Chapter 2

When Kaia came to, the first things she noticed were light lavender walls and a dark purple bedspread. She blinked until everything came into better focus and she clearly could see that she was, in fact, in her bedroom. She looked down at her clothes to see she was no longer in Maha's shirt (the same shirt that was probably so bloodied it would need to be thrown away) and instead was in a pair of pajama shorts and a long-sleeved Henley.

Kaia touched her face, expecting to feel dried blood from the curse that had been exorcised above her last night, but it felt clean.

Maha must have bathed her…

But. When? How did they get back home?

Kaia swung her legs over the side of her bed and left her room, feeling slight aches and pains in her body from the night before. She walked down the narrow hallway to where she could hear voices coming from the kitchen area, feeling a massive sense of relief course through her veins when she could hear her sister's softer tone among them.

Kaia crossed her arms over her chest and stood in the dining room to see Maha and three others at the table.

"You're okay!" Maha gushed, brown eyes rimmed with red. She pushed herself away from the table and wrapped her arms around Kaia's shoulders, squeezing her tightly. Kaia patted her sister's back and stared at the three men at the table.

She recognized two of them. There were the young sorcerers from last night, one with white hair and circular black sunglasses (why the hell was he wearing them inside?), and the one with long black hair. They were both dressed in black uniforms that had the same pin on the left breast that in her now sober mind, Kaia identified as the Jujutsu High symbol. The third was an older man, probably slightly younger than her father with broad shoulders, a severe-looking face, and a head of closely cut dark hair and neatly trimmed facial hair.

"Who are you?" Kaia asked after her sister released her.

"Your saviors," the boy with white hair drawled with a smirk.

Kaia felt her lip curl in disgust and chose to remain standing rather than sit down with such a pompous, arrogant prick.

"Have a seat, Kaia," the older man said.

Kaia thought he had a lot of nerve telling her to take a seat in her own house when they were the strangers. She glanced at Maha. Her sister had dark circles under her eyes and her brown hair was in a particularly messy bun on top of her head. She wore a sweatshirt and sweatpants and held a cup of tea in both of her hands as she sat down beside the boy with dark hair. She gave Kaia a weak smile and nodded her head slightly as if telling her it would be okay. Kaia fought back a sigh and obliged, sitting down at the end of the table.

"My name is Masamichi Yaga, a teacher at Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School. These two here are Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo," he said, gesturing with his hand to the boy with dark hair and the one with white hair respectively. "They're to thank for your survival after your group was attacked by curses last night."

Kaia risked a look at both boys and saw them looking far too content for their own good.

"Your parents have been informed of the situation and will be returning from their mission in Istanbul as soon as possible."

Kaia winced and rubbed her forehead. Bad. Very bad. Their mother would string her and Maha up by their toes and hang them from the rafters when she found out that they snuck out to a bonfire.

"Mom isn't going to be happy," Maha said quietly, reaching over and squeezing Kaia's hand. "Kaia, I'm so sorry. I should have never brought you there last night. It's my fault that…" She cut herself off when her voice wavered. "That you had to use that technique."

Kaia's recollection of the night was weak and she suspected the alcohol had something to do with it. Which begged the question.

Why wasn't she more hungover? From her understanding, she should have been throwing up with a migraine and curled up in bed all day. Instead, she just felt faint exhaustion and a mild headache accompanied by slight aches and pains that she blamed the curses for.

"Using the Murakami cursed moon technique around humans with no cursed energy when you have zero control over it was very foolish," Yaga said with a frown.

She had no idea how he knew about her technique. And even if one of the boys told him about it, they wouldn't know what it was called, but either way, she didn't like the fact that he knew something that was supposed to be a secret and she certainly didn't like the fact that he was scolding her for using it.

"I didn't plan on using it," Kaia said right away before he could continue chastising her. "I barely wanted to use my cursed fire last night. It overtook me when my wrist was—"

Kaia stopped herself. Her wrist had been completely broken in half last night by her curse. She should have been in complete and total agony at the break. She should not have been able to wake up and walk around so easily and forget entirely about her wrist that probably needed surgical intervention.

She brought her hand up to the table and turned it over in the beam of sunlight that trickled in from the windows. The only evidence of a break was the circle of bruises around her wrist.

"It's… It's fine," she said in disbelief.

"You have to thank Shoko for that. She's good at using her reverse curse technique to heal people," Geto said.

Kaia glanced at him from the corner of her eye to see him leveling a kind smile at her. Based on their few interactions, he seemed much more down to Earth than the other boy. At least Geto wasn't constantly smirking at her like he was god's gift to the world.

