The road leading to the Zenin clan’s mansion.
With Todo and Nobara behind him, Megumi calmly recalled the purpose of coming here.
"I’m here to take back the cursed tools from Giko and crush the opposition."
"Will that be okay? Your relatives don’t seem like they’ll sit still."
"I’m the head now. Even Naoya, my uncle, lost to me. What can those nobodies do?"
Unlike before, when he treated everything as trivial and kept himself small, Megumi now carried himself with confidence.
At the sight of that, Nobara and Todo both nodded without realizing it.
"You shut yourself in your room for a while and stopped coming out. You’ve changed."
"Sorry about that. I needed time to sort out my thoughts."
"Hmph. Good enough."
"Fushiguro Megumi. Or should I call you Zenin Megumi now? You’ve finally become a man worth looking at."
"Just call me Fushiguro."
"While we’re at it, let’s talk about your taste in women again...."
"Oh, come on."
Megumi shook off Todo, who kept clinging to him like a nuisance, and thought of Maki, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time.
'If I become the head.... I want to make a place where Mai can belong.'
No matter how things had turned out, he would do his best.
If this had happened before, he might have refused or run away. But since it had come to this, he decided he should become someone who wouldn’t shame the position of clan head.
He vowed to build a new Zenin clan where Maki and Mai would never be looked down on again.
'But.... what is this feeling?'
He had already subdued Naoya, his rival.
There was no way he would lose out in legitimacy. To guard against any possible trap, he had even brought Todo and Nobara with him.
The higher-ups would be swept away by Yoshino by the end of today as well.
"Fushiguro, what’s wrong?"
"Nothing."
And yet, why did he keep having this ominous feeling?
-------------------------------
Tragedies caused by an imbalance of information are not uncommon in history.
A general who charged into enemy territory without knowing the enemy’s true strength, only to be crushed in defeat.
Or the story of a war hero who entered a city already overturned by rebellion and ended up with his head cut off. Such tales were passed down all too often.
"Naoya was defeated by Fushiguro Megumi."
"This must never leak outside."
"What’s his condition now?"
"He’s much better, but they say it’ll take at least three more days before he’s back to normal."
The Zenin clan was following a similar path.
Their legitimate heir, Naoya, had lost his duel against Fushiguro Megumi, and that was highly likely to lead to unrest among his supporters.
For those firmly opposed to letting the clan’s entire fortune fall into Fushiguro Megumi’s hands, it was a bolt from the blue.
What was more, with the lives of the troops sent after Yoshino Junpei and Itadori Yuji still uncertain, they had few options left.
"Unauthorized intrusion into the underground prison, and Headmaster Yaga was taken."
"That’s rebellion."
"Even now, we could install Fushiguro Megumi as clan head, or else continue following the higher-ups...."
Even so, there was in truth no option to side with the rebels.
They had cooperated with Jujutsu Headquarters to send out the pursuit team, and Naoya had also struck first by ambushing Megumi. They had done too much already.
Even if they bowed their heads now, once they had already bared their teeth, a purge would be unavoidable. Not only would they lose everything they had accumulated, but if things went badly, even their lives could not be guaranteed.
"No, this won’t do. We’ll push the plan through as it is."
"You sure about that?"
"I’m against just collapsing here and waiting to be ousted. Fushiguro Megumi has to die."
Pushed to the edge of the cliff, they had no choice but to make a move they knew was a bad one.
Fushiguro Megumi had built a decent relationship not only with the Gojo clan, but also with Kamo Noritoshi, the next head of the Kamo clan.
There were even plenty of voices saying they should back him under the pretense of restoring ties with the Gojo clan through this opportunity.
If they dragged their feet, internal conflict was inevitable. They had to act before the opposing voices grew any louder.
"We should clean up Maki and Mai too."
"Cold as ever."
"Those girls were defective from the start. I don’t feel guilty."
To assassinate Megumi while the higher-ups still stood, they needed a pretext. Conveniently, that was already in place once they had helped the supposedly death-worthy Headmaster Yaga escape.
Now all they needed was to increase their credibility while clearing away internal sources of instability. Keeping the sisters confined within the clan after Naobito’s funeral had been for just such a contingency.
Maki and Mai, who were likely to side with Megumi, were the starting point.
"A clan that’s been passed down for generations can’t be handed over to some outsider."
Where had all this tragedy begun?
When Ougi, who had failed to become clan head, blamed his children for it? When Toji made a deal with Naobito? When Gojo was sealed in Shibuya?
If the day of action had been delayed by just one more day, the overthrow of the higher-ups would have been announced, and the Zenin clan would have had no choice but to follow Megumi with tears in their eyes and mustard in their noses.
If even one of the pursuit team members they had sent had returned and reported Junpei’s true strength, they would have been too afraid to move.
Their thoroughness and speed tightened the leash around the Zenin clan’s necks at the same time it made them complacent.
And so tragedy came without a sound.
------------------------------------
"How’s your body?"
"I’m fine."
