The transition wasn't a roar; it was a sigh.
One moment, Aris—a man who lived more in the margins of his notebooks than in the light of day—was staring at a smudge on a subway window. The next, the screech of the train tracks was replaced by a silence so absolute it felt like pressure against his eardrums.
He was standing in an alleyway in Shinjuku. At least, it looked like Shinjuku. The neon signs were there, but the kanji were distorted, melting like wax under a flame. The air didn't smell like exhaust; it smelled like old copper and wet fur.
Aris didn't panic. Panic required a certainty about reality that he had never quite possessed. He simply adjusted his glasses, his fingers trembling only slightly.
"Not home," he whispered.
Then came the sound. A wet, rhythmic thump-squish.
Turning slowly, Aris saw it. It was a mass of translucent, grey flesh, roughly the size of a refrigerator, clinging to the side of a dumpster. It had dozens of human tongues instead of limbs, and they were all tasting the air, fluttering in a sickening, coordinated dance.
A Grade 4 Curse. To a sorcerer, a pest. To Aris, a death sentence.
The creature's tongues lashed out, sticking to the brick wall and pulling its bloated body forward. Its "mouth"—a vertical slit running the length of its torso—opened to reveal rows of needle-like teeth.
Think, Aris told himself. This is... different. The air feels heavy. Like there's a fluid I can't see.
He felt a heat in his chest, a flickering ember of something dark and oily. It was Cursed Energy. He didn't know the name for it yet, but he felt the "flow." In his mind, he saw a vision of a steel barrier slamming down between him and the beast. He imagined the coldness of the metal, the rivets, the impenetrable weight.
He pushed that "flow" toward the image.
[Cursed Technique: Fantasist – Stage 1: Visualization]
A shimmering, translucent wall flickered into existence. It wasn't steel. It looked like hardened gelatin, pulsating with a sickly blue light.
The Tongue-Curse slammed into it.
CRACK.
The "wall" didn't shatter; it simply buckled, the force of the impact sending a feedback loop of pain straight into Aris's skull. He gasped, falling to one knee as blood began to leak from his left nostril.
It's not real, he realized, his vision swimming. I'm trying to overwrite the world, but the world is heavier than my head. I'm not building a wall... I'm just trying to convince the air to act like one.
The Curse recoiled, its tongues whipping frantically, and then it lunged again. This time, it didn't use its weight. It used its tongues like spears.
One of the fleshy appendages pierced the flickering blue barrier as if it were wet paper. It grazed Aris's shoulder, tearing through his jacket and leaving a shallow, burning streak across his skin.
The pain was grounding. It was sharp, hot, and undeniable.
Focus, Aris hissed, his teeth clenched. Stop trying to make things. Interpret the energy.
The Curse pulled back for a final strike. Aris watched the tongues. He didn't imagine a shield this time. He looked at the puddle of murky water at the Curse's "feet."
He imagined the water wasn't liquid. He imagined it had the concept of "Jagged."
He poured his flickering energy into the puddle. The water didn't transform into ice; it remained liquid, but it began to vibrate with a violent, unnatural frequency. As the Curse stepped forward to lunge, the "jagged" water tore into its soft underbelly like a thousand tiny buzzsaws.
The creature let out a gurgling shriek, its grey ichor spraying against the dumpster.
Aris didn't celebrate. The effort felt like someone had shoved a hot needle into his brain. His "Fantasist" logic was failing; the water returned to its natural state a second later, the cursed energy spent.
He scrambled to his feet, clutching his throbbing head. The Curse was wounded, but it was regenerating. It dragged its mutilated body toward him, its tongues now dripping with a black, acidic bile.
"You... smell... delicious..." the Curse rasped.
Aris backed away, his heels hitting a dead end. He looked up. The sky was still that bruised purple.
I can't win a war of attrition, he thought, his breathing coming in ragged hitches. My imagination is a candle in a hurricane.
Just as the Curse prepared to leap, a shadow fell over the alley.
A man stepped from the rooftop above, landing silently between Aris and the monster. He wore a dark, high-collared uniform and round, dark sunglasses. He looked bored.
"A window?" the man muttered, tilting his head. "No... you've got a core. Just no clue how to use it."
It was Satoru Gojo, though Aris didn't know that name yet. He only saw a man who moved with a grace that made the rest of the world look like it was moving through molasses.
The Tongue-Curse didn't hesitate. It saw a new target and lashed out with every tongue at once.
Gojo didn't move. The tongues stopped inches from his skin, hitting an invisible, absolute wall.
"Your 'imagination' is messy, kid," Gojo said, not even looking back at Aris. "You're trying to force the energy to be something it's not. Look at it. Feel the weight of the negativity. Don't ask it to be a wall. Ask it to be your wall."
With a casual flick of his fingers, Gojo didn't just kill the Curse. He deleted it. A small spark of blue energy expanded, and the creature vanished into a cloud of vanishing purple mist.
The pressure in the air evaporated.
Gojo turned around, sliding his glasses down just enough to reveal a single, crystalline blue eye. He stared at Aris, his expression shifting from boredom to a sharp, clinical curiosity.
"That's a weird brain you've got there," Gojo remarked. "You weren't just using cursed energy. You were trying to rewrite the physics of that puddle. High risk, low reward. I like it."
Aris tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He slumped against the brick wall, the adrenaline leaving him in a cold rush.
"Who...?"
"I'm the guy who's going to make sure you don't accidentally lobotomize yourself with your own daydreams," Gojo said, grinning. "Welcome to Tokyo Jujutsu High. Or, well... the sidewalk outside of it."
Aris looked at his hands. They were covered in grime and the fading residue of his own flickering power. He realized then that the "Fantasist" wasn't a gift. It was a burden. Every time he imagined something, he was betting his sanity against the world's stubborn reality.
And the world was very, very stubborn.