Mahiko actually quite liked the character of Naobito Zenin.
In the original work, the old man was one of the few normal people in the Zenin family — and at the same time, a charismatic, formidable sorcerer with genuine presence.
If he died, it was, in truth, a genuine loss as far as Mahiko was concerned.
But the most important point of the matter was that Naobito Zenin's position was an extraordinarily critical one.
He was the head of the Zenin family, one of the three great clans. With his death, the Zenin family would be thrown into turmoil — and by extension, the entire jujutsu world would struggle to find any peace.
But… the problem remained.
Why had Naobito Zenin died?
Mahiko frowned.
"Apparently he was killed while handling the matter of Mechamaru's disappearance," Zen'in Mai offered by way of explanation.
Mahiko opened her mouth, then closed it.
She understood now exactly who had killed Naobito Zenin.
He had crossed paths with Kenjaku. That was why he was dead.
"Tch…" Maki Zenin bit her teeth together.
Maki and Mai — both of them had poor impressions of their family, but their impressions of the old man were quite good. He had been the only person in the clan who hadn't looked down on them, who had treated them as young people with potential.
When news of Naobito Zenin's death reached them, neither girl took it well.
So that night, when they woke in the small hours, neither of them could fall back asleep. Mahiko simply feigned slumber.
Come morning, all three of them moved together. They spent the daylight hours drifting between a handful of locations with cursed spirit activity, dealing with the weaker ones, knocking out a few assignments — just grinding through the day until it was over.
By afternoon, the three of them had linked up with Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro, and the others.
No — "linked up" wasn't quite the right phrase.
The more accurate way to put it was that they had all been notified to gather at the same place.
That place turned out to be the banquet hall of a hotel.
Even before they entered, they could see two powerfully built guards stationed at the doors, each carrying a blade at their side. There was no trace of Cursed Energy on either of them — but they were built like fortresses.
Maki Zenin's brow furrowed slightly at the sight of the two guards. Then she led Mahiko and Zen'in Mai inside.
The hall's lighting was oppressive, the atmosphere murky and low. Only the large lights along the perimeter of the ceiling burned, stretching everyone's shadows out to extraordinary lengths.
Inside the hall, they could see that Yuji Itadori, Nobara Kugisaki, and the others — the three of them — were already there.
And at the same time, Mahiko spotted another figure she hadn't expected to see at all.
He was an older man, somewhere in his fifties by the look of him, dressed in plain white, his hair done up in a samurai-style topknot. His bearing was sharp and murderous, a longsword hanging at his hip.
The moment Mahiko caught sight of him, she could clearly feel both Zen'in Mai and Maki Zenin give an involuntary shudder.
"Tch." She heard Maki click her tongue.
This was Ogi Zenin.
The biological father of Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai.
He and the late clan head, Naobito Zenin, were of the same generation.
As they walked in, Megumi Fushiguro happened to be mid-conversation with Ogi Zenin — arms folded, lips curled in a slight sneer as she spoke.
"I've already told you — I have absolutely no interest in the position of Zenin family head," the dark-haired girl said flatly. "And besides, I'm a girl now, aren't I? From what I understand, you people don't want a woman as clan head."
"…" Ogi Zenin was silent for a moment. "Your wishes are irrelevant to me. I am only here to convey the former head's will."
He raised his head and looked toward Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai.
"You two are here as well?" he said. "Then let us begin."
The reason all of them had been summoned here was this: he had been tasked with conveying Naobito Zenin's last will and testament to the three — Megumi Fushiguro, Maki Zenin, and Zen'in Mai.
Around the perimeter of the entire hall, a group of hardened guards stood in taut silence, each carrying a blade. The killing intent radiating off them pressed down on the atmosphere of the hall until it felt suffocating.
The contents of the will were also drastically different from the original plot Mahiko had read.
In principle, when the head of the Zenin family died, the next head would need to be selected. And the selection of the next head would naturally be arranged according to the previous head's last wishes.
In the original work, after Naobito Zenin fell in battle against the cursed spirits of Disaster, he had left behind a will. In that will, he named his son Naoya Zenin as his successor — but also included a secondary clause: if Satoru Gojo were to be gone, or if he ceased to look after Megumi Fushiguro, then Megumi Fushiguro was to return to the family and inherit the headship.
