All the way to the Zenin clan mansion, Megumi was plagued by a bad feeling.
Wasn’t there a saying that if things went too smoothly, you should check them over once?
The thought that something terrible was about to happen wouldn’t leave his head, and the more he felt it, the faster he walked, trying to shake off the unease.
But had he already been too late?
"What the hell....."
It smells like blood.
That was the first impression that came to mind when Megumi and the others arrived at the mansion.
There was no one there to greet them, no gatekeeper either. From inside came only faint groans, the cracking sound of someone colliding in battle, and the metallic stench of blood.
Internal conflict? Intruders? Whatever the reason, it was clear that fighting was happening inside.
Something was wrong.
In the minds of the frozen group, a face they hadn’t seen for a while since the Shibuya Incident flashed up.
"Maki senpai!"
When they threw open the gate and rushed inside, what met their eyes was a complete mess.
The mansion’s long-standing structures had been brutally half-destroyed. In the neatly landscaped garden pond, unidentified corpses floated on the surface, while koi swarmed around them like mad, feasting. Even amid the chaos of blood and flesh scattered everywhere, there were still people alive somewhere inside, because every now and then groans and terrified cries drifted out from the mansion.
For the Zenin clan, one of the Three Great Families, it was far too savage and ruinous a sight.
Before they could even make sense of what had happened, a silhouette dropped in front of them.
Thud!
The person who crashed into the ground, leaving a crater behind, slowly got back up.
As a familiar face came into view, everyone there gaped.
"Mai?"
"You little brat?"
"Mai!"
Mai, a revolver in one hand and a sword in the other, slowly turned her head.
Feeling that something was off, their eyes met hers, and a chilling gaze stared back.
"How did you..."
"We should be the ones asking that. What the hell happened here?"
"......."
There were so many things they wanted to ask.
What had happened to make the clan look like this?
Why couldn’t they sense any cursed energy at all?
What had become of Maki?
Reading the look that contained all of those questions, Mai—or rather, Maki—twisted her expression.
"Why are you here so late?"
"Uh...."
"You’re late. Way too late."
Her bitter words carried irreversible regret, and a little resentment too.
Unable to do anything about the seething grudge in front of them, a man leaped down.
It was Zenin Naoya, with his strikingly dyed yellow hair.
"Well now, you came at just the right time."
"Uncle?"
"Mai, you’ve done enough already, haven’t you?"
Naoya laughed brightly, as if he hadn’t just been fighting a moment ago, and raised both hands.
Leaving Maki glaring murderously behind him, he spoke with a shameless face.
"I surrender."
-----------------------------------
Zenin Naoya is a genius.
No matter how much his personality and behavior dragged down his reputation, that was an undeniable fact.
The inherited Projection Sorcery from his father.
His unusual sense and development from childhood.
And his innate aggressiveness.
Aside from Gojo Satoru, who was considered beyond comparison, there was no one in his age group who could match Naoya.
Everyone praised Naoya as a genius, and naturally began to see him as the next clan head after Naobito.
Maybe it was his arrogant nature, but this was the point where Naoya truly began to warp.
Young Naoya had nothing to fear.
As the legitimate son of the clan head, there was no one who could treat him carelessly except his father, Naobito. And Naobito, having had Naoya late in life, doted on his youngest son excessively. That excessive affection became poison, and it ruined him.
"I’m a genius. I’ll be the next clan head after Dad."
With that thought at the core, Naoya grew more and more brazen.
He bullied servants, branch-family children, and even direct cousins who lacked ability, and went so far as to look down on his elders simply because they were women.
The older brothers above him, and people like Ougi and Jinichi, disliked Naoya, but he dismissed even that as the envy of losers.
Then one day, he heard rumors about a failure.
The second son of the previous clan head. A man who supposedly had no cursed energy at all.
Curious, Naoya ran off in high spirits to mock the loser.
How pathetic must he be?
How miserable must his face look?
With high expectations swelling in his chest, Naoya went to find the failure, and that day changed his life.
When he met those eerie eyes, Naoya froze.
The man didn’t even spare him a glance as he passed by, and Naoya, his legs going weak, sank straight to the ground.
He knew at once.
He wasn’t the kind of failure the clan talked about. If anything, he was a powerhouse who could kill anyone in the clan if he wanted to.
Only Naoya and his father, Naobito, realized that fact.
"Dad, why does everyone call Toji a failure?"
Even when he asked, he never got a proper answer.
He hadn’t asked to hear the obvious nonsense about having no cursed energy or no technique.
His feelings toward an incomprehensible existence turned into fear. And fear, in turn, became admiration.
"Big brother... stop.... It hurts... wahhh...."
The reason he beat up young Maki whenever he was bored was probably an extension of that feeling.
