoto’s death.
A bunch of students went missing, their bodies mutilated beyond comprehension. Mangled bloody messes, similar to the scene of Himoto’s death. Their bones crushed, blood smeared all over the walls. The bodies of the victims were usually found scattered around the school, seemingly at random. Sometimes they’d be in the janitor’s closet, sometimes, they’d be a bloodied mess on the school courtyard. Either way, many people died after Himoto.
It was strange. Some people swore they could hear voices. The people who left adequate documentation before they died swore they could hear voices before they got murdered.
One person even said that they heard something say your name. And then another person said the same thing. And then another, and another.
And then before you knew it, everyone started avoiding you. You were treated like an outcast of sorts, would’ve been the best way you could put it. You were thankful no one was bullying you, but people started straying away from you like you were secretly connected to the deaths someway.
Which, you weren’t.
You told people that.
Of course, they didn’t believe you. You found it a little hard to believe that yourself. Whatever it was, couldn’t have possibly had a connection to you. You had come to the conclusion that it might’ve just been a rogue killer. Someone who got sick pleasure from cracking people’s heads in. Maybe they were whispering some word that sounded like your name as a prank. Maybe it was someone who knew you and wanted to make your life more hell than it actually was. You refused to believe anyone hated you that much.
Right. Right???
You found it hard to believe that lie yourself. To you though, it felt even harder to believe that a spirit could’ve been attached to you in any way, or even worse, you were subconsciously controlling it.
You tried to shake it off. You tried to treat it like how you treated Himoto’s death. You tried to forget about it. Bury it so deep within your mind that you couldn’t possibly remember it at will. At least, if you couldn’t remember it, you could convince yourself that it didn’t happen. That it wasn’t real.
But nothing felt real after her death.
The bell rings. People rush out of class, eager to go home. More than usual today. You quickly packed your things and ran out of class too. On the way home, you bump into Ame.
The two of you stumble back a bit, and you begin sputtering apologies before you realize the state she’s in. She’s bleeding. She’s bruised. She looks like she narrowly won a fight.
“Ame, what…” you take in a breath, “Are you okay?”
She groans clutching her arm and staring at you. “I mean, for the most part yeah. I think I’m okay.”
“Don’t be stupid, you’re… you’re bleeding and you look like you just got into a really bad fight…”
“Well, do I?” She replies sarcastically, “I might’ve, thanks for the great observation.”
You look down on the ground unknowing of what to say. You shift your weight from both of your feet for a few seconds before reaching for your phone. You slowly begin to pull it out before Ame stops you.
“Listen, don’t. Don’t send me to the hospital. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re literally-” she shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. I got into a fight with that.” Ame stares at you for a few more moments, observing your shocked face before nodding. “It exists.”
“You… you can see it?”
She nods her head, “Well, barely. It was out of my view most of the time but I’m pretty sure it was one ugly spirit. It probably looked disgusting. You could probably see it too. I’m not sure though.”
“How did you fight it then?” You whispered, “It literally bashed everyone’s skull in. Actually, how WERE you even able to see it?”
“I don’t know,” She mutters. “I just started kicking what might’ve been its leg with my shoe until it eventually let go of me.”
“But you’re still hurt… we should get you to the hospital, no?”
“I’m completely fine. It’ll probably be better within a few days.”
“You might’ve broken something.” You said pointedly. “That won’t go away on its own.”
“I didn’t hear a crack,” Ame replied. “Just relax. Plus aren’t high school acceptances out today? You should probably go home and check. Stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine no matter what happens.”
You hesitate. She nods. You pat her on the back, a look of sympathy and guilt in your face before running off.
Your hands are shaking by the time you get home. Nervously, you open the mailbox pulling out all the envelopes inside. You didn’t want to know what your results were. It scared you. You gripped all the envelopes tightly, locked the mailbox, and walked out.
You focused on all your steps walking towards the elevator, counting down all the seconds until the elevator came down, opened, closed, and eventually stopped at your apartment.
Before you got in, curiosity got the best of you. You shuffled through all the mail, seeing which schools gave you offers.
You stop shuffling midway. You can’t tell if your heart drops, or if it skips a beat.
A top school had given you an offer.
-
Your parents treated you differently after that. They were nicer. Kinder than what they had used to be.
You supposed you must’ve been able to prove your worth to them. But their respect and love for you meant nothing towards you now. You knew it was all just fake. They were only saying that because you had gotten in, had you not been so fortunate, you would’ve never been able to hear the end of it from them.
You enjoyed your newly-found freedom to the fullest though.
For the whole summer, you spent your time away in your own room. There wasn’t much to do. Occasionally, you’d go outside, sometimes sneaking into the movie theatre, or looking around in the mall at other times. When your parents eventually gave you some allowance, you’d end up spending all day in arcades, burning the money on claw machines and games. After that, you’d come home, read manga, sometimes browse the internet, and go to sleep.
It was a peaceful life. You wished you could live like that forever.
It was near the time when school started again that you decided to pay Himoto’s parents a visit. A tinge of regret formed at your chest realizing that you probably should’ve talked to them sooner.
You gently knock on the door and wait for a few moments. No one answers the door. You take a deep breath and knock again. The lock slowly clicks open, and Himoto’s mom is standing there. You look her up and down, and she seemed paler than usual. You guess maybe Himoto’s death had a more serious toll than you thought.
“Come in,” she mutters quietly. You follow her into the house, not knowing what to expect.
Shakily, she pulls out a chair, and motions you to sit down. You give an awkward thanks and grip your hands tightly.
“You must’ve been Himoto’s best friend,” she mutters. “Are you here to pay her condolences?”
You nod. Neither of you said anything. Neither of you needed to say anything. You don’t know how long you stayed like that before her mother spoke again.
“Do you know how she died?”
Your chest tightens. You weighed your options of telling the truth or lying. If you lied, she might not need to how gruesome Himoto’s death really was. It might’ve been good for her to live in oblivion. In ignorance of the details, it might’ve let her keep her peace. Maybe.
If you told the truth… you weren’t sure how she could react.
“I don’t know.” You muttered. “One day I was with her, and the next…” you stopped mid sentence. You didn’t want to even finish that sentence.
Her mom nodded. “I was… so worried when she didn’t come home that day. I…”
You looked up at her. You realized how terrible she looked. She looked like she hadn’t slept well for the better part of the year. How could she? You just wondered why she hadn’t gotten revenge on Himoto’s killer yet.
“I waited and waited… I was worried sick…” she takes a shaky breath, “I didn’t know that that would’ve been the last time I saw her.” You didn’t know what to do. You felt stupid for staring at her, stupid for not saying anything. Stupid for even coming here.
“I’m sorry.” you whispered. You grip your hands tighter.
“No, don’t be,” She laughs, “It’s not your fault.”
A pang of guilt pokes you in the chest. You do your best to ignore it. The best you can do is grab onto her back, as she completely breaks down in front of you. You didn’t know what to do. In that moment, you heard the most horrific shriek you could’ve come from a human being.
You didn’t want to be here anymore. You wonder why you didn’t save her, why you simply squat there like nothing was gonna happen. Had you done anything, you wouldn’t be here right now. None of this would’ve happened, and you’d still have your best friend.
You wonder why you didn’t take her place. Why you didn’t just run across the road and save her. Why you just watched as it all unfolded.
The cracking sound replays in your head. You can’t do this anymore. You stand up. You leave Himoto’s mother alone in the living room and ran up to her room, quietly closing the door behind you.
Her room had more or less been left in the same way you remembered. Everything was still there, not a thing out of place. Her bed unmade, all her stuffies, her figurines, her photos, her room decor were still in the same place. The bookshelf was stacked with notebooks, stationery, and several novels. Her pillows messily stowed upon the bed. Some drawers on her desk were empty, some were shut. Paper sticking out of the shut ones, while the open ones had various other contents. You didn’t bother to look through it. It felt wrong.
All of this felt wrong.
You stared at the desk. It was the same as you remember. All her stuff was in the same position as what she left it in days before she died. You assumed her parents hadn’t bothered with tampering with her room at all. It was like it had been frozen in time.
You stand there for a second. Trying to avoid whatever you could’ve thought at that moment.
You drop a handful of flowers on her desk.
-
You hadn’t cried in a long time.
Most of the times, you had managed to control your emotions, you took deep breaths, tried to calm your mind, and usually, it’d been enough to stop yourself from tipping over the edge of tears.
But this time, it wasn’t enough for anything.
The second everything went dark in the house, you couldn’t stop yourself. You didn’t even know how it started. Tears started streaming down your face, silently until it started getting worse, and worse until you were full on crying. Ugly crying.
Actually scratch that. You weren’t even crying. You were having a full-on mental breakdown. Sobbing, hyperventilating. Fuck, it even hurt to think.
You laid there until you were able to normally breathe again. You weren’t sure how long it had been, but you could only assume it was likely hours before you felt in any way calm again.
It felt weird. You hadn’t felt this calm or relaxed in ages. Like nothing could ever bother you at this moment.
It was another give-or-take 20 minutes of you trying to force yourself to sleep, but you couldn’t do that either.
Eventually, you decided to get out of bed, maybe do something else, like watch the TV on mute before your parents woke up, and then sneak back to bed. Hopefully, that would make you tired enough to get some rest.
