"It's not bad to come out for some fresh air occasionally. What do you think?"
Sukuna had his hands in his pockets, his crimson pupils sweeping over the people not far away.
The several clones had completely suppressed Choso and the other three, but upon noticing Sukuna's presence, their attention was drawn to this pink-haired man.
Although these clones lacked eyes, Sukuna felt their attention shift onto him.
"What—you want to keep me company too?"
"Although I won't help that brat fight, it doesn't mean I'll ignore you."
Sukuna maintained his hands-in-pockets stance. The terrifying-looking clones halted in place. The invisible pressure exuded by this man's every move made them hesitate.
"Even though they are just some clones, they still feel fear... well."
Sukuna grinned. At the same time, an eyeball from an unknown source suddenly appeared beside him.
The eyeball stared straight at Sukuna. When Sukuna glanced at it, the eyeball exploded.
POP!
Pitch-black fluid splattered everywhere. Seizing the opening created by the eyeball's explosion, a clone swiftly lunged toward Sukuna, its hand formed into a claw, aiming straight for Sukuna's head—
SQUELCH!
However, before it could take more than a few steps, the clone was cleanly sliced in half at the waist by an invisible slash mid-run. A smooth cut appeared across the monster's waist, and its upper body simply slid off and collapsed to the ground.
THUD.
"It's a pity, but your cursed technique doesn't affect me."
Although the curse in front of him had a larger cursed energy pool than a five-finger Sukuna, in terms of overall strength, Sukuna was far superior.
"I observed from inside Yuji Itadori earlier. Your cursed technique applies a 'mark' based on the opponent's strength, right? A technique like this might be very useful in a match between equally matched opponents."
The giant baby's cursed technique had almost zero effect on Sukuna.
"But I am vastly stronger than you."
Sukuna looked somewhat disdainful.
Although this guy had massive cursed energy, its overall strength wasn't that great. It gave off a very bloated feeling, was hard to kill completely, and had many annoying tricks like disguises and dreams.
He almost fell asleep watching from inside Yuji Itadori.
Through Yuji's words, Sukuna learned that this curse was Kenjaku's doing.
That pervert Kenjaku, always messing around with these disgusting things.
"..."
Choso wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. Kento Nanami panted heavily. The group finally got a chance to catch their breath because of Sukuna. Megumi looked at Sukuna in the distance.
"It's Sukuna..."
"Itadori actually let Sukuna out, but he seems... not to have any hostile intent?"
"Don't let your guard down." Kento Nanami tightly gripped his blunt blade, staring at the figure in the distance. However, in the blink of an eye, Sukuna suddenly disappeared from his spot.
"...?!"
Kento Nanami hurriedly looked around, eventually finding the elusive Sukuna on the roof of the school building.
"Don't worry. I won't interfere with you."
"But don't expect me to help you either."
Sukuna raised his hand, brushing the fallen strands of hair from his forehead to the top of his head.
"This cursed spirit's technique doesn't drag people into an illusion—it makes them 'dream.'"
He had been observing earlier when he was inside Yuji.
Although he didn't want to interfere, Sukuna really couldn't stand watching these fools—who knew nothing about jujutsu—continue to be kept in the dark.
"Even though the presented effects seem identical, there is a fundamental difference between the two."
Sukuna's hints stopped there.
"That brat really dislikes using my power. He seems to have his own pride, and I'm not the kind of unromantic person to meddle in the kid's battle."
Sukuna spread his hands.
"So—please suit yourselves."
Yuji took action the moment he fell into the dream.
Just like before, he condensed blood onto his palm to form a sharp blood blade, and then slit his own neck.
SQUELCH!
Blood sprayed out, and Yuji's vision went black.
He had tried this before. As long as he committed suicide, he could break free from the dream imposed by this curse.
"..."
However, when Yuji opened his eyes again—thinking he had returned to reality—the scene before him was still the same dormitory building as before. Completely unchanged from when he first entered the dream.
"...What's going on?"
Yuji repeated his previous action, committing suicide once more. But the result was the same. After losing consciousness and opening his eyes again, the scene before him remained unchanged.
The young man quickly realized the problem and stopped his actions.
Perhaps because Yuji had been tagged with the "cursed technique mark" from the previous battles, the effects of this curse's technique had been further strengthened, so the method of escaping the dream was different from before.
