The stone steps were cold beneath him.
Ren sat hunched, elbows on his knees, staring at the sky just beginning to lighten with hints of dawn. The shrine behind him stood silent, unmoving, a relic of belief older than curses, older than jujutsu. A place that might have once housed something holy.
Now it was just a quiet place to breathe.
He was still breathing.
His hands trembled in the cold—not from the air, but from something deeper. Something raw that still hadn't settled inside him.
Cursed energy.
It was real. And it had answered him.
Not in the way he expected. Not in the way it did for the characters in the manga. No explosion of power. No guidance. No voice.
Just... pressure.
A push.
A need met with an instinctual scream from the soul.
"I almost died," he whispered. "And I still don't even know what I'm doing."
He looked at his hands again.
He felt something in them now. It wasn't a tingle. It wasn't a hum.
It was a weight.
And the more he sat still, the more he noticed it.
He'd seen that curse woman before he even felt cursed energy. That had to mean something.
"…I had it the whole time," he murmured, a realization blooming slowly in his chest. "I saw her. No one else did. I thought it was because she was weak. But that's not it."
He sat up straighter.
"I had cursed energy. It was already working. I just didn't know."
He exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the sky.
That fact changed everything.
He wasn't a late bloomer. He was a blind one.
It had been there. Inside. The whole time. Dormant, yes. Uncontrolled, yes.
But real.
And his.
He felt something else stir at that thought—something like pride. Or maybe just the tiniest shard of belief.
Maybe I can do this.
He pulled out his notebook. Flipped to a blank page. Drew a single line.
"Observation," he said out loud. "Cursed energy is always present in people. Most people leak it unconsciously. But only sorcerers learn to control it."
He tapped the pen against his lip.
"I saw a curse. That means my cursed energy was already active enough to allow perception."
He drew another line.
"Conclusion: My cursed energy works. I just haven't learned how to use it."
A gust of wind rustled the trees.
He closed his eyes.
And this time, instead of blocking out the world, he focused inward.
He searched for that pressure. That flicker of instinct. That recoil of the curse when it reached for him.
It was small. Quiet.
But he found it.
Like a muscle he hadn't known he had.
And when he flexed it—ever so slightly—he felt it surge.
A dull, twisting pain crawled across his arms.
He gasped and released it.
It wasn't graceful. It wasn't cinematic.
But it was real.
He had control now. Even if just a sliver.
It was always there.
He simply didn't know how to look.
That realization hit him deeper than any near-death moment.
> In Jujutsu Kaisen, cursed energy flows from negative emotion.
> But it only becomes power when given shape.
That's what the others had—Gojo, Geto, even Yuji. Their suffering didn't just shape them—it forged them.
Ren hadn't understood that.
Until now.
His fingers dug into the steps as he leaned forward, grounding himself.
"I was scared," he said aloud. "I didn't want to die. That's what it took to make it respond."
And now that it had responded, he couldn't let it fade.
He closed his eyes. Tried to feel it again. The cursed energy. That pressure in his stomach. That warmth in his chest, twisted with fear.
It came slower this time. No sudden pulse. Just... a subtle tension. A thread being pulled taut between his ribs.
There.
He tried to hold it.
Focus on it.
Shape it.
But it slipped. Fizzled.
"Shit... focus." He exhaled, tried again.
After several failed attempts, a tiny shimmer of energy collected in his right hand—just a few particles, flickering like dust motes.
It was barely anything.
But it was his.
He held out his hand like a monk in meditation. The cursed energy trembled and dispersed again, like smoke caught in wind.
Still too unstable.
Still a beginner.
But not nothing.
He pulled out his notebook, the pages smeared and damp from the night's flight. He flipped to a clean corner.
NOTES ON CURSED ENERGY (REALITY EDITION)
1. I've always had it.
2. It only appeared in crisis.
3. Must have been leaking constantly.
4. I could see curses. That was the sign.
5. Emotion is the key.
6. Fear → Instinct → Flow.
He paused.
Then added:
7. Shape is power.
He remembered something from the manga—Nanami's precision. Gojo's control. Even Toji, who had none, used tools with devastating purpose.
"Tools…" Ren muttered.
He eyed the worn stick of chalk he still had in his pocket. The same one he used for his fake rituals.
Could he maybe…
He knelt, drew a simple sigil in front of him. Nothing complex. Just a triangle with a single kanji for "focus" at its center.
Then he tried to feed cursed energy into it.
Nothing happened at first.
But then the line of chalk shimmered. Barely. The center kanji twitched as if alive, for just a split second.
And then fizzled.
Ren slumped back, smiling.
Still nothing useful. But now?
Now it was starting to respond.
He leaned against the post again and looked up at the shrine's wooden beams. It wasn't much of a sanctuary, but it had shielded him when he needed it.
He whispered, "Thanks, shrine. You probably saved my ass."
Silence greeted him. But it felt… less empty.
Maybe because of this energy inside him he felt less empty...
And now, he knew cursed energy.
Next?
Learn how to use it.