Prologue

"And they all lived happily, ever after. The end," Kaito Murakami said. He sat on the floor of his youngest daughter's bedroom, back pressed against the frame of her twin bed as he closed the storybook.

"Do all princesses live happily ever after?" his daughter asked. She laid on her stomach as he read to her, hands propping her chin up so she could better see the book's illustrations. She narrowed her bright green eyes at the cover where a princess was getting out of a carriage in an extravagant dress.

"Most of the time," Kaito said. He pushed himself up from the floor and raised his eyebrows at the little girl in the bright purple bed. "All right, Kiddo. Bedtime."

She puffed her lower lip out in a pathetic pout, a horrible habit she'd learned from her big sister just down the hall, and Kaito crossed his arms over his chest in amusement.

"That doesn't work on me," he said.

In typical dramatic fashion for the five-year-old, she huffed and puffed, and made quite the show of scrambling around on her bed so her head was on the pillow, auburn hair billowing out in wild tangles once she lied down, and pulled her purple covers up to her chin.

Everything in her room was the color. The walls were a pale lavender, her bedsheets were a deep royal purple, her curtains were a pinkish purple, and she had a dark purple rug in the middle of her hardwood floor. Everything was purple and pink and glittery and girly to the extreme. Even her nightlight was sparkly, as it was a pink princess castle that was dusted with glitter and almost had an effect that was reminiscent of a disco ball. While excessive, Kaito could only find it all too amusing given that his older daughter had been the exact opposite and wanted only boyish things in her room.

"What about the princesses who don't get a happily ever after? What do they do?" she asked, lips pulled down into a frown.

"Oh, they live happily ever after too. It just might take them a bit longer than it did for Cinderella or Snow White," Kaito said easily. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and switched off the neon pink lamp on her nightstand. Her pink castle provided the room with just enough light that he could see his daughter staring at the ceiling intently.

"I think I want to be Cinderella for Halloween," she said matter-of-factly. "I want glass slippers and a big sparkly purple dress."

"Cinderella wears silver though," Kaito said easily.

"She's a princess. She can change her dress to any color she wants," she said with an eye roll as if Kaito was a complete moron for not having the thought himself.

"Ah, of course. Big purple dress it is," he mused.

"With sparkles."

"With all the sparkles," Kaito agreed. "Good night, Sweetheart."

"Night, Daddy!"

Kaito shut her door until there was just enough of a crack for him to peek through if needed and walked down the narrow hallway to his own bedroom. On the way there, he passed his older daughter's bedroom. Her door was similarly cracked, and when Kaito looked in, her back was to the door and she appeared to be asleep.

He normally would have put his older daughter, Maha, to bed last, but she'd been sick with a cold the last few days and couldn't be bothered to sit through one of Kaia's endless princess stories. Not that he blamed her though. Kaito could barely sit through one of Kaia's princess stories, and he'd been on bedtime duty for the last week while his wife, Ren, was away on a mission.

It actually had been Kaito's mission first, but it seemed that the jujutsu society had it out for Ren for some reason, as they'd been neglecting to give her missions for the last few years. The poor treatment had started quite a few years ago, when Kaito and Ren moved from the ancestral Murakami home in Okinawa to Tokyo, and again when Kaito and Ren had their second child who was a girl instead of a boy.

Kaito didn't pretend to know what the higher-ups in jujutsu society were up to and he didn't want to know. Truthfully, he wanted to retire and had been wanting to retire for years. But Ren did not. So Kaito did his best to pull some strings and get the higher-ups to agree to transfer this last mission to Ren.

It wasn't anything too complicated. Just a few Grade 1 and Grade 2 curses to be exorcised in the countryside. Nothing Ren couldn't handle. But it had been over a week and the mission had gotten extended, and Kaito was getting exhausted having to manage two daughters on his own.

He was ready to have his wife back home.

Kaito went through the motions of preparing himself for bed. He brushed his teeth, changed, and sat in bed, reading a mystery novel Ren suggested. And before he knew it, about three hours had passed since he opened the book. He was just getting to the climax when his focus was shattered by a blood-curdling scream.

