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The brightness of a horrible romcom on the TV is the only visible source of light in the room. A man with an obvious curly haired perm and a voice more annoying than the utter lack of disregard the television has for your poor ears screams something about how the woman standing before him betrayed him for internet clout.
It’s hard to pay attention to a storyline so based on current affairs. The year is 2018, and the internet has never appeared more vast. The concept of random strangers making money off of sharing their personal lives and complicated love stories online is no longer just the basis of crappy reality shows from the early 2000’s. You know, the ones where one guy has a specific niche of a type and a bunch of girls dress up like it and bump out their assets and embarrass themselves on cable television for a few bucks.
Maybe Gojo-Sensei cares more about these types of movies than you do. He seems like the type, at least. As far as his collection of DVDs suggests, the man is more of a romance/comedy lover than an action/adventure lover like you are.
It’s just one more thing separating you from the great Gojo Satoru. ‘Nothing to bat an eye at.
You cover a yawn with the back of your left hand despite being alone in the room aside from the cursed corpse sleeping soundly to your right. Courtesy is courtesy no matter the number of witnesses. (Yes, even when there are zero.) You glance at Tsukamoto. It shuffles its feet in its sleep, needle-point claws tapping against your thigh but never breaking skin. You pull the thing closer to your side and push against the coffee table with your socks to shimmy yourself into a more comfortable sitting position. (Especially when there are zero.)
Your attention splits back to the screen as the heroine yells at her love interest for checking out another girl. She holds up his phone, which is open to a sultry photo of an Instawham! post of a girl in a glittery black dress grinning towards the camera. The photo obviously crops out the other people present at the time of its taking, as the woman is holding onto a formless person’s shoulders as she leans against their back and lifts bends her leg like she’s a flamingo.
You shamelessly grab the remote and pause the movie. The woman’s hair is some sort of seamless blend between dark brown, auburn, and sun-spattered highlights he’s sure some girls would kill for. You let your eyes glance down. Long, long legs. She’s tall–probably taller than you are, at least, at a young-and-growing 5 feet 8 inches. And she’s got a big ass.
She’s no Jennifer Lawrence, you think as you reach for the remote. The main chick resumes her shouting. But she’s objectively close.
You sigh and settle back into the tattered red couch on which you sit, and hold Tsukamoto close to your chest. Principal Yaga sure must have been thinking ahead when he created this cursed corpse. Its utter usefulness makes you wonder what other puppets and creations the Principal has crafted over the years.
Tsukamoto’s blue raspberry blue punching gloves tap against each other as you move him. Cursed energy flows from your being into its core in a constant, steady, low-kilter stream. The amount of it you’re able to comfortably expend for hours on end feels like far too meager to expect the warm and cheerful expression on Gojo-Sensei’s face every time he visits you in the basement, but the banter you share and the movie spoilers he so shamelessly spouts cause your dissatisfaction with your progress feel inconsequential by the time he leaves.
You yawn again and then whoop! loudly as the main girl’s best friend slaps her and yells at her to get a grip.
“Yes! Thank you,” you cheer. The best friend doesn’t hear the thanks you give her, but you get to witness a gloriously cinematic shot (frankly high above the lackluster quality of the rest of the romcom) of the main girl’s mascara running as she cries in a blue-lit room. She rubs furiously at her eyes and digs the heels of her palms into the sockets. You laugh at the squelching sound the boom mics were able to pick up.
Popcorn, you think, sounds great right now.
Luckily for you, Gojo-Sensei thought ahead and popped a few bags for you before he left again this afternoon. A cliche bucket with vertical, red and white stripes sits to the left of your feet still against the coffee table. You sit up and lean forwards, careful to not stir Tsukamoto’s snoring form too much, grabbing the tall bowl before settling back into the tattered cushions.
You reach into the bowl and toss a piece of popcorn into your mouth. The texture is a bit more dry than the last batch Gojo-Sensei made for you, but it’s by far not the worst thing you’ve eaten, so you shrug and continue chewing. Tsukamoto stirs slightly as your attention becomes split three ways–between the movie, the popcorn, and the constant expenditure of cursed energy–and you increase your cursed energy output as quickly as you can. The cursed corpse falls back asleep before it is given the chance to even rear back its arm. You grin. Progress is progress, after all.
