Jujutsu Kaisen: False Dawn

It was still night when I started cooking.

My hands moved without thinking, rhythm guided by routine. The old rice. A leftover egg. A bit of soy and spring onions. Stir, press, fry. The hiss of the pan echoed gently in the apartment, cutting through the dark silence.

I sat on the floor, plate in my lap, and took a bite.

It tasted... fine.

But what made the night special wasn't the food. It was the quiet hum of something new—something alive—twisting around my fingers like a puppet's wire.

Red Stitch.

My cursed technique.

I let it dance above my food, little red threads spinning between my chopsticks like a kid's game.

Delicate. Flexible. Alive.

Even now, it was still strange to me—how it came so suddenly. Like a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

But now that I had it?

I wasn't going to waste it.

So I started thinking.

First, about Sukuna.

His slashes—they weren't just cuts. They were intent. Spatial understanding. A cursed technique sharpened to surgical levels.

Could Red Stitch ever do that?

Maybe not now. But maybe one day.

Then Gojo. Blue and Red.

His manipulation of attraction and repulsion came from an understanding of Limitless at the molecular level. He wasn't just using a technique—he was rewriting the world around it.

Could I do that?

Could I bind space itself with my threads? Stitch gravity into the seams of the air?

I didn't know.

But I thought about it anyway.

I thought about Jogo's cursed fire. Mahito's Idle Transfiguration. Mei Mei's crows. Even the strange cursed spirits with obscure tricks like fluid control or mirror duplication.

If Red Stitch was cursed energy given shape, then couldn't I reshape that shape?

That's what binding vows were for.

The original cheat code.

Even before I had cursed energy, I started experimenting with binding vows. It wasn't a mistake. They were multipliers. Equalizers. Hidden potential unlocked by rules—tight, dangerous rules.

I could do the same.

Create vows around Red Stitch.

Enhance it.

Limit it.

Define it.

Maybe even evolve it.

---

I spent the whole night like that—drawing diagrams, stringing ideas together. No pun intended.

By dawn, I was still awake. And groggy. And a little delirious.

But also excited.

I stood at the window, sunlight bleeding through the blinds like threads of gold, and whispered to myself, "Okay, we build. But not on top of dreams."

I looked at my hand.

Cursed energy shimmered there. Weak. Flickering. A heartbeat from collapse.

That's when the doubt hit.

And the truth followed.

"I can't do any binding vows with my cursed technique. Not yet."

That part stung.

Because I wanted to jump ahead. To skip the grind. To cheat fate.

But I couldn't.

I hadn't earned it.

Not yet.

I could barely hold cursed energy in my hand for more than a few seconds without it tearing apart. It took me weeks just to learn how to wrap my fist in cursed energy.

Not cleanly. Not fully. Just… barely.

Yuji Itadori?

He did that in, like, a day.

Yuta?

By the second day in Jujutsu High, he was already swinging around his katana with cursed energy like it was natural.

And me?

I trained every day.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Like a sweatshop worker cramming physics into a soup spoon.

Yuji probably skipped training to eat hamburgers. And he still pulled it off.

"Ugh! Talent! It's so unfair!" I groaned, slumping onto the floor dramatically.

My arm hit the floor with a loud thunk.

Kai would've buzzed at me by now. If he were still here.

But I was alone.

So I groaned louder. Because I could.

Still, after all my whining, I picked myself back up.

And I trained.

---

Cursed energy control drills.

One hour: index finger to pinky, then reverse.

Another hour: breath-holding, cursed energy compression.

Another: attempting to loop Red Stitch through fingers without snapping the thread.

I failed. A lot.

But each failure taught me something.

Cursed energy is alive. It breathes with you.

Control isn't force—it's familiarity.

That was the real issue.

Foundation.

If I wanted to become strong, I needed a base stronger than anyone else's.

That's what made Gojo terrifying. Not just Six Eyes.

It was his cursed energy control. His base.

Even Sukuna—his technique was powerful, yes. But his ability to use cursed energy on instinct? That was the foundation of a monster.

I needed to build mine.

From nothing.

From scratch.

From me.

So I trained.

Even while grumbling.

Even while comparing myself to prodigies who never had to work this hard.

Because I didn't have a choice.

I have to compare myself to the best if I hope to reach them...