"DADDY!"

He jumped. It was Kaia screaming for him, and it wasn't her usual cry for him when she had a bad dream. It was raw and primal.

She was terrified.

He threw himself out of his bed, grabbed his cursed tool on his nightstand, and burst into a run down the darkened hallway of his home.

"Kaia!" he shouted, throwing open the door to her bedroom so hard that it came flying off the hinges.

Kaia sat on her bed, knees pulled to her chest and arms tightly wrapped around them, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she whimpered.

It took Kaito a few moments to see what the hell it was that scared his daughter so much, but then he saw it. He saw it the same moment Kaia scrambled out of her bed and hid behind his legs and when Maha appeared in the doorway of her little sister's bedroom.

"Daddy?" Maha asked quietly.

Kaito's eyes were glued to the figure in the corner of Kaia's room.

It was the figure of a young girl. Maybe ten years old? Eleven? She wore a tattered white dress that was dirty at the bottom and had long blonde hair that was matted to her head with dried blood. Her eyes were completely black and that dirty blonde hair hung over the left side of her face. Her fingernails were bloodied and broken and she wore no shoes.

And Kaito recognized her.

A sense of terrified and dreaded relief washed over him and he wasted no time scooping Kaia up into his arms and hugging her close to his chest and wrapping an arm around Maha who was now also hiding behind his legs.

"D-daddy? Who is that?" Maha whimpered, voice thick with tears.

He didn't have an answer for her. He didn't know who the figure was supposed to be.

But he knew what it was.

"That is a curse," Kaito said calmly. He never let his eyes stray from the girl even though he knew she wouldn't come any closer, not as long as he had Kaia where she was. "You know about curses, Maha. Your mom and I exorcise them. Remember?"

He heard more sniffling from Maha but he was pretty sure he could see her nod through his peripheral vision.

"Then… Will you… Exorcise it?" Maha asked very quietly.

He would. Not that it would make any difference though.

"Yes," he said. He slowly worked on prying Kaia off of him, but she squealed and clung even tighter to him when he tried. He patted her on the back and whispered in her ear, "it's okay, Sweetheart. I won't let anything bad happen to you, okay? But I need you to go with Maha so I can get rid of her."

Kaito pulled his eyes away from the all too familiar curse and nodded at his older daughter. She took the hint and grabbed Kaia's hand.

"Come on, Kaia," she said softly.

Kaia's whole body trembled. Kaito slowly knelt down so Kaia could touch the floor, and the instant her feet hit the floor, she barreled into Maha's arms. Maha took Kaia and hurried out of the bedroom towards her own, and Kaito kept his eyes on the curse to see if it would do what he thought it would.

It did.

It took slow steps to the doorway where Kaia just disappeared from and Kaito stood in its way, cursed tool at the ready.

The curse raised its arm as if to scratch Kaito for standing in its way, but he was quicker and slashed the thing's neck until it withered and disappeared.

He exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face. He was trembling just like Kaia was and felt like he was about to throw up.

The curse would be back. It would be back every single day for the rest of Kaia's life. It would stalk her. Follow her around day and night. It would never be more than a few feet away from her. It would never let her out of its sight. It would attack anyone that stood in its way of her. It would never attack Kaia though. Not unless she got too close. It would simply lurk behind her always. It would watch her relentlessly. It would be exorcised thousands and thousands of times, but it would always return at midnight.

And then one day, either after Kaia reached her full potential, or had her own children, or fall in a fight, the curse would finally move and kill her.

Just the way it did to Kaito's father.

Just the way it did to his great-grandfather.

Just the way it did to every Murakami who inherited the Cursed Moon technique.

Kaia, the girl who wanted to live happily ever after the way the princesses did, the girl who loved purple and glitter and castles, the girl who spent all year talking about what princess she would be for Halloween, was doomed.

And there wasn't a damn thing Kaito Murakami could do to save her.