"The point is that your technique should never just overtake you," Yaga said. He looked far less kind than Geto and it made Kaia shrink in on herself. Kaia absently thought that Yaga and her mother would have probably gotten along rather nicely.

"Well sorry," Kaia drawled a bit sarcastically. "I was drunk and scared, had just been assaulted, and had my wrist snapped in ha—"

"Assaulted?" Maha asked. "By who?"

Kaia winced. She didn't want to talk about that in front of strangers. To be honest, she didn't want to talk about it ever again, but the look on her sister's face with her wide eyes and lips pulled taut in concern made it clear that she'd have to tell her at some point.

"Let's talk about that later," Kaia mumbled, suddenly much more interested in the grain of the wood of the table than she was in this conversation.

Yaga cleared his throat. "If you want to be a jujutsu sorcerer then you can't let your emotions get the best of you like that. You're very lucky Gojo and Geto were there to hold you off from attacking someone while possessed. I doubt another student would have been able to intervene."

Kaia huffed and did everything she could to ignore the arrogance that radiated off the white-haired boy.

"Right. Understood," she said under her breath.

There was a long pause. The silence hung over them longer and longer until Kaia wanted to storm out and hide in her room for the rest of the day.

"I didn't come here to scold you," Yaga said after the silence went on for ages. "Ren will certainly be able to do that. I came here to escort you to Jujutsu High."

Her eyes flickered up and she could see what she thought was the ghost of a smirk on Yaga's face.

"You'll learn how to control your cursed moon technique there and you'll learn more about the work of exorcising curses. If you work as hard as your parents did, you'll be an excellent sorcerer one day."

Kaia felt the corner of her lips tugging into a smile.

"Pack your things. We'll be leaving soon."

Kaia did as told. She left Yaga, Geto, and Gojo in the dining room while she hurried to her bedroom to pack her things, a giant grin on her face as she did. This was it. It was the moment she'd been dreaming of for years. She'd finally be able to go to Jujutsu High and become a true sorcerer. She wouldn't be stuck exorcising just her curse anymore. She'd be able to actually do some good as her parents had. She'd be able to master her cursed techniques and hold her own. She'd be able to take care of herself.

As she rummaged through her room packing the essentials, Maha appeared, closing the door, and sitting on the edge of Kaia's bed, watching her with big eyes.

"What happened last night?"

Kaia threw a pair of pajamas into her duffle bag and went back to digging through her closet.

"Curses attacked."

"I know that," Maha said right away. "You said you were assaulted."

Kaia froze in front of the closet and slowly pivoted on her heel to look at her sister. How could she explain what happened to Maha without making her feel responsible?

"It's okay, Maha. I'm not angry about it," she said.

"But I am. What happened?"

Kaia rubbed the back of her neck.

"I drank too much. I didn't… I was an idiot and I didn't realize how much alcohol was in the punch. So I got a little drunk and tired and then Reiji… You know what? It doesn't matter. I took care of it and everything is fine. I'm going to learn to be a proper sorcerer, Maha! This is great!" Kaia would have told her more, but when the memory played on the back of her eyelids, she felt angry. Angry with herself for letting a guy get her in a vulnerable position like that. Angry with him for trying something so stupid. Angry with Maha for leaving her alone.

And Kaia didn't want to be angry. Not when she had such an incredible opportunity before her.

Maha couldn't be deterred though, evident by the crease between her brows and the way the corners of her lips tugged downward.

"Did he hurt you?" she asked quietly, not keeping eye contact.

"No," Kaia said firmly. "I hurt him."

There was a pause and then Maha nodded. When she made eye contact with Kaia again, there was a hard glint in her gaze.

"Good."

Kaia chuckled in spite of herself and crossed the room to sit beside her sister and embrace her as tightly as she could.

"I'm glad you're safe," Kaia said, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Same here."

When Kaia released her sister, she could see tears in Maha's eyes, though they didn't stream down her cheeks. Not just yet.

"I do think that Riku is an idiot though. I can't believe he was hiding behind you like such a coward last night," Kaia said lightly, hoping to break the tension in her sister's shoulders.

It worked. Maha laughed and shook her head.

"He was scared. Most people have never seen curses before."

Kaia couldn't help it when she scoffed.

"Yeah, but he's an idiot."

Maha laughed again and swatted her on the shoulder.

"That's enough. Hurry up and pack. You've got people waiting on you."

She did. Kaia packed the essentials and dressed in a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved shirt. She swung her duffle bag over her shoulder and headed out into the dining room to see Yaga clearly giving a hard time to both boys but composing himself when Kaia arrived. He stood up from the table and thanked Maha for allowing them to come in and headed outside, leaving Kaia alone one more time with her sister.

