Chapter 69

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:20 JST

A million things were going through Zen'in Naobito’s head as he watched the screen on the far end of the meeting room in Tokyo Jujutsu High reserved specifically for the Zen'in clan’s top brass.

The elders and the top members of the Hei unit had arrived to Tokyo to watch the games in person, having anticipated that this would be the most important Exchange Event since the inception of the system itself. After all, the two young pillars of Jujutsu Society were competing. In light of that, everyone else participating were mere sideshows in comparison.

The real objective had been to closely observe another clash between Gojo Satoru and Hibana Teira. Naobito, too, was intensely curious to see who would take the lead in their next bout, even though he had his doubts that it would make a difference to Teira’s agenda whether she won or lost. Gojo Satoru, after all, was her friend. In a way, she had already won everything.

Over time, as it became clear that neither Satoru-kun nor Teira-san had any intention of battling it out in the team battles, Naobito had gradually begun to focus on his son.

Naoya was the only impressive son that Naobito had begotten. The rest of his litter were mediocre to say the least. None of them had any hope of making it very far in the world of Jujutsu, and none of them had inherited his innate technique, except for Naoya.

Naoya’s awakening had been a cause for immense celebration. The Zen'in clan had developed yet another inherited technique, and a potent one at that. It was the same technique that had allowed Naobito to create an uncrossable chasm of power between himself and all of his rivals. They were strong and fast, but Naobito was far stronger and far faster. In the eighties, he had been the most powerful sorcerer alive.

Naoya, too, would one day inherit a measure of that legacy, even if he stood no chance against the Special Grades.

Naobito had watched him fight in excitement, going up against the preternaturally skilled Tokyo student, a Semi-Grade One girl that had almost effortlessly dispatched five Grade Ones. Her promotion to Grade One seemed an inevitability at this point, as much as Naoya’s promotion to Grade One was.

His heart then promptly sank as he watched her savage his son, employing a Simple Domain of all things to read Naoya’s superfast movements.

She ripped those ridiculous earrings of his right out from his ear.

Then, she dug a gouge through his face with just her fingertips.

Naobito reached for his gourd on the table behind him.

It was empty.

Naoya was screaming at the woman, though Naobito didn’t bother to read his lips. He wished to spare himself the embarrassment of listening to his own blood mewl pitifully, or worse yet, try to save face by insulting his opponent.

There was something all-too-off about that boy, but Naobito tried his best to be a good father and ignore those things in favor of focusing on his good qualities, such as his confident and his Jujutsu.

The girl was now laughing, something that further incensed Naoya.

Naobito reached for his gourd of sake, and when he lifted it, he remembered that it was already empty.

Empty.

The concept of being out of alcohol was enough to drive Naobito into homicidal rage. He grabbed the gourd and threw it on the wall right next to the TV screen hard enough to break the wood even as the gourd broke in half.

“Somebody get me more!” Naobito roared. One of the many faceless attendants left the room to obey his instruction, and Naobito continued watching the screen in anger.

Who the hell is going to recommend you to Grade One now, you fucking brat?

All the Grade Ones in Jujutsu High were putrid snakes, one and all. They were totally fine taking out favors amongst one another to help raise each other’s protégés to Grade One, but whenever a big clan descendant tried to use the common system, suddenly, everything cost money.

Especially a Grade One recommendation.

Many of the Grade Ones watching the Exchange Event could see that Naoya was Grade One material as well, but unless Naobito shelled out the big yen, none of them would make a single move to recommend his son.

Naobito could always just pay for a Special Grade One certification. Naoya would pass that test with flying colors, but as of late, there was a stigma attached to this system. Some whispered that Special Grade Ones were not as legitimate as Grade Ones promoted using the common system. Those whispers were quiet now, but in ten or twenty years, they would grow too loud to ignore.

To truly silence the dissent of the common rabble, you had to at least sell the illusion of equality, that the Zen'in clan’s elite were every bit as powerful, if not more powerful, than the elite of those that were raised in the Jujutsu schools.

This was how non-sorcerer elites maintained their supremacy. They would be taught in private institutions from the best teachers, of course, but they would still go to the same universities as the commoners, and would still outperform those commoners by virtue of better preparation.

You didn’t have to buy good grades to get good grades. Not directly, at least.

Naoya had grown up with every advantage there was, including an innate technique with a user’s manual. Such a thing was rarer than gold in the world of Jujutsu.

And now, look at him.