This curse's overall strength wasn't that impressive, but its cursed technique was incredibly annoying.
Yuji guessed as much, then let out a long sigh. Since that was the case, he might as well let nature take its course and leave only after finding a way to break the opponent's technique.
Yuji closed his eyes, let his consciousness return to his body, and tried to see if he could contact Sukuna.
After explaining his current predicament to Sukuna, Sukuna agreed to watch over his body for him.
After settling things with Sukuna, Yuji's consciousness returned to the surface. At the same time, the world before him suddenly began to spin.
"..."
Yuji remembered that in the previous few dreams, this curse had shown him some content. Megumi and Junpei speculated that the content of the dreams was the experiences of this Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit during its lifetime.
The first two times were memories of a fat boy being bullied in the dormitory and then verbally abused by his father after returning home.
And this time, the curse was once again showing him the same memory scenes as before.
"..."
The afternoon sunlight vanished, replaced by a messy yet lived-in bedroom. The walls were covered in anime posters, and the bookshelf was filled with light novels and figurines. The fat boy—the owner of the dream—was sitting at the desk, holding a pencil and intently drawing something on a piece of paper.
Yuji stepped closer and saw that the portrait on the sketchbook looked exactly like the tall boy who bullied him. It seemed this person had a certain foundation in sketching.
"...?"
Yuji felt puzzled. He clearly remembered that this tall boy had bullied the fat boy, so why was his portrait appearing on this drawing paper?
With no quick way to leave, Yuji had no choice but to continue watching.
Through the scenes presented by the dream, Yuji learned about the life of this fat boy. He wasn't fat from the beginning. As a child, he had taken hormonal medication due to an illness. After his body lost its shape, he began to be mocked by his classmates. Because he was bad at socializing—and also to escape reality—he hid in the online world.
His drawing skills were decent, especially at drawing handsome men, so he accumulated a certain amount of popularity in social circles aimed at female users, and he also made some online friends.
But in reality, he became increasingly withdrawn.
The scene jumped to the fat boy's junior high school days.
There was a quiet girl in his class. Because of her plain looks and introverted personality, she became the target of pranks by several boys in the class. Back in junior high, although the fat boy hadn't become so bloated yet, he was already bad with words, so he had no friends.
At that time—not yet overweight—in order not to be isolated and to fit into that "popular group" he envied so much, he also participated in that prank. They threw the girl's schoolbag into the girls' bathroom, stuffed trash into her desk, and deliberately made weird noises when she answered questions.
To make everyone feel "his presence," the fat boy always took the lead, which earned him a few fair-weather friends.
But later, the girl transferred schools because of the bullying. The matter was left unresolved, and no one cared anymore. The fat boy also returned to his solitary state.
Two years later, he successfully entered high school. Because his high school was far from home, he chose to live in the dormitory.
But what he didn't expect was that his roommate—the tall boy who bullied him—
Was the childhood friend of that girl who was bullied back then.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Aren't you best at drawing men? Draw yourself, you fat pig."
"I heard you used to bully people too? Now you know what it feels like, right?"
"Why doesn't a guy like you just go and die already!"
And his other roommates, upon hearing of his deeds, also joined in the action to "sanction" him. Whenever those boys felt in a bad mood, they would gang up, corner him, and beat him to a pulp.
"..."
The victim became the perpetrator?
Yuji stood to the side watching this scene, the pink-haired young man narrowing his eyes.
What Junpei and Megumi saw were only snippets of this fat boy being bullied. But now, Yuji had learned about this guy's life. He understood that this wasn't a simple story of a victim resisting a perpetrator, but a story of a former perpetrator who fell into a new bullying structure and became a victim.
But what was this curse trying to express?
The scene shifted again.
The fat boy's father's company went bankrupt. The man who once threw a teacup at him in their luxurious living room leaped from the roof of his company on a rainy night.
Creditors came knocking after that. The once spacious villa turned into a cramped rented apartment. However, his mother didn't leave. This gentle but somewhat cowardly woman started working two jobs to support this broken family and pay for both of them to continue their studies.
The fat boy's younger sister also changed. The girl shaved off her long hair, worked part-time at a convenience store after school, and would even smile and comfort her brother when she came home.
