(III)
When the news reached Naobito Zenin, the situation had yet to fully escalate. The man who tipped him off was Zuojiang Qianmen, an official within Kyoto's municipal government.
Zuojiang sounded anxious over the phone, stripped of a politician's customary composure.
Naobito Zenin swirled the flask in his hand without saying anything. Only when Zuojiang Qianmen asked what he should do did the clan head, who had held his position for over thirty years, reply unhurriedly, "No rush."
It was not an act. Naobito Zenin genuinely was not worried.
He finished the sake in his flask before calling a routine clan meeting.
At the meeting, he briefly explained the situation to several elders. They were not worried either. Some sipped tea, some dozed off, and others even changed the subject to the latest news about Jujutsu Society's Three Great Families.
The meeting lasted three hours, two and a half of which were spent heatedly debating the Gojo Clan's various misdeeds.
By then, five hours had passed since the incident.
Naoya Zenin, who had been listening outside the door the whole time, was thoroughly confused. He had only just turned fifteen that year and naturally knew nothing of the powerful backers the Zenin Clan relied on.
Once the meeting ended, he asked Naobito Zenin, "Father, aren't you worried?"
Naobito Zenin gave his son an odd look. "Worried about what?"
"The clan getting implicated."
"It was only a Grade 4 from a branch family. It won't reach the Zenin Clan."
Naoya Zenin still did not understand. "But the victim was a mayor."
Naobito Zenin smiled disdainfully. "Someone will take care of it for us."
Seeing how unconcerned his father was, Naoya Zenin felt that his own worries were ridiculous.
He knelt in the courtyard, looking at the lush green orchid grass, when a pair of eyes suddenly came to mind. Then he thought of her.
The girl who had stripped him of his dignity.
Naoya Zenin's intuition was sharp. He could guarantee that she was behind this. Recalling his father's expression just now, he felt that disdain infect him, and he went to find her wearing the same mocking smile.
Striding past room after room, he found her sitting in a courtyard as well.
Only, there was a child in front of her.
She seemed different. She wore an expression Naoya Zenin had never seen.
Patient, tolerant, even gentle.
Naoya Zenin quietly clenched his fists. He felt angry.
Because he thought she could not be like this. She could not be allowed to wear that expression, because she certainly never treated him that way.
He opened his mouth to sneer, but a single glance from her made his legs go weak. The phantom crackle of an electric current immediately filled his ears.
"Did you need something, Naoya?"
He did not dare approach. He simply stood unsteadily where he was, cold sweat pouring down his back. "N-no, nothing."
Naoya Zenin berated himself inwardly. What are you afraid of? She's just a little girl who looks five or six. You're going to be the head of the Zenin Clan someday. How can you be afraid of a child?
She walked toward him.
Cold sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes, stinging his conjunctiva.
She stopped in front of him.
He dropped to the ground with a thud. There was no electric current at all, yet his limbs felt so weak that he could not stand.
"Tell me what you heard today."
Naoya Zenin could not resist. He felt as though he had been cursed, with a curse that could not be broken, and this child could control him. In truth, only when he grew older would he understand that this was the combined effect of psychological suggestion and trauma.
He told her everything he had heard, even deliberately imitating his father's disdainful tone, just to sneak his own contempt into the account.
After listening, she showed little reaction.
Naoya Zenin personally thought she had been scared senseless.
The thought delighted him. He lowered his head, a smile spreading across his face. An indescribable sense of accomplishment filled him. He even thought that once he became clan head, he would marry her, then torment her and make her understand the Zenin Clan's true power.
Naoya Zenin left the courtyard in an excellent mood. So excellent, in fact, that when he returned to his room, he pierced his own ear and deliberately chose a green diamond stud.
That night, he lay under the covers, deliberately sleeping on his side to press the stud beneath his body. The fresh piercing had not fully healed, and the pressure caused a mild, stinging pain. Normal people hated pain, and Naoya Zenin once had too.
But now, he adjusted well, actually discovering a sense of pleasure in the pain.
Moonlight shrouded him, and a chaotic dream began.
A room steeped in sensuality, a dizzy sensation, and a cold gaze looking down from above.
That pure, fiercely aggressive green watched him, watched every disgraceful display, watched him kneel and crawl, watched him in all his wretched humiliation.
In the dream, he cried, huddled by her feet, sobbing uncontrollably.
But it was not sorrow. It was exhilaration.
He desperately wanted something-from her gaze, from her questions, or perhaps, from her...
The dream stopped abruptly. Naoya Zenin was jolted awake by a tumult like the chaos of war.
He angrily pushed open his door, ready to berate the servants, only to find the courtyard packed with police officers.
(IV)
"You officers have no right to enter the Zenin Clan's grounds." Ogi Zenin raised his chin slightly, blocking the entrance.
The officer leading the team frowned and presented a search warrant. "Mr. Zenin, please do not obstruct us in the execution of our duties."
