For the people complaining about the backstory being long, I understand. But for the rest of the volume and the future of the story, I believe it is important to establish the Zen'in Clan and along with this Toji who isn't the same as the Toji we see in JJK. Along with many Zen'in characters that we see in JJK, they are different in this story.
...
The first time I tried to join the Kukuru trainees, I was five years old.
They were running laps around the eastern yard when I slipped out of the barracks and followed them. Seven trainees moved across the dirt in matching dark clothes, numbered metal tags bouncing against their chests. The smallest was nearly twice my size.
That did not matter to me.
They slept in the same building, ate in the same dining hall, and answered to the same officers.
As far as I understood, that made us the same.
I reached the middle of their formation before anyone noticed.
"What's the kid doing out here?" an instructor shouted.
Several trainees looked back. Their rhythm broke just enough for me to squeeze between two of them.
"I'm running."
The instructor reached for my shoulder.
I twisted away and kept going.
My escape lasted less than a lap. The older trainees maintained their pace without effort. My legs began to burn, and my breathing became loud enough for everyone in the yard to hear.
"Toji."
Shiu stood beneath the barracks awning with a cigarette between his fingers.
I kept running.
"Toji."
"I can keep up."
One of the trainees passed me for the second time.
Shiu crooked a finger.
"Sure you can. Come lie to me over here."
I walked toward him slowly enough to make my disagreement obvious.
He placed a hand against the back of my neck and guided me into the barracks. Once the door closed, he looked down at me.
"What did I tell you yesterday?"
"That I couldn't train with them."
"And what did you do?"
"Trained with them."
Shiu stared at me.
I stared at the floor.
"Why?"
"Because I'm Kukuru."
"No, you're not."
My head snapped up.
"You live in the barracks," he continued. "You eat the food. That doesn't make you a trainee."
"My father sent me here."
"Good for him. He doesn't decide how I train people."
At five, I did not understand how unusual it was for someone inside the Zen'in Clan to speak as though my father's authority ended at a doorway. I only knew Shiu said it without lowering his voice.
He took me into his office and removed a numbered metal tag from a drawer.
"This belongs to Haru. How old is he?"
"Ten."
"Ten years and three months. That's when training starts."
"I can start now."
"No."
"Then I'll be better than him when I'm ten."
"Maybe."
The answer irritated me more than another refusal would have.
"I will."
Shiu leaned forward.
"Know why you fell behind out there?"
"My legs are shorter."
"That's part of it."
"I'll run faster tomorrow."
"You could hurt yourself tomorrow."
"I'm not hurt."
"You're five. Your bones are still growing, your balance is terrible, and you stop breathing whenever you try too hard."
"I don't."
"You're doing it right now."
I let out the breath before I could stop myself.
Shiu's mouth twitched.
"If I put you with them, you'll force your body to match people twice your size. You'll repeat every bad movement until it sticks, wreck your joints, then call it hard work."
"I can handle it."
"No. You can suffer through it." His eyes stayed on mine. "Those aren't the same."
I hated when he said things I could not argue with.
"You still want to train?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Fine."
I waited.
"We're starting with walking."
I stared at him.
"I know how to walk."
"You know how to fall forward without hitting the ground."
He took me to a small room behind the training hall. Colored circles had been painted across padded mats. There were no weapons, targets, or anything else that looked useful.
Yuki stood near the far wall.
She pointed toward the floor.
"Step on the red circles."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
I jumped across them as quickly as possible.
"Stop."
Yuki walked over and pushed two fingers against my shoulder.
I stumbled forward.
"Why're you leaning like that?"
"To go faster."
"You're falling and catching yourself. Go back."
The second attempt was slower.
"Head up."
I raised it.
"Not that high. You look ridiculous."
Shiu laughed from the doorway.
I glared at him.
He laughed harder.
By the end of the session, sweat had soaked through my shirt. Yuki corrected my knees, feet, arms, breathing, and the direction of my eyes.
"This isn't training," I said.
She threw me a towel.
"You're sweating."
"That doesn't make it training."
"What does?"
"Running. Fighting. Pull-ups."
"You can't do a pull-up."
"I almost can."
"You hang from the bar and glare at it."
Shiu laughed again.
Yuki turned me back toward the circles.
"Anyone can exhaust a kid. Teaching one how to move takes patience."
"I don't need patience."
"That," Shiu said, "is exactly why you're stuck with us."
For the next several years, they built everything from the ground up.
Yuki taught me balance, landing, and how to create force without losing control. Shiu increased the difficulty only when my movement stayed stable. Whenever I added weight or repetitions without permission, he stopped me.
