humb1ug

[humb1ug]

selcouth, sukuna

chapter one, amnesia

year: 2018

YUUJI ITADORI liked simplicity. Even if he knew that needing simplicity was his own dismay. Being tied up in a dark, musty room was not among the simple things he cherished in his life. 

     Before him, in the shadows, stood a man—tall, with snowflake hair that shone even in the dim light. His eyes were covered by a black bandana. 

    But he wasn't the only one there. Hazily, he turned his head to face a girl that could be only a few years older than him, maybe even his age. She wore ancient, intricately detailed robes that seemed far too delicate for the modern world, like she's just tumbled out of a storybook. Her long hair cascaded down her back, a few small braids in her hair, and her eyes were wide with confusion. He couldn't help but notice she was out of breath, and looked drained.

    Yuuji swallowed hard, trying to make sense of it all. 

    The white-haired man broke his silence. 

    "So, you're Yuuji Itadori, huh? The kid who swallowed the King of Curses' finger. You sure know how to make an entrance." The man flashed his teeth. He was like untrustworthy prey; he could become a predator if he needed to, if he wanted to. "I'm Satoru Gojo, your new teacher—assuming you survive, that is." 

    Yuuji tensed, his gaze shifting briefly to the girl, who was staring at Gojo without fear, only pure curiosity. Like she'd been here before. He felt a strange need to protect her, despite barely knowing her. Gojo's attention drifted to the girl as well, his expression turning slightly more serious. "And you... well you are a problem," he started, sauntering closer to Yuuji and the girl. He stopped in front of her, squatting so he could face her, as Yuuji and her were tied to the grimy floor. ''Would you have any idea as to why we simply found you unconscious in Jujustu High? And on top of that, anyone who tried to wake you up, almost was choked by vines?'' 

    ''No,'' she croaked, her gaze stern. 

    "You've really caused quite the stir," Gojo continued, in his savory voice. "It's not every day someone simply appears in Jujustu High. Especially not someone with a complete lack of cursed energy." He rose. "Tell me, do you remember anything at all? Anything that might help us figure out who—or what—you are?"

    ''No.''

    ''Is that the only word you know?'' Gojo scoffed. ''No.''

    Gojo sighed, clasping his hands together. "Well, we'll figure you out later." He turned back to Yuuji, his grin returning. Yuuji gulped. 

    ''I'm one of the teachers here at Jujustu High, for first years, maybe you remember me.''

    And that's when everything came crashing into Yuuji. ''Fushiguro! What -- where is he?''

    Gojo tsked, returning to his chair. ''You shouldn't be worrying about others when your execution is being discussed, Yuuji Itadori.'' His head turned back to the girl. ''You might be gone soon too,'' he laughed. What the hell is wrong with this guy?

    Gojo messily and horribly recapped the events of the last two days, then added, ''But the end result is still your fingers.'' Yuuji couldn't believe Gojo was pointing finger guns at him. 

    ''Your recap doesn't match with the current events!''

    ''And I still have no idea what the fuck 'Jujustu High' is,'' the girl deadpanned, fixing herself nonchalantly into a more comfortable position. Gojo peered down at her. ''So you do know other words,'' he teased. 

    ''Anyway, I did my best, Yuuji. I got your sentence suspended.''

    The girl raised a brow. ''So. . .he is still going to die?''

    ''How about you stick to your one-worded answers, smartass?'' Gojo said. 

    Gojo reached down into his pocket, pulling out a finger. The girl and Yuuji gagged. 

    ''Don't gag, you ate one of these. There's twenty of them in total, we only have six,'' Gojo explained. ''And don't worry, mystery girl, I'll get to your situation in a minute here.''

    ''Oh, so for each finger and toe?'' Yuuji asked. 

    ''No, Sukuna has four arms.'' 

   Sukuna? The girl felt her heart race at the name, maybe even a little irritation. ''Who's Sukuna?''

    Gojo ignored her, and instead threw the finger into the air, then blasted it into the wall. And the finger fell to the floor, unharmed. ''As you can see, the curse is powerful enough that we can't destroy them. That I can't destroy them,'' he laughed. ''Not to mention, the curse on these damn things grow stronger everyday, so our seals need to keep up.''

    Suddenly he pointed at Yuuji, the girl's eyes darted to Yuuji's face. What was so familiar about him? It's like all of her senses were working at full. She could hear, smell and see everything perfectly. 

    ''That's where you come in!'' Gojo beamed. ''If you die, the curse inside you dies. Imagine that Sukuna is a virus, and you're his host. He needs a habitable place to stay, right?'' Gojo went on, ''You see, our elders are cowards--think of them like. . .glorified principals, essentially--they wanted you dead yesterday, but wouldn't that be such a waste?''

