[Title and blurb are both provisional]
A mountain of personal headcanons and wild changes. This has nothing to do with the original plot! Rika does not exist from the very beginning!!!
As the heir to the Fu family's hereditary technique in Luoyang, Fu Xique has been told more than once by outsiders, "What a pity she wasn't born in the same era as the strongest of our time."
But as far as the onlookers are concerned, it doesn't matter if they never get to see those two friends beat each other up. Gojo Satoru has another Special Grade successor, after all, so these two teenagers of similar age can compete with each other instead.
Fu Xique has no intention of competing for the title of strongest, but that successor clearly doesn't see things the same way. How can she tell?...
Because that Special Grade sorcerer named Okkotsu Yuta is always looking at her!
Fu Xique considers herself friendly and cheerful enough, but that gaze enveloping her like a gentle spiderweb has practically become a trademark of Okkotsu Yuta's presence.
She can't take it anymore. She decides to lay her cards on the table. "According to local custom, I should address you as Okkotsu-kun."
The somewhat melancholic boy smiles gently. "It's fine. You can just call me Yuta."
"...All right, Yuta. I think I need to make it clear that I have no designs on the title of strongest. Could you maybe stop being so nervous around me?"
The young Special Grade freezes for a moment, his peacock-blue eyes glimmering faintly. "Do you think that's why I'm nervous?"
Fu Xique is baffled. "If not, then why?"
His expression changes. His eyes, solemn and tender, cling to her face, turning almost fervently devout and hopeful, with a hint of timid anticipation. "You... don't remember?"
It's practically the sort of question you'd ask a cheating girlfriend.
Before that gaze could spill out enough threads to weave the whole area into an inescapable web, Fu Xique is deeply shaken. Carefully and cautiously, she gives the universal answer used to buy time:
"...Huh???"
Wait, wasn't I supposed to be in a feel-good, happy-life slice-of-life story? Where did this love triangle come from?!
Childhood memories usually lose their vivid, fresh-as-yesterday quality once the colorful years of adolescence begin. Somehow, Okkotsu Yuta managed to hold on to his.
When he was little, he once saw a girl his age in front of a narrow alley.
"Leave grown-up matters to the grown-ups, okay?"
A faint, strange muttering came from the depths of the alley. Before he could look, someone covered his eyes and led him onto a broad, brightly lit street, away from the chilling malice.
The girl's voice was clear, lively and light, like a graceful swallow flitting among willow branches. He heard it only once, and never again.
The person who led him away stopped at the lights of a nearby home and turned back. The only thing that entered his vision was the curved tip of a lock of hair, a deep blue as rich as an iris.
Even now, Okkotsu Yuta doesn't know who that little girl was. Fortunately, he knows the voice he heard by the alley that day came from a curse. Eight years later, he enrolled at Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Half a year into school, the boy left and began traveling around the world on assignments.
He often recalled the chance encounter from his past, hoping against hope that they might cross paths again someday. But the countless people who passed him by were all utterly ordinary.
One missed chance, then another. As he traveled back and forth across countless places, he grew accustomed to disappointment.
Until, beneath a sky bathed in purple light, a long lock of deep iris-blue hair brushed past his shoulder. A pale purple skirt fluttered, just as bright and lively as he had imagined.
She turned her face toward him. Her eyes were just like the ones he had seen in that sunset, and then she smiled, free of all gloom, as if to greet him.
See?
Okkotsu Yuta thought, I've met you again after all.
Theme: Every cause and effect has a beginning and an end