"It's okay, brother. I'm very sad about Dad too, but as long as our family is together, it's fine."
But the fat boy didn't think so.
"..."
A week passed. It was time for school to end on the weekend, and the crowd surged toward the school gate.
His classmates had already left. He packed his schoolbag alone and dragged his feet outward. When he turned the corner of the school building, he happened to see that tall boy with his arms around the shoulders of a few classmates, talking and laughing as they walked toward the school gate.
He instinctively followed them.
Several private cars were parked at the school gate. One classmate was picked up by his mother, who stuffed a few skewers of grilled meat into his hands before leaving. Another classmate got into the back seat of a black sedan, rolled down the window to wave at his companions, and left.
Finally, he saw the tall boy walk toward a silver commercial vehicle. The window rolled down, and a middle-aged man popped his head out.
"How was your week? Are you tired? Are you getting used to living at school?"
"It's alright, Dad," the tall boy opened the car door. He clearly looked happy, but his tone was somewhat impatient because of the other's nagging. "Seriously—I'm not a kid anymore. I don't need you checking up on me."
"Of course I have to check on you. You're the only son in our family. How are things with that girl from the class next door? I'm still waiting to hold my grandchild."
The tall boy blushed slightly. "We'll talk about it at home. Let's go."
"..."
The car door closed. The engine started. The silver commercial vehicle merged into the traffic, quickly disappearing at the corner of the street.
The fat boy stood in place. From beginning to end, no one cared about his existence.
"Hah... Hah... Hah..."
The boy clutched his chest. His breathing suddenly became rapid.
The middle-aged man's phrase "Are you tired?" was like a needle piercing his eardrum, traveling along his blood vessels straight into his heart, and then being driven deeper inch by inch by his heartbeat.
Why? Why could he have a father like that? Why could he have friends like that?
Why could he smile so easily? When he was tired, someone asked "Are you tired?" When he went home, someone waited for him to eat. He also wanted someone to wait for him at the school gate. He also wanted to get into the passenger seat and say "I'm home" in that feigned impatient tone.
He also wanted to be like that person.
Why couldn't he be that person?
The moment the thought arose, jealousy surged up like a tide.
He had to take the bus all the way home. His mother hadn't finished work yet, and his sister was probably working the night shift at the convenience store. When the fat boy returned home, he was also entirely alone.
He pushed open the door to his home and walked to the mirror in his room.
The person in the mirror was wearing an old, faded school uniform, with two inconspicuous bulges on his chest. His face was the same: his features squeezed together by excess fat, oil floating on his forehead, and his bangs sticking to his skin.
He stared at himself for a while, then looked up at the picture frames taped to the wall above the mirror. They were all people drawn by his pencil, each one with handsome features and not an ounce of excess fat on their bodies.
This was the "him" in his fantasies.
If he could also be like that tall boy, or like the people in the drawings, he believed he wouldn't be subjected to such unfair treatment.
He looked at his bloated body in the mirror, then at the perfect male bodies he had drawn with his own hands on the wall, and felt a wave of intense disgust.
Why? Why did that bastard of a father have to go bankrupt?
Why could his mother only do odd jobs and not give him the life he had before?
Why could his sister still smile in this situation? Was she mocking him?
Why was everyone looking at him? Why couldn't he be like that tall boy? Why couldn't that transfer student girl just endure it a little longer, causing him to suffer retribution now?
All these questions pointed to the same answer in his twisted mind—
It was all his mother's and sister's fault.
He didn't want to live anymore.
His mother gave birth to his ugly self, and his sister stole the love his father had for him.
Harboring such thoughts, deep in the night when his mother and sister returned home—as his mother was cooking in the kitchen and his sister was folding clothes in the living room—he walked into the kitchen and picked up the kitchen knife from the cutting board.
"Ah—!"
Amidst his mother's screams, the fat boy hacked at the person who gave birth to him and raised him, knife after knife. After his sister came to the kitchen to see what was happening, he turned the blade toward her.
SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!
"..."
Blood formed a pool on the smooth floor. Yuji—who had witnessed this entire process from the side—widened his eyes.
Even knowing that this was just a dream, even knowing that everything before him was an unchangeable past that had already happened, his body moved before his brain could process it.
"Stop it!"
