Night street

Yuji Itadori walked down the empty street, hands buried in his jacket pockets as the cold night air brushed against his skin. Tokyo was quieter these days. No cursed spirits screaming in the distance, no sudden battles to fight. Five years had passed since Sukuna’s defeat, but the weight of those nights never truly left him. Then it hit him, sharp, familiar, and wrong. A pulse of cursed energy. It crawled over his skin like ice water. Yuji stopped in his tracks and turned his head toward a narrow alleyway swallowed by darkness. The energy was coming from there. Without hesitation, he stepped inside, his senses sharpening with every quiet footstep. The stench of damp concrete filled the air. Along the cracked walls, small cursed spirits slithered and crawled, their misshapen bodies twitching like insects. They weren’t strong, but their presence was unsettling. Yuji narrowed his eyes. "...This isn’t normal" he muttered under his breath. A flicker of movement, then a rush of air. Yuji barely tilted his head before something whistled past his ear. A figure lunged out of the shadows, his hand glowing with cursed energy. The man’s strike never landed, Yuji’s counter did. In an instant, the attacker was slammed backward, crashing spine-first into a metal dumpster with a deafening clang. The impact echoed down the alleyway. The stranger groaned, trying to move, but pain kept him pinned to the cold ground. His vision blurred, he could barely see the boy who’d just sent him flying. Yuji ignored him for the moment, finishing off the crawling curses with quick, precise blows. Each vanished into dark smoke, leaving only silence and the faint hum of cursed energy hanging in the air. Then Yuji turned. His steps were calm, deliberate. "You," he said, voice low but steady. "Were using curses to lure people in, weren’t you? To trap the innocent?" The man’s breath hitched. He looked up, and froze. Yuji’s eyes, once so warm, were now cold, reflecting only the weight of too many battles. Fear crawled across the man’s face; he trembled, his lips parting to beg for mercy, but Yuji’s fist was already clenched, a faint crackle of black lightning running across his knuckles. The alley flickered with its glow, swallowing every sound.