Quietly, you opened your door, and tip-toed to the living room. You quietly turned on the TV, quickly pressing the mute button before any sound could be heard. You gently lean down on the couch, and begin channel surfing before you realize you were thirsty. Actually…
Your eyes scanned around the room. Something didn’t feel right. It felt like someone else was here.
Your eyes darted around the room, trying to identify who it might’ve been.
There’s no one there.
Must’ve been your imagination.
You lazily slump back into the couch. You could get a glass of water later. You were probably imagining things. Probably. You resume browsing channels before finding something that piqued your interest. Some random movie that could probably keep your mind off things enough for now, until you fell asleep.
You blankly watch the flashing lights on the screen for a few moments before you hear some footsteps.
Okay, now this is getting weird. You think to yourself. Who could possibly be there? I swear that didn’t hear the door getting broken down, or even unlocked. Maybe I should just double-check to be sure.
You stand up, walking towards the door. As you expected, it was locked, just as it was before you went to bed.
Then… maybe it is my imagination? Maybe I’m just imagining things. No one can possibly get through a locked door.
… Unless maybe they locked it again? Picked the lock?
You look on the ground for any visible signs of footsteps. There were none.
It.. I guess it has to be nothing then? You look around, hoping to spot maybe a crazy guy, or some psycho killer, but instead you’re greeted with nothing.
You felt like you were going crazy. Your heart started beating faster, and your eyes begin darting around the room. There really really WAS nothing there.
But there had to be something there because the air felt weird, and you could tell that the room wasn’t completely empty. You begin walking around, flipping the place upside down, trying to see if there was something there. Maybe it was a bad prank. Maybe someone was playing tricks on you.
Maybe.. Maybe
You end up tripping in the kitchen and stumbling over. You groaned and rubbed your shin in pain before looking up.
You weren’t wrong. There was something there. Just. Not what you were thinking. The thing somewhat resembled a human, but it wasn’t very close. It had somewhat of a human shape, but what looked like no skin on its body. There were bones poking out of its body, some of its limbs hanging completely immovable. It had holes in the usual places where there were eyes, ears, and a mouth but none of them ever moved. The whole flesh of the thing looked like it was constantly dripping and melting away.
However, the one thing that stood out the most to you was the ribbon that still remained intact, tied to its neck.
That ribbon… It doesn’t take you long to realize that it was probably some manifestation of Himoto, much to your terror.
It also doesn’t take you long to realize that it’s probably the thing that had been going around killing students left and right, because before you can react, its long arms begin to reach for your neck, gripping tighter.
And tighter.
And tighter.
You could see some black spots in your vision before it slowly drags you closer, and you realize it’s actually saying something.
It was saying something over and over.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
You begin digging your nails into the thing, trying to ignore the disgusting texture hoping it’d just hurt enough to let you go. Clawing at something, hoping it’d be able to let you go. That maybe you’d be able to survive.
After a good few seconds, you realize you’ve completely dented through its arm, and you mange to fall down. Quickly you reach for the knife block, grabbing the biggest knife you could find.
In some rush of pure adrenaline and fear, you manage to grab the thing by its arm, gripping it so tightly that it snaps off. You’re surprised as the thing pops off, spraying a thick, purple liquid everywhere.
The thing backs into a wall, and you raise the knife. Without hesitation you keep pushing it into the monster, until it goes through the other side. It completely slumps down, but you don’t stop. You kneel down. You pull the knife out, raise your arm, and push the knife back in. You do this once, twice, three times, until it became a mechanical action.
Until you realize there’s nothing left and all that was the monster’s residue all over the walls. The purple goo was everywhere on the walls, and probably on you.
You strayed frozen in place, trying to catch your breath, trying to make your heartbeat slow down.
What the fuck did I just do?
You stare at the puddle of remains that sat on the kitchen floor.
I just…
Did I just kill Himoto?
Your tightens for what might’ve been the 9th time this day. You stare at the puddle of residue on the ground. You grip the knife harder.
Oh god…
There’s about three footsteps you hear before you hear the light click.
You slowly turn your head around.
You saw your parents standing in the doorway.
-
“We’ve been thinking about getting you institutionalized.”
You raised your head up and stared at both of your parents sitting on the other side of the table. They looked dead serious.
“But what about-”
“About what?” Your dad cut you off. “Something’s clearly wrong with you. We saw you in the middle of the night with a knife in your hand, looking like you were going to kill someone.”
You lower your head again. You forgot.
Whatever Himoto had turned into only showed itself to certain people. You happened to be one of those people
There wasn’t a way you could even explain this to your parents without it backfiring on you even more.
“I don’t remember raising a killer.” your father mutters. “And after all we’ve done, after we’ve raised you since you were a child, moving schools, and trying to give you everything we couldn’t have, this is how you repay us? By trying to kill us?”
“No I swear that’s not what-”
“Shut up.” He snaps. “Shut your mouth.”
Your mother stares at you like she’d never known you ever. That the person you were was a foreign entity to her. Her lip trembles. You know she probably wants to hurl insults and accusations onto you too, but she stays quiet, and slightly hyperventilating since your dad keeps going.
It’s pointless to bother explaining anything to these two. Once they had decided whatever they decided was true, it would’ve simply been like trying to cut a long down with a butter knife to convince them otherwise. Of anything.
Your dad pulls out the acceptance letters you got, and lights a match to them. You stand up. “No- please that’s too far-”
“You don’t deserve any of this,” your mom screams at you, “We worked so hard for you, we did everything for you to have these opportunities, and to have a shot at university.”
“Bad people don’t deserve nice things,” your father added on. “University is a nice thing, and if you want to kill us, then you don’t get anything at all.”
You quickly sink down to your chair in horror as you watch the pieces of paper get burnt. Your years of hard work, your years of getting beat up, yelled at, and having to numb yourself.
Just gone like that.
You feel like crying all over again, until there’s a knock on the door. Of course, as per usual, your parents ignore the knocking, and watch the letters burn until there is little more than ash left in the tray on the table.
The knocking doesn’t stop.
“Who could POSSIBLY be bothering us at this time,” your father muttered, annoyed. “I haven’t answered the door and they’re still there.”
“Must be some type of mandated apartment check. Why don’t you go answer the door?”
Your mother stands up and leaves the room. She opens the door, and you hear them talking. You try your best to drone out what your dad was saying, hoping that maybe if he was loud enough whoever was at the door could’ve been kind enough to at least send you off child protective services for a little while, until your parents calmed down. Maybe you’d be able to explain to them what happened.
Maybe they’d understand.
After a few moments, your mom comes back, and there’s a man standing behind her. Your dad stares at him too. It was really awkward for a few moments, it felt like someone was watching the lowest point in your life. Your father was the first one to speak up.
“Who are you?” he asks coldly. “Guests are not allowed in our home at this time. I’ll call the police if you don’t leave this property.”
Your mother stands there, not saying anything. Despite the awkwardness of the whole situation, you couldn’t help but feel angry your parents were being so rude to this stranger. You bit the inside of your cheek and looked at him.
He was an average looking guy. Not someone who could’ve been a threat. Twenty or so years in age, you could only assume, he didn’t look that old. What caught your eye though, was the weird clothing he had on.
It was some kind of uniform with baggy pants, and a really oversized shirt. It was buttoned-up to the top of his neck, with a striped gold button. You’d never seen that type of uniform before. It looked somewhat like a school uniform, but not by much. You wonder what kind of organization, or whatever he belonged to.
The man doesn’t answer any of your father’s questions. Instead, he changes the subject. “Did you see any paranormal activity here recently, sir?”
“…what? No?”
“Our reports show that there’s been paranormal activity in this region, and most recently the activity has been traced to your house.”
“Are you a missionary? We’re not interested if you are. Now if you’d so kindly g-”
“You must’ve heard of the recent murders in your child’s school, correct? I assume you still sent them to school everyday, despite that.”
“Why does it matter what I did or didn’t do?” Your dad glares at the man, “Why is this any of your business?”
The man continues, “I believe I heard you shouting at your child about something relating to-”
“This is absolutely NONE of your business,” your father snaps. “Unbelievable. I’m going to call the police.”
He quickly stands up to grab the phone, but before he can do that, the man cuts him off. “Your child wasn’t trying to kill you.” He said softly. “Don’t call the authorities, I can explain.” Your mother pushes your father back into his seat, and you awkwardly push out the spare seat for him. He gives you a thankful nod, and he sits down. Your father shoots a dirty look at you, and then looks at him with vitriol.
“Your child… is not a normal human.”
It’s quiet that you can hear a pin drop. Both your parents gawk at him in disbelief, and you lower your head further. The situation was so funny you could only think of laughing at the moment, but you keep your mouth shut.
“What are you going to tell us next?” Your father snides, “That they can do magic? That they’re god’s chosen one?”
“Actually… We have a strong case to believe that your child may possess supernatural or superhuman qualities. Your child seems to have been able to exorse what is called a ‘cursed spirit’ with nothing more than a kitchen knife.”
The man picks up the knife you left on the floor before. You could still see all the purple goo staining the shiny metal.