Were it only that he had drunk enough. That way, this travesty would never had been recorded in his memory. Alas, he was still a ways away from blacking out, and it would be too late even if he did. He would remember this humiliation for the rest of his life.

Thankfully, his fellow elders were quiet as church mice and unwilling to test Naobito’s mood. That was a shame, because if it really, truly came down to it…

…then Naobito would sacrifice one of his elders to his rage. It was an appropriate time to do so. Naobito’s dynasty, his son, had suffered a public defeat. The blood was already in the water. All he had to do was wait for one of his cousins in the room to say even a single word, and he would have a perfect excuse to set the record straight—in blood.

Naobito rules this house, and his son will rule next.

Not because he loved his son, but because he was the best option. The only option. All the others were pathetic. That wouldn’t stop their less pathetic uncles and fathers from doting on them and trying to elevate their station inappropriately. It was the nature of some fathers to be blind to their son’s flaws. Not Naobito, but some fathers.

Naoya activated his Projection Sorcery and ran away from the girl.

And he kept at it.

He chained Projection Sorcery once in a wide ring in the forest.

Then twice.

Then, three times.

Naobito’s eyes widened into saucers at the sight, and he cracked into a grin. This… could end up killing that scarred girl that had defeated him, but that was fine. Things happened in these sorts of games. Naoya would not be punished too harshly.

Rather than shoot directly towards the girl he had just fought, Naoya had somehow found himself another target.

Hibana Teira, sitting on the grass, was suddenly flying into several trees.

Utter horror and elation warred within Naobito’s heart as he watched his son weave Projection Sorcery like someone with twice his years of experience. Bitter loss had sharpened his mind, and now he was raining blow after blow down that wretched Curse Empress without a damn shred of resistance.

He had toppled one of the unbeatable Special Grades.

What’s more, he was killing her!

A mammoth weight began to leave Naobito’s chest. It was a shame about the young girl, but truly, her death was for the best. The world had no use for yet another Gojo Satoru, and especially not one as unbearably invasive as her.

…but it had been so easy.

Seven years of rapid changes, intense displays of overwhelming power, and it was all going to end like this.

At the hands of Naobito’s son, yes. And Naobito was proud, indeed. Very proud. Still, he couldn’t help feeling an emptiness in his stomach at this victory.

It was like chewing into a sumptuous meal in your dream. You merely imagined the delight, but dream meals could not fill stomachs.

Neither could this victory fill Naobito’s stomach.

Was it really over?

Naoya leaned down to say something to Teira’s mangled face. Blood and saliva bubbled from her mangled mouth and her savaged nose. She took shallow breaths as Naoya spoke.

“Just finish the job!” Naobito roared in frustration.

As Naoya leaned back from the girl to continue brutalizing her, something grabbed the back of his neck.

A Juchū, seven feet tall, pitch black, looking like a slender man armored in black reflective plate, and it had the head of an ant.

It wrapped its fingers all around Naoya’s throat, pulling him away from Teira.

The sight was akin to a body blow the way Naobito found it nearly impossible to breathe.

Hibana Teira’s face slid itself into wholeness. Blood marred her sheet white skin, but the open wounds, the shattered bones, the disfiguration, all of it disappeared as though time was running backwards.

In mere seconds, her face was back to normal, only covered in blood.

In mere seconds, she was already on her feet.

Naoya tried to freeze the Juchū holding him, but more appeared from outside the screen’s frame. Several held him entirely still while Teira spoke.

And she stood straight. Tall and regal, and utterly unbothered by the sheer brutality that she had been exposed to.

It hadn’t mattered. None of it had mattered.

It had been a cruel joke all along. And Naobito had fallen for it. He had well and truly fallen for it.

He was an idiot.

The Juchū began to pry open Naoya’s mouth, and out from a portal, a brown chunk of something or other fell into Teira’s hand. She pressed it in her fist into a ball and approached Naoya, before shoving it into his mouth, feeding it to him.

What the hell was that?

Poison? Did she poison him?

It dawned on Naobito, then, that just as Naoya was unlikely to be punished too harshly should he take a life in these games, the same could absolutely be said for Hibana Teira, who had half of Jujutsu Society already in her pocket.

I must save my son.

000

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:24 JST

I was the idea girl. I came up with the ideas. I loved coming up with them, because usually whenever I did, they worked out. If everyone just listened to me.

I knew, of course, that most of the ideas I had come up with, I had been lucky to walk away alive from. Lucky, yes, but you only got lucky that many times before something else became the dominant factor. Controlled luck. I tried my best to position myself in a way that I would maximize my luck, and I came up with great ideas. And whenever I fucked up, at least I walked away and lived to learn from my mistakes.