"They said the burn scar can’t be helped. That short-haired girl was crying her eyes out and apologizing."
"Nobara did her best. Just surviving was a miracle."
Inside a guest room in the Zenin clan mansion, Maki spoke with Mai while moving her body around.
Aside from the stinging of raw skin, she had no aftereffects.
She would look ugly, sure, but so what? It wasn’t like there was anyone she needed to show it to.
In fact, she felt relieved to be free of that bastard Naoya’s sexual harassment and crude remarks.
"What happens to us now?"
Maki, who had been keeping a composed expression, bit her lip at Mai’s question.
It had been nearly a week since they were confined in the mansion under the name of treatment and protection.
When she opened her eyes, the face she saw was not Ieiri Shoko’s but Mai’s.
She could barely remember what happened in Shibuya.
The moment that volcano-headed bastard, who had been thought dead, dropped a massive meteor, her consciousness cut off. When she woke up, Naobito’s funeral was already underway.
Since no attendants came by, she had only been able to get brief bits of information from Mai, who seemed to know the situation a little better.
"I don’t know either."
No one had explained how things were unfolding.
She didn’t even know why they had been confined here.
She felt like going to find that damn father of theirs, if only to ask him.
........
An awkward silence hung between them.
They had been together since birth, and yet for the past two years they had barely had a chance to face each other properly.
As for the last time they met, at the exchange event, she remembered parting on rather bad terms.
The conversations they had here were strictly about the outside situation; neither of them had spoken honestly about what was in their hearts.
"Don’t you have anything to say to me?"
While Maki was thinking over what to say, it was Mai who broke the silence first.
"Say what?"
"In Shibuya. You kept sticking around even after that old geezer told you to go back."
"I just thought it was a situation where I had to step in."
"You almost died."
There was a trace of moisture in Mai’s voice as she said it.
As if trying to hide her trembling, she lowered her head and went on.
"It didn’t have to be you there. You’re weak, after all."
........
"Why do you keep trying to go off somewhere?"
-You liar. I really hate you.
That pitiful sight overlapped with the way she had looked during the exchange event.
Before Maki could answer, the door burst open.
A young woman with a lifeless expression stepped carefully into the room.
"Mom?"
........
Maki and Mai’s mother, Madam Zenin, looked back and forth between the two of them and said nothing for a while.
At last, her mouth opened, and her purpose became clear.
"Maki, Mai. Your father is looking for you. Come with me."
"Huh?"
"That old fossil? Why now?"
........
Madam Zenin silently turned her back and walked off, as if telling them to follow.
The twins, puzzled, slowly got to their feet.
"What could this be about...."
"Let’s go first. We need to know what’s going on."
As they followed behind her, Madam Zenin occasionally did strange things.
She would suddenly stop walking, or rub at the corners of her eyes.
But she never once looked back.
.....?
Their suspicion only deepened.
After walking for quite some time, they arrived at the Zenin clan’s Giko.
The gate, normally off-limits to women, stood wide open today, waiting for guests.
"From here on, you go on ahead."
........
Madam Zenin still refused to meet the twins’ eyes to the very end.
"Mom."
"....."
"Forget it. Let’s go."
There were more than a few strange things about this, but they had already come this far. They couldn’t turn back now.
Leaving Madam Zenin behind, the sisters stepped through the gate into Giko.
"You’ve come."
There, their father was waiting.
Zenin special-grade jujutsushi Zenin Ougi.
At the unwelcome face they hadn’t seen in a while, the sisters frowned.
'You stains! If only you two, if only you two had turned out properly, then I....!'
Since childhood, Ougi had been the sort of man who could hardly be given a good evaluation as either a father or a person.
He was usually indifferent and cold, but whenever he drank, he vented his frustration over never becoming clan head onto Maki and Mai.
They had no memory of their mother stepping in to protect them. If anything, it was common for her to be beaten as well for having given birth to defective goods.
"Why did you call us?"
Her tone naturally came out harsh.
Instead of answering, Ougi rose to his feet and started walking toward them.
"What are you...."
"Do you know why I never became clan head?"
"Huh?"
The unexpected question made her slow to react.
In an instant, Ougi’s sword flashed out and cut across Maki’s upper body.
Slash!
"Maki!"
Clang!
"Agh!"
Mai quickly fumbled through her pocket and drew a handgun, aiming it at him, but Ougi was faster.
He flipped the lowered blade upward, and his sword cut through Mai’s gun and arm in a single motion.
"Ma.... Maki...."
As Mai stretched out a trembling arm toward the fallen Maki, Ougi’s merciless kick came down on her.
"Ghk...."
"That’s right. Why did I never become clan head?"
His history with techniques was not lacking in any major way. His legitimacy was not the issue either. What he lacked was only one thing: the perfection of his children.
Of course, that was only Ougi’s opinion.
In reality, compared to Naobito, Ougi had nothing that surpassed him, whether in skill or character.
"Because you, my children, are idiots....!"
He alone, consumed by his own stubbornness, did not know that fact.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register