“You want us to believe that they,” your dad motioned to you, “Can see some ghosts or ‘magical creatures’ we cannot? Are you still playing make-believe at your age?”
“So you’re just saying they’re just some ‘freak’ of nature?” Your mother adds, “I find that hard to believe.”
You couldn’t imagine how they couldn’t see the stains on the knife. Did it look shiny to them? Maybe you were imagining stuff again. Maybe this was a dream. Were you just crazy? Had your dad been yelling the whole time and you just started to hallucinate?
How could any of this be real?
Your dad stands up and puts his hand on the strange man’s shoulder. “I believe you should go.”
The man glares at your dad. “I’m not finished yet.”
“We have to take your child,” he continues, “It is my belief that it is not safe for them, or anyone else for them to remain here. Or in the general public, where you people typically reside.”
“That’s not up to you to decide. We have decided to institutionalize her already. It is under our control.”
“That’s not what I meant. They cannot be institutionalized. They have to come with us. There is no alternative choice here. They have to come with us, we will take good care of them.” “We refuse to let you take our child away.” Your mom snaps.
“Unfortunately, we are mandated to do so. I should add that they were partially responsible for all of the 52 deaths that happened in the school she attended? Such incidents are guaranteed to happen again if she remains in either your care, or institutionalized. Locking them in a psych ward will do absolutely nothing to prevent this.”
Your parents both look at you, in horror.
“You’re telling me… they’re a killer?”
The man nods, and you couldn’t even embrace for whatever your parents were gonna say after.
“What do you mean we raised a killer,” your dad said quietly, “I don’t think I’ve ever even put that idea into their mind.”
“What did I do wrong,” your mother sobs, “We created an abnormal person, a freak.”
“This isn’t our child. This shouldn’t be our child.”
“What did we do wrong to deserve this?”
You listen to this for a few more minutes before your father looks at you again. “Go.”
Your entire body went slack.
You’d never seen him like this before. He’s scared of you.
“Pack your things. Leave.”
“Get out of my house.”
The man gently puts a hand on your shoulder. You wrack a sob, and he pats your back.
You’re at the bottom step of a mountain.
The drive here was a blur, you didn’t know how long it was until you got here. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours, you couldn’t quite tell after all the events of today.
After you hastily packed everything you absolutely needed into your backpack, you were pushed outside the door by your parents, and the strange guy told you to get into a car. You wondered if you were being kidnapped. Maybe they were gonna sell you off here.
You didn’t know, but it wasn’t like there was anything you could do now. You weren’t welcome home, you didn’t know where you were, and you were surrounded by strangers that didn’t seem in the slightest, interested in your side of any story.
“Go up the stairs, I promise it doesn’t bite.”
Yeah, like that was really comforting.
You hesitate for a second, and begin walking up the mountain of stairs, leading you to one of those traditional-looking gates. You didn’t know what they were called.
Are they… gonna turn me into a shrine maiden or something?
You can’t help but ask. Maybe they’ll answer.
“Hey um… what are you guys gonna do to me?”
“You’ll see.”
As you reach the top of the steps, you can see a bunch of pathways formed, each leading to different buildings. All of them looked like old traditional buildings. You had no idea what any of the buildings were supposed to do, and they stretched out far and wide from your field of vision. It might as well have been a maze, as far as you were concerned.
You decided against asking any more questions, and continued following the man into some random building. You remembered making fun of Himoto for taking you to that fortune-teller once.
But what were you doing right now? You’d lost everything, as far as you were concerned. Now, desperate, following strangers to random buildings, hoping nothing bad would happen to you.
The guy finally stops at one of the buildings, and opens the door. He motions for you to step inside. You do.
You’re greeted with someone sitting in the center of the room. He seemed to be muscular, wore a completely black outfit with a zipper-up, and had brown hair, a mustache and a goatee. To be honest, if you were any younger, you might’ve thought he was a gang member, but he seemed nice enough for you not to run away.
“Sit down.”
You follow his instructions, and kneel on the ground.
“Do you know why you’re here?” You shake your head. The guy shoots a dirty look at the man behind you, the one that brought you here, and he cowers a little. “Why didn’t you tell them why they’re coming here?”
“I thought that was your job, Yaga.”
You made a mental note of that name.
“Anyways, sorry about that. Some of our people seem to be horrifically incompetent. You must’ve been a little scared? Probably a lot, actually.”
You stared at the ground, unsure of what the correct answer was here.
“You can talk and be honest, y'know? I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t know what happened on the way here, but it’s okay. You can talk.”
“So, were you scared?”
You nodded yes.
“Well, I would’ve been too. Usually, the principal would’ve been the one to have this talk with you, but since he’s gone, I’ll fill you in on the details of what’s been probably going on with you for the past six months.”
He pulls out a file, and begins looking through it.
“So, you remember when Himoto died right?”
You nervously swallowed, “Yes, I do.”
“Now typically, when someone dies, they just die. There’s nothing else to it. But because both you and her killer were present, she didn’t exactly die. She suffered a fate worse than death. Apparently, according to the students we interviewed, she seemed to have a lot of feelings remaining when she died.”
“None of them good ones, of course.”
He pauses, and stares at you, trying to observe your reaction. You try to keep your face straight, and tried to push down the rising feelings of guilt once again.
“Anyways, we’re not entirely sure if she was turned into a curse by you, or if it was a different cursed spirit purely born out of her image. Either case is possible. Hirota, the guy you were with earlier, was the one who was assigned with the mission, but that wasn’t even the main mission he was tasked with.”
“We had heard that there was a fortune teller in your area. The Gojo clan actually caught wind of this, and they suspected that it wasn’t just a case of an average ‘lucky fortune teller’. They wanted someone to double check, and if she indeed had any Jujutsu powers, that she should’ve been brought to them.”
“Well, unfortunately, she fled the Scene before Hirota could get to her, but he heard on the radio that there were some suspicious deaths happening at a school nearby on the same day.”
Your head felt like it was gonna explode from an overload of information. None of the words coming out of Yaga’s mouth made any sense. You had no idea what a cursed spirit, nor what Jujutsu was, and this entire tale felt like a really bad exposition to some type of shitty novel.
“So, Hirota decided to go inspect what was going on at the school nearby, and his instincts were correct. There was a cursed spirit on the loose. He spent a couple of days trying to locate it before he saw it following you back home.”
“When was this?”
“Just yesterday. That’s how he found where you lived.”
“And then…”
“You’re here now. You managed to exorse the curse with a kitchen knife. A strong one at that.” He pauses, looking lost in thought, maybe thinking about what to add. “Actually, do you actually know anything about Jujutsu?”
-
You opened the door to your dorm. It’s simple. There’s a window next to the bed that beams light in, a small twin-sized bed in one corner of the room, and a desk. You observe the room a few times, before laying down on the bare mattress in your room. You turned around in it and tried to get comfortable. One of the staff said they’d send you some bedsheets soon. They’d told you to make a list of everything you needed, and they’d get it for you.
You had to say, they were very hospitable to you.
Yaga told you that they had already transferred enrolment from your current high school to this one. He told you that this high school wasn’t a normal high school.
The main purpose of this high school was to teach students how to fight, and exorse said curses. That was their main focus, academics came second.
Which freaked you out a little, since you had always been pretty weak. But according to both Yaga and Hirota, you must’ve been stronger than usual, since you were able to kill a decently strong curse.
Yaga said they’d give you a ranking soon, and told you to go unpack. As for anything else relating to how you’d fight, you were on your own. Yaga told you that some sorcerers have innate techniques, while others didn’t.
Whether you had any was up to you to discover. You didn’t even know where to start with that. How could you manifest one? How could you even know you had one? You had no idea. You were told it was best to assume that you didn’t have one.
Well, they did give you a grace period to figure all this out before they started sending you out on missions. You were probably gonna figure that out later. Maybe it’d come to you naturally.
You bring your knees up to your chest for a second. Maybe you should find some other students that could help you out.
It takes you a good 20 minutes of wandering around to find one other student. After wandering through the better half of the school’s buildings, you were relieved to finally encounter one student.
Why are there like. No students at this school?
“Excuse me-”
The girl turns around. She’s got long black hair tied in two pigtails, and she was wearing basically the same uniform you saw Hirota in.
“Hi,” she responds, “I’m sorry… do I… know you?” She looks at you for a second before some type of realization hits her. “Oh, are you the new person? Y/N, was it? I’m sorry,” she bows down. “We just heard news that someone new was joining today.”
You wave both of your hands in front of your face, “No, no, stop bowing,” You feel your face turn red, “I should’ve said something first. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Utahime. Utahime Iori. I’m a third-year student here.”
“Okay, Utahime, nice.” The two of you stare at each other for a good two seconds before she starts laughing a little. You had no idea what was so funny, but you laugh along with her anyway.
“Sorry… it’s just the way you say it. Do you need help with something? I’m free for the next hour or so.”
“Help? Oh yeah, I could use a lot of that.”
“Can tell.” Utahime pauses for a second, “Well, what do you need help with? I’ll try my best to help you.”
“Uh well…”
She looks at you expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“I think I might need a little help with my dorm? Oh, and also, like you might need to tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do here. At least a little. I’m completely lost.”
“I’m guessing you probably came from a non-soccerer family?”
