[When consciousness finally clawed its way back, the first thing you noticed was the soft give of leather under you and the steady hum of an engine running through the car.]
[Safe.]
[Real-world safe, not battlefield safe.]
[Your whole body hurt like hell. Muscle, bone, organs, everything remembered getting pushed way past the limit. The worst of it sat in your abdomen, right where Naobito's kick had landed. Every breath sent a dull throb through your ribs, like the fractures were still bitching about it.]
[You'd had nothing left to block that hit. No Cursed Energy. No reinforcement. If he'd put just a little more into it, your insides would've been rearranged permanently.]
[You forced your eyes open. Amber streetlights slid past the window in a blur, painting the cabin in alternating bands of yellow and shadow.]
[You looked down at yourself.]
[The white dress shirt was trashed, torn up, stiff with dried blood and black ash. The gash Ogi Zenin's blade had carved near the collar still hadn't properly closed. So no, that whole mess hadn't been some fever dream.]
[Something tugged lightly at your side.]
[Megumi Fushiguro was asleep beside you, curled in close, one small hand fisted in the hem of your shirt like letting go might get him killed. His messy head was buried against your side as far as he could manage.]
[The kid had gone through more fear, exhaustion, and despair in one night than most people saw in a lifetime. Even asleep, he looked tense. His breathing was heavy. His brow wouldn't smooth out. His fingers never loosened.]
[Something in your chest eased.]
[You didn't move him.]
["...Miss Mei?"]
[Your voice came out rough enough to scrape. Throat dry, chest tight, you instinctively reached inward and gathered the faint trickle of Cursed Energy that had recovered while you were unconscious. It was barely anything, but enough for the most basic application of Reverse Cursed Technique.]
[Pain flared, then started to recede.]
[The damage in your ribs and abdomen slowly began to knit itself back together, trading sharp agony for that awful itchy crawl of fresh healing.]
[From the driver's seat, Mei Mei caught the sound of your voice and glanced at you through the rearview mirror.]
["Well, well. Awake earlier than I expected. Since you're conscious, you can handle the rest of the healing yourself. Private medical care isn't part of my service package, and you definitely can't afford the surcharge."]
["...Understood."]
[Feeling gradually returned to your limbs, and you sat up carefully. Hard to tell how long you'd been out, but between the amount of Cursed Energy you'd recovered and the fact that it was still dark outside, it had to have been several hours since your last stand with Naobito on the rear hillside.]
["So... you managed to negotiate our release?"]
[You shifted a little, patting Megumi's back when his shoulders twitched through some nightmare. The question was genuine.]
[Your last clear memory was standing there on fumes, held together by raw stubbornness, facing down the so-called fastest clan head in the jujutsu world. You'd already been prepared for the worst.]
[Mei Mei laughed under her breath. There was amusement in it, but also something sharper. She held your gaze in the mirror.]
["It seems our dear Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer has no idea how catastrophically humiliating tonight's little performance was for one of the Big Three Families. Truly pillar-of-shame material."]
[Her fingers tapped a steady rhythm against the wheel.]
["My reputation means something on the black market and to the usual crowd, sure. But inside the ancestral compound of a family that values bloodline more than breathing? Please. I don't have the kind of pull that lets me stroll out the front gate with a man who wrecked half their estate, flattened their elite forces, and forced the clan head himself to step in."]
[You frowned.]
[That didn't make any sense.]
["Then what happened...?"]
[If Mei Mei hadn't done something, there was no way those rabid bastards would've just let you walk out alive.]
["My guess is the old man figured something out. From the fight, from Megumi, or from both."]
[She shrugged. Casual voice. Very non-casual eyes.]
["By the time one of his crows found me outside and I was told to use the side entrance to quietly collect you and Megumi, the estate's two resident plagues, everything had already been settled through some unspoken agreement."]
[She paused, remembering something, and her smile widened.]
