The alley was narrow, smelling of damp concrete and old trash, but the stench barely registered. Paralyzed, he stared at the reflection in the cracked window of a parked car.
The man looking back wasn't the guy who had died on Earth. This person was tall, with features so symmetrical and sharp they looked sculpted. His skin had a faint, golden glow to it, and his eyes didn't look human—they looked like they held the weight of a thousand prayers.
Even in a simple, dark outfit, the figure belonged on a pedestal in a cathedral rather than a backstreet in Tokyo.
"What the hell happened to me?" The whisper slipped out smooth, carrying a slight resonance that made the air around him hum.
As if answering the question, a translucent blue screen flickered into existence right in front of his face. It lacked a flashy sound effect or a grand announcement. It just sat there, waiting to be read.
[Status Window]
Name: (Unnamed)
Race: Special Grade Cursed Spirit (Incarnated)
Concept: The Fear of Divine Judgment / The Celestial Worthy
Condition: Reincarnated / Stable
A quick swipe of his hand passed right through the floating text, leaving only a faint ripple in the air.
"Special Grade Cursed Spirit?" he muttered, reading the words again with a deep frown. The terms felt familiar. Too familiar. Cursed Spirit. Special Grade.
Realization suddenly hit him. "Jujutsu Kaisen?" His voice bounced off the brick walls. "Are you kidding me? That's an anime."
Slumping back against the dirty stone, he tried to catch his breath. This was impossible. The memory of dying was crystal clear. It had been a fast, mundane death—slipping on an icy crosswalk back in Chicago, the blinding headlights of an oncoming truck, the sickening crunch. Then, just dark. Knowing he was dead, how was he standing here? What exactly was going on?
A glance down at his new body revealed a long, white coat with gold stitching over a black shirt and slacks. He flexed his hands. The flesh felt solid, yet strangely light. A weird energy pulsed just under the skin, making his fingertips tingle.
Footsteps echoed near the entrance of the alley. Two guys in gray business suits walked in, chatting loudly and looking at a phone.
Aware of how ridiculous he looked standing in the dark in this outfit, he tensed up and took a step back to clear the path.
"Excuse me," he said as they got close.
Neither man glanced his way. One of them walked right past, so close that his shoulder went straight through the fabric of the white coat. A weird, cold draft lingered where the businessman's arm had intersected with his own body.
They continued out the other side of the alley, laughing about something on the screen, completely unaware that they had just shared the space with someone else.
He watched them disappear around the corner. They hadn't seen a thing. They hadn't heard a sound.
The lore from the show drifted into his mind as he looked back at the blue screen hovering in the air. Normal humans couldn't see curses.
When he shifted his attention, the window followed, staying perfectly centered in his vision.
Leaving the brick walls behind, he walked toward the end of the alley. The quiet dampness gave way to the loud, chaotic hum of Tokyo. Cars rushed by, and the sidewalks were packed with people moving in every direction.
To test the theory again, he stepped right into the middle of the crowd. Nobody stopped. Nobody made eye contact. A woman carrying a grocery bag walked straight through his chest. It felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer for a split second, then the cold was gone.
A salaryman waiting at the crosswalk held his phone up, scrolling through messages. Stepping up behind him, he peeked over the man's shoulder.
The lock screen lit up. Right beneath the time, the date sat in bold white text: October 2018.
The air seemed to leave his lungs. If the timeline matched up, the worst events of this world were right around the corner. "You've gotta be—"
A heavy thud cut him off. A plastic bag snapped loudly, followed by the clatter of a tin can rolling across the pavement.
Two girls beside him gasped and jogged toward the sound. A businessman brushed right through his shoulder, rushing in the same direction. Turning around, he saw a small crowd forming near the curb just a few yards away.
Through a gap in the onlookers, he saw spilled groceries. A bruised apple sat near a storm drain.
Right in the center of the circle lay the woman who had walked through him a minute earlier.
She was curled into a tight ball on the concrete. Her fingers clawed frantically at the collar of her blouse, ripping a button loose as she tried to get air. She wasn't choking on anything physical; she was hyperventilating, letting out ragged, wet wheezes. Her face was chalk-white, slick with cold sweat, and her eyes stared blankly at the sky, blown wide with sheer, primal panic.
"Hey, miss? Are you okay?" A guy in a hoodie broke through the circle and knelt beside her. He reached out to help her up.
