Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kasumi Miwa was an average girl. Maybe in another life, her average nature would have led to an equally average life; from graduating from an average high school, attending an average university, and eventually becoming a run-of-the mill office lady.

This was not that timeline.

Average girl Miwa found herself saddled the triplefold burden of mouths to feed, parents who had gone out for milk to never come back, and curses that she could see since the day she was born.

So average girl Miwa learned the New Shadow Style from a mentor who taught her how to survive in a world cruel to the average and useless. She found herself enrolling in a school full of unusual people, which made her the strange one for being so normal. There, the average girl found herself making quick friends with a shy boy more machine than man. Together they learned and grew, and maybe they would have loved together, too - but she realized her love too late, as was the fatal flaw of being an average girl. Emboldened by that love, New Shadow Style user Kasumi put everything on the line against the Special Grade who was, but also was not Suguru Geto.

Miwa had lost more than just the fight. Mechamaru was dead. Mai was dead. Todo was severely injured. Momo and Kamo were making plans to flee the country with whatever family they had left.

Then there was useless Miwa, who couldn't even swing her sword to support her family anymore.

But this... was not that timeline, either.

In this timeline, average girl Kasumi Miwa lived with a Karin Harutoki, her not-so-average younger sister.

And that alone made all the difference.

Kasumi Miwa, barely one-and-a-half into her life, watched in rapt attention as her baby sister was about to reveal her eyes to the world. The doctors had all been concerned - stillborn, they thought at first. It would be a blessing if she was, she heard her mother whisper. But her little sister's heart pitter-pattered still, and the doctors could only scratch their heads and say that all was (probably) well.

She gasped and tugged on her mother's faded hospital gown.

"Mama, look, look! Waking up!"

Her mother could only smile.

"Yes, that's her, Kasumi," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "this is your new baby sister."

"What's her name?"

Her mother's arms were too tired to lift something as beautiful as her sister. So Kasumi's stubby little arms raised her up instead.

"Harutoki Karin," her mother breathed as if a huge weight had been taken off her shoulders.

"Oh." Kasumi frowned, "why is her name different from ours?"

She didn't notice her mother's smile growing more strained. It would be years until Kasumi would finally understand why.

"It was her daddy's last name."

"Okay," knowing nothing else, Kasumi nodded and accepted this new facet of her growing life. The concept of a papa remained so mysterious and enigmatic to her not-yet-developed brain. She recognized the difference between boy-adults and girl-adults. But why did some of her friends have a mama and a boy-adult named papa? Why did some of her friends have a papa but not a mama? Why did some of her friends make fun of other friends who had neither?

It didn't make sense, and she was still so curious - but Mama didn't like answering those questions. So Kasumi decided that there were more important things to care about, like precariously balancing her sister on her lap and-

Oh, her sister was awake!

Ordinary brown eyes met a left eye that blinked cyan and a right eye gazing magenta. Two entirely different worlds mixed together to make a strange new shade.

She wondered what she looked like to her sister who glittered like gemstones compared to a dull girl like her. One of her friends said that her azure hair was pretty - but it felt a lot less special when it was her face that reflected back.

Her sister's eyes were closed, now.

Maybe they would open again. Maybe they would not. But she decided that she liked looking after her baby sister, and that was okay for today.

Kasumi Miwa was blessed with a little sister named Karin Harutoki, and she already loved her so much.

It was only a year later when she began seeing things. Scary things. Dangerous things. Nobody else could see them, so Kasumi Miwa pretended to not see them too. No more crying to Mama about a monster underneath her bed; Mama was busy with her brothers, so she had to be brave and sleep alone for Mama. Even as she felt fingers crawling up her spine and sucking up any precious warmth she had left, Kasumi Miwa stayed a good girl.

Monsters weren't real. Scary things weren't real.

Because Mama was scarier when she got mad, and Kasumi Miwa was a smart girl.

Sometimes, Kasumi Miwa had to be a bad girl. When the scary things tried sneaking up on her sister, she had to be a bad girl and use a stick to whack it away. If there was a scary thing looking in from outside, she had to shut all the windows closed and double-lock the doors, even if that meant Mama would be locked out, too.

"Nee-san," Karin spoke for the first time, in her hand-me-down rickety crib that Kasumi had outgrown a few months ago, and Kasumi's worst fears came true, "you can see them, too?"

"Shh," Kasumi extended a shaky pinky finger, "it's our secret, just between us, okay?"

Karin nodded back, and the pinky promise was sealed.

There was a strange man in their home. His eyes were like a dead fish's. Nothing like the beautiful gemstones of her sister, but ordinary things need not be unkind. Her mother, no longer seeing herself fit to take care of her, her sister, and her brothers all at once - was the one who announced this new change to her life.

"Kasumi, be a good girl for Kusakabe-san, alright? And take care of your sister," because I won't, was left unsaid.