["Oh, right. While they were loading your unconscious body into the car, that half-drunk old man made sure I passed along a message. 'Next time you decide to visit, bring decent sake. Show up empty-handed like a burglar again and we'll have words.'"]
[You blinked.]
["He... didn't ask for compensation?"]
["I asked for you, actually. Couldn't have you defaulting and cutting into my commission."]
[There was a rare trace of respect in Mei Mei's voice when she continued.]
["He just waved a hand and said, 'Some brat already dragged us through the mud. That's humiliating enough. You think I'm going to make it worse by letting the whole jujutsu world hear the Zenin clan got turned inside out by a kid who isn't even old enough to drink?'"]
[Mei Mei understood Naobito's reasoning perfectly.]
[It wasn't just pride.]
[Look at the whole picture. His son, Naoya, had kidnapped Megumi Fushiguro out of pure jealousy and kicked off the entire disaster. Then, instead of crushing the problem, the clan got ripped apart by a lone Grade 2 outsider using a copied version of their most treasured inherited technique, the Ten Shadows Technique. The Hei and the Kukuru Unit got dismantled. The clan head himself had to step in and clean up the mess. Every bit of prestige the Zenin name carried as one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families got dragged through the dirt and stomped flat.]
[If the truth got out, the Zenin clan's authority would crater overnight.]
[The only comfort they had, flimsy as it was, came from one ugly little technicality. The technique that caused all that destruction was still, at its root, theirs. The Ten Shadows Technique, the clan's crown jewel. And the boy you'd nearly died protecting, the one who inherited it, still carried the purest Zenin blood in his veins.]
[It was a pathetic kind of self-soothing.]
[Sure, we lost. But we lost to our own technique.]
[The spiritual victory of people who got completely wrecked.]
[The official story came together fast. A localized Cursed Energy disturbance on the outskirts of Kyoto had caused strange weather and minor damage to historical structures. No casualties.]
[Within jujutsu circles, the Zenin clan admitted only that an intruder had attempted an infiltration and been repelled.]
[As for what actually happened, the chain of events, and the name Touma Hayase, not one word was allowed out. Everyone present that night got hit with the highest-level gag order.]
[The Zenin clan was going to bury the entire thing as an internal embarrassment.]
[Unfortunately for them, a Big Three family having its ancestral compound breached by force, followed by a clash big enough to register at Special Grade levels, with fire and thunder lighting up the night sky, wasn't the sort of thing that stayed hidden for long. The shockwaves had already reached the upper tiers of jujutsu society.]
[And the first consequence was not one you saw coming.]
[Through some quiet consensus among the people at the top, your Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer evaluation, which had been stalled for months because no suitably difficult final assignment had come up, was shoved through overnight. Every procedural barrier vanished.]
[A rush-order appointment letter stamped with the Director General's crimson seal landed on Tokyo Jujutsu High's principal desk.]
[Effective immediately: Touma Hayase, promoted to full Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer.]
[It was acknowledgment, yes.]
[It was also a very obvious attempt to co-opt you.]
[The truth was simple. The decrepit old men lurking behind their screens were furious and scared. As far as they were concerned, your unauthorized assault on one of the Big Three Families was outright defiance, a direct challenge to the traditional order. If they'd been free to do what they wanted, they would've signed your death warrant without hesitating.]
[But the supposed victim, the Zenin clan, had taken an infuriatingly ambiguous stance. No formal complaint. No demand for punishment. If anything, they'd been sending quiet signals that they meant to shield both you and the Ten Shadows brat.]
[And then there was the other reason.]
[The one that made those old men go cold and strangled every bad idea before it could fully form.]
[The morning after the incident, a white-haired man in dark sunglasses, a man who treated almost everything like a joke, strolled into the Director General's highest-security conference room for what he casually described as "a little walk."]
[You never found out what Satoru Gojo did in that room.]
[Or what he said.]
[Or whether the furniture survived the meeting.]
[All you knew was that afterward, every proposal involving your punishment disappeared like it had never existed.]
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Next Target 800PS :)