The water running in the bathroom sounded for a long time.
Yasui stood beneath the showerhead, tilting his head back to let the hot water wash over his face.
His black, waist-length hair clung wetly to his skin.
He had set the water temperature quite high, near a scalding level, turning his skin completely flush red.
Yet he merely narrowed his eyes slightly, enjoying that subtle stinging pain—under his hundredfold five senses, even the sensation of water molecules impacting his skin felt absurdly crisp, as if someone were maliciously pinching him.
Extremely maliciously.
It reminded him of those far from pleasant childhood memories.
Tsk, it was a long story.
He raised his left hand, palm facing upward.
There should have been a hideous knife scar there, cut bone-deep by his own hands.
But now, the skin was as pristine as before, without leaving behind even a trace of a scar.
The effect of Reverse Cursed Technique proved even more overbearing than he had anticipated; even with severed limbs, a gouged heart, or torn lungs, one could survive.
“So convenient,” he murmured, his voice echoing softly in the bathroom.
“So much fun…”
Steam diffused across the mirror’s surface, blurring his outline into a hazy watercolor painting—flesh tones, black, purple…
all blended together in a heap, quite pretty.
Yasui reached out, tracing a line across the fogged-up mirror with his fingertip to reveal the excessively beautiful face behind it.
His deep purple eyes grew even more glistening, vaporized by the steam.
The speck of red between his brows looked bewitchingly vibrant, while his wet black hair clung to the side of his neck and collarbones like an ancient painting newly retrieved from the water.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a few seconds before suddenly breaking into a smile.
“So beautiful~”
Narcissistic, yet an absolute fact.
His mother was a great beauty, and his father was a handsome young fellow.
He inherited his mother’s face and his father’s eye color, obtaining every single advantage of the two.
The difference was that he wasn’t a lunatic—he was rather normal.
“If I were a Cursed Spirit,” he blinked pleasantly at the mirror, “I’d want to devour you too~”
After all, this skin looked utterly delicious—a gorgeous bone structure, pale skin, delicate blood vessels radiating a fragile aesthetic, weak Cursed Energy, plus a physique that invited Cursed Spirit attacks.
To those monsters born from negative emotions, he was probably like a walking, sweet-scented cream cake that came with its own monster-aggro tag.
It would be a disservice to their identity as Cursed Spirits not to come and take a bite.
Turning off the shower, he pulled off a bath towel to wrap around his waist and walked barefoot out of the bathroom.
The flooring was solid wood, feeling quite comfortable underfoot.
Too lazy to blow-dry his hair, he let droplets of water trickle down from the tips, soaking dark traces onto the floorboards.
Pushing open the bathroom door, he stepped into another room on the third floor.
The Yasui estate was massive; there were quite a few rooms on the third floor (seven for living, the rest used entirely for storage), with almost identical layouts—the same carved wooden beams, the same old-fashioned wooden windows, the same hard plank beds and lounger chairs.
His parents across his past and present lives had occupied two of them.
Later, after those two died, two rooms fell vacant, with only his Uncle occasionally sending people to clean them.
In truth, vacant rooms far outnumbered occupied ones.
Six vacant rooms, one occupied.
Changing into pajamas, Yasui settled himself into that familiar lounger chair, his damp hair spreading a wet patch across the headrest.
Staring at the ceiling, he began pondering his upcoming itinerary.
He couldn’t stay abroad.
Not out of fear.
The density of Cursed Spirits abroad was far lower than in Japan; Tengen, that massive Cursed Spirit magnet, wasn’t in other countries, but in Japan.
Cursed Spirits abroad had been drawn over to the Japanese side.
Ordinary people wouldn’t encounter a Cursed Spirit more than a few times in an entire lifetime.
The problem lay in his physique—[Super easy to attract Cursed Spirits, Aggressive Desire 150%].
Placing this trait inside a domestic setting scarce in Cursed Spirits was like lighting a ten-thousand-watt searchlight in the middle of a desert.
Although there weren’t many bugs in the desert, any that existed would hurl themselves at his face like crazy.
Just today alone, Grade 4, Grade 2…
who knew what would show up tomorrow?
Grade 1?
Special Grade?
(The reason he could distinguish grades was that as long as he was attacked or touched, the system would slap labels over their heads.)
The problem was, he didn’t actually want to blow his estate into ruins.