One Reaper Ant was kneeling on his hands and knees while I sat on its back. Another Reaper Ant was presenting a metallic tray right in front of me while I was busy rolling up a ten-k yen note, Shibusawa Eiichi and his judgmental stare slowly disappearing into the fold of the paper.

Naoya was busy trying his best to rip himself free from his binds, after which he would presumably induce some vomiting. He still had time, after all. He was far from digesting the psilocybin into psilocin. That would take at least another hour.

Another Reaper Ant was busy herding the crystalline white powder atop the metallic tray into discrete lines of equal weight representing my main dose and my redoses.

Drug use was, by and large, a game of dexterity, I had come to find out. A lot of finger action went into making sure that you were maximizing the quality of your high. A good roll of a joint, or accurately weighed powder, ensuring that you were taking exactly the amount that you needed, and not a bit more. Dosage was of the utmost importance. Dosage could decide the difference between a good high and a bad high, or a healthy life and one riddled with lifelong addiction, in almost every case.

I did draw the line at syringes, however, or opiates. I had nothing against heroin addicts with arms full of collapsed veins at this point, because why throw rocks at a glass house? Still, I had no interest in joining their hallowed ranks.

And I also had the sneaking suspicion that if I were to try taking opiates in my current stage of life, I might find that they made too much sense.

I leaned down over the white powder, bill in my nostril, and took a deep sniff.

I growled.

That felt horrible. It stung my nostrils.

It tasted horrible as it dissolved into my saliva and mucus before running down the back of my throat.

The Reaper Ant took the tray of mephedrone lines away, one of Michiko’s portals opening to place it somewhere in the Timeless Sanctuary that had now become no better than a drug den.

The mephedrone lit my face on fire, and returned to me what was lost after my messy break-up with Iori-senpai, whom I genuinely didn’t need in my life in the first place. It had been my foolishness that had convinced me that I had that much space for people.

Lesson learned.

…we had gotten along swimmingly at the start, and if it hadn’t been for my overbearingness, we would have become better friends. Unfortunately, drugs.

We’d clear this misunderstanding up after a conversation. Although I felt hurt by the rejection, I saw no reason to continue allowing Iori to labor under the misconception that a Special Grade sorcerer was mad at her. That wasn’t fair to her.

I looked to Zen'in Naoya, the boy that wanted to do unspeakable things to me for no real reason at all. Never once in my life had I spoken to him, and this was the first thing he said to me.

I should kill him. Fifteen was old enough to die when you were an insufferable piece of shit.

The political ramifications stayed my hand. Killing was permanent, but torture was all but. This experience would likely shape him for years to come, and that was all I needed.

I sighed. “I come up with really good ideas, you know,” I said to him. I stood up for a moment to let the Reaper Ant I was sitting on put its hands and knees on top of two other crawling Reaper Ants. I then jumped up to my raised throne, and commanded the lower Reaper Ants to crawl up to Naoya. “This one just occurred to me on the fly, and I’m sorry, but I really, really like it.”

I wondered, for a moment, if Bakuda was on mephedrone when she had first made that first megalomaniacal speech to me. There had been several, right? If I had to put a name to the feeling of being on mephedrone, then it fucking had to be ‘Bakuda’.

I rubbed my nose a little, feeling the phantom sensation of that caustic chemical on it. “Your problem, Naoya, is that you let me come up with ideas for you. No, you made me. I would have forgiven the brutal violence.” To be quite honest, the violence had felt good. The contact had been firm and reassuring, like the pressure of a good hug. “But then you went and said what you said, and now we’re here. So I’m thinking… six hours. Just six. How’s that sound?”

The Reaper Ant covering his mouth let go of it. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I even challenged myself mentally to axe this idea of mine should his next words be the right words.

“My father will hear of this!” Naoya shouted. I held up my hand to forestall him and sighed in irritation, trying my best to mask the raging bonfire within.

“You have one chance to repent,” I said to him. “Just one. If you don’t take it, you will be marked by this experience for the rest of your life, so think carefully. Tell me what I want to hear.”

Naoya laughed. “You don’t scare me!”

He lied.

He was terrified. And yet, he chose to eschew my attempts at forgiving him by refusing to apologize.

Even knowing the horrors I might unleash on him.

This was sickness. Not even just hatred or bigotry, but sickness. It was a level of rot that, if I had witnessed it within a grown man, I would have killed him without hesitating.

