Bonus updates today because im feeling generous :)
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Mid-January.
St. Love Children's Home.
The director, flustered and bewildered, ushered in a visitor who looked every inch a high-ranking yakuza: face like carved granite, eyes burning with the kind of unshakable will ordinary people never develop, hair shaved clean on the sides to reveal pale scalp.
Yet the man introduced himself as a teacher from a private religious college in Tokyo.
In the reception room the director poured tea with trembling hands and asked, cautiously, for the school's full name.
Yaga Masamichi cleared his throat.
"Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College."
The director blinked. He had never heard of it.
"I'm here about one of your children," Yaga said, sliding his faculty ID across the table. "I'm the first-year supervisor in charge of new admissions this year. We're a small private school on the outskirts of Tokyo—very low profile. We only accept a specific age group, and the screening is extremely strict. I'd like to know how Asou Akiya has been behaving here."
The director's face lit up with recognition. "Akiya-kun? We only have one. What an honor—he's been noticed by a religious school!"
In Japan, religion was respectable; monks had stable careers. Only the cream of the crop entered religious academies, and the employment rate was supposedly excellent.
"He's a good boy. Never causes trouble. Came to us early last year after his parents… passed. You'll always see him during volunteer cleaning duties."
Yaga watched the director's expression carefully. "He applied to us on his own initiative. Private tuition isn't cheap—can he afford it?"
"He gets minor injuries from time to time, goes out for treatment a lot. He probably learned about your school while in Tokyo. Money isn't an issue—there's government compensation from the accident. Yokohama kids these days all dream of the big city. I can tell he loves visiting Tokyo and Kyoto."
"Any adults ever come looking for him?"
The director shook his head firmly. He would never stand in the boy's way. "He's no delinquent. Kind-hearted, very independent."
Yaga mentally checked the data he had pulled from police records.
Orphaned in a cursed-spirit incident → awakened cursed energy → somehow learned of the jujutsu world through unknown channels.
Standard pattern.
But two things still gnawed at him.
First: the boy had recognized his voice instantly and called him "Yaga-sensei" before he'd even introduced himself. Faculty information was strictly confidential. Only someone intimately familiar with Tokyo Jujutsu High could do that.
Second, and far worse: "divine child of the Gojo Clan."
On the surface it sounded normal—Gojo Satoru was the most famous, most mysterious genius in the entire jujutsu world. A little hero-worship was expected.
But "divine child"?
Yaga's temples throbbed just remembering it.
Gojo Satoru almost never appeared in public. Aloof didn't begin to cover it. Outside the Three Great Families, almost no one had ever seen his face.
Yet this random orphan used the exact honorific the Gojo elders whispered when Yaga visited their estate earlier this year to discuss enrollment.
He had witnessed firsthand how the entire clan treated their young master like a living god—technically not the head of house, yet commanding more authority than any clan leader in the country.
Put together with the boy's words, the conclusion was obvious:
the Gojo Clan literally enshrined Gojo Satoru as a deity.
"Please call Asou…" Yaga caught himself. "…Call Akiya-kun in."
The director left.
Moments later the door slid open again.
The boy who stepped inside was neat, polite, posture perfect.
Black hair, refined features, secondhand down jacket worn like it was tailored.
He bowed with exactly the right depth, then—without waiting to be asked—turned to the director with a gentle smile and said, "It's all right, Director. This is a private matter. Could you give us a moment?"
The director hesitated only a second before nodding and closing the door behind him.
He understood instinctively: whatever was about to be discussed must not leak to ordinary people.
Fear of cursed spirits breeds more cursed spirits.
The jujutsu world's way of protecting peace was to make sure the public never learned it existed.
Left alone with Yaga Masamichi—first-grade sorcerer, creator of cursed corpses, the strongest and most genuinely caring teacher a underage sorcerer could hope for—Asou Akiya's heart beat perfectly steady.
This was the most powerful person he would meet before officially stepping into Tokyo Jujutsu High.
And, more importantly,
a good teacher who actually showed up to class.
If he had been born Gojo Satoru's student, he might have wondered whether school was worth attending at all.
Gojo's teaching style worked for geniuses.
For everyone else it was brutal.
But Yaga Masamichi?
He would teach you how to fight, how to survive, how the jujutsu world really worked—
patiently, selflessly,
and he never ditched class.
Asou Akiya lowered his eyes, hiding the reverence and excitement that flickered there, and spoke with flawless courtesy.
"Yaga-sensei. Thank you for coming all this way."
Yaga Masamichi observed every micro-movement of the boy with eyes sharp as drawn blades.
The interview had officially begun.
The teacher didn't look like a teacher; the student, however, acted exactly like a perfect student.
What irritated Yaga most was that utterly unshakable composure.
Is my intimidation factor dropping? Yaga wondered. The kid's breathing hasn't shifted even a millimetre.
He asked coldly, "Do you know what a jujutsu sorcerer is?"
Asou Akiya nodded. "A little."
Yaga had no patience for false modesty. He pulled a pink knitted doll from his pocket, gripped its round head with thick fingers, and let cursed energy surge. Invisible pressure rolled off him like a storm front.
