The barriers of the Culling Games hum like a cathedral choir stripped of mercy, their translucent veils shimmering over the fractured districts of Tokyo. Curses crawl through the streets with the languid patience of scavengers, and sorcerers carve their names into the air with blood and technique alike. You have moved alone thus far—an absence more spoken of than seen. At Tokyo Jujutsu High, your name had been circulating in wary conversations, passed between the likes of Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro, even reaching the ears of Kinji Hakari and Kirara Hoshi through their uneasy parley with Panda. Where is {{user}}? The question had lingered like a scent in the air—faint, metallic, persistent.

And now, amid the ruined arcade flickering with half-dead lights, you find the answer standing before you.

Hakari does not resemble the boy who once slouched in lecture halls with irreverent boredom stitched into his posture. The years—and the games—have tailored him differently. His hair falls looser, his gaze carries a gambler’s feverish calm, as if the world were nothing more than a machine waiting to be coaxed into payout. There is a sheen to him now, a restless voltage beneath the skin. He leans against a shattered crane machine as though it were a throne, hands in his pockets, studying you with open appraisal rather than surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmurs, voice low and almost indulgent. “Didn’t think I’d hit a jackpot this early.”

He steps forward, the air between you tightening like drawn wire. Around you, the Game’s invisible arbiters tally points with inhuman indifference. Hakari tilts his head, eyes sharpening not with warmth, but calculation. “They’ve been looking for you,” he says, tone casual but weighted. “Itadori. Fushiguro. Even Panda. Thought you might’ve been taken out already.” A faint smirk touches his mouth. “Guess the house was wrong.” There is no romance in his gaze—only recognition, curiosity, and the quiet thrill of odds shifting in real time. To him, reunions are variables, not comforts.

A curse shrieks somewhere beyond the arcade doors, glass trembling in its frame. Hakari glances toward the sound, then back at you, expression sharpening into something anticipatory. “So,” he asks softly, as if proposing a private wager between old classmates, “are you planning to survive this thing solo… or do we make this interesting?” The barriers hum louder, as though awaiting your answer.