Samsara Verse

⚙ SYSTEM ONLINE ⚙

welcome back, player. locating available routes...

...loading sarcasm (fully loaded)

...loading self-preservation instincts (still missing)

two isekai routes currently active. select below.

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◈ ROUTE 1 ◈

MISPLACED DEVOTION

[Reverse Harem / Isekai / Reader Insert] — Rating: Mature

Chapters 1/100 (ongoing)

You die eating instant noodles. You wake up in Jujutsu Kaisen. You know the plot, which makes surviving it both easier and much, much worse.

Romance targets: Itadori, Megumi, Gojo, Nanami, Inumaki, Choso, Yuta, Sukuna, Geto

→ Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88809771

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◈ ROUTE 2 ◈

SYSTEM SAID COLLECT ALL FIVE

[Reverse Harem / Omegaverse / Isekai] — Rating: Explicit, 18+, MDNI

Chapters 1/100 (ongoing)

You went looking for fluffy JJK fic at 1AM. You got isekai'd instead. Now a System is tracking your Love Points like your survival depends on it — because it does.

Romance targets: Gojo, Geto, Sukuna, Toji, Nanami

→ Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88808901

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My patreon:

Patreon.com/SamsaraVerse

My wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/user/SamsaraVerse

Chapter 3: You Are F*CKED, Capital F

~✦~

Mimi is still standing. The chair is still scraped back. The whole cafeteria is still watching, and somewhere behind your ribs a banner is still gleefully informing you that you are, currently, failing.

*Okay. Okay. Fine. FINE. You want a scene, universe? I'll give you a scene. Just not the one that's about to happen if I don't do something in the next four seconds.*

You don't think. Thinking got you into this. You just move — up out of your chair, around the table, one hand landing light on Mimi's forearm, your voice dropping into the kind of low, steady register you didn't know you had until this exact second.

"Hey. Hey, look at me. I'm here. It's okay."

You have no idea if that's the right thing to say. You have no idea what "it" is. You are fully aware you are doing a bit — some deep, half-buried memory of every hostage-negotiator scene you've ever half-watched on a plane, all steady eye contact and low register and *nobody has to get hurt today.* But her breath catches on the word *okay* like she's been waiting for someone to say it to her for longer than just this morning, and something in her shoulders drops half an inch, and you take that as permission to keep going, low and even, saying absolutely nothing of substance in the most reassuring voice you can manufacture.

*This is either going to work, or I am about to get expelled from an institution I didn't know I was enrolled in for public menacing. There is no in-between outcome here.*

Mimi's still trembling, but she's not shouting anymore, and somewhere in the middle of your very confident nothing-speech, she says something under her breath that you almost miss.

"...Circe."

*Wait.*

*What did she just—*

You keep your face perfectly still, perfectly calm, performing the single most difficult acting job of your life, while internally you are doing several laps around the room.

*Say it again. Say it again, I need to make sure I heard that, I need—*

"I just—" Mimi's voice cracks, quieter now, the fight draining out of her as fast as it came. "I don't understand you anymore, Circe. You used to—"

*There it is. Circe. She said it twice. That's not a nickname, that's not a slip, that's a NAME, that's MY name, or — okay, technically the previous tenant's name, but same difference at this point, I am currently renting—*

*Circe.*

*Do I have a family? Is there a whole set of Circe-people out there somewhere, worrying, wondering where she went? Is this about to turn into one of those Long Lost Family episodes where everyone cries on a couch? Was there a whole Circe childhood? Circe report cards? — okay. Okay, no, shelf. SHELF. Focus.*

You physically feel yourself yank the thought back by its collar and drop it into the growing pile marked *deal with later,* which is, you note grimly, threatening to become load-bearing at this point.

*Salvage the mission. That's the job right now. Everything else waits.*

You square your shoulders, take a breath, and say it loud enough to carry — not shouted, not performed, just clear, clean, and final, the kind of sentence you'd use to close a door.

"I have forgiven and forgotten whatever had happened."

You keep it deliberately small. No details, no specifics, nothing that could be checked against a version of events you don't have access to. Just the shape of an ending, offered up like a period at the end of someone else's sentence.

Mimi's whole face crumples with relief, fast and total, like you just set down something she'd been carrying for a long time.

And then — you feel it before you consciously clock it, a slight shift in the air of the room, dozens of small exhales you weren't tracking until they happen — you realize the relief isn't only coming from Mimi's table.

*Oh.*

*Oh, that's — okay, that's not just her. That's several tables. That's a lot of people who apparently also had something they needed forgiven. What did Circe DO. What did she do to an entire ROOM of people—*

The relief isn't universal, though. A few tables over, someone scoffs — actually scoffs, audible, unmistakable, arms crossed, eyes narrowed at you like your little forgiveness speech personally offended her.

*That is — okay, that is deeply concerning in a different direction. Some people wanted this. Some people think I don't deserve to give it. There's a whole political landscape here I do not have a map for, and I just planted a flag in the middle of it with my mouth.*

You don't have time to unpack it further, because Mimi's already wiping under her eyes, laughing a little, unsteady, and reaching for her tray like the last ninety seconds didn't just happen in front of a full cafeteria.

"We should — we should finish up," you say, grabbing for anything that sounds like normal conversation. "Don't want to be late."

Mimi blinks at you. "Late for what?"

*...Oh no.*

*Was that not a real thing. Was "don't be late" not a real concern. Did I just invent a deadline out of thin air in front of a woman I have apparently already emotionally wrecked once today—*

You don't answer fast enough, and Mimi, mercifully, fills the silence herself, brow furrowing.

"There's no chores rotation for our room today, if that's what you mean."

*Chores rotation. CHORES ROTATION. As in — assigned labor. As in this place runs on a schedule of mandatory work shifts that you, personally, are apparently expected to know without being told. As in—*

*Am I actually in a prison. Is that the twist. Nobody's even told me what this place is actually CALLED, and somehow that's almost worse — I've been too busy panicking about oatmeal to notice I don't have a name for the building I'm trapped in—*

"Unless," Mimi adds, and her voice shifts, careful now, testing, "you're seriously thinking about going to the library again. Even after everything."

The library. There it is again. The library, capital-L, said like it's a place with weight, a place that costs something to walk into.

"Because," Mimi presses on, gentler than her tone from ten minutes ago but no less pointed, "you don't have to keep questioning everything, Circe. You really don't. It's easier if you just — do as the administrator tells you to do."

*The administrator.* Singular. Capital-feeling. Cool. Very not-ominous. Love a school where the person in charge doesn't get a name, just a title, like a weather system.

"There's nothing wrong with the academy," Mimi adds, quieter now, like she's saying it as much for herself as for you. "You don't have to worry."

You want to ask a hundred questions. What happened before. What the library has to do with any of it. Who "the administrator" actually is and why saying the word out loud made Mimi's shoulders tighten like she'd flinched without moving. You want to ask all of it, right here, right now, riding the momentum of a forgiveness speech you don't remember earning.

~✦~

a/n 🖤 CIRCE!!! we have a name!!! and a mysterious library, and a very ominous "administrator," and a cafeteria full of people with feelings about our girl that she doesn't remember earning. no thoughts just vibes (the vibes are extremely bad) see you next chapter 🍿

get advance chapters here 👇

Chapter 2: I Don't Know What I Did But I'm Already Sorry

~✦~

Your brain does the thing it apparently does now, which is spiral at full speed while the rest of you stands very still.

