Somewhere, This All Went Wrong (Oregairu x JJK) Crossover (2024)

Utahime Iori Is Their Teacher (4.11)

...

Of course, there were obstacles in the way.

Nothing in life could be achieved without sacrifice, as the idiom for binding vows went. A tradeoff, a block, a hard limit, these things were universal to life, not simply Jujutsu Sorcery. But there were other kinds of limitations, barriers that existed only for some. Like the barriers of Tengen-sama, which concealed rather than erected unbreakable walls, no less important for it. In fact, his barriers were what all assistant managers and sorcerers used to strengthen their own curtains.

The weak borrowed from the strong.

In my case. I knew the barrier in my way now so well I may as well have created it myself. And in a way, I did.

Utahime-sensei hid a smile beneath the folds of her kimono, easily acting the part of a mysterious shrine maiden— if not for the vivid memory that refused to be forgotten of her shouting at her phone and cursing white-haired bastards trying to poach her students again. Unexpectedly, my sensei got fired up over the weirdest things. "To think you'd actually take me up on after-training and further expression of your cursed technique…"

You didn't have to look that shocked or that smug, Utahime-sensei… Seriously, you were destroying your character by the second, any longer and your nose might grow as sharp and long as a shark's fin. The Kyoto side of the Jujutsu Colleges already looked like a poor masquerade of Yakuza thugs, you didn't need to make it worse. Jujutsu Sorcerers looked like freaks, but we looked like scary freaks. Naturally, saying any of that would be stupid, so I elected to say nothing instead.

"But Hikigaya-san," She returned to her usual calm, steady expression. "I'm assuming you wish to try and achieve Reversed Cursed Technique?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I know, Sensei." What she was going to say had been said to myself many time and time again. So as those times before, I would say it again. "Without achieving Black Flash, something that is already 'impossible' becomes like Luffy reaching the One Piece in less than a thousand chapters."

Black flash, which some would say was a pivotal moment in any sorcerer's career. Simply by achieving it, their understanding of cursed energy improved by leaps and bounds. It was like achieving a Bankai, your power level rose dramatically even if you just scraped the bare bones of it. Or should that be better compared to a domain expansion? Rather than a bankai, a black flash was like when all the 'nakama' were down around the main shounen hero, and they were so beat up that their face resembled a purple pufferfish. But through the power of friendship, the hero unlocked a burst of energy out of nowhere. And hit the bad guy so hard it showed for two full pages in an incredibly drawn manga spread. A perfect hit. A zone.

On the more analytical side, Black Flashes were when your cursed energy managed to get within 0.000001 second of hitting someone physically creating distortion in space. Similar to how athletes had described the 'zone' when just before making a spectacular play in a game, black flash could be known as the activation energy for that zone. Once you hit it, your cursed energy output increases by 120% while in that zone.

I used cursed energy to augment and enhance my attacks, my entire technique revolved around cursed energy, and I had studied and read up on cursed energy likely more than any other student between both Tokyo and Kyoto. Yet, I had never achieved black flash once in my life.

"That's an example, I suppose. If it works for you." Utahime-sensei trailed off, caught off guard by my analogy. She quickly recouped, not about to let this teaching moment go. "You know the basic understanding of reverse cursed energy, cursed energy multiplied by itself to create positive energy, right?"

I did. "But how do you multiply cursed energy by itself? Multiplication isn't a physical thing you can do, it's a shortcut for addition."

Her face seemed to dim a bit, clearing her throat slightly, she quietly said. "Unfortunately, Hikigaya-san. I can't claim to understand it either. Shoko and Gojo-san have both attempted explaining it to me, but fyooi to hyoi and getting stabbed in the head while pouring all your ludicrous amounts of cursed energy into your reversed cursed technique don't make any sense to me."

Two geniuses being unable to explain their methods? What-ever in the world, how very surprising. Not. Hmph, you might even consider Reversed Cursed Technique, inhuman, for how many people had achieved it and what sort of people did. Only the mad, the quick, the clever, and the unnatural.

Strangely despite her own inability, she smiled. "In that regard, you might be too similar to myself, Hikigaya-san."

"What? Don't insult yourself like that," Instantly, I shot that down with the ruthlessness of a World War I dog fighter. "You're not like those two at all, but comparing yourself to me is taking it way too far in the wrong direction."

Seriously, Utahime-sensei was nothing at all like me.

