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Junpei thought he was going to die when he felt Mahito touched him, back at his old high school. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt before, like he was being shocked by electricity while his bones were being cracked in two. But he woke up sometime later on the floor of a dilapidated apartment, body aching. Mahito wasn’t there—instead, two other curses (?) were peering over him. One was some sort of squid wearing a white cloak, and it was carrying a disembodied head with one eye and a volcano where hair would normally be.
“It’s awake!” the volcano headed-one grimaced, to which the squid made an unenthusiastic “bwooooo!” sound.
Perhaps he should have been afraid, but he was too tired, too sore for that.
“It’s not like I want to be here!” Junpei instead snapped at them. He was not going to put up with bullies, human or otherwise.
“Watch it!” yelled Mr. Volcano Head (that’s what Junpei was going to mentally refer to him as from now on), “I could burn you to a crisp in an instant if I was at my full power! And Dagon could swallow you whole!”
The squid nodded fervently.
“I’m surprised Mahito didn’t kill you or turn you into one of those wrinkly things like he usually does,” Mr. Volcano Head continued condescendingly, “But maybe he kept you around to be fodder in Shibuya.”
“I don’t know what that is, but there’s other things I’d rather be doing,” Junpei grumbled, sitting up.
“And there are lots of things I’d rather be doing than watching over you,” Mr. Volcano Head retorted.
He looked up at his tentacled friend.
“Once my limbs grow back, I’m getting Mahito to take care of his garbage.”
Junpei had lost count of how many days it had been since then.
His time was mostly spent cooped up in the shoddy apartment—smugly referred to as a “lair” by Mahito and his friends. Ostensibly, he was guarding it, but really, he was forced to do errands by Mr. Volcano Head and the squid, even after the former appeared to have sprouted some semblance of a body. Volcano Head was militant about making Junpei clean both himself and the apartment since he didn’t want “human germs” getting everywhere, making the chores even more tiring.
Mahito and another other curse— one with branches for eyes—only returned home in the evenings, if at all. Junpei had been expecting wrath from Mahito, given how he was nearly convinced by Yuuji to abandon him. But he was instead ignored, only addressed by the occasional snide remark or nasty demand from the curse to do something around the apartment (Junpei refused to call the sad excuse for a residence a “lair”). So quickly, the curse had gone from fixating on Junpei to tossing him aside like litter, treating him exactly like the other curses did. The boy was never sure whether he felt worse when his captors belittled him or neglected him. Truly, all bullies were the same, whether they were human or not.
Frequently, the curses were accompanied by an eerie man with dark hair and a large scar across the top of his head. This man at least was kind enough to bring food whenever he visited, and to remind Mahito and the others of the differences between human and curse diets. Whether they bothered heeding the advice, of course, changed with the weather, but at least he probably wasn’t going to starve to death. There were also other allies of Mahito that came through the apartment less frequently, but they were all so uncanny that the boy could never tell whether they were human, curse, or something else entirely.
The only time Junpei knew peace was when the curses and the dark-haired man would occasionally play in the squid’s domain, leaving the teenage boy to meander around the beach. He had considered practicing his newly-acquired cursed technique, but he told himself there was only so much that he could do with his shikigami without damaging the domain or otherwise getting noticed. And he felt guilty trying to use a gift which had been given to him by Mahito, given all the destruction the curse caused. As Junpei wandered around, he found himself reflecting on his life and how he wound up in the situation he was currently in. Having no one to share them with, his thoughts and feelings bounced around endlessly in his head each day.
One day, Mahito showed up in the squid’s domain carrying someone. The curse carelessly dropped the person beside Junpei, who had been resting under a palm tree.
“I’ve brought you a little friend,” he cooed acridly, like Junpei was a lonely pet he’d grown bored of. He then turned away as quickly as he came, to join his friends building a sandcastle on the other side of the beach.
The lack of a reaction to the curse’s actions and words indicated that whoever the new arrival was, they were unconscious and likely not brought here willingly. In the same boat as Junpei, perhaps.
Taking a closer look at his new companion, the teeanger saw that the person appeared to be a skinny boy around his own age, wearing a dirty scarf and a tattered school uniform. He had the palest skin Junpei had ever seen and a messy mop of shoulder-length dark hair half-covering his face. Tentatively, Junpei moved the hair aside and saw the boy had a large scar on his left cheek, a jarring contrast to his heart-shaped face and button nose.
“Poor guy, at least I can cover mine with my hair,” he mumbled with a half-hearted smile, kneeling over the other boy.
