The fluorescent hum of a Walmart on a Tuesday afternoon is a special kind of purgatory. It's the soundtrack to forgotten dreams and expiring dairy products. For me, Bob, a 28-year-old whose greatest life achievement was correctly guessing the ending of a seasonal isekai anime three episodes in, this hum was my life's score. I scanned a jumbo-sized box of frosted corn flakes, the machine beeping with the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner. Another glorious day spent in the service of corporate-mandated "Live Better."
I was, by all objective measures, pathetic. My apartment was a shrine to plastic figurines and unwashed laundry. My diet consisted primarily of things that could be microwaved in their own container. My social life was a Discord server dedicated to debating which JJK character had the best Domain Expansion. Spoiler: I was a staunch defender of Hakari's Idle Death Gamble, not for its power, but for its sheer, unadulterated pachinko-fueled hype.
Yeah, a weeb. A loser. A single, pathetic weeb.
That's why, when the shouting started, my first instinct wasn't heroism. It was annoyance.
"Everybody on the ground! Now!"
The voice was ragged, laced with the kind of desperation that only comes from really bad life choices. I looked up from my register, my hand still hovering over the void button. A man, skinny and twitching like a meth-addled chihuahua, was waving a dull grey pistol around. He wore a stained hoodie pulled tight, but it did little to hide the tremors in his hands. Classic amateur.
My training, the soul-crushing three-hour video I was forced to watch when I was hired, kicked in. Don't be a hero. Comply. The money is insured. My life, however, came with a high deductible. I started to lower myself, my knees cracking in protest.
Then I saw her. A little girl, no older than seven, frozen in the candy aisle. She was clutching a bag of gummy bears so tightly her knuckles were white, big, tear-filled eyes locked on the gunman. Her mom was already on the floor a few feet away, whispering her daughter's name, "Chloe, get down, sweetie. Please."
The gunman's frantic eyes landed on the kid. A target of opportunity. A shield. "You! Kid! Get over here!"
My brain, the one usually occupied with power-scaling debates and gacha roll probabilities, did something unexpected. It calculated. Odds of him actually shooting the kid? Low, but not zero. Odds of the cops getting here in time? Unlikely. Odds of me, Bob, doing something? Statistically insignificant.
And yet, my body moved. It wasn't a cool, anime-protagonist dash. It was a clumsy, stumbling shuffle that sent a display of cheap energy drinks crashing to the floor. The noise drew the gunman's attention. His pistol snapped towards me.
"Stay back! I'll do it!" he shrieked, grabbing the little girl's arm and pulling her in front of him. She let out a terrified squeal.
My pathetic, weeb brain, steeped in thousands of hours of heroic narratives, supplied the script. "Hey! Let her go," I said, my voice cracking. I raised my hands in a placating gesture, channeling my inner negotiator (a skill honed by arguing with strangers online about whether Gojo could beat Goku). "You don't want to do this. Just take the money. It's not worth it."
"Shut up!" His eyes were wide, wild. He was losing control. The gun was shaking violently.
He was aiming at me, but the kid was right there. A stray muscle-spasm, a flinch, and she was dead. My life was a write-off. Hers wasn't. It was a simple, horrible equation.
I did the only thing I could think of. The stupidest, most heroic, most un-Bob-like thing I have ever done.
I lunged.
Not at him. At the kid.
I shoved her as hard as I could towards her mother, a clumsy, desperate heave that sent her sprawling onto the linoleum floor, safe. The world seemed to slow down, just like in the shows. I saw the gunman's shocked expression, the widening of his pupils. I saw the flash from the barrel of the cheap pistol.
Then came the sound, a deafening BANG that echoed in the cavernous space of the superstore. It was followed by a sensation I can only describe as a hot, brutal punch to my chest. It didn't hurt, not at first. It was just... impact. A profound, system-shocking impact that stole my breath and sent me staggering backward.
I collapsed into a rack of gossip magazines, headlines about celebrity divorces and alien babies swimming in my vision. A warm, wet sensation spread across my blue Walmart vest. I looked down. Red. A lot of red. So much for the "Live Better" slogan.
