Everything was wrong.

I couldn't see any Cursed Energy. My Six Eyes weren't working normally. I felt blind. In panic, I fed positive energy to my Six Eyes in order to maybe heal whatever injury I had sustained.

Instead, I seemed to have inadvertently activated a Cursed Technique Reversal, but for my Six Eyes.

Rather than seeing the world of cursed energy, I was treated to an unabridged, and glorious view of the material world instead.

Colors leapt out at me, sharp and vivid, each hue saturated in a way I'd never truly seen before. The world was… clearer, somehow, yet so ordinary. For the first time, the air didn't thrum with the familiar texture of cursed energy. I could see every detail, from the smallest scratch on a brick wall to the pattern of sunlight filtering through a tree's leaves several blocks away, through several buildings worth of obstructions. My Six Eyes were showing me something I'd never thought I'd appreciate—the purely physical world, without cursed energy twisting and warping everything in its presence.

I took a breath, and even the air felt different, somehow more immediate. No cursed energy pollution, no interference. Just the feeling of cold air filling my lungs.

For a second, the panic eased, replaced by a bizarre sense of wonder. "Huh," I murmured, taking it all in. The lack of cursed energy was almost… peaceful. No distractions, no layers upon layers of spectral influence clouding things. For the first time, I was just seeing, without having to filter or measure every particle of cursed energy around me.

And what I saw… was unaccountably manifold. So much so that my mind didn't have a way to conceptualize the big numbers. Ironic. I was a man shrouded by the very concept of infinity, and yet this much threatened to overwhelm me.

Trillions of quadrillions of quintillions of sextillions of things dancing in the air in complex patterns. The deeper I looked into the world, the more of these reality legos I found, constituting absolutely everything. Even me. I could see the gaps between all matter.

Where those things… molecules?

My brain hurt. Oh god, did it hurt. The pain spread from my skull to my neck down to the rest of my body. But the heart of the agony was inside my skull.

I had seen too much. Far too much. I fed positive energy to my brain, cutting my Six Eyes from energy at the same time in order to heal myself in case I had done real damage somehow. Immediately, my budding headache disappeared and I felt quick relief, so quick in fact that I gasped.

That was close.

I couldn't distract myself with my newfound powers right now. I needed to take stock of my situation, make sure no other bastard was waiting in the woodworks to surprise me with an attack.

I began by asking myself simple questions.

Why was I here? Where was this place? Where was that fucker, that lip-scar bastard? Why was I surrounded by a bunch of Americans?

Slowly, I descended from the air and regarded the people before me, who had avoided the damage of my Hollow Technique by standing on the sidelines.

Among them stood Robin.

The Boy Wonder, Robin. Batman's apprentice.

I blinked. Halloween was months away.

"Ask him what he wants," a dark-skinned blond guy with bare feet, carrying around some random-looking weapons, spoke in English.

Robin talked to me, "Why are you here?" Robin asked me in Japanese.

I blinked.

I let my hands fall next to me, focusing instead on revving up my Reverse Cursed Technique output in order to heal my body. "Where is here?" I asked.

"Star City," Robin said.

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

That clearly unnerved the other two—the archer guy and the black guy—but I didn't care. This was just great. "Star City, and you are Robin. The Batman's side-kick?"

Robin nodded, expression grave. "And who are you?"

I laughed more.

Wow. American kids were funny.

Still, why the hell was I even here? Who had brought me here?

Then I remembered.

That bastard! Goddammit!

He did this!

I refocused on 'Robin', glaring at him, "Enough jokes, where am I, and what do I have to do to get you to send me back?"

"Star City," Robin repeated, and I almost considered sending him a Red. No. He wouldn't survive.

Speaking of, who had I just killed earlier? One of the bastard's accomplices no doubt. Who cared?

"And we can't send you back where you came from because we don't know where that was," Robin said as he typed on a wrist-mounted device.

I slapped my forehead and slid my hand down my face. "I don't have time for this. And why are you dressed like that anyway?"

"Dressed like what?" Robin asked.

"Are you stupid or something?" I asked, "You're dressed like a superhero!" I started pacing, "No, I don't need this. Not now. Not at this time. I have a fight, I have—"

Suguru.

He was going to kill Suguru.

No, no, no, no, no, no! I'll fucking kill him! I'll fucking kill them all!

"I've had a bad day," I told 'Robin', "And I swear to you, I'm going to kill all of you if you don't get me back where I came from, right now. I won't hesitate."