Those words roused the boy out of his slumber, brown eyes opening and immediately meeting Junpei’s own.
“Yoshino Junpei—?” the boy mumbled woozily.
“Wait, how do you know who I am?”
It was strange to learn that some associate of Mahito’s was aware of him and knew his name, given how most of them barely acknowledged his existence.
But the boy doesn’t answer his question, instead sitting up slowly, his hands pressing against the sand to steady himself.
“I’m Muta Kokichi,” he said, after getting into a comfortable position. With his finger, he wrote out the kanji for his name in the sand. The boy’s wrists and fingers were slender, the skin on his hands appeared so smooth and fragile that it was as if he had never used his hands before. His movements too, were jerky, leading to clumsily-written characters that Junpei could barely decipher as
与 幸吉
“Oh wait,” Junpei laughed softly, “One of the characters in your name is in my name too. The ‘good luck’ one.”
He then wrote out the kanji for his own name.
吉野 順平
“Well, it’s in my family name rather than my given name but, you know what I mean.”
“So we’re connected in two ways,” Muta mused, “Through Mahito and through our names…..”
“Ironic that we both have ‘good luck’ in our names, when meeting Mahito was anything but lucky,” Junpei sighed, dusting away his writing with his hand.
“I can’t say it was completely a misfortune,” the other boy admitted, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”
“You’re talking like he saved your life or something,” snarked Junpei. He expected some sort of fierce rebuttal to his comment, but Muta instead just made a small frown.
“I detest Mahito but he technically upheld his part of our bargain,” he said.
Junpei wanted to ask what this bargain was, exactly, but Muta spoke again before he could.
“What do I look like?” he asked.
The question threw Junpei off a bit. But quickly, he put the pieces together that probably, whatever the ‘bargain’ with Mahito was, it involved the other boy’s appearance. Without thinking, Junpei brings up Muta’s most distinct feature first.
“You have a huge scar on—”
“A huge scar?” he interrupted. Immediately, his expression became crestfallen.
“Was Mahito supposed to fix that or something?” Junpei inquired bluntly.
“I’d think he’d be able to……”
Muta looked so sad by this point that Junpei felt compelled to try to comfort him.
“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with your scar! Really, it contrasts with your delicate features—”
Ugh, why did he just call this guy “delicate”? But there was really no other way he could describe his looks in one word. He was really digging himself into a hole, around the only possible ally he had around here. Junpei looked out towards the shore, trying to figure out what else he could say.
“What if we looked at your reflection in the water?” he proposed, realizing too late he never actually checked if water in this domain was reflective like real water, “That’s probably easier than if I just keep on offending you.”
“You haven’t said anything wrong…..” Muta said, sounding slightly confused, “But that does sound nice.”
Once he got up, Junpei extended a hand out to Muta, figuring the other boy was probably sore due to whatever Mahito had put him through. The other boy gripped onto it firmly.
“Is it okay if I hold your hand until we reach the shore?” he asked cautiously, once he was standing.
Junpei simply nodded briskly, not bothering to ask for an explanation. After going so long without feeling the affectionate touch of another person, the boy was secretly grateful for the opportunity to have prolonged contact. The feeling of Muta’s hand in his made him feel human—the most human he had felt since he had met Yuuji some weeks ago.
The two boys walked together slowly towards the water, both vigilant since Mahito and his fellow curses were nearby. Junpei noticed that the way the other boy walked was stiff and robotic, with each movement feeling deliberate.
At the water’s edge, Muta released his hand and looked down to see his reflection. Junpei also gazed at the water himself. Much to his relief, it did seem like it was similarly reflective to real water. Having not taken a good look at his reflection in a long time, Junpei noted that his hair had grown a bit longer and shaggier, that the bags under his eyes were darker, and that he had lost weight, causing his body to no longer have a certain softness.
“The scar is less bad than I feared,” Muta grinned, disrupting Junpei’s thoughts, “And I do see what you mean about delicate features….. But I’d say I look pretty good, actually!”
Standing beside him, Junpei could see now that the boy was taller than his thin frame suggested, standing a few inches taller than him. Their reflections showed how their features differed, Muta’s sharp eyes and pointed chin compared to Junpei’s drooping eyes and round face.
“You look like you could be a model,” Junpei chuckled, unsure why he felt like he needed to be so flattering, “Even your scar is cool, unlike mine.”
Once again, the boy was hit with anxiety, wondering what if Muta had been a model in his past. And he had made this joyful moment about his own trauma.
But instead, Muta only took Junpei’s comment as a compliment, the way he had intended.