Ah, I thought with a strange sense of detachment. So this is how it ends. Not in my bed, surrounded by my loving waifu pillows, but on the sticky floor of a Walmart. At least it was for a good reason. The thought was surprisingly comforting. The little girl was crying, but she was alive. I'd done one good thing.
The edges of my vision turned black. The fluorescent hum, the soundtrack of my life, faded into a gentle, welcoming silence. My last coherent thought was a regret.
I never got to see the end of One Piece.
Darkness. And then, a light. Not the harsh, sterile light of a hospital, but a soft, impossibly gentle radiance that felt like a warm bath for the soul. I was floating in a vast, white, and utterly featureless space.
"That was quite the show, Robert 'Bob' Miller."
The voice was… everything. It was masculine, feminine, young, old, booming, and whispering all at once. It resonated not in my ears, but in the very core of my being. I turned, and saw a figure sitting at a ridiculously ornate, almost celestial-looking desk, stamping a piece of parchment with a loud thunk.
The figure looked vaguely human, but its form shimmered, refusing to settle. One moment it was a kindly old man with a magnificent beard, the next a sharp-suited businesswoman, then a playful child. For the sake of my sanity, my brain defaulted to the image of a generic, robed entity of ambiguous gender.
"Uh… God?" I squeaked, my voice sounding thin and reedy.
"One of my many titles," the being said, waving a hand dismissively as it slid my parchment—my life's file, I presumed—into a folder. "You can call me the Administrator. Or Manager. Or 'The-One-Who-Deals-With-The-Paperwork.' It's all the same. Point is, you're dead."
"I figured," I said, looking down at myself. I was just a hazy, translucent outline of my former self. "So, what happens now? The pearly gates? Reincarnation? The bad place?"
The Administrator chuckled, a sound like a thousand wind chimes. "Ordinarily, for a soul like yours—largely passive, minimal karmic impact, a few minor debits for illegal anime streaming—it would be a standard reincarnation cycle. Clean slate, new life as a capybara in Venezuela. They have a pretty good life, you know. Very chill."
"A capybara," I repeated, dumbfounded.
"But," the Administrator continued, leaning forward and steepling its ever-changing fingers. "Your final act has thrown a wrench in the works. Self-sacrifice, no hesitation, for a complete stranger, a child no less. That scores... very highly." It tapped a few keys on a keyboard made of pure light. "It bumps you up to a premium package."
I blinked. "A… a premium package?"
"Indeed! You've earned it. A second chance. A full isekai experience, tailored to your own… proclivities." The being gestured vaguely at me, and I felt a phantom blush, as if it knew exactly how many hours I'd spent reading self-insert fanfiction. "We have a world picked out for you. One you're intimately familiar with. It should increase your chances of survival. It's a rather high-casualty setting, you see."
My non-existent heart skipped a beat. "A world I know?"
"Mhm. And we're even throwing in a few starting gifts to help you along. Think of it as a bonus for exemplary customer service on your way out." The Administrator snapped its fingers. Information flooded my mind, not as words, but as pure, undiluted knowing.
Destination World: Jujutsu Kaisen.
Oh no.
New Vessel: Female. Gojo Clan, Branch Family.
OH NO.
My spectral form convulsed. A girl? Me? Bob? I've spent years collecting waifus, not becoming one! The existential horror was palpable.
"Yes, yes, a bit of a shock, I'm sure," the Administrator said with a hint of amusement. "But the vessel was the most compatible one available with the gifts we've assigned you. Speaking of which…"
More information poured in.
Gift #1: Cursed Technique - [Emptiness/Nothingness].
The ability to touch and manipulate the conceptual absence of things. At its base level, it is erasure. At its peak, it is the ultimate negation. A power with near-limitless potential, but incredibly difficult to control.
My mind reeled. That was… broken. Absolutely, fundamentally broken. A technique that could, in theory, rival Infinity itself.
Gift #2: Special Trait - [Mystic Eyes of Death Perception].
A pair of Mystic Eyes that allow the user to perceive the conceptual "lines of death" and "points of death" on all things, living or not. To trace a line is to kill. To pierce a point is to end. A direct connection to the Root of all things, Akasha.