Robin stepped back, rattling off something in English, "He's not happy."

How did that bastard even get his hands on foreign operatives for this thing, and why were they dressed like fucking superheroes?

Then, like a flash, someone else appeared.

The Flash. Dressed in red and gold, with lightning emblems all over him.

The moment I saw him, I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing again.

He stood cross-armed in front of the young ones, protectively. But he had arrived like a bolt of lightning. I hadn't even seen him.

I stopped laughing. "There's no way you're the real deal."

Robin rattled off a translation in English. Just as the Flash opened his mouth, I interrupted, speaking English instead. Finally, I was able to put my overly elaborate childhood education to good use, "Listen, people, thank you, thank you, but I'm entertained, and I'm tired. Let me go home now. Before I stop being polite."

The Flash looked at me intensely, "And where is home?"

"Tokyo," I said, "The Flash." I chuckled. "This can't be real—how, how did you even get here?" I rubbed at my eyes.

The Flash disappeared before my eyes and reappeared before me, trying his best to grab at my wrist. He froze as he encountered Infinity, trying to push through the infinite space between him and me. I made to grab him, but he slipped away before I could. "Rude," I said.

But I considered the situation more closely now.

This guy was fast. Faster than anyone I had ever seen before in my life. He didn't have any Cursed Energy—no one here did.

But I could see something else inside him, some other form of energy that he was just brimming with.

I inserted only a sliver of positive energy into my Six Eyes in order to get a better look at him.

He was a beacon of energy. Far brighter than anyone else here, especially the kids behind him.

And he was dressed like the Flash.

"You guys are the real deal," I realized with a shock. "Robin, The Flash. Whoever you two are," I gestured at the bow guy and the black guy. "Is Superman real also?"

"Where are you from?" Robin asked.

"Don't," the Flash said, "Let me handle this."

I was high. No, I was high. Clearly. The near-death experience had released a bunch of chemicals into my brain, making me see things that weren't real.

Desperation warred with the realization. I couldn't be here, though! I needed to go back and—, "Flash," I pleaded, "Take me back to Tokyo. My friend is in danger. You need to take me back quickly." I hoped that my accent wasn't getting in the way of my meaning, or my desperation. Who was I even talking to? Was he even real? Was any of this real?

"No can do," he said flatly. "We don't trust you. And the Tokyo you came from might not even be the same one I could get you back to."

I blinked, processing that for a second, before I shot back, "What do you mean by that?" I slipped into Japanese by accident.

"Why did you ask if Superman was real?" The Flash probed, his eyes narrowing.

I didn't have time for this nonsense. My patience was already wearing thin.

"Because you're all dressed like comic book characters," I snapped, irritated. "Now can you please take me home?"

"You know about me from comics," the Flash said, his voice skeptical. "Not from the news."

I could feel my temper rising. "Yes, fastest man alive, Barry Allen, who cares? Just take me home—"

"I can't," the Flash said.

My entire body felt slack, "What do you mean, you can't? You're fast!"

"You're not from here," the Flash explained. "You're not from this universe."

Fuck this. I activated Blue, pulling myself into the air, and began to fly, looking around. Where was the sun, where was east? Or, since this was America, where was west? I could get to Japan faster like that.

As I floated upwards, I saw him. The one and only. The superhero. Big, broadly built man, dressed like the most popular superhero in the world. He even had that fucking swirl of hair hanging over his forehead. The swirl. "Let me guess," I spat, "Clark Kent, the last survivor of Krypton. Nice costume but I don't have time for this, I need to go find my friend."

Superman nodded, "We can go together. Where is he?"

"Where is Japan?" I asked him.

He tilted his head. "Follow me," and then he flew up ahead.

I pushed my Blue to its limits in order to follow him, accelerating steadily until I was flying at terminal velocity. Wind resistance slowed me down, crashing into my Infinity field, and I expanded it, programming the technique to push through the wind. Thus, I gained a second wind, being able to follow Superman, whom I still couldn't believe was real.

But on the off chance that he was, I muttered, "You're the strongest."

Superman looked behind to me and grinned, "Bragging isn't my style. I just do whatever I can."

What a Superman response.

"This isn't real," I decided. Because it wasn't.

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"Why do you say that? Because you read about me in a comic book?" How did he know that?

Right. Super hearing. Either that, or because he was a figment of my imagination. Either made as much sense as each other.

