[On the bustling modern street, the usual flow of pedestrians seemed to part around an invisible barrier.]
[Several adult men in dark haori and hakama, wooden sandals clacking against pavement. They'd formed a hunting semicircle, pinning a small figure with a backpack against the wall.]
[The one standing at the front, looming over the boy, was a young man with golden-brown tips in his hair and features so refined they bordered on unsettling. Beneath that pretty face, something venomous and flippant lurked behind his eyes.]
[Naoya Zenin. The instant you saw that face, revulsion surged from the deepest trenches of memory. Counting the time you'd spent inside those wretched simulations, it felt like years since you'd last laid eyes on this nauseating excuse for a human being.]
[Naoya was leaning forward, his slender fingers shooting out to clamp around Megumi Fushiguro's chin with zero pretense of courtesy. He squeezed, forcing the boy, barely past his sixth birthday, to tilt his head up and endure the full weight of that shameless scrutiny.]
[There was no warmth in the gesture. No trace of an elder's care. He handled the child the way a buyer might inspect a dusty piece of junk freshly arrived at an antique shop, with an arrogance that ran marrow-deep.]
["Let me get a look at you..."]
[The moment Megumi's features registered in full, Naoya's pupils contracted. A jolt of something indescribable, half thrill and half tremor, lanced down his spine and buried itself in his core.]
[The resemblance was staggering.]
[That jawline. The set of those brows. And those eyes, cold and unyielding even from a position of weakness, stubborn beneath the surface frost. A carbon copy of that man.]
[To Naoya Zenin, Toji Fushiguro was the only person he'd ever looked up to, the only figure his soul had ever worshipped. The lone wolf, proud and savage.]
[Staring at Megumi, Naoya felt a fleeting, disorienting vertigo, as though the life force of the man who'd crushed every sorcerer beneath his bare heel was somehow continuing itself inside this small body.]
[The manic thrill lasted less than a second.]
[Reality hit like ice water. The fervor in his eyes cooled instantly, replaced by a yawning chasm of disappointment and contempt.]
[His fingers didn't release the boy's chin. They tightened with deliberate malice, his expression turning thin and dismissive.]
[What a letdown. He's nothing but an ordinary, fragile little runt.]
[What Naoya worshipped was the monster who'd possessed not a single drop of Cursed Energy, who'd abandoned jujutsu entirely and still ground every rule to dust with nothing but raw physical violence. The pinnacle of brutality as art.]
[Megumi had the faintest current of Cursed Energy running through him, but his frame looked like a stiff breeze could snap it. His eyes carried stubbornness, sure, but not the viciousness Naoya craved. Not a shred of that suffocating, air-freezing pressure Toji radiated.]
[Does this frail little shell really carry that man's blood? This is an insult to Toji's very existence.]
[Then Naoya's gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, to the pool of pitch-black shadow at the boy's feet.]
[The realization that this brat, who didn't possess one ten-thousandth of Toji's presence, had awakened that technique.]
[The Ten Shadows Technique. His deepest, rawest nerve. As the legitimate heir of the Zenin Clan, Naoya had inherited the formidable Projection Sorcery. He considered himself a once-in-a-generation talent, destined for the summit of the jujutsu world.]
[And yet. Of all people. This castoff, this boy sold by his own father as a bargaining chip, had drawn the Zenin Clan's most exalted, highest-ceiling hereditary technique, the one every clan head for centuries had dreamed of seeing reborn.]
[He knew too well the greedy, feverish gleam that had filled those eyes when the clan elders learned the Ten Shadows Technique had resurfaced.]
[Why? Why does the best of everything fall into the hands of trash who's good for nothing?]
[The jealousy burned hot, but Naoya's ice-cold political instincts smothered it before it could spread. He was a man consumed by ambition. The next clan head's seat belonged to him and no one else.]
[So what if the kid has the Ten Shadows? With a personality this spineless, too afraid to even fight back while someone grabs his chin, he'll never amount to anything. Naoya calculated behind his sneer. Let that clueless idiot Gojo take him. As long as the brat stays out of the Zenin Clan, the seat is secure.
But if one day, the boy actually fulfills the Ten Shadows' potential...]
[Something genuinely lethal flickered in the depths of Naoya's eyes. The killing intent was tangible enough to lock Megumi's entire body rigid. Yet on the surface, Naoya's expression flipped like a switch. He released the boy's reddened chin and gave him a patronizing pat on the head, all hollow smiles and no warmth.]
["So you're the son Toji sold to the Zenin Clan?"]
["Since you lucked into the Ten Shadows Technique, I suppose you'd better cling to life and try your hardest. Just don't embarrass the Zenin name out here, kid."]
[Megumi's teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. His small frame went taut as a bowstring. Fists balled at his sides, knuckles white, nails biting into his palms hard enough to draw crescents of blood. He didn't beg. Didn't make a sound.]
[Naoya's hand rose again, fingers loaded with that same degrading force, reaching for the top of the boy's head.]
[Crack.]
[A sound so sharp it split the suffocating air like a gunshot.]
[A hand shot in from the side, swatted Naoya's hovering palm away from Megumi's head with ruthless precision.]
["Get your filthy hands off him."]
["Hah? Who the hell are you?"]
["Oh... I was wondering. You're that dog who follows Gojo around and copies other people's techniques."]
[Once he'd confirmed your identity, that trademark grin of his, the one calibrated to make blood boil, stretched wider. He drew out every syllable, dripping with superiority.]
["Let me get this straight. You were in the same class as Gojo and Suguru Geto, and the best you could scrape together was a 'Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer' rank by riding coattails? And you think you can look at me like that?"]
[In the intelligence networks of the jujutsu world, your profile was a pale shadow next to your two dazzling Special Grade classmates. The consensus on you hadn't changed: "Barely scraping by with a half-baked Copy technique." "Mediocre combat ability, completely eclipsed by Gojo's spotlight." "Grade 2 sorcerer."]
[So to Naoya, heir to the Big Three Sorcerer Families, already possessing Grade 1 strength and an ego to match, you weren't worth the effort of a direct glance. Acknowledging your existence felt like a waste of his time.]
[What he could never have known was the memory surging through your mind at that moment, vivid and soaked in blood.]
[In your earliest simulation, desperate for the truth and any scrap of intelligence about this world, you'd chosen to endure.]
[And how had it ended? This arrogant young lord had used you as a human shield without a second thought, discarding you alongside the Cursed Spirit that killed you. The humiliation and despair of being thrown away like garbage had seared itself into your soul, simulator barrier or not.]
["Hey, if you're a dog, then act like one and protect your master." His cold, mocking voice from that time still echoed through you, undimmed by the simulations that separated then from now.]
[You stared at the face before you. The humiliation stockpiled across past simulations fused seamlessly with the fury of the present.]
[You didn't retreat a single step. Your eyes held no trace of the deference owed to a Zenin heir. Only the bone-deep disgust and frigid pity one might feel looking at a corpse already rotting from the inside.]
["Take your people. Get out of my sight."]
[You didn't bother with a single polite particle. Your voice was terrifyingly level, yet it carried the weight of an order that left no room for discussion.]
[Naoya went still. Outside of Gojo and Toji, no nameless nobody had ever dared speak to him with this kind of naked disrespect. The false smile dissolved from his face like a crumbling mask, replaced by something twisted and dark. A vein pulsed at his temple.]
["What's with that look in your eyes..."]
["A Grade 2 nobody who survives by clinging to someone stronger... Don't you think you're overestimating your own worth?"]