The second the guy's fingers brushed her shoulder, he violently yanks his hand away like he'd touched a hot stove. He scrambled backward, hitting the pavement hard. The color drained from his face as he clamped a hand over his own chest, suddenly dry heaving. He stared at the woman, his breathing turning shallow and frantic, too terrified to speak.
He backed away from the crowd. The guy on the ground was still gagging, and the woman's wheezing hadn't stopped.
Before anyone else could try to help her, the blue screen blinked, updating with new text.
[System Warning]
Passive Energy Leak Detected.
Current Control: 0%
Effect: Harmful to normal humans. Induces severe psychological trauma and physical distress.
Suggestion: Relocate to unpopulated areas (city outskirts) to practice energy suppression.
He swiped his hand through the screen to dismiss it. He didn't need to read it twice. If he stayed in the middle of Tokyo, people were going to keep dropping just from standing too close to him. If he made a scene, a sorcerer would show up and exorcise him before he even figured out how to throw a punch.
He turned and walked quickly down the block, keeping his distance from the pedestrians. Once he cleared the main intersection, he broke into a run.
He stuck to side streets and narrow alleys. Whenever someone walked toward him, he hugged the brick walls or stepped directly into the street to give them a wide berth.
He ran for a long time. He didn't track the minutes, but the sun started setting. His chest didn't heave, and his legs didn't ache. The physical limits he was used to were just gone.
The tall glass buildings slowly gave way to older, shorter apartment complexes, and the loud noise of the city faded into background traffic. He kept going until the streetlights became sparse. The sidewalks ended, turning into dirt paths leading up a wooded hill on the edge of the city.
He climbed until the trees blocked out the view of the streets below. Finding a small clearing, he stopped and looked down at his hands. The same strange energy from earlier was still humming under his skin, but now he noticed it was drifting off him like heat rising from pavement.
...
Deep inside the underground monitoring hub of Tokyo Jujutsu High, there were no flashing red lights or blaring sirens. It wasn't a movie. Instead, a rapid series of sharp, electronic chimes broke the quiet hum of the server room.
An auxiliary manager jerked in his seat, nearly knocking over his coffee. He leaned closer to the monitor, his eyes widening behind his glasses. "Sir. We have an anomaly."
Kiyotaka Ijichi, looking as sleep-deprived and stressed as ever, hurried over to the console. "Where? Did one of Master Tengen's barriers tear?"
"No tear. It just... appeared. Right in the middle of a commercial district." The technician's fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up a map of central Tokyo. A massive, pulsing crimson dot sat right on a crowded intersection.
Ijichi felt a cold sweat break out on his neck. "Grade?"
"The reading is off the charts. It's an unregistered Special Grade."
"But the energy signature is a mess. It's leaking everywhere. It's completely unregulated."
Ijichi stared at the screen in disbelief. Cursed spirits of that level didn't just spawn out of thin air. They grew, they festered, and the "Windows" usually tracked the buildup of negative emotion long before a Special Grade fully took shape. This thing had bypassed all of that. It was as if someone had just dropped a radioactive bomb in the middle of the street.
"Are there casualties?" Ijichi asked, dreading the answer.
"Reports are hitting the police scanners right now. Multiple pedestrians collapsing at a crosswalk. Severe panic attacks, hyperventilation, some falling into shock. No physical trauma, but whatever this thing is... just standing near it is frying regular people's minds."
"Where is it now?"
"Moving," the technician said, watching the red dot slide across the map. "It's heading west, out of the dense city center. Toward the wooded hills on the outskirts."
Ijichi pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Sending students to investigate was completely out of the question. Even dispatching a Grade 1 sorcerer like Nanami or Mei Mei would be a massive risk. An unregistered Special Grade with an energy signature this chaotic was a death sentence for almost anyone.
There was only one option.
He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the contact list. He hit dial on the number he relied on—and dreaded—the most. It rang three times before a loud, cheerful voice picked up, accompanied by the background noise of a busy street.
"Yo, Ijichi! Don't tell me you forgot the kikufuku mochi I asked for."
"Gojo-sensei," Ijichi said, his voice tight. "We have a severe emergency. A massive, unregistered Special Grade curse just manifested in central Tokyo."
"Huh? Out of nowhere?" Satoru Gojo sounded mildly interested. The sound of a wrapper crinkling echoed through the speaker. "That's weird."