“I didn’t even know curses were a thing maybe UNTIL yesterday. I have NO clue what I’m even doing here.”
“Let’s just go to your room, and you can tell me the whole story about why you’re here, there. Sounds good?”
“Yeah, sure thing.”
-
“Oh, your room is right next to mine.”
You look to the left of the hallway seeing the door next to you. “Is that your dorm?”
“Yeah. Anyways, let’s go inside.”
You opened the door to your dorm, and it looks the same as before. The room was basically barren except your electronics and some clothes you managed to stuff into your backpack before leaving.
“Wow.”
Utahime looks around your room.
“You need a LOT of stuff actually. Did you always live life like you were broke or…?”
“I mean like… I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to take my belongings before I left. I think I just took what I needed the most?”
“Yeah I can tell.” She pauses for a second, “Actually, did you pick up your uniform? I don’t see it in your closet.”
“Oh uh… where am I supposed to pick it up?”
“It’s okay we can do that later. We can start making a list. Maybe we can assemble the furniture together when it arrives.”
“You’ll do that with me?”
“I mean, of course? Why wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, sorry,” you look down embarrassed, “Thanks.”
“Geez, how bad were you treated in school? You’re like…”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” Utahime laughs a little, “I’m just surprised. It’s okay, you don’t really need to feel shy here. None of us will hurt you.”
She pulls out a pad of paper and starts jotting down a bunch of things for your room. “Now, why don’t you tell me about how you ended up here? It seems like you have an interesting enough story to tell.”
-
“Okay, so. You’re telling ME that you exorcized a curse. On your own? With nothing but a kitchen knife?”
You nodded. “Okay, well I guess I think? That’s what Yaga and Hirota told me.”
Utahime shook her head, “Who’s Hirota? Never heard of that guy before.”
“I don’t know. I think he was just some random sorcerer dispatched on a mission to my district? Like apparently what happened was they were trying to catch some random fortune teller?”
“A… fortune teller? Why would they need to catch one of those?”
“I mean like, they were under the assumption she might’ve had some type of unique heavenly restriction or something. I don’t know. Apparently she could ALWAYS tell the future correctly.”
“And did you go to her?”
“… My friend dragged me along.”
“Did she tell both of your fortunes?”
“She told mine, I think. She didn’t tell my friend's fortune.”
“What did she say to the two of you?”
You didn’t respond. You tried to wrack your brain of what exactly she said to you. You remember what she said to Himoto; she didn’t tell Himoto’s fortune, but what about you? You remember calling it a load of bullshit. Maybe you should’ve remembered, maybe you’d know if any of it actually happened.
“I mean, I don’t exactly remember??? I remember she didn’t tell my friend. But she told me something, and I was-”
Utahime puts her face into her hands. “You’re telling me. You had basically a fortune teller that was GOING to tell you what happened in the future. And you forgot?”
“Wait no, let me think again…”
You tried to wrack your brains for what she could’ve possibly said. Something about…
No, it couldn’t be this hard to remember. It was less than a year ago. Maybe I should’ve written it down… Himoto… at least what did she say about Himoto…
…. Oh.
Your heart drops a little, remembering what she said.
“Himoto will die within the next three weeks.”
… she got that right….
“Okay I guess I remember what she said to my friend. I can’t exactly remember what she said to me, though.”
“What did she say to your friend? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“You remember how I told you like.”
“Uh-huh. Like you had a friend, and she had a creepy ass stalker? Yeah I remember that.”
“Well you see… She actually…” It takes a second for Utahime to understand what you were implying. Her eyes widen in realization before lowering her head.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Yeah, she died.” you said, flatly. “The fortune teller, I’m pretty sure, told her she was gonna die in a few days, and at the time I didn’t believe it. I mean how could she? She wasn’t sick, she was presumably living in a safe environment…”
“My condolences,” she mutters, “I didn’t know it was like that…”
“Honestly? Don’t be. Don’t even worry about it. I’m kind of over it to be honest. After everything.”
“So uh… I mean… what did she say about you then?”
“I honestly don’t remember. Like I think she probably said some outlandish shit, and I pray that it doesn’t happen, I guess?”
“I mean, hopefully it was something mundane, but based on how you’re even here, I doubt that.”
The two of you sit there for a second, before Utahime speaks up again, changing the subject.
“So, I guess you don’t have any idea if you have an innate cursed technique then? Or what it is, if you have one?”
You nodded.
“Girl, you LITERALLY stabbed a curse to death, I think that should give you some idea. Normal attacks don’t work on curses.” She thinks for a second. “Oh yeah, and I think, at least from what I see, your cursed energy output is pretty average. Pretty sure. For someone who has your cursed energy output, exorsing some type of semi-sentinent curse is pretty impressive. Considering that you had absolutely no clue what you were doing.”
“Actually, let’s go to the gym for a second. I wanna check something out.”
You follow Utahime to the gym. It’s that of a normal school gym, there was nothing surprising there. She goes into the storage room, looking for something. After a few minutes, she reappears with a large bucket.
A bucket of wooden swords.
“Okay, so, I’m actually not a combat sorcerer. Well, I’m more of a support sorcerer. But, it seems like you’re probably better suited for combat. Since at least from my knowledge,” she stares you up and down. You suppose she’s trying to see if she can find anything else interesting about you.
“Are we gonna spar?” You, asked, a little nervous. “I’ve never done that before.”
“You? Me? Spar? Hah. Funny joke, no. I can barely spar myself.”
“We’re gonna do something else. We’re gonna go outside, and see if you can replicate whatever you did yesterday. That should probably give you a good idea about what your cursed technique is.”
Utahime motions you to follow her outside. The two of you go to the courtyard where she stops at a giant rock. “Pick up a sword.”
You do exactly as she says, and you pull one out of the bucket.
“Okay, so I wanna see if you can dent this rock. With that sword.”
“… What? No. Of course I can’t.”
“I think you should be able to.”
“It’s just wood, how am I gonna be able to dent it? It’ll be in splinters.”
Utahime shrugs. “Just try. I think there’s a chance you might be able to dent it. But you gotta make yourself feel scared maybe? Like think about the worst thing you’ve ever experienced, and try to slash the rock.”
You stare at the sword, trying to imagine how you felt yesterday. Maybe, if you imagine that the rock was Himoto’s cursed spirit, you’d be able to do it.
Yeah, that might work. I think maybe I can just try that.
What was I feeling yesterday…
You tried to picture the image of her curse. You tried to visualize the gruesome face, the slimy texture of its skin.
The way it kept whispering to you.
It did make you feel scared.
Doing the best you could, you closed your eyes, gripped the katana as tight as you could, and hit the rock.
After a split second, you opened your eyes.
“Ow,” you groaned. “That hurt.”
Utahime stares at the slash across the rock. “That’s impressive.”
You stare down. There was a big gash across the slab that nearly cut through it.
“Huh.” She grinned. “Well, I guess we can probably deduce that you DO have an innate cursed technique now.”
“So… so that means I have superpowers?”
“Yeah, well kinda if you wanna call it that.” Utahime muses, “I think you can probably put your cursed energy into objects. I mean, there’s no other way that you could’ve been able to cut through the rock. Unless you were some type of pretrained samurai. And even so, they require a steel katana to be able to do that.”
Utahime slides her fingers on the blade part.
“Yeah, I mean, it feels slightly different than what it used to be.”
“Your classes are gonna teach you how to actually use cursed energy, by the way. You don’t need to visualize the worst event of your life everytime you wanna use cursed energy.”
“I mean that’s a pretty strong technique all on its own. Any normal attacks you use on curses can take effect. You can basically make your own cursed weapons at will.”
The two of you stare at each other, before Utahime grins, and you smile back at her. “Anyways, I gotta go now. Nice meeting you, Y/N. I’ll see you around?”
“Yep, see ya!”
You watch Utahime run off into the distance.
Huh. I feel weaker than usual.
You look around you, again. Your vision feels blurry. You feel light-headed.
I should probably get back to my dorm.
-
You had learned that there weren’t that many students in Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College.
So far, you have only met two students; one of them being Utahime, and the other one being Mei Mei. You hadn’t encountered other students, and as far as you were aware, they hadn’t mentioned any other students either.
Mei mei was the younger one of the two, surprisingly, and she was supposedly the stronger one of the two as well.
You awkwardly open the door, saying hi to both of them before slumping over on a desk.
“They gave you… the male uniform?”
You shrugged. “Apparently, that's all they have left. I don’t mind. I hate wearing skirts anyways.”
“I mean, you lowkey kind of pull it off anyways, so it doesn’t matter.”
You laughed. “Thanks.”
“Anyways,” Utahime changed the subject, “Didn’t they just assess you for your grade level? Like as a sorcerer?"
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“What level are you? I'm grade two, so is Mei Mei.”
“They said it was like somewhere on…”
“Yeah it’s on your student card.”
You awkwardly dig into your pocket and fish out your student card. It’s still warm from whatever machine they pulled it out of.
Grade 1.
Utahime and Mei Mei peer over your shoulder.
“HUH?”
Utahime looks at you shocked, Mei Mei looks surprised too. “Wow, that’s interesting. They almost never place anyone past grade two. Like it’s either grade two or special grade, I think? But no one here’s ever gotten the special grade title. Like I’m pretty sure you gotta be able to do some CRAZY shit for the special grade title.”
