Chapter 2: This Body Is Useless
Haruto made it exactly fourteen steps before he had to stop and catch his breath.
Fourteen steps. Down a single flight of stairs.
He leaned against the wall of the apartment building stairwell with his hands on his knees wheezing like a sixty year old smoker.
[HOST'S ENDURANCE: 2/100. SYSTEM RECOMMENDS NOT RUNNING.]
"I wasn't running. I was walking down stairs."
[SYSTEM STANDS BY ITS RECOMMENDATION.]
The building was a cheap four story apartment complex in what he guessed was Shinjuku based on the view from the window. The kind of place a college student with no money would live. Which made sense because based on the student ID he'd found in the apartment this body belonged to a kid named Akira Tanaka. Twenty years old. Attending a local university. No family photos anywhere in the apartment.
Just textbooks, instant ramen cups, and an unhealthy amount of manga volumes stacked under the desk.
At least the previous owner had good taste. He spotted a full collection of Chainsaw Man and Spy x Family. No Jujutsu Kaisen though. Which made sense. You wouldn't need the manga if you were living in the actual world.
The apartment hadn't given him much else useful. Some clothes that fit loose on his skinny frame. A wallet with about 8000 yen in cash. A transit card. And the phone which thankfully had no password.
[TIMER: 23:42:15]
"Alright. Jujutsu High." He pushed off the wall and continued down the stairs at a pace that would embarrass a grandmother. "Where the hell even is Jujutsu High?"
He pulled out the phone and checked the bookmarks the previous Akira had saved. There were articles about curses. Urban legends about monsters in Tokyo. Forum posts about people seeing things that shouldn't exist.
This kid had known about curses. Maybe he could even see them.
That thought sent a chill down Haruto's spine.
If the previous owner could see curses that meant this body had at least some spiritual awareness. Which meant curses could see HIM.
He stepped out of the apartment building into the street.
Tokyo hit him like a wall. The noise. The people. The sheer density of everything moving and breathing and existing all at once. Cars hummed past. Salary men marched in groups toward the train station. A convenience store across the street had its automatic doors sliding open and closed as people streamed in and out.
It all looked normal.
Except for the thing sitting on top of the convenience store.
It was small. Maybe the size of a dog. Black and shapeless with too many eyes. Like someone had taken a shadow and given it teeth. It crouched on the roof and watched the people below with a hunger that made Haruto's stomach drop.
Nobody else could see it. He was sure of that because a woman walked directly under it carrying grocery bags and the thing's head tracked her movement and she didn't even flinch.
"System."
[YES HOST?]
"I can see curses."
[CONFIRMED. HOST HAS INHERITED THE PREVIOUS BODY'S SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION. YOU CAN SEE CURSED SPIRITS.]
"Can they see me?"
[YES.]
"Can I fight them?"
[WITH YOUR CURRENT STATS? NO.]
"What happens if one attacks me?"
[YOU DIE.]
"Cool. Love that for me."
He kept his head down and walked. Fast. Well as fast as his noodle legs could manage which was basically a brisk shuffle. The curse on the convenience store didn't follow him. It was too weak and too focused on the negative emotions from the shoppers to bother with one skinny kid.
But there were more.
He saw three of them on the first block alone. A blob clinging to a traffic light. Something with too many fingers pressed against the window of an office building. And a tiny worm-like thing slithering along the gutter.
All weak. All grade 4 at most. The bottom feeders of the curse world.
But knowing what he knew about JJK there were things out there that could level a city block. Finger bearers. Special grades. And in about a month ancient sorcerers resurrected by Kenjaku would be walking the streets looking for people to kill for points.
He needed to get to Jujutsu High. Today.
The train ride was an experience.
Haruto squeezed into a rush hour car packed so tight that he could feel the body heat of every person around him. Which with an endurance stat of 2 meant he was sweating through his shirt in about forty seconds.
He'd searched the phone's map for anything related to the school but found nothing. Jujutsu High wasn't exactly on Google Maps. What he did know from the manga was that it was somewhere in the mountains outside of Tokyo. Hidden by barriers. Protected by veils.
In other words you couldn't just walk up to it.
You had to be invited. Or found.
Or you had to make enough noise that someone came to check on you.
He thought about that as the train rocked back and forth. The people around him looked tired. Normal. A girl next to him was scrolling through her phone with earbuds in. A businessman held onto the ceiling strap with one hand and a briefcase with the other. An old woman sat in the priority seat knitting something that looked like a tiny hat.
None of them could see the curse sitting in the corner of the train car.
It was bigger than the ones outside. Grade 3 maybe. Humanoid but wrong. Its limbs were too long and its mouth was too wide and it was staring directly at Haruto with eyes that didn't blink.
His heart hammered.
[CURSED SPIRIT DETECTED. GRADE 3 ESTIMATED.]
[THREAT LEVEL: LETHAL TO HOST.]
[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT. DO NOT SHOW FEAR.]
"Don't show fear?" he thought because he sure as hell wasn't going to talk out loud to a floating blue screen on a packed train. "My entire body is fear right now."
The curse tilted its head. Like a dog hearing a strange noise. It unfolded one of those too long arms and reached toward the aisle.
Toward him.
Haruto's breath stopped.
The fingers stretched closer. Black and wrong and dripping something that hissed when it touched the floor. The people standing between them didn't notice. Couldn't see it. The girl with the earbuds adjusted her hair and nearly brushed against the curse's arm without knowing.
Five feet away.
Three feet.
One foot.
The train lurched to a stop. The doors opened. People poured in and out.
Haruto didn't think. He moved. Shoved through the crowd with strength he didn't know this body had and launched himself through the doors onto the platform. He stumbled and nearly fell but caught himself on a pillar and kept moving.