"...No, I suppose I'm not like you at all." I startled inwardly, something curdling in my gut at the strange sudden softness of Utahime-sensei, a hidden grief.

She said, so calmly that I had thought I had mistaken that instance, but like an echo, I couldn't unhear that lining of mourning. "We haven't talked about it, no?"

I replied, quick. My mouth realizing faster what this was, faster than my brain had time to catch up. "There's no reason for us to talk about it."

"There is. But I understand wishing to run away from painful conversations." She looked to the side, a wistful cant to her lips in a slight smile. "You may not wish to hear it, but listen nonetheless. Consider it a test if you want. When I began trying to rise in the ranks as a Sorcerer, I wasn't the most popular," Utahime huffed at herself, self-amused despite herself, "said everyone ever. But I hope you can imagine it, being a year above those three. Shoko, Geto-san, and Gojo. The terrible, haunting feeling you were falling behind so quickly that soon you'd be nothing but a bystander in someone else's story."

I kept quiet. Though the ending unraveled itself before me, like a trainwreck in motion I did nothing to stop it. That same, awful, paralyzing, apathy to your own life.

"I volunteered for a lot of missions that in hindsight I probably shoudln't have, in an effort to be promoted to something above Third-grade. Missions that I usually had to be accompanied by a special grade or First Grade." She coughed into the slip of her sleeve. "I wasn't, ahem. Subtle in my animosity for Gojo. And since where he went Geto and Shoko followed, I ended up being paired up more often than not Mei Mei." She didn't sound mad, she didn't sound angry, she sounded… resolved.

"...I'm not sorry." I couldn't lie. I wasn't sorry. Not at all. Not a shred of remorse existed within my breast. The vicious satisfaction however, dulled.

"Don't interrupt, it's rude."

Automatically, I replied, "Hai hai, sensei."

Her expression twitched, as if couldn't decide what face and what emotion it should be feeling at this moment. She waved at me, "You're d-damn right."

I blinked. "That kind of talk… really doesn't suit you Utahime-sensei."

"Shut up! Don't make it worse by pointing it out!"

Five minutes later after Utahime sensei had vigorously brewed another set of tea with almost terrifying stillness. She sat primly again.

She sighed, blew out air over her cup until the scent of the astringent floral thing spilled over the room. Utahime-sensei opened her eyes, unreadable. "So what I'm saying… is that for now. We're even. You used me and manipulated me in order to hurt Mei Mei in the only thing she can truly care about… and I'll take my share of blame for influencing Mei Mei's actions that day, unknowingly or not."

A compromise. A ceasefire.

"Now you sound like Gojo with that kind of arrogance."

The always calm, except in the presence of that extremely aggravating Gojo-san which was more than fair; always graceful and elegant sensei of mine stopped, then suddenly, and without warning laughed. Stunned into laughter. Unable to help the bubbling mirth that resonated from the stomach all the way into the air, unlike the high and light thing which I expected, her laughter was completely unrestrained and even a little cute ugly. Tiny snorts, unladylike giggling, her image vanished into thin air with a single impossible to forget moment.

Finally, she calmed down a little, but the corners of her mouth were still raised higher than I had ever seen them. "Hikigaya-san… Ahem. Hikigaya-san, comparing me to Gojo! Hikigaya, me! To Gojo! Ahhaha!" Little giggles lifted into her voice, bubbly and infectious. She sounded amused beyond any control of herself.

I smiled and sat back on my heels. Removing the instinctive, automatic response that I was never just a student, distancing myself from that sharp, willful, refusal about to burst from my lips, I thought about it. Let it breathe in my head instead of being immediately excised.

It didn't sound too bad. Being a student for a little longer, I had gotten just a little, just the barest, smallest taste of being strong. What it meant to be strong with all the duties that entailed upon exercising that strength, and the stress, exhaustions, and burden on my back already felt crushing. The temptation beckoned, but it wasn't truly temptation. That was only what I made of it. The self-rationalization, the self-conflict that I forced upon myself so that I only had one choice and one choice time and time again. Then the correct answer, the one I should make after all the failures and setbacks, and twists and turns that I had made of myself. The answer I had landed at after long searching, was to give up. Let it go. Accept I couldn't do everything, be anything. A simple thing to grasp, but a difficult thing to uphold. I knew what I should do and what I had to do.

