The room smelled of antiseptic and quiet surrender.
It was a pale, colorless place, where time seemed to pool in the corners like stagnant water. Machines whispered in soft, unfeeling rhythms beside the bed, their thin green lines crawling across black screens like the last proof that a heart was still trying.
The ceiling above Richard Carlton was an unfamiliar sky he had memorized too well—cracks like constellations, stains shaped like continents he would never visit. Even the light entering through the narrow window felt tired, filtered through blinds that had long given up on hope.
Richard lay unmoving, a fragile thing swallowed by white sheets.
Terminally ill. That was the phrase the doctors used when they spoke in hushed, professional tones outside his room, as though softer voices might soften reality.
But the truth was crueler than any medical term. His disease had no name. Modern medicine—so proud of its miracles—had stared into his blood, his organs, his breaking body, and come up empty-handed. There was no cure to chase, no miracle surgery to pin hope on. Just a countdown with no visible clock.
His bones ached as though they were tired of existing. Even breathing felt like work his body resented doing.
Nurses came and went, their shoes whispering across the polished floor. At first, they had looked at him with open pity. Now, most of them avoided his eyes. Not out of cruelty—but because meeting the gaze of someone already halfway gone was a reminder of a truth no one liked to sit with for too long. Richard noticed it. He noticed everything. And he was tired of being noticed in that way.
He was tired of being pitied.
His family was wealthy—so wealthy that money had tried, and failed, to save him. His parents visited when they could. His siblings came too, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with forced smiles and rehearsed optimism. But Richard saw through them. In their eyes, he caught fleeting moments of mourning for someone who was technically still alive. They had already begun to let him go.
And that hurt more than the disease ever did.
He had lived eighteen years without truly living. Five foot nine, short black hair, blood-crimson eyes that felt too vivid for a body so weak—he had been born fragile, almost crippled from the start. Hospitals had been his childhood playgrounds. Beeping machines had been his lullabies. The world outside his window might as well have been another universe.
The only thing that had ever belonged to him—truly belonged to him—were stories.
Animated series. Novels. Worlds where people fought monsters, saved cities, burned brightly even if they died young. Worlds where pain meant growth, and suffering meant transformation. Worlds where weak boys could become something more.
Today, his trembling fingers held a tablet close to his chest. The familiar glow painted his pale face as the last episode of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen ended.
The screen faded to black.
Richard let out a slow, hollow breath.
"How fitting," he murmured to the empty room. "Watching people fight death… right before I meet mine."
The battles, the curses, the sorcerers who stood between humanity and annihilation—it all felt so close to his heart. Not because of the violence, but because of the defiance. Even when they were terrified, they stood. Even when they were broken, they fought. Even when the world was cruel, they refused to bow.
He envied that kind of strength.
His eyelids grew heavy. His body had always been quick to surrender to exhaustion, as though sleep was practice for the final rest waiting for him. As he drifted, his thoughts tangled around images of cursed spirits, neon-lit streets, desperate fights beneath shattered skylines. He imagined, foolishly, that maybe—just once—he could see those characters in person.
Just once, before he vanished.
He knew it was wishful thinking.
And then, the world changed.
When Richard forced his eyes open again, he expected the same ceiling. The same beeping machines. The same soft-footed nurses who would pretend not to see the way he stared at nothing.
Instead, cold air kissed his skin.
He lay on damp concrete, the smell of rust and old rain clinging to his lungs. The narrow space around him was swallowed in shadow—brick walls rising like silent witnesses on either side. Somewhere far above, neon lights bled into the night, casting trembling reflections down the wet alley floor.
He sat up.
And froze.
His body moved.
No pain. No weakness. No crushing weight in his chest. His limbs responded like they belonged to him, truly belonged to him, for the first time in his life. His breath came easy. His heartbeat was steady. Alive.
"I'm… standing?" he whispered.
He looked down.
The hospital gown still clung to his thin frame, absurd and out of place in the grimy alleyway. But his bones no longer screamed. His muscles didn't tremble. The sickness that had defined his existence was simply… gone.
In the distance, rising beyond the maze of buildings, a towering skyscraper pierced the night sky. Neon letters burned across its surface.
Tokyo.
Richard's blood ran cold.
"I was in California," he murmured. "This… this isn't—"
The word Tokyo echoed in his mind, dragging memories with it. Streets of a place soaked in chaos. Crowds swallowed by horror. The kind of place where people died screaming beneath curses no one else could see.
This reminds him of the Tokyo from the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
"Impossible." Shaking his head, he rebuked his crazy thought, as his heart thundered with him pinching himself. Hard. Once. Twice. Again.