I would have fainted if I had a body. The MEoDP. Shiki Ryougi's ultimate trump card. The power to kill anything, even concepts, gods, and things that shouldn't be able to die. Combined with a Cursed Technique of Nothingness in the JJK world? This wasn't a premium package; this was the deluxe, platinum, 'God-mode' bundle.
"Why?" I managed to ask. "Why give me all this?"
The Administrator finished its paperwork and leaned back, its form settling into that of a tired-looking office worker. "Two reasons. One, the JJK world is about to go through… a lot. You know the story. You're going to need every advantage you can get just to see your twenties. We're not monsters; we don't send souls off to die again immediately. Usually."
"And the second reason?"
A wide, slightly terrifying grin spread across its face. "It's going to be far, far more entertaining to watch."
Before I could process that ominous statement, the white void began to spin. The Administrator gave me a final, two-fingered salute. "Good luck, Bob. Or should I say… Aki?"
The world dissolved into a nauseating vortex of light and color, and my consciousness shattered into a million pieces.
My first year of life was a blurry, frustrating hell.
I was trapped. My new mind, the mind of a 28-year-old man, was wide awake, but my body was a useless lump of baby flesh. I couldn't speak, I couldn't walk, I could barely control my own limbs. My days were a monotonous cycle of sleeping, eating a bland mush that I assumed was baby food, and having my diaper changed by a woman with gentle but distant hands.
This brought me to the most horrifying discovery of my new life. It happened during one of these changing sessions. As my new mother cleaned me, my baby eyes, which were still learning to focus, drifted downwards. And I saw it. Or rather, I saw the distinct and unequivocal lack of it.
The plumbing was… different. Fundamentally incorrect.
My mind, Bob's mind, screamed. It was a silent, internal shriek of pure, unadulterated existential terror. It's gone! They took it! I'm a girl! The shock was so profound that I did the only thing my baby body was capable of: I wailed. A loud, piercing cry of genuine anguish.
My new mother simply shushed me, thinking I had gas. The indignity was almost worse than the initial discovery.
Slowly, painfully, I began to piece together my situation. My name, as the Administrator had hinted, was Aki. Gojo Aki. I lived in a traditional Japanese compound. The house was all dark wood, paper shoji screens, and tatami mats. The air was thick with the scent of old wood and quiet discipline. My parents were… formal. They treated me with a kind of detached reverence, as if I were a valuable but volatile piece of porcelain. I was their only child.
And I was part of a branch family of the Gojo clan. The whispers I overheard from the servants, the sigil on the walls—it all confirmed it. I was in. I was really, truly in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
It was around my first birthday that the System, my final "gift," decided to boot up. It appeared in my mind's eye, a cool, blue, holographic screen that only I could see.
[System Initializing... 10%... 50%... 100%]
[Welcome, User: Gojo Aki]
[Status]
Name: Gojo Aki (Robert 'Bob' Miller)
Age: 1
Cursed Energy Reserves: 2.1%
Cursed Energy Control: 0.5%
Innate Technique: [Emptiness] - Proficiency: 0.01%
Special Trait: [Mystic Eyes of Death Perception] - Synchronization: 0.1%
Overall Progress to Next Stage [Toddler]: 78%
It was… stark. The numbers were pitifully low, but they were there. It was a tangible measure of my potential. A progress bar for my own existence. The weeb in me couldn't help but feel a little thrill. It was my very own status screen.
The second year was when the true horror of my other gift manifested. The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.
It started subtly. A faint, hair-thin black line on the leg of my crib. I reached out with a chubby baby hand, curious. The moment my finger touched it, the wooden leg snapped with a clean, perfect break, as if severed by a laser. My parents rushed in, confused and concerned.
Then I started seeing them everywhere.
The world became a terrifying spiderweb of black lines. They crisscrossed every surface, every object. The tatami mat, the ceiling beams, the toys they gave me. I saw the lines of death on a fly buzzing near my head, and when I swatted at it, my hand passed through a line and the fly simply… ceased. It didn't get crushed; it just fell apart into inert pieces.
It was terrifying. To my toddler mind, it looked like the entire world was cracked and on the verge of shattering. I spent weeks crying, pointing at things that no one else could see, unable to explain the existential dread that gripped me. I was seeing the imminent, potential death of everything around me.