"Okay, mom." Kasumi replied, the same as she had done for the thousandth time.

The man reached into his pocket for a cigarette, then stopped himself. He knelt down to Kasumi's height, placing her soft fingers into his rough, scarred hands.

He saw straight through her smile.

"You see things?"

Kasumi bit her tongue.

"It's okay, you don't have to say anything. I'm Atsuya Kusakabe, and you've done a good job staying alive until now."

"What about m-my sister?"

Kusakabe frowned, turning to Mama.

"You didn't inform the handlers that there were two children."

"Please, I - I can't. Just take them. Take them away. Kasumi, take your sister with you. Be a good girl, okay?" Mama said.

"We'll take care of her sister too. Let's just get this over with." A tired sigh escaped the man, making him feel so much smaller than he actually was. "Kasumi-chan, where is she?"

"Y-you're going to take us away from Mama?"

A flash of pain appeared in the man's eyes, and he put both hands behind his face to hide the rest.

"They didn't tell me that I was going to play social worker with a bunch of little kids. See if I take another mission like this again," he grumbled, "Hey, kid. It's okay. I'm a sorcerer. Do you know what sorcerers do?"

Kasumi shook her head.

"That means I kill curses."

"Curses?"

"The things you see. If you see them, you can kill them. Normal people can't, so it's our job to kill them instead."

"If I do that, will my sister be safe?"

Kusakabe stopped himself from picking up another cigarette from inside his coat.

"Depends on how strong you are, I guess."

Kasumi nodded, and opened the door to their room.

The person who would become Karin Harutoki knew from the moment they existed that they should not be. Twenty years were too long to be crammed into an infant's head, so it wasn't until they had reached three that fate came knocking on their door.

Curses, they were called, those entities now as real as they had been fiction. They were one of the select few to be blessed - blessed - to see gruesome, twisted forms that no visual medium could ever do justice, day in, day out.

Any other child would have been traumatized. Any adult would have been traumatized just the same. Age was just a number when it came to facing humanity's worst made manifest, in more ways than one.

Fate despised their existence. In the same way that a rock standing against a river's current would eventually be worn down, the flow of causality despised anything that disrupted it.

In any other scenario, Fate would have decreed them too dangerous to be alive, and Karin Harutoki's infant body would have met an unavoidable, tragic demise. Fate itself should have been omnipotent, omniscient, invulnerable. Unfazed by the machinations of chaos or the shackles of order.

The destiny of man was to defy their fates by whatever means possible. When free will and fate clashed, it was always Fate that emerged unshakable. Except, for the first time, Fate had proven itself fallible just as man.

Toji Fushiguro. That name alone had diverged the natural order into several more volatile fates. The Honored One was forced to experience Death, Enlightenment, then Rebirth far too early in his life. The one that should have stood by His side embraced another fate that should not have been. All this tragedy was caused by Toji Fushiguro's involvement in the death of the next Star.

Since that day Order and Chaos clashed within the tiniest of probabilities; cosmological concepts so fiercely fighting for every entangled superposition. The world was at a precarious transition state, and it would only take one single variable to tip the scales in either direction.

The world experienced the birth of the body that would become Karin Harutoki, and the pillars of the universe shuddered at its weight.

Chaos - alongside Entropy, Rot, Decay, and Death - jumped at the opportunity. Primordial anarchy was always more powerful than cosmic law, whose victory lied not in subsuming Chaos, but merely self-preservation. Its nature was the path of least resistance, and so it deemed the life of Karin Harutoki forfeit from birth, as it did with all life before the laws of probability deemed otherwise.

Yet Order won every battle it did not lose. An unnamed child's death was a tragedy, but a moral one if the circumstances deemed it so. It too, decided that Karin Harutoki must die.

Both forces, despite being at odds since the beginning of all universes; had converged upon a rare consensus.

In such a rare set of circumstances, one of the foundations of the universe that safely stored all accumulated causalities cracked. The absolute truth that Chaos and Order would always disagree proved no longer true by contradiction.

Fate had no other possibility but to interfere.

The moment the person who was not Karin Harutoki became aware of herself, the world, and of a fate that not even Fate itself knew - they were offered a choice that wasn't much of a choice at all.

Live, and be erased to change broken fate. Die, and everything will be lost.

Kusakabe's eyes landed on the little blue-haired girl who was cursed to live in constant fear for the rest of her life. Because that was the life of a sorcerer. A curse. A good sorcerer killed curses, made binding vows, remembered plenty of dead friends, and found answers at the bottom of a bottle or against the smoking end of a cigarette.

He wasn't anything special. He'd accepted that - which was why despite being a Grade One Sorcerer, he didn't take any missions that were Grade One or higher. He took on Grade Three missions any time he could, too. That way, even if someone in accounting had made a fatal mistake, he would live to see another day. That margin of error was important to a good - but not special - sorcerer like him.