At eight, he caught me doing pull-ups after dinner.
"How many?"
"Eleven."
"How many did I give you?"
"Eight."
He grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me away from the bar.
"I felt fine."
"You were rubbing your elbow at dinner."
"I wasn't tired."
"Muscle gets stronger faster than tendons. Feeling strong doesn't mean every part of you caught up."
"I want to get better."
"Then recover."
I looked back at the bar.
"Toji."
"I'm going."
"You say that while standing still."
I walked away.
Daichi taught me how to see.
His first lesson began at breakfast. He sat across from me without speaking. I finished half my food before noticing him.
"When did you get there?"
"Before you."
"No, you didn't."
He lifted his cup.
"Then where'd this come from?"
Daichi had graying hair and a face so ordinary that remembering it became difficult the moment I looked away.
"Shiu says you're good at paying attention," he said.
"I am."
"What color was the cook's shirt?"
"White."
"Blue. The apron was white."
He took a drink.
"How many people came in after you?"
"Three."
"Five."
"You're lying."
"Could be."
I looked around the room and tried to count.
"I wasn't watching the door."
"You were facing it."
"That doesn't mean I saw everyone."
"Good."
I frowned.
"What?"
"You admitted you didn't know."
"That's good?"
"Better than making something up."
Daichi's lessons took place in ordinary rooms. He asked who entered first, who favored the left hand, which window had been opened, and which servant carried something hidden beneath a cloth.
Whenever I guessed, he knew.
"Stop inventing answers just because saying 'I don't know' bothers you," he told me. "Bad information gets people hurt faster than no information."
Later, he taught me how to cross a room without becoming memorable.
On my first attempt, Yuki looked up immediately.
"Why're you walking like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you stole something."
Daichi called me back.
"You moved slower than everyone else."
"I was being quiet."
"You were being weird. Match the room."
The second time, I walked at the same pace as everyone around me. I paused when someone blocked my route, crossed beside two operatives, touched the far wall, and returned.
"Did anyone see me?"
"Everyone."
"Then I failed."
"No one cared enough to remember you."
He nodded toward Yuki.
I looked at her.
"What did I do?"
She frowned.
"Do when?"
Daichi almost smiled.
"Disappearing isn't becoming invisible," he said. "It's making yourself too unimportant to notice."
At nine, I was allowed to observe the regular recruits.
They stood in two lines wearing clean identification tags. Some came from branch families whose quirks had failed to satisfy the Agency or Hei. Others possessed minor abilities considered unsuitable for hero work.
The Kukuru did not require quirklessness.
It required people the clan considered replaceable.
"You start at ten," Shiu told them. "You train for five years. If you pass at fifteen, you enter supervised fieldwork. That does not make you experienced, invincible, or important."
A boy raised his hand.
Shiu stared at him until he slowly lowered it.
"Just ask."
"What happens if we fail at fifteen?"
"You keep training."
"We don't get removed?"
"Why would I waste five years because you needed six?"
A girl near the end spoke next.
"What if we don't want fieldwork?"
Several recruits turned toward her.
"Then say so before someone's life depends on you pretending," Shiu said. "Fear tells you something. Ignoring it doesn't make you brave. It makes you dangerous."
I watched their assessments from beside the wall.
One recruit completed more push-ups than anyone else and stood grinning.
Yuki checked her notes.
"Your hips dropped after twelve."
"I did twenty-three."
"You did twelve."
"I kept moving."
"So does a fish on land. Doesn't make it a push-up."
Several recruits laughed.
Yuki pointed at them.
"You three. Floor."
Their smiles vanished.
Afterward, I found Shiu outside his office.
"I'm better than most of them."
"At some things."
"I should join them."
"You will next year."
"I already know the first-year material."
"Then repeating it should be easy."
"That wastes time."
He opened his office door.
A uniform had been folded across the desk. Beside it rested an identification tag.
I reached for it.
Shiu covered the metal with one hand.
"Not yet."
"My birthday's in two months."
"Then wait two months."
"I've trained longer than they have."
"Yeah."
"So I should move ahead."
"You'll move ahead where you're ready."
"That means you're holding me back."
"It means being talented doesn't protect you from consequences."
He tapped the identification tag.
"You got here five years early, Toji. You didn't magically become five years older."
For most of my life, the Zen'in had used my blood and lack of a quirk to decide what I could never become. Waiting felt too much like accepting their judgment.
Shiu's refusal came from somewhere else.
He did not doubt that I would become dangerous.
