Ren Fukuhara—though he did not know that name was his yet—woke to a world of massive blurred shapes and muffled sound around him.
Everything was wrong.
His body just would not respond to his will. He tried to move his arm, but the limb flopped uselessly, fingers twitching without coordination. His vision swam, unfocused and dim almost black.
Colors bled together like watercolor on wet paper, causing him to want to squint his eyes in shielding.
'What the fuck?'
He tried to speak. His lips parted as his mouth opened, but what came out was not what he expected.
What came was a weak, warbling cry that didn't sound remotely human. Panic spiked through him in the moment—sharp and immediate.
'Move. Move, damn it.'
Nothing worked. His legs kicked weakly as though It wasn't properly connected. His head lolled to the side, too heavy for his neck to support properly.
Then he heard voices. Soft, speaking in Japanese.
"看て,彼が目を覚ました. (Look, he's waking up.)"
He understood the words perfectly.Japanese was one of seven languages he'd mastered over the years and it felt natural. Contracts in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto—he'd worked across half of Japan's underworld at some point.
But why was everything so big?
The question tugged at his chest.
A face appeared above him. That of a woman. Her eyes were striking—deep brown with flecks of amber adorning it. Her eyes was tired but somehow still warm. She pink lips smiled down at him, while her hand —massive and soft—stroked his cheek.
"おはよう,私の小さな男の子." (Good morning, my little boy.)"
'Little boy?'
Another face appeared at his moment.. A man this time.
He had broad features, thick mustache and scarred knuckles.
The man reached down, and Ren—no, Prime—felt tiny fingers wrap around a calloused thumb.
His fingers.
Tiny. Weak. Infant fingers.
He didn't control it, it simpley touched it..
'No.'
The realization hit like a bullet to the chest.
'I'm a baby!'
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to curse, to thrash, to do anything that could relive him from thjs horror filled hell he had suddenly found himself in, but what came out instead was a pathetic mewling sound that made the woman coo and pull him closer.
'This isn't real. This can't be real.'
But the warmth of her steady body was very real. The rough texture of the man's thumb was real. The helplessness of his own useless limbs was very, very real.
Prime forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Control. He couldn't loose control.
He'd been in worse situations. Once he had been buried alive in Somalia. Another waterboarded in a Manila basement. Shot seven times in Prague and still completed the contract.
This was just... different.
He decided to stop struggling. He opened his eyes—his blurry, unfocused infant eyes—and observed.
The room is a traditional Japanese architecture filled with Paper walls and tatami mats.
The smell of incense adorned the room, slowly assaulting his nasal cavity.
The people. The woman—his mother, apparently—wore a yukata that was stained with sweat and blood. The man stood with the posture of someone trained in combat.
And then there was the matter of the system.
'[SYSTEM GENERATED].
[INITIALIZING...]'
He'd heard and vaguely seen those words right before everything went black. Right before he died in that Skyhaven alley with his guts spilling onto the pavement.
'So what the hell was that?'
No one answered.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Five months passed like a fever dream.
Prime now called ren—he'd learned his name by listening—had pieced together fragments of his new reality through observation and eavesdropping.
The name of the place and clan was the fukuhara clan. His father whose name is Takeshi, was the patriarch and also a jujutsu sorcerer of considerable renown, respected and feared in equal measure. A Grade One sorcerer— and one of the strongest.
But the clan itself?
Mid-sized at best. Maybe forty active sorcerers, another hundred non-combatants and support staff. The clan specialized in analyzing cursed spirits, recording information, cataloging techniques and phenomena.
They were researchers more than fighters.
Two hundred years ago, they'd been something more. He'd heard the elders talk about it in hushed but reverent tones. The Fukuhara clan had once been renowned across the jujutsu society, their archives sought after by many and by even the great clans.
Then something happened. An event no one spoke about directly, always referenced in vague terms by others as "The incident." "That time." "When we fell."
Whatever it was, it had reduced them. Stripped away their prestige, their influence, their strength.
Now they clung to relevance through their patriarch—Takeshi Fukuhara, the last great sorcerer their bloodline had produced in generations.
His father.
Jujutsu sorcerer.
Cursed energy.
Curses.
'You've got to be kidding me.'
He still couldn't digest it fully. It felt weird.