A forty-million-yen estate, plus those Italian sofas and mahogany screens he had smashed with a single punch—repairing them was a hassle, and replacing them was a hassle too.
Furthermore, those structured Jujutsu Sorcerer training institutions abroad were extremely difficult to enter.
Jujutsu world here was strict; “Priests” and “Monks” fought their own separate battles, valuing heritage while strictly adhering to various rules.
As a wild card with nothing but Reverse Cursed Technique and a sliver of weak Cursed Energy, he lacked knowledge of innate techniques, possessed no information network, had no channels for Cursed Tools, and had no desire to become some monk or priest, nor did he want to be managed by others.
Besides, staying here with his condition made him practically a walking harbinger of bad luck.
Japan was different.
Jujutsu High, the core of the Jujutsu world, possessed the strongest faculty (though a certain white-haired guy was still a student right now, Masamichi Yaga seemed quite decent too?), the most complete training system, and—most importantly—countless Cursed Spirits alongside countless key characters.
After all, Jujutsu Kaisen took place in Japan.
“Making key characters experience pain yields 1~1000 Points (floating scale)…”
He had no interest in torturing people, but teasing people sounded quite intriguing.
Yasui leaned lazily against the lounger, a glint of amusement flashing across the depths of his eyes.
Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, Shoko Ieiri, Masamichi Yaga, as well as the future Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro, Nobara Kugisaki…
every single one of these individuals was a walking EXP pack.
Provided, of course, that he could make it alive before them without being casually crushed to death first.
“Reverse Cursed Technique.”
He softly muttered, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the armrest of the lounger, “A fantastic stepping stone, isn’t it?”
In this era, the year 2005, anyone possessing Reverse Cursed Technique was a highly precious asset.
Shoko Ieiri had already been “protected” early on by the Jujutsu world even before enrolling.
A fifteen-year-old youth like him, equipped with innate Reverse Cursed Technique without any background in Jujutsu factions, would draw sufficient attention from the higher-ups even if his Cursed Energy capacity wasn’t top-tier—or rather, enough to make them reluctant to outright kill him.
Of course, the risk was immense as well.
The darkness, conspiracies, power struggles of the Japanese Jujutsu higher-ups, and their oppression of civilian sorcerers…
Yasui had read all those foul deeds in the original work.
Yet strangely enough, he felt no disgust—instead, he felt somewhat…
expectant?
“Sinister human hearts, power struggles, disgusting conspiracies and schemes…”
Casually grabbing a pillow nearby, he hugged it, pressed it over his face, and let out a muffled chuckle.
“Just thinking about it sounds so interesting.”
“Humans are so much fun…”
After all, in his past life, he lived within mathematical formulas where the world was precise, rational, and black-or-white.
In this life, since he was going to play a game, choosing an interesting path was naturally the only way to make it exciting.
A dull and ordinary daily life?
That was meant for normal people.
As a transmigrator who had died once, brought his own system, and could spend pain points as currency, he obviously had to plunge into the most chaotic, insane, and entertaining places.
Yasui climbed up from the lounger, his wet hair still dripping water, yet he had already opened his laptop.
The internet in 2005 was still quite primitive; booking websites were built like crap, with eyesore color schemes and loading speeds as slow as a crawling snail.
Nevertheless, he patiently filled out his information and bought a flight ticket to Tokyo for three days later.
First class, paid in full, without so much as a blink of an eye.
The inheritance left by his parents was substantial—the digits in his bank account were long enough to put one in a pleasant mood.
After finishing the payment, he snapped the laptop shut, pulled a top-of-the-line contemporary mobile phone out of a drawer, and sent a text message to the housekeeper, Uncle LanLi:
[Uncle LanLi, the third-floor living room of the ancestral estate was accidentally blown up while I was battling evil spirits.
Please bring someone over to handle it.
Also, I’m going abroad to play for a few days, probably won’t be back for quite a while~]
After sending the text, he tossed the phone aside, fished a Game Boy out from the nightstand, and started playing Tetris.
Retro 8-bit music sounded in the quiet room as blocks descended, rotated, stacked, and cleared.
Yasui stared at the screen, his fingers pressing rapidly as light and shadows from black-and-white pixels reflected in his pupils.
His brain automatically deconstructed the game into a mathematical model—optimal solutions, probability distributions, spatial utilization, clearing efficiency…
but soon enough, he forced himself to stop calculating.
“Playing a game is playing a game,” he muttered.
“Calculating math problems, what bad luck.”
