The problem with those people who find themselves in the world of Jujutsu Sorcerers, is that they are the story of people with such a tremendous amount of bad luck it's a miracle most of them are still alive. And I'm sure you're wondering how that might be such a problem but they have a tendency to both make my job leagues easier than it's normally be, while simultaneously tripling the amount of work I need to do. Mostly because in the stories you hear about there's a rather large amount of what you might call "survivor's bias" when it comes to curses.
Out of any of the unlucky children who would find themselves intertwined in this plot [Name] would know the most of this. After all, the scars were more than enough to show she'd had more than their fair share of scrapes and misses with me. The most prominent of the scars were the spots on the right side of her face, as though something had tried and failed to borrow into their skin. They were nasty and even now the thought of those god forsaken worms brought bile to [Name]'s throat as they did their best to change the subject as quickly as they could.
Closing the case file in mind, they leaned back in their desk chair, nibbling on the eraser of their pencil. It was a neat room, well, sort of. There was a fair amount of what most others might refer to as disarray and general chaos, though should you ask her about it, [Name] would merely wrinkle her nose at you. "It's organized chaos," they'd correct with a scowl, "I know where everything is, don't worry about it."
It was true, despite the mess of the bookshelf — which displayed a rather large array of variety, ranging from classical novels, old comics, more than a few volumes of manga and several beat up paper-backs — they could easily find whatever they needed should they be looking for it. Same could be said for any other part of the room. But for the most part it was tidy, it was simply [Name]'s desk that was in complete and utter disarray. Loose papers all piled up on each other, an open binder and a few filing folders along with all the random bits of stationery and finally the tape recorder that sat on top of it all.
[Name] sighed, closing their eyes before reaching for her glasses. Carefully she placed them on a corner of the desk next to their pencil case they took a deep breath, before beginning to speak.
"Statement of [Name] Fielding, in relation to the events that took place during an evening of June in 2018 in Sendai City at Sugisawa High. Statement recorded the following day by [Name] Fielding, The Archivist. Statement Begins."
"The halls of the school are dark, what little light there is floods in through the windows in weak beams that seem to stop just short of the corridor. The shadows of the place are one shade too hard and hold a texture of something like mud. The scent of the school, one that should have been faintly of sweat, chalk dust and paper is replaced with the routine stench of death and decay. The presence of those terrible things known as curses is all too clear."
"Fear is thick in the air as [Name] slowly walked through the halls, left hand gripping the handle of the sleek metal baseball bat with a tense purpose. Their eyes rake the hall, waiting for the monstrous creature to appear, they know it's lurking just beneath the surface. The cursed object unraveled by two foolishly naive students, the perfect summoning to bridge normality with the supernatural terror that people here called curses."
"The malice that dripped from the halls brought an excited, almost feverish anxiety to mind. It was a strange thing yes, but almost a pleasant sort of adrenaline that coursed through [Name]'s veins. After all this fear was her normal, the only true consistency in her life, and this instance was no expectation. Carefully, they backed against one wall, placing a hand around the corner ever so slightly as they looked around the corner into the next hall. Though they don't look with their eyes, at least not the two you'd expect. No, they stay there and wait, as the tattoo, one of several inked into them in direct contrast to the tone of her skin, on the back of their hand shifts. Blinking once, twice, before the drawing opened and the vibrant, poisonous green isis of the eye peered into the hallway."
"It was a strange thing really, to see out of one's hand, but the eye that sat where the tattoo had once been was one of many they possessed. There was another on the palm of their hand, smaller ones dotted their knuckles and the joints of their fingers, a pattern that was copied onto their other hand. The tattoos marked each and every joint of their body, their shoulder blades, the sides of their hips and their collar bone and nape of her neck. And much like the scars that littered their body, they were far from normal."
"But the abnormal appearance of one [Name] Fielding is not the purpose of this statement, rather the events that followed shortly after they rounded the corner. The eye on the back of their right hand blinking once, twice before it was once more only ink rather than the flesh and blood it had appeared to be mere moments earlier.
"Raising their bat, they rested the weapon on their shoulder, the echo of her footsteps the only sound throughout the stretch. Stopping in the centre of the hall they let out a disgruntled grunt as they tapped their heel against the ground impatiently."
"I know you're there!" [Name] called out to the empty space, face twisted into a disgusted sound as they called out to the curse. Grade two, six feet tall, wingspan of twelve feet, don't let it cut you. The information fed to her from their patron rising from their subconscious as they continued to try and find the monstrous creature they knew was lurking in the shadows."
