My immediate thought was the elder one, but it's probably one of the two.
-
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Somewhere, This All Went Wrong (Oregairu x JJK)
- Thread starter ArtemisAvant
- Start date
- Crossover
Unfortunately, A Curse Is All That Lingers (3.1)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Unfortunately, A Curse Is All That Lingers (3.1)
The official story was: under the advisement of First Grade Sorcerer Mei Mei, Hikigaya Hachiman proved his loyalty to the Jujutsu Headquarters by exorcizing Curse-user Arakawa Reiko after she had escaped.
Thus Forth, Hikigaya Hachiman shall be appointed as Semi-grade One sorcerer and be allowed to take on independent and overseas missions.
Any suspicions and doubts of his character and loyalty are to be removed.
The notice for his bounty and execution are to be considered as part of Arakawa Reiko's escape and non-reflective of the Jujutsu Commander's actual views. And are henceforth disavowed and declared null and void.
This was how I became free. This was how the truth died in its cradle. This was the answer someone had arrived at for their compromise. To keep peacefully living in that strained silence, to exist in that unchanged world. The future needed to die.
Back in the bed, back with the scratchy linen on starched, bleached heavy things that wore on me like a suit on a dog. I sat straight up, staring ahead into the patchy, beige-white paint gently peeling away with all the grace of a chainsaw. Someone had stuffed the dying bouquets into the leftmost drawer of a medical cabinets, dead petals and wilting green subtly there, a hint, a flash of color peeking out. Had shoved them in as far as deep as they could and then squeezed and squeezed. Plastic crinkling, soft brittle things being crushed and the stink of pollen like the shiny blood of a crime. Earlier, I had taken those flowers out from their resting place and stuffed them into an glass vase and filled it with water. So full that the slightest movement threatened to send the top rim of water dripping off and breaking the surface tension adhering it to itself.
"So this is the brat who managed to take on the higher ups?" Zen'in Naoya, the future heir to the Zen'in clan as he had proclaimed when he had stepped into the room, looked me over from head to toe. I did not return the favor. "Why don't you take Mai here," He shoved forward a quiet Zen'in Mai, so roughly she nearly fell over. This meek, this silent version of her didn't resemble the Mai I knew. "And marry into our clan, hmm? You're strong enough to take her."
"Hey. Mai. It's been a while." I said instead of listening to any of that.
Wide-eyed and blinking rapidly, Mai looked up at me with surprise wholly united for her. Naoya's face turned ugly, and too fast for me to see, he kicked out Mai's legs, forcing her to kneel. They, her knees, cracked on the floor. It sounded like it hurt.
"Aren't you the arrogant one?"
I finally looked at the sneering Zen'in. "Am I?" Mildly, I asked. Truth was, I didn't feel much of anything. Much less have the capacity for something as banal as arrogance.
Somehow that made him even more angry, and grabbing onto Mai's hair, he pulled her up as she writhed in pain. Oh… so the Zen'in were really that bad. If this man who could easily declare himself as the heir openly abused his family… then they really were all shit. Just shit-flinging Monkeys aping human speech. He grinned, visibly enjoying her muffled, well-used to this abuse, cries. It was an ugly, pathetic thing. Lopsided and so full of itself that it even stirred an emotion in me, something like revulsion. "You're not going to help your classmate? You tried so hard for that other girl… but you won't try for Mai?" I supposed the Great Three clans knew the truth.
He tutted at my silence, and whispered into Mai's ear, "Not that I can blame him. You're even more useless than—
I interrupted. "Mai. Your family is trash." A thought occurred to me, "but your cousin, the one with glasses and a ponytail, she's pretty cool." Her expression morphed into something complicated for some reason, but that came with being lifted by only your hair, probably.
Flatly, Zen'in Naoya said, "Why do you keep talking to her? She's a woman not even fit to be a wife, you know." The worst part of it, it wasn't said purposefully. It was said as a simple uncontested truth. Like it was fact. No lie.
I sighed, made a what can you do face at Mai, before turning to the Heir of the Zen'in clan. And clearly, with every word enunciated to an exacting precision, said, "Why would I talk to a Monkey?"
Everyone stilled for some reason. Even Mai had stopped squirming in obvious pain, her mouth gaping open and her eyes fully open. Naoya's grip loosened a little, and the shit-eating grin on his face fell away.
I tilted my head. "Or are you? Maki-san is going to destroy you all. So I suppose you'll actually be burning trash(shit) soon. So really… why would I waste my time with ugly shit-stained monkeys that should be burning already?"
After that, well. It really was a surprise that the conversation devolved.
But even the Zen'in clan couldn't get away with disrupting the only healer of the Jujutsu world. That was a good thing. I wouldn't want to kill Naoya before Maki-san did.
Mai stared at me, sitting in the chair provided for guests. A familiar sight, a familiar room. I was tempted to make a joke but my heart wasn't in it.
"Hachiman. That stuff you said…" She trailed off, her voice softer than I'd ever heard it.
I scratched the back of my head. "Ah, that? I just said that to piss that guy off." Smiled weakly and curved my eyes, changed my face into a look of nervous humour. Said carefully, slowly so that she understood. "People aren't monkeys after all."
Strangely enough, she didn't look convinced. In the interest of moving the conversation along, I coughed. Asked— No. Stop. What was I doing? I could not ignore it. The blatant cruelty that had been demonstrated in front of me. Even as I was now, ignoring it would be anathema to Hikigaya Hachiman. Worse, Mai had not even been surprised, not even caring beyond the immediate pain. She looked like she wasn't even going to acknowledge it. She was resigned to it.
"Mai. Is it always like that?"
Her eyes softened, a slight upwards cant to her lips, all made a devastatingly new look on Mai's face. "It's okay, Hachiman. It's fine." I had never heard of such a tone from the cruel, often senselessly so, Mai. The evil woman, softening herself just from this little? … this didn't suit her at all. She lied to me as easily as she breathed, but somehow, this didn't feel like she was lying at all.
Both of us looked at each other, dead in the eye, and said lies over and over again. We deceived each other, lied to others, and constantly and unthinkingly hurt others, and sometimes we hurt others intentionally. How could I ignore her wish then… how could I, when I was guilty of doing the same?
The flowers I had put into the glass vase earlier, their head too heavy and their stalks too thin, they succumbed to gravity. The water spilled covering the drawers with the clouded water. "By the way. How did Todo react to his yogurt going missing? Did he blame Kamo-san? Were they at each other's throats? I missed… a lot."
Uneasiness flitted across her face before something which I could mistake as relief slackened the muscles. Mai replied, "I suppose you did, it seems like you're making a habit of that." Too quietly to be believed, and too harshly whispered to be anything but heard, "Don't. You missed Todo slugging Kamo hard enough to open his eyes." And she began telling me the story, halting, pausing at moments to just stare at my face like it was capable of telling her something she was afraid to ask.
It never did, it seemed my face was not in the desire of saying things it shouldn't, and she left not too long after.
Getting up, I carefully placed the bent and snapped stalks of the wilting flowers back into place, removing some of the white gauze that lay on the table in favor of my agricultural emergency services. First, I soaked the water up from the spill, a hazard, what if someone came in and slipped on this water? Then used that wetted material as my impromptu splinting. They held and but the gentle curve from the neck of the flower to it's crushed petals had been damaged in such a way that no amount of gauze could support it up. That was alright. I accepted the flowers tried. Cut off and unrooted as they were, they had tried.
I hadn't lied, not really, not for what was important. White lies like, I was fine, it's okay, they allowed the world to continue turning. I couldn't say they counted as lies, not when they were so kind. When someone asked you, how are you, they never want to hear what your current mental state actually was. They allowed you to function. To continue walking forward in this cruel world, without burdening yourself on others… that must be the path of a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
The hazardous waster materials bin's lid snapped up with a thin, reedy sounding slap of plastic and the clouded transparency greeted me with a wide yawning emptiness.
People weren't monkeys, that was no lie.
I dumped the flowers, vase and all and overfull water into the waiting maw.
But the strong like Zen'in Naoya, the rest of the Zen'in clan, the Kamo clan, the Gojo clan that had created the strongest, the higher ups, all those who had contributed to this gigantic piece of flaming shit that was the Jujutsu world. Who allowed it to continue to exist. Well, that wasn't really their fault, if you think long and hard about it… what else would all a bunch of worthless disgusting animals that only knew how to fling more shit onto the pile do?
Trash beget more trash. Recycling wasn't enough, there was simply too much and worth too little to recycle it. Most of it was shit anyway, the kind you couldn't even make fertilizer from. Too dangerous to be ignored, and too pungent to be left to rot. So you just had to… burn it. And as for the monkeys?
You exterminated Monkeys.
…
A.N.
Hikigaya seems perfectly healthy and well adjusted. A perfect, completely ordinary, cog in the machine, Jujutsu Sorcerer.
...
The official story was: under the advisement of First Grade Sorcerer Mei Mei, Hikigaya Hachiman proved his loyalty to the Jujutsu Headquarters by exorcizing Curse-user Arakawa Reiko after she had escaped.
Thus Forth, Hikigaya Hachiman shall be appointed as Semi-grade One sorcerer and be allowed to take on independent and overseas missions.
Any suspicions and doubts of his character and loyalty are to be removed.
The notice for his bounty and execution are to be considered as part of Arakawa Reiko's escape and non-reflective of the Jujutsu Commander's actual views. And are henceforth disavowed and declared null and void.
This was how I became free. This was how the truth died in its cradle. This was the answer someone had arrived at for their compromise. To keep peacefully living in that strained silence, to exist in that unchanged world. The future needed to die.
Back in the bed, back with the scratchy linen on starched, bleached heavy things that wore on me like a suit on a dog. I sat straight up, staring ahead into the patchy, beige-white paint gently peeling away with all the grace of a chainsaw. Someone had stuffed the dying bouquets into the leftmost drawer of a medical cabinets, dead petals and wilting green subtly there, a hint, a flash of color peeking out. Had shoved them in as far as deep as they could and then squeezed and squeezed. Plastic crinkling, soft brittle things being crushed and the stink of pollen like the shiny blood of a crime. Earlier, I had taken those flowers out from their resting place and stuffed them into an glass vase and filled it with water. So full that the slightest movement threatened to send the top rim of water dripping off and breaking the surface tension adhering it to itself.
"So this is the brat who managed to take on the higher ups?" Zen'in Naoya, the future heir to the Zen'in clan as he had proclaimed when he had stepped into the room, looked me over from head to toe. I did not return the favor. "Why don't you take Mai here," He shoved forward a quiet Zen'in Mai, so roughly she nearly fell over. This meek, this silent version of her didn't resemble the Mai I knew. "And marry into our clan, hmm? You're strong enough to take her."
"Hey. Mai. It's been a while." I said instead of listening to any of that.
Wide-eyed and blinking rapidly, Mai looked up at me with surprise wholly united for her. Naoya's face turned ugly, and too fast for me to see, he kicked out Mai's legs, forcing her to kneel. They, her knees, cracked on the floor. It sounded like it hurt.
"Aren't you the arrogant one?"
I finally looked at the sneering Zen'in. "Am I?" Mildly, I asked. Truth was, I didn't feel much of anything. Much less have the capacity for something as banal as arrogance.
Somehow that made him even more angry, and grabbing onto Mai's hair, he pulled her up as she writhed in pain. Oh… so the Zen'in were really that bad. If this man who could easily declare himself as the heir openly abused his family… then they really were all shit. Just shit-flinging Monkeys aping human speech. He grinned, visibly enjoying her muffled, well-used to this abuse, cries. It was an ugly, pathetic thing. Lopsided and so full of itself that it even stirred an emotion in me, something like revulsion. "You're not going to help your classmate? You tried so hard for that other girl… but you won't try for Mai?" I supposed the Great Three clans knew the truth.
He tutted at my silence, and whispered into Mai's ear, "Not that I can blame him. You're even more useless than—
I interrupted. "Mai. Your family is trash." A thought occurred to me, "but your cousin, the one with glasses and a ponytail, she's pretty cool." Her expression morphed into something complicated for some reason, but that came with being lifted by only your hair, probably.
Flatly, Zen'in Naoya said, "Why do you keep talking to her? She's a woman not even fit to be a wife, you know." The worst part of it, it wasn't said purposefully. It was said as a simple uncontested truth. Like it was fact. No lie.
I sighed, made a what can you do face at Mai, before turning to the Heir of the Zen'in clan. And clearly, with every word enunciated to an exacting precision, said, "Why would I talk to a Monkey?"
Everyone stilled for some reason. Even Mai had stopped squirming in obvious pain, her mouth gaping open and her eyes fully open. Naoya's grip loosened a little, and the shit-eating grin on his face fell away.
I tilted my head. "Or are you? Maki-san is going to destroy you all. So I suppose you'll actually be burning trash(shit) soon. So really… why would I waste my time with ugly shit-stained monkeys that should be burning already?"
After that, well. It really was a surprise that the conversation devolved.
But even the Zen'in clan couldn't get away with disrupting the only healer of the Jujutsu world. That was a good thing. I wouldn't want to kill Naoya before Maki-san did.
Mai stared at me, sitting in the chair provided for guests. A familiar sight, a familiar room. I was tempted to make a joke but my heart wasn't in it.
"Hachiman. That stuff you said…" She trailed off, her voice softer than I'd ever heard it.