    ''A waste?'' Yuuji pressed. The girl could smell how anxious he was.

    ''There's no assurance that someone is capable of holding Sukuna is born again--a vessel--so, like any smart person would, I proposed that you should eat all of his fingers first. Great plan, right?'' Gojo flashed his teeth. 

    Gojo bent down, meeting Yuuji's gaze. ''So, Yuuji Itadori, will you die now, or wait until the most powerful cursed spirit to ever walk this Earth needs you alive?''

[humb1ug]

editing the plot of ouabh

--this book has so much lost potential, and by no means am i saying that i am a superior author or writer, but there are some things that i think could fit better into the story (and this is just a tumblr post anyways)

p.s: this is long

Evangeline Fox's lover, Luc Navarro, is going to marry her step-sister, Marisol. Like any perfectly rational person, Eva thinks that Luc must be under some sort of spell, or even a curse. So, she naively goes to the Prince of Hearts to seek help in stopping the wedding.

He apparently does exist, and tells her that in exchange, she will owe him three kisses from whomever he wishes, at any time he wishes. Desperately, she agrees. And even though he agrees to help her, he doesn't say what he will do. And with all these emotions and what's happened to her, she doesn't even think to ask.

Once she comes back, she finds that everyone at the wedding has turned to stone, including her beloved Luc Navarro. She's the only real person there. She goes up to Luc, and holding his body of stone, cries at his feet. Feeling even more desperate now, she hurries back to the Prince of Hearts, demanding some kind of alternative. He takes her back to the cursed wedding, and tells her if she turns herself to stone, everyone else will be repaired. Of course, she doesn't want to be stone, but she would rather live as a rock until someone eventually breaks her, than everyone she knows be stone forever.

Evangeline wakes up in a hospital, and Pietro (who is Poison and lies about his name, because she doesn't know he's is a Fate yet, and Jacks being the one who brought her to him because he still needs her for the Valory Arch. But, again, she doesn't know this yet, and assumes someone in her step-family brought her), is the one who helped her.

When Eva returns home, the day after, she goes looking for Marisol for some explanation. And in Marisol's room, she finds nothing but emptiness. Obviously, she goes to ask her step-mother, Agnes, and finds out that while she was literally stone, Luc and Marisol got married anyways, and Marisol has already moved in with Eva's ex-lover. Now she isn't so sure he was under a spell. She is angry and confused. Confused because she doesn't know if she's allowed to be in pain, because she did turn them all to stone, after all. She also thinks that maybe she should be happy for Marisol, because if it weren't for Luc, she certainly wouldn't have many options, since everyone has marked her as the Cursed Bride. Evangeline wonders if Marisol knew about her relationship with Luc.

Eva is being drowned in suitors because of her new reputation as some sort of savior. Of course, she doesn't feel this way, really, she feels more like a hypocrite and a liar. Although, she doesn't reject her suitors--a lot of the reason for that is also because of Agnes.

Two weeks later, the number of suitors have only doubled--and Eva didn't even know that this many people her age lived in her area. She's acquainted with a few, and really tries to make it stay that way. It's all being too much for her, especially since she still hasn't gotten over her ex-lover, and the last time she saw him, he was stone and about to marry her step-sister. Even with all this attention, all she is, is pain. But the hopeless romantic she is, she tries to find some kind of connection with the ocean of strangers.

One night, Luc and Marisol come over for dinner. Eva desperately does not want to see them, but she needs to know what happened.

Luc barely glances in her direction, and saves his lovey-dovey looks for Marisol. Eva's fighting tears the whole dinner, plastering fake smiles on her face. In fact, barely anyone regards her the whole dinner.

Before Luc and Marisol can leave, Eva tells Marisol that Agnes has to speak with her urgently, so Eva can get a moment alone with Luc. She tells him to follow her into a room, to which he obliges confusedly, and Eva asks him what the hell happened. Before asking, though, she throws a few insults in his face--and this is possibly the meanest she's ever been in a while, she thinks. But she doesn't care. For once, she doesn't seem to care. And after all this yelling and tears, Luc has no idea what she's going on about, and claims that they were never together in the first place. He doesn't remember us, Eva thinks. And apparently, Marisol was always his true love, Evangeline was never even an option. Now, she wasn't so sure he was under a spell, and perhaps he was just a piece of shit, but now she knows he's been cursed. She apologizes and bids him goodnight before Marisol can return, feeling embarrassed, but also somewhat more at peace for letting all of her emotions out. Although, she is somewhat happy that there's still a chance that Luc is actually cursed. Evangeline is sure it's wrong to feel good about that, but she can't help herself. It almost overshadows her embarrassment. But as she watches, from the window, her first love and another woman leaving, jealousy pricks at her skin, and haunts her the whole night. She is the other woman (couldnt help myself).