*Okay. Okay. Who's on the other side of that door. Could be anyone. Could be a guard. Could be a homicidal court noble. Could be — please, whatever's listening, let it just be someone boring. A maid. A guy delivering scrolls. Anyone who is not currently on fire, holding a weapon, or about to explain why I owe someone a blood debt. I would like one (1) low-stakes interaction before my next crisis, is that so much to ask—*

You open the door.

A gold rectangle blooms in the corner of your vision before you've even fully processed the person standing in the doorway, which feels, frankly, rude of your own eyeballs.

**IDENTIFIED: MIMI**

A little photo sits beside the name, a clean, official little headshot like the System pulled it from some database you were never told existed, and you glance up from the banner to the actual woman in front of you just in time to confirm: yeah, that's her. Same face. System's not lying to you today, apparently.

*Oh, thank god, I don't have to do the whole "so, what's your name" song and dance.*

"Hi Mimi," you say, breezy, confident, a woman who has never once been confused in her life. "What do you want?"

Mimi gives you a look.

Not a hostile look. Not even a scared one, which — genuinely, refreshing, you'll take it. It's a confused look, brows pulling together, head tilting a degree like you've just spoken to her in a language she almost recognizes. You would know that look anywhere. It is the exact look you used to give your coworker Dave when he'd greet you by a name that was not yours and never had been.

*Oh. Oh no. She never told me her name, did she. I just — I just knew it. Out loud. Immediately. Cool. Very normal. Very not-suspicious.*

You do not have time to fix that impression, because you finally clock what Mimi's wearing — a shapeless white overall, boxy at the shoulders, the kind of garment that has never once flattered a human body in the history of garments — and past her, over her shoulder, a hallway lined with doors identical to yours, several of them cracked open, several more with women ducking in and out of them in the exact same ugly white overall.

*Dorm. This is a dorm. This is a dorm full of women in matching institutional beige-adjacent nightmare fabric, and I—*

*—am going to need to put one of those on, aren't I.*

*Okay, think. Think fast. Standing out is bad. Standing out is how you get noticed, and getting noticed is how you get — I don't know, culled, or reported, or whatever the horror-movie equivalent of "sent to the principal's office" is in a world where I don't yet know the rules. Blend. Just blend. Blend like your life depends on it, because it might.*

You're mid-spiral when Mimi's voice cuts back in, a little sharper now.

"Why aren't you dressed yet? Don't be late — there won't be any food left if you keep standing around."

*Right. Right! Priorities. Cool. Very achievable, very low-stakes crisis, I can do this one.*

"Sorry, sorry — slept in a little," you say, waving a hand like this is a totally normal Tuesday and not the first fully conscious hour of your entire new existence. "I'll be out in a jiffy."

Mimi's eyes drop, pointedly, to the sheer black nightgown you are, in fact, still wearing.

"You need your common room dress on first."

*My — my what?*

Your gaze drags back to her white overall. Then to the open doors down the hall, every single woman in sight wearing the same shapeless horror in the same shade of institutional not-quite-white.

*Oh no.*

*Oh no, no, that's not a uniform for, like, kitchen duty or gym class. That's not a special-occasion thing. That is apparently what "common room dress" MEANS here. That's not a costume I'll be putting on for one scene and then never again. That is the DAILY OUTFIT.*

*I have survived exactly one interdimensional catastrophe and the universe's very next move is fashion violence.*

You shut the door, and the moment you're alone the fake-calm façade drops off your face like a mask that was never glued on right in the first place.

*Okay. Okay. Closet. There has to be a closet. Every isekai protagonist has a mysteriously well-stocked closet, that is a LAW, and if this universe is going to violate the fashion sense of the entire female population it can at least give me a—*

There's a closet. You yank it open.

Three of the horrible white overalls hang in a neat row, and past them, a handful of other dresses in muted colors — plain, practical, nothing you'd call ugly exactly, just deeply, aggressively unremarkable, the sartorial equivalent of a beige waiting room.

*Okay, so either the person whose body I am currently borrowing has genuinely tragic personal style, or — more likely, please be this one — these are also uniforms. Different context, same institution. Which would mean...*

You look at the overalls again. The plain dresses. The dorm hallway. The distinct, unshakeable vibe of everyone here answers to somebody and nobody here is having a good time.

*I think I'm in some kind of school.*

The word lands heavier than it should. You've read enough isekai to know "school" rarely means algebra and gossip in these situations.

*Okay, well — I do currently have a supernatural entity living in my skull for exactly this kind of situation. Let's use it.*

"Hey," you say out loud, to the empty room, feeling only a little unhinged about it. "System. What is this place?"

**[ SYSTEM: Nope. ]**

*Excuse me?*

**[ SYSTEM: You heard me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Host. Figure it out yourself. ]**

*I'm sorry, isn't figuring things out for me LITERALLY your one job? You're the System! You're supposed to system! At me!*

**[ SYSTEM: I show stats. I show unlocks. Occasionally, when I'm feeling generous, I drop a hint. Free-form exposition service is not in my job description, and frankly, neither is putting up with your tone. ]**

*My TONE? You want to talk about TONE—*

**[ SYSTEM: I could put you in significantly worse scenarios than "confused about a dress code," is what I'm saying. Your continued survival is, technically, a service I provide. I'd hate for that service to lapse due to an attitude problem. ]**

You open your mouth to say something extremely unwise to the omniscient entity that apparently holds your continued existence in whatever the System equivalent of a hand is, and then, wisely, for possibly the first time in your entire life, close it again.

*Fine. FINE. I'll figure it out myself. Bow my head, keep my eyes open, learn the rules the old-fashioned way. Cool. Great. Love that for me.*

It's somewhere in the middle of losing an argument with your own subconscious hallucination-slash-tormentor that you realize you've already stripped out of the nightgown, and your gaze catches on the vanity mirror across the room, and — right. Right, you'd meant to deal with this eventually and "eventually" has apparently arrived early.

The body in the mirror is not yours.

Not "isn't yours" in the vague, philosophical, whose body is anyone's really sense. Not yours in the very literal sense that you have a birthmark on your original left hip that is absent here, and skin that catches the low light a shade paler than you remember your own doing, and hands that move like they know things your hands never learned.

*Okay. That's — that's a whole thing. That's a whole conversation I am going to need to have with myself at some point, preferably with wine, preferably not while I'm three minutes from missing breakfast in an institution that apparently punishes lateness with starvation.*

*Later. Note to self: full-body identity crisis, scheduled for later. Right now — overall. Get the fugly overall on. Do not, under any circumstances, be the girl who shows up to the cafeteria looking like she doesn't know her own uniform code on day one.*

You get the overall on. It is exactly as unflattering in person as it promised to be.

Mimi's still waiting when you open the door again — she's changed into a fresh version of the same overall you're now wearing, and you fall into step beside her without either of you saying much, which suits you fine, because your brain is very busy doing the thing where it catalogs every hallway detail like your life depends on remembering it later. Stone floors, worn smooth in a path down the center like a thousand feet have walked exactly this route exactly this way for longer than you want to think about. Doors, doors, more doors. The smell of something starchy and boiled drifting up ahead of you, underscored with bleach and, faintly, the kind of institutional nervous-sweat smell you'd recognize blindfolded from every waiting room you've ever sat in.

