[Naoya Zenin's voice cut like a poisoned blade, but he didn't lash out. Not here. Not on a street teeming with ordinary people.]
[For all his arrogance, the Zenin clan's heir wasn't a complete idiot.]
[If he made a scene and Windows picked up on it, he'd catch hell back home.]
["Tch. What a buzzkill."]
[He'd leave. But not before making this mediocre nobody from the same year pay a price.]
[Even if it looked like nothing more than brushing past, he'd shatter one of your arms. Leave you screaming on the ground like a dog. That ought to settle the itch crawling under his skin.]
["We're leaving."]
[He barked the order at the Kukuru Unit attendants trailing behind him, then turned as if to walk away.]
[The moment his back faced you, his lips twisted into something cruel.]
[No warning. No tell. The world inside his retinas sliced itself into twenty-four frozen frames.]
[Projection Sorcery, engaged.]
[The pride of the Zenin clan. Plot the trajectory, and for one second, the laws of physics bend to your will.]
[His body shattered past the threshold of human motion, dissolving into an afterimage no eye could track in a thousandth of a second.]
[The step that should have carried him forward was rewritten in the very first frame. Naoya twisted at a vicious, killing angle, channeling a massive surge of cursed energy through his shoulder, and launched it at your right collarbone.]
[A clean hit would pulverize half a normal sorcerer's torso.]
[Drop dead, you worthless trash!]
[Naoya screamed it inside his skull.]
[But the self-proclaimed genius had miscalculated one fatal detail.]
[Because during that endless, nightmarish simulation, you had survived by playing his dog. Countless times on that training ground, this exact speed had knocked you down, mocked you, ground you into the dirt.]
[No one in this world, save Naobito Zenin and Naoya himself, understood Projection Sorcery better than you. The startup motion. The flow of cursed energy. Even those gaps between each of the twenty-four frames.]
[That familiarity was all Phantom Night Parade needed. Your analysis of Naoya Zenin was already complete.]
[You didn't dodge. Didn't raise a standard defensive technique. You just stood there, didn't so much as blink, and reversed the cursed energy circuit inside your body.]
[In the instant before his shoulder, screaming with terrifying kinetic force, grazed the edge of your clothes, a strange, colorless, formless pulse erupted silently from your body. Like a surgeon's scalpel, it sliced into the perfect chain of frames powering Naoya's Projection Sorcery.]
["Bzzzz...!"]
[Something detonated inside Naoya's skull. It felt like a steel ball jamming into gears spinning at full speed. The twenty-four consecutive frames he'd preset, right on the verge of compiling into motion, had one frame ripped clean out by a force so brutal it defied reason.]
[Projection Sorcery's absolute backlash triggered. Fail to complete all twenty-four frames, and the sorcerer's body freezes for a full second.]
[At that velocity, it was a death sentence on wheels.]
[Naoya's body seized. Stiff as stone. All that momentum had nowhere to go, converting wholesale into uncontrolled forward pitch.]
[And right as the backlash locked every muscle in his body, right as he hurtled forward like a tripped bowling ball, you just stood there. Cold... Utterly indifferent.]
[You stuck out your right foot and gave his ankle a light hook.]
["WHAM...!!!!"]
[A dull, miserable crash echoed across the school gate, drowning out the distant traffic.]
[One second, the untouchable heir of the Zenin clan had been savoring the sound of your bones snapping. The next, he slammed face-first into the rough concrete.]
[Inertia dragged him a good half-meter across the ground.]
[The air went dead. The Zenin attendants stared like they'd seen a ghost, jaws slack, brains short-circuiting. Their young master, the one they called genius, the leading candidate for next clan head, had just... eaten dirt on flat ground? And not gracefully. Not even a little.]
["Ah... ow..."]
[A muffled groan. The one-second freeze expired, and control trickled back into Naoya's limbs.]
[What followed was a vicious, drilling pain from the bridge of his nose.]
[His hands shook as he pushed himself up, straining to lift his head. That face, sharp-featured and handsome in its cruelty, was now smeared with dust and blood. The proud, straight nose had a chunk of skin scraped clean off. Twin streaks of red ran from his nostrils to his chin, dripping onto the pavement.]
[Naoya's mind had gone blank. His concussed brain couldn't begin to process what just happened.]
[Why did the technique fail? Why wouldn't my body respond? How the hell did I end up like this in front of this nobody?]
[But when he raised his head and met your gaze through the blood smearing his vision, those cold eyes staring down at him like he was a piece of non-combustible garbage, every question evaporated. Replaced by a shame and fury.]
["You... you goddamn piece of..."]
[Cursed energy exploded from his body, warping the air around him. He locked onto you with eyes that wanted nothing more than to rip you apart on the spot.]
["I'd suggest you remember where you are, Young Master Naoya."]
[Your voice was quiet and flat. Not a ripple of emotion. But it hit like a bucket of ice water dumped over every nerve screaming for him to lose control.]
[The reminder yanked him back. His spiraling cursed energy stuttered.]
[Bloodshot eyes swept the surroundings. It was peak after-school hours. The crowd had scattered from the commotion, but a few dozen meters out, parents and bystanders had already gathered.]
[A cluster of high schoolers in uniform were pointing and whispering. Someone had their phone out, aimed right at him.]
["Hey, what happened to that guy? Tripped on flat ground, that's rough..."]
["Dressed all fancy like that, you think he's pulling some kind of scam?"]
["That's a lot of blood. Looks painful... should we call the cops?"]
[Every idle, curious, amused whisper bored into Naoya's hypersensitive ego and amplified into the most vicious mockery imaginable.]
[He could practically hallucinate the laughter. A hundred fingers pointing at his prized face, ridiculing the Zenin heir for looking like a circus clown.]
[His rage toward you didn't cool with the return of reason. It compressed. Superheated. Shame acting as the catalyst, pushing it to a new, more poisonous altitude.]
[But he'd understood the subtext. This was a civilian street.]
[Unleashing jujutsu here, causing a panic, risking civilian casualties... even if the Zenin clan had the clout to bury the fallout with the higher-ups, the scandal would be a catastrophic headache.]
[Naoya clenched his jaw so hard the muscles in his cheeks spasmed. The expression was barely human.]
[Then his venomous gaze drifted to the attendants behind him, and from there to Megumi Fushiguro, half-hidden behind you, tiny fingers clutching the back of your shirt, face tight with fear.]
[That bloodied face twisted. Rage inverted into a grin.]
["Ha... haha... I see. Today's escort is Kukuru Unit. How perfect."]
[He dragged the back of his hand roughly across his bloody mouth, staining the expensive silk cuff crimson, and fixed you with a serpent's stare.]
["Grab the brat!"]
[Kukuru...?]