It was only due to that plastic brain of his that I was letting him get away with his life. One way or the other, I would mark him, and he would never dare take the same attitude with me again. Whether or not that made him a better person was immaterial to me, in all honesty.

I was fine with him breaking, psychologically.

Before he could say anything else, a portal swallowed both him and all my other Juchū up into Michiko’s Timeless Sanctuary, now sped up.

He was in a dark room, held utterly still by my Reaper Ants, and time moved at a breakneck speed. The flow of information was not distracting in the least. Neither was the feeling of him struggling for hours and hours, screaming himself hoarse and crying until there were no more tears left to cry.

His torment was as real as anything else, and yet, with the way time passed, I felt a slight amount of dissatisfaction in how little I could savor it. Savoring the pain of others was never my intention, but it was an incidental side-benefit of asserting myself that I had come to appreciate over the years.

Alas.

Within seconds, six hours had passed.

Michiko’s portal spat Naoya out. His eyes were wide open and he was murmuring. Not unconscious. He had wet himself. There were trails of dried saliva all over his lower chin.

He had well and truly digested whatever psilocybin he had eaten, and was still in the middle of his educational sojourn.

I laughed.

I could only imagine how utterly, mindbogglingly terrified he had been all those six hours as his mind melted away and comfort was but a pipe dream. The Juchū holding him still had kept him perennially uncomfortable, his wounds probably stung like nothing else, and his mind was likely turning against everything that he knew. I wouldn’t be surprised if he retired altogether from sorcery after this, or ended his own life.

Take notes, Emma.

I felt a twisted glee at the fact that this more than met the threshold of a Trigger Event for many parahumans. I had become the cause of the most important and terrible day of Naoya’s entire life. I felt some pleasure in that, the same pleasure that Sophia Hess had likely felt upon learning my secret identity.

Zen'in Naobito arrived like a bullet train. I watched him run over to Naoya while I sat atop my pyramid of Reaper Ants, laughing at these human ants.

Naobito shoved a glass vial into Naoya’s mouth and upended its contents.

Seconds later, Naoya began to spew the half-digested remnants of the mushrooms all over the forest floor.

“You’re too late,” I laughed.

Naobito stood up and glared at me. “What have you done?!”

I laughed harder.

“You’ve poisoned my son! You’ve killed him!”

I had to stop myself from continuing to laugh, because Naobito could give even a world-class comedian a run for his money right now. Oh, how hilarious he was being.

“It’s not poison,” I said. “It’s just mushrooms. I ate some too. Well, the key word is some. He? He ate a lot!” I laughed.

Naobito looked back at his son, then at me. Then, he breathed a sigh of relief. “It should be out of his system now.”

I laughed even harder.

“What?!” Naobito roared.

“I already said you’re too late!” I said. “Six hours have passed for him. He has well and truly digested those mushrooms by now, and he is not having a good time. See, look at his vomit. It’s way too smooth.”

Naobito did actually inspect the vomit with a frown. “What the hell have you fed my son?”

“Have you ever heard of psychedelics?” I asked. As an art major, he probably would have, but you never knew.

His eyes widened into saucers. “You’ve driven him mad!”

“The mushrooms are one-hundred percent non-lethal,” I said. Except in the cases when it wasn’t, cases that I had yet to come upon in my drug research. In fact, I had no idea how half these drugs interacted with one another. Only that mixing MDMA with psychedelics were fine, unless you mixed it with MAOIs, which was a deadly combination. “Worst case scenario, he’ll suffer a lifelong perception disorder in which he hallucinates constantly. That, and lifelong trauma, of course, but he had it coming, Naobito. I promise you, he did. Now, listen carefully, alright? We’re even now. I swear!” I raised my hand placatingly. “I’m done with your son now, so rest assured, he’s safe from me. I know, that sounds too good to be true, but you have my word, Naobito. I won’t continue litigating this particular case. I’ve had my satisfaction.”

Naobito looked baffled, likely because he thought he held any cards whatsoever. “You have no right! No right at all!” he roared.

“He said he was going to kill me,” I said.

“So what?! That was mere trash-talk and you--!”

“And then after killing me, he would…” I narrowed my eyes and gestured emptily at the air. “Rape me. Until there was nothing left. His words. By all accounts, I should actually just have shoved a Fertilized Juchū down his throat and created a litter of new Juchū from his flesh and his soul. As is proper.”

I let that sentence of mine sink in, so that Naobito knew exactly how fucked his son had been, and how utterly forgiving and benevolent I had been to keep him alive after he had spoken those words to me.

