Spring had settled into the foothills quietly, the way it always seemed to herewithout ceremony, without announcement. Sunlight filtered through the dense green canopy overhead, fractured into soft shards by overlapping leaves that hadn't yet decided whether they wanted to unfurl fully. The air was clean in a way Tokyo never was, carrying the faint scent of damp stone and new growth, of the earth awakening after a long winter.
Izana Miyamura walked alone.
The stone steps beneath his feet were old, their edges rounded and worn smooth by time and use. Some were cracked, others sunken slightly to one side, as if the mountain itself had grown tired of keeping them straight. Moss clung stubbornly to the seams between stones, bright and vivid where the shade lingered longest. Every few meters, a torii gate rose from the path, weather faded red flaking into pale wood beneath, the paint long surrendered to rain and wind.
There were more gates than he'd expected.
They stretched upward in a repeating rhythm, framing the path again and again, narrowing his view to what lay directly ahead. It felt deliberate. Like the stairs weren't meant to be rushed.
They'd offered him a ride.
A simple thing, an unmarked car waiting at the base of the hill, engine idling, door already open. He could still picture it, the driver's polite nod, the unspoken this would be easier hanging in the air.
Izana had declined.
Not out of stubbornness. Not pride.
He just wanted to see where he was going.
Each step forward was measured, unhurried. His breath stayed steady as the incline grew sharper, calves beginning to warm with effort. Somewhere behind the trees, he could hear distant trafficmuted, almost unreal. Tokyo was closed. Too close for how quiet this place felt.
It made him wonder if this was really it.
The letter hadn't said much. An address. A time. A name. Nothing about what waited at the top of the hill, nothing about what he was supposed to become once he arrived. Just come here, written with the confidence of someone who assumed he would.
Izana glanced up again, eyes tracing the path as it disappeared beyond another gate. The stairs didn't feel welcoming. They felt intentional. Like a pause built into the journey. A stretch of space meant for thinkingwhether you wanted to or not.
He'd been able to see curses for as long as he could remember.
It had never felt remarkable to him. They were just thereshapes clinging to corners, shadows that moved when they shouldn't, things that made people uncomfortable without knowing why. He'd learned early not to mention them. Learned to look past what no one else could see, to pretend the world was emptier than it really was.
People noticed anyway.
The staring. The quiet distance. The way conversations stalled when he lingered too close. Kids learned quickly when someone didn't quite fit, even if they couldn't say why.
Izana stepped through another torii gate, sunlight briefly catching on the worn wood before slipping away again. He wondered, not for the first time, if this place would be any different. If helping peoplereally helping themwould finally make sense of everything he'd lived with up until now.
Or if disappearing had always been the easier option.
The path continued upward, stone after stone, gate after gate, carrying him closer to whatever waited at the top. Izana adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and kept walking, letting the mountain set the pace.
If nothing else, he thought, at least he'd chosen the long way up.
There had never been a moment when the world changed for him.
No clear before and after. No sudden realization that things were wrong. The creatures had always been therepressed into corners, crouched beneath stairwells, folded into the shadows where light didn't quite reach. They clung to ceilings and hid behind people, their shapes uneven and unfinished, as if the world hadn't fully decided what to do with them.
Izana couldn't remember a time when he didn't see them.
As a child, he'd assumed everyone did. That it was just another part of being alive, like noticing cracks in the pavement or the way clouds sometimes looked like animals if you stared long enough. He'd asked once, absentmindedly, pointing toward a dark smear clinging to the corner of the living room ceiling.
His parents had followed his finger.
They hadn't seen anything.
They'd laughed, gently at first. Told him he had an imagination. Told him not to scare himself over shadows and dust. Later, when he insisted, their smiles had grown tight, concerned. Conversations happened in low voices behind closed doors. He learned, quickly, that whatever he was seeing wasn't something he was supposed to talk about.
So he stopped.
The creatures didn't go away. They never did. But Izana learned to live with them the same way he learned to live with people's eyes lingering on him a second too long, or the way classmates shifted away on benches without realizing they were doing it. No one was cruel about it. That would have been easier to understand.
It was just distance.
Strange, someone had whispered once.
Quiet, another had said, like it explained everything.
Izana passed beneath another torii gate, the air cooling slightly as the forest thickened around the path. His footsteps echoed softly, steady and unbothered. At some pointhe wasn't sure whenhe'd accepted that this was normal. Seeing what others couldn't see was simply how the world looked to him.
It wasn't until the day one of them reached for him that things changed.
The memory came uninvited, brief and oddly muted. A narrow alley. The smell of rust and damp concrete. A shape peeling itself off the wall, too close, too fast. He remembered the sudden pressure in his chestnot fear exactly, but instinct. Something in him is tightening, pulling inward.
And then the creature's hand had passed through him.
Not scraped. Not grazed. Just… gone through, like his body had decided it didn't need to be there anymore.
Izana had stumbled back, heart racing, staring at his own hands as if they belonged to someone else. He hadn't known how he'd done it. Only that, somehow, he had. As naturally as breathing. As if his body had always known what to do, even if his mind hadn't caught up yet.