He wanted me to survive long enough to become dangerous properly.
I pulled my hand away.
"Two months."
"Two months."
"Then I join them."
"You start the curriculum."
"That's what I said."
"No, it isn't."
The corner of his mouth moved.
"You've got two months to figure out the difference."
On my tenth birthday, the uniform and identification tag appeared on his desk again.
"This is mine?"
"It has your number on it."
"You could still take it back."
"I could."
I closed my hand around the tag before he changed his mind.
Shiu opened the door.
"Welcome to the training unit."
I expected weapons.
The morning began with another assessment.
Yuki watched me run, land, crawl, and carry weight. Daichi tested my memory. A medic checked every injury I had suffered since arriving at the barracks.
Shiu reviewed the results.
"You're avoiding the left ankle."
"It doesn't hurt."
"Yet."
The medic pressed beneath the joint.
My foot jerked.
"Three days without sprinting," Shiu said.
"That's too long."
"Four."
"You said three."
"And now it's four."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Keep talking and it'll become five."
Formal training did not give me permission to destroy myself. It only gave the instructors more chances to catch me trying.
The curriculum expanded quickly.
We studied first aid, communication, self-defense, locks, surveillance, weapons, and evidence. The instructors cared less about impressive results than correct decisions.
During one medical exercise, two actors waited inside a staged accident scene. One screamed with artificial blood covering his face. The other sat quietly in a corner with one hand pressed against his chest.
Most of the group rushed toward the blood.
I went to the corner.
Yuki stopped the exercise.
"Why him?"
"He isn't breathing right."
A trainee pointed toward the screaming actor.
"He's bleeding more."
"He's also yelling. That means air's moving."
Yuki nodded.
"Good. Loud doesn't always mean urgent. Check first. Decide after."
The same rule applied to fighting.
Yuki paired me with a boy named Ren during a knife drill. He was larger than me and held the rubber blade too far from his body.
I stepped outside his wrist and took it.
Yuki hit the back of my head.
"What?"
"You watched the knife."
"That's what I was taking."
Ren's free fist had stopped near my ribs.
"He didn't hit me."
"I could've," Ren said.
"But you didn't."
Yuki looked between us.
"That argument's going to sound really stupid when the knife is real."
Ren grinned.
"She's got you there."
"Again," Yuki said. "Watch the person. The weapon comes with him."
The second time, I controlled both arms before taking the blade.
Ren examined the rubber knife afterward.
"When do we get real ones?"
"When you stop asking."
"So never?"
"Probably."
At twelve, Daichi moved surveillance beyond the compound.
Our first exercise took place in a crowded shopping district. Each pair received a target and a photograph.
"If he sees the same face three times, you fail," Daichi said.
"What if we lose him?" Ren asked.
"Then fail quietly."
The target entered a department store.
Ren started after him.
I caught the back of his jacket.
"Wait."
"We're going to lose him."
"He checked the reflection."
"So?"
"He's watching behind him."
We entered through another door and transferred observation between pairs rather than staying directly behind him.
During the review, Daichi looked at me.
"You noticed the reflection."
"Yeah."
"You stared at it."
I said nothing.
"The target saw you."
"He didn't react," Ren said.
"He wasn't sure," Daichi replied. "Don't confuse his doubt with your success."
By thirteen, the exercises became less controlled.
Instructors woke us before dawn and placed us inside unfamiliar buildings filled with alarms, smoke, locked doors, and actors pretending to panic. Speed was never the main goal. They wanted to see how we chose when every option carried a cost.
During one scenario, I found a simulated casualty beside a locked case containing the stated objective. A timer counted down above the exit.
The casualty grabbed my ankle.
"Help me."
The case supposedly held evidence capable of exposing the clan.
The operative could not stand.
I dragged him toward the exit.
The alarm sounded before we reached it.
Sato reviewed the exercise afterward.
"You abandoned the objective."
"Yeah."
"You had time."
"Not for both."
"What if the evidence mattered more than the operative?"
"Then the briefing should've said he was expendable."
The room went quiet.
Sato leaned forward.
"You think the field is going to tell you which choice is right?"
"No."
"Then why are you acting like missing information excuses you?"
"I'm not. You asked why I chose him."
"And if you chose wrong?"
"Then I failed."
Sato watched me, then wrote something down.
"You passed that section."
"That section?"
"Don't get greedy."
At fourteen, specialization began.
Daichi selected surveillance trainees. Yuki handled close combat and weapons. Other groups focused on medicine, communication, technical access, driving, or logistics.
I moved between them whenever I could.
