Too Hellish a Headcanon

Hunter World, Meteor City.

Airships often hovered overhead, dumping huge quantities of discarded goods—or, more accurately, garbage.

The sky was a deep gray, as if cut off by smog, without a hint of blue. Trucks carrying garbage came and went all around.

The garbage was piled into towering mountains, with scavenging vultures circling low above them.

The air was thick with the stench of decay. Just breathing it in put anyone in a foul mood.

Some people in full protective suits and gas masks patrolled the area, while others wearing makeshift protection lurked around the garbage heaps, waiting for an opportunity.

On top of one of the heaps sat a boy who looked quite young.

He wore no protective gear, only a white hoodie, black shorts, long white socks, and white sneakers.

His hair was white, his long eyelashes were frosty white, and his eyes were blue as the sky.

At first glance, he brought the word angel to mind—if not for the strange black markings on his body.

The markings stretched from his face all the way down his body.

A large bloodstain covered his white clothes, a clear sign of the danger he posed.

"Was my headcanon really that hellish?" The white-haired boy held a red apple riddled with wormholes, his expression troubled as he hesitated over whether to take a bite.

"I only cosplayed Gojo after he swallowed Sukuna's Finger. And when I introduced myself, I only told everyone they could call me Ryomen Sukuna or Gojo Sukuna." His voice grew quieter as he spoke, and finally he sighed.

"Sure, in the manga, Ryomen Sukuna killed Gojo Satoru, and the scene where he died was so rushed and ridiculous, like he died just for the sake of dying. And, well..."

"This headcanon was a little hellish, since I made it for laughs."

"But stabbing someone was going too far. It really hurt." The boy touched his chest. His clothes were soaked with blood there, and a hole had been torn in the fabric.

In fact, not long ago, a knife had been stuck in that spot.

His name was Su Wu. He was a Chinese kid, and his age was classified. In short, he'd just gotten through the first major exam of his relentlessly competitive life. It wasn't the college entrance exam, though.

For some people, the college entrance exam was the most important—and perhaps the only—test that could change their lives. But for someone like Su Wu, who'd been born in Haidian... the college entrance exam was still a long way off.

He was young, but already a somewhat famous cosplayer. He often shared his cosplay outings and makeup looks on social media.

His followers on Douyin and Xiaohongshu combined numbered around a million, and he'd achieved financial independence at a young age.

Online, a crowd of anime fans called him "Teacher."

Of course, as a Chinese kid, he had a bit of a troublemaker streak, and occasionally cosplayed characters from headcanons he came up with himself.

Because of his age and height, aside from characters who were canonically elementary school students, he usually cosplayed characters as children.

He'd done gender-swapped versions, too: male Amu Hinamori, Ai Haibara, Ran Mouri, Rem, and Ram...

He'd also done child gender-swapped versions of Shuichi Akai, Gin, Bourbon, and Dazai Osamu...

And he'd cosplayed characters in their usual forms, like Dark Era Dazai, Megumi Fushiguro as an elementary school student, Chuuya Nakahara, Killua Zoldyck, and Divine Child Gojo Satoru...

Of course, Chuuya Nakahara was a character he could cosplay from his Sheep King days all the way through his Port Mafia days.

That was because Chuuya's height... hadn't changed much.

So there wasn't much of a height requirement for cosplaying him.

Then, at a recent convention, the latest plot developments in Jujutsu Kaisen had set off his troublemaker streak, and he'd gone with a headcanon of his own.

Gojo as the Divine Child, but... after swallowing Sukuna's Finger.

The idea was that only the strongest could restrain the strongest, so the arrogant, self-assured Divine Child imprisoned Ryomen Sukuna within himself.

The strongest, times two. Stronger than ever. The ultimate version of the strongest.

What about the logic? There wasn't any. The manga itself was already that insane, so what was wrong with making his headcanon a little crazier?

He'd excitedly put on Gojo's tracksuit, covered his face and body with Sukuna's tattoos, and hurried to the convention.

At first, he hadn't thought much of the many stunned looks that seemed to ask, "What the hell is this performance?"

After all, conventions were full of people who enjoyed a bit of fun, and plenty of them happily lined up to take photos with him.

Besides, if you were into cosplay, who cared what other people thought? How many anime fans weren't a little crazy?

That was, until a man with a deranged expression and obvious mental problems rushed up to him, excitedly plunged a knife straight through him, and left him bleeding out.

Even as he died, Su Wu couldn't figure out why that lunatic had targeted him.

Had the guy just picked a random unlucky victim?

He closed his eyes, then opened them, and found himself in midair.