I scratched the back of my head. "Ah, that? I just said that to piss that guy off." Smiled weakly and curved my eyes, changed my face into a look of nervous humour. Said carefully, slowly so that she understood. "People aren't monkeys after all."
Strangely enough, she didn't look convinced. In the interest of moving the conversation along, I coughed. Asked— No. Stop. What was I doing? I could not ignore it. The blatant cruelty that had been demonstrated in front of me. Even as I was now, ignoring it would be anathema to Hikigaya Hachiman. Worse, Mai had not even been surprised, not even caring beyond the immediate pain. She looked like she wasn't even going to acknowledge it. She was resigned to it.
"Mai. Is it always like that?"
Her eyes softened, a slight upwards cant to her lips, all made a devastatingly new look on Mai's face. "It's okay, Hachiman. It's fine." I had never heard of such a tone from the cruel, often senselessly so, Mai. The evil woman, softening herself just from this little? … this didn't suit her at all. She lied to me as easily as she breathed, but somehow, this didn't feel like she was lying at all.
Both of us looked at each other, dead in the eye, and said lies over and over again. We deceived each other, lied to others, and constantly and unthinkingly hurt others, and sometimes we hurt others intentionally. How could I ignore her wish then… how could I, when I was guilty of doing the same?
The flowers I had put into the glass vase earlier, their head too heavy and their stalks too thin, they succumbed to gravity. The water spilled covering the drawers with the clouded water. "By the way. How did Todo react to his yogurt going missing? Did he blame Kamo-san? Were they at each other's throats? I missed… a lot."
Uneasiness flitted across her face before something which I could mistake as relief slackened the muscles. Mai replied, "I suppose you did, it seems like you're making a habit of that." Too quietly to be believed, and too harshly whispered to be anything but heard, "Don't. You missed Todo slugging Kamo hard enough to open his eyes." And she began telling me the story, halting, pausing at moments to just stare at my face like it was capable of telling her something she was afraid to ask.
It never did, it seemed my face was not in the desire of saying things it shouldn't, and she left not too long after.
Getting up, I carefully placed the bent and snapped stalks of the wilting flowers back into place, removing some of the white gauze that lay on the table in favor of my agricultural emergency services. First, I soaked the water up from the spill, a hazard, what if someone came in and slipped on this water? Then used that wetted material as my impromptu splinting. They held and but the gentle curve from the neck of the flower to it's crushed petals had been damaged in such a way that no amount of gauze could support it up. That was alright. I accepted the flowers tried. Cut off and unrooted as they were, they had tried.
I hadn't lied, not really, not for what was important. White lies like, I was fine, it's okay, they allowed the world to continue turning. I couldn't say they counted as lies, not when they were so kind. When someone asked you, how are you, they never want to hear what your current mental state actually was. They allowed you to function. To continue walking forward in this cruel world, without burdening yourself on others… that must be the path of a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
The hazardous waster materials bin's lid snapped up with a thin, reedy sounding slap of plastic and the clouded transparency greeted me with a wide yawning emptiness.
People weren't monkeys, that was no lie.
I dumped the flowers, vase and all and overfull water into the waiting maw.
But the strong like Zen'in Naoya, the rest of the Zen'in clan, the Kamo clan, the Gojo clan that had created the strongest, the higher ups, all those who had contributed to this gigantic piece of flaming shit that was the Jujutsu world. Who allowed it to continue to exist. Well, that wasn't really their fault, if you think long and hard about it… what else would all a bunch of worthless disgusting animals that only knew how to fling more shit onto the pile do?
Trash beget more trash. Recycling wasn't enough, there was simply too much and worth too little to recycle it. Most of it was shit anyway, the kind you couldn't even make fertilizer from. Too dangerous to be ignored, and too pungent to be left to rot. So you just had to… burn it. And as for the monkeys?
You exterminated Monkeys.
…
A.N.
Hikigaya seems perfectly healthy and well adjusted. A perfect, completely ordinary, cog in the machine, Jujutsu Sorcerer.
Oh yeah, Hachiman against Jujutsu society!
No, it is not Hachiman against Jujutsu society, that's Satoru Gojo thing, it's Hachiman against the world. Go man, break the scale and become Special Grade or die trying.
The world and the relationships around him influence him as much as him influences the world. This is just him dropping the doomer attitude and embracing his selfishness a jujutsu sorcerer needs to advance.
- Location
- Mexico
What character development, lots of trauma and Geto brain damage + eating burned trash/piss/whatever the fuck is inside a trash can does to a mf
So yeah hachiman isnt really hachi anymore after…all of that.
@ArtemisAvant , You know in Hachiman narration, he keeps calling Satoru Gojo 'Six Eyes' as if his eyes are the only thing that is unique and memorable about him, that his entire personality revolves around his eyes. This is pretty much foreshadowing for character development bc by the time Hachiman refers to Gojo by his name, he would finally become mature and happier whether or not he becomes a special grade till that time is irrelevant.
With the Answer Forgotten, He Begins to Twist (3.2)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
With the Answer Forgotten, He Begins to Twist (3.2)
The ugliness of the masses. Their ignorance and their helplessness, I had seen it all before, when Geto Not-Geto killed dozens in response to my screaming. Their kindness despite it all… Judging the population by the individual was a foolish, hypocritical thing to do. It was like comparing the finger of a human to the entirety of a human. I had waved nonetheless. Been shaken like a child, and given an irrational pattern of thought and told to follow it. And when I refused, the irrationality manifested into flames punishing me for the rational. That was the tool of the strong. The power to inflict their will on others.
The tyranny of the strong. Their wretchedness, and the despicable levels they would descend just to confirm their belief of themselves. I hadn't seen it not directly not so blatantly before, but I felt it through every facet of my life. The uncaring court that had brought Komachi and I to live with our uncle. The rulers of the Jujutsu administration forcing me to work like a dog until I exhausted myself and died. Their sadism. Their hilariously evil attempt to force my friend to execute me. Who would excuse that. Answer: those who would excuse that were the ones that had been told they had to. Who believed that they in some way were still necessary. That their role in Jujutsu mattered in a way that couldn't be replaced.
A lie, of course.
And I'd prove it.
I clapped Mechamaru's shoulder, have you ever seen a nearly 2 meter tall puppet jump? It was funny. I should tell it to someone, maybe they'll laugh. A good start to a joke. But, ah… I never claimed to be a comedian. So perhaps I'll just hide it away in my head. Bounce bounce bounce, crack went the thought falling away somewhere, slipping into the gaps between the grates.
"Hikigaya-san. You are here. Present."
The Kyoto Jujutsu Technical College was the same as ever. The same traditional Japanese shoji paneled rooms, the same darkly stained flooring, and the winter melt causing our breaths to fog up in the poor insulation. A lightbulb flickered, burnt out. Their wiring had a tendency to do that, Utahime-sensei said it added charm. Miwa had quietly whispered it subtracted from our life expectancy. The shadows lengthened, and the weak winter sun only painted everything in pale hues.
Dead branches crawled against the floor. In my vision, they danced. Rhythmically moving like a conductor for the greatest macabre in the world. Directed by spider legs.
"You say that like you expected me to be dead." Why did everyone look at me like that? Like they were scared of me, my face wasn't that bad was it? Mechamaru flinched. Woah. When did you advance to being human, you sack of metal and strings? New AI? Turn it back. I preferred you before. You were more useful that way.
…kidding. I was kidding. Totally.
"As ever, your sense of humor is awful." Politely, Mechamaru asked, "What do you need, Hikigaya-san? I do not think you consider us friends… so the only reason—"
"You're right." Enough with the joking around. It wasn't funny anyway. "I need your help."
His green cameras flashed. "Tell me what I need to do."
I did.
…
Utahime-sensei looked like she didn't know how to talk to me anymore. The bamboo chute thunked, and ice splashed. She pretended not to hear, or perhaps she was too focused to spare words about something so meaningless.
It wasn't a sentiment I shared then. "About that first grade sorcerer… she said she knew you." A question that needed no answer, but an opportunity. I already knew about first grade Sorcerer: Mei Mei but not enough.
Utahime-sensei closed her eyes. "Yes. About Mei Mei… to seek forgiveness for another is a pathetic, worthless thing. And I can't rightly say that I wish to…" Opening eyes was a thing done since time immemorial, from birth, to the end when someone else closed your eyes for you, whatever the thing she wished to convey by doing so. It would not reach. "But you deserve an apology regardless."
"I don't want an apology." She looked like that hurt, physically.
Why? Why was she acting like she was the one hurt? This barely involved you. And yet, I was involving you anyway. So in that regard…. In the end… who was the one who should be apologizing then?
No one. Apologies were worthless, useless things that demanded freedom from guilt.
I stated, without any hesitation. "I want an explanation, Utahime-sensei."
Haltingly, quietly, Utahime-sensei did as I asked. "You spoke to her, her views on money are hard to miss, and you're an observant kid, Hikigaya-san. Her ideas are strange but not impossible to understand." When had she brewed tea? She hadn't even drunk a drop. And from the steam, that cup must be boiling. She held it tighter. Hands reddening starkly against the strained skin marked by scars. "In her own way… she must have been thinking she was doing her idea of kindness towards me."
Kindness? kiNdeSs? You called that kindness… If there was a cup in my hand, it would have shattered. Fortunately, I was able to lie still. Thankfully indeed.
That was not what I needed, not at all. Who Mei Mei was, why she did as she did? That didn't matter anymore. It was over and done with. The actions taken cannot be undone and the results won't change no matter how hard we wished them to. None of us could turn back time. The past repeated itself endlessly, and all we could do was play the role that fit them best. I closed my eyes., faked a look of mourning.
It wasn't hard. "Just… please. Tell me about her. So I don't hate her."
"Hikigaya-san?" She was hesitant. Good. That meant she was wavering, confused. Opportunity, chance.
"You said it yourself, Utahime-sensei. I'm an observant kid. Some have also called me painfully kind before… the more I know about someone the harder it is to hate them. So, please. Tell me everything. Her name, what she does, who her parents were, hell, even her pets, her family. Tell me enough that I can,"
Destroy her. Ruin her. Kill everything she is and then some. Burn her world to bloody cinders.
"See her as someone who didn't murder someone in front of me."
And so, my kind, trusting, sensei who was hurting in her own way, tried her very best to tell me everything she knew about Mei Mei so she could lead her student away from becoming another Geto Suguruu.
Unfortunately, in that endeavor.
She was utterly mistaken.
…
...
The ugliness of the masses. Their ignorance and their helplessness, I had seen it all before, when Geto Not-Geto killed dozens in response to my screaming. Their kindness despite it all… Judging the population by the individual was a foolish, hypocritical thing to do. It was like comparing the finger of a human to the entirety of a human. I had waved nonetheless. Been shaken like a child, and given an irrational pattern of thought and told to follow it. And when I refused, the irrationality manifested into flames punishing me for the rational. That was the tool of the strong. The power to inflict their will on others.
The tyranny of the strong. Their wretchedness, and the despicable levels they would descend just to confirm their belief of themselves. I hadn't seen it not directly not so blatantly before, but I felt it through every facet of my life. The uncaring court that had brought Komachi and I to live with our uncle. The rulers of the Jujutsu administration forcing me to work like a dog until I exhausted myself and died. Their sadism. Their hilariously evil attempt to force my friend to execute me. Who would excuse that. Answer: those who would excuse that were the ones that had been told they had to. Who believed that they in some way were still necessary. That their role in Jujutsu mattered in a way that couldn't be replaced.
A lie, of course.
And I'd prove it.
I clapped Mechamaru's shoulder, have you ever seen a nearly 2 meter tall puppet jump? It was funny. I should tell it to someone, maybe they'll laugh. A good start to a joke. But, ah… I never claimed to be a comedian. So perhaps I'll just hide it away in my head. Bounce bounce bounce, crack went the thought falling away somewhere, slipping into the gaps between the grates.
"Hikigaya-san. You are here. Present."
The Kyoto Jujutsu Technical College was the same as ever. The same traditional Japanese shoji paneled rooms, the same darkly stained flooring, and the winter melt causing our breaths to fog up in the poor insulation. A lightbulb flickered, burnt out. Their wiring had a tendency to do that, Utahime-sensei said it added charm. Miwa had quietly whispered it subtracted from our life expectancy. The shadows lengthened, and the weak winter sun only painted everything in pale hues.
Dead branches crawled against the floor. In my vision, they danced. Rhythmically moving like a conductor for the greatest macabre in the world. Directed by spider legs.
"You say that like you expected me to be dead." Why did everyone look at me like that? Like they were scared of me, my face wasn't that bad was it? Mechamaru flinched. Woah. When did you advance to being human, you sack of metal and strings? New AI? Turn it back. I preferred you before. You were more useful that way.
…kidding. I was kidding. Totally.
"As ever, your sense of humor is awful." Politely, Mechamaru asked, "What do you need, Hikigaya-san? I do not think you consider us friends… so the only reason—"
"You're right." Enough with the joking around. It wasn't funny anyway. "I need your help."
His green cameras flashed. "Tell me what I need to do."
I did.
…
Utahime-sensei looked like she didn't know how to talk to me anymore. The bamboo chute thunked, and ice splashed. She pretended not to hear, or perhaps she was too focused to spare words about something so meaningless.
It wasn't a sentiment I shared then. "About that first grade sorcerer… she said she knew you." A question that needed no answer, but an opportunity. I already knew about first grade Sorcerer: Mei Mei but not enough.