"It was then that they first heard it. It was a faint sound, the sort of thing that you can barely hear and aren't quite sure is real until the utter horror of the realization sits in it, like metal scraping on glass and the faint echo of static mixing into a terrible but subtle cacophony. The curse practically melted out of the shadows, like candle wax as it came into being, the thick muddy darkness rolling off it like sludge. It's face, if you could even call it that, was distorted and twisted into a spiral, each curve lined with eyes that would have found a safe and happy place on any grotesque insect."
"It was wobbly on its feet, the form thin and its arms too long for its weight but when it swung and arm out, lashing at the [Name] sharply they barely had time to duck. The sound of the pointed nails boring into the wall to their right was harsh and jagged, a terrible noise that made disgust crawl up her spine as she dodged forward. Raising the bat in hand, [Name] gripped it tight as her eyes glowed with that familiar insidious glint of cursed energy, prepared to bash the knees of the creature in and send it tumbling to the ground—"
The door of the dormitory burst open, cutting [Name] off harshly as they fell back, having been leaning a bit too far in their chair as the loud sound snapped them back to reality and they went tumbling to the ground with a colourful array of curses falling from her lips at the action. Somewhere above her, she could hear the laughter and amused scolding of her teacher as he leaned against the doorway.
I couldn't help but chuckle at the matter, the tape recorder was still running and frankly it was probably for the best that [Name] didn't get a chance to finish that statement yet. Had she continued, delving from her fight, which was more uneventful than you might think into the terror and fear of Sukuna that had slipped into the building. A malice that slipped through the shadows, hiding in the rust of old pipework, cracks in the walls and slits between windows. The sort of thing that if given the wrong hands and into the right place could be the perfect mixture for the creation of an, albeit rather weak, innate domain. Sure the girl in question had seen worse than that but it's more so for the combined sake of an interesting story and for someone who had the perfect mixture of curiosity and lack of preservation would go terribly, horrifically and brutally wrong.
"Language!" Gojo chidded them as she got back to her feet, correcting the position of her chair back to its proper state.
"Bloody hell Sensei," [Name] grumbled, completely ignoring his attempt at a responsible parental-like lecture on the appropriate language of a school setting. "Couldn't you at least knock first, I was kind of in the middle of something."
"And that would be?"
"Beholding," they deadpanned, gesturing to the running tape recorder.
"Ah," Gojo said, "Is it listening in then?"
"The eldritch deity that has decided I shall be it's only avatar thus shall suffer greatly or the tape recorder?"
"Both. Also are you okay, you seem more cynical that usual," Gojo questioned, his concern not going without his typical teasing tone.
"Sort of and not in the slightest, Sukuna's presense has been fucking with my head, makes it harder to see things clearly," [Name] said, tapping the side of their head as if they were trying to hit something back into place.
"My sincerest condolences."
"That sounds very suspicious."
"Excellent! Now then come with me."
Frowning, [Name] just stared at him, pointing between themselves and the tape recorder, the pair of scars under their eyes and the slit on their forehead had all opened to reveal the matching set of irises, each that same insidious green. "You know I was in the middle of a thing right?" she asked, blinking each set of eyes at him, first the singular one on their forehead, then their ordinary set and then the slitted ones just under that.
"I know."
"And?"
"And I need you, my favourite student!" [Name] snorted at that, rolling their eyes as Gojo continued his dramatic monologue, "to accompany me to pick up Itadori at the station."
"Why does this feel like you're trying to set up a romantic subplot?"
"Ah such a shame! I can't ever hide anything from such an intuitive being!"
"You legitimately weren't even trying."
"Okay you got me there," he chuckled, speaking normally for the first time since he'd entered the room, "I in part want you there, because I want you to try and keep an eye on Sukuna."
"Which one?"
"Very funny."
"Yeah well don't you have like six anyways?"
"Yes and how many physical eyes do you have?"
"Uhhhh," [Name] paused, doing the mental math quickly as they could, "50 not counting the scars," they finally finished. "But if we're going in public you realized I'd only be using like two of them right?"
"I know!"
"This is some kind of test isn't it."
"Bingo!" Gojo laughed, pointing at his student as though she had just won the lottery before adjusting his blindfold ever so slightly and snapping his fingers as he made a dramatic spin of his heel towards the door. "Now then! Let's be off!"
"I swear he only talks in exclamation marks," [Name] muttered, turning towards the clutter on their desk and reaching for her glasses. Three of the five eyes on their face closing as they did so, resuming their appearance of something that could easily be mistaken for just another set of scars to go along with her many, many others. Grabbing their school jacket, a comfortable thing which somehow managed to be a cross between a cargo jacket and a leather jacket while still remaining both fashionable and practical (how they too, had little idea). Clicking the red button on the tape recorder they watched the thing wind down, the recording coming to an end, before grabbing the closest pair of shoes and running after their teacher.