“Are you like hiding some super strength or something? ”
“What?” You scoffed. “No? I’m not hiding anything.”
Mei mei and Utahime start patting you down and inspecting you everywhere, trying to see if they could find something you could be hiding.
“Geez your arms are weak,” Utahime observes, “Like you have no strength at all. I swear the other day, I saw you getting winded from climbing up the stairs.”
“Oh, shut up,” you snapped, turning red. “I thought both of you knew I wasn’t that strong. Like I’d definitely lose to Mei Mei in an arm-wrestling match.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that. It’s just that you have to be hiding some sort of secret superpower to be grade one off the bat.”
“Yeah! Like isn’t it only given to experienced sorcerers? Maybe they meant to assign you special grade?”
“Should we ask Yaga?”
“We should.”
Just at that moment, Yaga walks through the door. He nods at the three of you before clearing his throat.
“Yaga,” Utahime raises her hand, “Are you sure they gave Y/N the correct ranking?”
“Let me see their student card?”
You hand it over to him, and he inspects the circular stamp on the card. “Yeah, it’s right. I mean, if they weren’t that strong, we wouldn’t have to take her out without good reason, right?”
“I mean the curse you said, was only a grade two curse, no?”
“Could you exorse a grade two curse on your own with no experience?” Utahime turns red. “Exactly. I believe the evaluation was that Y/N had more power to her than they look.”
“Now, if you excuse me, Mei Mei, and Utahime, a new mission has arrived for you.”
-
It took you four whole months to learn how to control cursed energy. You would’ve considered the entire experience a slow, painful, humiliation ritual, despite what the others might’ve said. They often told you, how you were doing really well, that you were quickly grasping things rather quickly.
You knew they were probably just being nice. You often told them to drop the complements, and to be honest, but they always swore they were being honest. It often felt like you were an infant that could barely use its legs. Oftentimes, it felt like the others were leaving you out of things. There were so many things you didn’t know. You felt so clueless. And honestly, pretty stupid.
You know at some point, Yaga decided to extend your grace period because you weren’t getting the hang of things quick enough. He said maybe he overshot how quickly you could learn. You often asked people if there was any point of you being here at all, they’d all insist that you belonged here.
Of course, their responses never felt genuine, but you’d say thanks anyways. You wonder what they actually thought about you. Were you a burden to them? Did they think you had potential? You couldn’t tell.
All of this was made worse by the fact you couldn’t exert yourself in the slightest. Every time you used your cursed technique, you’d feel extreme exhaustion. You could strengthen pieces of wood, plastic, and metal, but at what cost? It wasn’t like you could use them for anything. Sure, you could probably do substantial amounts of damage if you landed a hit, but most of the time you couldn’t. You got tired easily fighting in any regard, whether it was fist-fighting, or with a sword or whatever.
The only bright side here was that the academics were relatively easy. You started considering skipping in the first two weeks. You were missing from half your classes by the third. By the second month, you were nowhere to be found.
From then on, your daily routine had been rolling out of bed anywhere between 9am and noon, hastily getting ready, and spending the most minimal amount of time you possibly could studying, before either spending some time training (with little to no success), watching movies, or just sneaking off school grounds to play video games in arcades with the small amount of allowance you had saved up from your parents.
You had your favourites in the arcade of course. You had always loved the racing games, the fighting games, or the claw machines you typically found in arcades.
But ever since you had your newfound freedom, you realized you could also play first-person shooter games at the arcade now too. Your parents had forbidden you from doing that before, but now that they were gone from your life, you could finally enjoy those too.
It didn’t take you long to get addicted to them; you found out you were quite good at it too. Before you knew it, you were spending all day in the arcade playing them.
For a couple of weeks you were happy. You forgot you were even a student at all.
It was only one evening, when Utahime came knocking at your door, that you were reminded of the situation you were in.
You open the door with your laptop in your hand, and motioned for her to come in. She didn’t look too happy to see you.
“What’s wrong? Why do you look so pissed?”
Utahime stepped inside the door and closed it.
“Listen, you didn’t hear this from me,” she mumbled, “but they were just discussing sending you on a mission soon.”
“What? How soon?”
“Like. Two weeks from now soon.”
You stare at her, trying to see if there was any trace of joking on her face. There wasn’t.
“Are… are you serious?”
She nods. “Apparently they’ve been seeing that you haven’t been producing enough results in school cause you’ve been skipping so much, so they wanna send you on missions to start learning.”
“What? But I might die out there.”
“Do you think this school cares about death? I’m pretty sure there've been so many people that have died on missions from this school. Apparently in the past tenish years, curses have been getting stronger too. I’m just surprised they’re sending you out… since you’re so new.”
“What do you mean new? I thought I was supposed to be at least somewhat decent at it by now.”
Utahime laughs, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s impressive that you are where you are right now. A lot of sorcerers come from clans, and they have knowledge passed down from generation to generation. The rest of us have been training for years. You’ve at least done like 1 years’ worth of work in a few months, which is good enough, considering you’ve barely gotten any training.”
“So what the fuck do I do then? I don’t wanna die. Not like this anyway.”
“I mean, I could come with you. I could ask Yaga if I could come with you, since it’s your first mission, anyways. I mean, I could always just sneak out with you too. They probably aren’t going to expel any of us, unless we do something seriously stupid.”
“Please?? You’d do that for me?”
“I got your back. This time, at least. Just try not to get yourself killed.”
-
You decided against training for the next two weeks. There wasn’t any point, because you knew you wouldn’t be able to get stronger than you were right now. No amount of sparring with dummies, running laps, or anything would help you improve your strength exponentially in the next few days. In fact, it’d just make you tired.
And presumably lazier. You had simply grown to accept that as part of who you were. Yaga had ended up assigning the mission to the three of you, so you could watch and learn from your seniors.
In the meantime, both of them suggested that you found a good weapon you could use against the curse. Since you could put your cursed energy into anything, you could use any weapon to fight against the curse. It didn’t have to be a cursed weapon.
You ended up going into the storage room, and digging through whatever arsenal of weapons they could have. A large majority of them were cursed weapons; knives, swords, and those other traditional-looking weapons that you probably had no idea how to use.
Eventually after staying in there for a bit, something caught your eye. A revolver.
With a full magazine.
Exactly what you were looking for. Just on time, too.
A muffed voice comes from the other side of the door, “You done?” Mei mei asks. “It’s about time to go.”
“Yeah. Coming.”
You quickly pick up the revolver and walk out the room.
“A gun, huh? Interesting choice.”
“What else was I supposed to choose, huh? I have NO idea what half of the weapons in that room were, let alone how to use them.”
“Just so you know, that might not exactly be a cursed weapon. I guess the bullets might be infused though, if the past user used it enough.”
“Eh. Doesn’t matter. As long as you two are doing the heavy work, I’ll support you from the back.”
“We’ll probably be done in no time, to be honest. It’s probably a weak curse.”
-
Mei mei was right. It was a rather weak curse, and sending the three of you on the mission was absolutely overkill. Utahime scouted out the place. You had never seen her that scared before. Well, you guess the building itself was a little frightening, but seeing her jump at every sound she heard was new. Mei Mei promised that’s how Utahime usually was, on missions.
You made a note to make fun for it, later.
Finding the curse wasn’t really hard. You and Mei Mei both started going to town on the curse, and it was dead within seconds.
“So, are we done here?”
“I mean it looks like we are. That was a pretty simple mission. We didn’t even have to consider if it had extra parts, or whatever. That thing was barely moving.”
“Okay, great! Let’s go home then. Our job’s done for today.”
“Nah. You guys go home,” Mei Mei said, “There’s actually something I wanted to do before I went back.”
“Oh, okay. We’ll see you soon then, I guess?” Utahime replied, “Give us a call if anything comes up.”
Mei Mei nodded. “Sure.”
The three of you waved goodbye.
“So, I guess I wasn’t complete deadweight on that mission?” You asked.
“No. I don’t think so, at least.” Utahime answered. “I mean, you did technically kill the curse. Both you and Mei mei. Believe in yourself more, y/n. You’re literally not that bad.”
“Oh, okay.”
Utahime stares at you for a second, completely serious. “I mean it. Anyways, what did you think of your first mission?”
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad, mainly cause you two were there. But I barely did anything though. I think I like this though. I mean, the gun. I kind of like it. Fighting with it feels nice. Like I don’t think anything else I’ve fought with ever felt this natural in my hand.”
“Okay, I mean you can just use that then. I don’t know if we have any more bullets, but I think at least someone can obtain some.”
“I mean, can I get some better guns, too?”
“You can probably ask.”
“Coolio. Okay, I’m going back home, and watching a movie.”
Utahime rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
You laughs.
She laughs.
You walk back to your dorm, a lighter feeling in your chest. One that you haven’t felt in a long time. You wondered if things could stay like today forever.
#
APRIL, 2005
The sound of the alarm clock pierces through your skull.
You turn around and stare at the numbers. 8 o'clock.
I can afford to sleep for a few more minutes, can’t I?