BANG!
He rushed forward, smashing a punch into the fat boy's face, sending him flying. The kitchen knife slipped from his grasp, and the fat boy's back smashed directly against the stove.
Yuji glanced at the lifeless young girl and middle-aged woman, then stepped forward, grabbed the fat boy by the collar, lifted him off the ground, and pinned him against the wall.
"Why?"
There was suppressed anger in his voice.
"Why did you do this? These two people were your mother and your sister."
Yuji had been watching the fat boy's memories the whole time. He believed that this mother and daughter had treated the fat boy well in their daily lives. They could even be said to be the only two people who cared about him.
The pink-haired young man was utterly baffled.
The fat boy's glasses were crooked on his nose. Behind the lenses, those eyes were already red and swollen from crying. Tears mixed with snot smeared all over his face, and his lips trembled.
"I... I showed you all this... because I thought... I thought you would understand me..."
"..."
What was this guy talking about?
Yuji was stunned for a moment.
"You killed the only two people in this world who loved you, and you want me to understand what exactly?"
"No..." The boy cried even harder, but his voice suddenly became stubborn. "It's not my fault... They ruined me... My mom gave birth to me looking like this... My sister stole everything that was supposed to be mine... It's all them... It's all this body's fault!"
"..."
Yuji was silent for a moment.
Veins bulged on the pink-haired young man's forehead.
He had already met many different kinds of people.
But this was the first time he so genuinely wanted to end a human life with his own hands.
"Go apologize to your mother and sister!"
BOOM—!
Yuji smashed a punch into the fat boy's forehead. The kitchen wall was directly blown through by the punch, and the boy's body flew through the wall, falling out of the high-rise building—
In the next second, Yuji felt the world spinning, and the surrounding scene changed once again.
When he regained his senses, it was already daylight. Yuji felt gusts of cool wind. He looked around and found himself on a rooftop. He walked to the edge of the roof and looked down.
On the concrete ground below, the fat boy was lying face-up. His head had hit the stone steps at the edge of a flowerbed, and white brain matter mixed with red blood spread across the gray concrete.
His bloated belly stretched his school uniform out of shape. His four limbs were spread out in the pool of blood at awkward angles—like a squashed bug.
"..."
The dreamscape was still changing. Yuji couldn't overly interfere with everything in the dream, so this scene was likely a continuation of the fat boy killing his mother and sister in the kitchen.
He ultimately leaped from the high-rise building and died here.
Yuji stood on the roof, looking at the already rotting corpse below. After a moment, the corpse—which had already bred flies—suddenly began to melt. His bones collapsed, his flesh and blood melted like wax, and the entire corpse turned into a puddle of foul-smelling, viscous liquid.
At the same time, Yuji felt a strong fluctuation of cursed energy. The young man deduced that after the fat boy died, he cursed himself and ultimately transformed into the Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit he had seen earlier.
As Yuji hypothesized, the liquid began to re-aggregate, ultimately forming a bloated baby body that lay on its back, waving its four limbs wildly toward the sky.
Always taking, always angry, yet forever unable to move—like a true, disgusting giant baby.
"Truly disgusting."
A light voice came from not far away. Yuji followed the source of the sound and saw a man wearing a kasaya, with stitches on his forehead, who had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road.
"People like you, no matter what era, what social class, or what story, are nothing but the most insignificant maggots in the sewer. Even if you turn into a curse, you are still just a useless piece of trash that only knows how to squeal and can't even move."
"However, the potential of your cursed technique is indeed quite good. After all, even trash has its uses."
Kenjaku walked up to the baby with a smile and then pointed his palm at it.
"GYAAAAAAHHHHH—!"
The baby's shrill scream instantly echoed through the entire residential area. Under Kenjaku's control, the baby's body began to stretch into strips at impossible angles. Despite its struggles, it ultimately couldn't escape the man's control. The striped body merged into Kenjaku's palm and finally turned into a deep blue sphere.
Kenjaku held this cursed energy orb in his hand, then smiled and looked up at Yuji on the roof.
"This is our first meeting, right? Although I have seen you many times, this should be the first time you've seen my face."
The curse user who had survived since a thousand years ago looked through the overlapping dreamscapes at the most perfect masterpiece of his life.
"My son, Yuji Itadori."
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