And on top of this, she finds out that Agnes has sold her father's Curiosity shop. And out of spite, she rejects half of her suitors. If Agnes doesn't care about Evangeline or what she wants, why should she care about her?

Evangeline goes back to the Prince of Heart's church, seeking some kind of solution for the mess she let him make. ''I knew I wouldn't have to go looking for you,'' he told her. He informs her that the mess between Luc and Marisol would have been there without him interfering, making her believe even more that Marisol or Agnes cursed her first love. And in exchange for helping her, he tells her that she still owes him three kisses. And the first one, he wants it to go to Crown Prince Apollo of the Magnificent North. Evangeline, obviously, thinks this is absurd and he needs to choose someone else. Jacks refuses, and says it's easier than she thinks.

Once they arrive, Jacks pays for an inn for Evangeline.

At one of the palace events, three days later, Eva meets a woman named LaLa, and also runs into a blue-haired Jacks. After Eva is done exchanging pleasantries with LaLa, he brings her into a room and informs her that he's 'Apollo's closest confidante', to which Eva snorts. He scowls at her, and with her permission, puts his blood on her lips so she can kiss Apollo. And if she doesn't kiss Apollo tonight, Jacks will turn her back to stone forever, since she wouldn't have gone through with their deal.

While Eva and Jacks walking towards Apollo, she hears rumors all around that Marisol is a Cursed Bride, and that she must have bewitched Luc. Some guilty part of Evangeline hopes this is true.

They both find Apollo elegantly posing on a balcony, and join him. ''This is my dear friend Evangeline Fox. You may have heard of her,'' Jacks told Apollo, hoping Eva wouldn't interrupt saying she wouldn't be his friend, and judging by her expression, he knew she wanted to.

Apollo, a lot more handsome than imagined, gives Eva a lazy grin, kissing her hand in introduction. And Evangeline knew exactly what kind of man he was. He wouldn't be hard to kiss, of course, it's just that Eva hadn't ever kissed anyone that wasn't Luc Navarro.

Jacks motions his hands from behind, as if to say, ''Get on with it already.''

Nervously, and as a girl who knew she had no idea what she was doing, gives him an abrupt peck and scurries away. ''Oh, I am doomed,'' Jacks said from under his breath.

Apollo is wide-eyed, but runs after Evangeline, needing more. Jacks shrugged. At least it worked. Embarrassingly, but it worked.

Evangeline had left the palace before Apollo could find her, almost tripping over her skirts more times than she could count. Once she is outside of palace grounds, she feels safe enough, and less in a 'I need to get out of here now' state, she starts walking to her inn, not caring enough to go back for a carriage.

The next day, Jacks breaks into her room, abruptly opening the curtains and making loud noises to wake her. ''You still owe me two kisses,'' he said. Evangeline couldn't argue.

They go to the Fortuna matriarch's castle, which greatly bothers the older woman, whose already snappy by nature. Before they arrived, Jacks had already put his blood across Eva's lips. ''You have to kiss her,'' he whispered. Eva's eyes widen. ''I am not kissing this poor old woman.''

''So you would rather be stone?'' he'd retorted. Eva sighs, and quickly kisses the old woman on the corner of her mouth (i did this because it didn't make sense to me that she kissed her on the cheek - did that mean that jacks's kisses were also fatal if he kissed on the cheek? if there was an actual reason, pls lmk lol).

The old woman slaps Evangeline, which would've knocked her to the floor if Jacks hadn't caught her. ''That was unnecessary,'' he told the woman coldly. The woman agrees, demanding that Evangeline let her make up for it.

Jacks's posture straightened, and he said, ''Evangeline has curiosity in your Vault. Isn't that right, my Fox?'' Evangeline has no choice but to agree, and seemingly has no reason to do otherwise anyways. She wants to tell him to not call her 'his Fox', but can't bring herself to, thinking it's too mean.

Walking down the old woman's long hallways, Evangeline fills in the awkward silence with even more awkward small talk.

The old woman opens her Vault, revealing the Valory Arch. Evangeline doesn't think she'd ever seen Jacks's eyes sparkle so much in. . .hope? Why would a creature like him need to feel hope?

''Evangeline wants to know everything there is about this arch,'' he'd demanded. The woman blinks and hesitates, but Jacks nudges his head toward her subtly, as if to say, ''Get me what I want. Go convince her.''

Evangeline hesitantly hugs the older woman. ''Miss, where I am from, there is no such thing as wonder. Here, I've found so many incredible, impossible things, that part of everyone's everyday lives. Please, will you show me? It is all that I ask.'' When the woman hesitantly nods, Evangeline thinks she might've seen a glint of hidden approval in Jacks's expression. Well, Evangeline didn't need his approval. Why should she care about that, right? She needed to focus. She was kissing all these people for Luc.