This was for two reasons: on one hand, Megumi Fushiguro did carry the blood of the Zenin family — his father had been the previous generation's Heavenly Tyrant — and on the other, Megumi Fushiguro also bore the Zenin family's most important hereditary technique: the Ten Shadows Technique.
That will from the original story had set off a whole cascade of events for the Zenin family afterward.
But this timeline… was different.
"All those with the right to inherit the Zenin family estate… will divide it equally," the elderly man entrusted with reading the will intoned, his voice faint and without energy — yet in the silence of the hall it landed with an almost crushing weight. "Megumi Fushiguro… no — Fushiguro Maki. Zen'in Mai. Maki Zenin. The three of you are also entitled to participate in the division of the estate."
"…Divide it equally?" Maki Zenin blinked, momentarily stunned.
Mahiko's brow creased into a deep frown.
The girl's thoughts began to race.
Dividing the estate equally — put charitably, it was everyone sharing the cake together. Put bluntly, it was the dissolution of the Zenin family. The complete annihilation of the Zenin name.
You take a slice, I take a slice — and what had once been a great clan would fracture into countless feeble little branches, until at last there was nothing left.
Mahiko knew perfectly well that Naobito Zenin could never have written a will like this.
She knew what the original will said… which meant that somewhere along this timeline, the will had already been falsified.
…Was it Kenjaku?
What was his angle?
Mahiko turned it over in her mind.
And Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai — who had likewise grasped the true implications buried behind this will — had only just now begun to recover from their initial shock.
"You understand now, do you? This is the will the head left behind." Ogi Zenin sat there, expression composed — he had clearly known the contents of this will for some time already. His voice was entirely without any discernible emotional inflection. "Each of you three will receive a portion of the estate in due course."
"Then I refuse." Megumi Fushiguro showed not the slightest inclination to accept. "I voluntarily relinquish my share."
"Are you certain?" Ogi Zenin asked.
"I'm certain," Megumi Fushiguro answered.
For the first time, a faint smile surfaced on Ogi Zenin's otherwise severe face.
He swept his gaze across those assembled in the room.
"In that case — with all present members of the Zenin family, and the remaining heirs, as witnesses: Megumi Fushiguro has formally renounced her right to inherit the estate."
Megumi Fushiguro's expression remained flat as she asked one more question: "Is there anything else?"
Ogi Zenin rose from his seat and gestured politely toward the exit. "Nothing further at this time."
Megumi Fushiguro turned to Yuji Itadori and Maki Zenin. "Let's go."
And she walked toward the doors.
As she passed by Mahiko and Maki Zenin, she gave them a small nod and said quietly, "See you around."
And then she was through the door.
A dull clang.
The doors swung shut.
The atmosphere in the room fell silent and still once more.
Ogi Zenin's gaze returned to Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai.
The faint smile from a moment ago had already vanished from his face. Once again he was utterly severe.
"And you two? What are your thoughts on the matter?" Ogi Zenin asked his two daughters.
Zen'in Mai's expression had already recovered from its initial turmoil back to her usual composure.
She gave a noncommittal curl of her lips. "No idea. If the old man said to divide up the estate, then we divide it up."
Ogi Zenin's gaze shifted to Maki Zenin.
And Maki Zenin's eyes flashed. "I'm not giving up."
Her tone was resolute.
More than that — she was furious right now.
This was disgusting. Truly, genuinely disgusting.
Maki Zenin had once stood before Naobito Zenin and declared that she intended to compete for the headship of the Zenin family. She had kept pushing herself relentlessly ever since, growing stronger with every passing day.
Becoming head of the Zenin family was her goal.
It had nothing to do with money or power. It was because of everything she and her sister had endured growing up in the Zenin household — the endless contempt, the humiliation, the oppression — and she intended to fight back in the only way that mattered.
She would defeat every single person who had ever looked down on her or ground her underfoot, using her own strength. She would become the clan head. She would prove herself to this rotten family and this rotten fate.
But…
And now you were telling her the Zenin family was just going to… cease to exist?
Was that a joke?
For Maki Zenin to have climbed this far with a body only marginally above that of an ordinary person — just how much hell had she put herself through to get here?
The scale of that difficulty was unimaginable.
She had taken revenge as her reason for living, tempering her anger into a blade, sharpening it day after day.
And her enemies — had just killed themselves?
Was that a joke?!