He'd watched the anime once. Skimmed through it during a rare week of downtime between contracts. It had been... entertaining. Flashy fights, interesting powers, a world where monsters were real and people fought them with supernatural abilities.
He'd never thought he'd actually be in it.
'Of all the places to reincarnate...'
Not that he believed in reincarnation. Or hadn't, anyway. Hard to deny it when you were living it.
The world of Jujutsu Kaisen was dangerous. He remembered that much. Curses that could kill you in an instant roamed freely. Sorcerers who'd gut you for looking at them wrong existed. A whole society built on violence and power.
To an extent it reminded him of earth.
'Damn.'
He didn't feel excited. Didn't feel that rush of adrenaline some people might get at the thought of living in a fictional world. He felt... cautious and wary. He knew the stakes. What could happen. He knew any wrong move could get him killed? Worse dissected.
This wasn't a game. This was survival.
And he was very, very good at surviving.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Over the next few months his father had tried to train him.
Takeshi would hold Ren upright, supporting his weight, and move his tiny arms in slow, deliberate motions. Kata, probably. The basics..
"強くなる,息子. (Become strong, son.)"
His mother, Ayame, would laugh from where she knelt nearby as she folded laundry. Her laughter was light, musical, soothing to hear. Sometimes she'd cough afterward—soft, wet coughs that she tried to hide behind her hand.
Ren noticed.
He noticed everything.
The way his father's eyes softened anytime he looked at Ayame. The way she smiled even when she was tired. The way they both looked at him—their son—with something that made his chest feel tight and uncomfortable.
Love.
He didn't hate it. He had felt it once. But still it felt... wrong. Unfamiliar.
He has killed his first target at sixteen years if age. A man who owed money to this gang.
His last family memory was watching his younger brother's casket lowered into the ground. Emotions were tools. Tools to be used and discarded. Attachments were the same too.
And yet here he was, being cradled by a woman who sang to him in the evenings, held by a man who called him "my son" with genuine pride.
It was easier to pretend. He was good at that. Pretending was half of being an assassin.
So he played the part. Smiled when expected. Cried when hungry. Reached for them with chubby and useless hands.
But inside, he stayed sharp. Stayed alert. Cause he wasn't going to let himself be taken.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
At ten months, he spoke his first word.
"とうさん."(Father.)
Takeshi's face had split into a grin so wide it looked painful.
By one year and three months, Ren could walk. Could speak simple sentences and could pick up objects without dropping them.
He could have done better that he showed. Could have walked at eight months, spoken full sentences at one year. After all his mind is that of an adult.
But that would raise questions. Questions he would never give answers to.
So he always held back. Made stupid mistakes. Stumbled when he walked. Mispronounced words which he could say casually. He acted like a clever child instead of a reincarnated assassin.
The clan still thought he was a genius.
Takeshi boasted about him to the elders. Ayame beamed with pride whenever he said something precocious.
'If only they knew.'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The examination came after he completed 2.
Three clan doctors who were old men with thin beards and sharp eyes—sat in a circle around him. They pressed their hands to his chest, his back, his forehead, and began muttering to each other in low voices as though they were summoning something.
Cursed energy began flowing through the room like static electricity, as he sat. He could feel it now, prickling at his skin.
The lead doctor, Fukuhara Hideaki, pulled his hand away from Ren's chest, his expression was grim.
"The body is weak."
The second doctor— a younger one but no less serious, placed his palm against Marlon's spine and felt it. He frowned, then pressed harder.
"Cursed energy doesn't circulate properly."
The third doctor, the oldest of them all, simply stared at Marlon with milky eyes that seemed to see through him.
"Hollow."
The word hung in the air like a guillotine ready to fall at any given moment.
Takeshi stepped forward. "What do you mean, hollow?"
Hideaki stood, brushing off his robes before speaking
"The boy has cursed energy, Patriarch. But it's... stagnant. Like water in a sealed container. It doesn't flow through his pathways the way it should."
"Can it be fixed?" Ayame's voice was small and fragile, sounding worried.
The younger doctor shook his head. "We've never seen a case like this before. Usually, if a child is born without cursed energy, there's simply nothing there. But with your son... it's present. It's just not moving. Not reinforcing his body, not manifesting externally."