“No one—no one has ever said anything to me like that before!” he stammered, a blush blooming on his pale skin.
The boys stood in silence for a bit, as Muta appeared to take in his own reflection, studying the intricacies of his features and facial expressions. He put a hesitant hand on his scar, tracing over its grooves.
“I bet Mahito left this deliberately,” he frowned, “Maybe he even made it himself……”
He turned to Junpei.
“Do you have any scars from Mahito?”
Junpei shook his head.
“I just have scars above my eye, that I cover with my hair…..” he explained morosely, “Bullies at my school attacked me and burned me with cigarettes.”
Upon hearing that, Muta had a horrified look on his face.
“Oh, uh, I’m sorry that happened,” he awkwardly consoled.
Junpei wasn’t sure what kind of response he had expected, or why he told a boy he just met about his scars.
“Ah, you haven’t been bullied before, have you?” he questioned impulsively.
“No…..”
Muta’s eyes widened. The boy collapsed to his knees, in tears.
“I deserve to be tormented by my classmates if they ever see me again…!”
“What?” Junpei immediately exclaimed, “No, you don’t deserve that!”
Muta looked up at him, eyes watery.
“How can you say that when you don’t even know what I did?”
“I—”
Junpei crouched down beside him.
“What did you do?” he asked, slightly fearing what Muta’s answer could be. He’d rather not ally with someone whose morals clashed too much with his.
The other boy made a sad sniffle and looked away from Junpei.
“I was born ill. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t go outside. Everything was just hurting all the time—”
It seemed like Muta wanted to say more, but he just made a choked-out sob.
“So you had to do something horrible to your classmates to get Mahito to heal you…..?” Junpei prompted. Certainly, there were many horrible things Junpei wouldn’t have minded doing to his classmates in order to have earned Mahito’s favour. But did the misdeed Muta commit cross a line even for him?
“Essentially, yes,” Muta replied, more immediate than Junpei had expected, “But it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“Complicated?”
The taller boy sighed.
“Well, you see—”
And with that, Muta began to tell a tragic tale, starring a boy wrapped in bandages, trapped in a bathtub in the dark. A boy whose illness was the cost he had to pay for a great power, but not by choice. A boy whose family thought he was dead, whose authority figures who treated him as nothing more than a tool, and whose life was for the longest time devoid of anything resembling real companionship. A life which was changed, for the better and for the worse, by being able to attend school, through a puppet. Finally having classmates made him yearn more than ever to escape his confines, bask in the light of the sun, and finally feel the warm touch of another human being. And so entered Mahito, a devil with a dangerous deal that only Muta could fulfill due to his rare cursed technique. The curse healed Muta, but the sorcery world would be thrown into chaos by the information he had provided. And his soul, like Junpei’s, was now touched by Mahito, permanently transfigured. Damned for eternity, Junpei would say, if he were to use phrases from American religious horror movies he had watched.
But Muta was not like him. He knew the danger Mahito posed, and what the consequences of his actions would be. Every second Muta had spent interacting with him, he was disgusted. So disgusted that could barely pretend to stomach the curse and planned to fight back as soon as he was healed.
“The fact that I’m here should tell you everything you need to know about how that went,” Muta finally concluded, after describing his battle with Mahito in much vaguer terms than he had narrated the rest of the story with.
Junpei didn’t know what to say. Really, he should’ve been worrying about whether he lived up to Muta’s standards, not the other way around. He felt awful, knowing that the boy sitting beside him had lived through things which he thought had only happened in movies. His own life had been far from perfect, but he had a mother who loved him and until the beginning of high school, he had friends too. Certainly, his present was awful, but maybe his future could have been better. Maybe if on that fateful day in the movie theatre, if he had pretended he couldn’t see Mahito and ran home, he could’ve worked towards a better life for himself. Meanwhile, Muta had been stuck between a rock and a hard place, and despite how the sorcery institutions had treated him all his life, still ended up fighting to protect them.
The water tickled Junpei’s toes and he looked out towards the facsimile sea, noticing for the first time how the squid’s domain felt off from a real beach. There was no smell of salt or seaweed from the sea, no sounds of seagulls or crashing waves. He wondered if Muta was able to notice these differences, or if the domain was like a real beach to him.
“Y–you’d probably hate me if you knew how I ended up here—” he finally stuttered, only realizing too late how self-centred that sounded.
“I do know,” Muta said, surprising Junpei, “I know about what happened with you and Mahito due to my observations of both Tokyo Jujutsu Tech and Geto’s group.”
“But you still want to talk to me?”
