Chapter Text

The last thing they remembered, before everything unraveled into something grotesquely, irreversibly different, was the quiet, suffocating normalcy of their own thoughts.

Death, they had always assumed, would be either oblivion or something embarrassingly mundane. A slipping away, a dimming of the senses, maybe a tunnel if the human brain was feeling particularly theatrical in its final moments. They had entertained, in the privacy of late-night scrolling and half-ironic daydreaming, the absurd possibility of something else—transmigration, reincarnation, a second life stitched together from the tatters of the first. 

The kind of fantasy that lived in comment sections and web novels, where people dissatisfied with their existence could imagine themselves reborn as heroes, prodigies, kings and queens.

It was, they had once decided with a sort of grim, grounded certainty, nothing more than escapism. A coping mechanism of the masses, people wanting meaning where there was none, wanting to imagine importance where reality had refused to grant it. The universe did not care. There was no grand design waiting to pluck you from mediocrity and drop you into legend.

They had been so sure of that.

And then, well, they didn’t quite know what exactly happened next in their life, just, afterward—

—they woke up wrong.

As in, their body was wrong.

The air felt wrong as it passed through structures that should not have existed. Sensation came in alien channels, information flooding in from apertures that made no anatomical sense, a kaleidoscope of perception that refused to condense into anything a human could understand. They had weight, but not the kind they remembered; they could move, but their movement unfolded in too many directions at once, six limbs folded tight against a form that did not obey any recognisable organic blueprint of flesh.

They tried to breathe, and the motion that followed was wrong in a way that made something deep in their psyche recoil.

They tried to move, and the subtle shift of their limbs, those things tucked beneath an outer shell that felt more like armour than skin or cloth, confirmed every creeping suspicion clawing its way to the surface.

‘No.’

The denial came sharp and steadfast.

‘No, no, no—’

The realisation did not arrive gently. It crashed into them, a blunt-force understanding that flattened every lingering hope of this being some kind of mistake, some transitional state before something more… acceptable.

They realised that they were not human, no, they weren;t even humanoid.

They were—they were a fucking roach.

That fact detonated in their mind with a kind of hysterical clarity, cutting through the surreal haze with brutal precision. It was not metaphorical, not exaggerated, not a self-deprecating joke stretched too far. It was literal. Unavoidable, even. Every twitch of their body, every strange, multi-angled perception, every alien sensation confirmed it with merciless consistency.

They were in the body of a giant fucking cockroach.

Not a normal one, either, because apparently the universe was not content with simple humiliation. No, the form they possessed was something far worse, something dredged up from the depths of a shounen series they recognised with a sinking, nauseating certainty.

Kurourushi.

And over all of that, pressing down like a command carved directly into whatever passed for their mind, there had been a single, inescapable directive engraved into them when they’d awoke;

JOIN THE CULLING GAMES AS A <PLAYER>

It hadn’t been a voice, no, there wasn’t a sound, no tone, no personality behind it. It simply was, a statement that existed with the same unquestionable authority as gravity. When they’d first awakened, the command had wrapped around their mind, constricted, dictated, not a suggestion, not a request, but an order that left no room for interpretation.

For one disorienting, panicked instant, they had not even questioned it. There'd been no room to question anything. Only the crushing pressure of that instruction, the sense of being held, contained, like something leashed.

And then, they passed through a dark barrier, and it snapped.

The pressure vanished so abruptly it was almost painful, a phantom ache where control had been. The haze that had dulled everything, that had initially numbed their mind to the horror of their new body, simply dissolved, leaving behind a clarity so sharp it bordered on overwhelming.

Free will, returned without delay. Awareness flooded in behind it, and awareness, unfortunately, came with full comprehension.

Kurourushi was a Special Grade cursed spirit who served as a brief antagonist during Jujutsu Kaisen’s Culling Game arc. By the time Yuta Okkotsu had appeared, it had managed to obtain, what was it, 54 points? It, despite being a curse, had been a player powerful enough to force a stalemate between itself and three top-tier reincarnated sorcerers, until Yuta had exorcised it with the power of love or some shit, only for it to come back, and get exorcised again by Ryu’s high-output Biden Blast.

A strong antagonist for sure, and despite the internet rage at the time, they personally thought the cockroach curse had made a pretty interesting fight, and had possibly one of the most dangerous cursed techniques shown by a cursed spirit in the entire manga. That said, you would never catch them wishing to be a FUCKING COCKROACH.

Funny how things played out, wasn't it.

Because here they were; perched high above the city, their body still, their thoughts racing too quickly to organise into anything coherent. The city of Sendai sprawled beneath them in a way that should have inspired awe, but all they could focus on was the horrifying mismatch between what they felt and what they should have felt.

