Chapter Text
End
Death was a natural construct.
It would snip and snap at the thinnest of threads called life once it decided that it was already your time— because humanity has always been delicate with a short span in all their transient glory. One minute you were begrudgingly treading through the difficulties of puberty, then in the blink of an eye you were on your death bed, barely hanging surrounded by the people who regarded you as someone who mattered in their lives.
At least that's how you imagined your last moments would be, who knew that dying could blur out the years of memories you've spent as a person? You weren't even sure how old you were when death permanently drew its curtains close and claimed you as its own.
Then again, did anyone who died actually come back to live and tell the tale of what to expect on the other side?
Numerous possibilities have made you ponder before.
Would there be cherubs who'll sing of your most compassionate deeds whilst welcoming you in front of gigantic gates above a sea of clouds? Would the devil himself be the one greeting you as he dragged your damned of a soul down to the pits of blazing hellfire?
Endless possibilities.
There was also the notion of reincarnation, about being tossed back into the cycle to totally experience all of that from the very beginning.
Life was as much of a tedious pattern as it was a gift. You've been in a whirlwind of ups and downs, achievements and disappointments, and frankly, the entire shtick was exhausting that you had hoped to fulfill what was written on your tombstone after all of this: truly Rest In Peace.
A more unfortunate scenario would probably be being swallowed in a limbo with your idle consciousness dragging on in perpetual vain, while the more scientific approach you could come up with was...
Nothing.
Nothing else was beyond the grave. You would simply cease to exist after everything's over. Just you and your rotting bones together ten feet under in an eternity of slumber.
However, the cosmos believed it was time to chuck your assumptions to the trash, let you experience it firsthand by blessing you with another opportunity in this seamless course deemed as life.
The last time you had shut your eyes, your vision was slowly dimmed with black splotches. The first time you opened them again, harsh white light blinded your sight.
Shoot, is this heaven?
It was like being pushed out of complete darkness with bright glows hugging your form. Something worth noting was that you felt oddly ten times smaller and were smothered up in soft sheets after the ordeal of violently ripping you away from the void.
There were a lot of uncomfortable tugging and background noises, before you managed to single out a nearby person's voice, whose heavy breathing seemed like they just finished running a lap. "You're so... so beautiful."
It was when the image became somewhat clearer and the weird bouts of light headedness disappearing slightly that you realized an enormous, sweaty woman was holding you captive.
"Welcome home."
What.
You forcibly wriggled your way out of her touch, threw countless profanities at her face— honestly what the fuck, only for your demands to come out as unintelligible series of cries.
You've got to be kidding me.
And then you wailed nonstop like the baby that you were.
Rebirth
So it's that.
You have heard and read about the miracles, slash horrors, of people who have been gifted with second chances in life before. Surely, being reincarnated and squeezed into the tiny frame of a newborn meant wiping your past clean into a new slate of a human being. So why were you painfully aware of your current setting in which you're stuck in a toddler's body?
In spite of your curiosity revolving around the supernatural, it was a realm you did not truly understand back when you were still alive. Most would say there were stranger things in this world that could never receive proper answers, and they're right. But what, pray tell, kind of act did you commit in your previous life that warranted you this judgement?
Thankfully when you hurled hysterical questions at the people around you, the words came out as a jumbled mess of squeals and sobs.
Right, because which one day old infant would be able to engage in a full on conversation? Goo goo gaga was the sole extent of your language capacity for now.
It would be a nightmare if the opposite happened. People would be fainting and chanting prayers left and right, shrieking at you for speaking articulate sentences at this age. You might as well be the spawn of satan in that case.
"Aren't you the cutest, yes you are," the woman chuckled as she caressed your face. You two were inseparable (duh!) and showering you with affection all day long was a big part of the blooming relationship. "Did you know? Your name is a mix of mine and your father's. You have his eyes too." She rested her forehead against yours. "But nothing beats my features on you, Riko."
At least I won't get bullied for a generic name like that.
Was what you wanted to tell her, but she perceived your supposed comment as an adorable whine that she merely kissed you with her lips twisting into a contented smile.
Rejection
The following year was awfully uneventful considering you were familiar with the process of growing up. A few aspects of your new life have made it extra unbearable though, what with you being persistently in denial.
A shadow shifted high up in the ceiling of your room.
"What the hell is that," you muttered as the dark shaped figure faded within the walls the moment your mother barged through the door. Do three year olds really have this wild perception of the world around them?
"It's time for breakfast!"
It felt like you have been frequently spotting things that were not there whenever you did a double take. You mulled over the thought if you were becoming delusional due to the side effects of an unexplained rebirth.
"Riko?"
Are you really... gone from your old life? Or was this just a plain dream that you have been stuck in for far too long?
"Riko-chan."
Not to mention that name which did nothing but give you an unsettling curl at the bottom of your stomach for some reason.
Hisako, the woman— your parent— mother!— spun you around with a worried gaze. She lightly tapped your cheeks to bring you back to your senses. "Sweetie, are you alright?"
