300 Seconds

When young children faced senseless threats and violence, they instinctively searched for a way to survive. Their age kept them from understanding how terribly their foolish choices, their abject submission, and their utterly wretched means of survival would affect their futures.

But how could a child easily grasp something as profound as the right way to survive?

(1)

Toji was late again.

He should have arrived a little earlier.

When he received the message from the half-dead Shiu Kong in the hospital and learned that his children had been forcibly taken to the Zenin Clan, he should have left more decisively and hurried from Kanagawa to Kyoto.

Perhaps he should have been five minutes earlier.

Perhaps he should have skipped those five minutes of indecision outside the Zenin Clan's gates late that night.

No, three minutes earlier would have done.

When he heard his daughter's unnaturally cold interrogation, those three minutes of doubt had been nothing short of a betrayal of her. How could he have doubted his own daughter?

But it really was hard not to be suspicious of all the clues that suggested his daughter was anything but ordinary.

Fine, then ten seconds earlier.

He could have kicked the door open ten seconds earlier, then quickly covered Yuanli's ears so she wouldn't hear a single word out of that piece of trash's mouth. But he hadn't expected that damned trash to recount his agonizing past in just five seconds.

So even if time could rewind, Toji Zenin couldn't actually change anything.

The hands covering his daughter's ears finally went slack.

From the moment he stepped into the Zenin Clan's estate, this father who had accomplished nothing had plunged straight into helplessness.

He couldn't muster the energy, couldn't find the strength to beat that trash bloody. Because whenever he thought about his child hearing his guilty past, he felt he had no dignity left.

What fathers feared most, really, was their children looking down on them.

Even though Toji knew he was rotten to the core and could only belittle himself relentlessly, he still had a little dignity.

That dignity came from the warm hugs his daughter had given him, from the thanks she'd offered him. Yuanli could wholeheartedly credit him with a father's love that even he was too reserved to admit aloud.

Before this night, away from the Zenin Clan, in the days when she knew nothing of heavenly restriction, there had been so many moments when this deeply scarred man thought he had glimpsed eternal happiness.

But this night existed, the Zenin Clan endured, and heavenly restriction was a fact.

That eternal happiness, along with the tiny scrap of dignity Toji Zenin had built up, shattered across the floor in an instant.

The moment he wanted to turn around and leave Yuanli again, Toji became the thirteen-year-old child who had escaped that room.

(2) The room

"Hurry up and get in there to atone."

They shoved him, but he stood straight, refusing to budge.

That room was right before his eyes. Its oppressive atmosphere and foul stench, accompanied by a spine-chilling presence, filled his young self with instinctive fear.

Thirteen-year-old Toji might have been a very clever child.

He bared his teeth, trying to frighten the children shoving him. But because of his heavenly restriction, they had long since stopped fearing him.

They looked him over as though he were an object and told him disdainfully, "We're going to be jujutsu sorcerers, while you have a heavenly restriction. Without cursed energy, you're a sinner in the Zenin Clan."

Then they pretended to be kind as they urged him, "We all know you don't want to be a sinner. So you just have to go inside and atone. Once you come out, you won't be a sinner anymore."

At thirteen, Toji didn't quite understand what the pretense in their pretended kindness really meant.

He had lived amid other people's disgust and threats for too long. He desperately needed to escape those looks and all that unfair treatment.

He was instinctively searching for a way to survive.

And under their coaxing, the room before him became his only choice.

He was genuinely kind, and repeatedly asked for reassurance: once he went inside, he could atone, right?

They were genuinely vicious, and repeatedly deceived him: yes, hurry inside. Just five minutes, and once you came out, everything could go back to how it used to be.

Toji summoned his courage, pushed the door open, and went inside.

What he faced were monsters born of countless people's suffering, things he couldn't see but could sense, smell, and touch.

They tried to tear him apart. They hurt him.

Thirteen-year-old Toji was a very, very brave child.

He was afraid, but he didn't run.

He carefully counted the time. Five minutes meant three hundred seconds. As long as he endured three hundred seconds, everything could go back to how it used to be.

Sharp blades peeled back his tender flesh, and sharp teeth sank into his limbs.

When five minutes were up, he rushed toward the door, only to discover it had been locked from outside.

Mocking laughter rang out, piercing his ears.

More than the pain in his body, it was their ridicule that truly "broke" this child.

Mockingly, they demanded that he voice his submission and beg, just to gain a real chance at survival.

The child who was "broken" in that moment took the sharp blade in his hand and cut his own mouth.

His silence, his reserve, his refusal to speak of things all began with that cut across his mouth.