That irritated Yuki.
"You can't specialize in everything," she said after finding me in the technical room during combat training.
"I finished early."
"You left because Ren threw you twice."
"I figured out what he was doing."
"Great. Come prove it."
Back in the training hall, Ren tried the same throw.
His hand caught my arm.
His hip turned.
This time, I blocked the rotation, stepped outside his leg, and used his momentum to put him on the floor.
Yuki nodded.
"Good. Again."
Ren sat up.
"You could at least pretend you didn't enjoy that."
"I didn't."
"You're smiling."
"I'm not."
Ren looked toward Yuki.
"He is, right?"
"I don't care. Again."
The final year introduced poisons, explosives, and evidence work through controlled exercises. We used inert components, harmless substances, and staged rooms.
During one evidence exercise, an instructor handed me a report listing thirteen details I had missed.
"Thirteen?"
"You found exactly what we wanted you to find."
The next time, I missed six.
Then three.
During the fourth attempt, the instructor read my list twice.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
I pointed toward the staged body.
"You moved it after spreading the blood."
His eyes shifted toward me.
Then he added a note.
"Good."
That year, trainees began leaving on supervised assignments.
Ren went first.
Before departure, he checked the same zipper three times.
"You're going to break it," I said.
"Think they'll make me fight?"
"Not if it goes well."
He returned two days later without injuries and described the entire operation as boring.
That night, I found him behind the barracks with his hands shaking.
"You said it was boring."
"It was."
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
I sat beside him.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Ren looked down at his hands.
"The target came through the wrong door. I forgot the signal."
"But you gave it."
"After Daichi looked at me."
"So?"
"If he hadn't been there—"
"He was."
"I froze."
"For how long?"
"I don't know. Two seconds."
"Make it one next time."
Ren stared at me.
"That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"That maybe I'm not made for this."
"Do you want to quit?"
"No."
"Then learn from the two seconds."
He looked away.
"You're terrible at comforting people."
"I wasn't trying."
"Yeah. I noticed."
Ren reported the mistake to Shiu the next morning. Shiu recreated the moment until the correct response became automatic.
That was the point of supervised work.
Fifteen did not mean complete.
It meant prepared enough to discover which parts of training survived reality.
One month before my birthday, I entered Shiu's office.
"What assignment am I getting?"
"You're assuming you pass."
"I'll pass."
"That confidence is going to get expensive."
"What's the mission?"
"Observation."
"I've trained observation since I was six."
"In exercises."
"I can handle more."
"Everyone says that."
"I'm not everyone."
Shiu closed the folder.
"No, you're not. You got here at five, spent five years preparing, then completed the same program as everyone else. You're heavily trained."
"Exactly."
"That doesn't make you experienced."
"What do I have to prove?"
"That you can make decisions when no instructor controls the danger."
"The combat trials."
"The judgment trials."
"Everyone calls them combat trials."
"Everyone likes being wrong."
He opened a cabinet containing six folders.
"Physical tests. Observation. Navigation. Problem-solving. Controlled combat. Somewhere in every trial, the plan will fail."
"On purpose?"
"Usually."
"And if we keep going?"
"Sometimes that's the right choice."
"And if we stop?"
"Sometimes that's right too."
I frowned.
"How are we supposed to know?"
"You won't."
He closed the cabinet.
"That's the test."
The night before the trials, I sat on my bed with Jin'ichi's wooden sword across my knees.
I cleaned it even though it would not be part of the evaluation. The wrapping had darkened with age. Shallow dents remained from afternoons when my brother and I pretended we would both become heroes.
Ren stopped in the doorway.
"You bringing that?"
"No."
"Then why're you cleaning it?"
"It was dirty."
"It's always dirty."
He leaned against the frame.
"You nervous?"
"No."
"Liar."
"Daichi barely speaks, and somehow you still quote him too much."
"That's how he gets you."
Ren looked at the sword.
"Your brother gave you that?"
"Yeah."
"He with the Agency?"
"Maybe someday."
Ren understood that I did not want to continue.
He pushed away from the doorway.
"See you tomorrow."
"Yeah."
After he left, I placed the sword beside the bed.
The clan sent me to the barracks at five because it considered me disposable. Shiu refused to treat that rejection as permission to ruin me. He made me balance before fighting, observe before following, and control my body before demanding more from it.
I arrived early.
That never meant I was ready early.
It took ten years to understand the difference.
The barracks settled into silence around me.
By morning, the instructors would stop controlling every danger.
Then I would find out which parts of their lessons had truly become mine.
...
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