You must have been facing still the blank space of your room, dwelling inside a tiny bubble of your past. Before anyone knew it, you were stumbling back to the present, right into the arms of your newfound family.
And just like that, with a flick of reality snapping you out of it, you meekly embraced her. "Sorry, mama."
"Shh. Tell mama and papa if you don't feel good, okay?"
"... Okay."
Now if you weren't so much as spiritually aware it would probably be easier to accept things as they were, no matter how unexplainable.
Alas you'd always find your mind wandering, retreating into the deepest corners of your core that fragments would start piecing together those fleeting albeit warm reminders of another home.
And then you're back rejecting the act of grace that you (didn't ask for!) were bestowed with.
Should've stayed dead. Dead. Dead.
Remembrance
Why you were mourning a life you couldn't even remember well, you had no idea. Nonetheless, it looked like something in your past wasn't quite done with you yet with its determination to catch up on your tracks.
You nearly lost hold of your spoon as soon as the memory of your old name came knocking at you in the early hours of the day, right in the middle of breakfast while the three of you went on with your meals.
"Riko-chan, what's wrong?" Hisako asked, her brows creased in concern. How wouldn't she be when you're staring there in a daze, your fingers trembling with the spoon paused just inches from your gaping mouth like you were having some sort of epiphany?
"I... my name's—"
"What? What is it?" Reiji folded the morning paper shut and shot up from his place across the table. "Are you choking?"
"I'm—"
"Riko!"
"I'm mama, mama's cooking is out of space!" you blurted out the most random statement you could string up from your nervous-wreck of a brain. What kind of excuse is that?!
To you, it was a piss poor cover-up that you wanted to bang your head along the table. But to your parents, it was enough to send them back on their seats, releasing simultaneous sighs of relief.
Your mother placed a gentle hand over yours. "You almost gave me a heart attack."
Reiji was shaking his head with a fond smile. "You always cooked better than those five star restaurants we have been passing by at the shopping center," he said, implying how he could never be satisfied by anybody's culinary work unless it was his wife. "They could learn a thing or two from you."
Hisako rolled her eyes. "Oh stop it, Reiji."
"I'm serious. It was what won my heart in the first place, remember?" he insisted.
"Yes, and you are such a sweet talker too from what I can remember..."
The reminiscent exchange of their high-school days together did not register in your mind. No, you were currently floating in a different plane, straying far away from the presence of the two as if there was a button automatically tuning out their voices.
For the two adults, it was normal for a child like you to drift off from their conversation.
On the other hand, it was a grim reminder of what you might have been missing this whole time.
You absentmindedly poked and picked your food apart.
I wonder how I died.
Beginning
You were four years old when the object of your unrest emerged from hiding.
Just when home started to feel a lot more like home, death had once again crawled its way from below the depths and towards you, except it spared you from its clutches this time.
No, not out of kindness nor pity. Death had spat at your existence, striking you with the harsh truth that you deserved to be alone.
It wasn't fair.
You wished that it had fetched you along with your parents to get it over with instead of leaving you behind the hospital with a few scars and a trauma for a lifetime.
An accident.
They ruled out the car wreck as such during the investigation, as simple as that, and there were no other indications that it was anything but so the case quickly came to a close.
You were hardly given a moment to grieve over everything— the source of your growing anxiety introducing itself as the one who'd adopt the lost and orphaned soul that you were.
"We found you."
It was a foreign face that greeted you. You were expecting a direct relative, a cousin, an uncle, an aunt or anything! Rather they, who you've never seen before, came filing in the room with disturbingly knowing grins disguised as sympathy for your condition.
"A candidate for the Star Plasma Vessel."
The constant whispers of a past you had thought been buried instantly resurfaced back. You were trying to make out the words leaving their lips one by one but all you could see was the burst of dozens of pages fluttering right before your very eyes.
Why the feeling of loneliness seeped through the broken cracks of what you believed were the missing chunks of your own puzzle— why you've had this wary feeling of being watched the moment you were thrusted into this world— why there was always a sense of foreboding bound to the name that was Amanai Riko.
Amanai Riko.
Amanai Riko.
Star Plasma Vessel.
Tengen.
Death.
Red.
Greatest duo.
Riko.
Dead.
It's going to be my blood.
Riko.
It's going to be me.
The cog.
The cog!
I'm just a cog.
For Shibuya.
Three things you could pick out from the flurry of emotions and memories; one, you wore the existence of Amanai Riko, two, somewhere between Riko's youth, Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru would become her— your!— escorts, three, after that came Fushiguro Toji murdering you in cold blood to halt the merge with Tengen.
A kickstart to that stitched bastard's plans and the catastrophic downfall of jujutsu society, the unbelievable defeat of the strongest in Shibuya.
You were not meant for another chance at life.
Sitting here now amidst the people who would soon keep you under their wing and nurture the perfect vessel for Tengen, it was long ago established that you were destined to be a pawn in the grand scheme of things.
And your death would certainly be one of the keys for the machine to start rolling towards the golden era of great sorcerers and curses alike.