Ogi Zenin was not a middle-aged man with common sense-at least where the law was concerned. After all, from birth, the laws he had memorized were those of Jujutsu Society, and the rules he obeyed were those of the Zenin Clan. Had his elder brother not cautioned him, he would have brazenly called these men pigs rather than respectfully addressing them as officers.
"Have your superiors come here. This is the Zenin Clan, one of Jujutsu Society's Three Great Families. It's not somewhere lowly policemen like you can enter as you please."
The lead officer coldly put away the warrant, then waved his hand and led his team straight into the Zenin Clan's grounds.
Ogi Zenin froze, then prepared to attack the police, but Naobito Zenin stopped him.
Though the brothers had constantly fought among themselves over the past few years, they remained united against outsiders. Seeing his elder brother intervene, Ogi Zenin swallowed his anger, though his arrogance remained.
He did not believe these pigs could find anything. Naobito Zenin thought the same.
But when the officers hauled away batch after batch of Zenin clan members, the brothers could no longer stand by.
Naobito Zenin stopped the lead officer. "You need a reason to arrest people, don't you, officer?"
The lead officer sneered. "Please step aside, Mr. Zenin. Naturally, the police have grounds for making arrests."
Furious, Ogi Zenin blurted out, "Who do you pigs think you are?"
The officer glared at him. "Mr. Zenin, please show some respect."
Hot-tempered as he was, Ogi Zenin lashed out, knocking the officer to the ground with one punch. Beside him, Naobito Zenin deliberately made no attempt to intervene. He even leisurely took his flask from his sleeve and drank a mouthful of sake.
Seeing the officer on the ground, Ogi Zenin stomped hard on his wrist and sneered. "You came empty-handed, and you'll leave empty-handed. You're not taking anyone away."
"Do all you Jujutsu Sorcerers think you're above the law?" the officer roared.
"The law only applies to ordinary people like you." Ogi Zenin bent down and whispered into the officer's ear, "What does it have to do with us Jujutsu Sorcerers?"
Deciding that was enough, Naobito Zenin coughed softly, took out his phone, and began composing a message to his backer, Diet member Miura Harukimi.
Meanwhile, the other officers nearby saw what had happened and rushed over, helping the officer up. "Officer Miura, are you all right?"
Naobito Zenin's hand jerked, sending the unfinished message.
The officer surnamed Miura struggled to his feet and told his colleagues with absolute resolve, "Don't worry about me. Take them away, and take this man who assaulted an officer too."
Seeing that Officer Miura had not learned his lesson, Ogi Zenin moved to hit him again, only to hear Naobito Zenin suddenly ask, "Officer Miura, may I ask if you know Miura Yasukimi?"
Officer Miura looked displeased. "No comment."
Naobito Zenin's heart sank, and panic stirred within him. He kept it off his face, however, and even posed another question. "Then may I ask which members of the Zenin Clan committed murder?"
"We're not arresting them for murder." Officer Miura pulled his police identification from his pocket. "Allow me to introduce myself again. I'm Miura Yasunori, a narcotics inspector with the Narcotics Control Department. Following a tip-off and investigation, we confirmed that members of the Zenin Clan have been gathering to take hallucinogens, as well as illegally manufacturing and selling Tetracaine Hydrochloride Injection and tetrahydrocannabinol injections."
"As persons implicated in this case, Mr. Naobito Zenin and Mr. Ogi Zenin, you'll need to come with us as well."
(IV)
Naoya Zenin walked to that courtyard in a daze.
Today, she sat alone in the courtyard, playing a board game.
He still felt afraid whenever he approached her, but now a trace of bewilderment mingled with his fear.
Sitting across from her, Naoya Zenin asked in a drifting voice, "Will they come back?"
She held a white stone. "They won't be coming back."
The stone landed on the board with a crisp click.
Naoya Zenin felt utterly lost, because apart from him, only women and children remained in the Zenin Clan now.
He did not know where to begin, but he was full of questions and felt he had to get an answer.
He rubbed the green stud in his ear and asked his first question. "Will you leave?"
"Of course."
Naoya Zenin felt his throat tighten, leaving him struggling to speak. He swallowed, and a strange thought sprang into his mind, but he quickly suppressed it.
"When?"
"No comment."
Naoya Zenin tugged lightly at his earring. The faint pain reassured him a little, but it still could not quell the overwhelming confusion and dread.
He seemed unable to suppress that thought any longer.
"Could you take me..."
"Naoya." She suddenly interrupted him.
He pressed his lips together, then answered hoarsely, "Yes."
"Come give me a hug."
Naoya Zenin's eyes widened in disbelief. He felt as if a brutal butcher had taken up residence in his chest and was hacking savagely at his heart.
"What did you say..."
Her gaze was cold, but her words burned. "Come here. Give me a hug."
Without a second thought, he threw himself toward her. Just before he touched her, he suddenly felt a pain in his neck. Then he missed her and fell facedown on the ground.
The fleeting pain was followed by overwhelming dizziness, just like in his dream-or perhaps he had returned to that dream.
As his consciousness slipped away, he heard an utterly emotionless voice.
"Forget everything."