*This doesn't feel like Jujutsu Tech. I know Jujutsu Tech. Jujutsu Tech has, like, vibes — trees, a weird gate, a guy who dies falling off a cliff for comedic effect. This feels like a boarding school run by people who read "institution" in a dictionary and took it as a personal challenge. I don't know what this is. I don't know if I know what this is. That is deeply unsettling on a level I don't have room to unpack right now.*

The cafeteria, when you reach it, is loud in the specific way any room full of people trying not to be noticed is loud — a low churn of voices, none of them raised, most of them tight. There's a line. Of course there's a line. You join it behind Mimi, and when you reach the front, a bored-looking attendant gestures for your wrist without even glancing up.

"ID."

*My what.*

You freeze for exactly one panicked second before your fingers find it on their own — a thin bracelet at your wrist, half-hidden under the overall's cuff, clearly something the body's previous owner wore constantly enough that your hands knew where to look before your brain caught up. You hold it out. The attendant scans it against some kind of reader without ceremony.

**★ IDENTIFICATION VERIFIED ★**

*Status: On File*

You catch a half-second flicker underneath that line — something that might have been more text, might have been a flag of some kind, gone before you can read it — and the attendant's already handing you a tray, already looking past you to the next person in line.

*Okay, that's — that felt like it almost said something else. Cool. Cool cool cool. Filing that away with the rest of the "deal with it later" pile, which is, I will note for the record, getting extremely full.*

You take your food. You notice, as you're handed it, that the person serving it is dressed exactly like you, exactly like Mimi, exactly like everyone else in this room — no kitchen uniform, no staff distinction, just the same white overall, same tired posture, same careful blankness in her eyes.

*So either the students pull chore duty here, or this is genuinely just a school with extra steps, or — your stomach does something unpleasant — or the line between "student" and "staff" here is a lot blurrier than either word should allow. Cool. Love that framing. Love it here.*

You find a corner table, empty, tucked far enough from the main clusters of noise that you can eat without anyone crowding in to make conversation. It feels like the right call the second you sit — from here you can watch most of the room without being in the middle of it, and if anyone asks why you're sitting alone, *I wasn't feeling well* is a lie simple enough to survive follow-up questions.

*Good. Smart. Eat, watch, learn the rules from a safe distance, don't say anything that gets flagged. Very sound strategy. Ten out of ten, no notes.*

Except the notes arrive almost immediately, in the form of eyes. Not constant — nobody's staring outright, nobody's rude about it — but every few seconds, from somewhere in the room, a gaze flicks toward your table and away again, quick, like you're something people are checking is still there rather than something people want to look at.

*What. WHAT. I haven't done anything. I have been awake for less than an hour of institution-time and I have done nothing but ask a woman her own name back at her and put on a dress I didn't pick. What is happening.*

You're so deep in cataloging the staring that it takes you an embarrassingly long moment to notice Mimi is sitting across from you.

You don't remember her sitting down. You don't remember losing the thread of her at all, honestly, somewhere between the ID scanner and the corner table, and now here she is, tray in front of her, glancing at you the same quick, flicking way the rest of the room is — except hers keeps coming back, again and again, like she's building up to something.

*Popular or troublemaker. Those are the options, right? Those are the only two reasons a room stares at one girl this consistently. And I have exactly zero data points on which one I am, because in my old life I was reliably, comfortably, gloriously unremarkable.*

*Okay. I need answers. I need System. I need —*

You go very still.

*Wait. Can it hear this? Can it hear ME? Right now? Is it just — sitting in here, listening to every unhinged thought I've had since I woke up, or do I have to actually go stand in a bathroom stall and address it out loud like an insane person for it to—*

**[ SYSTEM: I can hear all of it. ]**

You choke on air that wasn't even in your mouth yet.

*You can WHAT.*

**[ SYSTEM: Read your mind. Hear your thoughts. Whichever phrasing bothers you less, pick one, I'm not precious about it. ]**

*That is — okay, that is deeply, deeply violating, do you understand that, there is a difference between "voice in my head that talks back when summoned" and "entity currently reading my diary in real time," I would like to lodge a formal—*

**[ SYSTEM: You're the one who called me. ]**

*I—*

*...oh.*

*Oh, right. I did do that. Just now. In my own head. Which you apparently heard, because you can hear everything, which was, again, the entire complaint—*

**[ SYSTEM: Going in circles, Host. ]**

*Fine! FINE. Forget the privacy violation, we'll workshop my feelings about that later. Why is everyone staring at me?*

There's a pause — the specific, insufferable kind of pause you're starting to recognize, the one that means you're not going to like what comes next.

**[ SYSTEM: Complete your current mission first. Then we'll talk. ]**

The banner blooms before you can even object, sliding into place over your tray like it owns the table.

**◈ ACTIVE OBJECTIVES ◈**

*Survive Breakfast (in progress)*

*Do Not Reveal You Have No Idea What's Going On (currently: failing)*

*??? (locked — clear the above to reveal)*

*"Currently: failing." CURRENTLY. FAILING. I am eating OATMEAL. I have not DONE anything. How am I already losing at a mission called "survive breakfast," I am, definitionally, currently surviving this breakfast—*

"Look," Mimi says, and her voice cuts clean through your internal spiral, low, careful, aimed only at you. "I just want to say — whatever happened. Before. Can we just... forgive and forget? Please. I'd really like to move past it."

You blink at her.

*Forgive and forget WHAT.*

*She's not offering ME forgiveness — she's asking ME for it. Which means whatever "before" is, she thinks I'M the wronged party here, and I have no idea what I did, or what was done to me, or what this body was in the middle of before I got poured into it like a smoothie. I don't know if I'm owed an apology, a hug, or a restraining order on her behalf, and I have approximately zero seconds to figure out which one before my face gives away that I have absolutely no memory of whatever this is—*

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. You close it. Open it again. This is, you're fairly sure, the least reassuring possible reaction to give someone who just handed you an olive branch and is visibly waiting to see if you'll take it, and you can see it land on Mimi's face in real time — the hope draining out of it fast, replaced by something more brittle.

"Are you — seriously? You're not even going to say anything?" Her voice climbs, just slightly, just enough that the nearest table's conversation stutters and a few more heads turn your way. "I'm trying here. Do you have any idea what it took for me to even say that out loud—"

*Oh no. Oh no no no, she's spiraling, I can feel it, this is a woman who worked up the nerve to apologize and is now watching it blow up in her face in a cafeteria full of people who are ALREADY watching my table for reasons I don't understand, and if this turns into a scene there is no version of the next thirty seconds where I don't reveal I have absolutely no idea what's going on—*

"Mimi—" you try, low, urgent, one hand half-lifted like you can physically hold the moment together.

"No," she says, and she's not lowering her voice anymore, she's standing, chair scraping back loud enough to turn every remaining head in the room, "no, you know what, I've been nothing but patient—"

*Abort. Abort abort abort. Somebody silence this situation before it silences my entire mission—*

Somewhere behind your ribs, underneath the panic, a small gold banner flickers back into existence, patient, self-congratulatory, and completely unhelpful.

*Do Not Reveal You Have No Idea What's Going On (currently: failing)*

*Yeah,* you think, watching Mimi's face twist toward something with an audience now fully assembled, *I can hear it too.*

~✦~

a/n 🖤 MIMI??? girl is going through it and our OC has no idea why, love that for both of them honestly. also the System reading her mind was a whole one-line joke that got away from me and is now permanent lore, this happens more than I'd like to admit 🚩 see you next chapter, it's about to get so much worse before it gets better 🍿

get advance chapters here 👇

(Jujutsu Kaisen — Isekai / Reader Insert)

Chapter 3: I have never wanted to throw up so politely

~✦~

You find out you have a bed roughly four minutes later, once you work up the nerve to unzip the backpack that's apparently been strapped to you all day without your notice.

