Work Text:
The sun was coming through the window, slipping through the small cracks that the curtain did not cover.
Suguru slowly started to open his eyes, rolling to the side and rubbing his eyes to shake the sleepiness away.
The silence in the room was the same as always, alone again.
His parents were working and the neighbors were too far from his home, and even if they were closer he would share a minute of his life with them. Everyone in his village treated him as a weirdo, the looks on their face every time he was around, the whispers and rumors; always so shameless.
He wished his mother was at home more. Or that perhaps his father was closer and not so reserved with his affections.
He was pretty aware of his loneliness, it was a painful truth that he had already assimilated.
Distant family, disowned by his neighbors, with no friends.
He got out of bed and looked at the floor, searching for reasons to go out into the world; he decided to do it because of the inertia of the universe.
As a routine, he feeded the cows and sheeps. He washed the dishes and organized his room, made a breakfast of champions, which means a bowl of cereal with yogurt and fruits.
The only sound on the house was the one of chewing and the clicking of the spoon. He often dreamed of having a happy breakfast like one of those on the TV shows where the families shared breakfast and wished a “Good day” to everyone before leaving to their respective responsibilities.
He went back to his room to go to his desk and do homework. As the math problems were getting harder he wished he had a schoolmate to help him, maybe to laugh at the silly mistakes.
As he finished his school duties he decided to go to the garden and summon one of his favorite curses, it was a kind one from grade 3, almost harmless unless given orders. It looked like a mixture between a goat with his little horns, but also like a caterpillar with a long chubby body and more than a couple eyes. It had some fur so it was soft to touch and surprisingly didn’t stink as almost every other curse.
It was a very particular curse, the aspect wasn’t terrifying and for the moment it was the closest to a friend Suguru could have.
As soon as the little curse was fully summoned, it ran swiftly to pounce on Suguru. The little kid laughed with his eyes closed and let the creature enjoy the company, even if it was more in the other direction, Suguru was the one enjoying the creature company. Then he started playing with a rope, Suguru runned away and the curse immediately tried to follow him to catch the rope.
After a while they started to feel tired and fell into the grass, Suguru laughed softly while watching the meringue coloured clouds, trying to decipher the figures and talking out loud his hypothesis. The curse couldn't answer anything, at the end of the day it was a grade 3 curse with no language conscience.
As the sun was getting bigger and positioning itself at a specific point that indicated that it was getting closer to midday, Suguru went to his bedroom to change his clothes to the school uniform. Once he was ready he brushed his teeths and grabbed his bag with notebooks and lunch.
The road was long and silent so he decided to summon the twin curses he had, they were like small balls resembling a frog but with a weird fur on the top of their heads, each one had an eye. They were kinda funny because of their way of walking around.
Suguru was a person who liked to walk fast, trying to not interrupt the flow of walking of the other people or maybe trying to stick to the punctuality hour. But today the discouragement and the manifestation of his low spirits that tormented his soul; he was walking slowly, almost like kicking his steps and getting lost in the landscape of an empty land with nothing to offer him.
When he, sadly, saw the school gate, he unsummoned the two curses that made him company on his walk. Then grabbing on tightly to the straps of his backpack he entered into the gray institution.
After another academic day of the same shit, classes where he was distracted and dissociated imagining fake scenarios, the breaks between classes consisted merely of going to the library to read old and incomplete manga. Laughter and pointing as the soundtrack of his school experience, by this point he was used to it.
Suguru looked carefully at the clock, 5 minutes left before the exit bell ringed. He hurried to pack his things and to be ready to sprint towards the gate. With his senses alert, he did so in the exact second he heard the shrill and loud bell.
The scenery seemed to change slightly after going through the gate. A few steps further he felt the refreshing silence of leaving his classmates behind.
He summoned his curses again, the twin curses that accompanied him in the morning and also the one he liked to play with.
The long road again, the green fields and the sleeping cows.
The silence and the loneliness, the cars fast running in the road.
Alone again at home he went straight to his bedroom, where his frustration seemed to explode.
Suguru burst into tears, sobbing and screaming.
Wishing he was a different kid, with more loving parents, with friends, with a normal life and not this burden of having magic powers.
He wanted to be loved. He wanted his biggest dream to be a nice thing like a travel, a profession or something like that and not the fervent desire of that loneliness and pain in his chest would disappear, he wanted to fill the void that his little childish heart had to bear.
He fell asleep crying and wishing that tomorrow when he woke up, he was someone different. WIth a different face and different life.
His wish was in bane. Next morning he woke up with the same sad face, little dark bags under his swollen eyes, the same pout on his lips and the same heavy weight on his back.
The only thing that changed was the presence of an old man with a weird haircut, he introduced himself as Yaga Masamichi, the teacher of Jujutsu High.
Suguru thought if that man was his key to heaven. Suguru didn’t know that it was just the first face of the second ring of his own hell.