[2015.]
[Extreme Overload Control [SR]: The human brain normally limits muscular output to roughly 30% in order to protect the body. You can consciously override that restriction and force your body to release 100% or more of its explosive power. The price is severe muscle tearing and widespread microfractures throughout the skeleton.]
[Time slipped by fast, the kind that only hits you after it's already gone, and before you knew it, 2016 had arrived.]
[The New Year's draw came on schedule.]
[Draw complete.]
[Voiceprint Analysis and Mimicry [R]: Your auditory system has been enhanced to detect minute shifts in vocal cord vibration and frequency. You can read lies through heartbeat changes and tonal drift, and you can also adjust your own vocal apparatus to perfectly reproduce any voice you've heard. Even the speaker's closest acquaintances would be fooled.]
[The underground workshop at Jujutsu High smelled like scorched cursed tools and expensive wool felt.]
[Wearing safety goggles, cursed-tool clamp in hand, you were finishing the last round of skeletal reinforcement and core cursed energy circuit tuning on Panda. By now his body had grown huge, a whole furry mountain of a thing.]
["This part... needs more support."]
[You were focused enough that you didn't hear the footsteps.]
[The heavy iron door to the workshop groaned open, and Yaga stepped inside.]
["Hayase. Someone's here for you."]
[Your clamp was locked onto a critical Cursed Energy circuit in Panda's wrist. You didn't even look up.]
["Who? If it's Nanami or Ijichi, tell them to come in. Better yet, tell them to use their phones."]
[But even as you said it, something felt off.]
[Why would a visitor go through the principal instead of contacting you directly? If it were somebody you actually knew, they would've just called. At this point, even Fushiguro's homeroom teacher had your number.]
[Without thinking much about it, you threw out one more question.]
[Yaga looked at you for a moment. Took a slow breath.]
[When he answered, his voice was heavier than before.]
["No. It's someone from the Zenin clan."]
["...What?"]
[You handed the rest of Panda's core tuning, along with the tools, over to Yaga without a hint of expression crossing your face.]
["I'll go see what this is about."]
[You walked the long corridor, pushed through the doors to Jujutsu High's old-fashioned reception room, and immediately spotted the figure waiting off in the corner.]
[A girl in plain casual clothes. Dark hair tied in a high ponytail. She sat with her back so straight it looked less like posture and more like a drawn blade.]
[A Zenin girl?]
[You studied that slim, stiff silhouette for a moment.]
[It had been years since the night you walked into the Zenin estate alone, dragged Megumi Fushiguro out of Naoya's hands, and afterward had a very "friendly" chat with the clan head, Naobito Zenin. Since then, you hadn't had any real contact with that rotten old snake pit.]
[While you were still turning it over, the girl's head snapped toward you. Fast. Like she'd caught the slightest shift in the air. Her eyes locked onto you from across the room, sharp enough to cut.]
[That made you pause.]
[For someone whose Cursed Energy was barely there at all, her awareness was way too good.]
[Years of lurking in bad places, plus your passive abilities, had pushed your Cursed Energy suppression close to perfect. When you wanted to disappear, you disappeared. Outside of Gojo and those Six Eyes of his, you could count on one hand, probably with fingers left over, the number of people who'd noticed you that quickly while you were actively hiding yourself.]
[Hold on...]
[Once you got closer, something else felt off. You could barely pick up any Cursed Energy from her at all.]
[But the closer you got, the clearer the details became. The tight muscle lines under her clothes. The controlled, even rhythm of her breathing. You dropped the idea that she might just be some normal civilian.]
[It wasn't that she had no Cursed Energy. It was that the amount inside her was so low it sat almost at a regular person's baseline. In a place like Jujutsu High, where everyone reeked of the stuff, she'd nearly slipped past your senses entirely.]
[You took the chair across from her. She sat ramrod straight, staring at you without blinking, jaw tight enough to crack a tooth. When it became obvious she had no clue how to start, you opened for her.]
["You're... Maki Zenin?"]
[Surprise flashed over her face. Like she genuinely hadn't expected you to know who she was. Then she jumped to her feet, something bright and fierce lighting up in her eyes, her voice trembling a little at the edges.]
["Lord Touma Hayase... you remember me!?"]
["Uh..."]
[The words "Lord Touma Hayase" made your hand pause halfway through pouring tea.]
[Years at Jujutsu High had long since gotten you used to "Sensei Touma," "Hayase," or, in Gojo's case, something roughly equivalent to "hey, you."]
[Hearing that Zenin-style honorific again, thick with all the old clan hierarchy and stale feudal nonsense, yanked you right back to the atmosphere of that compound. It felt awful.]
[Maki had grown up there. Of course that kind of language was drilled into her.]
[Knowing that didn't make it any less irritating. You waved a hand.]
["Drop the 'Lord.' It sounds weird. 'Sensei' is fine. My name is fine too. Anyway, you came all the way to Jujutsu High looking for me. What's this about?"]
[Something shifted in her eyes, like she'd finally crossed some line in her own head. She stood up so abruptly the chair scraped, then bowed so hard her forehead smacked against the wooden table with a solid thud.]
[Her voice came out raw.]
["Lord Touma Hayase! I want to study under you! Please teach me... how to become stronger!"]
[She'd practiced those words over and over. You could hear it.]
[Years ago, you'd crushed the mountain called Ogi Zenin, her father, right in front of her with overwhelming force. Later, when she learned you'd nearly torn through the Zenin clan's elite by yourself, stopping only short of the clan head Naobito, something in her must have changed.]
[You'd shown her, in the bluntest way possible, that the things crushing her and her sister weren't untouchable.]
[To her, you'd probably become the first crack in a wall that had looked permanent.]
[Of course, none of that was anything she'd ever say out loud. Feelings like that, the kind that get tangled up with fear and gratitude and old humiliation, usually stayed buried. You definitely weren't about to guess that a bit of violence from years ago had taken root that deeply.]
[What you did know was simple enough.]
[You knew what the Zenin clan was like. You'd seen Naoya torment Maki and her sister with your own eyes.]
[So your conclusion was straightforward: she wanted out. Or at least she wanted enough strength to stop being prey inside that disgusting environment.]
[You knew a little about her condition too. Like Toji Zenin, the so-called Heavenly Restriction Tyrant, she carried a Heavenly Restriction. Cursed Energy traded away in exchange for physical ability.]
[The problem was that hers looked incomplete. Whatever physical boost she'd gotten, it was nowhere near the level Toji had reached.]
[If she'd been that strong, she wouldn't be here asking you for help.]
[She would've walked back into the Zenin estate and torn the whole place apart with her bare hands.]
[Honestly, when you thought back to that night, you knew one thing for sure: even if every Zenin in the compound had rushed you at once, the pressure still wouldn't have matched the suffocating terror Toji once put on your shoulders.]
[Even now, if someone dropped you into a rematch against that monster in his prime, you weren't sure you'd win.]
[This time, you didn't bother correcting the "Lord."]
[Now that you knew why she'd come, you didn't say yes or no right away. You just looked at her, calm and serious.]