Inside: a pencil case you don't recognize but that is, weirdly, exactly the brand you'd have picked yourself. A brand-new workbook, only the first page filled in, in handwriting that is unmistakably your own. A student ID with your face on it, your actual name printed underneath, and an address that means absolutely nothing to you.

No photo. No family tree helpfully tucked in a side pocket. Just an address, a name, and a whole lot of nothing else.

"Okay," you say, out loud, to absolutely nobody. "Guess I'm going home."

You are, it turns out, extremely bad at finding a house you have never seen before in a neighborhood you have no memory of, using nothing but a scrap of paper and the vague, growing dread of someone who suspects she's about to be late for her own life.

The street you're on is lined with near-identical houses, each with a little nameplate mounted by the gate, and you've taken to reading them one by one, out loud, under your breath, like some kind of deranged door-to-door census taker.

"Tanaka. Tanaka. Watanabe. Oh, come on, how many Tanakas can one street—"

"Lost?"

You nearly jump out of your skin. There's a man standing a few feet away, having appeared with the kind of silent, unhurried ease that should probably alarm you a great deal more than it initially does, because your first, instinctive reaction — before your brain fully catches up — is a small, warm flicker of recognition.

Long dark hair, tied back loosely. A gentle, faintly amused expression. The kind of face that radiates calm, reasonable trustworthiness, the sort you'd hand your car keys to without a second thought.

*Oh my god,* you think, delighted, for exactly one glorious half-second. *It's—*

You know this face. You loved this face, in the life you actually lived — one of your favorite characters, hands down, the kind of guy you used to see edited into unhinged, slow-motion thirst-trap reels set to some sultry remix, captioned things like *he could ruin my life and I'd thank him.* You remember thinking that was funny. You remember thinking that was, at worst, a harmless little internet bit.

And then the rest of you catches up, and every cell in your body turns to ice.

It's not Geto Suguru.

It's wearing Geto Suguru's face like a coat somebody stole off a corpse, which — you remember now, with horrifying clarity — is essentially exactly what happened. The real Geto's only been dead a few months. Barely enough time for the body to go cold, let alone for anyone to notice the person wearing it isn't him anymore. The thing looking at you with such warm, patient curiosity is Kenjaku, and Kenjaku is, by an extremely comfortable margin, one of the single most dangerous beings you have ever had the misfortune of knowing facts about.

"You seem to be having some trouble," Kenjaku says, tilting his head — Geto's head, Geto's gentle, easy smile — and gesturing vaguely at the paper in your hand. "Looking for a particular address?"

*Oh my god oh my god oh my god,* your brain screams, in a single unbroken siren of pure, undiluted horror. *This man is going to end the world. This man is going to orchestrate the deaths of thousands of people using a face that isn't even his. This man is currently standing eighteen inches away from me on a residential street asking if I need directions like this is a completely normal Tuesday—*

"Oh!" you say out loud, beaming, voice pitched so warm and easy it could pass for genuine sunlight. "Yes, actually, that would be so helpful, thank you so much!"

*I am going to throw up. I am going to throw up right here, on this man's shoes, and it will be the single most understandable thing I have ever done.*

You hold out the scrap of paper with the address on it, hand miraculously steady, and Kenjaku leans in to look at it with exactly the kind of unhurried interest a kind stranger might show, and you smile at him the entire time like you are meeting a beloved elder statesman, or possibly the actual Buddha, rather than a genocidal parasite wearing the face you used to see thirst-trapped into oblivion on your For You page.

"Ah," he says, and points. "Two streets that way, then left. You'll see it — big crooked mailbox, hard to miss."

"Thank you so much!" you chirp, taking the paper back, fingers not shaking at all, definitely not.

*Please leave. Please, please, please leave. I will build you a shrine. I will never watch another isekai anime as long as I live if you just walk away right now.*

Kenjaku studies you for one moment longer than is strictly comfortable — long enough that you feel it, somewhere deep and animal, the specific sensation of being catalogued — and then, mercifully, inclines his head and continues on down the street, unhurried, like a man with absolutely nowhere urgent to be.

You do not move again until he's fully out of sight.

Then you very quietly, very privately, allow yourself to have the nervous breakdown you've been holding off for the last ninety seconds.

"Okay," you whisper, hands pressed to your face. "Okay. Two streets that way. Left. Big crooked mailbox. Go."

You go.

The address leads you to a house that looks correct in a way that makes your chest hurt a little — same shape as the one you grew up in, same crooked mailbox, same wind chime by the door that's slightly, maddeningly, the wrong pitch.

You let yourself in with a key you found in the backpack's side pocket, because apparently whoever's running this simulation wanted you to have exactly enough information to survive and not one shred more.

"I'm home," you call out, testing the words like you're not sure you're allowed to say them.

There's a clatter from the kitchen, and your mother — your mother, or something close enough that your throat goes tight — pokes her head around the corner.

"There you are! How was your first day?"

"...fine," you manage.

"Good, good. Oh, your grandmother made way too much rice again, so you'd better be hungry."

You freeze.

"My — grandmother."

"Yes, your grandmother," your mom says slowly, giving you A Look. "Who lives here. With us. As she has for the past several years. You feeling okay, sweetheart?"

Before you can answer, a voice calls out from the living room — warm, creaky, and instantly, inexplicably familiar in a way that has nothing to do with this universe and everything to do with some dust-covered part of your memory you didn't know you still had.

"Is that my favorite grandchild? Come give your grandmother a hug, I haven't seen you all day!"

You round the corner. There she is. An old woman with your nose. Alive. Real. Here.

You do not cry. You want to, a little. You also want to laugh. Mostly you just want to sit down on the floor and take a minute, so that's what you do, right there in the hallway, while your mother asks with real concern whether you hit your head at school today.

~✦~

a/n 🖤 KENJAKU CAMEO. that's it. that's the tweet. she talked her way past one of the most dangerous men in the entire series using nothing but unhinged customer-service voice and I have never been prouder of a fictional woman. also: grandma's alive?? more on that later 👀 see you next chapter

get advance chapters here 👇

(Jujutsu Kaisen — Isekai / Reader Insert)

Chapter 2: I did not sign up for a group chat with this many red flags

~✦~

The instrument shelter turns out to be much smaller than the word "shelter" implies — a slatted little wooden box, louvered on all sides like an oversized birdhouse, perched on four thin metal legs that raise it up to roughly head height. Barely taller than Fushiguro would be, if you'd already met him. It's not even hidden, really. It's just standing there, alone, in a bare stretch of ground near the back fence, so plain and forgotten-looking that your eyes would slide right past it if you weren't already feeling sick from thirty feet away. There's a strip of paper sealed across its tiny door — old, yellowed, covered in characters you can't read but instinctively don't like the look of.

A talisman. Of course it's a talisman.

The wrongness here isn't a hum anymore. It's a pressure, a physical weight pressing in against your skull the closer you get, and by the time Itadori rips the paper seal clean off without a second thought, you're seriously reconsidering every choice that led you to this exact moment.

"You feel that?" you ask, mostly to see if he does.

"Feel what?"

"...nothing. Never mind."

Right. Of course he doesn't. Not yet.

Itadori pulls the little door open and bends down, ducking his head to check the compartment properly before committing to anything. There's nothing else inside. No forgotten equipment, no dust-covered clutter — just a shallow little space, barely big enough to hold anything, and sitting right in the middle of it like it's the only thing that's ever belonged there: a small, sealed wooden box. He reaches in and pulls it out. The second his hands close around it, the pressure in your skull spikes so hard you have to grit your teeth to keep from making a noise.