"Call me when you get the chance, all right?" Maha asked.

"Will do. Good luck with Mom and Dad whenever they get home."

Maha frowned and said a quick, "this is the one time I'm jealous of your freaky powers. I'm going to get all the blame while you're away at school."

"At least you won't have to worry about seeing my curse following me to the bathroom in the middle of the night and freaking you out!"

"Thank God for that."

They hugged one last time.

Then Kaia was gone, on her way to Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School.

Gojo sat with one leg crossed over the other on the train to Tokyo as Geto sat in the seat across from him, Yaga was somewhere a few rows ahead, and Kaia was seated against the other side of the train, directly across from him and Geto. He crumpled up a wrapper of kikufuku and tossed it in the now empty bag, shooting the new girl another glance and looking closer at her cursed energy.

Interesting.

"You're going to rot your teeth," Geto said, pulling his mind back to the present.

"Eh," Gojo said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "You ever have kikufuku, Kaia?"

"Don't talk to me," she said right away, leveling a nasty scowl with dark green eyes at him.

"That's not very polite," Gojo said with a smirk. "I thought the Murakami were a very traditional family. You should know better manners. Or did your family stop teaching them when they left their ancestral home in Okinawa?"

Her eye twitched and Gojo should see the muscles working in her jaw as she clenched her teeth.

"I barely know you, but you have got to be one of the most arrogant, pompous jerks that I have ever met in my life. And I was stuck with a bunch of high school jocks last night!"

Geto chuckled into his hand but Gojo wasn't deterred. It was just too easy to press her buttons. He'd been around Geto and Ieiri for too long that he had to work a lot harder to get a similar reaction out of one of them. It was fun being around someone new to irritate.

"Hey now, my arrogance saved your pretty little ass last night."

She was pretty. Gojo couldn't deny that. She had such interesting features with thick auburn hair and green eyes that were less hazel and more emerald. He couldn't deny that it was an uncommon hue of green for a person's eyes. But her cursed energy? That's what he was most interested in. His Six Eyes decoded it last night. Her cursed energy glowed differently than most people's, had a different color to it, more purple than blue, and was more chaotic than controlled. He had tried to look at Maha's energy to see if it was the same, but she didn't have any, so he couldn't compare. Though, he still wondered if maybe Kaia's father had similar cursed energy. Or maybe he didn't, and the only reason Kaia's was odd was because of her inherited cursed technique. He couldn't be sure.

She scoffed, "the last guy who talked to me like that got his elbow snapped in half."

"We saw," Geto said. He smiled softly at Kaia and Gojo watched the way her cheeks flushed and the way she looked away to stare out the window.

"Was he the one that assaulted you?" Gojo asked curiously.

"I will punch you," Kaia said, refusing to look away from the window.

"I wish I could say Satoru wasn't always this bad, but he is. You'll get used to it eventually," Geto said, laughing quietly.

Gojo watched Kaia give a deep sigh. She turned away from the window and those interesting green eyes shifted between him and Geto as a lock of reddish-brown hair fell over her shoulder.

"Are you guys going to be my classmates?"

"Nah," Gojo answered before Geto could. "We're second years. You'll have three other classmates. I think Yaga is planning on picking them up later this week."

"Well thank goodness for that," she said breezily.

Gojo laughed, deciding that he liked her annoying little attitude.

"I wouldn't get too cocky if I were you. You might find yourself wishing we were your classmates since we're the strongest," Gojo teased.

Kaia quirked one eyebrow above the other and shamelessly raked her eyes down Gojo's figure, starting with his face, going down to his neck, his chest, his legs, and then back up again. She smirked when her eyes met his.

"You? You're one of the strongest?"

He smirked back. "That's right."

She laughed into her hand and shook her head.

"You expect me to believe that your lanky ass is one of the strongest? Look at you. I could snap you over my knee like a twig."

His mouth dropped slightly in disbelief.

Geto burst into a fit of laughter, not at all trying to hide it this time as he reached forward and smacked Gojo in the side of his arm between bouts of laughter.

"At least Geto has some definition. You're just so lanky. How do you manage not to trip over all those limbs?"

"I have definition!" Gojo said a little too loudly, earning a few stares from the other passengers. "I have a six-pack!"

"What? Like it's hard? I have one too," she said. There was a mischievous glint in her green eyes the longer this went on.

"I could show you right now," he said, knowing that his lips were forming into a pout.