The longer the dull and, frankly, stupid movie carries on, the more you wish Gojo-Sensei had more action and supernatural movies in his DVD arsenal. You’d even take Human Earthworm 2 over another week of stupid girls falling for rich boys and their stupid best friends butting in when the getting gets good.
You grumble in anticipation as the movie begins to dwindle down, the main characters now in a solid relationship with a wedding to plan, and grab another piece of popcorn. This one is shaped differently than most of the others, and it’s a lot saltier than the ones at the top of the bowl. You swallow it anyway, thankful enough that you aren’t dead and being dissected in the Tokyo campus’s morgue (which they actually have, apparently). Small mercies.
As the credits start to roll, you reach for the T.V. remote and cancel out of the movie.
Gojo-Sensei never said anything about watching all of the credits to these movies!
You blink rapidly at the sudden change in light as the screen lights up blue, awaiting for a new disc to be inserted. You toss aside the DVD you just finished and grab a new one at random, a foot precariously pressed against Tsukamoto, now sleeping on the floor in front of the couch.
After inserting the new disc, you return to the couch, your foot resting on one of the cursed corpse’s boxing gloves. You change your mind about the puppet’s placement and set it beside you on the couch again. The movie begins with the white, curly text of a long-winded title atop a brown-tinged Winter scene. The credits start to play as the scene changes in the background, and you soon realize you can’t understand a word of it aside from the names.
You groan. This is one of those stupid French films Gojo-Sensei mentioned! You sulk for a while, mourning the fact that you will be hard pressed not to fall asleep during a movie he won’t be able to understand a lick of, before grabbing the popcorn bowl from the table again.
You pop a piece into your mouth as a girl bikes down a cobblestone road, calmly staring out at a boat-littered body of water after travelling through the building-encapsulated path. This one is less salty than the last, but the texture is like a scab’s–tough and flakey simultaneously–and the aftertaste makes you gag involuntarily.
You stick your tongue out. “Blegh!”
Did Gojo-Sensei get a different brand this time? Or, did he put on a stupidly disgusting seasoning to help me stay awake or something? This is disgusting!
Curiosity gets the best of you. You peer into the bowl, and what you see does not surprise you as much as the sinking feeling that tugs the breath out of your lungs.
There is no popcorn at all visible in the bowl, even though the vessel is still about half-full. You swallow thickly and hope to God you’re dreaming. It’s either just that–you’re not awake–or you just ingested three of Sukuna’s fingers.
The world bends and twists around you. You feel sick to your stomach, and you are certain of the reason why. At least this explains why they tasted so different in comparison to the popcorn Gojo-Sensei gets him.
You search your being for Sukuna, surprised despite yourself that the King of Curses has not at all attempted to take over your body. It’s no use. Sukuna is nowhere to be perceived. You bend yourself at the waist and vomit all over Gojo-Sensei’s basement floor. You want to feel bad about that, really, but you don’t get the chance to when your cursed energy output falters in your state of shock.
Tsukamoto whams you on the back of the head, and you gasp at the impact, which leaves you lying on the ground and seeing stars. You sit up quickly, surprised by how bright the room suddenly appears, trying your best to not get spit-up on you anywhere. But the floor is clean, and the room appears brighter because it is brighter.
You look around, in shock at the incomprehensible change in atmosphere, and happen to notice there is no bucket of popcorn (or fingers) anywhere to be seen. You press a hand against your forehead and sigh deeply.
I guess I was dreaming, you think to yourself. A weight sluffs off of your shoulders at the revelation, and you can’t help but let out a weak, nervous laugh.
Sukuna laughs with you (or at you) then, until his uncontrollable chortle is the only sound you can hear.
You lift yourself off of the floor and lie on the couch before noticing a Tsukamoto-shaped bump beneath your back. You don’t move it from underneath you, still taking a moment to regain your bearings and accept the fact that you were only dreaming about eating Sukuna’s fingers like they were movie snacks.
You don’t even have the mental strength to tell Sukuna to shut up as the curse keeps on laughing at your expense. The only image that goes through your mind is the sight of a popcorn bucket full of some of the most dangerous appendages in all of jujutsu history.
You’re never going to be able to look at popcorn the same after today, that’s for sure.