[The liquor burned all the way down, less like drinking and more like swallowing a strip of fire. Heat burst in your stomach a second later.]
[You had zero tolerance for alcohol. Absolutely none. The aged jizake hit like a truck, harsh enough to make you choke on the first swallow and break into a fit of coughing.]
["Kh... cough!"]
[You coughed until your eyes watered. Your face turned red from the effort, and from the alcohol, which honestly was not helping your dignity.]
[Still, that embarrassing little display did what a careful explanation never could. It proved your earlier "I don't drink" hadn't been polite refusal. You meant it.]
[Naobito's sharp stare eased a fraction. Not much, but enough. There was even a flicker of amusement in his eyes before he bothered to hide it.]
[This was the Zenin estate. A place where people learned to wear masks before they were old enough to tie their own clothes right. Scheming was basic survival here. So watching you get wrecked by a single cup and go red in the face carried a weird kind of honesty. To a man who'd spent his whole life reading people, that mattered. At minimum, it told him you weren't one of those smiling bastards who bowed with one hand and stabbed with the other.]
[Naobito stroked his chin, watched you finally get your breathing back under control, and asked the question he'd clearly been holding onto since before you sat down.]
["A while ago, that brat Satoru Gojo, the one who thinks the world has no rules, told me Toji's bastard son was his concern. But looking at you now... things don't seem that simple, do they, Touma Hayase?"]
[You wiped the corner of your mouth, took a few slow breaths, and forced the heat in your chest and the churn in your stomach back down.]
[When you looked up again, the calm was back. Your posture straightened, your expression settled, and you met the head of the Zenin clan without wavering.]
["Toji entrusted Megumi to Gojo before he died. That's true. But you know what it means to be the strongest in jujutsu society. His schedule is ridiculous. The number of missions he gets is beyond unreasonable. He doesn't have the time to patiently raise a child who's only just awakened his technique and is still figuring himself out. So after discussing it properly, he formally handed Megumi Fushiguro's training over to me."]
["I see... so you're the teacher."]
[Naobito rolled the cup slowly between his fingers, thinking. A second later his eyes sharpened again.]
["I can tell that boy matters to you. To you, and to the Gojo clan. So explain this to me. If that's true, why were you the only one who came charging into this lion's den that night?"]
[The point was obvious. Gojo was Megumi's official guardian. You could have brought the strongest sorcerer alive and let him handle it. So why stake everything on a near-suicidal solo run?]
[You didn't dodge the question. Your voice stayed level when you answered.]
["Because if Gojo had come that night, this would not have ended peacefully."]
[Naobito's grip tightened around his cup.]
[He got it immediately. If Satoru Gojo had shown up angry, the Zenin clan's losses that night wouldn't have ended at a smashed courtyard and a few heavily injured men. The whole balance of power among the Big Three Families might have been blown apart on the spot.]
[But that still left one problem. Naobito frowned harder, a deep line settling between his brows.]
["I still don't get it. Fine, you kept Gojo out. But after you won, you could've taken the boy and vanished in the confusion. You were already spent. Empty. Instead you stayed there and waited for me to come deal with you. What was that? Were you trying to mock the Zenin clan?"]
["No. You're reading it wrong."]
[You shook your head, and your next words came out so plainly they could have been about returning a library book.]
["Naoya taking Megumi was the first wrong. But me forcing my way into the Zenin estate is a separate issue. No matter why I did it, I still injured people. I still damaged this place. Someone has to answer for that."]
["..."]
[That answer bought a long silence, the kind that hit harder than shouting.]
[What you'd said was flawless. Morally clean. Full of responsibility. There wasn't a crack in it anywhere.]
[And that was exactly why it was so strange.]
[No jujutsu sorcerer talked like this.]
[This was a world full of curses, murder, lunatics, and people clawing over each other for power. So what kind of sorcerer storms one of the Big Three compounds, tears it apart, burns through every scrap of his own strength, and then sits there waiting to get punished because he feels bad about the property damage?]
[And just like that, Naobito finally put a name to the wrongness he'd felt from the moment you stepped into the room.]
[You were too normal.]
[Compared to the twisted, power-drunk, cold-blooded sorcerers raised in old jujutsu families, your sense of order and responsibility was more normal than most ordinary people walking around outside.]
[Then another thought struck him, and a chill crawled up his back.]
[In a world this insane, someone who could keep that kind of rigid, almost painfully ordinary morality, while also carrying enough power to force that "normal" onto reality, even at the cost of his own life...]
[Wasn't that its own kind of distortion? A very specific one. Yours, Touma Hayase. Maybe the worst kind of all.]
[Naobito looked into your clear eyes, and something unexpected rose in his chest.]
[Gratitude.]
[Compared to the other path, the one Toji had once arranged as a cold transaction, buying Megumi Fushiguro back and throwing him into this rotting swamp of a clan where envy and rules would grind him into another numb little monster...]
[Maybe this was better.]
[Maybe the best luck that kid could have gotten was ending up beside a teacher carrying this rare, dangerous, completely unreasonable sense of justice.]
[Naobito lowered his eyes and poured himself another cup. He watched the lamplight shake across the amber surface and muttered so quietly even you barely caught it.]
["That... might not be bad at all."]
[As the head of the Zenin clan, he saw the family more clearly than anyone.]
[He knew perfectly well where it was heading if it kept rotting in place. A giant tree hollowed from the inside, just waiting for one good wind to scatter the branches.]
[But he was old. He couldn't cut all that rot out by himself. So he'd watched Naoya and the others sink deeper and deeper into their own arrogance.]
