May 1, 2004. Saturday.
Exactly one year left on the death timer.
Asou Akiya still could not see a single cursed spirit.
The torment inflicted by that scheduled email had crested like a wave, broken, and now slithered back down the slope of his nerves, leaving only a dull, heart-fluttering dread.
Humans are creatures of terrifying adaptability. No one can stay wound to breaking point forever. Asou Akiya judged that his negative emotions would continue to accumulate, slow and poisonous, the way a young terminal patient waits for the respirator.
He savored, almost tenderly, the crisis this jujutsu world had gifted him.
Every breath was air from a new world.
Every heartbeat was a miracle in a borrowed body.
Every thought was an act of rebellion against fate.
Not bad at all.
At this rate, the very desperation to escape the Reaper would soon make low-grade cursed spirits sniff him out like blood in the water. The other kids at the welfare institution didn't carry half this much pressure.
Keep going. Struggle harder.
This was still the newbie protection period.
There were far more battles of wits waiting in the future.
"We've been living together almost four months," Asou Akiya said one evening, perched on the edge of his top bunk, legs dangling like a child's. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
The three roommates who had once frozen him out now wavered between fear and resentment. They had seen the bathroom floor run red and watched him calmly stitch himself back together while following a medical video. They did not want to answer, yet they feared the consequences of silence.
The sixteen-year-old finally spat it out: "Someone who isn't afraid of death."
Asou Akiya could tell it was honest. He pressed, unrelenting. "Anything else?"
The other two muttered:
"Two-faced."
"A weirdo who's always thinking who-knows-what."
Those labels were nothing. He had never hurt anyone; he would never become a Tom Riddle in a children's home. At worst, he was just the resident eccentric.
Still, his brows drew together in dissatisfaction.
He had just realized something critical: he lacked a defining trait.
He wanted to stand beside Gojo Satoru and claim a corner of that radiant three-year youth. Right now his disadvantages were glaring. The first time Gojo laid eyes on him, he would be forgotten before the second blink. In the technique-worshipping Three Great Families, someone like him was indistinguishable from the servants who polished the floors. Gojo Satoru wouldn't even bother learning his name as he strode past.
Gojo Satoru was strong, at fifteen already hovering between first-grade and quasi-special-grade. Among his peers, only the Pokémon-master-of-curses Geto Suguru could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
Geto Suguru's innate technique, Cursed Spirit Manipulation, appeared once in a thousand years.
Ieiri Shoko's innate technique was unknown, but she had apparently mastered Reverse Cursed Technique on her own; she could heal herself and others, the universal medic of the jujutsu world.
Against those three blinding suns, Asou Akiya had to forge a trait that burned itself into memory.
First impressions were everything.
He absolutely could not be invisible.
He reached up and ran his fingers through his fine, straight hair (bangs, yes, but nothing quirky). Then he touched his earlobes (even thickness, no Buddhist blessing, no piercings). A soft, disappointed click of the tongue escaped him.
"Tch."
These days the good-boy aesthetic was out of fashion.
Was it time to go full delinquent?
Or… should he just copy the fourteen-year-old Dazai Osamu?
Asou Akiya let out a soft, self-mocking laugh. Cosplaying a paper character was amusing for a moment, but actually imitating one would be pathetic. The essence of Dazai Osamu could never be captured by raising surface resemblance; if Gojo Satoru saw him trying, he would probably just think the kid was mentally ill.
[Dazai was only 160 cm at fifteen. I'm already 5 cm taller at fourteen. The future looks bright!]
[Once I'm fully grown, I should clear 180 cm at least. Exactly how much depends on luck.]
[190 cm and above… I don't even dare dream.]
He pulled the notebook from beneath his pillow, rested his chin on the end of the mechanical pencil, and clicked it down with a sharp snap. The nib pressed hard against the blank page and carved a single English word:
"Persona."
He needed a persona that belonged only to him.
One that would sear itself into Gojo Satoru's memory the instant they met, stir some emotion (any emotion), and make the strongest sorcerer of the age want to speak with him again.
For many days after, Asou Akiya drowned in thought. He scribbled and revised in class, leaving chaotic scrawls and doodles of Gojo's eyes all over the margins. What kind of persona could hold the gaze of the Gojo Clan's treasure (those terrifying Six Eyes) for more than a fleeting second?
The Six Eyes saw everything.
Even the original manga had never fully revealed what they could perceive.
The greatest obstacle to his imagination was his own weakness, his fear of those eyes, the cowardice of a soul that did not trust itself.
[I can't concentrate on lessons anymore; my head is full of insane ideas.]
[Thank goodness Japanese middle-school curriculum is easy.]
[Huh? My shoulder feels stiff…]
[I haven't been in cold water lately… have I?]
He maintained the posture of a model student, but his gaze (empty, mechanical) slid across his own shoulder.
Something seemed to be clinging there.
He couldn't see it.
It felt like simple fatigue.
Without a word he looked away again, propped his cheek on his right hand, and resumed the expression of diligent listening. During break he stayed seated, isolated from the clusters of laughing classmates. From the hallway came the bright voices of girls, apparently discussing the new transfer student.
Unnoticed, the boys in class had begun to resent him: good looks, honeyed tongue, top grades, teachers' pet, never joined any clique, and those bandages that kept appearing on his wrists…
Asou Akiya inhaled slowly, as though he could taste the negative emotions swirling around him. Rumor said they stank worse than rot.
It was only spring.
What would summer be like (the season sorcerers called their busiest)?
Time slipped forward.