“Well…..” he slowly admitted, “At first I was resentful of people like you or Itadori Yuuji, who just seemed to enter the world of sorcery on their own whims. But for both you and him, it still was an act of desperation. Even if I can’t quite put myself in your shoes, I do understand why you ended up working with Mahito.”
“Thank you, Muta,” is all Junpei could say in response. He was curious what Muta had meant by implying Yuuji was similar to him, but he wasn’t quite ready to ask about that yet.
“You can call me Kokichi,” the other boy insisted, “I haven’t heard anyone call me by my first name in a long, long time. And there’s no need—” he gestured out towards the sea “—for formalities here.”
This was just like how it went with Yuuji, Junpei realized. He hoped that if he ever saw Yuuji again, he would be as forgiving as Kokichi was. No one here, among the curses and their friends, ever called Junpei by his name. It was such a little thing that most people would take for granted.
“Then you can call me Junpei,” he smiled, as much as he could, given everything.
“Do you still feel uneasy?” Kokichi asked, “You look kind of sad.”
“That’s what I always look like,” Junpei laughed half-heartedly.
“Even around Itadori? From what I had overheard, he seemed quite fond of you……”
“Probably……” (Junpei hoped that he didn’t, for once.)
The boy grabbed a small rock and tossed it into the water, watching it sink deep into god knows what. He felt like he still had more to say.
“I….. I feel foolish,” he finally muttered, “Looking back, it was so obvious that Mahito was dangerous. That it would be a bad idea to trust him.”
He saw a smooth rock beside him, which he picked up like he did the previous one. But instead of just throwing it, he tried to skip it along the water. Instead, it sank like the last one.
“But they always say, hindsight is 20/20.”
Kokichi too picked up a rock.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much over it,” Kokichi tried to console him.
He tossed it towards the sea. Unlike Junpei’s, his rock made a bounce before sinking.
“I mean, my mom got killed because of all this!” Junpei retorted, “And I probably would’ve been too, if Mahito didn’t change his mind and decide to spare me!”
In the time he had spent with the curses, he became certain it wasn’t Ito who had left the cursed object in his home that caused his mother’s death. His former tormentor possessed no interest in the supernatural and, for better or for worse, Junpei was just one of many students the cruel boy picked on. It had been reckless and self-centred to think he occupied so much space in the bully’s thoughts that he would go out of his way to kill his mother. That left the question of who killed his mother and why, but those weren’t questions he’d get to the bottom of while he was held captive by Mahito. The boy tried to skip another stone, but again, it fell into the water right away.
“Well, you’re alive. And you’re a different person now,” Kokichi gently argued, trying to nudge him out of his gloomy thoughts, “Like I am.”
The other boy’s remark was a bit callous, Junpei thought at first. But then, his mom perpetually had a carefree attitude, always telling him that there’s more to life than school. Junpei was sure she would’ve said something similar if it had been someone else he cared about who had been killed, with her carefree attitude and all. Hypothetically speaking of course—it’s not like there was another person whose death he would’ve been sad over (well….. maybe Itadori? But they had known each other for such a short time).
“You sound like my mom,” Junpei just laughed.
Looking out towards the horizon, he picked up a third stone and tossed it on the water. This time, it made two skips before vanishing.
“She’d always say that I don’t have to go to school if I don’t want to. That there were other things I could do with my life and I could always do some equivalency test if I needed a high school diploma. But I felt like I couldn’t move on until my bullies were punished somehow. Since I knew the school would do nothing!”
“You wanted vengeance,” Kokichi surmised.
Junpei nodded.
“I felt like if I didn’t do something, that would make me weak.”
“I know how that feels. After all Mahito did, I felt like I had to be the one to exorcize him, as penance for how I had betrayed everyone. I had thought, if I didn’t kill him or die trying to, that would just make me spineless. But for all the planning I had done, I’d never considered the possibility that I could lose to him and still be alive, but still trapped under his thumb just like before. There was probably a more practical way, like if I’d pretended to be allied with him and Geto for a bit longer. But I wanted him to suffer.”
Kokichi tried to skip a stone again, but it sank immediately.
“Do you still want that?” Junpei asked.
“I guess so. But first I want to get out of here, away from Mahito.”
“Me too.”
The two boys sat quietly for a bit afterwards. Junpei saw that Kokichi then got up and was looking around for something. Soon enough, he returned with another smooth stone, which he threw across the water while standing up. This stone made three big skips and then disappeared into the sea dramatically.
“That’s pretty impressive for someone who hasn’t done this before,” Junpei praised.