There was no point lying to himself; he did sympathize with the girl when he read the dossier. She was poor and lived with a mother who should have provided her more than just some ragged clothes, a home, and some rice. That was the reason why he had to suck it up and play social worker, even if he really really didn't like the idea of giving the higher-ups a way to take advantage of him.

So yeah, he could work with Kasumi Miwa, so long as she was okay with being a coward and not a hero. This line of work wasn't kind to people who prioritized others over themselves. He would know. Nothing wrong with being a good person - but when push came to shove, he always prioritized himself over the mission.

Was that advice a Grade One like him should be giving? Eh... probably not. He blamed the administators - if they wanted a proper sorcerer doing things, they should have given the mission to anyone else.

"If I do that, will my sister be safe?" the child asked, and his heart nearly gave out.

"Depends on how strong you are, I guess," he lied, knowing that eventually, she would end up the same as him. He could see the girl being at least average, maybe even good - but never good enough and always falling a second too short.

The girl seemed satisfied by the answer, and she opened the door to the room behind her.

Special Grade.

There was a time, once, when Kusakabe had tried his hardest to reach that pinnacle. What sorcerer didn't dream of proving themselves the strongest, through his sword or technique? Without the weight of time, age, or experience slowing him down, that goal felt attainable. Realistic, even.

Just before he planned to take a mission to exorcise a Special-Grade curse, he had met a young boy.

A young boy with silver hair stolen from the moon and blue eyes containing all that the world had to offer.

He had looked through him, and found him unworthy.

"Go back," Satoru Gojo said to yet another ordinary person, "you won't be able to beat that thing."

Kusakabe tried opening his mouth, to protest. Surely the hours he spent training himself, wielding his sword, bleeding for it - it all had to be worth something.

But Satoru Gojo looked at Kusakabe and found it all lacking. At the moment he thought that Gojo had called his swordsmanship worthless.

"Nah," Gojo corrected him years later as a teen, just when Kusakabe was only nearing middle-age and not firmly entrenched in it as he was now, "not worthless, just not enough."

Age and experience gave way to wisdom, but Gojo had it all from the very beginning.

Grade One was a title given to mortals.

Special Grade was a title reserved for the divine.

Kusakabe took a step backwards from the door, one hand underneath his coat to clutch the katana hidden within.

In the room was Kasumi Miwa's undocumented younger sister, who saw the world through mismatched eyes and responded to Atsuya Kusakabe's presence with a disinterested glance.

The girl's appearance was secondary. Her presence was the same. Hyper-concentrated cursed energy surged around her in waves.

Their eyes met. The moment lasted for an eternity and not.

Special Grade.

Then the girl looked away to meet her sister. Kusakabe released his breath, tension finally leaving his body.

"Nee-san, who is this?"

"This is-"

"I'm Atsuya Kusakabe, and-"

"I know," she said simply and impassively. "Show me."

"Rin-chan, that was rude! I told you to use proper honorifics next time. You should apologize to Kusakabe-san!" Kasumi chastised.

'Rin-chan' looked like she wanted to say something, but hesitated. Kusakabe let go of his sword beneath his coat, and raised both of his hands to hopefully placate the younger girl. She relaxed a bit, though her gaze still oozed suspicion.

"Now, I know you kids don't trust me, and that's fine. Reasonable. But I'm your best bet to staying alive. Those things you two see are real and dangerous. Ignoring them will only work for so long. You're reaching the age when you'll be targeted, hunted, and killed. That's if you're lucky. So please, come with me if you don't want to die."

The girl rolled his eyes, but she nodded. She didn't trust him, but she trusted his logic. That was good.

"I'm Karin Harutoki, and I need to be strong. Teach me, not her."

"Eh? Teach what?" her older sister asked nobody in particular.

"We'll... address that on the way to Tokyo." Kusakabe sighed. He had a nagging feeling that sighing was going to be his default reaction for a while, even more so than usual.

"Tokyo! Waaah, we're really going to Tokyo?" Kasumi's eyes sparkled with joy. "We've never been to the big city before!"

"What are we going to eat?" Karin wondered out loud.

Kusakabe relaxed, "Anything that you two want for today. My treat."

"An expensive sushi place," they both immediately replied, then began to giggle between themselves as if they derived some sick joy from scamming an adult out of his properly-earned pocket money.

Damn it, this was exactly why he hated dealing with children.

"Alright, fine. Come on, I'll help you two pack up your things."

Chapter Text

There was something strangely depressing about being able to pack every one of those kids' belongings into a single suitcase he brought. Not that he was complaining. Neither were the kids.

"Do you think they'll serve stew there? And Kusakabe-san is paying so we won't need to worry about anything!" It apparently didn't take much to earn Kasumi's loyalty, so long as free food was in the equation. Oh well, there were worse vices than enjoying good food.