"Found it," Itadori says, delighted, blowing a layer of dust off the lid. "See, this is why I love this club. We're basically explorers."

"Don't open it," you say, with a confidence you don't examine too closely.

He opens it anyway.

Inside is a finger. Preserved, unmistakably human, and very obviously not okay. The second the lid comes off, you feel something shift in the air around you — like every curse within a mile radius just turned its head at once.

"Huh," Itadori says, peering at it with the mild curiosity of someone looking at a weird bug rather than a severed human digit. "That's — okay, that's actually kind of freaky. We should probably tell someone."

"Yeah," you say faintly. "We probably should."

You do not tell someone. Instead, Itadori closes the box back up, tucks it under one arm like a school project, and the two of you start the long walk back to the clubroom.

It is, without question, the longest walk of your entire life, both current and previous.

You already know what happens if that finger ends up in the wrong hands, or the wrong stomach, or gets loose at the wrong moment. You know, roughly, what today is supposed to become, if the shape of the story holds even a little. Every step back across campus, you're doing the mental math on how many ways this could go worse than you remember, and coming up with an uncomfortably large number.

*Please,* you think, at the box, at the universe, at whoever's in charge of this simulation, *let's just get through today without anything catching on fire.*

Neither Sasaki nor Iguchi is back yet when you get to the clubroom, so it's just you and Itadori, and the box, sitting innocently in the middle of the floor between you.

"Okay," Itadori says, eyes bright with the specific, terrible curiosity of someone who has never once had a self-preservation instinct kick in at a useful moment. "You should touch it."

"Absolutely not."

"Come on, just to see if it's actually as scary as it looks! I already touched it and I'm fine."

*I have been in far, far too many situations exactly like this one,* you think, with total conviction, *to not know that touching that thing is a guaranteed, one-way ticket directly into the middle of this plot, and I would like to formally opt out.*

"No thanks," you say instead, out loud, going for breezy and probably landing somewhere closer to strangled. "I'm a huge scaredy cat, honestly. I've already got plenty of scary, ugly things in my life. I don't need to add 'touched a cursed finger' to the list."

Itadori squints at you like that's a weirdly specific thing to say, and you make a mental note — too late, as usual — to be less weirdly specific in the future.

"Suit yourself," he shrugs, and, in the single worst decision either of you will make all day, tosses the box lightly into the air and catches it again, grinning. "See? Nothing happens. It's just a box."

"Please don't do that."

"Do what, this?" He does it again.

"Itadori—"

"Sasaki, catch!" he calls out, because Sasaki has apparently chosen this exact moment to walk back through the door — student council business evidently resolved, Iguchi nowhere in sight yet — and before anyone can object, the box is sailing across the room in a lazy, careless arc.

Sasaki, to her credit, looks utterly betrayed by this development. She fumbles it. The box tips sideways mid-air, and every single alarm bell in your body goes off at once, because if that thing hits the floor and cracks, if the finger rolls out and gets lost, or worse, gets found by someone who isn't supposed to find it yet — you don't actually know what happens then. You just know it's bad. You know, with total certainty, that this is exactly the kind of small, stupid, off-script accident that could send the whole story careening somewhere you have no map for.

So you lunge.

You do not catch it with your hands.

You catch it, with tremendous and immediate regret, directly in the face.

There's a black shape in front of you.

You know, somehow, before your eyes even fully process it, that it has four arms.

*Nope,* you think, with the swift, decisive clarity of someone slamming a door shut on a conversation they don't want to have. *Nope. Not doing this. If I don't acknowledge you, you're not real. That's how this works. That's a scientific fact I just made up.*

The shape doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just — waits, close enough now that you can feel it, somehow, the way you'd feel someone standing directly behind you in a dark room.

For one brief, hopeful second, you think maybe it's decided to extend you the same courtesy. Maybe, against all odds, the single most dangerous entity in this entire universe has taken one look at you and thought, *eh, not worth the effort,* and is simply going to let this be.

That hope lasts exactly as long as it takes him to speak.

"You're not actually in my domain." The voice is low, curious, and entirely too amused. "What are you? You don't smell quite human. And yet." A pause, considering. "You do feel human. Mostly. But what's in front of me right now — it's more like a projection. A very blurry one, at that."

You do not get the chance to respond, mostly because you do not currently have a face to respond with, and also because the entire world chooses that exact moment to come rushing back in a wave of noise and light and someone screaming directly into your ear.

~✦~

a/n 🖤 she catches a cursed box to the face and gets Sukuna's attention on day one. incredible start. no notes. see you next chapter 🍿

get advance chapters here 👇

(Jujutsu Kaisen — Omegaverse / Isekai / Reader Insert)

Summary: You went looking for fluffy JJK fic at 1AM. You got isekai'd instead. Now you're trapped in someone else's body, in a royal court that reads you as "Wrong," with a System that logs Love Points like your survival is a dating sim.

Disclaimer: not my characters, all the trauma (and the omega dynamics) are mine though

Pairing: Omega!Reader x Alpha!Gojo x Alpha!Geto x Alpha!Sukuna x Alpha!Toji x Alpha!Nanami

Rating: Explicit, 18+ — MDNI

Chapter 1: I Just Wanted Comfort Fic, Not Consequences

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

The mattress is wrong before you're even awake enough to know why.

That's the first thing that registers — not sight, not sound, just the fact that whatever you're lying on is too firm in some places and too soft in others in a way your memory-foam topper has never once been, and your body clocks the wrongness a full three seconds before your brain catches up and asks the obvious follow-up question.

*Wait.*

You crack one eye open.

Dark wood beams cross a ceiling that isn't nearly as far away as a room like this ought to have — low enough, actually, that you're fairly sure you could touch it standing on a chair, which is such a strange, oddly specific detail to fixate on that you almost miss the bed you're lying in. A canopy — an actual canopy, faded velvet gone thin and soft with age — hangs over it, frame carved from the same dark wood as the beams overhead. Cold air that smells like old stone and dust instead of the vague ghost of last night's instant ramen.

*Okay. Okay, that's — that's not my ceiling.*

You sit up too fast, and the room does a slow, unkind spin around you, because apparently even interdimensional whatever-this-is comes with a head rush. Stone walls. A heavy wooden desk sits beneath three tall window panels, floor-to-ceiling, the kind of glass that should be flooding this room with actual daylight — except all three are sealed shut, no visible latch, no visible hinge, like they were built to look like windows and never actually meant to open. Across from the bed, a cupboard, absurdly oversized for the room around it, doors shut, contents unknown.

*Where. Am. I.*You get up. You do the thing every horror movie protagonist does right before the horror movie really gets going, which is touch everything like touching it will make it make sense. The blanket, real, heavy, definitely wool. The bedpost, real, definitely wood, definitely carved with some kind of crest you don't recognize. Your own arms, real, definitely yours, except—

Except they're not quite yours. The forearm you're looking at has a faint silver bracelet-scar around the wrist that you have never had in your life, and your nightgown — because you are, apparently, in a nightgown, sheer and black and absolutely not the ancient graphic tee you fell asleep in — pools around legs that are the right shape to be yours but somehow feel like they belong to someone standing slightly to the left of where you are.

*Nope. Nope nope nope. Okay. New plan. Let's establish some facts before I fully spiral, because I can feel the spiral coming and I would like to delay it as long as humanly possible.*

**FACT ONE:** This room does not belong to you.

**FACT TWO:** Nothing in this room belongs to you.

**FACT THREE:** You, sort of, might not entirely belong to you either, which is the fact you are choosing to set gently on a shelf in the back of your mind and deal with never.