Fucking Kurourushi, of all things.

The creature that had been, in its original context, an obstacle. A monster whose only purpose was to show the viewers that Yuta was just that guy, which MAPPA had accomplished amazingly, by the way.

But now—

Now it was them.

For a long, strained moment, they did nothing but stare.

The city of Sendai stretched out below, the quiet fractured by violence. A few buildings bore the scars of recent destruction, glass was shattered, concrete infrasturcture was torn open as though the city itself had been clawed apart by something far too large to belong. The streets were not streets anymore but battlegrounds, and from up here, they could watch the tiny figures of sorcerers alike brawling it out, murdering each other in broad daylight for points.

In the distance, something massive stirred.

Their vision, too wide, too sharp, too detailed, tracked it effortlessly from kilometres away, locking onto the hulking forms of enormous shikigami that burrowed through the earth around Yurtec Sendai Stadium like living disasters. They resembled moles, in the loosest, most horrifying sense of the word, their bodies vast enough to disrupt entire blocks as they pulled themselves over the ground. Asphalt split and heaved in their wake, buildings shuddering as the creatures dragged themselves forward with relentless, kaiju-like force.

Explosions followed in staggered succession, bursts of fire and pressure that rippled through the cityscape. The air trembled with the aftershocks, distant yet palpable, the kind of destruction that would have once sent adrenaline flooding through a human body that they’d possessed just a day ago.

But now, it simply… registered.

Information. Data. Movement.

They watched it all from their perch atop the apartment building, their body folded in on itself in a way that felt disturbingly natural, limbs tucked beneath the layered structure of their outer shell. The height did not bother them. The chaos did not provoke panic in the way it should have.

If anything, there was a strange, creeping detachment settling in around the edges of their awareness, something cold and instinctual that regarded the destruction not with fear, but with—

Hunger. The scent of bloodshed below was tantalising.

The thought slipped in uninvited, and they recoiled from it internally, a flicker of something human pushing back against the alien logic that came with this body.

No. No, absolutely not. That was not their thought. That was—

It couldn’t be. Sure, they looked ugly and gross as shit, but up in the noggin—that was still 100% human! Their emotions were all fucked up because of bug biology, but they still had their head together, and as long as they kept that up, no way they were ever gonna do something crazy like eat another human being.

Rather, they just stood above the fighting, observing quietly while they tried to figure out what the fuck they were gonna do now.

Not participating, not yet.

They’d gotten in only one fight so far, not long after being freed from the shackles of what they could assume was Suguru Getou’s Curse Manipulation, while they were travelling the streets earlier using “cloak mode,” the layered chitin of their form sealing over the more grotesque details beneath. The insectoid, unnatural legs that should have betrayed them to anyone with eyes were hidden under that dark, shifting shell, and from the outside, their silhouette drifted forward at a speed that felt wrong, gliding over asphalt with a smoothness that no human gait could replicate.

During their initial exploration, they’d caught glimpses of themselves as they passed shattered storefronts and intact windows alike, reflections fractured by cracks or smeared with grime, and every single time it sent a dissonant jolt through their mind. There was a part of them, some traitorous fragment of aesthetic appreciation, that registered Kurourushi’s form as undeniably striking, the way their cloaked silhouette cut through the ruined streets like a shadow given mass, something sleek and predatory and really fucking cool if they were being fully honest. 

That same part recoiled a heartbeat later as the rest of them caught up, as the wrongness of being a bug all reasserted itself with nauseating clarity, because cool or not, it was still them, and the thing reflected back at them was not a person but something that belonged in nightmares.

Down in the streets, up close, the scale of the violence refused to stay abstract. Every step, or every glide, rather, brought with it a barrage of sensation so dense it bordered on suffocating, except their body refused to be overwhelmed in the way a human body would have been. Instead, it… adapted. 

Partitioned information flowed in from too many vectors at once, scent, vibration, sight fractured into overlapping fields, and rather than collapsing under the weight of it, their mind segmented, shunting inputs into parallel channels with an efficiency that felt less like thought and more like computer processing. 

It was chilling, the way they could be internally screaming, a continuous, frantic spiral of ‘what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck,’ while something deeper and more mechanical in their mind and body calmly catalogued physical routes, mapped movement patterns of the beings around them, and adjusted their path with flawless evasion.

But, of all senses, the smell hit them the hardest.

Blood.

