King and Jujutsu
Yuuji, Megumi, Nobara and Maki were walking back to the school after an impromptu shopping trip because Inumaki was sick and they were out of cold medicine. The streets were more packed than normal this day, so the group was farced to walk really close to each other.
"So, what are we- oof!" – Yuuji turned back to speak but collided with someone.
"Heh, sorry about that. Are you ok?" – he apologized to the really tall man with a claw-like scar on his eye.
Suddenly Maki pulled him back and pushed his head down until he was bowing.
"WE are really sorry for this, sir! Please excuse the rudeness!" – she also bowed her head.
"Hmm. It's fine." – the man replied bulled the brim of his cap down and continued on his way.
Maki held Yuuju and didn't relax until she could no longer see the tall man. Finally she released him and let out a breath of relief.
"Um, Maki-sempai what was that?" – Yuuji asked her with a puzzled look at the sudden behavior.
"What was that?! That was me trying to not get you killed! That was KING, the second strongest man alive! Come on, we have to get back quickly. I'll explain back in the school."
Soon they were back in the school, Inumaki was asleep after taking the medicine but Panda joined them.
"So, umm… Who is this King guy I bumped?" – Yuuji asked.
"Yeah, and what's with the fancy title? He looked like some foreigner." – Nobara added.
"You bumped into King?!" Panda was shocked "Wow, that's some bad luck."
"IF, you'd allow me to speak, I'd explain!" Maki raised her voice "So, around 10 years ago rumors started circling among the clans and other unaffiliated sorcerers about a mysterious man that appeared out of nowhere. He could apparently defeat special-grade curses in seconds and without even a scratch, plus he had some sort of mysterious technique that guaranteed your death once he activated it, no matter how far you ran, you'll die. Well, as with most rumors, people were in doubt. There was no way just a random man could have such a fearsome power, so some sent assassins to test him while others decided to try and hire him for hard jobs. Well, he not only completed every request but every assassin sent after him died a gruesome death, most of them even stabbed with their own cursed tools in their vitals. So, the rumors were proven correct and the man, King, became known as 'The second strongest man alive' because-"
"Because Gojo-sensei is the strongest?" – Yuuji interrupted.
"Because it is said only Gojo-sensei could defeat him. The two of them never actually fought, obviously, otherwise everyone would have seen or heard of it. I doubt they have even met, but still you have to be careful. People say he is a very ruthless man when on the job but at least he is really recognizable and easy to avoid in most places. Remember him – very tall American, blonde hair, claw marks on his eye and the intimidating face. If you see him, try to be polite and avoid him if possible." – Maki warned.
Megumi stared at her but nodded. Nobara just picked at her nails.
"I dunno, he looked like some ossan to me." – Yuuji said.
"Yuuji!" – Maki grabbed him by the collar and shook him.
It all started when he found himself caught in a Cursed spirit attack… No, it all began when he was just about to begin middle school.
King was the average American boy, he lived with his parents in a Detroit apartment almost since his birth. His mother was a cooking class instructor and his father worked for one of the biggest electronics companies in the country. They lived a good life, they might have not been rich but they also never lacked anything, but humans are greedy by nature, so when his father was offered a promotion to become the director of the newly-opened Japanese branch, he accepted immediately. The family moved to Tokyo a few months later and stayed there.
King struggled a bit with Japanese in the beginning, but learned soon enough and became a fan of Japanese video games, anime and manga, that actually helped him learn quickly, so by the next school year he switched from being homeschooled to the local middle school. He was the new kid, the odd tall blonde American in a school full of Japanese, so a few curious and uneasy glances were always directed at him. King could also feel something odd, some nasty, slimy feeling when he got to certain places in the school building or they had lessons in certain rooms, but he thought nothing of it, being the new odd guy was bond to make anyone feel uneasy.
It didn't go away. The feeling persisted and sometimes even got stronger, especially when some of the other children were pointing at him and whispering, like he could feel their negative emotions.
'No way… Do I have some secret 6th sense?! Am I going to turn in a chuuni?!' – King thought, having seen some of his classmates enter that phase.
Oh, if it only was the 8th grader syndrome… The more time passed, the more it seemed he could sense and not only in school – certain overpasses, river banks, alleys, crossings, spots in the metro station, near office buildings, cemeteries, hospitals… He noticed the bad feeling clinging to those places where people had bad experiences with or died there, not to mention sometimes he could see vague movement of the shadows and feel like something was watching him. He ignored the 'ghosts' he noticed and did his best to not react in any way in order to not seem weird to his peers that had just started to warm up to him. Not to mentions, those vague shapes and shadows were just ghosts, they couldn't hurt him anyway, since they had no bodies and if you didn't notice them, they'd pass by you.