Maki Zenin's hand, hanging at her side, clenched into a fist — trembling with the force of her rage.
Mahiko, standing beside her, let out a quiet sigh.
Seeing the girl in that state, she of course understood exactly what was going through Maki's mind right now.
And Mahiko had also largely figured out what game Kenjaku was playing.
It was actually quite simple. What Kenjaku wanted right now was for the jujutsu world to be thrown into as much chaos as possible.
By falsifying the will and forcing the heirs to divide the estate equally, only two outcomes were possible.
One: they actually did divide it — the Zenin family completely dissolved. And with that, Kenjaku would have a far easier time infiltrating and taking control of the upper echelons of the jujutsu world.
Two: someone within the Zenin family refused to accept the equal division, and internal conflict broke out.
Once one of the three great clans — the Zenin family — descended into civil war, the entire jujutsu world would be destabilized, and even the returning Satoru Gojo's attention would inevitably be drawn in.
The Zenin family was, in its nature, a clan of godlike sorcerers whose internal contradictions had been accumulating for generations.
Like a powder keg — one spark and it would explode.
For Kenjaku to throw the Zenin family into chaos, all he needed to do was give it the gentlest push.
Mahiko scanned the faces gathered in the room.
Zen'in Mai had checked out.
Maki Zenin was seething.
And the most obviously hostile presence in the room was, without question, Ogi Zenin.
Tagging along after Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai had apparently, once again, dragged her right into the heart of things.
Heh…
But that was fine.
This was, in fact, a stroke of extraordinary good fortune.
Mahiko could feel it — there were no surveillance cursed spirits belonging to Kenjaku in the vicinity of this location.
Which meant Kenjaku hadn't taken full control of the Zenin family — he had simply taken a clever shortcut and swapped out Naobito Zenin's will.
He was probably busy with his own affairs right now. The wound Mahiko had dealt him was likely still bleeding.
He thought he'd gotten incredibly lucky, because Naobito Zenin had walked right into his hands.
But what he could never have anticipated was — standing right alongside Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai, there was also a Mahiko.
Ha…
Hahahahaha.
Kenjaku had plenty of moves he could make. The specific reason he had gone after the Zenin family was twofold: on one hand, Naobito Zenin had simply walked right into his crosshairs at the perfect moment — and on the other, Kenjaku must have concluded that Mahiko had absolutely nothing to do with any of the three great clans, and so had deliberately chosen a place to meddle that he believed she would never find.
In his entire life, he would never be able to guess just how much Mahiko actually knew — nor could he fathom that for all his deliberate efforts to avoid her, she would still somehow find him anyway.
The shape of a plan had already taken form in the girl's mind.
She really did want to see what expression he'd make when he discovered that his scheme had once again come under Mahiko's eye.
"Are you both going to participate in the division of the estate?" Ogi Zenin spoke up and asked.
"…Uh." Zen'in Mai's mouth twisted sideways.
And Maki Zenin gave a derisive snort: "What's it to you? You got a problem with that?"
Maki Zenin knew exactly what kind of man her father was.
Ogi Zenin had always looked down on his two daughters. So Maki had assumed her father's head was full of something along the lines of "what right do you two worthless trash have to share in the estate."
She had already steeled herself for a fight.
But to her surprise, Ogi Zenin's expression remained utterly neutral.
"No. If you intend to participate in the division of the estate, then come with me in the car back home right now. The day after tomorrow, a family assembly will be convened to finalize and complete the division of all assets."
The man spoke, rising from his chair.
"There are three of you — the car fits exactly. Let's go."
His emotions were completely bottled up. Looking at him now, he seemed more like a taciturn old father who simply didn't know how to express himself.
So much so that Maki Zenin found herself staring at Ogi Zenin with a slightly dumbfounded look.
Had his brother's death shaken Ogi Zenin so deeply that it had changed him?
Heh.
And Mahiko, watching all of this unfold before her, felt something turn over quietly in her chest.
When something acts against its nature, there is always something lurking beneath the surface.
When a person acts against their nature, the smile hides a knife.
Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai might not have any real understanding of just how low their father's floor truly was — this was a man perfectly capable of killing his own daughters without a moment's hesitation.
For Ogi Zenin to suddenly present himself as this passive, harmless, agenda-free old man?
He was obviously up to something.
Did that even need thinking about?
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Jujutsu x Mieruko: Oh no, am I a villain too?
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