That late into the day, it was everywhere, soaked into the streets, smeared across concrete and metal, lingering thickly in the air, and the moment their senses truly registered it, something inside them lit up. A visceral, undeniable reaction that cut through every other layer of their awareness. It smelled—good. Not just good, but incredibly good, rich and sharp and intoxicating in a way that made something in their chest tighten with a hunger they did not want to examine. They recoiled from it instinctively, their human mind lurching back in disgust even as their body catalogued the scent as desirable, valuable, something to be sought out.

‘Nuh uh! Absolutely not! I’m a vegan bug, thank you very much!’

So they moved.

Every time they caught sight of sorcerers; figures darting through the destruction, cursed energy flaring around them in ways that their new perception could now see, shimmering distortions layered over reality—they turned away without hesitation. There was no bravado, no instinct to test themselves, no delusion of protagonism. The moment their senses registered the density of that energy, the danger it represented, their path shifted seamlessly, their body already redirecting before the conscious decision had even fully formed.

‘Nope. Not fighting that, or him, or her, not today, not ever, ideally!’

They passed one intersection where the asphalt had been peeled back like paper, where something massive had surged through the ground moments before, leaving behind a crater that still smoked at the edges with what they now recognised as cursed energy. They did not linger, they did not look closer. Their trajectory bent around it, smooth and immediate, their cloak rippling faintly as they skimmed the edge of the destruction.

Further ahead, they spotted a distortion in the sky—something subtle, a shimmer in the air above the street that their enhanced perception latched onto a fraction of a second before it fully manifested. There was a pressure to it, a tension that prickled across every sense they possessed, and then—

The sky shattered.

The sound cracked through the air like glass breaking on a monumental scale, followed instantly by an explosion that swallowed the far end of the road in fire and force. The shockwave rippled outward, rattling debris, sending fragments skittering across the ground as the world seemed to lurch sideways for a heartbeat.

Takako Uro.

At the reminder that they shared this death arena with some of the most dangerous sorcerers in the Culling Games, Kurourushi, or the poor fool trapped inside the bug, did not hesitate.

There was no moment of stunned recognition, no attempt to understand what had caused it. The instant that sound registered, their body pivoted, their path reversing so sharply it might have looked like they had been yanked backward by an invisible force. Every calculation screamed the same conclusion—wrong direction, wrong place, get out—and they obeyed it with absolute, unquestioning compliance, their form gliding away from the source of the explosion as fast as their unnatural movement allowed.

They were already halfway down the opposite street when they heard screaming.

It cut through everything else, high-pitched and raw, unmistakably human in a way that pierced through the layered noise of destruction. For a fraction of a second, their body tried to ignore it, to maintain course, to prioritise survival over anything else.

But they stopped anyway.

Their attention split, one of their many overlapping fields of vision angling toward the source. It took almost no time at all to locate it. A supermarket, its glass front partially shattered but still mostly intact, barricaded from the inside with overturned shelves and whatever debris had been available. Behind it, huddled together in a tight, desperate cluster, was a family—five people, pressed together, faces pale with terror.

And outside, were two sorcerers.

They weren’t fighting anything. They weren;t engaged in some desperate battle for survival. They were laughing, grinning as they tore into the barricade with casual, almost bored cruelty, their cursed energy auras (what a weird fucking thing to say) flaring around them as they dismantled the flimsy defenses piece by piece. One of them leaned forward, pressing a hand against the debris, his expression twisting into something eager as he locked eyes with the people inside.

The decision they made was not a decision.

It did not pass through the same channels as their fear, their logic, their frantic attempts to stay alive. It bypassed all of that entirely, something instinctual and immediate rising to the surface with a clarity that left no room for doubt, as the human overpowered the bug—

—and their arm moved.

It slipped free from the cloak, and even in that brief exposure, the limb that emerged was something distinctly inhuman; a fusion of shapes that suggested both muscle and exoskeleton, rigid and powerful in a way that made their own perception of it falter for a moment.

The ground answered them.

The asphalt around them began to boil. The next instant, it erupted, and cockroaches; countless, writhing, overwhelming in sheer number, poured upward from beneath the street, a living tide that coalesced around the main roach—which was them by the way—with terrifying speed. The swarm rose, folding in on itself, forming a mass that loomed over the road like a dark, shifting wave.

The two sorcerers turned, their expressions snapping from amusement to shock, mouths opening as the first flicker of panic took hold—

And then the swarm surged forward, not as a loose collection of bodies but as a unified force, something shaped and directed with precise, terrifying control. For a split second, a new instinct clawed its way up through their mind, something sharp and hungry that urged them to let it consume, to let the swarm do what it was made to do. Iron, take all the iron, eat all the iron—

—but they recoiled from it, wrenching that impulse back with a force that felt almost physical.

‘Vegan roach, vegan roach! I will not eat them, like the fully natty, morally intact, vegan roach I am! Positive affirmations: vegan roach, vegan roach, vegan roach!’

