"Why" - Chapter 13
"I have a cursed technique... Red Stitch."
The words hung in the air, soft but heavy.
Ren sat up slowly, his body trembling, every limb screaming exhaustion. It felt like he'd been flattened by a truck—twice. His arms ached like they'd been stretched too far, his legs jittered like they didn't know how to stand anymore, and his mind…
His mind was the worst part. Fuzzy. Overheated. Like a thousand thoughts were trying to scream through a single keyhole.
But even through the fog and the pain, he smiled.
Because something had changed.
No—*everything* had changed.
He flexed his fingers, and there it was: thin red strands, no thicker than thread, unspooled from his fingertips. They shimmered slightly, pulsing with his cursed energy. They moved as he willed them to—like soft, obedient puppets dancing in his hands.
It was delicate.
It was strange.
And it was *his*.
"Red Stitch," he whispered again.
It didn't sound like a name Gojō would say. It didn't sound like the kind of cursed technique you feared. It wasn't Limitless. It wasn't Ten Shadows. It wasn't anything famous or special.
It was *weird*. Web-like. Subtle. Built around control and manipulation, not raw power.
Ren stared at the red strings moving between his fingers and chuckled. "What the hell is this?"
He didn't feel strong. Not really. His body was still sore. His cursed energy had been nearly depleted from the feedback he got from Kai. And yet...
He could *feel* the technique now.
It was like breathing. Like it had always been there—locked behind a door he never knew how to open until now.
But the real question hit him next.
"Why?"
He asked it out loud, voice cracking in the silence of the apartment.
Why *this* technique?
Why *now*?
He remembered how it happened. The feedback from Kai. The unfiltered cursed energy tearing through him. That violent synchronization—if you could call it that—between Kai's curse and his own.
So was it… because of Kai?
Kai had been a spider-ant hybrid of some sort. Was that related?
Had Ren absorbed part of his structure, his cursed blueprint?
Or…
Ren's smile faded.
Or was Red Stitch always inside him?
Did he awaken something that was *his* all along?
He didn't know which answer he preferred. Both scared him in different ways.
He thought back to everything he knew from the manga. He'd read it two—no, three times. From beginning to end. He could name every major technique, every clan ability, even the obscure ones from side characters.
But never, not once, had he heard of "Red Stitch."
It wasn't in the books.
Wasn't in the lore.
Wasn't anything that should *exist*.
"Gega never wrote this..." Ren whispered. "So what the hell am I?"
He leaned back against the wall, letting his head rest against the cool plaster. Sweat clung to his forehead. His breath was slow and shaky.
There were only two answers he could accept:
**One**—Red Stitch was such a weak technique that even Gega, the creator of this world, never bothered to mention it. Maybe it belonged to some faceless background sorcerer, one whose name never even got a panel.
**Or two**—Ren was an error. A bug in the system.
He wasn't supposed to exist here. And Red Stitch was just… the manifestation of that wrongness.
A leftover piece of himself from a world that didn't run on cursed energy.
He let the strings wrap around his fingers and form a spiral. They twirled between his knuckles like a tiny red helix, shifting shapes with little more than thought.
Ren smiled again.
Weak or not, he had something now.
Something *real*.
He pulled the threads tight between his fingers and made a crude net, just to see how far he could stretch it.
The cursed energy stayed consistent. Light, but dense. Almost like muscle memory was baked into it.
"Fine," he whispered. "It's not a flashy move. It's not a domain. But it's mine."
He stared at the string, watching it tighten and loosen with each breath.
"I'll make it work. Even if it's weak."
The threads curled into a loose circle.
"I'll turn this into something no one's ever seen."
His breathing steadied. His thoughts slowed.
He played with the string like a kid with yarn—testing how fast he could move it, how thin he could stretch it before it flickered out of existence.
And somewhere, deep inside all the pain and fear, a new emotion began to bloom.
Hope.