"Idiot. Sushi is a lot better than stew, nee-san."

"You're the idiot, Rin-chan, you've never had sushi before!"

Karin pretended to consider her sister's point. "Nuh-uh."

"Yuh-uh!" Kasumi insisted and stuck her tongue out.

"Settle down, you two. We're almost there."

Kusakabe made another right at the nearest traffic signal. He knew a place - good and cheap, too. It was a conveyor sushi restaurant, but he had a feeling that if he went anywhere else, he wouldn't be able to foot the bill.

He parked the car at the first available spot closest to the restaurant. The two girls followed his lead. The server bowed his head, recognizing him as a regular.

"Are these your nieces, Kusakabe-san? I wasn't aware that you had any family outside of Usami-san."

"Yeah. Distant relatives. I'm taking care of them now," he grumbled, "just get us to a table."

The server didn't need to be told twice.

"Hey, kids, you know how this place works?" Kusakabe sat them down and asked.

Karin nodded, "Mhm. We take a plate from the belt and put it in that slot over there when we're finished."

"Y-yeah, what Rin-chan said!" Kasumi followed-up.

Kusakabe raised an eyebrow at Kasumi's obvious lie, but on the other hand Karin did seem to know what to do - so he let it slide. There was no need to embarrass Kasumi in front of her younger sister.

He scratched the back of his head. "Now where do I begin with you two?"

"Curses. What are they?" Karin's sharp magenta-and-cyan eyes gazed through Kusakabe's soul. If he had a nickel every time-

The server was here with his tea. Kusakabe snatched the cup and sipped on the bitter drink.

"They're evil."

"Well, duh." Kasumi rolled her eyes.

"No, they're evil. They're the manifestation of humanity's negative emotions. Usually fears, but stress, anxiety, and hatred can also form curses."

Karin hummed as if she had expected his answer. She popped a serving of fatty tuna from the conveyor and almost moaned from the taste.

He could sense the gaze of the rest of the patrons staring at him with judging glances, - wait, damn it, this kid had to be doing it intentionally. What the fuck was wrong with her?

"And what is this?" Karin raised a single finger up and not a second later, Kusakabe saw cursed energy surging into it like a broken dam. The cursed energy concentrated in her finger was even denser than the cursed energy that passively surrounded her.

"Kid," he sighed."That's Cursed Energy. The same kind of energy that curses feed themselves on - and what we sorcerers use to exorcise them."

Kasumi squinted directly at Karin, but frowned.

"Sis, what are you looking at?"

"Don't bother trying to see it. The first step to learning how to wield cursed energy is by sensing it within yourself. Learning how to sense cursed energy outside of your body is the next step of that process."

"Then why can my sister see it and I can't?" Kasumi pouted. Karin patted her back.

"There, there, nee-san. Kusakabe-san said that you can see it with training. Right?" Heterochromatic eyes gazed death into his soul. It would have been adorable if it wasn't for the mass of churning cursed energy behind her. Child or not, he was not going to be on the receiving end of a special grade any time soon.

"Depends," Kusakabe bit into his sushi roll, but then quickly added, "-on how much effort she's willing to put in."

Karin's eyes turned into two narrow slits.

"You can afford taking us to a sushi place."

"It's cheap conveyor sushi, kid. If you're going to complain, then become a sorcerer yourself."

"How often do you come here?"

"Pretty often. Maybe three, four times a week. But there's some other places that I go to for dinner sometimes."

Kasumi looked at Kusakabe as if he was an alien.

"Come on, cut me some slack. I get too tired to cook when I get home after a mission. These old bones aren't what they used to be. Kids these days, judging my lifestyle..."

"Kusakabe-san, that phrase is meant to be used against entitled brats, not towards two poor children who have never gone out to eat before," Karin pointed out.

"Karin-chan!"

"Oh, come on, I added the suffix and everything," she complained at her older sister.

"That still wasn't nice. Apologize to Kusakabe-san."

"I didn't do anything wrong, nee-san."

Kusakabe intervened before the siblings' quarrel could get any worse.

"Come on, kids, get along. You'll get to buy plenty of things once you become an active sorcerer."

"How much per year?" Kasumi's eyes shined with Yen signs.

"Since you're curious, my last year I earned around... 3 billion yen, untaxed. But no amount of money is worth being dead," he tried to emphasize, but it was already too late. Kasumi was already daydreaming about an all-expenses-paid vacation to any foreign country of her choosing.

"Holy fuck." Karin muttered under her breath in English, so that her sister wouldn't be able to understand what she was saying. "You get that much a year just for exorcising curses?"

His eyebrows raised at 'just', but it wasn't as if special grades were risking their lives during the job - if at all. Still, he wouldn't forgive himself if he was responsible for yet another Satoru Gojo in their generation.