Utahime-sensei closed her eyes. "Yes. About Mei Mei… to seek forgiveness for another is a pathetic, worthless thing. And I can't rightly say that I wish to…" Opening eyes was a thing done since time immemorial, from birth, to the end when someone else closed your eyes for you, whatever the thing she wished to convey by doing so. It would not reach. "But you deserve an apology regardless."
"I don't want an apology." She looked like that hurt, physically.
Why? Why was she acting like she was the one hurt? This barely involved you. And yet, I was involving you anyway. So in that regard…. In the end… who was the one who should be apologizing then?
No one. Apologies were worthless, useless things that demanded freedom from guilt.
I stated, without any hesitation. "I want an explanation, Utahime-sensei."
Haltingly, quietly, Utahime-sensei did as I asked. "You spoke to her, her views on money are hard to miss, and you're an observant kid, Hikigaya-san. Her ideas are strange but not impossible to understand." When had she brewed tea? She hadn't even drunk a drop. And from the steam, that cup must be boiling. She held it tighter. Hands reddening starkly against the strained skin marked by scars. "In her own way… she must have been thinking she was doing her idea of kindness towards me."
Kindness? kiNdeSs? You called that kindness… If there was a cup in my hand, it would have shattered. Fortunately, I was able to lie still. Thankfully indeed.
That was not what I needed, not at all. Who Mei Mei was, why she did as she did? That didn't matter anymore. It was over and done with. The actions taken cannot be undone and the results won't change no matter how hard we wished them to. None of us could turn back time. The past repeated itself endlessly, and all we could do was play the role that fit them best. I closed my eyes., faked a look of mourning.
It wasn't hard. "Just… please. Tell me about her. So I don't hate her."
"Hikigaya-san?" She was hesitant. Good. That meant she was wavering, confused. Opportunity, chance.
"You said it yourself, Utahime-sensei. I'm an observant kid. Some have also called me painfully kind before… the more I know about someone the harder it is to hate them. So, please. Tell me everything. Her name, what she does, who her parents were, hell, even her pets, her family. Tell me enough that I can,"
Destroy her. Ruin her. Kill everything she is and then some. Burn her world to bloody cinders.
"See her as someone who didn't murder someone in front of me."
And so, my kind, trusting, sensei who was hurting in her own way, tried her very best to tell me everything she knew about Mei Mei so she could lead her student away from becoming another Geto Suguruu.
Unfortunately, in that endeavor.
She was utterly mistaken.
…
WeirdRatThing
Contains Red Dye 40
- Pronouns
- He/They
I can't wait for the inevitable betrayal on his part! And the best part'll be, if he is actually secretly pretty strong but just suffering from a Hebert-level self-esteem issue, that he won't even be effected by something like Kenjaku! He'll just be that disillusioned!
I think it was less of him being secretly strong and more like he now has the mentality to become strong, to constantly experiment how his powers work. Cursed technique is after all influence by the user imagination, skill, output and last but not least, the most important of all, interpretation. He was experimenting with before all the BS happened but now he will push himself further than ever before, consequences be damned. Becoming a special grade is just among the first steps to fight the rotten world around him.
- Location
- Mexico
Can't wait for Him to kill the MILF groomer tbh
Once Again, Nanami Kento Will Not Leave a Curse (3.3)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Once Again, Nanami Kento Will Not Leave a Curse (3.3)
...
"Hikigaya-san."
"Nanami-senpai?" The man in the same outfit as he had worn that day waited for me at the exit to the metro. The metro that one would only take if you were a Kyoto student heading towards Headquarters. So the first grade sorcerer Nanami Kento being here was not only unusual. It could only be intentional. For a reason I could not comprehend, the man had either determined what I was doing or had a very good idea of it. But the question remained and so I asked, quietly, "What are you doing here?"
He removed his goggles, and for the very first time, I could see how exhausted his eyes were. Lines, crinkles, and an unremovable shadow had carved into the clay of his face, pushing the skin like one might pinch the bridge of their nose day after day. The years had worn on him, but had not worn him down. He breathed in, slightly inclined his head to the sky, said tonelessly, "And what about you? What are you doing here, Hikigaya-san?"
It was as if he said, what are you doing? In this place where you got someone killed. In this place that condemned you to an execution, what could you actually do? But if he had actually said that, it wouldn't have hit as hard as it did.
I had to lie. "..." I had to and it felt a little harder every time.
Nanami walked forward, his hand was light on my shoulder, just the barest touch and even that I could see visibly discomfited the man. In his other hand, he held up two sandwiches wrapped up in glittery clear plastic. "She asked me to give this to you, if I saw you."
Bakery-san… that was right. How long has it been since I went there? It wasn't like I had been avoiding it on purpose… was I? Why couldn't I answer that for certain? Shouldn't Hikigaya Hachiman know himself best? Or was I not Hikigaya Hachiman anymore…
We moved to a bench overshadowed by the Jujutsu Headquarter Castle. A cold slab of roughly hewn stone flanked on the side by serpentine dragons for a strange sort of handrail. In contrast, the sandwich was warm, filling, and hearty in a way that I knew couldn't be explained simply by the simple ingredients presented excellent. The addition of Mirin, and an olive oil vinegar were not enough to warm my stomach. Yet, my stomach was warm.
It was an unexplainable thing. Even for a world full of curses and sorcerers.
Nanami ate his robustly, in quick, large bites that nonetheless seemed to take in everything of his own meal without letting a drop of it fall. Memory stirred. I had witnessed office workers eat that way many a time on the metro. Halfway through, he stopped. Looked up, blew out a breath, and closed his eyes in a sort of contentment unique to that sort.
I tried my best to mimic him in that regard. Not because I thought it was efficient or even cool… but because it was so uniquely real. Like, ah, so that's how you do it. As his junior, I consciously tried to imitate his style.
Neither of us talked, for that would spoil the heat of the meal. Bakery-san must have prepared them especially, because sandwiches sold there mostly came cold-cut, and while they were still leagues above others in that regard… the knowledge that she had cared enough to gift Nanami-senpai, even one for the me who hadn't even thought to visit her in months…
Nanami took both of our plastic wrappers, folded them several times, and placed it into his jacket pocket to be recycled later. He stretched his long legs a little, stuffing his hands in his pockets. A more relaxed version of the man— it almost didn't suit him, like an old suit that didn't fit quite right on the shoulders and the hems were too short. "Hikigaya-san. You were the third child Geto-san took in."
I froze.
Nanami continued explaining without looking at me. "Your technique is markedly different as most expressions of the self tend to be. But the way you fight, your martial technique, and the way you curve your eyes in a lie… as his junior, I would be remiss if I couldn't recognize something so blatant."
Deny it, deny it, deny, denydeny!
But... why? Why did I need to deny it anymore?
So in the end, I said nothing.
"Gojo-san, Ieiri-san. They are too mired in their own sorrows to recognize such a thing." He let out a short chuff that might be mistaken as a laugh. "Your cursed energy even feels similar to his at times."
Did it?
He glanced at me, a helpless slant to his mouth. "Right now, if I closed my eyes… it'd be truly too cruel."
"So… are you here to stop me, Nanami-senpai?" I said, softly.
He quirked his lips. "I could not condemn Geto-san's actions. In truth, I understood them far more that I wished to…" He recited, as if repeating an old song on a winding track that never ended. "Sorcerers are shit who must force their comrades to sacrifice themselves for the weak. I said something irresponsible back then and even allowed the Strongest to sacrifice himself with the responsibility of fixing this world."
He sighed, pinched his eyes against the crowning rays of the sun over the horizon. The clouds were a scattershot of white against the darkening sky. Faintly, the sounds of children playing through the streets before dinner could be heard, along with the sharp cries of mothers and fathers calling for the lost children. Calling them home.
I listened to it all for a long while and waited for Nanami-senpai to speak.
"... If Geto-san was in front of me now. I'd do my best to stop him. I would not condemn but neither would I allow him to continue down his path. A sorcerer's job is to exorcize curses. Saving people is only a byproduct. He forgot that. As adults, to do what he did against children…. I would not allow."
My cursed energy readied itself, my hands clenched in my pockets and the claymold of Cursed Technique Application: Phase Shift began filling. This would be… difficult. I had no illusions, even now, I still was no match for a real First grade sorcerer. But, neither could I relent. I eyed the wrapped cursed tool handle sticking out unobtrusively from under Nanami-senpai's overcoat.
Suddenly, Nanami's voice thundered out. "But you are not Geto Suguruu! Even if you use the same words, even if you have been scarred by him and changed irreparably under his influence. You are different to him, because you are not him. Hikigaya Hachiman!" I sat straight, at attention. His eyes bored through mine into the soft skull-sponge behind them. "I hate the higher ups. But the rules and regulations they enforce create this current peace we have benefited from. Can you, in full honesty, say that you will still do what you will even knowing that you may destroy these moments?"
I let my cursed energy go.
"... Nanami-senpai. Who do you think I am? An idiot who's overly strong and arrogant beyond belief? I'm weak as hell. There's only so much I can do but the little I can do, I'll make sure that it won't hurt anyone but me." I considered, "and some of the shit monkeys like the higher ups, but they don't count."
Nanami sat up, stood up, adjusted his coat, turned around and looked me in the eye with a severe expression.
Finally, he said, "Don't swear."
I blinked.
Seriously? That's all he had to say after all that? I stood up as well., shaking my head. What a strange man— I turned around to leave. Stepped away. But something… something lingered.
Someone followed. "Wait. Why are you still here?" Wasn't the wise man supposed to leave after all that?
Nanami-senpai placed his goggles back on. And completely straight-faced said, "Supervising you. Do I look like the sort of worthless adult to leave a child to fix the mistakes of the world we allowed? Please, Hikigaya-san. I'm not an idiot."
…
...
"Hikigaya-san."
"Nanami-senpai?" The man in the same outfit as he had worn that day waited for me at the exit to the metro. The metro that one would only take if you were a Kyoto student heading towards Headquarters. So the first grade sorcerer Nanami Kento being here was not only unusual. It could only be intentional. For a reason I could not comprehend, the man had either determined what I was doing or had a very good idea of it. But the question remained and so I asked, quietly, "What are you doing here?"
He removed his goggles, and for the very first time, I could see how exhausted his eyes were. Lines, crinkles, and an unremovable shadow had carved into the clay of his face, pushing the skin like one might pinch the bridge of their nose day after day. The years had worn on him, but had not worn him down. He breathed in, slightly inclined his head to the sky, said tonelessly, "And what about you? What are you doing here, Hikigaya-san?"
It was as if he said, what are you doing? In this place where you got someone killed. In this place that condemned you to an execution, what could you actually do? But if he had actually said that, it wouldn't have hit as hard as it did.
I had to lie. "..." I had to and it felt a little harder every time.
Nanami walked forward, his hand was light on my shoulder, just the barest touch and even that I could see visibly discomfited the man. In his other hand, he held up two sandwiches wrapped up in glittery clear plastic. "She asked me to give this to you, if I saw you."
Bakery-san… that was right. How long has it been since I went there? It wasn't like I had been avoiding it on purpose… was I? Why couldn't I answer that for certain? Shouldn't Hikigaya Hachiman know himself best? Or was I not Hikigaya Hachiman anymore…
We moved to a bench overshadowed by the Jujutsu Headquarter Castle. A cold slab of roughly hewn stone flanked on the side by serpentine dragons for a strange sort of handrail. In contrast, the sandwich was warm, filling, and hearty in a way that I knew couldn't be explained simply by the simple ingredients presented excellent. The addition of Mirin, and an olive oil vinegar were not enough to warm my stomach. Yet, my stomach was warm.
It was an unexplainable thing. Even for a world full of curses and sorcerers.
Nanami ate his robustly, in quick, large bites that nonetheless seemed to take in everything of his own meal without letting a drop of it fall. Memory stirred. I had witnessed office workers eat that way many a time on the metro. Halfway through, he stopped. Looked up, blew out a breath, and closed his eyes in a sort of contentment unique to that sort.
I tried my best to mimic him in that regard. Not because I thought it was efficient or even cool… but because it was so uniquely real. Like, ah, so that's how you do it. As his junior, I consciously tried to imitate his style.
Neither of us talked, for that would spoil the heat of the meal. Bakery-san must have prepared them especially, because sandwiches sold there mostly came cold-cut, and while they were still leagues above others in that regard… the knowledge that she had cared enough to gift Nanami-senpai, even one for the me who hadn't even thought to visit her in months…
Nanami took both of our plastic wrappers, folded them several times, and placed it into his jacket pocket to be recycled later. He stretched his long legs a little, stuffing his hands in his pockets. A more relaxed version of the man— it almost didn't suit him, like an old suit that didn't fit quite right on the shoulders and the hems were too short. "Hikigaya-san. You were the third child Geto-san took in."
I froze.
Nanami continued explaining without looking at me. "Your technique is markedly different as most expressions of the self tend to be. But the way you fight, your martial technique, and the way you curve your eyes in a lie… as his junior, I would be remiss if I couldn't recognize something so blatant."
Deny it, deny it, deny, denydeny!
But... why? Why did I need to deny it anymore?
So in the end, I said nothing.
"Gojo-san, Ieiri-san. They are too mired in their own sorrows to recognize such a thing." He let out a short chuff that might be mistaken as a laugh. "Your cursed energy even feels similar to his at times."
Did it?
