Keitaro POV
Life was painful to me.
From the moment I was born I had been cursed by the people around me.
I was a bastard child born from a Zenin clan and Gojo clan member.
Neither side wanted to take responsibility for me.
To the Zenin I was proof of disgrace, a stain of mixed blood without the Ten Shadows or any other techniques connected to them.
To the Gojo, I was a disappointment I possessed neither the Six Eyes nor the Limitless technique like Satoru Gojo as such wasn't worth much of an investment.
Neither of my birth parents cared about me either they simply just gave me up, allowing me to be passed around between the two clans like some kind of toy.
In both households I was treated with hatred.
Their collective hatred cursed me to feel the negativity of everyone.
Every glare sank into my skin like heat.
Every whisper burned across my back.
When servants flinched away from me, my chest tightened as if I were the one being struck. When the elders spoke of me with disgust, my bones ached, heavy and wrong like they wanted to collapse inward.
I didn't understand it at first.
I thought everyone lived like this.
That pain was simply the price of being alive.
It wasn't until I saw other children laugh without flinching that I realized something was deeply wrong with me.
In the Zenin household the hatred was overwhelming and constant. Their resentment made my skin blistered, my throat burn, my hands tremble. They never hid their negativity towards me.
"Half-blood."
"Useless."
"A failure that shouldn't exist."
They said those things openly, and my body paid for every word.
At the Gojo estate, their indifference pressed on me like a slow suffocation.
I would stand in the corner of rooms, silent, and still while conversations flowed around me as if I weren't there.
Every time someone's gaze slid over me, my chest tightened, my vision swam, and a dull ache spread through my limbs.
Hatred burned but being ignored left me completely numb.
I learned quickly not to react.
If I cried, the pain got worse.
If I spoke, the attention cut deeper.
If I smiled, sometimes they forgot I was there at all.
So I smiled.
I smiled through the burning in my ribs.
I smiled through the headaches that made my vision blur.
I smiled through nights where I woke up gasping, my body covered in hot burning red marks I couldn't explain.
Then one day while standing alone in the hallways of the Zenin clan compound, listening to elders argue about my existence I understood the truth that would define my life.
I wasn't cursed by fate.
I was cursed by people.
And as long as they hated me...
I would feel it.
For a long time I kept my mouth shut and forced a smile through it all but then I met someone.
It happened during a moment when my skin started burning with a fresh new set of markings that crawled up towards my left eye.
I remember clutching the wall to keep myself upright when the pain vanished.
Someone had placed a thin white cloth over my eyes.
I looked up.
She was standing at the end of the hallway.
Clad in loose white robes with a blue sash wrapped around her waist.
"You're burning," she said calmly as if commenting on the weather.
She approached slowly, deliberately, as if she knew sudden movement would hurt me.
"Tell me what your name is, young one?" she asked.
"Keitaro," I whispered.
Her expression softened "that quite the powerful name you have. Keitaro tell me how would you like to become my student?" she asked.
I stared at her, no rather I felt her.
Her presence didn't scrape against my nerves like the others.
It didn't burn or crush me "I..." my throat tightened.
Habit told me to smile.
Habit told me to refuse before rejection could follow.
But the cloth over my eyes muted the agony enough for honesty to slip through. "...I don't know how," I shyly confessed.
She smiled again, just a little.
"That's fine," she replied "I'll teach you everything the clans should have been doing"
When the Elders of the Gojo clan discovered this though they had been firmly adamant that I should not be taught at all.
However the woman or as I come to learn Kisara Gojo stood her ground completely unbothered.
"He's under my supervision now esteemed elders," she said her tone light almost bored "if you have objections, then file them but keep in mind I won't read them."
At that moment I was in awe because of how quickly the elders caved in.
She was strong and confident.
I wanted both of those things.
Little did I know that the training I would receive from her would be hellish.
She took me outside the compound.
We trained in abandoned courtyards, forest clearings, half-ruined shrines no one visited anymore.
"The clans only teach members how to use their cursed techniques but nothing else," she said once after a hard day of training, "what I teach you Keitaro is how to fight without them and learning to grow stronger."
At first, I didn't understand what she meant.
Strength to me had always been cursed techniques, bloodline abilities, things you were either born with or discarded for lacking.
That was how both clans lived.
How they judged worth.
Kisara Gojo shattered that belief within a week.
She taught me how to stand before she taught me how to strike. How to balance my weight so pain wouldn't knock me over. How to breathe through the burning in my chest instead of tensing against it.
"Pain gets worse when you resist it," she told me, tapping my sternum with two fingers "let it pass through you don't let it settle."
Training with her was relentless.
If I collapsed, she waited.
If I hesitated, she corrected me.
If I cried, she said nothing and continued.
She made me fight blind more often than not. Sometimes she tied the cloth over my eyes herself, adjusting it carefully, and making sure it dulled my vision just enough without plunging me into darkness.
"This blindfold isn't to make you weaker," she said as she knotted it "it's to stop you from drowning in the negativity of others. Your cursed trait as I've come to suspect is like a form of synesthesia that allows you to feel what others feel. By covering your eyes though it prevents you from receiving the feelings of others."
She was right.
Without the blindfold I could feel everything.
With it, the feelings I felt from others became manageable.
From then on she taught me her own personal martial arts and how to properly use my cursed energy in combat.
One day during a sparring match I suddenly felt an intense burning in my eyes
I froze in mid-combat, something Kisara was quick to notice.
"What's wrong Keitaro?" she asked sharply
"It's my eyes sensei it..it burns," I hissed out in pain.
Reaching up I tore off the blindfold and suddenly I could see everything.
I saw paths running up my sensei's body.
Cursed energy ran through her like glowing veins, branching, twisting, and converging. Along those pathways were points of tension... small, star-like intersections where everything seemed to hinge.
"I can see the flow and points of your cursed energy sensei," I replied in awe.
For the first time I saw my sensei react with shock "incredible your eyes managed to develop something akin to our clan's Six-Eyes," she murmured.
"So what does this mean sensei?" I asked re-tying my blindfold.
"What it means my dear student is that we can better improve your martial arts skill. I will apply the Limitless technique to our training and you're goal in that time is to use your eyes to counter my style understand?" Kisara explained.
I eagerly nodded "yes sensei!" I exclaimed causing her to ruffle my hair "good now let's go have some food," she said as our stomachs suddenly grumbled causing us both to laugh.
-end of prologue-
Yes, as you all can tell from the title image this mc and his skillset is all directly based off Qin Shi Huang from Record of Ragnarok.
Next chapter we will see Keitaro moving back to the Zenin clan and having a little confrontation with Naoya.
Or in other words teaching him that his pillowfists don't do shit.