INAZUMA || JUJUTSU KAISEN

INAZUMA, THE WRITTEN STORY

Sarugaku Elementary School

A cursed spirit, second grade, has manifested in the school. Find it, and exorcise the curse before it realizes it's not alone.

It was around five in the evening, a Friday. The schoolyard had just emptied of children, and the sun was beginning its journey to retire below the horizon. Trees waltzed in the breeze, and a stray cat curled up on the sun-baked sidewalk, unbothered by the chaos of others' lives as it deftly cleaned its paws with a pink tongue.

"Time for school, children..." The cursed spirit cooed. It was a massive, hideous thing, with a bulbous, engorged body that sloshed when it moved; red-veined, disturbed eyes spouting like barnacles over its face. It smiled with a mouth of rotten teeth and dragged its long jagged nails across the walls, leaving deep score marks.

Suddenly, it struck, blasting through the locked door with frightening speed and strength. Black slobber dribbled from its swollen lips as it peered around, finding the neatly tidied classroom to be empty.

"Not...in class?" It giggled, sweeping out into the school hallway once more. The curse left a trail of destruction in its wake: broken glass, doors tore off its hinges as it played a deadly game of hide-and-seek with its prey.

"Hiroki, it's getting closer!" The little girl hissed, her voice trembling with pure fear. She gripped a pair of scissors in her hands, the dull blades out. By her side, her brother curled up in a ball beneath their teacher's desk, his face buried in his arms, eyes welling with tears threatening to spill as the two of them prayed their presence would go unnoticed.

They were on the second floor, with no safe method of escape. The curse had discovered the kids playing on the field and hunted the children deep into their school, where they hoped the labyrinth of halls and classrooms would aid in hiding their presence, but the delectable scent of their fear alone was enough to give their position away.

"Aiya, I'm scared," Hiroki whispered. The twelve-year-old fumbled with his phone, the screen dead and dark as his hope leaked out alongside his whimpering.

Another violent crash, this time from the classroom directly next door, and Aiya winced as the scissors bit into the soft flesh of her palms. She stuffed her free hand into her mouth in a feeble attempt to stifle her cries, but when a bulging eyeball suddenly pressed itself into the glass door of their classroom, a terrified scream burst from her lips.

"There you are!" The cursed cried in malicious delight, and with a shattering of glass and broken wood, it barged into the classroom, claws outstretched and reaching for the children.

"HELP!! HELP US!!" Hiroki and Aiya began to scream, scrambling over toppled desks and chairs as they attempted to put as much distance between themselves and the monster as possible.

"HIRO!!" Aiya cried and trembled when the curse grabbed hold of her brother's ankle and began to drag him in, ignoring the boy's bloodcurdling shrieks and the way his nails bled and cracked from clawing at the smooth tile floor. The curse unhinged its gaping jaws, and an awful stench of rotting flesh and battery acid filled the room.

It teased her, relishing in their fear as it played with its food, unaware of the presence rapidly approaching it from just outside the classroom window.

"It's always the ugly ones." She scoffed to herself, fingers tightening around a long chain pooled neatly at her feet.

The teen appeared in a shattering eruption of glass, the heavy ring at the end of her chain finding home in the curse's temple, splintering the hardness of its skull. The curse reeled back with a howl of surprise and fury as the girl launched herself through the window and grabbed hold of Hiroki's arm, tossing the boy behind her.