Jujutsu Kaisen: False Dawn

Night settled quietly over the apartment like a cold, wet cloth.

Ren sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes half-lidded, hands outstretched toward the floating fish-curse twitching inside the red stitch bindings.

"Kai 2," he said aloud.

He smirked.

"Yeah. That's your name now. You're my second key. Second time's the charm."

It was a terrible joke. He laughed anyway.

Kai 2 flopped once in midair, lazily bumping into the invisible net of cursed threads keeping it contained. It gave a low, warbled gurgle. Probably didn't appreciate the joke either.

Ren leaned forward and started again from the top. The tests.

He went through the same checklist he had with Kai 1: cursed energy pulsing through red threads, measuring how Kai 2 reacted to energy fluctuations, and watching for behavioral changes.

And—unsurprisingly—Kai 2 reacted better than the first.

"Smarter," Ren murmured. "You're trying to escape. That's a good sign."

Every time the fish-curse wiggled aggressively, Ren gave a sharp mental pull. The red thread linked directly to its cursed core responded, stopping the movement cold.

It was like marionette control. Crude, inconsistent. But real.

One pulse—Kai 2 twitched.

Two pulses—Kai 2 rolled.

Hold the energy steady—Kai 2 hovered, completely still.

It required constant flow and perfect balance. Too much cursed energy, and the red threads fractured. Too little, and the curse snapped free.

But the terrifying part?

It worked.

Ren grinned.

"I can control curses."

He sat back, pressing his palms to his knees, exhaling sharply.

He tried to remember the faces of the people he passed every day. The salaryman at the train station. The schoolgirl is in the apartment across from his. The old man who walked his dog every morning.

None of them would ever see this.

None of them would ever know.

Ren had tested it—brushed Red Stitch against a regular human in a crowded station. They'd flinched, yes. But seen nothing.

Humans… were fragile.

Like animals in a world of gods and monsters.

Ren shook his head, disturbed by his own line of thought.

"Now I sound like Geto," he muttered.

That name still gave him chills.

Even if he could now see why Geto started thinking that way.

Still, he refused to walk that path.

He looked back to Kai 2, whose big buggy eyes stared at him, oblivious to the meaning of Ren's revelations.

"You're doing great, buddy."

He resumed his tests.

The next step was binding vows.

It didn't work.

No matter what phrasing Ren used—requests, exchanges, attempts at making oaths—Kai 2 just floated there like a balloon with brain damage.

Ren nearly gave up.

But then a wild idea struck him.

What if… the red string wasn't just a leash?

What if it was a conduit?

A cheat?

Ren cracked his knuckles, reset his breathing, and focused.

He spun a new red thread from his fingers—fine and needle-thin—and attached it to Kai 2's core.

He closed his eyes.

"I want to make a vow," he whispered. "A real one. But you're not smart enough to understand it."

He paused.

"What if I force you to understand it?"

He cleared his throat and recited:

"Let's make a binding vow. For the next 10 seconds, your sight will be linked to mine. But I can't use my eyes. I can't break this vow. And you—Kai 2—you have to agree."

Nothing happened.

Not yet.

Ren narrowed his eyes and poured cursed energy down the red thread. Not a blast. A message.

A pulse. Then another. Then three short vibrations.

Then a longer one. Sharp. Repeating.

To any sorcerer it would've looked insane. But to Kai 2?

The curse spasmed.

Its body pulsed with energy.

A spark. A reaction.

It agreed.

The Binding Vow activated.

And then—

Ren's vision went black.

But not empty.

Instead of darkness, he saw something else.

The world twisted. The edges shimmered and pulsed with violet light. Shapes moved unnaturally, like smoke with weight. Every corner of his apartment glowed faintly with traces of negative emotion—old frustration, loneliness, and a lingering panic.

He was seeing the world the way Kai 2 did.

Not with human eyes.

But with cursed perception.

Ren staggered, falling to one knee.

It was overwhelming.

Sensory overload.

It wasn't just sight. It was feeling, too. Fear. Hunger. Instincts.

Every object in the room had resonance. His bed buzzed with the cursed residue of sleepless nights. His fridge glowed faintly blue with old bitterness.

Kai 2's perception wasn't human.

It was primitive. Blunt. Raw.

But also… honest.

"This is insane," Ren whispered.

And then, as fast as it came—it was gone.

10 seconds.

His eyes returned.

He was back in his body, gasping for breath, forehead slick with sweat.

Kai 2 twitched and drifted, as if it too had been dazed.

Ren lay on the floor, chest heaving.

He'd done it.

He had forced a curse into a two-way binding vow.

And it had worked.

Not only that—he'd seen what no one else had. The cursed world through cursed senses.

And now… he understood.

"Cursed energy isn't just power," Ren whispered, eyes wide.

"It's memory. Emotion. Context."

He laughed.

A long, ragged laugh that echoed off the empty apartment walls.

"Knowledge really is a cheat code."

He sat up.

Looked at Kai 2 with new reverence.

"You, my slimy little friend, are going to take me further than I ever thought."

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