[Leave your brain here]
With one thunderous crash, a Dayun truck on the highway sent Lin Kano's soul to another world.
And so Lin Kano transmigrated into a baby named Shoichi Kano and began his new life.
At first, he thought this "Shoichi Kano" identity belonged to the protagonist of a dating sim he had played, but despite his vast viewing experience, he couldn't remember any dating sim with a character by that name.
Since Shoichi Kano started out as an insignificant nobody living on the outskirts of Tokyo, much like Lin Kano himself, he had plenty of time to adjust to his new identity.
This world seemed no different from the one he had lived in before. It was another modern society, which meant he had to slog through elementary school, middle school, and high school all over again.
Until one day, he spotted an absurdly oversized fly on the street. He asked other people about it, only to discover that none of them could see it. He was the only one who could.
Well, damn. I've transmigrated into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
Now Shoichi Kano was even more worried. In a dating sim, at least he could admire pretty girls and unlock some special CGs on certain special holidays. What a feast for the eyes that would be!
But in this place... even staying alive would be a challenge.
He had already given up hoping for a cheat like a system. He had started praying for a system to help him on his very first day here, but sixteen years had passed without so much as a trace of one.
He reasonably suspected that this dumbass author simply didn't know how to write a system novel.
Now that he had discovered his talent for seeing cursed spirits, perhaps he could be a jujutsu sorcerer too. That gave Shoichi Kano a little more confidence. Maybe there would even be a place for him on the future "Cursed Realm Continent"?
Of course, all of that depended on him awakening a decent cursed technique. Ideally, something like "Chaos and Harmony," so he could jump straight into creative mode.
With all these random thoughts running through his head, Shoichi Kano walked into his home in this world.
His mother in this life had died of illness early on, while his father was a sailor who was away from home most of the year. As a result, he essentially lived alone in the little apartment building his father owned, supported by the money his father transferred to his bank account every so often.
He was supposedly living the life of a high school student-though the Japanese called it senior high school-but in practice, it wasn't much different from college.
"Why is there nothing in here..." Kano opened the fridge and found it empty enough to set up a Culling Game barrier inside. His spirits sank.
If his kendo club captain hadn't insisted on making them finish that samurai movie, he could have come home earlier. But now it was almost seven in the evening, leaving him little time to cook.
He glanced at the wallet on the dining table. There weren't many yen left inside either. Saying he wouldn't have another meal after this one was an exaggeration, but he certainly couldn't afford many more.
If only he hadn't secretly taken money to bet on horse races. The trouble was, Japan in the early 2000s really didn't have much in the way of entertainment...
Still lost in his wandering thoughts, Kano headed toward a ramen shop he frequented.
By his "live for today" philosophy, even if Red King was coming to Earth tomorrow, he would still have to eat a hamburger first.
Applied to his current circumstances, that meant even if he was so broke he would be eating dirt tomorrow, today's tonkotsu ramen and tempura were nonnegotiable. He would even need a bowl of miso soup afterward to wash it all down.
How did that saying go again... "We old Tokyo locals have to have a meal like this. Now that's au-thentic~"
When he reached a fork in the road, the mighty hand of "Lord Fate" got its claws into Kano.
The ramen shop was to the left of the fork, but this time Kano refused to follow the obvious route and wanted to try turning right to see whether he could still reach it.
At first, he only noticed that his surroundings were growing colder and there were fewer and fewer people on the street. But he had always been rather easygoing, so he figured it might be a late spring cold snap. Even if it was already May, that wasn't impossible.
Then he saw a woman approaching in the distance.
She wore a brown raincoat with her head lowered, her glossy black hair cascading down to her chest like a waterfall and completely hiding her expression.
On her lower half, she wore matching straight-leg trousers and black leather shoes with modest heels. Her outfit looked ordinary enough, with nothing particularly noteworthy.
The only thing worth mentioning was her hands, since they were the only part of her left uncovered by the outfit.
Her slender, delicate hands could have belonged to a hand model, but sharp black nails grew from them. Those nails gleamed like metal, as though they could easily tear through steel.
Under the pale glow of the streetlights, her skin seemed to take on an inhuman, deathly gray hue.
Shoichi Kano's sixth sense began screaming warnings. At first glance, he knew something was wrong with this woman! Like a mouse spotting a cat, he felt his skin crawl.
Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and walked away.
Bang! "Ow!" His forehead slammed into what felt like a very solid pane of glass, leaving him so dizzy that stars seemed to dance before his eyes.
The strange woman's little leather shoes clicked sharply against the asphalt.
She drew closer and closer.
Shoichi Kano was still struggling against the invisible barrier in front of him. He tried everything, but couldn't break through it, like a video game character blocked by an invisible wall.
Kano was practically frantic now, smashing punch after punch into the transparent barrier before him, but none of it helped.
Twenty meters, fifteen meters, ten meters, five meters...
The footsteps drew ever closer to Shoichi Kano, and he felt as though this life of his was about to end too.
He didn't know how much time passed. Perhaps one second, perhaps three, but to Shoichi Kano, that brief instant felt like a century.
The footsteps stopped.
Did she leave?
Shoichi Kano felt the transparent barrier in front of him. It was still there, telling him that this feeling was nothing more than wishful thinking.
But what if?
What if she isn't interested in me?
He tentatively turned around. Since there was no escape in his current direction, perhaps facing another way would offer him a way out.
Then he had a close encounter with that "beauty."
There were fewer than fifty centimeters between them, so Shoichi Kano could see her face clearly.
Framed by her waterfall of tangled black hair, her true face was revealed: her features were perfectly proportioned. In shape and contour alone, she fit the "delicate nose and almond eyes" described in old books.
Except her eyes were an eerie dark gray, while her pupils were white and contracted to tiny pinpoints, impossible to spot without a close look.
Those were absolutely not human eyes!
In his utter terror, Shoichi Kano felt as though he had fallen into an ice cave. Almost every cell in his body seemed frozen, leaving his body unresponsive and completely unable to move.
His gaze drifted downward, and only then did he notice the pure white mask fitted snugly over the lower half of her face.
Her two white pupils tilted slightly upward until her gaze met the boy's directly.
She paused for half a second and placed a hand on the edge of her mask, as though she might pull it off at any moment.
Shoichi Kano wanted to back away, but behind him there was only the invisible, transparent barrier.
"Am I beautiful?" the woman asked, her voice slightly husky, with the smoky quality of a mature woman's voice.
Kano felt his vision go dark! He had heard the urban legend of the Slit-Mouthed Woman in both his previous life and this one, but actually experiencing it in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen was something he absolutely did not want!
How can I survive this?
The woman stared into the boy's eyes, naturally taking in the way he trembled like a leaf.
She had realized that this human could see her, which meant he could serve as her prey.
Her prey had already taken the bait, and she was certain he couldn't escape. So she was in no hurry, merely waiting in silence for him to give his answer.
Whether the boy answered "beautiful" or "not beautiful," she had a response ready! If he answered "beautiful," she could use her scissors to slice the corners of his mouth to match hers. If he answered "not beautiful," she could simply kill him outright!
Either choice led to death!
For an imaginary cursed spirit like her, born from an urban legend, the power rooted in that legend's rules had long since become her "cursed technique," her "instinct"!
Scared out of his wits, Shoichi Kano already saw his life flashing before his eyes. More than twenty years of his previous life mingled with sixteen years of memories from this one, scene after scene unfolding before him.
Finally, the images froze on a certain game he had once played.
And so the boy instinctively blurted out the word that came to mind:
"Mom."
"?"
Before you continue