My name is Ryan Smith.
I am sixteen years old, I have never kissed a girl, my social battery runs out talking to cashiers, and the greatest manga ever written just ended in the most devastating way possible.
Life is going great.
I'm being sarcastic. Life is not going great.
I've been lying on my bed for three days since the final chapter dropped. Three days. I only got up to use the bathroom and even then I was thinking about it. Gege Akutami wrote 260 chapters, made me cry four separate times, gave me characters I actually cared about, and then wrapped it up like he had somewhere else to be.
I told my friend Derek about it.
He said "isn't that the one with the big white haired guy."
Derek is no longer my friend. Derek never was my friend.
The thing is, I don't have many friends to lose. I go to school, I sit in the back, I eat lunch watching anime video essays on my phone, and I come home. That's the whole routine. I'm not even the interesting kind of loser. I'm the invisible kind.
Which somehow feels worse.
---
Downstairs my parents were at it again.
"You never listen to anything I say Gerald!"
"I'm listening right now Karen and I wish I wasn't!"
I turned my volume up.
Look, I know that sounds cold. But when something happens every single day it just stops being an event. It becomes weather. My parents arguing is just rain. You don't cry about rain. You put headphones on and wait for it to pass.
I couldn't tell you what they were actually fighting about anymore. Money probably. Or dishes. Or the way dad parks the car. It's always something small that's really about something big they won't say out loud.
Mom's been sleeping on the couch for two weeks.
I'm not going to talk about that more because honestly I don't know how to talk about it without it becoming a whole thing. And I don't want it to be a whole thing right now.
I turned the volume up higher.
---
It was midnight when I finally looked up from my phone.
I'd been doomscrolling TikTok for two hours watching the most brain-rotted content known to mankind. A cat wearing sunglasses fell off a shelf and I laughed for thirty seconds. I don't know who I am anymore.
Then my stomach growled.
I checked the kitchen. Nothing. My dad had eaten the last ramen yesterday like the personal villain he is.
So I put on shoes, grabbed my hoodie, and walked to the 24 hour grocery store three blocks away. Midnight grocery runs are genuinely one of the few things I enjoy about my life. Nobody talks to you. Everything is quiet. The fluorescent lights make the whole world feel slightly unreal.
I found my noodles. Chicken flavor. I was heading back.
Then I heard it.
Tires. Loud. Fast.
I turned around.
A truck.
I had exactly enough time to think "oh this is so stupid" before it hit me.
---
I woke up staring at a white ceiling.
Everything hurt but in that distant fuzzy way, like the pain was happening to someone nearby. I blinked a few times. Hospital. The smell was wrong but the vibe was hospital. Beeping machines, stiff sheets, that specific kind of silence that means someone is professionally watching you.
A nurse walked in to check on me.
She was really pretty.
My brain, apparently fully functional despite being recently hit by a truck, immediately started working against me.
"Hey," I said. My voice came out like gravel in a blender. "You come here often?"
She blinked at me.
"This is your hospital room," she said.
"Right. Yeah. That was bad. I'm aware."
She smiled. Not the smile of someone who is charmed. The smile of someone who finds a small animal's failed attempts at dignity adorable.
I looked at the ceiling.
Tragic.
---
I tried finding the TV remote. Found it. Started flipping channels looking for something, anything, maybe a news channel so I could figure out where I was because something felt off in a way I couldn't name yet.
I also looked for my phone.
No phone.
I checked under the pillow, under the mattress, asked the nurse when she came back. She gave me that smile again. No phone.
I gave up and stared at the ceiling for what felt like an hour.
Then the TV landed on something.
A news channel. Two reporters. Talking about some kind of sorcerer summit happening in Tokyo.
I almost changed the channel.
Then one of them turned to face the camera.
Short black hair. One eye covered. A scar that I recognized because I had looked at it in manga panels probably hundreds of times.
My brain stopped working.
That's Maki.
Maki Zen'in.
Then the camera panned and standing next to her was a tall guy with an eyepatch and a smile that was way too kind for someone who has canonically done war crimes.
Yuta.
Yuta Okkotsu.
I sat up so fast the machines started beeping. My whole body was screaming at me but I did not care. I was gripping the side of the hospital bed so hard my knuckles were going white and I was staring at that TV screen like it personally owed me an explanation.
I was dead.
I got hit by a truck buying chicken flavor ramen.
And I woke up in the Jujutsu Kaisen universe.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
That had never happened to me before in my entire life.
Then, at the corner of my vision, something appeared. A small glowing window, hovering in the air like it was completely normal.
It said one thing.
[Are you ready?]