"Curses are dangerous. Even a Grade Two curse can kill an entire crowd of people in broad daylight."

"Kusakabe-san, what are grades?"

"Right. I knew I was forgetting something important. Jujutsu society is divided into 'grades'. The system is meant to facilitate the proper division of labor for sorcerers fighting against curses."

Kusakabe held up four fingers, each one to denote a single 'grade'.

"Grade Four is below average. Those are the small curses. They're just mindless clusters of cursed energy, if they have a form at all. Usually non-lethal to sorcerers and non-sorcerers alike.

Grade Three is the average curse. These will kill people, but it takes a fair amount of effort to do so. They usually don't have a sense of self, and will repeat whatever words that gave birth to their existence.

Grade Two is an above-average curse. They usually have a cursed technique, or the ability to use basic jujutsu. This is the point where these buggers start getting intelligent, like taking hostages or using the environment to its advantage.

Grade One is where things get hairy. They're both strong and smart, and they almost always have a cursed technique. It's always a pain to take one down - but it's possible."

Finally, no fingers remained - but he still held out his hand in a clenched fist.

"Then there are the Special Grade curses. When faced with a special grade, run. 'Cause even if there's only a fraction of a chance that you'll be getting out alive, that's still better odds than fighting. Those bastards are always smart, always have a cursed technique, can use advanced jujutsu, and on top of everything else - they can use a domain expansion.

The grade system is also exponential. A Grade Two curse can easily mow through a horde of Grade Threes, just as easily as a Special Grade can with a horde of Grade Ones."

"What grade are you? And if we became sorcerers, what grade would we be?" Kasumi asked once Kusakabe was done.

"Me?" Kusakabe snorted, "Grade One. Which means I'm authorized to take on missions with Grade One curses. You two together would barely be able to take on a Grade Four, at least right now."

That was a lie. Although the Kasumi kid was definitely a Grade Four at best... her sister was a completely different story. Her unpolished talent made her a Grade Two, at least, with the potential to reach Grade One with raw cursed energy alone.

If she had a cursed technique - even an average one, let alone something like Limitless, then becoming a Special Grade would only be scratching the surface of her potential. The only other sorcerer who had reached such a level in the modern day was...

"Hey-ho, Kusakabe-san!" A tall, white-haired teenager entered the restaurant with a childish grin and while wearing a pair of round sunglasses that failed to fully hide his arrogance.

"What are you doing here?" Kusakabe sighed, not even surprised anymore at how often his - and every other Grade One sorcerer's lives were interrupted by the force of nature that was Satoru Gojo.

"Oh, you know, I was just in the area and thought; hey, didn't Kusakabe-san take a mission around here?"

The man turned to where the two sisters were sitting. "And these must be the kids you picked up! Planning on becoming a parent so late?"

"Shut up, Gojo."

"You know what, hey kids, let's ditch this crusty old man," he took off his blindfold, revealing blue eyes and the power behind them just like hers, but not, Karin realized, "-how about you two hang out with me instead?"

Kasumi squealed - she might have even drooled a little, much to Karin's disgust and horror combined. Sure, the man was pretty, but no amount of pretty allowed him to corrupt her sister like that! Over her dead fucking body! She hid her scowl behind a mask of indifference.

"Kusakabe-san, can I borrow your phone? I think I need to call the police."

This proved to be an inopportune moment for her intervention, since Kusakabe-san was now choking on thin air and was in no state to comply with her request.

"Pffft- I'm not a suspicious person, you know!" the white-haired man guffawed, before looking directly at Karin herself. She only nodded, coming to the simple and obvious conclusion that this pretty manchild was wholly unfit to receive the admiration of her big sister.

"And that is exactly what a suspicious person like you would say. Kusakabe-san, if you aren't too busy choking to death, I would like to use your phone to dial the police before either of us gets molested."

"K-Karin-chan! He's just being nice!" Kasumi blushed.

"I'm sorry, and that's supposed to mean anything against the allegations?" she replied.

Gojo kept his smile up as he smacked Kusakabe's back to stop the older man from choking to death. Maybe he smacked him a bit harder than what would be necessary. Just a bit.

"Those aren't jokes kids should be making. How old are you two?"

"Five, and my sister here is six, you degenerate."

"Gojo-san, I-I'll be old enough in..."

Karin smacked her idiot nee-san's shoulder.

Gojo, to his credit, looked unfazed. If he had shown any interest towards her sister, Karin would have cut his neck open then and there, unfathomable amounts of cursed energy lazily surrounding the man be damned.

Instead, Gojo turned towards her.

"Huh. You're pretty good at hiding it."