“I mean, I haven’t but Mechamaru has,” Kokichi clarified, “My class went on a beach trip in the summer. Managed to get to ten skips pretty quickly, but it’s different now when it’s my own body doing it.”
“Wow, you could beat a world record.”
“Nah,” the other boy corrected, sitting down next to Junpei again with a small smile on his face, “That’s nowhere close. The world record is 88 skips, actually.”
“Maybe if we’re stuck here long enough, you’ll get to 89 one day,” Junpei laughed, “Though unfortunately, the records people probably couldn’t come in here and verify that.
Rather than laughing along with him, Kokichi’s expression became somber. Probably he was upset at the prospect of being trapped for so long. Junpei knew that he and his new companion would soon need to come up with a way to escape the curses. Right now, though, he just wanted to earn the other boy’s friendship. In the past, while he knew the bullies at his school had other victims besides him, he had always been reluctant to reach out to them. He had always justified this by telling himself that no one had it as bad as him, that no one would be able to understand his pain. But he could now admit that he was afraid of being rejected, of finding out that even others who had suffered the way he did found him strange and repulsive. However, the Junpei that was sitting here on this fake beach was a different person from that Junpei, the one who had befriended Mahito at Kinema Cinema.
Tucking his hair behind his ear, he saw his burn scars reflected in the water—a cluster of round, circular marks which spanned from his right eyebrow up along his forehead.
“Kokichi,” he said, turning to face the other boy.
The other boy turned towards him, looking a bit confused.
“I mean, you were sad about the scar on your cheek earlier,” Junpei explained, a finger tracing along the raised flesh, “So I thought maybe it’d make you feel better if I…. I—um—”
His doubts held him back from finishing his explanation. Would it be too corny? Too pretentious? Like he was trying to be a kind and all-loving main character?
“.... if you also had your scars showing?” Kokichi wondered, trying to finish his sentence.
“Yes! That!” Junpei nodded.
Since the other boy seemed to approximately understand what he was going for, he became motivated to finish what he was going to say.
“That way, you would feel less alone,” he declared.
Kokichi’s eyes widened, clearly surprised by the gesture.
“Ah! You didn’t have to…!” he replied shyly, putting a hand on his own scar.
“I wanted to—”
“It—my scar—it’s not a big deal! Really!” Kokichi stuttered, “We just met! You—you don’t have to make yourself uncomfortable for me!”
“Well, like you said earlier, there’s no need for formalities here,” Junpei argued, “There’s no one here who could judge me except for you and the curses. And the curses will never like me anyways.”
Kokichi laughed warmly.
“True….. Thank you, then, for showing me your scars. It does make me feel better, to know another person who’s kind of like me.”
“Ah, I’m glad!” Junpei replied.
Kokichi tilted his head and looked away for a moment, as if he wanted to ask something but was unsure.
“You….. can touch my scar, if you want,” he offered timidly.
Junpei must’ve looked like he was frowning again, because the other boy became nervous.
“I mean, from what I know about you, you seemed like you’d appreciate that!” he sputtered, “Err…. sorry if that was weird.”
“Oh, no I—” Junpei placed a hand on Kokichi’s cheek tentatively, “It’s fine!”
He stroked the scar gently with his fingers.
“I’m scared…… that Mahito scarred me like this deliberately,” Kokichi trembled, “As if to say that I’ll never be free of him……”
“For a long time, that’s what I thought about the scars my bullies left,” Junpei reassured, “But you can’t let people who hurt you define you like that. And now they’re gone, anyway. Well, they’re gone because of Mahito, but—you know what I mean—”
The other boy nodded.
“I do. And when we get out of here, we can have a fresh start.”
Junpei moved his hand away from Kokichi’s cheek.
“Wait, can I show you my shikigami?” he asked, “I’ve been afraid to use my technique since I found myself here. Since Mahito gave it to me and all. But it might be useful for helping us get out…..”
Kokichi grinned.
“Of course! And I’ll show you my technique, if we can find things on the beach to build puppets out of…..”
At the other end of the beach, Mahito was lounging under an umbrella with the other curses. He spied Junpei and Kokichi cheerfully conversing.
“Lame!” he exclaimed, “I was hoping they’d hate each other. But it looks like they’re getting along….. How boring!”
“Why are you still so fascinated by these humans?” Jogo groaned, lowering the pipe which Mahito had fashioned for him from someone he transfigured, “You’ll never understand them.”
The silver-haired curse pondered the question for a moment, before smirking.
“It’s exactly that! I’ll never understand them!”