A being calling itself the Fun System spoke to him.

[Welcome to the Jujutsu Kaisen world. Make everyone in this world believe that your headcanon is actually Gojo Satoru from another world.]

[Our motto is: add a little fun to life.]

Then he fell into a garbage heap.

[Detection error. World arrival point has been misplaced.]

"Then... where am I now?" Su Wu, who'd been swallowed by the garbage the moment he landed, poked his head out of the heap and asked calmly.

As a seasoned anime fan, he was very familiar with the process of dying, transmigrating to another world, and getting bound to a system.

[Current location—]

[Meteor City, Hunter World.]

The system's voice grew quieter.

[Main quest changing—]

[Please max out your compatibility with the character in this world.]

[Language pack loaded.]

[Please do your best to survive until the system has collected enough energy for another world crossing.]

[Current world danger rating—high risk.] Its voice turned cold and mechanical.

"Meteor City..." Su Wu trailed off.

Hunter x Hunter was familiar to him, and so was Meteor City, the Spiders' home.

Meteor City was a famous, gigantic garbage dump in the Hunter World. Its living conditions were so harsh that fanfiction writers described it as a literal hell.

He couldn't tell one grain from another, was lazy and useless, had never fought anyone or even gotten into an argument, and always called the police whenever trouble came up. Forget surviving until the system had gathered enough energy to send him to the Jujutsu World—he wasn't even sure he'd live through the night.

"I'll probably be the transmigrator who dies fastest." Su Wu closed his eyes peacefully, ready to sleep forever in the garbage.

Life was a boring game, and switching to a new world was just like loading a different game level.

If it was all a game, then death wasn't so hard to accept.

He'd always lived with that attitude.

He stayed calm right up until a pair of hands pulled him out of the garbage heap.

He had no idea where those hands were dragging him.

"...What are they trying to do?" Su Wu asked the system, bewildered.

"This is Meteor City," the system reminded him.

"Oh, Meteor City..." Su Wu suddenly understood.

Judging by how the people of Meteor City were portrayed in old fanfiction...

They were probably going to strip him naked and eat him alive...

No. No way.

He could accept dying, but not dying like that.

"System, I want a newbie protection period." He knocked on the system in his mind.

[Please do your best to improve your character compatibility—]

[For every certain increase in compatibility, you will gain some of that character's abilities.]

"Then which compatibility am I supposed to raise, Gojo Satoru's or Ryomen Sukuna's?" Su Wu looked troubled. Even now, he didn't seem afraid. If anything, he was treating the situation with a playful nonchalance.

He should've known better than to make up a headcanon. How was he supposed to raise his compatibility now? What a pain.

The system had probably meant for him to use the [Gojo Satoru who swallowed Sukuna's Finger] headcanon to stir up trouble in the Jujutsu Kaisen world and shock the other characters.

But something had gone wrong, and he'd ended up in the Hunter World instead.

[Host must max out your compatibility with both characters,] the system explained.

Feeling the people silently surrounding him start to strip off his clothes and prepare to remove his limbs, Su Wu fell thoughtful.

He seemed to sense a certain kind of energy inside his body.

Could it have come from Gojo Satoru and Sukuna? But there didn't seem to be much of it... If he'd inherited their power, shouldn't there be more?

Come to think of it, ever since he'd arrived in this world, he'd seen things differently from ordinary people. Almost everything appeared in a way that reminded him of thermal imaging. He could also see energy spilling from the people surrounding him.

So this was the Hunter World's [aura]...

He could even make out every detail about the people around him—their height, weight, heart rates, body hair, and the materials their clothes were made from.

They were all ordinary people.

Gojo Satoru and Sukuna used Cursed Energy, while the Hunter World's power system was called Nen. Cursed Energy came from negative emotions, while Nen was life energy.

At least he didn't need to worry about the two power systems clashing later.

The Six Eyes picked up and analyzed every piece of garbage spread across the surrounding mountains: what each item was, how damaged it was, what it was made of.

So his Six Eyes had become real, too.

A flood of complicated but useless information poured into his mind, making his head feel several pounds heavier, as if something were pressing down on it. Even thinking had become difficult...

But it was bearable. He'd deal with these guys first.

It took a villain to deal with a villain. He should do unto them as they'd done unto him.

People who killed others should be prepared to be killed themselves, right?

He'd use Sukuna's abilities. He wondered which one he could use.

He opened his eyes expressionlessly and stared at the people looming over him. "Who gave you permission to look down on me? Trash."

As he opened his eyes, invisible slashes appeared, killing several ordinary people around him in an instant.