You slam the snooze button and roll onto your other side. There was no point in waking up so early. You wouldn’t learn anything in class, you probably wouldn’t be doing that much at all today, period. You’d probably go down to the machine lab and-
There’s a loud, scraping noise for about five seconds, followed by a knock on your door. You groan, pull the pillow over your head, trying to drown it out, but to no avail. The person kept knocking.
You curse the person on the other side of the door, before slipping on your hoodie from the day before, and slowly creaking open the door.
“Uh… hi?” you rubbed your eyes, “Do I know yo-”
Two hands grab each of your shoulders and snap you awake. “Oh fuck, it’s just you Iori. Why are you waking me up so early?”
“Cause…it’s the first day of school… and we have to greet the first years.”
“Oh shit, yeah.” You rub your eyes, and yawn. “You go do that, I’m going back to bed.”
“Ugh, we have to go.” Utahime snaps. “Do you think I wanted to go either? I got up. I know you wake up when the sun sets, but do something for once.”
“Who said we had to? Can’t they gather amongst their own? Who said we had to say hi? I geninuely could not care less about those kids.”
Utahime stares at you in disbelief, before grabbing her temples and sighing. “Okay, fine no one asked.”
“Yeah that’s what I thought. I’m going back to be-“
“Not so fast. I heard two of those kids are special grade. If that’s true-“
“It’s too early in the morning for this. Just tell me later.”
“They can’t JUST be terrorizing me Y/N. You gotta take some of the weight too.”
You snickered, “Yeah, no thanks I’m good.”
Utahime loudly exhales from her nose before rolling her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, suit yourself. I’ll find you later and tell you.” She grabs the doorknob aggressively, and slams the door shut behind you. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
You groan, rubbing both of your eyes with the palms of your hand. You squat on the ground for a seconds, trying to recover from the light-headedness of standing up so quickly. You take off the hoodie and hop back into bed.
You have no problem falling asleep for a couple more hours.
-
The sun is straight-up beating into your eyes when you wake up again.
You turn around.
11:00 am.
“Fuck.” You muttered. You had already slept the first class of the day, not that it mattered too much. The content was probably studiable on your own if anything. What you were more concerned about was the shipment coming today.
You had ordered two firearms; a sniper, and a handgun. Specifically, an automatic pistol, but not that it mattered much. You had no idea how the school even let you get two guns; you were pretty sure they were illegal, but they said they’d place an order.
You just had to specify which ones.
Of course, except that one experience on that mission, and video games, you had virtually no other experience. You had begged Utahime to go to the shooting range with you, but she balatantly refused to. Mei Mei didn’t seem too interested either, and you definitely weren’t going alone, so you just went with your instinct. Or maybe not your instinct, but the guns you were best with in games.
Maybe some of that skill would translate over into practical knowledge. Maybe it wouldn’t. You’d just have to see.
The staff had told you the shipment would’ve been available at the machinery lab at noon.
You quickly get ready and run there.
There were two cardboard boxes sitting beside the door when you got there. You pick them up, open the door, and walk inside.
The lab was the same as per usual. It was musty, dry, and stored a bunch of power tools that you wondered if anyone here even ued. Many were still in their boxes collecting dust, probably since the day they were bought.
You drop the two boxes onto the table. You shook each box, trying to determine which one was the automatic pistol.
You grab a knife and cut the box open. It looked easy enough to assemble; there was a magazine of bullets, the body of the gun, and some other components. You’d worry about those later.
You grab the gun, and try to get a feel of it in your hand. It felt very much like one of those toy guns kids played from in their childhood. Except the plastic here was probably higher quality.
You fiddled around with the trigger, pulling it once. There was a click, and then a small vibration and then nothing.
What did they call that? Dry firing?
You do it a few more times, getting used to the feel. You wonder what it’d feel like with the actual bullets. Would you pull your shoulder from the recoil? Would the gun explode in your face? You didn’t know. It made you a little scared.
You flip the magazine upside down, and catch one of the bullets that falls out. You felt its weight, and inspected it. It was small, a little on the heavy side, encased with brass.
Okay, so the plan was I’d put my cursed energy into the bullets. And then… I think I’d be able to damage curses? Probably. I hope my plan works. But… if putting cursed energy into objects changes the fundamental structure of the material…
Yeah. This might not be a bad idea. Worth a shot anyways. Better than getting my ass handed to me in training.
Speaking of which, for how many weeks have I not gone?
Probably the whole year, to be honest. I’m just glad they haven’t given me shit for it yet. Though, they haven’t given me shit for a lot of things. It’s not like they can kick me out, anyways.
You stare at the case again.
Maybe I can cut these bullets open… I wonder what’s inside…
-
It’s about four hours of fucking around in the lab before you give up.
You had cut open one bullet, you had busted another, and you infused your cursed energy into the other half. Not a bad outcome for one day. Tomorrow, maybe you’d go test them out late at night, so you wouldn’t get in trouble.
There’s a knock on the door, before the doorknob turns, and you see Utahime standing in the doorway.
“Are you done yet?”
“I mean, done as I could be.”
She walks in and sits on the chair beside you. “So, about the first years,”
“Why are you THIS excited to tell me about the first years?”
“Cause what do you MEAN there’s 2 of them that are special grades? I’ve never seen that before. Okay, I mean, one of them is some prodigy kid, but the other one… I don’t know.”
“Well, if they’re stronger, that means we get less work, no? Like we can just give all our missions to them. Plus, aren’t you graduating this year?”
“Yeah?”
“You literally have nothing to worry about then. Cause you’re gonna be out of here in a year. What’s your plan for the future?”
“I don’t know? Like probably be a sorcerer?”
“Boringgggg”
“Okay, yeah, yeah, I don’t wanna hear this from you.”
Utahime sighs, “Still though.”
“Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal. Do you wanna go somewhere? You can tell me there.”
“Oh, yeah sure. Do you wanna go to a cafe?”
-
“So, what did they do? Did they make fun of you?”
“What do you think?” Utahime snapped, “The two strong ones did, at least. One of them was just straight-up bullying me and the other one was making passive aggressive remarks.”
“There’s a third one?”
“I mean, I think I told you there were three. Two guys, and a girl. She was… she’s okay. I like her.”
“So the guys were making fun of you?”
“Yes. Yes they were.” Utahime leans back into the chair, and folds her arms. “God, I hate them already.”
You snicker a little.
“I mean they have to be a big deal then, right? You said one of them was a prodigy child or whatever.”
“Oh, yeah. Him? His name’s Satoru Gojo. Like he’s THE gifted child.”
Utahime takes a long sip of her drink.
“How’s he gifted?”
Utahime chokes and sputters. She hacks a cough, and you hit her on the back before she regains composture.
“He’s like. Y’know how I told you it’s rare to have one innate cursed technique?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, he has two. And those two aren’t even like normal ones. Like I personally, have no clue what they are but apparently he's the reason why curses have been getting stronger in the past decade so…”
“So is he like. The chosen one or something?”
Utahime thinks for a second, “Yeah probably. Not sure if his clan spoiled him, or tortured him though.”
“He’s part of a clan??? Clans still exist?” “Uh, yeah? They run this whole system.”
“God, that’s so old-fashioned.”
“You don’t say.” Utahime shrugs, and touches the side of her drink, checking its temperature. “So, are you gonna order something, or are you sticking to hot water?”
You widen your eyes, and sit up straighter, “I told you, I’m too broke to order.”
“You spent it all on arcades, didn’t you?” Utahime mutters, unamused. “God, you have a spending problem. What’s so fun about them anyways?”
“Honestly, nothing. They fill a void in my soul though.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”
“So, what about the other two? There were three first-years right?”
“Oh yeah. So, the other special-grade first-year is called Suguru Geto, and I mean like. I’m pretty sure he comes from a non-soccerer family? I don’t have that much info on him, but him and Gojo became friends pretty quickly…”
“And by pretty quickly, you mean they started picking on you right away, right?”
“Okay, shut up. It’s gonna be YOU dealing with them for 3 extra years, not me.”
You laugh, “Sorry, sorry.”
Utahime huffed. “Anyways, he’s… I don’t know. He’s ‘nice’ if you don’t think about him too much. Like he acts nice. Not sure if he is. First day and he was already babbling about some ‘we gotta use our powers for good’. Like you haven’t even BEEN on school grounds for 10 whole hours, WHAT are you talking about?”
“So he’s one of those, huh? Like a righteous ass guy?”
“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
“Got it. I’ll be sure to stay away from them.”
“And I guess the third one is chill. Her name is Shoko Ieiri. She’s chill. Cigarettes at fourteen is crazy though. Life hasn’t even gotten that tough yet. I think she said she was some type of healer? Not sure though. She’s the only one I can tolerate out of those three.”
You reach for a sugar packet on the side of the table, and start pouring it into your water. “I see, I see.”
“You know… I can… get a drink for you if it’s this bad… Y/N.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Clearly not. You’re literally pouring sugar into a cup of plain hot water. Like that's a new level of low.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. When they give me some money next month, I’ll spend it better.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past 5 months too.”
“Nah, for real this time. I’ll stop going to the arcade and all that. I think I gotta start getting my life back on track.”
“Yeah, you’re literally having a mid-life crisis at 15 years old. How does that even happen?”