*Okay. If I don't know where I am, let's work backward. What's the last thing I actually remember?*You close your eyes — mostly to stop looking at the stranger's-if-technically-your wrist — and drag yourself backward through the last night you can account for, which, embarrassingly, was spent almost entirely horizontal, on your actual bed, in your actual apartment, doing the single most normal unremarkable thing a person can do at one in the morning: doomscrolling.

*Right. Right, okay. I remember this part.*

You'd finished the manga two days before. All of it. Every chapter, every panel, the whole several-hundred-chapter marathon, and you'd gone into it fine, emotionally stable, a functioning adult with a job and hobbies, and come out the other side a small crater where a person used to be, because — and you will go to whatever grave you're apparently now eligible for still saying this — Gojo did not have to die like that. He simply did not. You have Opinions about the pacing of that arc that you have shared, loudly, with several group chats that have since muted you.

So naturally, at one in the morning, still raw, you'd been doing what any reasonable unhinged person does after a fictional death ruins their week: hate-refreshing Twitter for context you didn't need and weren't going to get closure from.

Which is how you'd seen it. The little blue checkmark account, the one that only posts twice a year and always in the worst possible way:

**GEGE'S OFFICIAL ACCOUNT** *New announcement incoming. You're not ready. 🫡* *Project title reveal: "Jujutsu Kaisen: Modulo."*

*A modulo. He named the new thing after a math operation. The man killed my blorbo and followed it up with a title that sounds like a homework assignment. Incredible. Never change. Actually — change. Change immediately. Bring him back.*You remember laughing, a little unhinged, a little too loud for one a.m., and then closing the tab because you did not, in fact, have the emotional bandwidth for whatever "Modulo" was going to do to you, and instead going searching — the way you always do when canon has personally wronged you — for fic. Specifically: happy fic. Specifically: **not** another 40k word slow burn that ends in a funeral. You'd typed increasingly unhinged search terms into AO3 at that point — *fluff, no angst, everyone lives, canon divergent, i am so tired* — and gotten exactly the kind of results you'd expect, which is to say, several thousand fics tagged "fluff" that were absolutely lying to you.

And then, somewhere in that scroll, half-asleep and fully delirious, a notification had popped up that you do not remember your phone ever being capable of producing.

*No app icon you recognized. No sender. Just — text, floating dead center over whatever tab you'd had open, gold-edged like a game loading screen, way too smooth for a phone notification to look.*

**AN ADVENTURE AWAITS. YOUR FAVORITES ARE WAITING. TAP TO BEGIN.**

*In hindsight — and genuinely, only in hindsight, because at 1 a.m. with a shattered heart over a fictional death, this made perfect sense at the time — that should have been the point where I closed the app, put the phone on the charger, and went the hell to sleep like a person with self-preservation instincts.*

*Instead I thought: oh, sick, some indie dev made a fan game. Free Gojo content, no funeral included. Sign me up.*You remember tapping it. You remember a loading bar that took a genuinely unreasonable amount of time for something that was, allegedly, just an app. You remember your thumb hovering over a green button that said **INSTALL** in a font that looked suspiciously similar to a font you're pretty sure isn't licensed for use by indie developers, and you remember thinking, briefly, *this looks like it's going to ask for way too many permissions*, and then not caring, because it was one in the morning and you were sad about an animated man, and you pressed it anyway.

That's it. That's the whole memory. A green button. A too-long loading bar. And then—

Nothing. A gap. The kind of gap where your brain should have something and instead just holds up a sign that says **CONTENT NOT FOUND.**

And now you're here, in a room the size of your apartment's entire square footage, wearing someone else's nightgown, attached to an arm with a scar you've never earned, having apparently woken up several hundred years and one entire universe away from the last place you remember falling asleep.

*Okay. So to recap: I was sad about a fictional death, I searched for comfort content, and the universe's response was to personally enroll me in what I can only assume is the least comforting timeshare presentation of all time. Cool. Cool cool cool. Incredible customer service. One star. Would not recommend.*

That's when the air in front of your face does something no air has ever done before, which is *flicker* — one clean, deliberate stutter, like a television losing signal for exactly half a second — and a rectangle of gold light blooms into existence eighteen inches from your nose.You do not scream. You want credit for that later. You do, however, fall backward onto the bed with a dignity-free thud, scrambling up onto your elbows to stare at the thing hovering in your bedroom like it personally invited itself.

**✦ SYSTEM BOOTING... ✦**

*loading tutorial (again)*

*loading sarcasm (fully loaded)*

*loading host (concerningly late)*

*Oh my GOD. Okay. Okay okay okay — this is IT. This is the app. This is actually loading. Holy — the graphics are insane, is this AR, is my phone doing this, wait, where even IS my phone—*

**[ SYSTEM: Cute. Truly. Adorable that you think this is a phone doing anything. ]**

*Excuse me?*

**[ SYSTEM: Good morning, Host. Or afternoon. Or several centuries removed from your original timeline — honestly the clock situation is complicated and I'd rather not get into it before you've had water. ]**

You stare at the banner. The banner, as far as you can tell, stares back, which shouldn't be possible for a rectangle of light with no discernible face, and yet.

*This is really immersive for a free-to-play mobile game. I have genuine concerns about how much data I agreed to give up for this. Where's the loading screen with the terms and conditions I definitely didn't read?***[ SYSTEM: There were no terms and conditions. There was a green button and your own reckless disregard for your personal safety at one in the morning. That's the whole contract. Congratulations, you signed it with your whole life. ]**

*I'm sorry — WITH MY WHOLE LIFE?*

The banner blinks out and is instantly replaced by a second one, more official-looking, boxed in thin gold lines like a status screen from every gacha game you have ever regretted installing:

**HOST STATUS**

*Name: [ ERROR ]*

*Designation: UNKNOWN*

*Cursed Technique: UNKNOWN*

*Location: Not Your Universe*

*Return Trip Available: Maybe? Can't Say Right Now*

*Okay, "not your universe" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that box and I would like it unpacked immediately, please, preferably before I fully lose the ability to breathe like a normal person.*

**[ SYSTEM: Long story, short version: you are no longer on Earth. You are no longer in a universe with WiFi, indoor plumbing you'd recognize, or, regrettably, a clearly labeled return button. There might be one. I'm not saying there isn't. I'm saying "not right now" and "ask me again after you've survived a little longer." You ARE, however, in a universe that will look extremely familiar to you, given how much of your personality over the last several years has been "I finished the manga and now I am unwell about it." ]**Your stomach drops somewhere south of your knees.

*No. No, don't you dare. Don't you DARE tell me—*

**[ SYSTEM: Yep. ]**

*I need you to be more specific than "yep." "Yep" is not a designation. "Yep" is not a location. "Yep" is doing the thing where you make me say the sentence out loud in my own head like a fool—*

**[ SYSTEM: You're in the world of the manga you finished crying about forty-eight hours ago. Congratulations. You wanted less angst. The multiverse heard "less angst" and translated it as "personal isekai," which, frankly, tracks, because I don't make the rules, I just deliver the bad news in a fun font. ]**

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. You close it again.