Blood sprayed everywhere, severed limbs littered the ground, and they were reduced to a truly literal mess of blood and brains.

[Current Ryomen Sukuna compatibility: 10%]

[Gojo Satoru compatibility: 20%]

His compatibility with Gojo Satoru was actually that high? Ah, right. It was probably because of his appearance.

He'd transmigrated with his own body, so the clothes on his chest were still torn, but the wound from the knife had healed.

He'd deliberately dyed his hair white and styled it. To keep the white from making his skin look dark, he'd also covered himself in the palest body paint he could find. Even his colored contacts had been custom-made to look like the Six Eyes.

When it came to cosplay, he never skimped on spending.

But after he'd transmigrated, no matter how he looked, his hair was white all the way down to the roots. His skin seemed naturally snow-white, and his eyes seemed naturally like the Six Eyes. No matter how much he rubbed them, he couldn't feel the contacts.

His compatibility with Sukuna was probably because of the Curse Marks he'd painted on himself.

But... the burden of the Six Eyes seemed heavier than he'd expected.

The [Six Eyes] were Gojo Satoru's eyes, as well as a passive ability. They gave him a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision and let him see things from extremely far away. Of course, they could also see energy, such as Cursed Energy and the aura in people from the Hunter World.

Su Wu looked at the nosebleed that had started dripping at some point, wiped it away, and immediately felt fresh blood trickling out again.

Maybe, since he'd originally been an ordinary person, the Six Eyes were simply too taxing on his brain—even for Gojo Satoru, who'd been born a Curse User?

Even Gojo wore sunglasses or a blindfold because of the strain the Six Eyes put on him.

Was his brain warning him about the pressure by making his nose bleed, since it had never endured anything like this before?

Or was there some other reason? Maybe... his so-called compatibility?

Thinking of that, Su Wu tipped his head back, trying to force the nosebleed to stop, while biting into the unspoiled side of the worm-eaten apple.

"My mouth tastes kind of weird..." He smacked his lips, his tone conflicted.

"Please tell me I didn't eat a bug."

Well, the apple had come from a garbage heap... It was only to be expected.

"An apple with wormholes really shouldn't be eaten." He tossed the core aside.

The progress bar for energy collection was completely empty.

A line of tiny text appeared beside it.

[When the progress bar is filled with deep crimson, the system can open another world-crossing passage.]

Who knew how long that would take?

"Starting today, I'm the strongest. So should I be called Ryomen Sukugo, Gojo Sukuna, or maybe Sukuna Satoru?" Su Wu sat on the garbage heap with his head still tipped back, gazing up at the gloomy sky as he spoke to himself, bored.

If he wanted to raise his compatibility with Ryomen Sukuna, should he start by slaughtering a city? Killing hundreds of thousands or millions of people ought to raise it pretty fast, right?

Ah, that was too evil-villain-like. Restrain yourself, restrain yourself.

Su Wu pushed the horrible idea out of his mind, but he understood one thing very clearly—

This wasn't the world he knew anymore. The restraints of morality no longer applied to him. He didn't need to keep suppressing his nature and pretending to be no different from an ordinary person in front of others.

He could really do whatever he wanted.

PS: [The protagonist mostly acts on his nature. He's a troublemaker with a Schrödinger's conscience, not a normal person. He's got a few screws loose.]

[Started writing on impulse because I like the idea. My writing isn't great; it's at an elementary-school level (and I can't suddenly improve by leaps and bounds). It's trash, and I'll be adding some headcanons. Please leave your brain on the side while reading.]

[The protagonist already has a system, so there's no need to get too hung up on whether his abilities make sense. It'll be better for both you and me.]

[I don't make a living from writing. With my numbers, I don't earn much. I'm relying entirely on sheer stubbornness.]

[The protagonist won't start off invincible, and he won't immediately punch the Hunter Association chairman, kick the Ant King, and grind the Phantom Troupe into the dirt.]

[The style leans toward a calm, everyday pace, with little passionate, high-stakes action. If you want nonstop thrills and twists, this probably isn't for you.][To be clear, it's really, really, really, really, really boring! I think it's trash myself, too. Sumimasen.]

[Advance warning: the protagonist has a Nen ability. If you can't accept that, just leave.]

[If it's not to your taste, just close the page. There's no need to comment specifically to make me mourn your departure.]

Don't see the protagonist start with too little Cursed Energy and the Six Eyes putting a heavy strain on him, then accuse me of nerfing him or not knowing the source material. If you want to know why, read Chapter Fifty-Two first. Don't rush to slap the "doesn't know the source material" label on me.