Before the older woman opens the vault, she said, ''I take it you do not know of the prophecy.'' Evangeline nods. ''It goes something like: 'This arch may only be unlocked with a key that is not yet forged. Conceived in the North, and born in the South, you will know this key, because she will be crowned in rose gold. She will be both peasant and--'' Jacks had cut her off before she could proceed.

[humb1ug]

selcouth, sukuna

prologue - dirty, mortal liar

year, 992

''TASIA, I DO NOT WANT TO HURT YOU,'' he'd pleaded. ''Please, please, stop.'' His hands laid in front of him, creating a forcefield, protecting himself from his lover's power. He could've cried, he might've. 

    ''Do not call me that!'' she roared, throwing a blast of her energy at his forcefield, almost destroying it. ''You have lost everything that is me, Sukuna! I curse you, I curse you, I curse you!'' One of after the other. . .blast, blast, blast. She was brute force. 

    Something that would lay with him for years, was that she'd never said she hated him. After all, she physically could not lie. Although, that never fixed his guilt or his rage, it merely comforted him every few decades; because of course, he never would forget her. She truly did lay a curse on him. He was bewitched by her. His equal, the only one who could stand against him and win. 

    If I do not do anything now, she will kill me. Her kind does not mix emotions. When they feel them, that is all they feel. And now, all she is, is vengeance and rage. I have to hurt her, Sukuna regrettably thought. How could he save both of them from her own self?

    Suddenly, he rid of his forcefield, and ran behind her, knocking her down. I shall only do what is necessary. I cannot hurt her, he thought. 

    Anastasia quickly recovered, rolling to her feet with agility. She lunged at him again, her hands crackling with dark green energy. Anastasia wasn't a sorcerer, she didn't even have any cursed energy. No, she was something else entirely. From another world. 

    "I trusted you, Sukuna," she spat, her voice trembling with emotion, her arms raising slowly, collecting energy. "But you did not trust me, you led me to believe so. Hell, for a second I believed you loved me!" She guffawed, getting onto her knees, commanding the vines and roots of trees to bring Sukuna down and hold him hostage. 

    Sukuna danced out of the way of her control, constantly dodging the controlled plants around him. ''How dare you say I do not love you? Can't you see, Tasia, this is for all of us!'' 

    "You are a dirty, mortal liar!" she screamed, her energy flaring dangerously. "You made everything better for you, Sukuna. Everything was always for you!" 

    Tasia's yellow cat eyes flared, as if she craved the blood. Perhaps she needed the blood. 

    Sukuna dodged her energy blast, his mind racing. He knew he couldn't keep this up forever. He couldn't keep her forever, not like this. She was relentless, and her fury gave her strength. He needed her to stop. 

    "Tasia, listen to me," he said, his voice firm but gentle, dodging and burning her vines and tree roots to a crisp. "This isn't you. This rage, this hatred—it's consuming you. Please, let me help you."

    Anastasia's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of the woman he loved. But then she shook her head, her resolve hardening. "Manipulator," she spat. 

    She raised her hands, gathering her energy for a final, devastating attack. Sukuna braced himself, knowing he had only one chance to stop her. He had to reach her, to make her see the truth.

    As the blast of energy hurtled toward him, Sukuna closed his eyes and focused all his willpower. He thought of their time together, the moments of joy and love they had shared. He thought of the promises they had made, the dreams they had once had.

    He channeled all those memories into a single, powerful force. He opened his eyes and unleashed a wave of energy that collided with Tasia's attack, creating a brilliant explosion of light and sound. Everything around them came to ashes at his feet. Including Tasia. 

    When the dust settled, Sukuna stood panting, his body trembling with exhaustion. Tasia was on the ground, her body still. She was immortal. . .he couldn't have killed her, could he? No, no. He wouldn't have it. 

    "Tasia," he whispered, kneeling beside her. "Please, come back to me." For only a few seconds, he let the tears fall down his bloodied cheeks. His eyes scanned all the bruises he'd caused, forcing a sob out. ''Anastasia. . .you were supposed to kill me, I -- I did not want to h-hurt you. . .Anastasia, please.''

    He cradled her unmoving body. ''I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,'' he chanted like a prayer. This might've been the only time he'd actually meant his apology.

    But something was off. Aside from his possibly dead wife, of course.

    The ground under her formed roots, trying to steal her body away from Sukuna. He merely stared in awe. Her body was engulfed by nature, and when he tried to dig her out with his bare, beaten hands, she was no longer there. It was only him, and his mistake.