It hurt.
He laughed—a broken, disbelieving sound that scraped out of his throat. "I'm not dreaming."
"Then, how am I here ?"
"How did i appear here from the hospital ?. And my body ..."
As the thought formed, reality shimmered.
A translucent purple interface unfolded before his eyes, hovering in the air like a living screen. Symbols glowed. Lines of alien text rearranged themselves with mechanical precision.
[INFINITE TEMPLATE SYSTEM INITIALIZED !]
[BOUND TO HOST: RICHARD CARLTON !]
His breath caught.
"A system…?" he whispered, awe and disbelief colliding in his chest. He had read about this. Watched it happen to characters who crossed into new worlds and were gifted cheats beyond reason.
"I don't think am dreaming" he muttered.
"Where am I?" he asked hoarsely. "Why am I here? What do you do?"
The response came without warmth. Completely mechanical.
[HOST DESIRED WORLD SELECTED FOR WORLD TRAVERSAL]
[SYSTEM FUNCTION ONE: ENABLE MULTIVERSAL TRAVEL ACROSS FICTIONAL AND NON FICTIONAL MULTIVERSES]
[MULTIVERSAL TRAVERSAL: INACTIVE. 100% TEMPLATE SYNCHRONIZATION REQUIRED]
[SYSTEM FUNCTION TWO: TEMPLATE DRAW: ACTIVE.]
[EACH TEMPLATE IMBUES HOST WITH POWERS AND ABILITIES OF SELECTED ENTITY.]
[SYSTEM FUNCTION THREEE: INACTIVE. 100% TEMPLATE SYNCHRONIZATION REQUIRED]
Richard's hands trembled.
"You sent me here… because I was thinking about this world?"
[CONFIRMED. FIRST DESTINATION DESIGNATED BY HOST'S MOST RECENT OBSESSION.]
[THE WOLRD OF JUJUTSU KAISEN]
Shock gave way to a cold, crawling fear, mixed with explosive excitement.
"Jujutsu Kaisen ?!"
"And I am in Tokyo?!"
Tokyo wasn't just a place—it was a future catastrophe waiting to happen. He knew what would unfold here. He knew how merciless this world could be.
Cursed spirits didn't care about second chances.
A shiver ran down his spine.
Richard didn't know what point in time of the story he had arrived in, and the system wasn't giving him an answer to that. But seeing as Tokyo isn't yet destroyed, he concluded it must be early in the story.
"Then I need power," he said, voice tight.
The alley felt suddenly too narrow. Too exposed. This was a world where monsters slipped out of shadows and devoured the unprepared. Lingering here, powerless, was a slow suicide.
The purple interface flared.
[INITIATING TEMPLATE DRAW .....]
A roulette of light spun before him—sigils, names, silhouettes of figures from countless worlds. The air hummed with something ancient and divine.
The wheel slowed.
Stopped.
[TEMPLATE ACQUIRED: MOB. ORIGIN WORLD: Mob Psycho 100.]
Richard's eyes widened.
Mob.
A boy who carried storms in his heart. A gentle soul with godlike power, emotions sealed behind fragile calm. A being whose psychic force could shatter cities when his feelings overflowed.
"That's… insane," Richard breathed, awe blooming into wild hope. "Mob was basically a demi-god right ?"
Without hesitation, Richard commanded the system to integrate.
Foreign energy blossomed inside him—not violent, not cruel, but vast. It unfolded through his mind like a sunrise breaking through fog. His thoughts stretched, expanded, touching edges he had never known existed. Knowledge flooded in: psychic control, emotional thresholds, the terrifying truth of what lay beyond them.
The system displayed his status.
[SYNCHRONIZATION: 8%.]
[AVAILABLE ABILITIES: LIMITED PSYCHOKINESIS, ENHANCED PERCEPTION, MINOR EMOTIONAL RESONANCE.]
Only eight percent—and Richard already felt like a different being.
"What happens at a hundred…?" he whispered, equal parts terrified and exhilarated.
"I can't wait to test these powers"
The joy of movement, of breath, of simple existence welled in Richard's chest until it hurt. For the first time, life wasn't something happening to him—it was something he could step into.
He was still alone. Still wearing a hospital gown in a back alley in a city that would soon become a battlefield.
But he was alive.
Truly alive.
"I'll live," Richard said softly, a promise forged in trembling breath. "I'll live the life I never got to."
He stepped out of the alley, into the glowing streets of Tokyo—toward danger, toward wonder, toward a world that didn't know his name yet.
And for once, he didn't feel like a boy waiting to die.
He felt like someone about to begin.