He felt like taking that nearly spent fruit knife and giving his own brain a quick poke.
Ah right, speaking of fruit knives, he needed to buy a proper knife for self-harm, or else it wouldn’t pierce into flesh easily.
The phone vibrated.
Uncle LanLi’s reply was earnest yet tactful:
“…Young Master, is it almost time for this year’s medical checkup?
Would that be alright?”
Looking at that text message, Yasui’s shoulders shook with laughter.
Tactfully asking if he was out of his mind~
God LanLi, Uncle LanLi, had served as the housekeeper in the Yasui family for nearly forty years.
He had been around since his grandfather’s generation, watching his father be born and go mad, watching his mother fall ill and self-harm, and now watching him—this “lovely child”—grow up (Yasui genuinely considered himself a normal person).
God LanLi was probably the only person in the entire world who understood the Yasui family’s genetic defects best—lunacy, the real, genetic kind.
However, he wasn’t a lunatic.
Yasui slowly typed out his reply:
“Uncle LanLi, if my mental illness flares up, I’ll just go straight to dying~ Right now I’m still alive and able to text you, proving my mind is perfectly clear.”
“Also, if anything happens to me in Japan, don’t donate the inheritance~ If you donate it to welfare organizations, they won’t spend the money where it should be spent~ If possible, go find people individually yourself and do one-on-one charity work.”
After sending it, he muted his phone and continued playing Tetris.
After about five minutes, the phone vibrated again.
Uncle LanLi: “…Understood.
Someone will come to fix the estate tomorrow.
Please…
stay safe.”
The forty-six-year-old God LanLi sat in front of his office desk.
Tall and well-built, his fingers clicked on the computer—clicking twice, letting out a sudden sigh, clicking twice more, and sighing again.
He was troubled.
He had watched Yasui grow up.
Although the boy acted unhinged at times, he remained normal most of the time.
He didn’t know what was wrong today, talking about battling evil spirits, destroying the house, and heading to Japan.
The tone sounded as if he were settling his final affairs.
God Immortal Venerable LanLi truly had no options left when dealing with the Yasui family.
Sighing, he sent another message: “Young Master, if you see anything strange, you must call me first…”
Yasui stared at that text for a few seconds without minding it, lazily continuing his game.
Looking at the text sent by Yasui, LanLi’s eyes held helplessness alongside a trace of something else.
LanLi didn’t cross Yasui.
He knew that there were no normal people in the Yasui family.
A decade ago, LanLi told Yasui’s father, Yasui Zelda: “When you said earlier that you could fly, that was a hallucination, Mr.
Yasui.”
Then his father—that brilliant genius nominated for the Fields Medal who took the mathematics world by storm—in order to prove it wasn’t a hallucination, looked left and right before LanLi’s eyes, pondered seriously, and opened the window to jump out before LanLi could even react.
Of course, that proved he could indeed fly, albeit for a rather brief duration.
Fortunately, it was the second floor with a green belt below; Yasui Zelda broke a leg and survived.
But ever since then, Uncle LanLi understood: arguing with members of the Yasui family over “what is reality” and “what is hallucination” was an extremely dangerous affair.
Their reality and ordinary people’s reality never seemed to reside in the same plane.
Their thought patterns were bizarre as well.
Never reason with a lunatic.
…
After playing for a while, Yasui tossed the device aside and stared up at the ceiling.
Outside the window, dusk had fallen.
The April wind carried the unique moisture of the water town, drifting through the gaps in the wooden window to sway his half-dry long hair.
He suddenly felt a bit hungry, but was too lazy to go downstairs, simply lying in the lounger as drowsiness gradually crept over him.
In three days, he would be heading to Japan.
To that country with the world’s highest density of Cursed Spirits and an endlessly high mortality rate—to that place housing the Six Eyes blessed child, the Cursed Spirit Manipulation user, and the future strongest.
He would knock on the doors of Jujutsu High under the identity of a “stray Jujutsu Sorcerer capable of Reverse Cursed Technique,” and then—
“And then,” Yasui closed his eyes, his lips curving into an amused arc, “let’s see how adorable everyone turns out to be~”
Pain points were the hard currency.
And he could hardly wait to try farming some neat little points off those “key characters” in Japan.
Plus, he was quite curious about them himself.
Those adorable characters.
Hehe, a “fan meeting.”
He was the idol, and those people were the fans.
After all, who told him to be so good-looking?