I knew I had to get it under control. I remembered Shiki from Kara no Kyoukai. She had to learn to "turn them off," to switch between her normal perception and the MEoDP. So I focused. Every waking moment that I wasn't being fed or changed, I focused. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will the lines away, to force my brain to see the world as it was, not as it could end.
It was a slow, agonizing process. For months, failure was the norm. But one day, while staring at my favorite wooden rattle—a toy riddled with so many lines it looked like a shattered mirror—I concentrated with all my might. I didn't want to see it break. I wanted to see my toy.
For a single, blessed second, the lines vanished. The rattle was just a rattle. Whole. Solid. Normal.
I was so exhausted by the effort that I immediately fell asleep, but it was a start. A victory. Over the next year, I practiced relentlessly. The System screen became my guide.
[Mystic Eyes of Death Perception] - Synchronization: 1%... 2%... 5%...
By the time I was three, I could turn them on and off with a conscious thought. It was still draining, and sometimes they'd flare up if I was startled or emotional, but I had control. I had survived the first trial of my new life.
I also began to experiment with my Cursed Technique, [Emptiness]. It was far more abstract than the Eye. It wasn't something I could see, but something I could feel. A tiny, hungry void deep within me. My first successful use was an accident. One of the stern-faced clan elders was lecturing my father, and I, a bored toddler, was playing with a small pebble. I was annoyed at the old man's droning voice. I focused on the pebble in my hand, wishing it would just… go away.
For a fraction of a second, it did. It vanished from my palm, leaving a strange, cold sensation behind, before reappearing an instant later. No one noticed. But I did. And the System did.
[Innate Technique: [Emptiness] - Proficiency has increased to 0.05%]
My growth was slow, almost glacial. But it was steady. I learned to walk. I learned to speak, my tongue fumbling with the formal Japanese of the Gojo clan. I was a quiet, observant child, a fact my parents seemed to appreciate. They mistook my silent contemplation and intense focus for good behavior, not for a transmigrated soul desperately trying to master god-tier abilities before puberty.
On my fourth birthday, I was given a small mirror. It was the first time I had truly seen myself clearly. I had known my hair was a very long, Raven-Black clolor, and that my eyes was red with white pupils. But seeing the whole picture… it was a shock.
The face staring back at me was doll-like, with delicate features, that long black hair, and those unnervingly intelligent red eyes. It was a face I recognized. A face from the gacha games of my past life.
I was the spitting image of Rio Tsukatsuki from Blue Archive.
The sheer absurdity of it all hit me. I was a Walmart clerk named Bob, reborn as a girl who looked like an anime character, born into the Gojo clan with the power to kill anything and the power to erase existence itself.
I stared at my reflection and did the only thing that felt appropriate. I let out a small, weary sigh that was far too old for a four-year-old's body.
"What a mess," I whispered to myself.
It was later that day that everything changed.
I was in the small, manicured garden of our compound, attempting to use [Emptiness] to make a single leaf vanish for a full second. My parents were inside, meeting with some elders from the main family. It was a tense occasion; I could feel the stiff, formal energy from all the way out here.
[Innate Technique: [Emptiness] - Proficiency has increased to 0.12%]
Progress.
Suddenly, the oppressive silence of the compound was shattered.
BOOM!
It wasn't an explosion. It was the sound of a barrier—a powerful, intricate one that I knew was maintained around our property—being shattered like cheap glass. Shouts of alarm erupted from the main house. Several black-suited jujutsu sorcerers, our family's guards, rushed out into the garden, forming a protective circle around me. They looked terrified.
And then he walked in.
He didn't use the gate. He simply stepped through the ruined wall as if it were a beaded curtain. He was tall, impossibly so to my child-sized form, with a shock of stark white hair. A simple black sunglasses covered his eyes, but it did nothing to hide the grin plastered on his face. It was a grin that radiated arrogance, confidence, and an overwhelming sense of power that warped the very air around him. The pressure of his Cursed Energy was a physical force, a tsunami that made the guards tremble and my own nascent reserves feel like a leaky faucet.
Gojo Satoru. In the flesh. He looked exactly like he did in the anime, but seeing him in person… the sheer presence of the man was on a completely different level. He was a walking natural disaster.