But there was a wish I needed to fulfill, and an answer I wanted to find, and still, still… I couldn't forget. I couldn't let go. The self-conflict didn't matter, the self-actualization in the gentle road of growing up didn't matter. It simply wasn't about me.

Here my sensei was, outstretching her hand to me again, and here I was again unable to take it. She was trying her very best, trying as hard as she could to reach a peaceful conclusion for the tragedies we had made of ourselves. As the unfortunate moderator between enemy and student, Utahime-sensei earnestly, passionately, and straightforwardly decided to bear the weight by herself. Asking me to blame her was a greedy, selflessly selfish, impossible thing, and she knew that but asked it of me anyway.

I knew that Mei Mei was not even the main perpetrator to blame for Arakawa Reiko's death, that Arakawa-san was already dead and no justice existed for the departed, I knew that. But like a child, when I witnessed the 'murder weapon' be unaffected by the blood staining its steel surface black, I had the irresistible urge to shatter it.

"Then it's settled. For now, I'll be a student of yours for a little longer Utahime-sensei."

She started at my hand. Utahime looked at it for a long time, said, quietly, "...For now, is it?"

"I'm stubborn."

"Hmph. As your sensei then, I'll have to do my very best then to convince you."

There, now you were sounding more like yourself, Utahime-sensei.

I couldn't take the offer not truly, not ever. But that didn't mean I had to reject it either. "Don't worry, Utahime-sensei. I'll be freeloading here as long as possible, so you'll have plenty of time." It wouldn't stop me of course, but she and I both knew that, just as she and I knew that wouldn't stop her from trying.

Her face fell. Comically deadpan. "Don't take heartfelt sentiments and twist them into something rotten!"

Impossible. Ask anything else of me, but that.

Quickly, Utahime-sensei coughed into her sleeve and tried to place on her mask of cool placid dependability. "But in all seriousness. Hikigaya-san, if you truly need to learn Reversed Cursed Technique." We're just brushing off that other conversation just like that?! "I'll help you. But we may need to… cheat."

"Huh, we weren't planning on doing that from the beginning?" I said, still stuck about five minutes back and an entire character development ago. No seriously, you're just going to move on? Was this the fabled power of an adult, compartmentalization?

"Jeez." She tched. She actually tched, but it had a hardened edge in it, like she was trying a little hard to try and appear unaffected. "I'm throwing out the sugar. Clearly it's rotted you to the core too."

"No, I was like this from the beginning. Sickly sweetness just feels right at home."

In reciprocation for her efforts, I supposed, I couldn't help but play along.

Even though these days wouldn't last. That these irreconcilable contradictions would remain unsolved and eventually come to a bloody head. It wasn't something as shallow as pretending, but instead something closer to unsteady understanding. I couldn't tell if either Utahime or I were lying more to ourselves or each other, nor could I tell if anyone truly benefited from this uneasy peace but our shallow wishes. But I had done it correctly, hadn't I? I hadn't lied. I hadn't hidden anything…. So why was I still like this?

Why was I still floundering, why was the answer still so far out of reach I couldn't even ask myself the question?

Before Utahime-sensei could reprimand me again, my phone beeped. Both of us startled out of the conversation, Utahime-sensei trying to repair her image by sipping at her tea, while I plucked out my phone and stared.

A message from an unknown number: Ne, ne, Hikigaya-kun! You're free, aren't you? You are. Accompany this beautiful onee-san today!

…Really? Not even an option to say no? If Haruno-san ever wrote a contact with someone it'd have the refuse option crossed out in menacing red pen, and terrifyingly magnetize your finger to the yes yes yes option.

But I was shocked out of my self-sabotage and musing for now, and in some strange way I had Haruno to thank for it. Perhaps that was why I didn't immediately block her number.

Another message popped up as soon as the read receipt was delivered… scary: Also, this is Haruno. But you can put, hm, what should you put? Oh I know! Put something cute like older girlfriend in for my username, I'll be checking~ So you better not put anything mean or boring there!

That Tyrant Queen! That was a breach of privacy!, also I was sure she wouldn't accept something simple like just her name or a variation on that, and I didn't dare refuse her. I-It wasn't because this was the first time a girl asked me out or a-anything!

Even though my stomach swopped low, I couldn't help but wonder what Haruno-san wanted with a strange, not anticipation, but curiosity.

…

A.N.

The name of this chapter is also, Emotional Whiplash that there is no Catharsis for. That's what being an Adult is.