Later, he escaped through sheer determination, clinging to his obsession with dignity.

Now he would have to tread over that shattered dignity and vanish from his daughter's sight, bleeding all over.

The anguish he had felt at thirteen was like a time bomb that suddenly exploded when he was in his thirties.

That belief in his own guilt, buried deep in his heart, had inexplicably persisted to this day.

He had to go. He had to disappear. Because only if he vanished, if he left, would Yuanli be free of guilt.

(3)

Toji rose to leave, but Yuanli reached back and caught him.

He watched Yuanli pull a pair of handcuffs from the shadows and cuff them together.

Then the girl turned and told the trash solemnly, "There is no guilt in having a heavenly restriction. Toji and I will not accept baseless accusations. And because of your past actions, in the days to come, I'll make you experience punishment far more painful than today's."

Having said that, the child turned back to him.

"Dad."

He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a short, breathy sound.

Yuanli frowned. "Crouch down."

Without thinking, he crouched in front of his daughter.

"Who am I to you?" The child pointed at herself.

He looked at the child whose hair and eyes were exactly the same color as his and answered quietly, "My daughter."

"I'm your daughter. Then do you think I'm guilty?"

A wave of panic swept over Toji. He grabbed the child's arm. "No, you're not guilty. You won't be guilty."

The child paused, then leaned forward and hugged him with one arm.

His head rested against Yuanli's bony shoulder, and her hand gently stroked his back, again and again.

"Don't panic, Dad. Don't be afraid."

She was clearly just a child under ten, yet the dependable, reassuring quality in her voice actually soothed Toji.

He hugged Yuanli back with one arm, no longer quite able to tell whether he was an adult now or that panic-stricken child who had escaped the room.

He heard Yuanli continue, "If I'm not guilty, how could you be? We share the same blood, the same status. We're a family. We share honor and disgrace, right?"

Perhaps thirteen-year-old Toji had been so utterly alone that he needed those words even more than thirty-year-old Toji did. So he descended into this adult body and answered the girl's question in this father's place, his voice catching with a sob.

"Right."

The girl paused, seeming to notice something, and softened her voice. "Tell me. Tell me how they bullied you."

Toji had suffered so many wrongs. In his thirties, he didn't even dare tell Yuanli why, much less anything else. But now, whether it was his daughter's dependable voice or the memories taking hold, he could actually speak of that incident and how he had felt.

If Toji had been clearheaded now, he would surely have touched the scar cut across his mouth without realizing it, finding it too shameful to speak of.

But now, all he felt was sadness and hurt.

The girl quietly listened as he finished that cruel story, then asked him, "Toji, you think going in there to atone was the wrong decision, don't you?"

That was indeed what he thought. And that mistake had grown into guilt.

The scar on his mouth was guilt, the room was guilt, and his unacknowledged, forever despised self was guilt too.

But then he heard Yuanli say, "Under those circumstances, you weren't wrong at all, Toji. You were brave."

As though afraid he wouldn't understand, Yuanli continued, "Toji, survival is an instinct. There's no guilt or wrongdoing in it. The ones who were wrong, the guilty ones, were the people who threatened you, those shallow, ignorant people. You did wonderfully."

His eyes stung a little. "Wonderfully?"

"Yes." The girl was utterly certain. "Knowing the room was dangerous and still overcoming your fear was incredibly brave. And even at the very end, you didn't give in to their oppression. Although I don't approve of hurting yourself to keep yourself grounded, being able to think of cutting yourself to stay clearheaded under those circumstances really makes me admire you."

"Admire me?"

"Yes! Admire you."

They were only simple words of praise, yet Toji felt as though his shattered self-respect had been picked up again and fitted back together, piece by piece.

Yuanli released him from the hug and looked straight at him. After a long moment, she said, "Toji, you need to remember that you have two children. You're not alone."

Toji gazed into those emerald eyes and slowly nodded.

Yuanli didn't seem satisfied with that response. "Dad, I need you to repeat what I just said."

Toji instinctively wanted to touch the scar at the corner of his mouth, but realized Yuanli had cuffed his dominant hand. He gave up and said, "I have two children. I... I'm not alone."

The girl nodded and reached out to pat his shoulder. "All right, it's too late. Let's go."

Holding his hand in her left and her little brother's in her right, Yuanli led them forward.

Just as they were about to leave the corridor, the girl turned her head and said to Toji,

"Oh, right, Dad. I forgot to tell you. In my eyes, nothing is indestructible. The only things that can endure forever exist in my memories."

"Whether they're people or events."