July, high summer. Under the pretext of seeing a doctor, Asou Akiya came to a major hospital in Tokyo. His shoulder throbbed constantly. The doctor prescribed muscle relaxants and blood-circulation medicine, but nothing helped. Leaving the pharmacy, he drifted toward the inpatient wards. The closer he got to crowds, the worse the discomfort became.
Floor by floor he wandered the hospital, passing patients and families with despair carved into their faces. The bitter smell of cigarette smoke leaked from the stairwells, mingling with a stench of decay far worse than any restroom.
Asou Akiya closed his eyes.
From every direction came the sensation of unseen eyes watching him.
He lingered a moment longer. Sweat soaked through his shirt. The old arrhythmia returned; a faint unease coiled beneath his ribs. Pretending nonchalance, he walked to a vending machine and bought a can of cola.
Shinjuku, Tokyo (bustling, dazzling, and, in sorcerer tongues, "the cauldron of curses").
He spent the entire day there, checking off every famous location on his map. At the very entrance to Kabukicho Ichiban-gai he even took a peace-sign selfie with his flip phone.
He was having the time of his life.
Especially when night fell and the brilliant shop lights painted the streets in mortal, earthly color.
Standing in the heart of Shinjuku, Asou Akiya let the smile slide from his face until nothing remained but cold indifference. The white bandages had multiplied with the passing months. Neck, wrists, shoulders (all swathed in pristine cloth).
His slight, fragile frame looked heartbreakingly frail.
"Remember," he whispered to himself.
"Remember every last thing that ever hurt you."
Suppressed emotion churned and boiled. The black-haired boy's breathing grew heavy. Malice seeped into his eyes drop by drop. He stared murderously at his own shoulder (one final step away from awakening).
That final step (how had Yoshino Junpei, bullied and broken in the original story, crossed it)?
Was it hatred?
Was it rage?
Asou Akiya suddenly broke into a run!
He sprinted toward the places he had sworn, across two lifetimes, never to set foot in: the haunts of petty thugs and delinquents.
With a tongue still clumsy at venomous sarcasm, he earned exactly the beating he had come for.
That beautiful face was given special attention. Fists sent him sprawling. His collar was seized; another open-handed slap cracked across his cheek. Finally, the black-haired boy curled on the ground, arms wrapped protectively around his head, while a reeking drunk drove boot after boot into his stomach.
He kept repeating to himself: This is worth it. Those born without talent have to be cruel to themselves.
But it hurt…
It hurt so much his nose burned and tears threatened to spill.
Why hadn't he transmigrated into a great sorcerer clan?
Why had he been born without an innate technique?
Where was the golden finger? Where was the system?
If even this level of external trauma wasn't enough, did he have to walk straight into a haunted site and feed himself to a cursed spirit's jaws?
Was it worth it… was it really worth it…
It hurt so much…
The thugs raining blows down on him jeered, "What's that muttering, brat?"
"Old man…" Asou Akiya could barely open his swollen eyes. Blood dripped from his split lip. His voice rose from a whisper to a raw, guttural roar. "Hit me harder! Did you skip dinner or something? This is nowhere near enough!!!"
Since the day he arrived in this world,
he had accepted the new name, the new life,
everything except being a powerless monkey.
He would crawl if he had to, but he would crawl into the world of transcendent power!
That place was a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, dazzling beyond measure,
how could it be complete without him!
In the alley, beside a pile of overflowing garbage bins, Asou Akiya lay half-conscious, bandages bleeding through, black hair spat on and matted with filth and dust. He looked like a corpse discarded in the shadows of the red-light district.
It was a mercy his face was so swollen and bruised; otherwise losing consciousness here would have doubled the danger.
After a long while, his fingers twitched.
His ruined cheek scraped across the rough ground.
The black-haired boy forced open eyes that had gone dead and flat.
Bloodshot veins spider-webbed across the whites.
He was alone in the dim alley now. Wallet gone, no matter; he had left everything valuable in a locker. The wallet was bait to satisfy the robbers.
No, he still had something on him…
The most repulsive, nauseating cursed spirit was plastered against him at point-blank range, its hideous eyes brimming with malice.
It hissed.
[School, school, school…]
A fourth-grade curse born from the accumulated negativity of school life, the very thing that had been clinging to him these past months!
This was no flyhead!
Asou Akiya's hand shot out and clamped around the spirit, he could touch it!
Crimson cursed energy flared into existence under the wild resonance of his exhilarated mind, blazing like a beacon in the darkness, wreathing his palm.
He knew the nature of cursed energy intimately: the fusion of mental strength and negative emotion, welling up from the pit of the stomach. It could be water, fire, light; flowing or instantaneous; entirely dependent on the sorcerer's understanding and control.
Ryomen Sukuna, ever the condescending teacher, had once demonstrated with his own body.
To Asou Akiya, cursed energy was flame.
For the first time, brain and soul synchronized perfectly. He wrung cursed energy from the reservoir of negativity he had cultivated for months, instinctively visualized the newborn power as raging fire, set his soul and body ablaze without hesitation, and drove that flame straight through the fourth-grade spirit's torso!
Purple cursed blood exploded outward, painting him head to toe.
He braced a hand against the ground and forced himself into a crouch, then stood.
"I'll go to school," he said, voice calm as winter iron. "Now kindly disappear."
At long last, the world revealed a different face to the transmigrator's eyes.
Shinjuku, Tokyo, in the small hours before dawn,
a riot of demons dancing in the dark.
Curses everywhere, endless and teeming.