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lilacxquartz · 5 months ago

Text

— ALL EYES ON YOU —

prison realm (cursed spirit form) x gn!reader

plot: tasked with retrieving the prison realm nothing could have prepared you for what it truly was — a/n: some lore and interactions, final part will conclude with some yandere horror — masterlist • ao3 • part 2 of 3 • < previous chapter • next chapter >

Chapter 2. Observation

The journey back was not without a great deal of tension; the cursed spirit trailing behind you like an unwelcome shadow, breaching your personal space in a way that could almost be considered parasitic—from the way it latched onto you—ever silent and unsettling.

You brought it back to your boss, expecting to be free from the burden of delivering it, from being around it for a second longer, but then you were denied that right.

“What is… this?” they asked, eyeing the being up with clear confusion painted across their features.

When you couldn’t form a response, however, Kenjaku paused, unsure how to process exactly what you had brought back. They sent you out with the task of retrieving the prison realm; an object, the final remnants of a monk, and yet, you had brought back a whole being.

“It…” you finally managed to choke out, “it was an object when I entered the room,” you continued, “but then something—I’m not sure what—activated and it became… whatever this is.”

Kenjaku listened and blinked as if bewildered, but also, fascinated. In all of their years of studying and working with jujutsu, they had never quite seen something to rival this. Their mind raced with all sorts of questions and possibilities as they considered the potential idea that the way cursed spirits are born have since then evolved from what they knew.

Just as they turned their back from the prison realm, however, you had already managed to quietly slip away, hoping to pack your things and leave this unsettling situation behind before they both realised that you were gone. For some reason, it was much more of a pressing issue for you to avoid whatever it was that you had awoken while in Tengen’s territory, than it was to confront your own boss - and that was with knowing exactly how they could be when not amused, too.

In the background, as you shoved things roughly into a bag, you could hear them interrogating it, maybe even bargaining with it. The results from what you could make out, though, seemed to come out flat, which was especially evident from the sigh that left Kenjaku’s lips from the moment they walked back into the room.

“What a pain,” they muttered to themselves, pinching the bridge of their nose between their fingers, slowly allowing their eyes to drift and meet with you again. “...What are you doing?”

You gulped. “R-rearranging things?”

Their gaze narrowed. “You’re leaving - why?”

“I’m not sure why, but, I-I just feel… uncomfortable around that… thing,” you hesitated as you tried to put your thoughts into words; you couldn’t quite shake off what you felt around it before. Most people and cursed spirits alike all adapted to your technique if you set the right intention, this creature, however, infiltrated it, it felt like, which left you feeling less than ideal.

Kenjaku nodded as they considered your stance, but they didn’t take your attempted retreat as an acceptable answer. For them, it was rather a matter of figuring out why exactly a cursed spirit would be acting this way, and what exactly it had done earlier for someone once reliable to be hesitant of their work. After all, never had such a problem with you before, so for that reason, they pressed the issue.

“Why?” they simply asked once more, repeating themselves.

You took a deep breath as you considered the cause of it all. It wasn’t that you didn’t know how to begin to explain this whole situation, but it was rather the part that you couldn’t quite believe your own thoughts. The cursed spirit, the prison realm, whatever you could call it—definitely had eyes for you, didn’t it? It wasn’t all in your head. The way it trailed after you like something with magnetic focus, or how it could easily bypass your cursed technique, left you feeling at best, unsure about it. You seldom felt unsafe in the work you took on, but that interaction you had with it earlier? It made you feel afraid.

Therefore, in your attempted explanation, you chose to focus on the details, rather than to scramble forward with the whole picture.

“I… believe that my cursed technique had messed with it,” you revealed with a start, taking a moment to pause and to think about your next words, “I had the intention to set myself as an ally, but perhaps this thing doesn’t understand the concept, even if it does seem to be intelligent enough. It started to see me as something else…? I don’t know what though, or how to properly describe it, but, I simply didn’t feel safe around it and even now…” you added as you trailed off, shuddering as you faced the direction you felt pressure radiating from, “I can still feel it staring at me, I can feel its many, many eyes on me and I—”

“—you’re overthinking again,” Kenjaku cut you off, growing annoyed as they stifled your nervous habit; something that they had always found a slight bit annoying, especially so given that your technique called for a certain level of calm. They remained quiet for a moment before pressing on with an idea in mind. “I’d like to try something, if you’d let me.”

You warily looked back at them while trying to calm down, getting a bad feeling about this already. “Try something?” you asked, hoping that your interactions with that thing could be minimised, and yet, you had an inkling of a feeling that it was headed the opposite direction.

“You’re not going to like it,” Kenjaku confirmed, watching the hope in your eyes briefly shatter in betrayal, thinking that you were being a little dramatic, “but, I want to observe this interaction—this bond or whatever—that it thinks it has with you.”

“Observe…?” you asked, not expecting an answer, something that they didn’t give to you regardless. Working for this person was either easygoing and a smooth ride, or it wasn’t. The worst parts of your career were when they couldn’t shake a curiosity off, leading you to have a front-row seat of their descent into madness as they tried to process what exactly they were dealing with. For some reason though, for this particular case, you had a dreadful sort of feeling that it would be a quick notice—for a reason you couldn’t quite explain—leaving you feeling uncertain once again.

You tried to rationalise it as maybe the cursed spirit in question takes orders from who activates it, but in that case, why would it try to get as close to you as it did? You highly doubted that, as a result of it tethering itself to you so tightly, that it would fulfil its mission of capturing the six eyes user. The very way it regarded you with intense focus alone, let you to believe that you were the person it intended to trap instead. Another possibility drifted into mind following that notion, that perhaps, this sort of form was never meant to be triggered to begin with.

(Because what exactly were the chances that a cursed spirit could manifest out of a cursed object?)