The creature fled soon after, confused or startledhe never found out which.
Izana hadn't told anyone about that either.
Some things, he learned, were easier to carry quietly.
He stepped forward again, the stone path unwavering beneath his feet, and let the memory fade back into the background where it belonged. The stairs continued upward, patient and unassuming, as if none of this was unusual at all.
Maybe it wasn't.
Maybe this was just how his world had always worked.
Izana hadn't been alone.
He realized it only after everything was overafter the creature had fled, after the alley had returned to being just an alley again. He was still standing there, back pressed to the wall, heart beating faster than it should have, when he noticed the man a few steps away.
He hadn't appeared suddenly. He must have been there the whole time.
The man was tall, broad in a way that suggested weight rather than bulk, his posture relaxed but solid. He didn't look alarmed, or impressed, or even surprised. Just observant. Like he'd been watching something unfold exactly as expected.
Izana straightened instinctively, unsure why.
"You alright?" the man asked.
His voice was calm. Ordinary. Not the tone of someone panicking or interrogating. Izana nodded once, uncertain what else to do.
The man studied him for another second, then exhaled through his nose, slow and thoughtful. "Yeah," he said, mostly to himself. "Thought so."
He introduced himself simply.
Masamichi Yaga.
A teacher.
Izana remembered blinking at that. The teacher felt strangely out of place here, standing in a narrow alley that still smelled faintly of rust and damp concrete. Yaga didn't elaborate. He didn't explain what kind of teacher or what subject he taught. He just reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope.
Plain. White. Unmarked.
"In a few years," Yaga said, holding it out to him, "if you still have questions, come here."
That was it.
No warnings about danger.
No speeches about responsibility.
No talk of destiny or potential.
Just an address. A date. A time.
Izana took the envelope carefully, like it might fall apart in his hands. When he looked up again, Yaga was already stepping back, attention drifting toward the mouth of the alley as if the matter was settled.
"This place answers things," Yaga added, almost as an afterthought. "Not always the way you want. But it does answer them."
Then he left.
Convincing his parents hadn't been easy.
Izana kept his explanation vaguecareful not to say too much, careful not to sound afraid. His mother worried immediately, questions tumbling over one another, concern written plainly across her face. His father stayed quiet, listening without interruption.
When Izana finally showed him the envelope, his father took it, turned it over once, and handed it back.
He met Izana's eyes then.
There was no fear there. No confusion. Just a look, Izana didn't have words forrecognition, maybe. Or understanding. Or something that lived somewhere between the two.
They never spoke about it again.
And now, years later, Izana found himself walking the path the envelope had led him to, stone steps stretching upward beneath his feet, torii gates standing silent and worn. Whatever his father had seen that daywhatever it had meantIzana still didn't know.
But he was here now.
That had to count for something.
The stairs began to level out.
Izana noticed it only because the strain in his legs eased, the steady burn giving way to something softer, almost relieved. The forest thinned slightly ahead, sunlight spilling more freely through the branches, warming the stone beneath his feet. The torii gates grew fewer here, spaced farther apart, as if the mountain itself was loosening its grip.
He slowed without meaning to.
There was a feeling in the airsubtle, but present. Not heavy. Not threatening. Just… aware. Like stepping into a room where someone had recently been standing, their presence still lingered in the quiet.
Izana exhaled, long and slow.
He wondered, briefly, what waited for him beyond the last gate. Not the buildingsthat much he'd already seen between the treesbut the people. The kind of eyes that would look back at him. Whether they'd narrow in that familiar way, assessing, unsettled. Whether he'd feel the same distance he always did, even standing in a place meant for people like him.
People like him.
The thought lingered longer than he expected.
He didn't want to disappear. He never had. Hiding had just been easier than explainingeasier than answering questions no one really wanted answers to. Easier than watching expressions shift when he spoke too honestly, when he noticed things he wasn't supposed to notice.
Creep, someone had muttered once, not quite under their breath.
Weird, others had decided without saying it at all.
They hadn't been friends. Not really. Just classmates, peerspeople who existed around him without ever with him. Izana had learned how to stand just outside the circle, close enough to hear laughter, far enough not to be invited in.
He didn't resent them. There was no anger in the memory. Just a quiet understanding that some gaps didn't close, no matter how long you stood near them.
But maybe this place would be different.
Maybe hereat the top of all these stairsthere would be others who didn't flinch when he looked at the wrong thing for too long. Others who understood what it meant to see something and not immediately turn away. Others who wouldn't need explanations because they already knew.
Izana stepped through the final torii gate.
The path opened up before him, wide and still, the buildings of Tokyo Jujutsu High rising calmly beyond the trees. He stopped there for a moment, sunlight warm against his back, the forest quiet behind him.
He wasn't asking for much, he realized.
Just to be understood.
Just to belong somewhere without pretending.
If this place could offer thateven a littlethen the climb had been worth it.
Izana straightened, adjusted the strap of his bag, and walked forward.