The command shifted, the swarm obeyed.

Instead of breaking apart into a devouring mass, it solidified into a dense, chitinous construct that swung forward like a weapon. It collided with the two sorcerers with brutal force, the impact sending them hurtling across the intersection, their bodies slamming into the ground hard enough to crack the pavement beneath them.

Silence followed, brief and stunned.

They tried to speak, to admonish those two evildoers.

‘Leave those poor civilians alone, damn you!’ They attempted to shout, the words forming clearly in their mind, urgent and indignant, exactly what they meant to say.

What came out instead was—

“I LOVE THE TASTE OF IRON!”

The sound of it reverberated through the street, their voice—or whatever grotesque approximation of a voice their body produced—twisting the intended words into something unrecognisable. It was loud, booming in a way that carried far too easily, and the effect it had was immediate.

The family inside the supermarket screamed.

The two sorcerers, who had just begun to push themselves up from where they had been thrown, froze as they turned their attention fully toward them. For a heartbeat, there was a tense, unreadable pause as they took in the figure standing in the street, the lingering swarm, the sheer density of cursed energy that surrounded them.

And then, they ran.

There was no attempt to retaliate, no bravado, no last-ditch attack. They fled, scrambling away with a desperation that bordered on frantic, disappearing down the street without a second glance.

…Uh. That was something.

They stood there for a moment, the adrenaline of the encounter still buzzing through their system, and then—awkwardly, uncertainly—they lifted their arm again, attempting something that approximated a wave toward the supermarket.

‘Um… Sorry, not sure why I said that. I know how I look, so I’ll get out of your way now. You all should find some place to hide!’ They tried to explain, the words forming carefully in their instecoid maw, an effort to sound as non-threatening as possible.

What emerged instead was way fucking worse.

“URGH… IRON… I LOVE THE TASTE OF IRON… I KNOW I LOVE THE TASTE OF IRON, SO I WILL LOOK FOR IRON. I LOVE IRON! YOU SHOULD LOVE IRON TOO!”

The screaming inside immediately intensified, rising to a pitch that made something in their mind flinch, the family pressing further back as though distance alone could protect them from the thing standing outside.

For a single, excruciating moment, they just stood there, caught between the lingering impulse to help and the overwhelming awareness that they were, in every possible sense, making this worse.

‘Okay. Okay. Abort, abort mission! We are the problem, we are absolutely the fucking problem!’

So they fucked off immediately afterward, and here they were, at the apex of an apartment building staring at the destruction from above.

The absurdity of it all pressed in on them again, heavier this time, dragging their thoughts back from the edge of that unsettling detachment. They latched onto it desperately, clinging to the sheer, undeniable ridiculousness of their situation as though it might anchor them to something resembling sanity.

They had died, and above all possible odds, they had transmigrated.

And instead of becoming some overpowered protagonist, or some irrelevant side character, or any other chosen figure in a world of curses and sorcerers—

They had become this.

A breath—if it could even be called that—shuddered through their body, taken in not through the horror that was their mouth, but through all the crevices that made their flesh. The motion was alien and deeply unsatisfying, as though the concept itself had been translated poorly into something that merely mimicked the original function.

For a moment, they considered laughing.

It bubbled up for a moment, hysterical and sharp, the kind of laughter that bordered on breaking, but it never quite made it out. Their new anatomy wasn’t right for it. The expression of it felt… incompatible.

So instead, the thought came out flat, resigned, almost eerily calm despite everything raging beneath it, despite the destruction throttling the landscape.

“I’M HIGHKIRKUINELY FUCKEDDD.” They chittered into the air, their voice ghoul-like and horrifying.

…Wow, that’d come out completely fine.

Fucking great. So saying stupid shit like that was okay, but they couldn’t properly communicate with people? Awesome! What was next, they’d have to express themselves using brainrot terminology or some shit to avoid sounding psychopathic?!

…What if it actually worked like that?

“FUCK THIS STUPID BUG LIFE,” their insectoid biology continued to produce a voice that grated on the ears like nails on a chalkboard, “MAN. DOES IT GET ANY FUCKING WORSE THAN THIS?”

Their senses alerted them to a sudden, and immediate build-up of immense cursed energy to their immediate side. They twisted around, rotating perfectly just in time to see, Ryu Ishigori on an opposite rooftop, in all his punk rock, open-jacket glory fixing his pompadour in their direction, Granite Blast charging in a bright orb immediately between his palms.

“ARE WE DEADA—”

The entire upper half of the building they stood on, with them on it, was suddenly and immediately consumed by a blinding beam of blue energy.