๐ MISPLACED DEVOTION ๐
(Jujutsu Kaisen โ Isekai / Reader Insert)
Summary: You die eating instant noodles. You wake up in Jujutsu Kaisen. You know the plot โ 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) โ Itadori, Megumi, Gojo, Nanami, Inumaki, Choso, Yuta, Sukuna, Geto
Rating: Mature
Chapter 1: this is objectively someone else's problem
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You die โ probably โ 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 โ 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 โ 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 โ lanky, glasses, mid-argument with someone on the phone about a return policy โ 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 โ 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 โ *I'm new, I got lost, there is something deeply horrifying sitting eight feet away from you and you have no idea* โ 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 sayโ"
"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 โ 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 โ 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 โ 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 โ 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 โ 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 โ it genuinely helps more than you'd think, and it's free, unlike therapy, which she also needs.
comments are my love language, so please, tell me your theories, yell at me about the harem allegations, whatever. i read every single one ๐ซถ thank you for reading ๐โจ