Since Maki was weak too, in a way similar to him having no cursed energy.
He projected his desire to surpass the Toji he admired onto Maki, and satisfied it by crushing her instead.
As time passed, when Toji died, the emotions Naoya felt were too complicated to put into words.
Toji, whom he had thought was the strongest person he had ever seen in his life.
The one who killed him was Gojo Satoru, a man who stood even higher.
Rage at having the target he wanted to surpass taken away. Unresolved inferiority.
Within that, Naoya grew even more violent.
And now, in front of him, there was Mai, who looked exactly like Toji.
Pop, crack-crack-crack!
Within time divided into 24 frames, offense and defense traded back and forth.
Leading the exchange was Naoya, who held the advantage in speed.
Following the movements he had set, he thrust out his forearm and fist again and again, but Mai blocked every attack with a face so cold it was frightening.
"You...!"
Unlike Megumi, who had been one-sidedly beaten down, she could clearly react.
Watching Mai track his movements, Naoya was reminded of a familiar experience.
The killing intent, rage, and sneer he had felt that day. Emotions just like Toji’s back then were surging around her.
Now he understood.
Why he couldn’t sense any cursed energy in this body.
No matter what trick she had used, this wasn’t Mai right now. It was Maki.
Not the weak Maki from before, either, but someone like Toji...!
"You...!"
As Naoya’s foot, veins bulging on his forehead, slammed into Maki’s abdomen, Maki’s sword cut off several strands of his hair.
As Maki was driven backward, the revolver in her hand aimed straight at him.
With a metallic click, the cylinder spun, and the barrel spat fire.
Bang!
Even within those 24 frames, the bullet flew in fast.
But he had already read the trajectory from the movement of her eyes and shoulders at the setup stage.
Naoya ducked to avoid it, and his hand seized Maki’s arm.
Buzzzzz
As the penalty of Projection Sorcery took hold, Naoya’s accelerated fist slammed into Maki’s abdomen, trapping her within the frame.
The undefended blow struck her steel-like body and sent her flying.
Boom! Bang! Bang!
Driven back by the heavy impact, Maki smashed through the training hall wall several times before Naoya, now accelerated, appeared above her.
His flashing kick came down through the rubble and slammed into Maki’s guard, sending her straight into the ground.
Even then, her eyes never wavered as she muttered something under her breath, fixed on Naoya.
"Two, three, four, five....."
That gaze, as if dissecting him, disgusted Naoya.
That bitch, who had been beaten until she was vomiting on the training hall floor, dared to stand in the same place as him.
No, she was trying to reach the same place as Toji.
"You...!"
"You’re not Toji!"
Just as Naoya thought that and tried to accelerate again, an unwelcome guest appeared.
"Mai?"
The very person who had dealt him a humiliating defeat.
Fushiguro Megumi and his strays had arrived at the Zenin clan estate.
"Tch."
With those guys here, he had no chance of winning.
The brown-haired girl behind them and the topknot-wearing gorilla were definitely not easy opponents either.
Even though the thrill of battle hadn’t faded yet, Naoya’s mind spun quickly and made its decision.
"Those idiots probably don’t know about the plan, do they?"
Judging by their blank faces, that was certain.
He could already roughly tell what he needed to do.
"It’s a shame I couldn’t finish this fight, but... I’ll wait for the right moment."
Unlike the dead Ougi and Jinichi, he still had room for negotiation.
Ougi, who could have served as a witness, had long since been beaten to death by Maki. Everyone who had sided with him was dead except for Naoya himself.
Besides, since there were still forces supporting him, even Megumi, as clan head, couldn’t just punish him however he liked.
Given that he had spared Naoya after the ambush, Megumi didn’t seem like the type to kill recklessly.
If he denied everything and slipped through, there was even a chance Maki would be the one held responsible for the massacre.
She was a jujutsushi, after all. They wouldn’t just let her off after she’d killed so many people.
Even if he couldn’t talk his way out of it, he only needed to buy time to escape.
"What are you thinking?"
"Mai... even if we treated you badly, killing everyone like this is a bit much, isn’t it?"
"So all of this was done by Mai?"
"......"
Putting on the most pitiful face he could and playing the victim shifted the mood a little.
When they realized Mai was the main culprit behind the slaughter, the expressions of the three over there all turned to shock, while Mai simply listened in silence.
Naoya, inwardly cheering, let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
"I’m sorry about what happened to Maki.... I didn’t know Ougi would go that crazy either."
"......."
"I’ll explain everything to the others. So let’s stop here."
The stance was that he had nothing to do with the plan, and that he had no choice but to resist because Mai, having lost her reason to rage, attacked first.
Having pinned everything on the dead Ougi and Jinichi, Naoya took the mediator’s position and continued speaking.