"That's okay. No one wants to see that," Kaia remarked with an all too casual shrug of her shoulders.

Gojo couldn't help it when his mouth hung open again in disbelief. Was this seriously happening right now?

"Contrary to what you think, Kaia my dear, plenty of people want to see that," Gojo retorted.

Geto finally got his laughter under control and cleared his throat, once again smiling at Kaia and saying, "sadly, it's true, Kaia. It's actually pretty annoying."

"Mm. I guess that makes sense. The skinny look is in right now after all," she said.

Geto burst into uncontrolled laughter for the second time and Gojo snorted and crossed his arms, pouting to himself and glaring at the new first-year. She smiled and giggled into her hand, choosing to spare him from any more insults to his ego, and opted for pulling out a book as she settled comfortably into her seat.

"She and Shoko are going to get along beautifully," Geto teased.

"Yeah, whatever."

"You'll be staying here," Yaga said. He knocked on a door in the girl's ward and waited for someone to open it. "You'll have your own room in a few weeks. There was a leak across the hall and it rendered most of the girls' dorms uninhabitable. Something about a mold problem. Should be fixed soon enough. For now, you'll be staying with Ieiri."

Kaia didn't like the sound of that. How did such a prestigious school end up with a mold problem?

The door was opened by a girl slightly older than Kaia with dark hair that was cut at her chin along with bangs, and a freckle beneath one of her brown eyes. She smelled like an ashtray and smiled lazily at Kaia.

"You're much prettier when you're awake and not covered in a cursed spirit's blood," she said.

Kaia's brow furrowed.

What?

"Ieiri, this is Kaia Murakami. Kaia, this is Shoko Ieiri. She was on the mission last night with Gojo and Geto and she's the one you have to thank for fixing up your wrist," Yaga explained. "Show her the ropes, Ieiri. I've got some things to attend to. Murakami, tomorrow morning you'll accompany me into the city to pick up the rest of your classmates. I suggest you get a good night's rest because tomorrow will be a long day."

Yaga left them after that and Kaia lingered in the hall as Shoko blocked the doorway.

"Um. Thanks for fixing my wrist."

"No problem. It was a pretty nasty break. You would have needed metal and screws to put it back into place if Gojo didn't bring you to me," she said. She moved out of the doorway and nodded at Kaia to follow her into the room.

It was bigger than Kaia's bedroom back home, with light wooden floors, a rather large window, and two beds pushed up against opposite sides of the wall. The first thing Kaia noticed was that everything was so neutral in color and it made her wish she'd brought at least one purple blanket from back home. Instead, she'd be forced to make do with blue and white sheets. Shoko sat down on her bed that was further from the door and twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

"So is it true? Do you really have your family's cursed moon technique?" she asked.

Kaia set her duffle bag down and walked over the window, leaning her head against the glass as she looked out into the pretty forest that was covered in a layer of frost.

"Yeah," she said. "Can't really control it though. It usually ends with me going on a freak rampage until someone snaps me out of it."

"Hm," Shoko hummed. "Why'd your family leave Okinawa? Apparently, it was a huge deal in jujutsu society when you did."

"It was?" Kaia asked. She moved away from the window and sat down on the bed, leaning back on her elbows. "Honestly, I don't know much about jujutsu society. My parents never brought us into it. I only know about the school and curses. Why did people care that we left?"

"Dunno. Yaga said it was because the Murakami resided there for over a thousand years. Supposedly the higher-ups think that you guys leaving left a curse."

Kaia could feel her eyebrow quirking above the other the way it always did when she heard some particular brand of nonsense.

"No way," she said easily. "The curse has been with my family from the very beginning. It didn't show up because we left Okinawa."

"So there is one?"

"Yeah, it's a little girl. She doesn't look like a proper curse though. She looks like a normal human—except for the black eyes. She follows whoever inherits the cursed moon technique and kills them eventually."

Shoko's eyes widened.

"Does she follow you?"

Kaia rubbed her forehead with the back of her thumb and held back the urge to wince. She really hated talking about this.

"Yeah."

"Whoa. Heavy," Shoko said quietly. "Maybe that's why Gojo was so interested in your cursed energy."

Kaia had heard enough about Satoru Gojo. She rolled her eyes and threw her hand out at Shoko.

"What's his deal? Why is he such an arrogant prick?"

Shoko immediately threw her head back and started laughing. "He's arrogant because he's the boy with the Six Eyes."

Kaia stared, waiting for the punchline but it never came. Eventually, when Shoko clearly wasn't going to explain any further, Kaia asked, "and that's a big deal because…?"