[Meeting you, and meeting Megumi Fushiguro, had shown him something different.]
[A sliver of possibility.]
[His gaze drifted over the rim of the cup. Then it snapped back into focus. The old murk in his eyes vanished, replaced by something fierce and clear. He'd made up his mind.]
[He tossed the porcelain cup aside. It clattered across the floor while his hand closed around the expensive bottle of aged liquor. Head tipped back, he drank straight from it, gulping down half the thing in seconds.]
[Even without being much of a drinker, you knew that stuff was strong.]
[The old man's sudden binge caught you off guard. You leaned forward on instinct and reached out.]
["Clan Head Naobito, you..."]
[THUD.]
[He slapped your hand away, rough and impatient, and didn't stop until the last drop was gone. The empty bottle hit the tatami beside him. He let out a belch thick with alcohol, then pushed himself to his feet.]
[His face was flushed an ugly red, but his back straightened all at once, like a blade being drawn. Fire lit his eyes. It felt like years had peeled off him in one go, and the man standing there now was the monster he'd been in his prime.]
["Ahh, that's better! Haven't drunk like that in years. Come on, young man. Indulge an old fossil and help me loosen these rusty bones!"]
[The last word was barely out before he moved.]
[No warning. No pause for an answer.]
[His body smeared into overlapping afterimages and crashed toward you with thunderous speed. There was nothing slow about him now, nothing hesitant either. He opened with the technique he was proudest of, Projection Sorcery.]
[A weathered hand, trailed by a fan of afterimages, caught your shoulder at a speed that made the room feel fake.]
[The world twisted.]
[Space snapped into frozen frames, exactly like it had that night on the mountainside.]
[You were trapped inside one floating two-dimensional frame out of twenty-four. Your body locked up.]
[Naobito's follow-up kick came screaming straight for your stomach.]
[But this wasn't that night.]
[Back then, summoning shikigami had bled your cursed energy dry and left you no choice but to eat the hit with your body. Right now, your reserves were full.]
[BOOM!!!]
[The impact shook the room.]
[You didn't move.]
[Your feet stayed planted like they'd been nailed to the floor. Naobito's full-force kick landed clean, and you took it without giving up so much as an inch.]
[At the exact moment the blow connected, Cursed Technique Reversal: Nagihiru Kinkou flared out from your core.]
[A wave of cold, unnatural power burst outward. Invisible, absolute. It crashed straight into the frame-based space Naobito controlled so confidently.]
[The twenty-four-frame flow faltered.]
[It glitched.]
[Projection Sorcery's perfect rhythm slammed into a wall of pure denial.]
[Shock flashed across Naobito's face. His body stalled for a tiny fraction of a second.]
[That was enough.]
[Your own innate technique, Phantom Night Parade, activated.]
[You blurred forward in a streak that mirrored his movement almost exactly. Copy meeting original. Your palm drove into the center of his chest.]
[Just like that, the positions flipped. The attacker became the one trapped in midair, frozen inside a hovering two-dimensional sheet by the same rules Naobito himself knew best.]
[Your face stayed calm. No flourish, no extra drama. You lifted your leg and kicked with absurdly precise control, giving back exactly what he'd tried on you.]
[BAM!]
[The moment the frozen state broke, Naobito's body flew in a clean arc and landed with impossible accuracy right where he'd been sitting before, cross-legged at the table. Not even his clothes were out of place.]
[The shockwave rattled the heavy low table between you. Somehow, almost offensively enough, not a single cup tipped over.]
[You lowered your leg, smoothed a wrinkle from your shirt, and went still.]
[You understood what that attack had been. Naobito had moved fast, ridiculously fast, but he hadn't put killing intent into it. He hadn't pushed the technique to its lethal end. It was a test. Nothing more.]
[So you answered in kind. Your return kick had been measured too. Enough to show force. Not enough to cross the line.]
[Naobito sat there for a second, blinking. Then he looked down at the faint shoe print on his chest.]
[Something in him gave way.]
[Like he'd just stumbled into the funniest thing in the world, the old man threw his head back against the table and burst out laughing.]
["HAHAHAHAHAHA!"]
[It was loud, wild, almost delighted. The paper doors shook in their frames.]
[That tiny exchange had confirmed it. Completely. No room for doubt.]
[The truly frightening thing about you, the thing that ought to keep every member of the Big Three Families awake at night, wasn't the borrowed destructive force of the Ten Shadows Technique.]
[It was the innate technique you'd used to copy it.]
[Phantom Night Parade.]
[That monstrous adaptability. That bottomless engine.]
[Naobito had understood the shape of it a while ago. If you hadn't been distracted protecting Megumi that night, if back-to-back fights hadn't already wrung you dry...]
[Then against someone who could shut down his speed with prohibition and mirror Projection Sorcery at the same impossible pace, how could he ever have beaten you that cleanly?]
[If the two of you fought here and now, with no restraint and no intention of stopping until one of you died, the result was nowhere near certain.]
[The laughter slowly died down. So did the last of Naobito's testing, and the last of his caution.]
[He settled back into place. When he looked at you again, his eyes had changed.]
[The old man rested his hands on his knees. His stare carried a weight it hadn't before, and when he spoke, his voice did too.]
["I'll reconsider it... the possibility of bringing Megumi Fushiguro back as the next head of the Zenin clan."]
[He paused. Fine lines lifted at the corners of his eyes, and a sly smile tugged at his mouth, old-fox to the core.]
["Not now. Later. After you, his very responsible teacher, have raised him properly enough to take charge of this rotten family."]
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