Kusakabe, now finally able to experience the joy of sweet air - asked, "Gojo, what are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that she knows what her cursed technique is. I mean, how else is her cursed energy swirling-"

Karin froze. She should have been more careful. Karin immediately suppressed her aura - er, cursed energy back into herself. She had been so used to her older sister not being able to see her weird energy that she had never bothered to hide it whenever they were together. And Kusakabe-san had probably seen it a few hours ago - but hadn't commented on it because he was presumably easing both of them into practicing sorcery the proper way, and not the hack-job she was doing now.

Satoru Gojo knew.

She was going to kill him.

The world froze.

Five seconds.

She picked up a metal knife and plunged it down onto his neck. Just before the knife could hit flesh, it stopped, caught between something protecting his entire body. Karin looked around for any gaps within his invisible defense.

Four seconds.

Nothing. None. His entire body was covered in a strange cursed energy that made things stop - but still continue within that near-zero boundary.

Three seconds.

But it wasn't a barrier. A barrier would meet resistance. She didn't feel anything meeting her knife - no equal and opposite reaction. It was as if there was a pocket dimension that things were still moving through, separating every part of him from the outside world.

Two seconds.

The world was about to unfreeze.

She took her knife back to her table and returned back to her original position.

One second.

If only she had more time to work with. She decided to think about what her approach would be if there was a next time.

Method One: Gojo Satoru had to breathe. Pump air into his pocket dimension, which would be let in. Then she could throw another thing into his space that could turn the air into non-breathable air. He would be forced to lower his barrier to breathe, or risk choking to death. In that instant, she could easily drive a knife through a major artery.

Method Two: Gojo Satoru had to eat. Force him to eat something that she could easily poison. That came with the obvious downside of having to stalk him, so she crossed that one off the list fairly quickly.

Method Three: Gojo Satoru used Cursed Energy. If she looked closely, his pocket dimension was being maintained by some energy surrounding him. In theory, if she released her energy to draw her own barrier to overlap his, which would neutralize the link between the pocket dimension and his power-

Zero seconds.

"-around like that?" Gojo ended - but his smile abruptly faded.

No way. No way that this fuckboy man child had noticed it.

His grin returned - now with an unhinged twist near the corner of his eyes.

"Damn, I think that was the best attempt on my life by a long shot."

As soon as those words left his lips Kusakabe grabbed his katana that was underneath his coat - ready to covertly strike at a moment's notice.

"A curse user?" He whispered.

Gojo shook his head, "Nah, not really. Hold on, I just remembered I needed to do something with Suguru. See you later~!"

"And don't think of trying that again." he whispered to her, directly.

Fuck.

"Don't end up like that guy." Kusakabe warned.

"Why not?" Her older sister asked, but somehow, Karin felt like Kusakabe was directing his words at her, exclusively.

"Satoru Gojo is the strongest Special Grade Sorcerer, and by a wide margin. His power's completely gone to his head."

And for good reason, Karin admitted.

"He's sooo pretty, though..."

Karin looked to her older sister in horror.

"No. I forbid it. Never, ever, not in a million years."

"R-Rin-chan, are you interested in him too?!"

"Nee-san?"

"What is it, imouto?"

"Say that again, and they will never find your body."

"Uwah! B-b-but how could you not! He's-"

"I mean it! Shhhh. Shut up while you're ahead, nee-san."

Kusakabe adopted a stance of absolute neutrality and quietly finished his food.

Chapter Text

Kusakabe took them to a mountain the middle of nowhere, or that was what it would seem to Kasumi Miwa.

Karin Harutoki felt strained. She was surprised that not even Kusakabe seemed to notice the hexagonal boundary of the torii gate stretching into a massive dome of illusionary perfection. Conceal, Shroud, Lighter than Light, Darker than Dark, an indiscernible voice chanted.

This was sorcery. It was a mantle of ancient power straining her tiny shoulders, a weight heavier than a thousand centuries. This was what she would grow into. What she had to grow into. Beyond even this.

(Or else, Fate warned her.)

"We'll be entering Jujutsu High from here." Kusakabe said, "This is where you'll be staying for the time being."

Past the torii gates was, true to his word, a school. The architecture was blend of modern concrete and traditional East Asian tiling. Despite its large size, the campus was barren. She couldn't see or sense anyone in the classrooms, bar for a few guards making sure that the school was secure.

"There aren't many students here," Kasumi observed.

"Yeah. I told you, a lot of sorcerers die young." he replied, sighing, "so you two best be careful."

Karin huffed, "gee, thanks for the reminder. Has anyone else told you that you're terrible with kids?"

"I don't believe in sugarcoating anything. You two should be properly aware what you're getting into."

"Fair enough."

Kasumi was too busy mentally parsing the implications of that statement to notice her sister's snide remark.

All three of them entered what appeared to be a residential building. Kusakabe took out his wallet from his coat pocket and held it in front of the building's card reader. The lock disengaged with a small click.