He glanced at me, a helpless slant to his mouth. "Right now, if I closed my eyes… it'd be truly too cruel."
"So… are you here to stop me, Nanami-senpai?" I said, softly.
He quirked his lips. "I could not condemn Geto-san's actions. In truth, I understood them far more that I wished to…" He recited, as if repeating an old song on a winding track that never ended. "Sorcerers are shit who must force their comrades to sacrifice themselves for the weak. I said something irresponsible back then and even allowed the Strongest to sacrifice himself with the responsibility of fixing this world."
He sighed, pinched his eyes against the crowning rays of the sun over the horizon. The clouds were a scattershot of white against the darkening sky. Faintly, the sounds of children playing through the streets before dinner could be heard, along with the sharp cries of mothers and fathers calling for the lost children. Calling them home.
I listened to it all for a long while and waited for Nanami-senpai to speak.
"... If Geto-san was in front of me now. I'd do my best to stop him. I would not condemn but neither would I allow him to continue down his path. A sorcerer's job is to exorcize curses. Saving people is only a byproduct. He forgot that. As adults, to do what he did against children…. I would not allow."
My cursed energy readied itself, my hands clenched in my pockets and the claymold of Cursed Technique Application: Phase Shift began filling. This would be… difficult. I had no illusions, even now, I still was no match for a real First grade sorcerer. But, neither could I relent. I eyed the wrapped cursed tool handle sticking out unobtrusively from under Nanami-senpai's overcoat.
Suddenly, Nanami's voice thundered out. "But you are not Geto Suguruu! Even if you use the same words, even if you have been scarred by him and changed irreparably under his influence. You are different to him, because you are not him. Hikigaya Hachiman!" I sat straight, at attention. His eyes bored through mine into the soft skull-sponge behind them. "I hate the higher ups. But the rules and regulations they enforce create this current peace we have benefited from. Can you, in full honesty, say that you will still do what you will even knowing that you may destroy these moments?"
I let my cursed energy go.
"... Nanami-senpai. Who do you think I am? An idiot who's overly strong and arrogant beyond belief? I'm weak as hell. There's only so much I can do but the little I can do, I'll make sure that it won't hurt anyone but me." I considered, "and some of the shit monkeys like the higher ups, but they don't count."
Nanami sat up, stood up, adjusted his coat, turned around and looked me in the eye with a severe expression.
Finally, he said, "Don't swear."
I blinked.
Seriously? That's all he had to say after all that? I stood up as well., shaking my head. What a strange man— I turned around to leave. Stepped away. But something… something lingered.
Someone followed. "Wait. Why are you still here?" Wasn't the wise man supposed to leave after all that?
Nanami-senpai placed his goggles back on. And completely straight-faced said, "Supervising you. Do I look like the sort of worthless adult to leave a child to fix the mistakes of the world we allowed? Please, Hikigaya-san. I'm not an idiot."
…
- Location
- Mexico
Nanami is a massive walking W
TheFarBeyond
Professional Slacker
- Location
- Indonesia
Nanami's mentor prowess is OP. Truly a gigachad
One of the few positive moments in Hachiman life, one day he would look back and appreciate this moment even more.
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damm. Like it's true, but damn. Damning him with faint praise. He only has that few happy moments in his life that he can perfectly remember this one? Damn. Like he would, no doubt, but damn.
Hikigaya Hachiman Returns, Quietly, Loudly (3.4)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hikigaya Hachiman Returns, Quietly, Loudly (3.4)
…
I hadn't gotten a very good look at the Jujutsu headquarters. The beating heart of cursed operations for the entirety of Japan could not be denied to be a beautiful, ostentatious grand spectacle. None of which had crossed my mind when I had been here last. A little difficult to do that while you were running through at the fastest speed possible.
Stone walls, heavy foundations that followed a long central stairway gently sloping upwards to the body of the castle itself. Twin rooftops, and secondary buildings flanked us— the rooftops Arakawa and I fought Mei Mei on was ontop of one those flanking rooftops. If I looked closely, the telltale signs of slow repair showed themselves to be obvious. Mechanical lifters, and messy crates of tiling covered by a thin layer of rime and stone dust. Blooming flowers despite the chill overflowed out of the round stone foundations, from little carved out shelves.
Even with a recent attack, scores of people passed Nanami-senpai and I, some even taking a second look as they passed us. Yes, Nanami-senpai was simply that eye-catching. Hm? Myself? Why would that look at little old me? Oh that crater over there from where I shot out a jet of cursed energy to reduce the impact of my fall? The nearly collapsed rooftop with yellow warning tape flapping the wind, and the visibly broken shoji paneling at one the higher floors of the main castle?
Then… if all that was so obvious. Why were their heads still facing my way? A dangerous person who somehow got away with his crimes walked among you, and you still craned your pale necks to look?
Just get out of my way, bystanders.
A hand rested on my shoulder. "Flaring your cursed energy like that is unseemly, Hikigaya-san." He was right, but still my mouth thinned into a nearly invisible line. It didn't make it any easier to ignore the ones who just watched. "Effort where effort is demanded. Wasting your energy reserved for afterwork hours on people who do not have better things to do… you know better."
Touche. As was becoming a habit, Nanami-senpai proven himself right with every word he spoke.
So without caring at all about the eyes staring at us, or the heavy stares that dared me to go wild once again, or even the anxiety ridden gazes of most, Namami and I strode through the gatedoors and stepped onto the barely repaired scarlet paneling.
The trial of destruction was still evident, even though apparently a sorcerer with wood based manipulation abilities had regrown the segments torn and shattered from the fighting, they were still unpainted pale yew wood, almost as if they were naked. That was how it felt to gaze upon those areas. Like seeing someone unvarnished by clothing, clad in their birthday suit, an unsettlingly vulnerable sight.
Was it strange I had the urge to crash my foot through those places?
I directed a smile at the receptionist, held out my phone, and said tonelessly. "Yahallo, secretary-chan." The receptionist was a man, but what could I say? It was funny. My phone dangled limply in my hand, a blank black screen. "Cellphone-chan, here is experiencing some issues with receiving missions, so could you please direct me to the nearest radio tower-kun?"
Nanami inclined his hand. "Please." Intentionally or unintentionally looming over the seated man and with his goggles fixing his gaze into a sharp annoyed glare, I could not tell.
Naturally when faced with two totally ordinary people, secretary-chan acquiesced in a heartbeat of stuttering, mumbled answers.
As we were walking away, "You shouldn't bully others."
"I'm not. I'm simply doing what I need to do."
Continuing as if he hadn't heard me, Nanami said strongly, "Instead, use your long term position and wealth of experience to impress upon them the horrors of their current existence. Without speaking a word of falsehood, take away their surety and useless passion for their dead-end future."
I glanced at Nanami-senpai. He said that without an ounce of malice… scary. Who was the one everyone was supposed to be terrified of again? "That sounds like you're cursing them with the truth, Nanami-senpai."
Sagely, he replied. "Nothing of the sort."
"It really does sound like that though…"
"You're wrong." So fast!
But… thank you Nanami-senpai. You've made this easier. Somehow… even though that aching, sympathetic hole shot through my chest still existed, having someone be unafraid to stand at my side despite it all.
It may be only for pretenses, only done out of the blessed(cursed) legacy Geto Suguruu haunting me even now, a fake, lying thing without any real truths, and any harshly confronted differences threatened to tear this fragile moment apart in an instant, but.
But even if it was fake… I could deny how much I clung onto this irreplaceable moment. If the genuine article is a cruel, thoughtless thing existing out of its own merit. Then the fake must be kind, was it?
I'll be a hypocrite for a little longer.
…
Another intimidation—persuasion and I had what I needed.
At the risk of sounding a tad bit megalomaniac and more than a little melodramatic… all the pieces were in my hand, now.
Now, I simply needed to use them as best I could. It was all up to me. Naturally, because this entire goal was decided out of my selfish wants, it could not be done by anyone else or for anyone else. I said it before, and I'll say it again. The dead do not wish for justice. That was a fallacy taken upon the living to justify their own selfish hatred.
Even though I rushed out of the medical bed, had most of my legs wrapped in bandages still and my neck looking like a stiff breeze would bleed it red, and itching whenever I spoke. It still felt like it had taken too long. A rushing, pushing feeling gripped at my spine and tightened with every wasted second, urging me on faster and faster. Hurry up.
I soothed that feeling, soon soon. Responding to immaterial, incorporeal thoughts with any degree of seriousness probably wasn't the best sign for my steadily declining mental health, but this was the Mirror world. Emotions became curses and humans became sorcerers, and somehow monkeys were the ones commanding the sorcerers.
On and on we ascended to the topmost sanctum, to the room of six tall doors and surrounding shadows. I saw, witnessed the sorcerers who had tried to stop me before in tip top shape courtesy of Ieiri-san, and Arakawa and I's own hesitation to murder, some were missing and I could not ignore that, but the vast majority were watching me while gripping new cursed tools and preparing their replenished stores of Shikigami and cursed energy. By now, the higher ups would have heard of me walking into their hallowed castle again without being summoned.
They must be prepared suitably, already called to head the six higher-ups hiding behind those doors and arranging themselves to look suitably foreboding and nearly 'mystical' in ability to 'predict' me coming here again. That their oh so wise and sensible ways had already been prepared to deal with this eventuality. Maybe it was even true in some ways.
I was what you would call… a liability. Someone who had shown that they were more than willing to go against them, even scuff their nose a little and damage their property. Capable of surviving against a first grade sorcerer even— even if that was mostly Arakawa's technique boosting me and because the first grade had been pulling her punches and refrained from using her deadliest attacks until the last moment. Right now, my reputation was the most infamous as it had ever been… and the parallels to another turned sorcerer were beginning to be obvious. Even if they didn't think of the name in their heads, the figure of that man was being overlaid on my own.
So naturally, Aoi Todo and a scruffy looking man wearing a brown trenchcoat of all things waited just before the apex of the headquarters. Two first grades. Should I be flattered, or was Nanami-senpai that scary?
"Hachiman.. You've finally got a good look to your eyes… To face tribulations and trails, to experience death so closely… you've seen it, haven't you?!" Todo intoned, slammed his fist into his suddenly bare chest— it was winter and the insulation was crap here so seriously why had you ripped your shirt off? You freak. You absolute weirdo. His smile was a sharp vicious thing that made him look like a Saturday-morning villain. But he sounded like he was reciting lines from a shounen manga. Frankly? It was damn impressive.
But it was also Todo. I waved my hand back and forth. "Nope. Nada. Not even a little. No idea. You got the wrong guy This is Hayama Hayato here, never heard of that other H.H. guy."
Besides me, Nanami greeted the other first grade. "Kusakabe-san. It is strange to see you here."
The so-named man who looked like he needed a serious shave despite having no facial hair to speak of, and to stop smoking despite also clearly trying to quit by using suckers as an aid even though nothing of the sort existed in his mouth currently, scratched at his head, winced as his neck bent. "What a pain in the neck." You were the one making that pain, idiot. "I'm a teacher for god's sake. I shouldn't even be mixed up in this trouble, hell, I'm surprised to see you here too."
Nanami shrugged off his overcoat, fodling it in his arms and began to pull his tie loose. "I believe Mei Mei was otherwise occupied, Ieiri-san was fairly annoyed with her."
"Damn, then what am I doing here? Win and get my ass kicked and stay in bed, pain like a bad cough that won't go away for the next six months, or fight and lose and get my ass still broken and pride thrown in the trash? Shit…" he dragged his hand down his face in the universal gesture of too old for this shit. "Say, kid, just go in."
I looked away from Todo trying to impress onto me the values of… something, Jennifer Lawrence, maybe? To the other first grade.
He said, dead-serious to my face. "I'm not about to risk my neck for those old geezers, and Todo-san here… actually I don't know why he's here."
Proudly, Todo shouted, "They offered enough yen to buy another Takada-brand yogurt! And," he coughed as if he hadn't just been openly declaring his idol fixation. "Hachiman. It's been a while since we spoke heart to heart. Care to let our fists speak the truths we are unwilling to speak aloud?"
No, but why did that sound cool for a moment there? Ugh, did I just think Todo was cool? This truly was the worst day of my life, was Mai hiding around the corner laughing her ass off? Was Gojo Satoru going to show up and blast us all into death by infinity? Please. I'd welcome it. Before I become Todo, end this curse(Todo transformation) before it could truly begin.
"I know who ate your yogurt."
Todo was suddenly behind me, pushing me forward. "My friend! Do what you must, then quickly hurry back so we can crush(kill) the villain who robbed me."
Just like that, I passed by the two first grade sorcerers the higher ups had placed to stop me. Just like that—
Clang. Nanami's wrapped cleaver met Kusakabe's katana before it could so much as brush my neck. Twenty different clashes in an instant, and all I could catch was that Nanami had pressed Kuskabe back to the back wall, spinning his cleaver in his hand and drawing back to slam with exciting precision on the katana. It held, but the ground cracked underneath Kusakabe, trenchcoat flapping madly behind him.
"Tch. Kid, you just don't know when to drop dead, do you?"
"Hikigaya-san, you go on ahead, I'll take care of this."
"Oh fuck, it's Overtime for you, isn't it?" Kusakabe flashed across the walls, as Nanami's cleaver began systematically destroying places where the other man could brace off and flee.
And Todo… was just watching, bored even. Honestly, I was sure if I came back down in a moment's time, he'd have joined the fight just to take on both of them at the same time. Hopefully it knocked him out before I had to tell the truth.
