Rukongai, South District 64. A secluded courtyard.
Six or seven figures in mismatched cloaks sat in a circle. They were fallen nobles of Rukongai.
Bang!
A gaunt, hollow-eyed middle-aged noble slammed his teacup onto the table and snarled through clenched teeth:
"Damn it! What's going on?! Why have all those rumors we started spreading gone dead in the water? We can't even make a ripple!"
The others around the long table looked just as grim.
Having lost their power and their troops, these people had become adept at hiding in the shadows and wielding rumors and false accusations like knives.
Years ago, they had used those relentless attacks, fueled by spite and incitement, to drive Sōya Azashiro, the brilliant but fallen lieutenant of the Eleventh Division, into a complete mental breakdown. In the end, he had torn off his armband and defected from Seireitei.
Now they had set their sights on a new target: Kōga Kuchiki, the lucky bastard who had married into one of the Five Great Noble Houses by wedding the daughter of the Kuchiki Clan's head.
Why should he have it all?!
Why had they, heirs of noble bloodlines, been dragged into the mud while some boy who had come from nowhere used his strange Muramasa to win Kuchiki Ginrei's favor, marry into the family, and rise through the Sixth Division? Everywhere he went, people respectfully called him "Lord Kōga"!
Jealousy had nearly burned away their reason. Their plan had been vicious: repeat their old trick, spread rumors that Kōga took undue credit, disrespected the nobility, and even secretly manipulated his colleagues' minds. They would exploit the noble council's instinctive suspicion of an outsider gaining power and nail him, bit by bit, to the pillar of shame.
"...It's all because of that damned Thirteenth Division captain, Shuichi!"