"Yes," I said, "Because I read about you in a comic book. How does that feel? To know that your life is a comic?"

"Who is to say that your life isn't, somewhere in the multiverse?" Superman asked.

That stopped me dead in my tracks, mentally. Physically, I was still rushing to keep up with Superman, subconsciously reprogramming Infinity to better handle the wind resistance and push more speed out of Blue.

"Ever heard of Gojo Satoru?" I asked, "Satoru Gojo," I corrected, remembering Western naming conventions, "The strongest…" How did one translate it…? "Jujutsushi."

"Can't say it rings a bell," Superman said. I laughed. Figures. If my life was a comic, it'd probably be some kind of fucked up horror manga, and I couldn't see Superman being such an otaku that he would read manga.

"You're a reporter, right?" I asked him.

"…You're right," he said.

I looked down at the rapidly passing landscape. We had long-since passed the city limits and were now flying over dark wilderness, unilluminated by any city lights.

"Have you married Lois Lane yet?"

"How much about me do you know?"

I thought about that for a moment, "Krypton, Daily Bugle. Or was it uhh… Daily Planet? One of them is Spider-Man, for sure. Not that you would know. He's from a comic book, too, just not yours. The sun makes you strong. You crash-landed in a farm, your parents are nice, you act like an idiot in your civilian life, and your biggest enemy is a bald billionaire who keeps trying to give you cancer. And your best friend is an orphaned billionaire dressed like a bat. How right am I?"

"…My parents are nice," Superman said, looking dead ahead, "I like to think I'm not an idiot when I'm working, and… I suppose, yes, I keep having to deal with a rather persistent thorn in my side that matches your description. As for my friend, no comment."

"You also never kill," I said, "Because you're such a good guy, and everyone deserves a second chance. But really, it's because your writers can't be bothered to make more villains, so they have to keep using the same ones. If you were a manga character, at least there would be difference, uh, variety in your challenges, but it's always the same with you. Lex Luthor throws Kryptonite at you, it hurts really bad, and you power against it and rescue Lois."

"Do you prefer to kill your enemies?" Superman asked. I could sense judgment in his tone, not that I cared.

"Yes. Overwhelmingly, yes," I laughed. "Real life isn't a comic book. In the real world, real people deal with real problems."

"Why did you try to kill Brick?"

Try? And who was Brick? The red guy? "He tried to kill me. And I thought he was a friend to the one who almost killed me." A guy with no cursed energy throwing around giant slabs of rock, what was I supposed to think?

"You were grievously injured when you arrived. According to Robin, at least," Superman said. "Now, you seem fine. Why is that?"

"I overcame my limits," I said proudly. "I figured out the Hanten Jutsushiki and survived. And now, I'm on my way to kill the bastard who did this to me. Because life isn't a comic book, and that bastard needs to be killed. Wait, that guy, you said 'tried', does that mean he's not dead?" How could he not be dead? Nothing could survive my Purple! Nothing should survive it.

I must have not hit him dead center. Annoying.

Superman looked back at me with a frown, "The Flash moved him away in time from your… attack. He was still severely injured, and would have died without immediate treatment, and the aid of superpowers, both his own and the ones we could bring to bear."

Why would the Flash do that?

"Does that disappoint you?" Superman asked, "What if I told you, he likely had nothing to do with your injuries?"

I stopped mid-air. He stopped as well, looking at me. "Was he your ally?"

"That's beside the point."

So he was a villain. I laughed. I continued flying, "I don't have time for this, Clark. Keep up."

Superman easily shot ahead of me. "You caused millions of dollars in property damages."

"Bill the Gojo clan," I said with a roll of my eyes. Not that it mattered. He wasn't real. None of this was.

As I kept flying, the little cold air that seeped through Infinity slowly sobered my mind up, ridding it of that boundless energy I had been feeling little by little.

"How does it feel?" I asked him, "To be the strongest?" If anyone else in the world should know, it was him.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because where I'm from, I'm the strongest," I said proudly.

"And what does that mean to you?"

I huffed, "Responsibility. Being bossed around. Taking care of problem after problem because no one else can."

"Who bosses you around?"

"A bunch of ancient old people," I replied, "Who hate the young. Who think they have power over me."

"What do you do, Satoru?" Superman asked me.

"I kill monsters," I said with clenched teeth, "Cursed spirits. I'm not a hero. I'm a bug killer. What do you call them? Exterminator. I kill a bunch of insects. But these insects are big enough to kill anyone that's not strong like me."