But it wasn't my fight.
So all I said was, "See you soon, Nanami-senpai." Hearing a squawk of outrage from the other first grade at having been counted as defeated already, I let a smile play on my lips. My goodbyes said, I ascended these stairs one last time.
In my pocket, the walkerman began to turn that tape again.
…
A.N.
I don't believe in cliffhangers.
…
I hadn't gotten a very good look at the Jujutsu headquarters. The beating heart of cursed operations for the entirety of Japan could not be denied to be a beautiful, ostentatious grand spectacle. None of which had crossed my mind when I had been here last. A little difficult to do that while you were running through at the fastest speed possible.
Stone walls, heavy foundations that followed a long central stairway gently sloping upwards to the body of the castle itself. Twin rooftops, and secondary buildings flanked us— the rooftops Arakawa and I fought Mei Mei on was ontop of one those flanking rooftops. If I looked closely, the telltale signs of slow repair showed themselves to be obvious. Mechanical lifters, and messy crates of tiling covered by a thin layer of rime and stone dust. Blooming flowers despite the chill overflowed out of the round stone foundations, from little carved out shelves.
Even with a recent attack, scores of people passed Nanami-senpai and I, some even taking a second look as they passed us. Yes, Nanami-senpai was simply that eye-catching. Hm? Myself? Why would that look at little old me? Oh that crater over there from where I shot out a jet of cursed energy to reduce the impact of my fall? The nearly collapsed rooftop with yellow warning tape flapping the wind, and the visibly broken shoji paneling at one the higher floors of the main castle?
Then… if all that was so obvious. Why were their heads still facing my way? A dangerous person who somehow got away with his crimes walked among you, and you still craned your pale necks to look?
Just get out of my way, bystanders.
A hand rested on my shoulder. "Flaring your cursed energy like that is unseemly, Hikigaya-san." He was right, but still my mouth thinned into a nearly invisible line. It didn't make it any easier to ignore the ones who just watched. "Effort where effort is demanded. Wasting your energy reserved for afterwork hours on people who do not have better things to do… you know better."
Touche. As was becoming a habit, Nanami-senpai proven himself right with every word he spoke.
So without caring at all about the eyes staring at us, or the heavy stares that dared me to go wild once again, or even the anxiety ridden gazes of most, Namami and I strode through the gatedoors and stepped onto the barely repaired scarlet paneling.
The trial of destruction was still evident, even though apparently a sorcerer with wood based manipulation abilities had regrown the segments torn and shattered from the fighting, they were still unpainted pale yew wood, almost as if they were naked. That was how it felt to gaze upon those areas. Like seeing someone unvarnished by clothing, clad in their birthday suit, an unsettlingly vulnerable sight.
Was it strange I had the urge to crash my foot through those places?
I directed a smile at the receptionist, held out my phone, and said tonelessly. "Yahallo, secretary-chan." The receptionist was a man, but what could I say? It was funny. My phone dangled limply in my hand, a blank black screen. "Cellphone-chan, here is experiencing some issues with receiving missions, so could you please direct me to the nearest radio tower-kun?"
Nanami inclined his hand. "Please." Intentionally or unintentionally looming over the seated man and with his goggles fixing his gaze into a sharp annoyed glare, I could not tell.
Naturally when faced with two totally ordinary people, secretary-chan acquiesced in a heartbeat of stuttering, mumbled answers.
As we were walking away, "You shouldn't bully others."
"I'm not. I'm simply doing what I need to do."
Continuing as if he hadn't heard me, Nanami said strongly, "Instead, use your long term position and wealth of experience to impress upon them the horrors of their current existence. Without speaking a word of falsehood, take away their surety and useless passion for their dead-end future."
I glanced at Nanami-senpai. He said that without an ounce of malice… scary. Who was the one everyone was supposed to be terrified of again? "That sounds like you're cursing them with the truth, Nanami-senpai."
Sagely, he replied. "Nothing of the sort."
"It really does sound like that though…"
"You're wrong." So fast!
But… thank you Nanami-senpai. You've made this easier. Somehow… even though that aching, sympathetic hole shot through my chest still existed, having someone be unafraid to stand at my side despite it all.
It may be only for pretenses, only done out of the blessed(cursed) legacy Geto Suguruu haunting me even now, a fake, lying thing without any real truths, and any harshly confronted differences threatened to tear this fragile moment apart in an instant, but.
But even if it was fake… I could deny how much I clung onto this irreplaceable moment. If the genuine article is a cruel, thoughtless thing existing out of its own merit. Then the fake must be kind, was it?
I'll be a hypocrite for a little longer.
…
Another intimidation—persuasion and I had what I needed.
At the risk of sounding a tad bit megalomaniac and more than a little melodramatic… all the pieces were in my hand, now.
Now, I simply needed to use them as best I could. It was all up to me. Naturally, because this entire goal was decided out of my selfish wants, it could not be done by anyone else or for anyone else. I said it before, and I'll say it again. The dead do not wish for justice. That was a fallacy taken upon the living to justify their own selfish hatred.
Even though I rushed out of the medical bed, had most of my legs wrapped in bandages still and my neck looking like a stiff breeze would bleed it red, and itching whenever I spoke. It still felt like it had taken too long. A rushing, pushing feeling gripped at my spine and tightened with every wasted second, urging me on faster and faster. Hurry up.
I soothed that feeling, soon soon. Responding to immaterial, incorporeal thoughts with any degree of seriousness probably wasn't the best sign for my steadily declining mental health, but this was the Mirror world. Emotions became curses and humans became sorcerers, and somehow monkeys were the ones commanding the sorcerers.
On and on we ascended to the topmost sanctum, to the room of six tall doors and surrounding shadows. I saw, witnessed the sorcerers who had tried to stop me before in tip top shape courtesy of Ieiri-san, and Arakawa and I's own hesitation to murder, some were missing and I could not ignore that, but the vast majority were watching me while gripping new cursed tools and preparing their replenished stores of Shikigami and cursed energy. By now, the higher ups would have heard of me walking into their hallowed castle again without being summoned.
They must be prepared suitably, already called to head the six higher-ups hiding behind those doors and arranging themselves to look suitably foreboding and nearly 'mystical' in ability to 'predict' me coming here again. That their oh so wise and sensible ways had already been prepared to deal with this eventuality. Maybe it was even true in some ways.
I was what you would call… a liability. Someone who had shown that they were more than willing to go against them, even scuff their nose a little and damage their property. Capable of surviving against a first grade sorcerer even— even if that was mostly Arakawa's technique boosting me and because the first grade had been pulling her punches and refrained from using her deadliest attacks until the last moment. Right now, my reputation was the most infamous as it had ever been… and the parallels to another turned sorcerer were beginning to be obvious. Even if they didn't think of the name in their heads, the figure of that man was being overlaid on my own.
So naturally, Aoi Todo and a scruffy looking man wearing a brown trenchcoat of all things waited just before the apex of the headquarters. Two first grades. Should I be flattered, or was Nanami-senpai that scary?
"Hachiman.. You've finally got a good look to your eyes… To face tribulations and trails, to experience death so closely… you've seen it, haven't you?!" Todo intoned, slammed his fist into his suddenly bare chest— it was winter and the insulation was crap here so seriously why had you ripped your shirt off? You freak. You absolute weirdo. His smile was a sharp vicious thing that made him look like a Saturday-morning villain. But he sounded like he was reciting lines from a shounen manga. Frankly? It was damn impressive.
But it was also Todo. I waved my hand back and forth. "Nope. Nada. Not even a little. No idea. You got the wrong guy This is Hayama Hayato here, never heard of that other H.H. guy."
Besides me, Nanami greeted the other first grade. "Kusakabe-san. It is strange to see you here."
The so-named man who looked like he needed a serious shave despite having no facial hair to speak of, and to stop smoking despite also clearly trying to quit by using suckers as an aid even though nothing of the sort existed in his mouth currently, scratched at his head, winced as his neck bent. "What a pain in the neck." You were the one making that pain, idiot. "I'm a teacher for god's sake. I shouldn't even be mixed up in this trouble, hell, I'm surprised to see you here too."
Nanami shrugged off his overcoat, fodling it in his arms and began to pull his tie loose. "I believe Mei Mei was otherwise occupied, Ieiri-san was fairly annoyed with her."
"Damn, then what am I doing here? Win and get my ass kicked and stay in bed, pain like a bad cough that won't go away for the next six months, or fight and lose and get my ass still broken and pride thrown in the trash? Shit…" he dragged his hand down his face in the universal gesture of too old for this shit. "Say, kid, just go in."
I looked away from Todo trying to impress onto me the values of… something, Jennifer Lawrence, maybe? To the other first grade.
He said, dead-serious to my face. "I'm not about to risk my neck for those old geezers, and Todo-san here… actually I don't know why he's here."
Proudly, Todo shouted, "They offered enough yen to buy another Takada-brand yogurt! And," he coughed as if he hadn't just been openly declaring his idol fixation. "Hachiman. It's been a while since we spoke heart to heart. Care to let our fists speak the truths we are unwilling to speak aloud?"
No, but why did that sound cool for a moment there? Ugh, did I just think Todo was cool? This truly was the worst day of my life, was Mai hiding around the corner laughing her ass off? Was Gojo Satoru going to show up and blast us all into death by infinity? Please. I'd welcome it. Before I become Todo, end this curse(Todo transformation) before it could truly begin.
"I know who ate your yogurt."
Todo was suddenly behind me, pushing me forward. "My friend! Do what you must, then quickly hurry back so we can crush(kill) the villain who robbed me."
Just like that, I passed by the two first grade sorcerers the higher ups had placed to stop me. Just like that—
Clang. Nanami's wrapped cleaver met Kusakabe's katana before it could so much as brush my neck. Twenty different clashes in an instant, and all I could catch was that Nanami had pressed Kuskabe back to the back wall, spinning his cleaver in his hand and drawing back to slam with exciting precision on the katana. It held, but the ground cracked underneath Kusakabe, trenchcoat flapping madly behind him.
"Tch. Kid, you just don't know when to drop dead, do you?"
"Hikigaya-san, you go on ahead, I'll take care of this."
"Oh fuck, it's Overtime for you, isn't it?" Kusakabe flashed across the walls, as Nanami's cleaver began systematically destroying places where the other man could brace off and flee.
And Todo… was just watching, bored even. Honestly, I was sure if I came back down in a moment's time, he'd have joined the fight just to take on both of them at the same time. Hopefully it knocked him out before I had to tell the truth.
But it wasn't my fight.
So all I said was, "See you soon, Nanami-senpai." Hearing a squawk of outrage from the other first grade at having been counted as defeated already, I let a smile play on my lips. My goodbyes said, I ascended these stairs one last time.
In my pocket, the walkerman began to turn that tape again.
…
A.N.
I don't believe in cliffhangers.
They Lead Him Down, He Crawls Out of His Grave (3.5)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They Lead Him Down, He Crawls Out of His Grave (3.5)
…
"Yahallo, Monkeys." I waved nonchalantly, walking to stand in the direct middle of the six doors beaming a light on me. Idle as a leopard, I craned my neck around, wondering which one of these silhouettes monkeys was Principal Gakungaji.
"Hikigaya Hachiman." Ooh, say my name like that again. You'll make me flush. "You come to stand before us once more, throwing vile ugly words at us because you are a child. Ignorant. Arrogant." If so, then they must be using cold, dispassionate words said in the same manner you might speak to a particularly intelligent cockroach because they were dust lice.
"We offered mercy, and you have spat on it. Do you know what that is named? It is the wolf biting the hand that feeds it." From the way you were speaking it was as if that mercy was something that they were benevolently and simply waiting for me to pass the 'test' and then welcome me with open arms and clapping to give. As if I needed to first jump through hoops and hoops and only then after I had stripped off all my individual thoughts and anything but blind obedience, and only then they would deign to give me mercy. "Do you have anything to say for yourself, Hikigaya Hachiman? If you have come for another reason, speak quickly and leave even quicker."
Then another door monkey chimed in, a female one, with such a warm and gentle tone that it could only be fake. "Oh dear child. Why have you come? Out of justice? Out of a sense of righteousness? You have brought with you so much anger, and for what? These are pains you have taken upon yourself. You have shattered the rules. Broken the regulations, and deceived and hurt and lied. We are the bedrock of the Jujutsu World you have thrived in. Innumerable curses have been exorcized and numerous sorcerers exist only at our behest. To challenge that is not only the height of foolishness that even Gojo Satoru would not dare to, but akin to damning the whole of Japan out of selfishness."
Then another voice, more familiar behind the reverberation of the doors. Gakungaji. "Hikigaya-kun. Your actions do not reflect well on young Utahime. Have you perhaps thought of what your actions will cause onto others? She tells me you all are very good children, and yet here you are. Thoughtlessly lashing out because you were denied what you wish for."
Again and again, they threw out words in the facade of language. Of communication. I stared neutrally at nothing, readying myself. They were just… tossing rocks into a placid lake, ineffective. Shallowly rippling across the surface as noise.
I took out my phone, fiddled with it a little.
"Look. He even dares ignore us to play on his phone." They shouted, in different ways, other more offended, and others just simply sneering at me. Gakungaji was quiet.