"Answer honestly. Why do you want to become a sorcerer?"
The doll's tiny arms and legs began to twitch.
"I—"
Akiya had already pooled cursed energy into his eyes, sharpening his dynamic vision. He twisted aside the instant the doll lunged.
He stepped sideways, mouth opening to continue.
A vicious fist of wind followed.
The doll spun mid-air and attacked again under its master's control.
Yaga had instantly read the boy: too rational, almost numb to life and death. Against that type, adults had their methods. He gave no chance to speak, pressing harder.
"Your parents were killed by a cursed spirit. Aren't you afraid? People who awaken like you usually carry a lifelong terror of curses."
"Uwah—!"
Akiya threw both arms over his head. The blow still landed squarely in his stomach; acid surged up his throat. The doll danced back, smug, its combat instincts clearly superior.
Biting down the pain, Akiya forced words out.
"Of course I'm afraid!"
Yaga's assessment was immediate: terrible physical technique, low total cursed energy, but the speed at which that scarlet cursed energy manifested was startlingly fast.
A person born with hard limits, yet gifted with superb reflexes and cursed-energy mobilisation.
Yaga delivered his verdict, heavy and sincere.
"Someone afraid of curses cannot become a sorcerer. Most awaken an innate technique between four and six years old. You're almost ten years late and have no innate technique. The talent gap is insurmountable. Rather than act on impulse and die to a curse someday, it's safer for you to return to the normal world while you still can."
He truly believed this was kinder.
But Akiya didn't need kindness.
For pure safety, which world could compare to the one he came from?
"You've misunderstood!" Akiya suddenly shouted.
Yaga froze.
"I awakened in July of last year!"
"Two hundred and twenty-three days!" Akiya continued without hesitation. "The day my parents died, I caught one glimpse of the monster. After that—nothing. For two hundred and twenty-three days I lived in endless terror! I was afraid of dying, afraid of those shapes would appear again, afraid I'd be swallowed whole without ever knowing when!"
He wasn't wearing his down jacket indoors. Asou Akiya rolled his knit sleeves all the way to the elbow and extended both wrists.
Pale, thin arms—
crisscrossed with multiple horizontal cuts.
People who truly want to die don't slice across the wrist; they cut vertically along the artery.
The black-haired boy's calm returned, a calm so ruthless that even Yaga Masamichi—who had only ever heard of such composure from military operatives—felt a chill.
"I guessed the condition for 'seeing' them. To simulate near-death experiences, I tried everything: hanging, drowning, bleeding out, free-fall, dehydration, starvation…
To make myself despair even more, I burned through every yen my parents left me, staked everything on coming to Tokyo looking for a chance.
Still I saw nothing.
So I despaired harder."
Yaga's expression changed. He ordered the doll to stop attacking.
He would dissuade an ordinary person,
but he would never dissuade a boy who had already prepared himself to this extent.
Dropping all unnecessary pity, Yaga asked, cold and professional, the question only a first-grade sorcerer had the right to ask:
"How did you finally succeed?"
A sly glint flashed in the boy's eyes—like a child finally letting an adult see inside his secret fort.
"I realized I still hadn't broken.
I hadn't suffered enough."
"…Huh?"
"I paid someone to beat me half to death."
"That's it. I passed out—and when I woke up in the hospital, I could see the other Tokyo."
The breezy summary overflowed with joy, exhilaration, and a thick, almost embarrassing longing.
Yaga was stunned.
This was premium sorcerer material—insane enough, pressure-proof enough.
Back to the real question.
"Why become a sorcerer?"
Akiya lowered his wrists and instantly reverted to the quiet, courteous image.
Yaga knew it was all surface now.
He waited, genuinely curious, for an answer that might actually satisfy him.
Akiya met his eyes and cut straight to the core.
"Yaga-sensei, when you ask that, you're hoping I'll say I discovered something special about myself, or that I want revenge for my parents, right?"
"Regrettably—no. That's not the truth."
He respected Yaga too much to lie.
And Yaga didn't want a merely acceptable answer—he wanted excellence, the kind worthy of standing in the same classroom as the three monsters enrolling in 2005.
"When I woke up in the hospital, I remembered the monster killing my parents. I didn't know it was a cursed spirit then.
I was terrified. Helpless. Orphaned overnight.
The police told me it was a gas explosion."
"They lied."
Akiya smiled in the middle of the memory—clean, refreshing, far more devastating than any sob story.
"I got sick of ordinary people's self-deceptions.
Instead of going along with society, I'd rather do the opposite—rip myself free from a mediocre life."
"I'm so young, and the world is so deep.
The moment it waited for me to open my eyes, I decided all on my own—"
"That at the very least, right now, the world is waiting for one person to applaud."
"I want to join the jujutsu world."
"I want to meet the sorcerers who walk the edge between life and death."
"My life had no value; my soul was hollow and boring.
Cursed energy suddenly made me feel alive.
I firmly believe I was born to witness the meaning of life—and I'm running toward the jujutsu world to do exactly that."
"You are an outstanding educator.
Please let me become your student.
Guide me.
If I ever do anything wrong, scold me as harshly as you need."