Ren came home three days later. Kaito gave her the news. Told her that Kaia must have been the next Murakami to inherit their unique Cursed Moon technique. Ren picked up on the implication immediately and demanded to see her daughter. Kaito had never seen his wife hug anyone so tightly before in his life. She peppered her daughter with kisses and told her she would protect her no matter what. Told her that her mother was a powerful sorcerer and would never let anything bad happen to her.

She tried to make a plan with Kaito for how they would handle the curse. Said they would have Kaia sleep in their room. Said that they would take shifts until midnight and exorcise the curse. Said they would research and figure out how to properly exorcise the damned creature one day. Kaito listened and nodded. He didn't tell her the truth. Didn't tell her that there was no point and that Kaia would have to be comfortable with it. That Kaia would have to accept the fact a curse would be watching her every second for the rest of her life.

The plan became that each night, just before midnight, Kaito or Ren would wait in Kaia's bedroom for the curse, exorcise it, and then return to bed. They would do it until Kaia was old enough to begin her training and old enough to take care of it herself. Kaito tried telling Ren that the curse wouldn't move until much later in Kaia's life, but she didn't want to hear it. Said she wouldn't let her daughter sleep while a curse lingered close by.

So they fell into the routine as the girls grew. They would take turns and exorcise the little girl. The curse never fought back. It let itself be exorcised each night and would return the next midnight. Kaia became a horribly light sleeper because of it. She would wake up at every little creak in the house and beg to have a cursed tool in her bedroom while she slept. Kaito denied her requests at first but ultimately allowed it after he saw dark circles start to appear under her eyes from her fear of falling asleep and gave her his dagger to keep close by.

The girls got older and the curse never left. Kaito and Ren watched and waited for the girls' cursed techniques to develop. Just like Kaito thought, Kaia developed the Cursed Moon technique of the Murakami. An interesting technique that acted a little too similar to that of a possession for anyone's sense of comfort, but a technique that gave the user future sight and enhanced reflexes once they could control it. It seemed Kaia got all of the cursed energy and techniques because she developed another technique alongside her cursed moon, and that was the ability to breathe fire. It didn't burn her, but it burned her clothes and she developed a habit of breathing out streams of fire or smoke whenever she got worked up.

Maha on the other got none of the same gifts. Though she could see curses, she herself had no cursed technique and no cursed energy. At first, Kaito thought it really upset her, but over time, she seemed to get over it. Maha wasn't interested in exorcising curses. She wasn't interested in the nightmares that plagued her little sister. She became more and more interested in being a normal girl. Over the years, their personas started to shift. Maha became more interested in the prettier, feminine things while Kaia gave up on princesses and castles and glass slippers.

Maha got to be the normal girl. Got to attend sleepovers at her friends' houses, got to go to sporting events, got to go to school dances, even got to go on dates when she was old enough.

Kaia got none of that. Instead, Kaia was trained on her cursed techniques, trained on how to control herself, trained on how to handle weapons and wounds, and trained on how to make her body strong. She was not allowed to go to sleepovers or have them. Not allowed to go to parties or school dances. Not allowed to go to a normal school like her sister. Where Maha got to pick her own destiny, Kaia's destiny was chosen for her.

All the while the curse lingered.

Always watching.

Always waiting.

*Author's note*

First crack at a Jujutsu Kaisen fic! I love the manga with all of my heart and I adore Gojo. I've seen so many lil fics on Tumblr that I wanted to take a swing at it(: As I mentioned in the summary, Part I takes place while Gojo is still in school and is filled with a slow burn romance and a certain mystery surrounding the OC and her family. Part II will take place in present day JJK.

Chapter 1 will be up on Sunday. Weekly updates after that where chapters will be posted late Sunday night/early Monday morning depending on where in the world you are. Estimated 16 chapters, give or take a few as I edit. Comments are so very appreciated! Feel free to visit me on Tumblr say hello there!(:

(I would post the link to my Tumblr, but FFN is weird with that kind of stuff. I'm just Bxriles there!)