He didn't look back until he was up the stairs and out of the station standing in the open air breathing like he'd just run a marathon.
[CURSED SPIRIT DID NOT PURSUE. IT RETURNED TO PASSIVE STATE.]
"Passive state. It was reaching for me."
[GRADE 3 SPIRITS HAVE LIMITED AWARENESS. IT MAY HAVE BEEN REACHING FOR THE EMOTIONAL RESIDUE NEAR YOU, NOT YOU SPECIFICALLY.]
"May have?"
[SYSTEM CANNOT CONFIRM.]
He leaned against the station wall and let his heartbeat slow down. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. His legs trembled. His hands shook.
This was real. This was actually real. He was in the Jujutsu Kaisen world with zero power and everything wanted to eat him.
"I need help." He said it out loud. Not to the system. Not to anyone. Just the truth spoken into the Tokyo air.
He needed to find a sorcerer. Any sorcerer. Someone who could see what he saw and who could point him toward the school.
But how do you find a sorcerer in a city of fourteen million people?
The answer found him.
He'd been wandering for two hours. His legs screamed. His stomach growled because Akira Tanaka apparently hadn't eaten since yesterday. He'd stopped at a park to sit on a bench and reconsider every life choice both in this life and his previous one.
That's when the curse appeared.
Not a weak one this time. Not a grade 4 bottom feeder or a grade 3 lurker.
This thing was grade 2 at least. It pulled itself out of the ground behind the public restroom like something crawling out of a nightmare. Massive. Eight feet tall. A body that looked like it was made from melted bone and teeth. Four arms. Two mouths. And it moved fast.
The people in the park didn't see it but they FELT it. A mother grabbed her child and hurried away without knowing why. An old man on a bench packed up his newspaper and left. The air got heavy and cold.
Haruto froze.
The curse's heads both turned toward him. The only person in the park who was looking directly at it. The only person whose eyes met its eyes.
"System?"
[GRADE 2 CURSED SPIRIT DETECTED.]
[THREAT LEVEL: IMMEDIATE DEATH.]
[RECOMMENDATION: RUN.]
"Where?!"
[ANYWHERE THAT IS NOT HERE.]
He ran.
Or tried to. His body managed about fifteen steps before his legs gave out and he crashed to the ground. His palms scraped against concrete. His knee tore open on the edge of a path.
Behind him the curse roared. A sound that no normal person could hear but that vibrated in his bones like a bass speaker pressed against his skull.
It was coming.
He could hear the impact of its massive limbs hitting the ground. Feel the vibration getting closer. He rolled onto his back and saw it above him blocking out the sky with its grotesque body.
Both mouths opened wide.
"SOMEONE—"
A line of light cut through the air.
Clean. Precise. So fast that Haruto only saw the after-image.
The curse split in half. Straight down the middle. Both halves collapsed sideways and dissolved into black smoke that evaporated before it hit the ground.
Standing where the curse had been was a figure.
Tall. Athletic. Holding a polearm that caught the afternoon sun along its blade. Dark hair tied up in a high ponytail. Jujutsu High uniform with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows revealing lean muscular forearms.
She turned to look at him.
Amber eyes behind dark framed glasses stared down at where he lay sprawled on the ground bleeding from his knee with his chest heaving.
Maki Zenin.
In person she was terrifying.
Not terrifying like the curse. Terrifying like looking at a thunderstorm from too close. Beautiful and dangerous and completely beyond anything he could handle.
She didn't offer her hand.
"You can see them." It wasn't a question.
"Y-yeah."
She studied him for a long moment. Eyes moving from his face to his trembling hands to the blood on his knee. Measuring him. Deciding if he was worth the effort of further conversation.
"Pathetic." She slid the polearm onto her back and turned away. "If you can see curses and can't fight them you should stay indoors."
"Wait—"
She was already walking.
"WAIT!" He forced himself up. His legs screamed but he didn't care. "Are you from Jujutsu High? I need to get to Jujutsu High!"
She stopped. Didn't turn around.
"Why would a civilian need to go to Jujutsu High?"
"Because if I don't I'm going to die."
"People die every day."
"Please." He hated how his voice sounded. Small. Desperate. But he was past caring about dignity. "I know about curses. I know about sorcerers. I know about things that are going to happen and if I don't get to someone who can help me—"
She turned around. Those amber eyes locked onto his.
"Things that are going to happen?"
He realized he'd said too much.
"I... I just need to talk to someone. Anyone. A teacher. A student. Anyone at Jujutsu High."
She stared at him for what felt like a full minute. He could feel her deciding. Calculating. This wasn't a woman who made decisions based on emotion. She assessed threats and opportunities the same way a predator assessed prey.
Right now he wasn't sure which category he fell into.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Haruto. Akira Haruto." He combined both names without thinking. The dead owner's family name and his own first name shoved together.
Maki looked at him one more time. Head to toe. Skinny arms. Bleeding knee. Soaked shirt clinging to a body that had zero business being anywhere near a curse.
"Follow me." She turned and started walking. "Keep up or I leave you."
He limped after her.
[QUEST UPDATE: REACH JUJUTSU HIGH WITHIN 24 HOURS]
[PROGRESS: CONTACT ESTABLISHED WITH JUJUTSU SORCERER]
[BONUS DETECTED: FIRST CONTACT IS A FEMALE SORCERER. 3X MULTIPLIER ACTIVE.]
[SYSTEM NOTE: THE FEMALE SORCERER IS MAKI ZENIN. SYSTEM RECOMMENDS... NOT STARING.]
He was staring.
She was walking ahead of him with long confident strides. The polearm on her back caught the light with every step. Her ponytail swayed against her neck.
He forced his eyes forward.
One month. He had one month to prepare for the end of the world.
But first he had to survive following a woman who could kill him faster than any curse.