The day spent with connie and her mother quickly ended . I'd left a while ago and it was now almost pitch black in the night.
I walked the shore wandering after wandering through the empty streets of beach city, still not tired despite training all morning and hanging out for quite a while.
I stood in the center of the docks, plenty empty space, my shoulders loosened, eyes closed. The moon outside was dipping lower, casting long shadows across the wooden planks. The coolness here, untouched by ocean spray, settled over me like a calm I felt ever since arriving here.
Breathing steady, I let myself sink into that calm. The steady pulse of my heartbeat was loud in my ears, the subtle tension in my muscles the only thing reminding me I was alive and moving. I pictured the future, the people I'd just met, the fragile threads connecting me to this world. Steven's boundless optimism. Connie's shy focus. Even the flickers of friendship with the gems.
But underneath, a shadow lingered.
The Diamonds.
What if they came for all this? What if everything I was starting to care about got wiped out?
I pushed the thought down. It wasn't time for fear. Not yet.
I let my hands rise in front of me, fists clenched softly. The familiar warmth sparked in my veins, the restless energy gathering just beneath my skin. It felt like something raw, like a living fire waiting to be unleashed.
Without opening my eyes, I began to move. Slow punches, measured and precise. The thud of my fists breaking the stillness, echoes of a cracked boat Id dragged up here rang. Each strike felt electric, like the energy inside was both powering me and responding to me, pulsing through every fiber.
I lost track of time. My breath synced with the rhythm. Muscles burned, but my energy was endless.
Hours slipped past. The sky outside lightened, growing from dark blue to ia slight tinge of yellow. I didn't stop. Not yet.
Then the thought struck me again—sharper, heavier this time.
Death.
What if they come here? What if I can't stop it? I can't lose everything, not again.
That fear twisted inside me like a blade, sharp and unwelcome.
I tightened my fist without meaning to, throwing a punch heavier than intended and I suddenly hear a loud explosive burst of force in front of me.
Opening my eyes from what felt like a meditative state I saw the picture before me.
my knuckles collided with the center, rusted metal frame of an old ship, shattering the deteiriaoring wood in a spray of splints.
I staggered back, heart pounding.
Blue and black flames flickered, trailing along my fist like dust caught in a storm wind, alive and hungry.
The air thickened around me. The power thrummed in my arms veins with a dark, heavy pulses
I blinked, trying to make sense of it. This!? was the power of...cursed energy?
It felt wrong. Heavy. This was power tied to pain, to spiraling emotions, to everything I hadn't dealt with but had carried like weights under my skin.
I flexed my fingers slowly, watching the strange flame curl and waver. It wasn't warm, not really. It was cold and sharp, like the edge of a blade hidden beneath skin.
It looked just like in Jujutsu Kaisen, the raw manifestation of negative emotion, but If this was cursed energy… what did that mean about me?
Was I a sorcerer now? A vessel? Something worse?
The quite docks was now lined with bright pink and yellow light and the dim eminence of cursed energy still lingered
This was definitely an emergency that required immediate testing.
----------
I reached the hill. The one I'd seen been living on since Id gotten here, with its wild hibiscus blooming in waves across soft, impossibly green slopes. The rising sun hit everything in that blinding early-morning glow, casting the grass in neon life, like nature had been oversaturated by some divine artist's brush. Birds chirped. Wind rustled through the flowers.
It didn't match how I felt at all.
I stood still for a while, letting my heart slow. My hands were still tingling from what I'd done, or more, what I'd released. I flexed my fingers again. The echo of cursed energy still whispered in my veins, like smoke that refused to clear.
I needed to understand it.
And to do that, I needed to focus.
I lowered myself to the grass, cross-legged. Closed my eyes. The way Yuji or Yuta might, in the quiet between battles. They never made cursed energy seem easy. Just necessary.
I let my thoughts spiral inward. Focusing on my awareness.
Cursed energy... from what I remembered in Jujutsu Kaisen, it's born from negative emotions. Fear, anger, regret, loss. The human heart trying to protect itself by turning pain into fuel. And sorcerers, those who could control it, learned to shape that fuel without losing themselves to it.
"Negative emotion as power," I muttered, almost testing the idea aloud. "But if I can feel it… I can learn to command it."
I stayed there, breathing deep.
Letting the fear rise.
Not panic inducing but a nudge at honesty of my current situation.
What scared me wasn't dying. It was losing this new world. Connie's sweet laughter. Steven's hopeful way of seeing things. The Gems, weird and chaotic and somehow kind. I'd barely just found all this. And already… I was imagining losing it.
That was my truth.
That was the fuel.
I opened my eyes slowly, pressing my palm against the earth. "Alright," I said to myself, low and even. "Let's see what this is."
I stood again, this time calm in a inevitable sense. No flinching. I pictured the cursed energy in my core—not like fire, but coiling like pressure. Deep and heavy. Like some form of gravity with intent.
My breath slowed to a deliberate pattern.
In. Hold. Out. Focus.
I drew in the emotion, felt the fear twist beneath my ribs, and didn't run from it. I channeled it.
The energy responded.
At first, a faint shimmer. Blue tinged with black trailing over my arm like ink in water. The same hue as last night but transparent and seemingly more controlled.
I raised one hand in front of me, palm open. to test this fuel.
"Flow," I whispered, willing it out through my fingertips.
The cursed energy bloomed.
Not in a burst like my punch. But like wind catching flame somewhat slow, beautiful in its danger. It circled my hand in cold flickers, quiet but alive.
And I felt it. Not just emotionally, but physically. The energy resisted me. Like pushing through thick air or dragging a blade through tar. It didn't want to obey but it could.
I took a step forward and threw a soft jab at nothing.
*POP*
The cursed energy lashed forward in a burst, snapping nearby flowers from there roots. Hibiscus petals scattered into the air from the shockwave.
I stumbled back, panting—but not afraid.
I got tired from just a couple of attempts but.
"I can use it," I breathed.
But it wasn't like magic. In the sense it took my physical endurance it was more, me
It was me—the worst parts. Shaped. Sharpened. Unleashed
It felt like it used my soul itself and not mere mental energy.
I looked at my palm again. faint marks found where the energy had passed. It left no heat. But it left something.
Proof.
If I was right—and this really was cursed energy—then that meant this world, Beach City, didn't follow just its own rules anymore.
It meant I was something new here.
Maybe even something dangerous. Enough to beat the Diamonds themselves.
I looked out across the hill, pink sky blooming overhead like a second sunrise.
The question wasn't whether I could use this power.
But how I can save everyone with it no matter how little I had.