He didn’t forget to subtly say that he would cover for the massacre, of course, while also signaling that he supported Megumi.
It was the kind of aristocratic speech that pretended to sympathize with Mai’s situation while still shifting the blame onto her.
After hearing Naoya’s story in full, Nobara and Todo looked a little confused.
Because the story kept breaking off in the middle and the full circumstances weren’t clear, they didn’t know what to say. Mai keeping her mouth shut only made it worse.
What they could tell was that the sisters’ father, Ougi, had gone mad and hurt Maki, and that Mai, driven insane by it, had slaughtered the Zenin clan members.
There were too many strange points, and they had a mountain of questions they wanted to ask, but the atmosphere was so serious that they hesitated to speak carelessly.
But Megumi was different.
Even if Mai kept quiet, there were too many strange points in Naoya’s words.
Right now, with the upper ranks not yet known to have been overturned, there was no way the opposition would just sit still. The fact that the matter had progressed without Naoya, who held an important position in the clan, was suspicious enough, and the reason for hurting Maki had been brushed over far too vaguely.
Having roughly grasped the truth of the incident, Megumi asked Mai in a low voice,
"What happened to Maki senpai?"
".....She’s dead."
At the calm answer, Megumi’s expression twisted.
Tears welled in Nobara’s eyes, and Todo lowered his head with a somber face.
Watching their reactions, Naoya quietly edged backward and secretly began gathering cursed energy.
Megumi, who had been silent for a while, turned his gaze toward Naoya.
There was no hesitation or mercy left in those eyes.
With a bitter expression, Megumi opened his mouth.
"I won’t interfere, Maki senpai. Do whatever you want."
A killing permit issued in the name of the Zenin clan head.
Revenge had to belong entirely to the sisters Mai and Maki.
As Mai nodded, her figure vanished from sight in an instant.
Whoosh!
A sword strike flew toward the prepared Naoya.
Breaking into a cold sweat, he dodged and shouted furiously,
"Are you seriously doing this? You think the clan head can act like this?"
"You’ve already been exposed. Stop acting."
As if sensing the truth from Megumi’s attitude, Todo and Nobara were also glaring at Naoya with murderous expressions.
They looked ready to jump him and kill him on the spot, but no one stepped in.
The board that had been set up through their joint effort had been prepared for Mai and Maki.
"I’ll accept the result. If you win, not only will I spare your life, I’ll also recognize your position within the clan."
Megumi made the offer to Naoya, who was trapped in a corner.
It was meant to prevent him from overturning the board and running away.
Even knowing it was a poisoned chalice, Naoya had no choice but to accept it.
It would be a waste to run now, after all, with the unspent thrill from earlier and the clan’s assets still on the line.
"For the record, that last part was a [binding vow]."
"Don’t regret this."
Now that he knew the other side was serious too, he had no options left.
All that remained was to throw everything he had at the enemy in front of him and crush them.
Grinding his teeth, Naoya began to accelerate.
Dudududududu!!!
As the technique stacked on itself, Naoya’s body broke through the speed of sound.
His top speed, one he hadn’t been able to reach before.
Taking the experience from the fight with Megumi as a lesson, he had no intention of ever releasing the technique again.
Crack
His body had been injured earlier and still wasn’t fully healed, but that was fine.
He intended to settle this with a single decisive exchange.
He could think about recovery after that.
"........"
Maki, impossible to read, simply stood still and waited for the attack to come.
He could understand her side too. The wound cut by Ougi. Back-to-back battles with the "Disease." She was probably at her limit too.
She was planning to settle this in a short fight, just like him.
"I’ll break through at top speed!"
That was what he thought.
"Mai."
Whoooosh
The atmosphere changed, and an enormous surge of cursed energy burst up from Maki’s body.
At the same time, something spilled from Mai’s hand onto the ground.
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
What spread out across the floor had sharp spikes sticking out in every direction.
It was caltrops.
"Stupid bitch."
So that was her plan to seal off his mobility.
But Projection Sorcery allowed movement in the air too.
Naoya shot upward in an instant and dropped toward Mai at terrifying speed.
Power became speed and mass.
If this hit, then in one blow....
"I was waiting."
Just before the strike landed, Mai met Naoya’s eyes—and had already switched places with Maki.
She had seen him use aerial movement while fighting alongside Naobito.
The real purpose was to restrict his attack path.
"You can’t set up an unreasonable movement, can you?"
The limitation on movement while airborne.
Naoya’s leg, performing the final 24th motion, showed no sign of moving.
By now, Maki had already grasped the principles of Projection Sorcery, and the unavoidable counter came flying in.
"I could see it once I got this body."
"You fake...!"
Slash!
Naoya’s leg met the blade head-on and was split vertically in two.
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