Crawling Through Fire - Chapter 9
Ren stared at the ceiling of his dim apartment, the flicker of morning light slipping through the blinds and casting striped shadows across his face.
He hadn't slept much. Again.
But he was getting used to that.
There was no time to sleep—not really.
Every day, every hour, every breath he wasted not improving was another second closer to death. The world of Jujutsu Kaisen didn't wait. It didn't pause for him to catch up. It devoured the weak, and Ren Sato? He was still painfully weak.
That's why he was about to try something stupid.
Again.
He whispered the words with a trembling breath:
"For the next minute, my sensitivity to cursed energy will be amplified. In exchange, my cursed energy usage will double. I cannot stop this vow until it ends, or I suffer backlash."
He had rehearsed the wording carefully, trying to be specific without anchoring himself into a corner. But as the vow settled—thick and iron-clad—he realized immediately…
He had underestimated it.
A floodgate opened.
His senses exploded.
It wasn't just like seeing cursed energy—it was like drowning in it. Every pulse of his own energy flared like a scream in his bones. It ran over his skin like static electricity and fire and glass shards rolled into one. He could feel the cursed energy from the broken talismans in the corner. From the faint spiritual residue in the walls.
He could even feel the dull, pulsing echo of something outside the apartment—something far, hungry, and old.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed to the floor, convulsing lightly, his hands curled into fists against the tatami.
The vow had begun.
And he had fifty-eight seconds to survive it.
---
It wasn't pain like a wound.
It was pain like his body was rebelling from the inside out. Like his soul had turned against him, forcing him to confront the truth of how bad his cursed energy flow actually was.
Every leak. Every inefficiency. Every tiny flicker of wasted energy.
He felt it.
I just noticed it. Felt it.
Each ounce of cursed energy lost was like a tiny knife sliding under his skin.
And there were so, so many knives.
The first twenty seconds were an exercise in grit.
The next ten were pure madness.
His mind scrambled for a solution, any kind of mental image or breath control or focus technique to stabilize the agony—but everything slipped through his fingers.
He couldn't move without triggering more pain.
He couldn't speak without his cursed energy flaring violently.
He couldn't think clearly.
So he didn't try to fix it anymore.
He just endured.
Second after second.
Agony after agony.
Until the vow ended.
And then—nothing.
Just silence.
No more pressure. No more heat.
Ren lay on the floor, chest rising and falling like he'd run a marathon in the middle of a volcano. He stared up at the ceiling, dazed.
A full minute passed before he sat up.
Two before he could reach the sink.
Three before he spoke again.
"…worth it," he croaked, laughing softly.
---
DAY TWO
The pain had faded, but not the lesson.
That binding vow had shown him the real map of his cursed energy flow.
Broken, inefficient, chaotic.
But it gave him something else, too.
A blueprint.
Now he could sense, just faintly, where he was going wrong.
And with that came opportunity.
Ren sat in front of his mirror, holding his hand out.
He whispered—not a vow, not a command, just a focused intention—and tried again.
A shimmer.
Just a flicker of cursed energy on his fingertip.
He grinned.
It stayed.
For ten whole seconds.
Then fizzled.
But he had done it.
---
DAY THREE
It wasn't just one finger now.
It was two.
Then three.
Then his palm.
He could hold cursed energy in specific locations, like small pools waiting for use.
It wasn't usable in combat—not yet. It was too slow, too unstable.
But it was progress.
He noted every detail in his journal.
- Right-hand dominant for energy flow.
- Left hand is easier to stabilize but slower to start.
- Holding breath stabilized flow for up to 2 seconds longer.
He was becoming an expert in his own cursed energy. Not through genius. Not through natural talent.
But through brutal, methodical trial and error.
---
DAY FOUR
That day was tough.
Everything refused to work.
Cursed energy leaked faster. His focus shattered constantly. He fell into old patterns.
Maybe he was tired.
Maybe he needed rest.
But he didn't stop.
He couldn't.
He ran the same drills until midnight. His knuckles were red from tapping the walls. His throat was dry from whispering commands.
And when it was over—he smiled again.
Even failure was information.
Even pain was a teacher.
---
DAY FIVE
Yuta.
He found him.
It had taken hours of digging through forums, small-town news, and school rumors.
Eventually, he triangulated three supernatural incidents in a suburban ward of Tokyo—each about a week apart. Faint reports of objects twisting, screaming in empty classrooms, and shadows following students.
He rode a train out to the ward.
Sat at a café across the street from a school.
And watched.
He didn't get close.
Didn't make contact.
But he saw Yuta.
A pale, tired boy.
Thin.
Scared.
Haunted.
And beside him—though no one else could see—it stood.
Rika.
Ren's breath hitched when he saw it. A glimmering, pulsating thing that hovered at Yuta's side like a curse made of grief.
It was beautiful.
And terrifying.
And maybe—just maybe—his only real chance.
---
That night, Ren returned home and looked around his wrecked apartment.
The walls had small cracks.
The floor had warped near the center from repeated impact.
Even the ceiling looked like it had a bruise.
He couldn't train here much longer.
He needed space.