I held up my phone, as it suddenly buzzed and buzzed over and over again. I cleared my throat, reinforced my vocal cords to reverberate loudly enough to drown out all the screeching. "As of right now… every single sorcerer in Japan no longer answers to you." A manic light danced in my eyes. "Headquarters, the higher ups? You're cut off."
Bewilderment. Shock, and outraged cry, "Are you insane, Hikigaya Hachiman? No, this cannot even be limited to just insanity! This is fantasy. Impossibility. Even if such a ridiculous thing was possible, you would have to supply sorcerers with your money alone. That among many other reason would doom your idiotic show—"
"Which is why, Mei Mei and myself are currently paying for them." I interrupted them cut across their blustering, disbelief with a steady voice. Calm. Almost… arrogantly relaxed even. "I'd say… 250 million yen in disposable assets can last a good long while, but math was never my strongest subject."
This was only possible due to the combination of three things.
One: Mechamaru and I had implanted a puppet camera in several crows I had captured, bought, found , and very simply let them fly nearby Mei Mei's own flight of black birds. Naturally social creatures, as I suspected, Mei Mei suspected nothing. Through careful observation we compiled a basic set of information. Banking Information.
Two: In Depth information, Utahime-sensei, who admitted to being by both herself and the perpetrator in question a long time friend of Mei Mei, who was undoubtedly a loner so even though she pretended to be indifferent and shallow, I knew… as a fellow loner, we cherished those seemingly shallow relationship to an almost frighteningly degree. We would reveal things without thinking. Tell secrets that could destroy us. All out of that impossible, implacable thing named trust. Thus, I easily gleaned information such as her family, her mother's maiden name, her brother's first pet, little dumb things that only an attentive friend would know.
Mei Mei being an excellent first grade sorcerer and even better business woman, she counted among the richest people in Japan, and while I could not liquidate her assets in her company or properties so easily. Because of the naturally oddity of unexplainable sums of money, bribes, and buying mysterious artifacts(cursed tools) with a quick pass of security checks, her identity practically stole itself.
Three: But one woman's life savings, even an absurdly rich one, could not supply all of Japan's sorcerers to continue their missions without noticing a thing, but I could slow that noticing. While the actual assignment of missions and reports on curses was managed by the office-like hive downstairs which Nanami-senpai handily navigated, and with a quick intimidation to change the banking information from the higher ups and clans to Mei Mei's, I also added my own not-insubstantial money to that quickly dwindling supply.
See, I was a consummate loner, and as such… I hardly ever spent money, and considering I had no time to buy vanity or pleasure purchases, all from the dozens of missions I had done simply sat there accumulating interest even accounting for the sizable cuts of my pay from being disciplined and for being a student of Kyoto Jujutsu Technical College… I still had Geto's last blessing.
Trust funds. I said he was an excellent parent did I not? Or at the very least, a superb guardian. Nanako, Mimiko, and I were all provided for and with full access as he trusted us implicitly. Geto Suguruu was a special grade sorcerer at one point at time, and the leader of an international cult… just how much money do you think he would spare his wards in the case of his very likely death?
I wasn't done yet. It had gone silent in the room a time ago, as the lack of messages and complaints had failed to trickle in, and my phone kept constantly buzzing announcing the repetitive depletion of my bank account. Honestly, I had never used either my trust fund or my own earned money anyway. But I bet Mei Mei cared. And likewise, I wasn't done with her, not by a long shot.
Right now, the higher ups were probably wondering why no one had stormed in and screamed about everything imploding.
I answered that question bounding in their balding, sore-filled, spotted sick skulls. Hammered the truth home into their rotting brains. "You aren't needed. Have you finally figured that out? The money you direct from the Japanese government and the three clans to, is replaceable. Your authority… Why," my phone kept buzzing, kept paying for missions, kept proving my words true with every bright white message angrily demanding attention. "The mission systems are practically running like new without your constant interference, would you look at that."
It wouldn't last, it barely held itself together, but all the same it mattered. People were funny in that way. As if they could not rush forward, until they had seen it right before their very eyes. The important part was not making it work, but proving that it could.
I didn't do anything as unseemly as grinning, but if there was an air of indulgence in my words not even I could stop that. "So I guess," I let my words trail off, ringing out like the scrape of the executioner's axe to the chopping black. "The only thing to do now… is to take away the enforcement of rules and regulations. Or in other words. Executions."
A once-man screamed at me. "Hikigaya-kun—!"
But I wasn't listening anymore. "Cursed Technique Application: Phase Shift."
Did you know? Those doors they spoke through, saw through, all connected through like cellphones to them, were a clever shikigami powered by cursed energy. Frankly, who knew who those monkeys were. They could be anywhere. Even outside of Japan. But what I did know was that these monuments to ego, these massive shoji doors were all, one two three four five six, one and all, linked to their cursed energy.
Phase Shift didn't need to burn my cursed energy, it wouldn't have hurt Mei Mei so badly or destroyed her cursed axe before if it was only my energy fueling it, and just so you know… I didn't need to touch to activate it. Only the cursed energy in the air. Only cursed energy at all. The volatile nature of cursed energy did the rest, my technique only catalyzed it into a cascading reaction. My fingers unfurled, a ball of blue fire shooting out in six crackling lines one for each door, and then my hand snapped into a fist. Follow the lines, follow the traces. And burn.
"Start screaming, Monkeys. Maybe you can get saved."
I lied.
Shikigami were directly linked to their user's cursed energy, being an extension of them as they were. They'd burn from the inside out. Even if they'd live, they'd be scarred for life. Never to again use their cursed energy again without remembering that burning. That inherent betrayal.
A scream cut off as the doors exploded into flames. Shouts of outrage developed into panic. Pleas for me to stop, suddenly quieted. The strum of a guitar, only for the strings to snap. The lights from each door had gone out, but the ghostly flame provided all I needed to see.
I inhaled, breathed out the smell of ash. Alone in a room gently being painted in blue.
"As for executions… I'll have to take that role for now."
…
…
"Yahallo, Monkeys." I waved nonchalantly, walking to stand in the direct middle of the six doors beaming a light on me. Idle as a leopard, I craned my neck around, wondering which one of these silhouettes monkeys was Principal Gakungaji.
"Hikigaya Hachiman." Ooh, say my name like that again. You'll make me flush. "You come to stand before us once more, throwing vile ugly words at us because you are a child. Ignorant. Arrogant." If so, then they must be using cold, dispassionate words said in the same manner you might speak to a particularly intelligent cockroach because they were dust lice.
"We offered mercy, and you have spat on it. Do you know what that is named? It is the wolf biting the hand that feeds it." From the way you were speaking it was as if that mercy was something that they were benevolently and simply waiting for me to pass the 'test' and then welcome me with open arms and clapping to give. As if I needed to first jump through hoops and hoops and only then after I had stripped off all my individual thoughts and anything but blind obedience, and only then they would deign to give me mercy. "Do you have anything to say for yourself, Hikigaya Hachiman? If you have come for another reason, speak quickly and leave even quicker."
Then another door monkey chimed in, a female one, with such a warm and gentle tone that it could only be fake. "Oh dear child. Why have you come? Out of justice? Out of a sense of righteousness? You have brought with you so much anger, and for what? These are pains you have taken upon yourself. You have shattered the rules. Broken the regulations, and deceived and hurt and lied. We are the bedrock of the Jujutsu World you have thrived in. Innumerable curses have been exorcized and numerous sorcerers exist only at our behest. To challenge that is not only the height of foolishness that even Gojo Satoru would not dare to, but akin to damning the whole of Japan out of selfishness."
Then another voice, more familiar behind the reverberation of the doors. Gakungaji. "Hikigaya-kun. Your actions do not reflect well on young Utahime. Have you perhaps thought of what your actions will cause onto others? She tells me you all are very good children, and yet here you are. Thoughtlessly lashing out because you were denied what you wish for."
Again and again, they threw out words in the facade of language. Of communication. I stared neutrally at nothing, readying myself. They were just… tossing rocks into a placid lake, ineffective. Shallowly rippling across the surface as noise.
I took out my phone, fiddled with it a little.
"Look. He even dares ignore us to play on his phone." They shouted, in different ways, other more offended, and others just simply sneering at me. Gakungaji was quiet.
I held up my phone, as it suddenly buzzed and buzzed over and over again. I cleared my throat, reinforced my vocal cords to reverberate loudly enough to drown out all the screeching. "As of right now… every single sorcerer in Japan no longer answers to you." A manic light danced in my eyes. "Headquarters, the higher ups? You're cut off."
Bewilderment. Shock, and outraged cry, "Are you insane, Hikigaya Hachiman? No, this cannot even be limited to just insanity! This is fantasy. Impossibility. Even if such a ridiculous thing was possible, you would have to supply sorcerers with your money alone. That among many other reason would doom your idiotic show—"
"Which is why, Mei Mei and myself are currently paying for them." I interrupted them cut across their blustering, disbelief with a steady voice. Calm. Almost… arrogantly relaxed even. "I'd say… 250 million yen in disposable assets can last a good long while, but math was never my strongest subject."
This was only possible due to the combination of three things.
One: Mechamaru and I had implanted a puppet camera in several crows I had captured, bought, found , and very simply let them fly nearby Mei Mei's own flight of black birds. Naturally social creatures, as I suspected, Mei Mei suspected nothing. Through careful observation we compiled a basic set of information. Banking Information.
Two: In Depth information, Utahime-sensei, who admitted to being by both herself and the perpetrator in question a long time friend of Mei Mei, who was undoubtedly a loner so even though she pretended to be indifferent and shallow, I knew… as a fellow loner, we cherished those seemingly shallow relationship to an almost frighteningly degree. We would reveal things without thinking. Tell secrets that could destroy us. All out of that impossible, implacable thing named trust. Thus, I easily gleaned information such as her family, her mother's maiden name, her brother's first pet, little dumb things that only an attentive friend would know.
Mei Mei being an excellent first grade sorcerer and even better business woman, she counted among the richest people in Japan, and while I could not liquidate her assets in her company or properties so easily. Because of the naturally oddity of unexplainable sums of money, bribes, and buying mysterious artifacts(cursed tools) with a quick pass of security checks, her identity practically stole itself.
Three: But one woman's life savings, even an absurdly rich one, could not supply all of Japan's sorcerers to continue their missions without noticing a thing, but I could slow that noticing. While the actual assignment of missions and reports on curses was managed by the office-like hive downstairs which Nanami-senpai handily navigated, and with a quick intimidation to change the banking information from the higher ups and clans to Mei Mei's, I also added my own not-insubstantial money to that quickly dwindling supply.
See, I was a consummate loner, and as such… I hardly ever spent money, and considering I had no time to buy vanity or pleasure purchases, all from the dozens of missions I had done simply sat there accumulating interest even accounting for the sizable cuts of my pay from being disciplined and for being a student of Kyoto Jujutsu Technical College… I still had Geto's last blessing.
Trust funds. I said he was an excellent parent did I not? Or at the very least, a superb guardian. Nanako, Mimiko, and I were all provided for and with full access as he trusted us implicitly. Geto Suguruu was a special grade sorcerer at one point at time, and the leader of an international cult… just how much money do you think he would spare his wards in the case of his very likely death?
I wasn't done yet. It had gone silent in the room a time ago, as the lack of messages and complaints had failed to trickle in, and my phone kept constantly buzzing announcing the repetitive depletion of my bank account. Honestly, I had never used either my trust fund or my own earned money anyway. But I bet Mei Mei cared. And likewise, I wasn't done with her, not by a long shot.
Right now, the higher ups were probably wondering why no one had stormed in and screamed about everything imploding.
I answered that question bounding in their balding, sore-filled, spotted sick skulls. Hammered the truth home into their rotting brains. "You aren't needed. Have you finally figured that out? The money you direct from the Japanese government and the three clans to, is replaceable. Your authority… Why," my phone kept buzzing, kept paying for missions, kept proving my words true with every bright white message angrily demanding attention. "The mission systems are practically running like new without your constant interference, would you look at that."
It wouldn't last, it barely held itself together, but all the same it mattered. People were funny in that way. As if they could not rush forward, until they had seen it right before their very eyes. The important part was not making it work, but proving that it could.
I didn't do anything as unseemly as grinning, but if there was an air of indulgence in my words not even I could stop that. "So I guess," I let my words trail off, ringing out like the scrape of the executioner's axe to the chopping black. "The only thing to do now… is to take away the enforcement of rules and regulations. Or in other words. Executions."
A once-man screamed at me. "Hikigaya-kun—!"
But I wasn't listening anymore. "Cursed Technique Application: Phase Shift."
Did you know? Those doors they spoke through, saw through, all connected through like cellphones to them, were a clever shikigami powered by cursed energy. Frankly, who knew who those monkeys were. They could be anywhere. Even outside of Japan. But what I did know was that these monuments to ego, these massive shoji doors were all, one two three four five six, one and all, linked to their cursed energy.
Phase Shift didn't need to burn my cursed energy, it wouldn't have hurt Mei Mei so badly or destroyed her cursed axe before if it was only my energy fueling it, and just so you know… I didn't need to touch to activate it. Only the cursed energy in the air. Only cursed energy at all. The volatile nature of cursed energy did the rest, my technique only catalyzed it into a cascading reaction. My fingers unfurled, a ball of blue fire shooting out in six crackling lines one for each door, and then my hand snapped into a fist. Follow the lines, follow the traces. And burn.
"Start screaming, Monkeys. Maybe you can get saved."
I lied.