"Cursed spirits?" Superman looked back at me, "What does that mean?"

"You want me to say crazy people from Arkham Asylum, or whatever prison you send your villains to? What was it called again? Iron Heights? No, that one was for Flash, I think. No, I don't kill people, idiot," I chuckled, "I exorcise curses. Monsters who come from the negative energy of humanity. Creatures that only know how to hate and kill and torture. Can you do that, Superman? Can you even kill a monster like that, or does it go against your comic book hero rules?" I spat.

"How old are you?"

"…Sixteen," I replied. "But I lied. I also kill people. I kill curse users like that bastard who is killing my friend right now," I sped up, pulling everything I could out of Blue. Superman easily kept up. It was maddening. He was holding back on my account.

"We're not likely to find your enemies where we're going, Satoru," Superman said gently.

"Shut up," I bit out, "You're not real. You're a comic book character."

To that, Superman couldn't say anything.

"You know, you I can understand," I continued, "But your friend, Batman, I cannot. He's a normal powerless human, and he doesn't have the power to let his villains live, and still he does. The Joker. That Penguin man, the Scarecrow man, what was his name, was it just Scarecrow? Riddler! They go to Arkham, they get out, kill people, Batman brings them in, they get out, kill people, over and over and over!" I roared. Why was I even seeing this guy? Was I having a crisis of conscience or something? Why? What did I do that was so wrong? "I don't need to see you! I'm not guilty! I don't feel bad! In fact, what I do feel bad about is that I could not kill them in time!" My only problems in life came from that simple fact—not being able to kill fast enough.

Nothing about this hallucination made sense.

"What if you never had another reason to kill again?" Superman asked. "How would you feel?"

"Shut up," I huffed, speeding up. Superman kept up easily.

"Humor me. Please. Imagine a world without cursed spirits."

"Hah," I laughed, "Your world. With Joker and Lex Luthor and Thanos." Was Thanos a part of the DC universe? Who fucking cared?

"Imagine a world where you didn't need to kill anymore. Would you?"

The sincerity of his tone hijacked my senses, and suddenly, all I could do was consider that insane situation in which I had leave to stop fighting. Me. The man who had ushered in a new era of cursed spirits, the man who had upped the ante and raised the bar for what it meant to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

The me who would cause so many of my classmates to die one day, for sure, because they couldn't handle the pressure of my existence and what it did to the cursed spirits of the world.

"You think I like this work?" I muttered. "You think I have a choice? I am my world's Superman, and my Lex Luthors are cursed spirits that spawn out of nowhere and kill and torture and possess people for no reason. The ones who die are the lucky ones. The spirits get creative when they have living humans to play with. Don't talk to me about hope and what that S on your chest means, it's nonsense. In the real world, monsters kill humans because they can, and humans try to kill the monsters before they can."

"I'm not your enemy, Satoru."

Soon, the horizon began to lighten before my eyes.

I felt the sting of light in my eyes, realizing that they weren't shaded. Absently, I pinched my arm, wondering when this persistent hallucination of Superman himself would disappear. It didn't.

I felt an out-of-body experience at that moment, like something had pushed my soul out from my flesh and I was seeing myself in third-person perspective.

"Punch me," I said.

"No," Superman said.

"If you're real, punch me."

"I won't hurt you."

I stopped and pointed my finger at him. He turned around and frowned at me. "Punch me, or I will kill you, Clark Kent. I can do it. Nothing can stand in the way of my Murasaki. Not even the man of steel."

Clark floated towards me, and I resisted with all my might to not float backwards and away from him. I needed to know for sure.

I needed to know that—

He stopped and put both hands on my shoulders, and he pierced me with those blue eyes of his, "I won't hurt you, Satoru."

"Why?" I bit out.

"Because I have no reason to. Because you're in pain. Because it won't make anything better."

I pushed myself away from him, pulled my left sleeve up and scratched my arm as hard as I could, drawing blood. I grunted as I saw the thin lines sprout with droplets, and felt the pain. Then I looked at Superman, still there, watching me with furrowed eyebrows.

I activated Reversed Curse Technique to heal the wounds. "Why are you still here?"

"Because I'm real, Satoru."

"How can you be real?"

"I just am."

No. That wasn't good enough.

Because if he was real, then where was I. Where was Suguru?

I flew ahead as fast as I could. Superman followed.