Gojo had lied. They weren't actually going to the station. Rather they met Itadori at a bus stop barely five minutes away from where you would take the rather overly specific trail to the school from the city. The boy himself was clad in another hoodie, backpack slung over his shoulders and looking significantly less confused (though maybe that was just the whole "all-knowing" part of [Name]'s brain but who's to say) than the previous day.
"Itadori!" The teacher called out to the boy, snatching his attention almost at once as the boy quickly made his way over to them in return. "Glad to see you're looking well, you've already met [Name]," He clapped [Name] on the back at the mention of the [Nickname] taking the time to attempt to ruffle their hair as well.
"Ack! Hey—" [Name] protested, trying to move their hair, which she had taken the liberty of dying a vibrant, borderline obnoxious shade of purple.
"So then!" Gojo continued, cutting Itadori's attempt of greeting his to-be-classmate and stirring them both by the shoulders to face the direction of the school, "let's be off!"
"Is he always like his?" Itadori whispered to [Name] who only shrugged in response.
"You get used to it," she murmured back to the boy, "so I'm terrible at coming up with conversation starts so do tell, what's it like having an all powerful curse in your head all the time."
Itadori blinked at them, Gojo with a smirk, made to move a few steps ahead of them in order to give his students a proper chance to talk. "That's..." He paused, frowning for a moment as [Name] looked at him curiously, taking great care to only look at him physically and not accidentally slip into a full blown examination of his entire soul. Which regardless of if it was intentional or not, happened more than they'd like to admit.
"A very direct way of putting it?" She offered.
"Yeah, I guess I haven't thought about it too much? I mean I can hear his voice in my head which is strange but for the most part I've been feeling pretty normal."
"Interesting," [Name] hummed, ducking in front of him, walking backwards in order to remain facing the boy as she examined him.
"Is that not normal?" Itadori asked, nerves getting the better of him as nervousness seeped into his voice.
"Well it's hard to say what's normal, it's not like there aren't other people who have similar situations to yours going on, but normally people who are are killed before it gets the chance to go anywhere," [Name] rambled offhandedly, talking so casually about the matter it admittedly caught Itadori off guard. "Which is actually kind of a shame, though that's just how things are run in Japan.
Honestly I'm surprised you don't need to sign paperwork to commit a felony." They continued, speaking in a manner that seemed to invoke something in the ways of John Mulaney.
Itadori couldn't help but snort at that before quickly backtracking, "oh god I shouldn't laugh at that."
"Eh don't worry about it, I mean I joke about my problems are the time in a half-hearted effort to pretend like they aren't actually a problem which is probably just as concerning as it sounds but somehow I haven't died yet so who knows."
Itadori let out a chuckle as they turned back around, moving a head onto the trail that would lead to the school. "Woah!" Itadori gasped as he followed her, raising a hand to his eyes to block out the sun as he stared up at the mountain. "It's in the mountains? Is this really Tokyo?"
"This isn't actually out of the ordinary for a Tokyo suburb." Gojo commented, starling [Name] a bit as he appeared behind them rather than where they had last seen him.
"What about Fushiguro?" Itadori asked, remembering the dark haired boy with a bit of a start and a look of concern.
"Oh he's asleep," [Name] butted in, "got himself patched up and was out like a light."
"What about you?"
"What about me?" Admittedly she was a little caught off guard by the boy's concern as she met his gaze, the irises of his eyes were such a warm rich brown, almost like hot chocolate the thought.
"Yeah well you did fight some of the curses right? Are you okay?"
"Oh that," [Name] laughed off his concern with a shrug, "I was really just dealing with the clean up and aftermath, Megumi definitely got the worst of it. Also while I remember," they started, the thought crossing their mind as they spoke, "is it okay if I call you Yuji?" she didn't wait for an answer, "I'm going to call you Yuji." She finished before turning away and leading the two behind her down the path.
Gojo hummed in amusement at the antics of his student, slipping into step next to Itadori as he gathered the boy's attention, "First thing's first, Yuji— you've got an interview with the Principal."
"The principal?" Itadori tilted his head at the blind-folded man, confusion flitting across his expression.
"If you mess up, you might get rejected for admission, so stay frosty, okay?" Gojo said so offhandedly and casually that it only made the poor boy even more surprised than he already was.
"What?" Itadori cried, voice raising in volume as he stared at the man in near frantics, "does that mean I get executed right away?"
"What a disappointment, I thought you were the leader..." It was then that the fourth voice butted in, earning [Name]'s attention at once as she fell back in step with the boy, though she happened to do so on the wrong side of him, missing her opportunity to properly see (at least see other than what she already good) the mouth of Sukuna. "A hierarchy not based purely on strength is boring if you ask me." Sukuna said with a nasty smirk as the skin of Yuji's teeth peeled open to reveal lips and mouth in a manner that felt less unsettling than it had any right to be.