(Oh, how wrong he was…)
As the years went by, King seemed to shoot up in height, easily towering over most of his classmates by the time he entered junior high, he was already 180cm and according to his doctor, he could get even taller. With his height, the basketball team and the football team always tried to recruit him but he was content in the literature club, not to mention he helped some of the shy members of the club by simply being there when someone came to cause trouble, his height made him intimidating. He was also scared shitless by some of the bullies that sometimes tried to take over their club room but with his size and poker face from years of pretending the ghosts didn't exist helped him chase every troublemaker off.
And then, summer break came and his family went to a trip to Osaka. It was nice, but then he decided to help a crying girl in the park find her lost cat and things went downhill from there. First, an old lady attacked him with her cane, thinking he was a brute foreigner trying to kidnap the girl, the situation was resolved but he had a few rips in his jeans. Then after finding the girl's cat, the frankly huge feline launched itself at his face and scratched his eye badly, thankfully he had closed it beforehand. Lastly, apparently the girl's boyfriend saw the two together and called two of his friends to 'teach him a lesson', so in the end of the day King and two of the 3 boys were in the hospital after the fistfight. He was a bit battered, but otherwise his size helped him defend himself and actually fight back until the police came. He would be released from the hospital the next day while the two would be detained for assault, not to mention whatever other charges his parents were about to press. When summer break was finally over, King returned to school with a few fading bruises and a scar on his left eye, making him even more intimidating. Rumors soon followed that he either was in a gang fight or wrestled a lion or some other wild beast. King didn't like the rumors, he was just an average American otaku! But the truth was too embarrassing, so he kept his mouth shut.
Time passed quickly like that and before he knew it, King graduated from high school.
King's life could be considered normal, if he ignored the ghosts he saw sometimes… Those things were freaking him out even to this day, their vaguely visible forms and shapes putting him on edge. He had finished his last year in university and was now job-hunting, but that was proving difficult, his appearance putting off people and making it even harder for him to find a job. It was on one of these job-hunting outings that he met his first ever Jujutsu sorcerer.
King was walking back to his one-room apartment after yet another rejection from a company. He still had his part-time job as a janitor in the nearby bank, so he wasn't broke but still money was tight. He wasn't going to give up, though. He studied Electronics hard in university and wasn't about to let all his efforts go to waste doing a cleaning job for the rest of his life!
'That's it! I'd go to the FamilyMart and gat some of my favorite pudding to cheer myself up.' – King decided and took a shortcut down an alley.
As he got deeper, suddenly he was gripped by fear, his heart beating loudly in his chest and the familiar gross feeling of a ghost surrounded him, but… this time it was different. It was MUCH stronger than any ghost he had encountered and this time, he had the feeling he could not just pass it off. The usually short alley seemed to stretch impossibly far and end in a black void. King was frozen in place, cold sweat running down his brow and heart thundering in his chest.
"Keeeekeke!" – the monster looming over him laughed.
It was terrifying, more than twice King's height, long serpentine body and many wiggling human arms it used to crawl on the wall, its head a swollen and twisted mess of scales, flesh, eyes and teeth, so many teeth… Well, King couldn't see it that clearly, he could only make out its shape and strength but it still made him freeze on the spot.
'Shit, shit, shit! I am dead! I'm going to die! This thing will eat me and I'd become one of those 'mysteriously disappeared' cases in the newspaper. I don't wanna DIE!' – he furiously thought, on the brink of tears.
Suddenly something slammed into the monster and sent it flying. Softly, a few meters in front of him landed a teenager, he was small but then most Japanese seemed small to King. The peculiar thing was the pure white hair and blue eyes the boy had.
"Well, aren't you in luck, ossan?" – young Gojo glanced at him.
King just stared, still frozen in place.
"By the look on your face, you can at least see where the curse spirit is, but you are too weak to do something about it. Why such a strong one targeted you, I don't know."
"HISSS!" – the curse stood up and charged at Gojo and King.
"But thankfully I was shopping nearby, so you are in luck!" – Gojo declared and hit the cursed spirit.
Before he knew it, Gojo had defeated the curse, leaving King in a state of confusion as the surroundings returned to normal.
"Oh, by the way, ossan." Gojo addressed him "Me and my friends are supposed to meet soon and go back to our school but I really wanted some limited time Peach and cream daifuku. They're s'posed to be sold somewhere here but I got lost!" – Gojo declared nonchalantly and laughed a bit.