"Yo!" he called out, his voice casual and carefree, completely at odds with the destruction he had just wrought. He waved a hand at the terrified guards. "Relax, guys. I'm not here to prune the hedges. Just visiting family."
My father, a stern man with dark hair, rushed out of the house, followed by the elders. His face was pale.
"Satoru-sama! What is the meaning of this?! You could have announced yourself!" my father stammered, bowing low. It was the first time I had ever seen him look flustered.
Satoru ignored him completely. His blindfolded gaze swept across the garden and landed directly on me. Even with the glasses, I felt his stare. It was like being analyzed by a supercomputer. The Six Eyes. They weren't just seeing me; they were dissecting me, peeling back every layer, looking straight at my soul, at my Cursed Technique, at the latent power of my Mystic Eyes.
The grin on his face widened. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
He took a step forward, and the world seemed to bend around him. Infinity. He wasn't walking; he was manipulating space to bring himself closer. In an instant, the hundred feet between us was gone, and he was crouching down in front of me, bringing us face-to-face.
I was frozen. My brain, the pathetic weeb brain of Bob, was screaming. IT'S HIM! IT'S GOJO SATORU! HE'S REAL! HOLY CRAP! DON'T-LOOK-AT-THE-EXPENSIVE-FIGURE-HE-MIGHT-BREAK-IT! Wait, I'm the figure.
"My, my," he hummed, tilting his head. He reached out and poked my cheek. His finger stopped a millimeter from my skin, halted by his Infinity. "Look at all that potential. A brand-new Cursed Technique and eyes, something deliciously empty. And something else… something weird with your eyes. You're a little treasure trove, aren't you?"
He knew. Of course, he knew. The Six Eyes saw it all.
"Satoru-sama, she is my daughter, Aki," my father said, his voice trembling. "She is a child of our branch. We will raise her according to tradition."
Satoru let out a short, barking laugh. "Tradition? You fossils wouldn't know what to do with a power like this. You'd seal it, stifle it, turn her into another one of your stuffy, boring clan puppets. No, no, that won't do at all."
He stood up, towering over all of us. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets, the picture of casual dominance.
"I've been thinking," he said to the sky, as if just having a thought. "I'm soon be the head of the clan, but it's a lonely job. All those stuffy old mummies on the council are a real drag. You know what I need?"
No one dared to answer.
He pointed a long finger down at me. "I need a little sister."
A collective gasp went through the assembled family members. My father looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
"S-Satoru-sama… you can't be serious! She is—"
"She is what?" Satoru interrupted, his voice losing its playful edge for a split second, replaced by a cold authority that sent a shiver down my spine. "A Gojo with an insane amount of potential? The most interesting thing to happen to this clan since, well, me? You were just going to hide her away out here in the sticks."
He crouched down again, his blindfolded face just inches from mine. A huge grin returned.
"So, what do you say, little spark? Want to come with me? The main house has better snacks. And you'll get to see me kick ass on a regular basis. It's way more fun than sitting around here smelling old wood."
My four-year-old mouth opened, but no words came out. I was starstruck, terrified, and unbelievably, ridiculously excited. This was it. The plot was starting. And it had just come crashing through my wall.
Satoru seemed to take my stunned silence as a yes. He stood up and clapped his hands together once, a sound that held an air of finality.
"Great! It's decided then!" he announced to my horrified family. "As a soon to be the head of the Gojo Clan, I'm officially adopting her. Aki is my little sister now. She'll be moving to the main compound with me. Effective immediately."
He didn't wait for an argument. He simply scooped me up in one arm, holding me like a sack of potatoes. I let out a small squeak of surprise.
"Pack her things," Satoru commanded, already turning to leave. "Just the cute stuff. I'll buy her new clothes. These traditional robes are a total fashion disaster."
And with that, Gojo Satoru, The Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer, strode out of the compound he had just wrecked, with me, his newly declared little sister, tucked under his arm, leaving my entire branch family standing in stunned, impotent silence.
My System screen pinged silently in the back of my mind.
[Story Quest Initiated: The Strongest's Sister]
[Objective: Survive.]