They then entered an almost hotel-like hallway full of labelled suite doors. Kusakabe, who must have been familiar with the place, stopped in front of the third door and opened it. The door swung open to reveal a traditionally-styled room - complete with sliding doors and tatami mats.

"Waaah, it's so big!"

Kusakabe coughed, "It's only a single room. I'll contact the administrators for separate rooms or a double."

"We'll take the double room later." Karin said on Kasumi's behalf, who had taken it onto herself to start unpacking all of their belongings.

"That's good. Great, even. Stay here until I come back; I need to find someone to give you two a tour of the place."

Kusakabe left the room and the door closed behind him.

Karin rolled her eyes, trying and failing to hide her snickers.

"What's so funny?" Kasumi frowned.

Karin pantomimed, "Wow, mister, it's so big!", and flatly turned towards her older sister. "You don't see anything wrong with that?"

"...No?"

"Sigh, never mind then, nee-san." her heterochromatic gaze lingered softly, before she turned around and huffed.

"Rin-chan, can you do the thing you did with your hand back there?"

"What thing?"

"You know, that - hand thing?"

"Oh." Karin paused, before stretching out her hand and creating a dense sphere of cursed energy in front of her sister. "This is cursed energy, according to Kusakabe-san."

"I don't get it," she frowned. "How come you can see it and I can't?"

Karin shrugged. "Can you try feeling it? Maybe that would help?"

Her older sister moved her hand above Karin's outstretched palm. The orb dispersed in the atmosphere like dye in water as it was disturbed by Kasumi's hand, before reforming into a sphere again. There was a strange immateriality to the orb; it had no mass, exuded no heat, but it was still there in her hand, and she could see it as clear as day.

Kasumi frowned, looking into her fingers like there was some great secret of universe hidden within her palm lines.

"I could feel something there. It was cold, but warm. I still don't think I'm any closer to actually seeing it for myself..." Kasumi's face turned glum.

Karin patted her older sister's back. "It's fine, nee-san. Someone's going to teach us how to become better sorcerers, right? And it isn't like you have to become a sorcerer to be my nee-san."

"R-right!" Kasumi nodded, trying to ignore the twinge of childish insecurity within her heart.

Well, there certainly wouldn't be any harm in helping her nee-san with her own cursed energy. Karin looked at her sister - but she didn't see anything, at least nothing like Satoru Gojo, whose cursed energy was as boundless as the sky. Even Kusakabe had a greater presence with his own aura.

Or, maybe she was thinking backwards. Neither Satoru Gojo nor Kusakabe-san were normal people. They were sorcerers, and a part of being a good sorcerer likely involved being able to possess and use large amounts of cursed energy to fuel their special powers.

So a normal person wouldn't have the same amount of energy within them compared to people who had spent their entire lives training their energy. And Kusakabe-san had said that it should be easier to detect other peoples' cursed energy than one's own. If cursed energy followed the same rules as the physical world - then everybody should be able to see it. The fact that normal people were unable to physically 'see' cursed energy implied that either sorcerers' eyes could perceive a broader spectrum of light that cursed energy resided in... or, the more likely explanation; the ability to 'see' cursed energy was a completely independent process from regular vision.

Which meant that the first step to being able to 'see' her sister's meager amount of cursed energy was to close her eyes. She near-instantly felt more in tune with her own massive amount of cursed energy. It churned onto itself like a barely-contained maelstrom. Karin grimaced. It was ugly, inefficient, and reeked of a hack job. Her suppression wasn't as good as she had thought it was. She needed it to be less obvious. Less visible.

She could try spreading out her cursed energy - but no, that would take up too much room, and it would be even harder to see her sister within a pool of her own cursed energy. The problem was that her body kept generating more and more cursed energy as she spent it. Even using her ability wouldn't help - because within the short span of time that she did stop time for, her cursed energy would already be fully restored.

It would be great, Karin wished for not the first time, if I could stop time for as long as I want. But her technique disagreed, whispering to her not yet, but eventually. The invisible downside to stopping time was how it affected her physical age. The world demanded that all things return to dust, and so long as she didn't find a way to escape that rule, her technique would always be limited to five seconds for her own safety. Nothing more, nothing less.

She had noticed that even when limited to five seconds per activation, she was aging faster than normal. It was difficult to tell, but Karin couldn't deny that physically, she was just about the same age as her onee-san - if not a bit older.

So she'd simply have to use her cursed energy just as quickly as her body regenerated it.

Easier said than done... but there had to be more ways to use cursed energy than using it to power an ability. Maybe she should try imbuing her body with it instead? Karin forced her cursed energy to flow through her veins, muscles, and into every single cell of her body. The physical intertwined with the metaphysical, and sheer, unbridled power was the result. Enough for Karin to physically compete with someone far beyond her age and training.

And... there.

In the same way that it was harder to see the stars in a city polluted with skylight, Karin's sheer amount of cursed energy had stopped her from being able to see anything else with her supernatural perception.