Slapping his hand against the side of his cheek let out a disgruntled sigh, "sorry about that Sensei, he comes out sometimes."
"What an interesting body you have now," Gojo said with a casualty that was almost as alarming as the mouth that proceeded to simply appear on Itadori's hand rather than cheek.
"I do owe you a debt after all," Sukuna said with something that was almost a laugh, completely ignoring Itadori's protests. "When I make this boy's body mine, you'll be the first one I kill."
Gojo merely laughed at the threat, which earned him both an expression of exasperation from [Name] and astonishment from Itadori. "Me a target of the great Sukuna? What an honour."
Before the curse could respond [Name] reached forward grabbing Yuji's hand in an attempt to examine it before the mouth could retract. "Fascinating," she mumbled, ignore the flustered boy on the other end of the arm, "Does this mean there's a set of vocal cords wherever in Yuji's body that you appear?" They poked the mouth, who made an attempt to bit back at her, missing her finger by several inches as the girl merely laughed at the thing, earning a stare of amazement from Itadori as she did so.
"Don't touch me." Sukuna snapped, moving from Itadori's hand to his cheek, the slits under Itadori's eyes opening to reveal Sukuna's gaze as he glared at the girl. "Nothing, especially not the sort of disgusting monstrosity that you are should be laying a hand on me, when I'm done with that white-haired freak you're going to end up next on my list. What the hell are you anyways? A curse or a human?"
"Okay first off all," [Name] started, ignoring the wounded protest that her teacher was giving at being called "that white-haired freak", "If you want to kill me I'm afraid you're going to have to get in line. Secondly to answer your question, am I a curse? Am I a human? I am neither of them while being all of the above at the same time, but for your purposes," Her eyes flashed with cursed energy as she smirked, "It'd really be best not to think about it too much."
Itadori clapped his hand over Sukuna's mouth, not bothering to give the curse time to speak. "So is he really famous then?" He questioned, deciding it would probably be best to concern himself with whatever [Name] had just been referring to another time.
Gojo grinned, "yep, I'll let [Name] fill in that exposition though."
[Name] rolled her eyes at that, their eyes flashing with that same cursed energy as they began to speak, their tone shifted ever so slightly, sounding as though it was made of velvet and had she gone on like that Itadori found himself understanding that he could have listened to her speak in such away for an eternity.
"Ryomen Sukuna, with four arms and two faces is a demon of legend. The truth however, is that he was once a human, even if he wasn't at the time of his destruction, who actually existed. But that was just over a thousand years ago, in what was the golden age of Jujutsu in Japan, Jujutsu Sorcerers had sharpened their skills against him, but were ultimately defeated. With the title Ryomen Sukuna would traverse the ages after his death as a cursed object. Jujutsu Sorcerers wouldn't even be able to his remains found in their own grave wax, without a doubt, he was truly the king of curses."
Finishing their statement, they closed their eyes as their tone returned to normal and they opted to ignore the tape recorder which had appeared at their feet, shifting ever so slightly to hide it from Itadori's view.
"And there you have it!" Gojo said with a grin, appearing behind the girl and clapping them on the back.
"Is he stronger than you Sensei?" Itadori asked, as the man seemed to ponder his question.
Without a doubt Satoru Gojo was an odd one to say the least. But he is one who is far out of my reach, an impressive thing to say the least considering that unfortunate truth that plagues the world, but death is the end, and the end will always have the final word. But he only smiled, before giving his answer, "good question, if Sukuna were to completely regain his power. It might be a little difficult."
"Would you lose?"
"Nah, I'd win." Gojo finished with a wide grin, Itadori made no comment on that, simply coming to the conclusion that his teacher's confidence, if anything, was admirable. "Now then I'll let you," he pointed towards [Name] with a smile as he wrapped one arm around the boy, "Get back to your beholding!"
"Seriously?"
"Yep!"
[Name] only rolled her eyes at her teacher, calling out one last thing to Itadori as he was led into the building that served as the principal's office. "Oh and Yuji? You'll do fine, don't stress about it too much okay?"
"How do you know that?" he called back, more anxiety than he would have liked to admit slipping into his tone, he didn't even get to catch her answer as the door swung shut with a neat 'click.'
Stooping to pick up the tape recorder at her feet, how it even got out here was beyond even her knowing and they'd learned two things on the matter long ago: one, don't question it, two, you can't get rid of them so don't even try. [Name] sighed, answering Itadori's question to the tape recorder rather than the boy himself as they made her way back towards the dorms. "Well unfortunately, I know everything."
.
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a/n first of all if you get the references I love you, secondly i wrote this instead of doing my assignments for online school and it turned out to be very long I will try to update again when I finish said assignments.