A hundred lives for the life of one (is this the end?) | JJK

CHAPTER ONE | PROLOGUE

Warning to all that enter. If you know nothing about Itadori Yuuji's mother, don't read this unless you want to be spoiled. I only know most of what I'm writing about due to being spoiled and watching the first season of JJK. [Which I've now finished + finished season 2]

The warning is there, don't blame me for spoiling yourselves.

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There was a point in time when they existed. Multiple points. They remember each instance with startling clarity. Their own movie to review during these times in the void, not yet corporeal, not yet solid, not yet formed. It staved off boredom, allowed them to reminisce, and granted the ability to learn from mistakes long past. They remember their first shift, filled with gallons of fear and grief and dysphoria. After the eighth time, the fear and grief faded, replaced with anger and annoyance. The only thing that was constant was the dysphoria. From human to beast to man to woman to nothing over and over again. It never cleared the innate wrongness staring at what was supposed to be a grotesque creature, only to be an aging man, or being a four-legged animal shifting to a two-legged thing barely passing as a human being.

Their first had been short. Filled with hunger, pain and desperation. They had begged their gods, begged and prayed, and were given a curse instead of a blessing when their life was cut at twenty-three. Their most recent was shorter. A young, humanoid-passing thing that was slain six years into life. If they were corporeal, they would have winced, would have rubbed the spot along their back where a large, heavy blade had sliced over delicate skin.

Instead, they look back. They fill the silence of nothingness with their thoughts. Allowing laughter and cries and shouts to encompass their mind in memories that was theirs, and theirs only. They look fondly upon little girls with aspirations to live past twenty and boys with worlds on their shoulders. Worlds with strife, and worlds without. Demons, monsters, and creatures. Deities, angels, and angelic amalgamations. It was easy to disappear into sweet, comforting tales of home; warm, filled with the decadent scent of warm bread and gentle embraces.

If only it were that easy.

The first sign of something changing is the way they feel a tugging at their very soul. Their malleable form seizes, freezes, and goes still. The pain is as bad as it usually is. It feels as if they're being torn to shreds, vast soul being shoved into a canister to hold each life snuggly. A suffocating endeavor that makes them feel too-big for the space provided. It was never comfortable any longer. Not after the twentieth, not after the thirtieth. They're compacted, ensured every piece is contained, and sealed thoroughly. If they had a mouth to scream from, they likely would from the pressure encompassing their entire being. It pushed and pushed and pushed until they felt they would die from being crushed.

It fades, if only for a second, and they feel something else. It isn't discomfort, nor is it familiarity. But, there's a keen notion that falls over them before they manifest in a new world. A rightness settling into place. As if a missing puzzle piece was finally linked, finishing a beautiful masterpiece for all to view.

And they almost felt complete. 

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The being that had lived what had to have been hundreds of lives by now, was born Onimaru Nukumi to an odd woman by the name of Kaori. A girl, just like her first, with a promising vessel. She, as that's what they are now, immediately notes something off. In the top corner of the hospital room she was born into is some creature. It warbles in a frightened manner, two pairs of eyes blinking fervently while its worm-like body wriggled to and fro. Yet, it failed to move from its location.