"Ah, yes. I can show you the shop. It's near my apartment." – King replied robotically and walked out of the alley, a white-haired boy following him.
King's second encounter with a sorcerer, well sorcerers, was a year after he was rescued by Gojo. He had managed to find a menial job of filling out documents in an office building but at least it paid better than being a janitor. He was on his way home after staying late in the office, the sky was already black and the lights were almost blinding. He stumbled his way to his apartment and honestly, the events leading to it were quite muddled. This and that happened, somehow he lost both his briefcase and coat, then next thing he remembers, he stumbles into a disaster zone. A ghost was trying to drag its crumbling body towards him when the half-destroyed building it came out of decided to crumble and completely squashed the thing, spraying some of its juices on King's shirt. His sleep-deprived mind couldn't process the events quick enough, so he just stared.
"Whoah! What the hell happened?!" – a voice shouted from behind him.
"Wasn't this where Izuna detected that Special-grade? How-?!" – another voice joined.
King turned to look behind him, his heart thundering in his chest, the sound echoing in the alley. There stood 2 men, a young man with a fishing hat and another carrying a strange blade that looked like it came out of a fantasy film.
At that moment, to the two men King looked utterly terrifying, his scary face, scars and empty look in his eyes, plus the intimidating thundering of his heart painted a very different picture. To them King seemed like a really scary, ridiculously strong Jujutsu sorcerer that had decimated the special-grade cursed spirit quickly and quite brutally at that. The fact that they also could barely sense him made them quickly retreat and run far away.
Since that day rumors slowly started to spread about a mysterious and powerful man, a few similar incidents and coincidental meetings fueled the rumors even more. Eventually it reached the point that random people would seek out King and offer him huge amounts of money to exorcise spirits for them. The money was VERY good, too good to refuse, so King tried it a few times and somehow his luck always proved good so he barely even glimpsed the ghost before it somehow got pulverized, not to mention the few assassins he didn't even notice were also always involved in some fatal incident. A few years later, his reputation had reached the point where sorcerers called him "The second strongest man alive", saying only Gojo would be able to defeat him.
Despite being constantly worried about his life whenever he was out on a 'job', King lives a pretty cushy life with the millions he makes every time someone hires him for a job.
King came back to his apartment after another successful trip to Akiba, his bags full of new merch, manga and games. After he went in, he noticed a pair of black shoes inside, too small and clean to be his, plus there was faint light coming from beneath the door of the living room. Slowly, the man made his way down the hallway, his heart was starting to beat loudly, his hands sweaty. He carefully opened the door and peered in.
"Yo, ossan! You are finally back. Found anything interesting this time?" – he saw Gojo sitting on his couch, sipping some hot chocolate and reading a magazine.
"Why do you always appear unannounced? You almost gave me a heart attack." – King sighed in relief.
"Sorry, sorry, but this is way more fun." – Gojo smiled playfully.
"For you, maybe. Want some snacks?" – King grumbled but still opened his bags and started showing the white-haired man his purchases.
"Nah, thanks. I have a few daifuku with my name written on them waiting for me back in the school." Gojo refused the chips "Still, it is so hilarious every time I hear someone talking about you, ossan. You know, the newest rumor I heard was that your glare puts a curse on your enemies that drains them of their life. It's so ridiculous that everyone totes your reputation around, calling you the second strongest man alive, when you'd practically fall over if a curse sneezes at ya!" – he laughed as King glared at him half-heartedly.
"Well, at least it pays much better than my old job." – King mutters.
"Of course it does! Those suckers would probably die of contempt if they learn their money was funding the hobby of some ordinary dude with barely enough cursed energy to perceive where a curse is. You know, some of my colleagues have been making a secret betting pool about who would win if we ever met and fought." – Gojo informed the tall man.
"Please, don't do anything. I have more than enough crazy rumors circling around about me. I don't want to attract even more attention. What if someone decides they are not happy and send assassins after me? I'd die!" – King moped.
"Like they haven't already." -Gojo whispered to himself.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing, nothing~ So… Do you wanna go a few rounds on Town Fighter? I have some free time before having to go back to those old coots in the school."
"Alright." King agreed and pulled out the controllers "I am going to wipe the floor with you again."
"Careful now or maybe you'll really be called the strongest man alive if someone hears you."
Being gaming friends with King was one of the longest-running inside jokes/ pranks in history and Gojo was loving every second of it.