He bowed—deep, sincere, unwavering.
Asou Akiya paid no attention to the pink doll still hovering threateningly at his shoulder, nor to the infamous mortality rate of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
He simply stepped forward, took the teapot, and poured a fresh cup for the man seated before him.
The way he held the pot, the angle of his wrist, the slow circular motion to settle the leaves—none of it was Japanese. It carried the unhurried elegance of that ancient country next door, a ritual older than any tea ceremony on this island.
Then.
Yaga Masamichi's eyes widened. He froze in his chair.
The black-haired boy sank to both knees on the tatami, lifted the cup with two reverent hands, and offered it up.
"Sensei. Please have some tea."
For Yaga Masamichi—a man of genuine virtue—one sentence was enough:
This child is worth it.
In all his years of teaching, Yaga had guided countless students. He genuinely wanted to change the jujutsu world for the better. He was proud of every graduate and quietly anxious the day he sent them off to fight.
His students respected him; they grew nervous in his presence. He thought that perfectly normal.
He never bragged about how precious his experience was. If a student wanted to learn first-grade techniques, he taught them—simple as that.
But today, for the first time, he tasted what it felt like to be respected from the very bottom of a student's heart.
Unbelievable… from a boy he had only just met.
Can he read minds? Yaga wondered.
He stared at the stubborn tea stem floating upright in the cup—an omen of good fortune—as though afraid to accept the bond it implied.
At last he took the cup and drank.
The tea was neither good nor bad.
It merely warmed his throat.
Yaga spoke, voice low and heavy.
"You pass. Do your best to become a proper sorcerer."
He rose. At the doorway he paused and added without turning,
"Term starts April first. It's a boarding school. Since you have no guardian, I'll come get you early.
Uniforms will be mailed next month. Modify them however you like—tell me if you have requests.
Contact me anytime."
His voice dropped even lower, almost reluctant.
"Don't ever betray your own heart."
Then he was gone, footsteps hurried, as if fleeing the lingering power of that single cup of tea.
Asou Akiya stood, brushed the dust from his knees, and let out a small breath.
"I thought I'd be more embarrassed," he muttered, sticking out his tongue, eyes crinkling with faint amusement.
Back when he'd watched season one of Jujutsu Kaisen in his previous life, he'd felt nothing for any character. He criticised without mercy.
He thought Sukuna's revival arc was just imprisonment in slow motion.
He refused to call Gojo "the strongest."
He found Gojo's students unbearably naive.
The moment he saw them call their teacher an idiot to his face and still think they were in the right, he had laughed until he cried.
A single special-grade cursed tool—how much was that worth?
Gojo Satoru could hand them out like candy.
And the students' attitude? Barely civil on the surface.
That was what they called "keeping respect in their hearts"?
A foolish teacher.
Spoiled brats.
He truly couldn't bear to watch.
He really couldn't bear to watch anymore.
Only years later, when he finally sat down to the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie and season two, did he realize that Gojo Satoru wasn't the clown he'd once dismissed.
He was warm on the surface, ice at the core.
High-school Gojo (DK-Gojo) burst onto the screen like a revelation: layered, dazzling, a backstory so perfectly crafted that he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the greatest characters in all of anime.
Yet the twenty-eight-year-old Gojo lived exhausted, forever on overtime, as though the title "strongest" itself was a curse.
In the entire series, only Itadori Yuji and Okkotsu Yuta ever treated their teacher properly.
They remembered what Gojo carried for them.
They never badmouthed him.
When he needed support, they gave action, gave hugs, gave praise—like master and disciples keeping each other warm in the endless cold.
During the Shibuya Incident, when Gojo was sealed in the Prison Realm and Principal Yaga Masamichi was sentenced to death by the higher-ups, they made Yaga look like a man without a single friend in the world, not a first-grade sorcerer whose students filled the jujutsu society like peach and plum trees in full bloom.
So many lives those two had touched.
A drop of kindness should be repaid with a fountain.
Were all those graduates useless?
If it had been him…
"If it were me…"
Asou Akiya's voice lost every trace of gentleness. "I'd slap their faces until they swelled."
He carefully tidied the reception room: wiped away Yaga's fingerprints, overlaid his own faint cursed-energy scent, scrubbed the teacup inside and out until no trace remained.
Good student.
Start right now.
Never wait until someone is dying to put them in your end-of-life montage.
That's just pathetic.
He stepped outside, took a deep breath, and with one sweeping surge of cursed energy exorcised every low-grade spirit haunting the children's home.
The air instantly turned crisp and clean.
Yaga Masamichi, still not far down the road, glanced back.
He could feel an entire zone of minor curses vanish in the blink of an eye.
He no longer treated Asou Akiya like a child.
He acknowledged the terrifying clarity of that mind.
[He never exorcised them before—was he hiding his strength?
The moment I leave he wipes the place clean… Does he think that once he's officially accepted by Jujutsu High, curse users won't dare touch him?]
[What a ridiculously insecure brat.]
[A student born to chase the jujutsu world—cautious yet fearless.
He'll support his classmates well.]
This year…
This year was going to be something else entirely.