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Uh yeah. I'm serious."

"Wow. You really don't know much about jujutsu society," she muttered to herself. Shoko sat up straighter and produced a cigarette from her pocket. "It's a really rare form of jujutsu passed down only in the Gojo family. I don't really know the specifics of it, but I know it gives him an insane level of perception and helps him manipulate anything he wants down to a molecular level. It's a huge deal. He's the first person to be born with the Six Eyes and Limitless techniques in a hundred years."

"Oh," Kaia mumbled.

"It's why he wears sunglasses all the time. The Six Eyes tire him out."

"Damn, so his cockiness is totally warranted then, huh?" Kaia asked with a frown.

"Yeah. It's a real shame," Shoko said with a snicker. She lit her cigarette and walked over to the window, pushing it open and breathing the smoke outside, even though the scent of it still lingered in their room. "Sorry. Is it okay if I smoke?"

"Sure," Kaia said with a yawn. She didn't love the smell of cigarette smoke in their room, but if Shoko was being forced to share a room with Kaia when she had the curse of a little girl stalking her at night, then Kaia figured she could meet her halfway and allow her smoke. Besides, according to Yaga, she wouldn't be stuck sharing a room with Shoko indefinitely.

"Wanna grab some food? The cafeteria should still be open," Shoko asked after she smoked about only half of her cigarette.

Kaia hadn't eaten anything all day and she definitely had a mild hangover, so she was quick to jump at the offer.

They headed over to the cafeteria and Shoko explained on the short walk over that most of the third years were away on missions, so it was just the second years and her for now. It'd been a shock for Kaia to learn that the second years consisted only of Shoko, Geto, and Gojo and that was when it dawned on Kaia that her hopes of going to a cool high school like Maha's came crashing down.

"You okay?" Shoko asked.

Kaia didn't care if she sounded childish. She gave a dramatic sigh and pouted.

"I was hoping for a more… Exciting school. You know, with dances and sports and—"

Shoko gave her a kind smile. "So a normal school?"

"No, not normal," Kaia said right away when they reached the cafeteria, the scent of rice and fresh vegetables filling her nostrils and making her stomach growl. "I've always been on such a strict regimen. I was hoping to have some fun at school. I dunno."

Shoko patted her on the back as they started to get their food.

"You're a sorcerer, Kaia. Not a normal girl."

Kaia bit down on the back of her bottom lip and tried to stuff her disappointment deep down. She was a complete and total idiot for thinking that, wasn't she? After getting a plate of rice, vegetables, and salmon, Kaia sat down at a small circular table with Shoko and picked at her food, testing to see if her hungover stomach would handle it well—which it surprisingly did, but she had to eat slowly.

"Sho!"

Kaia looked up to see Geto and Gojo joining them at the little table, Gojo sliding in next to Kaia and bumping shoulders with her. She shoveled rice into her mouth and rolled her eyes when he wouldn't move over.

"See you're showing Murakami around. How's our new first-year adjusting?" he asked with a stupid grin on his stupid face.

"Leave her be," Shoko said right away when she glanced at Kaia and could probably clearly tell she was not in the mood.

"What? I'm being friendly!"

"You're being incorrigible," Geto said, though his voice was still surprisingly light and easygoing. Must have been all the time he spent with Gojo that left him so perpetually unbothered.

"Well, if she can't deal with me then I have no idea how she's going to handle curses—family's cursed technique or not."

Kaia had enough. Her head was hurting and her stomach suddenly wasn't handling the food as well as she thought. She didn't want to deal with an arrogant dick who thought he was a gift to the world and she certainly didn't want to listen to him talk about her family's cursed technique. She just wanted to curl up in her bed and sleep away the lingering hangover and start over, preferably without Satoru Gojo hanging around.

"Kaia! Wait! He's just kidding!" Shoko called out when Kaia stormed off in the direction of the dorms. The last thing she heard before she exited the cafeteria was a whack and the sound of Gojo whining, demanding to know what he did wrong.

Kaia's body felt heavy and tired, so when she reached her dorm room that still smelled like Shoko's cigarettes, she threw herself on the bed without even changing and passed out the instant her head hit the pillow.

She dreamt of a house with wooden floors and an old lullaby playing softly in the background.

*Author's note:*

Not gonna lie, it's hard to write from such a young perspective again. It's hard to write someone being childish at the itty bitty age of sixteen, so bear with me. Next chapter goes up on Sunday!

As always, please leave any and all feedback with a review! (I could use the pick-me-up since Omicron is wreaking absolute havoc on me right now and I now have to miss Christmas with my family blahhhh)