Your Highness (Gojo x Reader)

Chapter 5-Black Market

The gentle breeze flowed through the cold and dark alleyways of the outskirts of Heian and Edo which had come to be known as the Otoko no Haka, which translates to Man's Tomb.

Factories towered over skinny streets covered in human feces, urine, and starving skeletons of people dying of the filth of the streets and drugs. Opium, fentanyl, and meth had taken the streets by storm, leaving those who had no will to live with a way out.

There was so much smog and smoke in the air from the thousands of factories in the Otoko no Haka regions, that buying a pack of cigarettes was useless due to amount of tobacco in the smoke that was being released for tobacco had been turned into a factory fuel. If one wanted to get high, they simply had to inhale.

There was no such thing as the law in the Otoko no Haka, so not only were the streets laced with every disease known to man, but criminals ran rampant. They did whatever they wanted, but nobody could blame them. Perhaps they were the only ones having an ounce of fun.

Inside the factories, people worked 14 hour days with little to no food and nowhere to sleep. Every apartment building in the Otoko no Haka had either been destroyed or reserved for Government paid Samurai, or rather the Jujutsu sorcerers who protected factories from criminals, and kept the factory workers in line and weak, to prevent anybody stepping out of line and causing a rebellion.

Whenever somebody said factory workers, it is important to note that these factory workers came in all shapes and sizes. Women, men, Old, young. If you could walk and grab things, you were working in a factory.

If you could not, you were doomed to the streets as a beggar. There were only two alternative options, three for women. You could become a criminal and hope you don't get caught by the Jujutsu Samurai, you could try your luck and try to escape to the farmlands of the north called the Shi no Teien, or the Garden of Death. At least there you would have a place to sleep, and two hours less work since the working time was predicated on the sunrise and sunset. Or, if you were a woman, you could go to the rich and prosperous cities of Heian and Edo where you could become a prostitute and hopefully find a sugar daddy.

The distinct smell of urine and gasoline poisoned everybody's lungs, and left many dying of lung diseases. The sight of a young child coughing up blood until their eventual death was not an uncommon one.

There was zero opportunity and equality in the Sukuna Shogunate. You only had money either from being an ally of Sukuna whom he kept close, or you turned to disturbing tactics. The ones who got especially wealthy were the black market dealers.

The black market in Japan had taken on a new face and product: Sorcerer Parts. After Sukuna established the Sukuna Shogunate, during the chaos which followed of him taking on a conquest for control over all of Japan, people discovered cursed technique cores.

Cursed Technique cores were the many centers of Jujutsu techniques, and if the core of a technique was either safely and successfully attached to a person or eaten and digested, they could gain the technique. So Black Market dealers rounded up the dead bodies of hundreds of dead sorcerers, even killing some for more body parts and cursed energy residue, and began selling them for thousands, even millions of dollars. Many people lost their entire lively hood in hopes of gaining a cursed technique, only to discover that the body part they purchased did not possess a cursed core.

An old pickup truck trudge through the alleyways of dead rotting bodies Otoko no Haka. The pickup truck had once belonged to a family owned plumbing business, but the business was destroyed after Sukuna's conquest of Japan. The faded yellow dot of the sun set behind the viscous weeds of smog that choked all happiness and joy that presented itself in the Otoko no Haka. The pickup truck had one huge cooler in its bed that was strapped down precariously under destroy frays of straps.