The Hollow Technique is the combination of a Cursed Technique Lapse and a Cursed Technique Reversal.
It fuses possibility with the opposite of possibility to create something impossible.
Within the Limitless Technique, the forward infinite attractive force and the reverse infinite repulsive force combine.
Blue and Red merge, and from attraction and repulsion, an imaginary mass is born.
It is a Cursed Technique that emerges from the union of those opposing forces.
Whether a sorcerer can use a Hollow Technique depends closely on the sorcerer’s imagination and the capabilities of the Cursed Technique itself.
When two mutually exclusive forces become one, a phenomenon appears within the illusion.
Light and shadow merge, both existing within a single space, until they finally entangle into chaos.
[New Moon and Full Moon]
[Demon Hour]
[Gray and White Wedge]
[Gap Between Light and Shadow]
[Hollow Technique: Chaos]
The light of the Cursed Technique Reversal shot toward the twisted mass of shadow from the Cursed Technique Lapse before Hajime Kashimo even had time to react.
The instant the two merged, Hajime Kashimo was swallowed into the range of the attack.
A storm of light and shadow swept across Hajime Kashimo’s eyes, dragging him into chaos.
Cursed Technique Lapse: Shadow.
By releasing Cursed Energy, it forms a sticky mass of black shadow that drags the target inside and subjects them to a continuous grinding assault.
Cursed Technique Reversal: Light.
The fired beam of light still follows the rule that it “cannot harm anyone.” When it hits the target, it stretches the target’s mind, forcing them to experience several months within a single second.
Hollow Technique: Chaos.
Hajime Kashimo fell into a world where black and white were intertwined.
Reflected in his eyes was something neither black nor white, a colorless light that belonged to no color at all.
No, it did not even seem like light.
Neither light nor shadow, neither black nor white.
Even after Hajime Kashimo closed his eyes, he could still feel that strangeness.
Pressure.
Adhesion.
The sensation against his body was neither dry nor sticky.
He braced his hand above him, yet what he touched was neither substance nor void.
Before long, Hajime Kashimo grew dizzy in that place with no space, time, or direction.
He opened his mouth, but not even a sound came out.
He tried to activate his Cursed Energy, but there was still no response.
He felt as if both his mind and soul had been struck.
Although his body had not suffered any injury, every part of him had already lost its sense of “self.”
Compared to Purple, Hollow Technique: Chaos did not damage the physical body.
It damaged the mind and soul.
It pulled the enemy into a “non-real” space, making them exist within chaos for a hundred years during a single second in reality.
They could not truly land anywhere, could not think in any concrete way, and could not feel anything clearly.
And the longer the enemy remained inside the chaos, the longer that effect would last.
Bang!
As dust rose into the air, Hajime Kashimo broke free from the chaos and collapsed face-first to the ground, his eyes empty.
Gen walked over and pressed his palm against the back of the unconscious Hajime Kashimo.
…
Leaning on his long staff, Hajime Kashimo sat at a table on the mountaintop, his blank eyes fixed on the distant horizon.
Beyond the endless mountains and forests lay the city where Hajime Kashimo had once lived.
Ever since he had grasped the Cursed Technique of “Self,” Hajime Kashimo had set out on the path of “becoming stronger.”
In his mind, weakness meant being killed by outsiders who invaded.
Weakness meant being unable to eat the best food.
Amid flashes of lightning and fists, Hajime Kashimo made a name for himself.
As his frame gradually grew tall and slender, a peculiar challenger came to seek him out.
“Were you strong from the very beginning, or did you become strong later?”
That day, Hajime Kashimo spared the life of that “challenger,” and for the rest of his life, he turned those words over again and again.
Who was born strong, and who became strong afterward?
He had not been strong from the start.
He had once sat in his mother’s arms, raised by familiar villagers until he grew up.
Until one day, he realized that when his neighbors looked at him, they no longer saw the “Hajime Kashimo” they had known before.
Those gazes, mixed with fear, admiration, and awe, brought that question back to Hajime Kashimo’s mind once more.
“Were you strong from the very beginning, or did you become strong later?”
Before every strong opponent fell in defeat, Hajime Kashimo would ask that question, hoping to hear their answer.
In Hajime Kashimo’s eyes, the neighbors around him had, from a certain day onward, turned into withered trees.
It was like when he sat among the mountains and looked out.
Every tree in that endless forest looked different, but in essence, they were all weak living things.
“Have you spent time with anyone over the past ten years?”
That man came to him again.
Instead of answering Hajime Kashimo’s question, he threw another question back at him.
Hajime Kashimo killed him.
Looking at the corpse with a smile still on its face, its waist and abdomen pierced through by lightning, Hajime Kashimo sat quietly on the mountaintop, in that chair.
Hajime Kashimo once again wandered through the alleys where he had played as a child.
The eyes of his childhood friends no longer held the same “sincerity” as before.
Like everyone else, they were filled with fear and awe.
So that was it.
Power meant loneliness.
Hajime Kashimo wanted to invite his friends out for a drink.
But in the end, he only stood there holding his Nyoi Staff, in front of a door that had not opened for him in a long time.
After so long without speaking to others, he had forgotten how to interact with people as equals.
No.
Perhaps he had forgotten how to interact with people at all.
His friends left him.
They were clearly the same age, yet after Hajime Kashimo defeated the invading Cursed Spirit, the man who could still drink with him, guide him, and help him see the path he had once walked died because of the Cursed Spirit’s Cursed Technique.
Hajime Kashimo sat in the seat of honor at that rough funeral, surrounded by the heavy, listless atmosphere, yet not a single tear fell.
So that was how it was…
Because the strong were always lonely.
The people around him were like clumps of dirt.
With the lightest squeeze, they could be crushed to death.
Friends or family, not a single person could understand Hajime Kashimo.
And so, Hajime Kashimo left the village.
Without knowing why, Hajime Kashimo challenged every “strong” person he could find, fighting and fighting without end.
After each battle, Hajime Kashimo kept asking for the answers to his questions.
Did being strong mean being lonely?
Did being strong mean being unable to be understood?
Was the pursuit of greater strength a curse placed upon the strong?
But right up until the end, Hajime Kashimo never found his answers.
Not until that man appeared.
“Are you satisfied now?”
The black-haired man stood behind the aged and weakened Hajime Kashimo.
After the decisive battle with another strong fighter that man had introduced to him, he appeared once more and, in an amused tone, invited Hajime Kashimo to go to the future, to fight the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer in history.
“Kenjaku, we really should fight after all.”
“Spare me.
I still want to leave your corpse intact so I can turn you into a Cursed Object.”
Feeling the immense Cursed Energy behind him, Hajime Kashimo opened his mouth in his final moments.
“I accept your earlier proposal…
Let me fight Sukuna in the future.”
…
November 3, 2018, morning.
“Good morning, Hajime Kashimo.”
When Hajime Kashimo woke up in bed, he saw Gen in front of him, along with the Reverse Cursed Technique in his hand that had not yet fully faded.