“He was so eager to fertilize my corpse. It was only fair that I fertilize his instead. Keep in mind, Naobito—he can never unsay those words. Now, for as long as Zen'in Naoya lives, it is true that a man that threatened to rape me walks free in the world of Jujutsu, alive. Not dead. That’s embarrassing. Do you not see how fucking embarrassing that is, to have people like that continue to exist in the same plane of existence as me?”

I took a deep breath and let my high chase away the indignity of my new life, my new circumstances. Naoya would continue to be a thorn in my side for as long as I lived for what he had said to me. This violation would never go away. Still, I could bear it, because I was a reasonable human, for the most part.

Words… were just words.

“But we’re even now,” I said. “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day. The world has changed from the barbaric days of old, when words were enough to get one killed. I stay my hand for the sake of modernity and progression. Now it’s your turn to take your son and make sure that he knows exactly how much he owes me for letting his words slide.”

Naobito was quiet. Then, “you would risk all-out war just to have your satisfaction? People on both our sides dying in droves, Jujutsu Society collapsing from within?”

“The only war I ever plan to wage is one in which I kill many, many, many people,” I said. “The only downside is having a marginally heavier weight on my conscience. But yes, Naobito, be sure that I am willing to catapult every last drop of goodwill if I am provoked. This peace? It’s not for my sake.”

Everything would be so much easier if they all just died, and why did I hold myself back again?

Because it was the ‘right thing to do’.

That thread on which all the conservative faction’s hopes and dreams dangled was thin indeed, and I wanted Naobito to realize that now.

“Remember, Naobito: the only reason I’ve taken all these steps to redeem my clan and its vassals in the eyes of Jujutsu Society was for the sake of justice, a justice that I believe far supplants the one your lot believe in. But this sense for justice has dulled my edge. It blunts my bloodlust. I know, intellectually, that diplomacy is the right path. Emotionally, I am far less tolerant. Still, I lead with logic. This peace is not for my sake.

“All of this is for you,” I smiled. “All my attempts to make nice: for you. Now go on,” I said. “Take your son.”

He did, carrying his muttering son on his shoulder.

“And say thank you, Naobito. Thank you, Teira, for taking the hard path, knowing that it is the right thing to do.”

Naobito bared his teeth at me.

He walked away.

He was angry now, but when the tempers finally fell and we would meet once more, he would thank me profusely for letting things slide with just this.

You did not threaten the head of a Jujutsu clan with rape and live to tell the tale.

You just did not.

My benevolence was truly immeasurable, and once Naobito calmed down, he would have to acknowledge this fact.

I took deep breaths, each lungful of air filling me with vitality and the unmistakable feeling of power. In a way, I was grateful to Naoya for giving me something to do, to bounce back from my pathetic failure to socialize.

Still, that thirst hadn’t disappeared at all.

I craved the stimulation of someone else’s words prying my own into the forefront of my psyche.

Shoko was gone, and I was leery on talking to her anyway. We were going through a rough patch, and I didn’t appreciate her aura of constant judgment. Suguru was… busy watching our upperclassmen get demolished by Kamo Joichi.

I smirked. What an asshole he was, but he was fond of pretending that he was better than the rest of us. Arguably, that made him a bigger asshole than Gojo and I.

Still, I really wanted to talk to him. We hadn’t really talked all that much, him and I. At least not in an honest and vulnerable way. Suguru had his own share of demons from his life as a sorcerer, and I wondered if I was doing my best to support him the same way I supported Shoko. Not just in terms of training, but also just counselling and advising them.

I tried my best to introduce them all to the world of Jujutsu in the most direct and frontal way possible, ensuring that they were not blinded by their own biases towards authority. All their lives, they had been taught to obey, and the only thing I had to offer in regards to a philosophy was that the option not to obey was just as valid, if not more so in the face of an unjust society.

I wondered if I had done right by my friends, or if they all secretly hated me.

My imagination was turning against me. I needed to speak with someone.

Since Shoko was gone and Suguru was busy, my conversational partner would have to be Gojo, unfortunately. Perhaps, for just one moment, we could be sincere with one another, and open up about all the things that plagued our existences?

Perhaps he’d appreciate an opportunity to just endlessly talk about his feelings? I could already think of a dozen topics we could engage in, and none of it had to involve any of our usual rhythm of violent banter and ribbing.

On this day alone, Gojo Satoru and I would have a perfectly friendly conversation.