You roll your eyes, and stir the water harder. “You know how it happens.”
“Oh shit yeah, sorry.”
“It’s okay, don't worry about it.”
You touched the side of the mug to check the temperature.
It was room temperature now.
-
You didn’t think much about the injuries you might’ve gotten from doing this.
That, in hindsight, was probably a mistake.
You were nervous, all throughout the next day. You woke up, spent your whole afternoon in the library, before going to the lab around evening.
Utahime had warned you earlier today. She insisted that you were probably going to get hurt, with the lack of safety you had for yourself. You had promised her it would’ve been okay. What could she do if you got hurt anyway?
What’s the worst that could happen if you got hurt?
You doubt you’d die. At least not in a testing range. As long as the barrel of the gun wasn’t aimed at you, the worst you probably could end up with was a pulled arm.
Oh, how wrong you were.
You quickly reach in the center of the table and grab the pistol. You hadn’t bothered to tamper with the sniper yet, because it was worth more. And you were pretty sure you probably were gonna get in trouble, if you wrecked the more expensive gun first.
You slide the whole magazine of bullets in the gun before tossing it into a garbage bag, along with a bunch of rusted tin cans.
The test was simple. All you had to do was shoot the bullets through the tin cans. If they went through, it was a success, if anything else happened…
Well…
You’d see yourself back in the lab tomorrow, in the best of cases. First though, you needed to test your aim without the gun.
Cause, if your aim was already garbage without the gun, there was no point in wasting bullets trying anything else. For that, you managed to make some makeshift darts with a bunch of paperclips. It wasn’t a bad creation, if it wasn’t for the amount of metal you had to reshape, while either draining all your cursed energy, or almost burning yourself.
You walked about twenty minutes off school grounds into the forest surrounding the school. It wasn’t the smartest plan, but you’d just have to try throwing darts at some makeshift target at some tree, to test your aim at different lengths.
For about the next three hours, you’d toss these darts at trees of random distances, until it became dark.
For the most part, your aim was fine. It wasn’t anything impressive, per say, but about 75% of the time you were able to hit the targets. That was fine enough.
You sighed, and pulled the darts out of the tree, and tossed them into your bag. You leaned against a tree, slid down, and sat there, admiring how tall each of the trees were.
You were tired. Maybe you’d do this tomorrow.
Wait, how did I get here again?
You almost jump up. You look around you, trying to see where you could’ve possibly come from. All the directions looked the same. Trees spread out as far as you could see.
Fuck, this is bad.
You tried to wrack your memory on which way you came from. You remember walking straight into the forest. You suppose maybe you could retrace your footsteps back. That was one possibility.
You tried to think about any landmarks you saw before walking this way.
It might’ve been the best idea to retrace your footsteps, and walk straight back.
-
It didn’t just take you twenty minutes to walk back to school grounds. It took you a whopping four hours to find your way back.
Had you known this sooner, you definitely would’ve just done the test in the forest, come back, and gone back to your dorm.
Actually, you question if it was even worth taking the test at this point in time. It was what you could only assume was 2-3 am, and you’d have to clean up the mess you made, which would take another hour.
But you were already in this deep. You were deeper in than you thought. You might as well just do the test, and deal with the consequences later.
After some looking, you found a ledge, a little shorter than you were, and placed the cans on there. You pulled out your gun.
Slid the magazine into place.
You aim at the target.
Okay here goes nothing…
Everything goes in slow motion. You didn’t even manage to process what happened before it did.
A click.
Followed by a loud firing sound.
The gun didn’t actually fire. Not like normal.
Some kind of weird pressure building up in the barrel.
Something cracking. Sounded like glass, but it wasn’t.
Blood on your hand.
A piercing white pain on the left side of your face. It burned. It stinged. It blinded you.
What you could only assume were drops of blood falling onto the pavement. Your blood. Probably.
You don’t know what kind of sound you made. Crying? Sobbing? A blood-piercing scream? All of the above? You weren’t sure. You didn’t even know what happened before you look at yourself in the reflection of the window, and you see a big piece of shrapnel stuck in your eye.
And the pistol in your hand is in pieces. Many pieces, and half of them were stuck in your hand.
Your breathing quickens.
Fuck, fuck where’s the infirmary? I need… i need to get some pain killers and bandage this up. This… I… no. I just need to get there and…
You threw down whatever was left of your weapon, and grabbed onto the ledge with your good hand for support. Every few steps, you took a break, trying to ignore both the searing pain in your hand and eye, and the trail of blood you were leaving on the ground.
You genuinely felt like you were going to die.
Luckily, the infirmary was one of the nearby buildings. You pulled open the door, and the first thing that you saw was a roll of bandages.
You quickly reached for them, crudely wrapping that left side of your head, and your palm.
Then you reached for the first bottle of pills you could see. You just needed some pain killers.
Actually, maybe you wouldn’t need them at all, cause you were probably gonna die of blood loss at this rate, anyways.
But your hand moves faster than your body, and it shoves a few into your mouth. You don’t know how many, and you swallow them dry. You hack a cough from how bad they taste.
Blood’s all over the counter. You wanted to lie here. Just lie here and take it, but you couldn’t.
You physically couldn’t. Your body didn’t want to at least. You had never moved on autopilot like this before.
You slowly begin walking towards the direction of the dorm. One step at a time.
You weren’t exactly sure how you hadn’t at least passed out from blood loss yet.
Your breathing was heavy. It took too much effort to breathe.
You just barely make it to the dorm building before you completely collapse on the floor.
“Hey. Hey. Are you awake?” Two hands shake you aggressively. They’re… cold.
You’ve never heard that voice before. With all the strength you had left, you managed to open your eye, to see a girl crouching over you. She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and she was wearing baggy clothes. Probably her Pajamas.
“Are you okay?”
A second voice. That of a guy’s. It’s kind of deep, not really though. You assumed the answer must’ve been obvious to that question, probably based on the sole state of whatever your body was in. Gouged out eye, shrapnel in pieces in your hand, you assumed you couldn’t have looked too great.
“Should we take them to the hospital?” The guy asks. “It looks bad. Especially the eye. Wait, you can heal it, right?”
There’s a pause between the two. “I mean, it’s worth a try.”
Who… who are these guys?
You try to look at the other guy. He has long black hair and purple eyes. He was looking down at you with a worried look on his face.
These are probably the first years… fuck….
You try to open your mouth to speak, but you can’t even find the strength for that.
“Okay whatever the FUCK you do, don’t just stand there and do NOTHING. Both of you.”
Oh my god. The third one is here too?
“Okay, I’ll take them to the infirmary, and you can-”
“Are you fucking stupid? They JUST got back from the infirmary. Where the hell would they have gotten the bandages from?”
“Okay well-”
The two of them begin shouting hurling insults at each other. You try to do your best to spot the third person amongst them. He’s standing behind them. He’s tall, with chopped short-ish white hair, and black circular sunglasses. They look completely black. You wonder why he’s wearing them at night. There’s no sun outside.
He stares at you with curiosity. It feels as if he’s trying to pick apart every part of your being with his eyes. You wondered if he had a morbid fascination with what was happening in front of him.
Your eyes only meet for a second before you look away. They’re bright blue. Piercing blue.
It scares you a little.
You look back to the other two students, and the brown-haired girl turns back to you. The black haired one starts pulling the bandage off your face, revealing the injury underneath. His eyes widen, and he looks away.
“Fucking hell that’s bad.” he mutters.
The girl winces at the injury too. The boy begins peeling off the bandages on your hand to reveal the shrapnel still stuck in your hand.
The two of them look like they wanna look away, but they keep their eyes glued to you.
The girl puts her hand over your eye. You’re not exactly sure what she did, but the throbbing pain in both your face and your hand stopped. She props you up, and forcibly opens your left eye.
It’s blurry for a second, but then you can see everything clearly with both eyes.
The black-haired boy is the first one to talk.
“Are you feeling okay?”
It’s a genuine question, at least from what you could tell. You nod, trying to rub your left eye with your hand. It was only gone for maybe forty minutes, and all forty of them were the worst agony you had ever suffered.
He pulls your arm away from your eye. “You shouldn’t do that, it might get infected.”
An irritated feeling creeps up in your chest, like you were a toddler scolded for picking at their scabs, but you were in no place to complain. You could’ve died ten minutes ago, and someone had managed to heal you.
You inspected your hand. It looked brand new too.
“We haven’t seen you around. Are you a student here?”
“What kind of question is that?” The black-haired boy asked, “Why else would they be on school grounds?”
“I thought we met all the upper years on the first day, no? We haven’t seen this one before. I’m pretty sure they all had to be there.”
The sighs, and you hear him huff a ‘whatever’ before joining the white haired boy in standing up.
“Ignore them,” the girl mutters. “I’m Shoko, by the way. Shoko Ieiri. That’s-”
The black-haired boy cuts her off. “Geto. Suguru Geto. Nice to meet you.” The white haired boy doesn’t say anything for a second before Geto hits him on the back. “Introduce yourself, Satoru,” he snaps.
Satoru…. Satoru Gojo, the prodigy child. The one that Utahime said was ‘the strongest of them all’. So they were the first years. God, what an annoying bunch.
Gojo shrugs. “I’m Gojo. Satoru Gojo, I guess.”