"So he can't become a sorcerer?" Takeshi's voice was carefully controlled.
"I didn't say that," Hideaki replied. "But as he is now? He's fundamentally weaker than even a non-sorcerer child. His body is fragile. Without cursed energy reinforcement, he'll be vulnerable to curses, to injury, to illness."
"Then what do we do?"
The oldest doctor finally spoke, his voice like grinding stone. "We monitor him. See if his pathways develop as he grows. Sometimes these things resolve themselves."
"And if they don't?"
Silence.
Hideaki sighed. "Then he lives as best he can. There are roles in the clan that don't require combat ability. Record-keeping. Analysis. He could still contribute."
Takeshi's jaw clenched. His fists tightened at his sides.
Ayame pulled Ren closer to her, her arms trembling.
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The clan elders gathered later that evening.
Ren sat in Ayame's lap, pretending not to understand the conversation happening around him. The room was large, formal. Ten elders sat on cushions arranged in a semicircle, their faces illuminated by paper lanterns.
Takeshi knelt at the center, his back straight, his expression unreadable.
Elder Fukuhara Masato spoke first. He was a thin man, ancient and old and with a voice that crackled like dry leaves, he spoke
"We've received the doctors' report, Patriarch. Your son is... disappointing."
Another elder, a woman named Fukuhara Reiko, leaned forward. "Disappointing is generous, Masato. The boy is hollow. Useless. The patriarch's heir, and he can't even circulate cursed energy properly?"
"Reiko." Takeshi's voice was low but dangerous. "Choose your next words carefully."
She didn't flinch as she spoke "I'm speaking the truth, Takeshi. You know as well as I do what this means. The clan has been declining for two centuries. We've pinned our hopes on you—on your strength as a Grade One sorcerer—to restore our standing. And now your heir is... this?"
"He's two years old," Ayame said quietly. All eyes turned to her but she didn't look up. Instead she jjust held Ren tighter. "He's just a child."
"A child who will grow into a liability," another elder muttered. Fukuhara jokabe, a broad-shouldered man with a permanent scowl. "We can't afford dead weight. Not now. Not with the other clans watching us, waiting for us to fail completely."
Masato raised a withered hand. "Perhaps we're being hasty. The doctors said his condition might improve with age."
"Might," Reiko repeated, her tone dripping with skepticism. "And if it doesn't? What then? Do we pretend the heir to the Fukuhara clan isn't a cripple?"
"Enough." Takeshi's voice cracked like a whip. The room fell silent. "My son is not a cripple. He's young. He has time to develop."
"And if he doesn't?" Ichiro challenged. "What then, Patriarch? Will you name another heir? Or will you doom this clan to irrelevance for the sake of your pride?"
Takeshi stood. The motion was slow, deliberate. When he spoke, his voice was cold enough to frost the air. "My son is the heir. That will not change. If any of you have a problem with that, you're welcome to challenge me for the position of patriarch."
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Takeshi waited, his gaze sweeping across each elder in turn and when no one accepted the challenge, he turned and walked toward Ayame.
"We're leaving."
Ayame stood, cradling Ren against her chest. As they passed through the doorway, Ren heard the whispers start up again behind them.
"What a waste."
"The patriarch's arrogance will destroy us."
"That boy is cursed."
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Later that night, Ren lay in his futon, staring at the ceiling in deep thought.
He could still hear his father's voice in the next room. Takeshi was speaking to Ayame in a low and measured tone, perhaps comforting her.
"He'll be fine." Takeshi spoke.
"You don't know that." Ayame's voice was thick with tears.
"I do. He's strong. I can see it in his eyes."
'Strong.'
Ren almost laughed. They thought he was weak. Hollow. A disappointment. Perhaps it is true that it is hollow but
'It doesn't matter.'
He'd been underestimated before. In his past life, targets had looked at him and seen just another street kid. Just another disposable body.
Right up until he put a bullet between their eyes, catching any hope of survival of theirs.
This world wanted to count him out?
Fine.
Let them.
He'd survived worse than their scorn.
And when the time came—when he figured out what the hell this system was, when he learned how this world really worked—he'd show them exactly how wrong they were.
Ren smiled in the dark, a cold and manic smile!