Shikigami were directly linked to their user's cursed energy, being an extension of them as they were. They'd burn from the inside out. Even if they'd live, they'd be scarred for life. Never to again use their cursed energy again without remembering that burning. That inherent betrayal.
A scream cut off as the doors exploded into flames. Shouts of outrage developed into panic. Pleas for me to stop, suddenly quieted. The strum of a guitar, only for the strings to snap. The lights from each door had gone out, but the ghostly flame provided all I needed to see.
I inhaled, breathed out the smell of ash. Alone in a room gently being painted in blue.
"As for executions… I'll have to take that role for now."
…
TheFarBeyond
Professional Slacker
- Location
- Indonesia
A coup d'etat, damn
WeirdRatThing
Contains Red Dye 40
- Pronouns
- He/They
Beautiful. Simply and sweetly: Beautiful.
Can't wait for what's next!
Can't wait for what's next!
It's truly has symbolic victory that it was Hikigaya Hachiman that did this and not Satoru Gojo. Geto is looking at his son with unmatched pride right now even Kenjaku can feel it.
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Somewhere, somewhen where Kenjaku and the Special Grade Curses are probably idk hopscotching in a field of butterflies or some other pastel-flavored shit, Geto's body suddenly fist pumps the air so hard taht it sprains Kenny's arm for weeks.
The Rain Comes with Spring (4.1)
New
ArtemisAvant
Some idiot, who's running from carpal tunnel
- Location
- Cornfield Central, Indiana
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Rain Comes with Spring (4.1)
The world shifted.
Gojo Satoru pulled up his blindfold slightly, whistled. We were seated in Utahime-sensei's office, as the man had seemingly shown up out of the blue and loudly declared that he was looking for the 'guy who did what we were all thinking'. Oddly enough he made me sit in Utahime-sensei's spot, while he lounged in the lower student's spot.
"How's being the Terror of the Jujutsu world?"
"Terrible. No benefits. Honestly, they looked at me worse before, but — negative one hundred compared to negative ninety nine, is still negative. How's being the Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer?"
"Incredible. I'm super rich and everybody loves me. They don't even send assassins after me anymore, which by the way you should watch out for, I caught one when I was walking in."
I rubbed my temples. "Yes, I know, you dangled the assassin up by his shoes, asked. 'You new here? Mou, Kyoto has way too many students! It's not fairrrrr' and then Utahime-sensei started screaming at you."
"Good times." He grinned, completely unrepentant.
"It happened literally five minutes ago."
"I know, right? Should'a been there." He made a disturbingly cute face that should not belong on a grown man but nonetheless it existed. On Gojo Satoru's face of all faces. "He might've started wetting his pants!"
Shit, that did sound fun— wait. I was supposed to be the moral authority now. "Oh no. Don't… do that. Nooo. Totally. Bad, you." Amazing job, me.
Gojo shrieked over pitched and too whiny to be anything but fake. "Don't burn me, Hikigaya-sama~" But suddenly his blindfold fell completely off, and his face smoothed out into an abnormal seriousness. Beyond waxing poetic about his eyes, I already noticed something. His face was too smooth. Even with Limitless… sunlight and wind likely still hit him considering he could smell and see. There should be gentle markings and wrinkles on that face, but inhumanely there was nothing but smooth unmarked skin. RCT? Constantly? Why? "... The clan's in an uproar and I imagine the Kamo and Zen'in are far worse because they can't claim having the strongest to protect their standings. You really broke everything and patched it up with duct tape. How much money do you even have left?"
I pulled out my phone. "Currently? I'm hitting the negative triple digits."I looked again, corrected myself, "Quadruple. You aren't my debt collector are you?" Japan really took their taxes seriously if that was the case. How would I go explaining this to the IRS… On second thought, how should I go about faking my death?
"You're not thinking of faking your own death, are you?"
"Tch, stop cheating with your stupid eyes."
"Ne, Hikigaya-sama, don't be so mean! Here I am, out of the goodness of my heart," What heart? You were groping the wrong pectoral, any lower and you'd be seeing Pam from HR. "Concerned for my Senpai's student and here you are coldly talking only about my eyes." So he was still annoyed about that…
I closed my eyes. "Well yeah… It'd be too awkward otherwise. Do you know how much Geto talked about you? I practically know your life story, you were just as present as he was even when you weren't physically there. Calling you Six Eyes-san is a preservation tactic."
"...you admitted it." Gojo was shocked, strange, that was possible with those eyes? Joking. Joking. "I thought you wouldn't."
I got up, flipped on the electric kettle, and flicked the bamboo chute back, it had gotten stuck downwards again. Too much moisture, the water levels were a bit off in the carefully precise mechanism. "Nanami-senpai told you, right?"
He didn't deny it, instead watching me calmly arrange the tea and set it in two bags, shaking bits of tea that flaked off into a cloth. I opened a window slightly, and wincing a bit at the chill, flapped the cloth into a pile of melting snow.
"And…" I didn't run around, keeping my eyes on the tiny air bubbles slowly rising to the top of the electric kettle's glass middle. "There's another thing, but that can wait."
"Mm. You're right it can." For a man speaking with his dead friend's ward he sounded remarkably calm. His voice, even, calm. I didn't know if it was simply because for all my supposed theoretical familiarity, I didn't really know the man, but I couldn't detect anything like surprise in his intonation. The sound of his hand hitting the table that served as Utahime-sensei's desk, made me turn around. A heavily inked print document sat with a sheaf of others. "The Gojo clan's current assets and vaults. That'll solve your debt problem." his finger moved over to a different paper, one with a photo of Gojo himself. "As for the imminent crisis, you can add my account to stem the tide for a good long while." He then moved those papers to the side, and spread out the remaining papers. "And here is the government of Japan changing their budget for Jujutsu Sorcery to little ol'me."
There were several things that needed to be addressed in that! Several, really huge things admitted with all the nonchalance of changing from an art major to a homeless person!
"I know the Prime Minister personally." He said to my shocked face. "Saved his family once from a special grade curse, you know. But all this? It's a stopgap at best. We'll need to decide some sort of ruling body to handle the money—"
I found my voice again. "Not a ruling body, we saw what happened last time with that. Actually, you might want to change the people in charge of the money to be non-sorcerers."
His hands stopped moving. "... Non-sorcerers?"
The real question hid behind his innocuous repetition. One I didn't hesitate to answer.
"Ordinary weak people. One third them, one third sorcerers, and one third windows or assistant managers. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do." The kettle dinged. I set to making the tea. "What does Tengen-sama feel about the situation?"
"No idea." Gojo blew out air, the bright look on his face hardening a little. "Don't imagine he cares much, though. Tokyo and Kyoto Jujutsu Tech are both unaffected so it's not a problem." Seemed as if the two pillars of the Jujutsu world didn't much care for each other, a story there to be sure. "You've thought this through."
I smiled, handed over the tea next to Gojo, and brought my own to my lips, as the steam curled into my nose. I gulped it down. Warm. A good balm for my frazzled nerves that had been deadened ever since I set alight the world and hid away in my room. "The privilege of the weak. Can't exactly just blast away all my problems like an entire mansion in the way."
He made an odd face. "He really told you everything, huh. Gross." He said as much but it sounded like the exact opposite. Something like fondness and nostalgia.
I commiserated with the man. "Every day. He'd offhandedly mention it while making coffee and tea for the girls. Or when he explained some vague Jujutsu concept, you were the first example on his lips."
Gojo hid his face in the steam. For once quiet, the chattering on and on and exuberance, not so dimmed, but softened.
I left him to it, staring outside the window as the icicles dripped. Evergreen bushes popped out from blankets of white-grey and across the distance, I saw a bright red bird flitting from melt to melt landing on top of a Buddha with a fluffy hat currently being made into a nest. I wondered if the koi fish were placed back in the pond by now.
"You know… it's funny." True to his word, Gojo laughed a little. "All the students that I had picked out to change this shitty, rotten world… and even the ones I had my eye on like Todo Aoi, or Muta Kokichi(Mechamaru), they didn't end up doing much of anything."
I said, "Mechamaru helped a bit. Maki-san was cool."
"A bit," he echoed. "Cool."
"It's not over yet. The three clans… that's a job better suited for the strong. I just…" I searched for the words. Failed to find them. Started over, "We started from different points. You at the beginning and me at the end. Or rather, you started at the bottomup, while I approached it topdown. Plus," I gestured at the papers. "Couldn't keep it up without you."
He groaned. "Ugh. Stop. Having you try and cheer me up is just gross. Ughhhhh." He threw his hands dramatically in the air and dragged them down his eyes. "When I see Suguruu he's going to be so smug his kids beat mine."
Kid? Suguruu's kid? You know I had parents before, right? Geto didn't, like, literally birth us. Frankly, I wasn't even sure if he legally adopted us. The details on that were murky at best but they definitely not above board. Intimidation, threats, and ludicrous exploitations of money were probably involved. What? That sounded incredibly familiar especially in light of current events? Noooooo… This and that were totally different. Totally.
Also, "... About that."
…
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do here.
I sat, a little stupid, a little bit tired, on the snow-flecked grass. My pants wetted nearly immediately, and the damp chill sinking down to my calves slightly irritated me but that was it. Without really thinking, I grabbed ahold of the bamboo bucket by its long handle, and poured the water down across the name.
Arakawa Reiko, on a tiny little headstone, surrounded by a hundred, a thousand others in soft grey.
Did I have a right to even be here? If there was a funeral, I would have missed it. Yet, it's not as if there could be one. Her cremation urn sat beside me, smooth and dull like fired clay. Empty and lifeless. In the cases of … 'messy' deaths, the general procedure was to totally immolate the body, and char the skeleton into bone ash. They'd then bring in specialist to purify the remains, and if that weren't enough they'd then dispose of the lingering ashes with a cursed technique.
No one wanted another Ryomen Sukuna after all.
I found my eyes stubbornly stuck to the name of the Memortium set aside for Jujutsu Sorcerers. Sacrilegious? Blasphemous? Maybe. Having a curse-user's name carved into the same stone that marked down those who had died against curses and curse-users, that'd do the trick. Rivulets of water fell into the grooves of her name, collected into thickened streams to then stream down catching another name below.
Most didn't even have ashes. Some had never been retrieved from whatever curse had swallowed them. A fact, a fixed point in existence, sorcerers were burdened by terrible lives. They had done a study on it. I remembered Utahime-sensei describing it to us, by and far, by convention or simply fate… Sorcerers were marked by tragedy.
Not from the predator-prey cyclical relationship of Curses and their hunters, but from others, from humans, and from their own existences. Even before they awakened their cursed technique, the jujutsu sorcerer was likely to have a dead parent, an abusive relationship, a childhood friend die. The sort of things that would create emotions impossible for any child at that age to grasp— in fact, someone had even theorized that it was that those intense and impossible to wrestle emotions forced the brain to develop the patterns of a cursed technique and with it the ability to see curses.
Arakawa Reiko was born to a mother and father in an already strained relationship. I had been wrong, her mother was not the one who left but the one had died. Her father had not killed himself out of grief but instead had snapped one day. His mind simply couldn't handle it anymore. He tried to kill himself by overdosing on the leftover remains of his wife's medication but due to circumstances no one could have foreseen, he had survived. Complications later arose, and through a relation in the United Kingdoms, he was set to begin treatments there. The prognosis was grim, and most had already believed him to be brain-dead beyond the small reaction his brain had to music.
She had misled me… was the painful thought that wandered through me. Or had I misled myself and allowed her to never correct me? Then again, when would she have had the chance? Another reminder that my observations and deduction were not infallible, or even accurate. I had made mistakes, I had assumed, and I had allowed myself do the one thing I promised myself I would never do again. Somewhere, somehow, Hikigaya Hachiman had erred. He had allowed himself in his weakness, his anger at his own weakness, and his inability, to rely on someone else.
And it killed her.
I had gone over it thoroughly. My cursed technique, the murder weapon, the smoking gun. It took me approximately 3 minutes and 27 seconds to reach Ieiri-san from the moment of injury. Arakawa Reiko had been reinforcing her body with cursed energy and further enhancing herself with her musical cursed technique. The song was set to activity, quick beat. Both a blessing and a curse. Her blood loss accelerated, but it also circulated oxygen faster to the brain. When I had applied my cursed technique on her brain without fully understanding the effects, it had tried to implement a similar strategy by shifting around parts of her brain to withstand the brunt of the damages. Or in other words, pick and choose which part of the brain it'd starve of air first. In my delirious attempts to then stabilize and slow brain function, something my technique was wholly unsuited for… my technique had tried to find the state most close to slowed brain function. Not death, but something close.
The state closest to slowed brain function was sleeping, and it tried to do so by moving around the oxygenated blood in the brain and wasting it until it fell into a pattern similar to sleeping. In other words, I had set the actual useful blood into areas where it was unneeded and circulated the useless blood into random parts of the brain.
I was not saying I had killed Arakawa Reiko out of some overly self-conscious attempt at self-flagellation. But because I, my technique, had indeed been the one to kill her. Mei Mei's Black Bird Strike had struck the decisive blow, but it had been my hands choking her to death. If I had simply focused my cursed energy to my legs and ran headlong to Ieiri-san, she could have been saved. Not without substantial effort, but still saved.
Then to sit before her name and ask forgiveness, would be the worst joke told in history. It would be as if the murderer of the child you had loved had came to the funeral, cried his own tears, mourned and acted as if he was the one most hurt by this tragedy. See? The very retelling of it made one one to shatter the bones in their fist against that murderer's jaw.