Annnnnd he has an attitude too. Shouldn’t have been surprised.
Shoko stares at the other two in disbelief before turning to you once again. “What’s your name? Are you an upper year?”
“Uh… yeah. I’m in second year.”
“SEE? I TOLD you one of them was skipping the introduction day.”
You feel your cheeks turning red from embarrassment.
“Okay… whatever… that doesn’t matter right now.” Shoko exhaled sharply, “And what was your name?”
“It’s Y/N.”
“Huh. Okay.” Shoko mumbled. “Never heard of you before. It’s nice to meet you.” “Actually,” Geto interjected, “What happened? You were screaming so loud, I’m pretty sure the whole of Tokyo could hear it.”
“Hey, that’s not nice-”
“I’m just wondering.”
You shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It kind of is, if you’re missing one of your eyes, no?”
You look up, straight at Gojo. It was the first time he had voluntarily spoken in the entire conversation.
You felt your blood go cold.
“Satoru, don’t be like that. It’s only been a day, and you’ve disrespected like. All of our upperclassmen.”
“Why should I respect them?” He sounds bored, “Respect this, respect that-”
“Your excuse for making fun of Utahime was her being weak. What’s your excuse here?”
Gojo doesn’t say anything. Instead he stares at you, intensely, and humiliation creeps up your chest. You genuinely want nothing more than to sink into the floorboards. Dying didn’t sound so bad as it did ten minutes ago.
Shoko cuts both of them off. “You should go rest, Y/N. You’ve probably had a long day.”
“Yeah, thanks, Shoko. And um… thanks for healing me.”
“Don’t mention it. Ignore those two, they’re like that.”
Shoko offers to help you stand up, but you shake your head, mustering all your strength, and stand up. You nod to her again in thanks, and Geto (out of courtesy), and awkwardly walk off to your dorm.
“My fucking god,” you mutter under your breath.
You could still feel Gojo’s eyes boring into your back as you left.
-
Gojo, as you would come to find out, was one. Insufferable. Guy. After that first encounter, you hadn’t seen the first-years at all. Instead, you spent all day locked up in the lab, trying to figure out what went wrong with your first attempt with the bullets you made.
Turns out, the bullets were too heavy for the gun to be able to shoot. That caused some error in the barrel, it got stuck. Usually, only the gun would’ve been jammed, but because you had infused them with cursed energy, they had managed to explode in the barrel, which caused shrapnel to end up in both your hand and eye.
You had to beg the school to get you a new sidearm. It wasn’t an easy task, considering they were hard to obtain, and you had just managed to completely obliterate one of them, but after annoying the staff enough, they gave in.
This time, you had asked for a normal handgun. Nothing fancy.
And instead of directly infusing your cursed energy into the bullets, you’d probably have to make your own this time around.
You spent hours, days, probably even weeks trying to make your own bullets from scratch. As far as you could remember, you had never put this much effort into anything at all. Not your studies, not a hobby, absolutely nothing. It got to a point where you began to dig through research papers containing math, physics, and engineering years beyond your comprehension.
Not that you could understand any of it. You tried, though. Well, you understood them just enough to have a rough idea of what you were supposed to do.
It was just whether you could do it or not.
You were already in this deep. You couldn’t back out now.
By the time you had managed to make a successful bullet, over a month had passed. A month of rotting away everyday in the tools lab.
It took you three tries to make a bullet that wouldn’t explode upon any kind of contact.
It took you another four tries to make a bullet that could actually slide through the barrel of a gun.
Partway through, you realized as long as you could tap the bullet against the desk, and it’d make a dent, then it was good enough to use.
You were almost finished making your second bullet, before you heard a loud knock in the door. You guessed it was probably Utahime.
“Come in.”
The doorknob creaks, and opens a crack. “Iori, I told you you didn’t need to-”
It’s Shoko instead. You stare at her disbelief for a second before quickly putting everything you were doing in a drawer under the desk.
“Nice hangout spot,” she grinned. “Is this where you come to ditch all your classes?”
“How did you even know I was here?”
“Hey, no need to be hostile. Utahime said that I should either come here, or go to the arcade to find you. Seems like I was lucky today.”
“Lucky is one way to put it.”
She ignores your reply. “None of us have seen you for a while, not even Utahime. Is something wrong?”
You shrug. “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been busy, that’s all.”
“I find that rather hard to believe. But, okay. Utahime says you’re always ditching class, you never get missions, so you just hang out down here all the time? There’s not even like… a TV or anything down here.”
“I mean, I’m usually down here doing work.”
“What type of work?”
You don’t answer Shoko’s question. She doesn’t ask further.
“Okay well, I came down here to tell you Satoru actually wants to spar with you.”
Your eye twitches in disbelief. “What do you mean… Gojo wants… to spar with me? Does he know I can BARELY use a sword? Tell him to fight Geto, or something.”
“No, he specifically wants to fight YOU. I’m not sure why. We all told him that he didn’t need to start beating up seniors, but he insisted.”
“Can you and Geto tell him to fuck off?”
“We tried.” Shoko says, in a half-apologetic tone.
You sighed, and pinched the bridge of your nose. “It’s just like… why would he want to do this exactly? We ALL know he’s going to win.”
“None of us know, except him.”
“Can I chicken out?”
“Not unless you want him to find you later.”
“… so when does he want to do this, exactly?”
“Right now.”
You tilt your head and sigh, before standing up. “Let’s go then, I guess. Lead the way.”
Shoko stands up, and walks out the door, waiting for you to follow. You switch the lights off, and shut the door on your way out. You fish in your pockets for the key to the lab and lock it. “You have the… key to this place?”
“I mean, yeah I kinda stole it. Well, actually not really. One of the teachers gave me the key, I just forgot to give it back. I don’t really think they care though. No one uses this place anyways.”
“Damn. You’re lowkey kinda cool, Y/N.”
“Thanks…”
You stuff the key back into your pocket. You hear a piece of plastic clattering on the floor. “Oh shit sorry-”
You kneel down and pick it up. Shoko didn’t say anything. She simply waited for you to pick up the card. It was an awkward three seconds.
“Okay, let’s go, I guess.”
You followed Shoko through the school grounds. You’re not sure if you were annoyed, nervous, scared, or something else. Maybe all three. Either way, you knew you were gonna come out of this completely bruised. Probably humiliated too as well, but he was the strongest sorcerer.
There was nothing to be embarrassed about. Actually, it’s only humiliating when you don’t expect to get badly beaten. Everyone knew you were already going to get badly beaten.
Geto was already scolding Gojo by the time you reached the field.
“Satoru-” “Yeah, I know, I know Suguru. You don’t need to say it again.”
“Okay but-”
“Oh, don’t go too hard, don’t send them packing to the infirmary again, they just got injured,” Gojo said in a mocking tone, rolling his eyes. “Just relax. I wanna see something.”
“Oh? They’re here.”
You stand awkwardly in the center of the field, unsure about what to do. Shoko had already walked to the other side of the field, and was sitting down.
I wish I could’ve been a healer too. What the fuck did I do to deserve this?
“Uh… so…” You stare at the two, unsure of what to say. You wonder if there was a way to embarrass you further in this situation.
“Can I just surrender already?” You asked, “Like we skip to the good part, you win, I lose, y'know? We all know you’re gonna win anyways.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Gojo teased, “It’s fine. I won’t go too hard on you. It’ll be fun. Promise.”
“Yeah.. fun for you.”
Gojo doesn’t respond. He simply just spins around the wooden katana in his hand. He tosses you one, and you miss the catch just by a little.
You can feel your face turning red. You despised this so much already. You felt clumsy. You felt a little stupid, if you were being honest, standing in the middle of the field, preparing for a beatdown.
You look around, trying to see where Geto and Shoko were, but they were nowhere to be found. You guess Gojo probably told them to leave, so it’d just be the two of you. You suppose you appreciated that he was gonna embarrass you in private, rather than in front of half the student body.
Without warning, he hits you on the shoulder. You wince, grabbing it in pain, before turning your body, trying to protect that side.
He hits you again, from the right.
Fuck, he’s fast. I don’t even think I have time to react…
You tried to think about where he could hit you next, maybe from the front, possibly the back. Fuck you had no clue.
You decide to take a guess, and back away a step or two, before you get hit on the back. Hard. You don’t have time to recover from the shock. Quickly, you turn around, he swings at you again, but this time you’re ready.
Or, at least you think you were.
You try to deflect his hit this time, but before you were even able to hit him, you felt a resistance between the piece of wood and him. You press harder.
Still nothing.
You look at him, he’s grinning. A big, shitfaced grin.
Okay, yeah fuck this actually. You couldn’t even touch him. That meant until he gave up, or got bored, you were gonna have continuously doge his attacks.
So that’s what you did. At least he’d managed to make his attacks predictable, so you’d know where he’d be coming from next. All you had to do was keep the distance between you and him, so that you wouldn’t end up with three broken bones, and he’d probably just get bored enough, and stop at some point.
In fact, he started making more unpredictable hits, closing the distance between you and him. He landed four more on you, before you had to think of a different strategy. You decided to try using whatever protection he had to your advantage, maybe you could push yourself away. A little.
part 2