You paused once more, stilling in your footsteps as they led you to where they were containing the being. Your hand rested on the surface of the door, not quite daring to push inside, yet not running away from the task at hand that awaited you. Kenjaku didn’t intervene, simply observing you from a measured distance. The way you both approached and interacted with the prison realm, was too part of their study in perceiving its relationship with you, after all.

Again, they were your employer for long enough that they knew your quirks and habits for long enough. They knew exactly the sort of things that would make you nervous as well as what you would or wouldn’t lie about. An example being, that you would always claim to be under the weather if they were to assign you to a mission that involved even the slightest amount of combat, so they adapted, leaving the retrieval and stealth missions up to you instead. You were useful where you thrived, so if this thing posed an issue to you, they would therefore have no problem in pulling you out.

Kenjaku thought this much too, as they anticipated the interaction, that if this was more trouble than it was worth, that they would simply reassign you to deduct just how big of a potential counter threat they could potentially face come autumn. If the prison realm had a mind to imprison you instead, then that wouldn’t do either, given its conditions. It wasn’t that they cared about your wellbeing, but rather, that they still had use for you and an interference like this, would be more trouble than it was truly worth.

Finally, though, you pushed the door open, revealing a dark room devoid of light and the creature standing in the corner. What was interesting to you, was that it didn’t go back to its object form after being left alone. You could just about make it out from the dark space, its skin just vaguely reflecting the light from the hallway. It was sickly pale and almost rotten in appearance, further feeding into your unease.

You flinched as it snapped its head towards you, walking back into your boss who quickly steadied you by the shoulders, warily facing it head on as its eyes snapped open, focusing right on you. Slowly, it cracked and popped its joints as it made its way towards you, extending its arms to reach out and touch you, but not quite make contact—largely because that was right about when the intervention occurred.

Kenjaku’s own instincts and understanding with this sort of development were admittedly just as new as yours were, but they used what knowledge that they did have about the object in question to study it for just under a minute—not allowing the full sixty seconds to complete. They figured, though, that since you weren’t fully distracted nor focused on anything else but the prison realm at hand, that the conditions weren’t being met to begin with, but something about the whole interaction left even them, feeling off.

In the meantime, you had just about managed to lock your sights onto the whole form of the creature that loomed over you—unsure where exactly to look—as all of its eyes were on you. You let out rolling, shuddering gasps as you tried to retreat from it, feeling thoroughly afraid, with your technique not having a single effect on it any longer—if it ever had.

Kenjaku pulled you out at the last second, right before it could connect its twig-like finger to touch your face, quickly sealing off the chamber within a flash.

It took a moment for you both to compose yourselves after.

“That… was interesting,” they muttered more to themselves than to you before taking a step forward, slightly pushing you off to the side, “feel free to take that break if you wish - I’m going to attempt to reroute its focus - it has a job to fulfil, and I’m going to make that happen, one way or another…”

“You’re not going to sell me out to it, are you?” you warily asked.

Kenjaku scoffed and kept a tight tone as they responded to you, “No, but it might yield slightly and do its job if it understands that it could potentially gain access to you,” they considered, “I haven’t heard of cursed spirits forming a connection with humans before - outside of vengeful spirits that is, so whatever it thinks it has with you, should be utilised rather than completely dismissed.”

You were about to reply, but then they continued, leaving you standing with your lips slightly parted.

“It does make me wonder though, that if it’s a cursed spirit in this form and if it potentially takes on the six eyes user, then what if… I could absorb them both using Geto’s maximum uzumaki - what a glorious betrayal that could be,” they considered, “would that be a way of obtaining the technique, or would it be the same risk posed as the potential of me taking over his body all the same?”

You tilted your head at that thought. “It’s an interesting thought, but I thought you couldn’t take over Satoru Gojo due to the immense amount of power from the technique alone - isn’t that why you made an effort to eliminate such potential users, given that it would be a hard counter?”

Your boss narrowed their eyes, not seeming too pleased at the reminder, clearing their throat as they stifled down their ramblings. “I suppose not then, but if a person is trapped within a cursed spirit that can turn into a cursed spirit, then they might as well be part of it,” they added, “a curious thought experiment at best,” they smiled, hoping that you would catch on and see the appeal.

“What about everyone else that was trapped within it though?” you considered.

Kenjaku blinked, coming back to themselves for a moment, the wonder slowly fading from their eyes as they were forced to be realistic for a moment. “Ah, that’s a consideration that I hadn’t thought of…” they admitted, “though, perhaps that could be something for me to look further into after everything else is underway; I’d hate to undo my own progress…”

They then turned towards you before backing away again, pushing the door ever so slightly open but not the whole way outward. An eerie chill passed by you as this happened, but you thought nothing of it for the time being.

“Pack what you need for a couple of nights away,” they instructed, returning their tone to something that carried authority, seemingly concluding what they dismissed as idle small talk from just moments before, “book a hotel closeby, though, I’d like for you to be reachable if there’s any new developments - I’ll handle this situation for the timebeing… one way or another.”

You nodded, taking the journey back to where you were before, returning to pack your bag. The chill seemed to follow you, but you wrote it off as a draft, returning your focus on leaving the building as soon as possible.

Something about the room you were in felt especially suffocating, however, as if it had suddenly become smaller than it realistically could have been. You felt watched too, and a certain coldness crept up on you, causing you to freeze and to whip your head back to process the dread that was abruptly facing you.

That… thing… the prison realm, was staring right back at you and you couldn’t move beyond changing directions. You were left frozen, unable to talk and unable to run.

A memory flickered through your senses as you considered its history and usage.

“One minute is all it takes.”

Your heart sank to your stomach as you were forced to process this.

(How long, exactly, has it been standing there?)

(Surely not for a whole minute?)