Your Life As A Tokyo Jujutsu High Background Student

Chapter 8 - Curry and chaos

Being an average jujutsu sorcerer was a massive pain in the ass.

It seemed like no matter how many extra hours you poured into training, you could never close the gap of raw talent between you and those infuriatingly gifted prodigies like Hakari, Kirara, or Megumi. But what you lacked in flashy innate techniques, you made up for in sheer stubbornness and a boatload of spite.

Having Soulstring, a special-grade bow that could manifest arrows from your cursed energy, definitely gave you a leg up in battles. When you first got your hands on that bad boy, however, it was about as easy to handle as a wet bar of soap. Just one shot took you almost three painstaking minutes to charge up. Not exactly practical timing when deadly curses were baring their gnarly fangs in your face. Eventually, through endless training (and no shortage of cursing), you learned to channel your own cursed energy through Soulstring more efficiently without wanting to throw it off a cliff. Now, wielding Soulstring had become second nature, an extension of your body. You could shoot as fast as your smart mouth could spit out insults.

But you knew better than to get lazy. Losing Soulstring was a very real possibility. Some fast curses could knock it out of your hands, or Gojo's snotty elders could demand you return their legendary cursed tool, just for kicks. You were all too familiar with the feeling of helplessness as an average sorcerer with no bloodline gifts to fall back on.

So, while Soulstring came with a handy sure-hit effect, you still dragged your sorry ass out of bed early every morning to practice shooting. Alone in the empty training arena with your good ole normal bow and arrows, you drilled the motions relentlessly with moving targets - knock arrow, draw, loose, repeat... All your shots flew just as swift and true.

Most people attributed your fighting abilities to your cursed tool. Jokes on them. They had no idea. While Soulstring never missed, neither did you.

The good thing was you didn't particularly care for their validation. You had other matters to worry about. For example, hand-to-hand combat.

As a long-range fighter who specialized in ambush, of course, you naturally preferred keeping curses at a healthy distance. But in the unforgiving world of jujutsu, sometimes, life just didn't cater to your preferences. You never knew when you would have to punch your way through a mission. Letting Gojo and Hakari wipe the floor with your ass was a fair trade for all the tricks you picked up.

When Megumi moved in, you were determined to get him his fair share of quality hand-to-hand training as well. Obviously, as a prodigy with the revered Ten Shadow technique and a permanent stick up his ass, Megumi wanted no part of it... until the day you effortlessly slipped through his Divine Dogs and slammed him into the ground before he could complete the hand sign to summon Nue. All with just your bare hands and a shit-eating grin. The look of absolute bewilderment on Megumi's face was downright priceless.

He didn't need to know how many hours you had spent stalking... eh, closely observing him training from a strategic distance before you figured out the patterns of his movements. The synergy between his black and white dogs - how one would leap to attack while the other covered, leaving a split-second opening as they coordinated. The precise time it took Megumi's delicate fingers to form the hand signs, and for each shikigami to materialize. His preferences on which shikigami to summon in response to which situation... those sorts of things.

He also didn't need to know a big reason you could get to him was because he had underestimated you. And now that he knew to cover his openings, you probably wouldn't be able to punch through his defense again. Just one clean hit by an average sorcerer was enough to convince him that being a long-range fighter didn't mean he could slack off on close combat training.