William Zenin was a strange boy with a stranger still life.
His birth had come from a union of two irresponsible people withholding potentially world ending secrets from each other.
Secrets that they, to this day, have yet to inform each other of.
Not that it mattered – they had long since separated.
They didn't concern themselves with each other's lives because they didn't care for each other. William didn't care about the situation because they didn't particularly care for him either.
A tragic situation, really.
It was the morning of his eleventh birthday that for the first time in his life, William refused to leave his bed.
I can just tell today will be a horrible day.
His face was sunk into his pillow, and his hands were wrapped around a second pillow.
Even in bed, he could remember the day his life was ruined.
It had been a normal day for five-year-old William. The birds were chirping, the wind was slow, and the sun was lazily shining. That was until his father came home.
In retrospect, William should have known something was wrong from that alone.
William's father was not exactly the most present of all fathers. A trait he shared with his ex-wife.
William had been making his one breakfast before the man came and had to stay hungry till lunch when the man left. It would have sounded amusing if it had been a bar joke.
A hungry man walks into a room with a hungry child and food. Then the man leaves. What's left in the room?
William did not find it funny.
The man walked in, ate William's food, told him he will soon likely awaken as a jujutsu sorcerer, and there is an entire secret society full of these sorcerers.
Marvelous. Simply fabulous.
It wasn't all bad, however. Through the history books William had managed to get his hands on soon after, if he had been born a few centuries earlier, his life would have been far worse.
The second golden era of jujutsu.
An era where monsters in human flesh like Satoru Gojo, Ryomen Sukuna, and Yuji Itadori lived. The particulars were lost to history, however, William understood this much: the current modern sorcerers would be instantly obliterated by mere proximity to any of these sorcerers. A mortal simply had no place in a land where gods walked.
After the death of Ryomen Sukuna, Yuji Itadori lived a long life where he made it his personal mission to exorcise every single curse in the nation. His efficiency rivaled the record-breaking levels of Satoru Gojo, and his influence was such that upon his death, the balance of the world shifted for the second time in known history.
The first major shift in the balance of the world was the birth of the user of the Six Eyes, which resulted in cursed spirits strengthening. The second shift was the death of Yuji Itadori through old age, which resulted in cursed spirits weakening.
Special grade curses were a myth.
Grade One curses were just as rare.
Grade 2 curses were considered the most dangerous curses one could encounter.
Slowly, the jujutsu world changed.
The big three clans dissolved.
With the weakening of curses, sorcerers weakened as well. Fewer and fewer sorcerers awakened cursed techniques and fewer still were born with large reserves. The clans were far from unified anymore. There was simply no reasonable way to maintain their continued existence.
From what William understood, most of their profit came from exorcising strong curses with their powerful techniques. Strong curses and techniques that, unfortunately for them, no longer existed.
Inherited techniques were a legend old men bragged to their grandchildren about while the children in question slowly began to question their grandfather's sanity.
No money, no technique, no clan.
Simple as that.
William Zenin, although a Zenin, had never seen or met any other Zenin aside from his father. The books he got his hands on had come from one of the sorcerers who exorcised curses as a hobby. Apparently, the man had found the five-year-old's solemnity cute.
All in all, the sorcerer situation was manageable. Of course, William hadn't known that at the time.
Then, on the same day, his mother came to visit.
In retrospect, William should have known something was terribly wrong when she arrived.
Still reeling from founding out he might be a sorcerer, unaware of what it truly meant, the boy was preparing dinner with the somber attitude of a man who was mentally writing his will.
He never got to eat the dinner he was making.
A selfish woman walks into a room with a hungry child and food. A satisfied woman walks out. What's left in the room?
Still not funny.
His mother, as it turned out, had a secret just as world-shattering as his father.
She was a witch.
Therefore, William might be a wizard.
Excellent. Simply splendid.
She explained this fact would not affect him at all until he was eleven years old. Then it would dictate the rest of his life.
A seven year long boarding school, an insane dark lord that had gone around murdering wizards five years ago, an infamous hero who had risen to fame as a baby and had never been seen since, and magic.
William had no idea what to do with the information.
So, he did nothing.
Quietly listening to his mother's dry voice, he nodded along as he watched her eat his food. At least she's giving me some details. Father spent more time chewing than talking.
She left and William went to bed. At the time, the boy only had one thought. This seems like a problem for future William.
Future William was now current day William. Current day William was not happy at all.
He was deeply unsatisfied, in fact.
By his calculations, he was the same age as the infamous Harry Potter. Looking at it objectively, there should be no problems with this. However, every bit of life experience eleven-year-old William had – which was more than what most twice his age had – told him this was a sign of terrible things to come.
All William could do was hope he truly wasn't a wizard.
He didn't have much hope. Praying he wasn't a sorcerer had proved fruitless when the boy woke up one day with a splitting headache.
Information had poured into six-year-old William's head.
Projection Sorcery
A cursed technique. A Zenin clan inherited technique at that. A few hundred years ago it would have made him a rich young master. Now, it was merely another burden on William's ever-growing list of things he hates.
(The list goes like this: Father, Mother, everything associated with Father, everything associated with Mother, Me, Morning, Effort, Initiating conversations…)
Please Merlin. Gojo. Anyone! I beg of you! Make me a muggle!
Just as he finished his internal plea, an owl flew into his room and dropped a letter.
Oh, for Merlin's sake!
William had left a window open.
Forcing himself up, he felt his face contort into a pout.
He stared at the letter.
A red stamp. A logo.
Hogwarts.
William's shoulders shook.
A single tear rolled through his face.
"Fuck my chud life." The eleven-year-old whispered.