Now, she was in a rural countryside seeing the unfiltered, starry night sky for the first time in her life. Tiny atmospheric particles ebbed and flowed - not just cursed energy, but other things, too, that seemed to destructively interfere with it, and other strange particles that passed through either harmlessly. But neither were important - because there, in the middle of the room, finally shining brighter than anything else - was her sister's cursed energy.

"I think I see it, nee-san." Karin said, eyelids fluttering open. "I'll tell you if it moves."

"Y-you don't have to," Kasumi sputtered, and her cursed energy followed suit. "Wait, Rin-chan, your hair...?"

Karin looked into the mirror that was conveniently placed right next to her. The top and back of her hair was still black - but the inside was glowing a soft, pulsing yellow. She immediately pulled all the cursed energy out from her body, letting it return to a more natural state. All the yellow in her hair immediately reverted into its normal black.

So imbuing her cursed energy into her body caused her hair to go half-super-saiyan.

"...Huh. I guess I'm a living night light now."

"What did you do-"

"I put my cursed energy into my body." Karin's hair turned half-yellow again, and she stretched her arms and legs, "and it made me stronger... I think? I can also see your cursed energy. Before, there was just so much of mine that it made it difficult for me to see yours."

Kasumi blinked.

"I don't get it, but okay!"

"Can you try moving your cursed energy, nee-san?"

"I can try, but how...?" Kasumi struggled to put her thoughts into words.

"Start by closing your eyes, nee-san. Breathe in. Out. In. Out. Don't think, just focus on my words."

"O-okay, what now-" Karin flicked a finger at her nee-san's forehead, "Ow!"

"I thought I told you to not think about anything else, idiot."

Kasumi flinched, "I wasn't!"

"Really?" Karin raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Her older sister vigorously nodded her head in response.

"Yes, really!"

"Then do it again until you can feel something inside your gut." Karin commanded.

"Hngh..." Kasumi tried to concentrate - but her concentration drifted elsewhere, and she ended up collapsing into a defeated heap after only a few minutes.

"I can't do it, Rin-chan."

"Maybe the teachers have a better way," Karin agreed. "And awakening cursed energy probably takes longer for some people than others. If using cursed energy was easy, wouldn't everybody have it?"

"I guess you're right," Kasumi sighed, but her face lit up with another smile despite her failed efforts. "I'll just try again later! Right now, we should be exploring our new room together!"

Karin was thankful that it was so easy to make her older sister happy. Said older sister was already getting herself familiar with every nook and cranny of the room. They also found that they had a bathroom complete with a bidet and shower all to themselves; truly, the height of luxury.

She'd have to breach the subject eventually. Her mouth felt uncharacteristically dry.

"Nee-san?" she asked.

"What is it?" Kasumi answered, despite her defeat by the softness of their traditional bed.

"I... are you going to become a sorcerer?"

"Why wouldn't I? Doesn't it sound cool, Karin? Cutting down those curses like, ha! Pow!"

Karin winced. "I've seen people die to curses, nee-san. It's not pretty."

Kasumi stilled, her mind mentally rebooting itself into responsible big sister mode.

"You've never told me that before."

"Does it matter? Kusakabe-san tried to hide it, but curses kill people. All the time." Karin argued.

"So? I can't just stand by to watch my little sister do the same thing. I'm going to be a sorcerer, whether you like it or not." her older sister insisted, before wrapping her arms around Karin's shoulders. "You're not getting rid of me so easily!"

"Haah, fine, nee-san. Whatever you say."

Someone behind the door knocked three times. The door handle creaked open, revealing a large man with hair cut close to his scalp and with a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. Behind him was a... curse. Karin squinted. A curse, but hateful nature bound and suppressed.

The most surprising part about it all, however, was that the cursed doll was shaped like Hello Kitty.

The man looked slightly taken aback by her gaze. Karin broke her line of sight and scurried behind her big sister. She found dolls to be generally creepy... no, she wasn't scared of dolls. Never. Nope. Just like how she wasn't afraid of clowns, the dark, or losing her nee-san.

The man knelt down on one knee to match their height.

"Hello, I am Masamichi Yaga, and I work as a teacher here at Tokyo Jujutsu High."

Kusakabe entered the room following Yaga, before quickly extinguishing his cigarette onto an ashtray.

"That's it from me, then. I'm off to teach the other Grade One kids." Kusakabe waved a nonchalant hand towards their general direction and hurriedly left with his coattails flapping in the wind.

Yaga sighed.

"Don't take it too harshly. He might not look like it, but he's just an awkward guy at heart," He replied to Miwa's sullen expression. The Hello Kitty doll waddled over to her older sister - and Kasumi hugged it with a small sniffle.

Karin's fear towards dolls quickly turned into jealous hatred.

"If both of you are ready, follow me."