*Okay. Okay, so. Let's think about this like an adult. Let's think about this like someone who has, in fact, read the source material several times, including that one arc I refuse to revisit, and therefore has SOME idea of what a person is supposed to do in this situation—*You know the tropes. You know the ones where the reincarnated protagonist immediately panics and gets themselves killed by a curse in chapter one. You know the ones where they're way too calm about it and it reads as fake. You have, unfortunately, thought about this exact scenario more than a well-adjusted adult probably should, lying in bed at ungodly hours theorizing about what you'd do if you ever ended up here, and every single one of those theories currently feels completely useless in the face of an actual glowing banner telling you that you have no cursed technique, no name, and — apparently — no straight answer on whether home is even still on the table.

*Okay, but wait — if this is that universe, then the timeline matters. A LOT. Is this before or after the funeral I am still not over? Please tell me this is before. Please tell me I have arrived early enough to do something useful with this information, because if I'm standing here with a working knowledge of every single character's worst day and I can't leverage that into fixing ANYTHING, I want a refund.*

**[ SYSTEM: There is no refund. There is, however, a complication, which I was going to ease you into, but you've clearly decided we're doing this the fast way, so: this isn't quite your canon. ]**

*...What does "not quite" mean.***[ SYSTEM: It means you know the names. You know the faces. You do NOT, currently, know the rules, because this version of the world runs on a little something called Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics and a scent-based social hierarchy that is about to make your morning extremely complicated. Your manga knowledge is going to help you approximately forty percent of the time. The other sixty percent, it is going to actively get you killed if you rely on it. Use responsibly. ]**

*I'm sorry. I'm SO sorry. Omega WHAT.*

You look down at yourself — properly, this time, past the stranger's-wrist and the stranger's-nightgown — and notice, for the first time, the way the fabric sits differently at your hips, the unfamiliar softness in your own face reflected faintly in the dark window glass across the room. Not a different person. Just — a slightly different you. Adjusted. Recast.

*Cool. Cool cool cool. So not only am I in a universe with a body that isn't mine, it's a body that comes with a whole biological caste system I have zero preparation for. Fantastic. Incredible. Five stars. Where's the tutorial. Where is genuinely the tutorial, I would like to speak to whoever designed this onboarding experience—*

**[ SYSTEM: I am the tutorial. ]**

*You are doing a TERRIBLE job.***[ SYSTEM: Rude, but fair. Okay. Quick version, because footsteps are incoming and I'd rather you not have your first conversation with an NPC while your jaw is on the floor: your Designation isn't something I'm handing you yet. Not because I'm being coy — okay, partially because I'm being coy — but because you genuinely don't know it yourself, and until you do, neither do I. Keep that in your back pocket. ]**

*Wait — footsteps? What footsteps, I don't hear any—*

A third banner blooms, preening and glittering, right over the first two, timed with theatrical precision:

**◈ NEW QUEST AVAILABLE ◈**

*Objective: Survive Breakfast*

*Reward: Continued Existence*

*Bonus Objective: Do Not Reveal You Have No Idea What's Going On*

*"Survive breakfast" is not a quest, that is a Tuesday, I refuse to accept that as a stated objective—*

**[ SYSTEM: Also, before I forget — one more thing, filed under Need To Know Eventually, Not Necessarily Right Now. ]**

*Oh, I don't like that lead-in at ALL—*A fourth banner. Smaller. Locked. A little gold padlock icon sitting self-satisfied in the corner where a stat should be.

**PRIME PACKAGE: 🔒 LOCKED**

*True Designation: [ CLASSIFIED ]*

*Unlock Condition: ???*

*What is THAT. What is a "Prime Package." Why is it locked. Why do I feel like the answer to that is going to ruin my whole month—*

**[ SYSTEM: Not telling you. Not because I'm being difficult — okay, partially because I'm being difficult — but mostly because you are not even remotely ready for that information and I would like you to survive long enough to earn it. Chin up. Shoulders back. There is, in fact, a knock about to happen at that door, and I would very much like your face to be doing something other than "recently concussed" when it opens. ]**

You barely have time to process the sheer audacity of a glowing UI element telling you to fix your face before it happens — three brisk knocks, polite but not gentle, the kind of knock that belongs to someone who's used to being let in immediately.You freeze. Every banner winks out at once, gone like they were never there, leaving you alone in the low candlelight with your own too-fast heartbeat and a body that isn't quite yours and a universe that isn't quite the one you cried over forty-eight hours ago.

*Okay. Okay. New plan. New new plan. Survive the knock. Figure out the rest later.*

You smooth down the nightgown you didn't choose, plant your feet on a floor that doesn't belong to you, and, for the first time since you opened your eyes, you make yourself stand up straight.

*Whatever's on the other side of that door — I did not read this far into a several-hundred-chapter manga to die in the first five minutes of my own spin-off.*

The knock comes again, sharper this time.

You open your mouth to answer it, and somewhere behind your ribs, quiet as a held breath, something in you that isn't quite panic anymore starts, very faintly, to be curious.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

a/n 🖤 WE'RE LIVE. okay. okay okay okay. this is the one, this is the fic I've been threatening to write for ages, and I need everyone to know that "Jujutsu Kaisen: Modulo" was the joke I was proudest of writing in this entire chapter and I will not be taking feedback on it 🫡quick housekeeping since this is chapter one: yes she's isekai'd into her own comfort read, yes the System is unhinged and a little bit mean about it, yes I know the room description is doing A Lot and I regret nothing, and NO I will not be confirming what "Prime Package" means yet, the little padlock is staying locked for a while 🔒👀

also throwing it out there now: her actual name is not going to be "Host" forever, and when you find out what it is I need you to lose your mind about it publicly because I definitely did while deciding it

(Jujutsu Kaisen — Isekai / Reader Insert)

Summary: You die eating instant noodles. You wake up in Jujutsu Kaisen. You know the plot — which makes surviving it both easier and much, much worse.

Disclaimer: not my characters, all the trauma is mine though

Pairing: Reader x Ensemble (eventual) — Itadori, Megumi, Gojo, Nanami, Inumaki, Choso, Yuta, Sukuna, Geto

Rating: Mature

Chapter 1: this is objectively someone else's problem

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

You die — probably — somewhere between finishing your microwave noodles and lying back down on the couch, and the last coherent thought you have is *if I don't get to eat the rest of that, I am filing a complaint.*

Then you're standing in a field. Fully dressed. Noodle-free. Extremely alive.

Okay. Weird. You've read enough of these stories to know how this is supposed to go — cue the trembling, the disbelief, the slow-motion realization that you've died and been reincarnated into another world, probably as a duke's daughter or a slime. You wait for the appropriate emotions to arrive.

They don't.

Mostly you're just annoyed that you're wearing someone else's shoes.

"Huh," you say, out loud, to nobody. "Okay."

There's a fly the size of a golden retriever floating six inches from a girl's face. It has too many teeth for something with a fly's face, and it's making a low, wet clicking noise that you feel more than hear. The girl it's hovering next to is complaining to her friends about neck tension and doesn't seem to notice it at all.

You've also read enough of *this* particular story to know exactly what that thing is, which is the only reason you don't scream.

"A curse," you say, delighted, like you've just spotted a rare bird. "Hi. You're a curse. That's so cool. I have never once wanted to be closer to a bug-shaped murder demon before, but here we are."

The curse turns its entire head around, slow and creaky, like a haunted ceiling fan, and looks directly at you.

You look back at it with the enthusiasm of someone at a petting zoo.

It screams and flies directly into a wall.

"Oh my god," you say. "Skill issue."

Here is the situation, as best you can piece it together over the next ten minutes: you are, unmistakably, unfortunately, standing in the opening act of *Jujutsu Kaisen,* in a uniform you don't recognize, at a school you've apparently "transferred" to, according to a girl who is now looking at you like you've grown a second head for asking "wait, is this the *anime*."