The right thing to do then, the correct thing to do… call me old-fashioned, but seppuku seemed in order.
I didn't have a good blade to do it with.
And I still had an urn to place between two girls. Still had responsibilities I had made of myself, and most selfishly of all. I still had the audacity to believe… I couldn't die yet.
There was no way you would forgive me, Arakawa-san… but I hope you found your own happiness where you were.
…
...
The world shifted.
Gojo Satoru pulled up his blindfold slightly, whistled. We were seated in Utahime-sensei's office, as the man had seemingly shown up out of the blue and loudly declared that he was looking for the 'guy who did what we were all thinking'. Oddly enough he made me sit in Utahime-sensei's spot, while he lounged in the lower student's spot.
"How's being the Terror of the Jujutsu world?"
"Terrible. No benefits. Honestly, they looked at me worse before, but — negative one hundred compared to negative ninety nine, is still negative. How's being the Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer?"
"Incredible. I'm super rich and everybody loves me. They don't even send assassins after me anymore, which by the way you should watch out for, I caught one when I was walking in."
I rubbed my temples. "Yes, I know, you dangled the assassin up by his shoes, asked. 'You new here? Mou, Kyoto has way too many students! It's not fairrrrr' and then Utahime-sensei started screaming at you."
"Good times." He grinned, completely unrepentant.
"It happened literally five minutes ago."
"I know, right? Should'a been there." He made a disturbingly cute face that should not belong on a grown man but nonetheless it existed. On Gojo Satoru's face of all faces. "He might've started wetting his pants!"
Shit, that did sound fun— wait. I was supposed to be the moral authority now. "Oh no. Don't… do that. Nooo. Totally. Bad, you." Amazing job, me.
Gojo shrieked over pitched and too whiny to be anything but fake. "Don't burn me, Hikigaya-sama~" But suddenly his blindfold fell completely off, and his face smoothed out into an abnormal seriousness. Beyond waxing poetic about his eyes, I already noticed something. His face was too smooth. Even with Limitless… sunlight and wind likely still hit him considering he could smell and see. There should be gentle markings and wrinkles on that face, but inhumanely there was nothing but smooth unmarked skin. RCT? Constantly? Why? "... The clan's in an uproar and I imagine the Kamo and Zen'in are far worse because they can't claim having the strongest to protect their standings. You really broke everything and patched it up with duct tape. How much money do you even have left?"
I pulled out my phone. "Currently? I'm hitting the negative triple digits."I looked again, corrected myself, "Quadruple. You aren't my debt collector are you?" Japan really took their taxes seriously if that was the case. How would I go explaining this to the IRS… On second thought, how should I go about faking my death?
"You're not thinking of faking your own death, are you?"
"Tch, stop cheating with your stupid eyes."
"Ne, Hikigaya-sama, don't be so mean! Here I am, out of the goodness of my heart," What heart? You were groping the wrong pectoral, any lower and you'd be seeing Pam from HR. "Concerned for my Senpai's student and here you are coldly talking only about my eyes." So he was still annoyed about that…
I closed my eyes. "Well yeah… It'd be too awkward otherwise. Do you know how much Geto talked about you? I practically know your life story, you were just as present as he was even when you weren't physically there. Calling you Six Eyes-san is a preservation tactic."
"...you admitted it." Gojo was shocked, strange, that was possible with those eyes? Joking. Joking. "I thought you wouldn't."
I got up, flipped on the electric kettle, and flicked the bamboo chute back, it had gotten stuck downwards again. Too much moisture, the water levels were a bit off in the carefully precise mechanism. "Nanami-senpai told you, right?"
He didn't deny it, instead watching me calmly arrange the tea and set it in two bags, shaking bits of tea that flaked off into a cloth. I opened a window slightly, and wincing a bit at the chill, flapped the cloth into a pile of melting snow.
"And…" I didn't run around, keeping my eyes on the tiny air bubbles slowly rising to the top of the electric kettle's glass middle. "There's another thing, but that can wait."
"Mm. You're right it can." For a man speaking with his dead friend's ward he sounded remarkably calm. His voice, even, calm. I didn't know if it was simply because for all my supposed theoretical familiarity, I didn't really know the man, but I couldn't detect anything like surprise in his intonation. The sound of his hand hitting the table that served as Utahime-sensei's desk, made me turn around. A heavily inked print document sat with a sheaf of others. "The Gojo clan's current assets and vaults. That'll solve your debt problem." his finger moved over to a different paper, one with a photo of Gojo himself. "As for the imminent crisis, you can add my account to stem the tide for a good long while." He then moved those papers to the side, and spread out the remaining papers. "And here is the government of Japan changing their budget for Jujutsu Sorcery to little ol'me."
There were several things that needed to be addressed in that! Several, really huge things admitted with all the nonchalance of changing from an art major to a homeless person!
"I know the Prime Minister personally." He said to my shocked face. "Saved his family once from a special grade curse, you know. But all this? It's a stopgap at best. We'll need to decide some sort of ruling body to handle the money—"
I found my voice again. "Not a ruling body, we saw what happened last time with that. Actually, you might want to change the people in charge of the money to be non-sorcerers."
His hands stopped moving. "... Non-sorcerers?"
The real question hid behind his innocuous repetition. One I didn't hesitate to answer.
"Ordinary weak people. One third them, one third sorcerers, and one third windows or assistant managers. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do." The kettle dinged. I set to making the tea. "What does Tengen-sama feel about the situation?"
"No idea." Gojo blew out air, the bright look on his face hardening a little. "Don't imagine he cares much, though. Tokyo and Kyoto Jujutsu Tech are both unaffected so it's not a problem." Seemed as if the two pillars of the Jujutsu world didn't much care for each other, a story there to be sure. "You've thought this through."
I smiled, handed over the tea next to Gojo, and brought my own to my lips, as the steam curled into my nose. I gulped it down. Warm. A good balm for my frazzled nerves that had been deadened ever since I set alight the world and hid away in my room. "The privilege of the weak. Can't exactly just blast away all my problems like an entire mansion in the way."
He made an odd face. "He really told you everything, huh. Gross." He said as much but it sounded like the exact opposite. Something like fondness and nostalgia.
I commiserated with the man. "Every day. He'd offhandedly mention it while making coffee and tea for the girls. Or when he explained some vague Jujutsu concept, you were the first example on his lips."
Gojo hid his face in the steam. For once quiet, the chattering on and on and exuberance, not so dimmed, but softened.
I left him to it, staring outside the window as the icicles dripped. Evergreen bushes popped out from blankets of white-grey and across the distance, I saw a bright red bird flitting from melt to melt landing on top of a Buddha with a fluffy hat currently being made into a nest. I wondered if the koi fish were placed back in the pond by now.
"You know… it's funny." True to his word, Gojo laughed a little. "All the students that I had picked out to change this shitty, rotten world… and even the ones I had my eye on like Todo Aoi, or Muta Kokichi(Mechamaru), they didn't end up doing much of anything."
I said, "Mechamaru helped a bit. Maki-san was cool."
"A bit," he echoed. "Cool."
"It's not over yet. The three clans… that's a job better suited for the strong. I just…" I searched for the words. Failed to find them. Started over, "We started from different points. You at the beginning and me at the end. Or rather, you started at the bottomup, while I approached it topdown. Plus," I gestured at the papers. "Couldn't keep it up without you."
He groaned. "Ugh. Stop. Having you try and cheer me up is just gross. Ughhhhh." He threw his hands dramatically in the air and dragged them down his eyes. "When I see Suguruu he's going to be so smug his kids beat mine."
Kid? Suguruu's kid? You know I had parents before, right? Geto didn't, like, literally birth us. Frankly, I wasn't even sure if he legally adopted us. The details on that were murky at best but they definitely not above board. Intimidation, threats, and ludicrous exploitations of money were probably involved. What? That sounded incredibly familiar especially in light of current events? Noooooo… This and that were totally different. Totally.
Also, "... About that."
…
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do here.
I sat, a little stupid, a little bit tired, on the snow-flecked grass. My pants wetted nearly immediately, and the damp chill sinking down to my calves slightly irritated me but that was it. Without really thinking, I grabbed ahold of the bamboo bucket by its long handle, and poured the water down across the name.
Arakawa Reiko, on a tiny little headstone, surrounded by a hundred, a thousand others in soft grey.
Did I have a right to even be here? If there was a funeral, I would have missed it. Yet, it's not as if there could be one. Her cremation urn sat beside me, smooth and dull like fired clay. Empty and lifeless. In the cases of … 'messy' deaths, the general procedure was to totally immolate the body, and char the skeleton into bone ash. They'd then bring in specialist to purify the remains, and if that weren't enough they'd then dispose of the lingering ashes with a cursed technique.
No one wanted another Ryomen Sukuna after all.
I found my eyes stubbornly stuck to the name of the Memortium set aside for Jujutsu Sorcerers. Sacrilegious? Blasphemous? Maybe. Having a curse-user's name carved into the same stone that marked down those who had died against curses and curse-users, that'd do the trick. Rivulets of water fell into the grooves of her name, collected into thickened streams to then stream down catching another name below.
Most didn't even have ashes. Some had never been retrieved from whatever curse had swallowed them. A fact, a fixed point in existence, sorcerers were burdened by terrible lives. They had done a study on it. I remembered Utahime-sensei describing it to us, by and far, by convention or simply fate… Sorcerers were marked by tragedy.
Not from the predator-prey cyclical relationship of Curses and their hunters, but from others, from humans, and from their own existences. Even before they awakened their cursed technique, the jujutsu sorcerer was likely to have a dead parent, an abusive relationship, a childhood friend die. The sort of things that would create emotions impossible for any child at that age to grasp— in fact, someone had even theorized that it was that those intense and impossible to wrestle emotions forced the brain to develop the patterns of a cursed technique and with it the ability to see curses.
Arakawa Reiko was born to a mother and father in an already strained relationship. I had been wrong, her mother was not the one who left but the one had died. Her father had not killed himself out of grief but instead had snapped one day. His mind simply couldn't handle it anymore. He tried to kill himself by overdosing on the leftover remains of his wife's medication but due to circumstances no one could have foreseen, he had survived. Complications later arose, and through a relation in the United Kingdoms, he was set to begin treatments there. The prognosis was grim, and most had already believed him to be brain-dead beyond the small reaction his brain had to music.
She had misled me… was the painful thought that wandered through me. Or had I misled myself and allowed her to never correct me? Then again, when would she have had the chance? Another reminder that my observations and deduction were not infallible, or even accurate. I had made mistakes, I had assumed, and I had allowed myself do the one thing I promised myself I would never do again. Somewhere, somehow, Hikigaya Hachiman had erred. He had allowed himself in his weakness, his anger at his own weakness, and his inability, to rely on someone else.
And it killed her.
I had gone over it thoroughly. My cursed technique, the murder weapon, the smoking gun. It took me approximately 3 minutes and 27 seconds to reach Ieiri-san from the moment of injury. Arakawa Reiko had been reinforcing her body with cursed energy and further enhancing herself with her musical cursed technique. The song was set to activity, quick beat. Both a blessing and a curse. Her blood loss accelerated, but it also circulated oxygen faster to the brain. When I had applied my cursed technique on her brain without fully understanding the effects, it had tried to implement a similar strategy by shifting around parts of her brain to withstand the brunt of the damages. Or in other words, pick and choose which part of the brain it'd starve of air first. In my delirious attempts to then stabilize and slow brain function, something my technique was wholly unsuited for… my technique had tried to find the state most close to slowed brain function. Not death, but something close.
The state closest to slowed brain function was sleeping, and it tried to do so by moving around the oxygenated blood in the brain and wasting it until it fell into a pattern similar to sleeping. In other words, I had set the actual useful blood into areas where it was unneeded and circulated the useless blood into random parts of the brain.
I was not saying I had killed Arakawa Reiko out of some overly self-conscious attempt at self-flagellation. But because I, my technique, had indeed been the one to kill her. Mei Mei's Black Bird Strike had struck the decisive blow, but it had been my hands choking her to death. If I had simply focused my cursed energy to my legs and ran headlong to Ieiri-san, she could have been saved. Not without substantial effort, but still saved.
Then to sit before her name and ask forgiveness, would be the worst joke told in history. It would be as if the murderer of the child you had loved had came to the funeral, cried his own tears, mourned and acted as if he was the one most hurt by this tragedy. See? The very retelling of it made one one to shatter the bones in their fist against that murderer's jaw.
The right thing to do then, the correct thing to do… call me old-fashioned, but seppuku seemed in order.
I didn't have a good blade to do it with.
And I still had an urn to place between two girls. Still had responsibilities I had made of myself, and most selfishly of all. I still had the audacity to believe… I couldn't die yet.
There was no way you would forgive me, Arakawa-san… but I hope you found your own happiness where you were.
…
doge
shadow cable management
- Location
- California!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, I'm guessing Gojo got informed about that Not!Geto running around between scene breaks. Reiko's funeral was particularly sad.
Here's to hoping Mei-Mei quietly accepts getting robbed and doesn't go for a rematch.
I'm looking forward to Hikki meeting with any of his classmates.
Here's to hoping Mei-Mei quietly accepts getting robbed and doesn't go for a rematch.
I'm looking forward to Hikki meeting with any of his classmates.