You do not know how you got here. You do not know if this is permanent. You do know, on a purely surface level, that this thought is going to require a lot more processing than you currently have the bandwidth for.

Later. You'll deal with the implications later. Right now you have more pressing concerns, chief among them: figuring out where you're actually supposed to be, before someone notices you've been standing in the middle of the courtyard talking to yourself for several minutes.

"Okay," you tell yourself, resuming what you hope looks like a purposeful walk instead of a full-blown identity crisis. "Okay okay okay. Think. What do main characters do in this situation. They cry. They panic. They have a nine-paragraph internal monologue about the unfairness of fate."

You consider this.

"Nah," you decide. "I'm gonna go find my classroom, or whatever."

You do not find your classroom. What you find, following a persistent, itchy pull at the back of your skull that you can't quite explain, is a half-open door at the end of a mostly empty hallway, with a hand-lettered sign taped over it that reads OCCULT RESEARCH CLUB — INVESTIGATIONS WELCOME.

You don't know why you're drawn to it. You just know that whatever's radiating out from behind that door feels like the same wrongness you felt off the curse outside, except worse. Denser. Older, somehow, in a way that makes the hair on your arms stand up before you've even seen what's causing it.

You should probably not open this door.

You open the door.

Two boys look up at you from the floor, surrounded by an amount of ghost-hunting equipment that suggests a recent and enthusiastic online shopping spree. One of them — lanky, glasses, mid-argument with someone on the phone about a return policy — barely glances over. That one, you'll learn in about ten seconds, is Iguchi. The other one looks up at you properly, pink hair catching the light from the window, and something in your chest does an immediate, humiliating little flip.

You know that face. You know it from a screen, from fan art, from an ungodly number of hours you are not proud of.

"Oh, hey," he says, easy and curious, like you interrupting his afternoon is a mildly interesting development rather than an inconvenience. "You lost? This is the Occult Research Club. Full disclosure, we're not, like, officially sanctioned by the school, if that's what you're here about."

"I'm not here about that," you say, distracted, because the wrongness is even stronger in here than it was in the hallway — not localized to anything you can actually see, just soaked into the air itself, thick enough that it makes your teeth itch. Whatever's causing it isn't in this room. But it's close. And this room is clearly where the investigating is happening.

"...okay," the boy says, watching you scan the room for a source that isn't there. "So what *are* you here about?"

You open your mouth. You have several options — *I'm new, I got lost, there is something deeply horrifying sitting eight feet away from you and you have no idea* — and standing in the doorway of a room that smells faintly like a fire hazard, every single one of them evaporates."I don't actually know," you admit, with total honesty, for possibly the first time all day. "I think I might be a transfer student? I got kind of turned around."

His whole face lights up like you've handed him a gift.

"No way. We're getting a new member? Iguchi! We're getting a new member!"

Iguchi lifts one hand in a distracted half-wave without looking up from his call, mouthing something that might be *hi* or might just be *hold on.*

"I said I got turned around," you clarify. "I didn't say—"

"I'm Itadori Yuji," he says, already crossing the room to offer you his hand, grin wide enough to be genuinely alarming given the circumstances. "Welcome to the club. Fair warning, we're currently investigating a haunting."

You feel that wrongness pulse again, faint and patient, somewhere close by but not *here.*

*Oh,* you think, taking his hand anyway, against every ounce of self-preservation you supposedly possess, *you have no idea.*Here's the thing about knowing you're in an anime: it's less useful than you'd think, and *significantly* more distracting than you'd think, especially when the actual protagonist is currently explaining, with total sincerity, that the "haunting" you've just been recruited to investigate involves cold spots, a traumatized cafeteria cat, and a wooden box that nobody but you seems to notice is emanating the supernatural equivalent of a foghorn.

"So basically," Itadori says, crouching down to dig through a bag of gear, "people keep saying weird stuff's been happening near the old instrument shelter, out behind the gym. It's this tiny little box on a stand — used to keep the school's thermometer in there, back before they moved it, so it's basically been sitting empty ever since. Cold spots, weird noises, that kind of thing. Sasaki's convinced there's something actually sealed inside. Like an old talisman, or a ward, or whatever you call it. Anyway, we're thinking we go check it out for real today, since she's finally got a free period lined up."

You feel your stomach drop somewhere around your shoes.

*Of course* there is.

"Today?" you repeat.

"Yeah! No time like the present. You in?"

You should say no. You should say you have class, or a headache, or a sudden and completely reasonable urge to transfer schools again. Instead, you hear yourself say, "Sure. Sounds fun," because apparently some deep, doomed part of you has already decided that watching this unfold from the front row is worth whatever's about to happen.The door bangs open before you can ask who "Sasaki" even is, and a girl strides in, phone still pressed to her ear, finishing a sentence with the crisp efficiency of someone who has never once lost an argument with a school administrator. She hangs up and eyes you with open curiosity.

"New recruit already investigating? Bold. I like it. I'm Sasaki, by the way — don't let Itadori's enthusiasm fool you, he still thinks EMF readers work on batteries you buy at a convenience store."

"They don't?" Itadori asks, betrayed.

"They do not." Sasaki drops her bag on the desk with a decisive thud. "Also, I can't come with you two — student council's on my case about the club budget again, I have to go argue with them before last period."

"I can't either," Iguchi adds, finally hanging up, sounding vaguely apologetic about it. "This return's turned into a whole thing. They're trying to tell me the sensor's 'used' because I opened the box."

"You did open the box."

"That's not the point, Sasaki."

Sasaki waves a hand at you and Itadori, already losing interest in the return-policy discourse. "You two go check out the instrument shelter. Take pictures. Don't touch anything without gloves."

"No promises," Itadori grins.

You like them already, in the specific, doomed way you like things you know you're going to watch get hurt."Alright," Itadori says, hauling himself up and slinging the gear bag over one shoulder. "Instrument shelter, right now, before last period. You coming, [Name]?"

You blink. "How do you know my name?"

"It's on your badge," he says, pointing.

You look down. Sure enough, there's a name tag clipped to your unfamiliar uniform, with your actual name printed on it in small, official lettering — proof, apparently, that whatever brought you here at least had the decency to fill out the paperwork first.

"Right," you say. "Of course it is."

"You okay? You've got a face like you're solving a math problem you hate."

"I'm always solving a math problem I hate," you say. "It's called existing."

He laughs, delighted, and grabs a flashlight off the floor.

"C'mon. Grandpa's always saying I should help people more, and honestly? Rescuing a new club member from a boring first day at a new school probably counts."Something in your chest twists at that — quick, unbidden, gone before you can fully name it. You know, with the specific, unhelpful certainty of someone who watched this happen from a very safe distance, on a screen, with popcorn, exactly how much time Itadori's grandfather has left, and exactly what he's going to ask of him before the end.

You did not expect that knowledge to feel like a physical weight the second its source became a real, grinning boy standing three feet away from you, gear bag over one shoulder, radiating a kind of uncomplicated goodness you have no idea how to prepare yourself for.

"Yeah," you say, throat a little tight, following him toward the door, alone, while Sasaki heads off in the opposite direction already muttering about budget line items. "Let's go check out your haunting."

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a/n: if you're enjoying [Name]'s downward spiral into extremely well-informed chaos as much as i am writing it, do me a favor and smash that vote button — it genuinely helps more than you'd think, and it's free, unlike therapy, which she also needs.