Chapter Sixty-Five: Negotiating and preparing to enter a war
The Jujutsu Council—that hallowed hall where missions rained down upon sorcerers like unwanted mail, where decisions regarding curses were made with the kind of gravity normally reserved for declarations of war, where old men in robes sat in judgment of everyone and everything while contributing approximately nothing of value to actual combat. I could say with complete honesty that this was my first time visiting in person, though the original body's memories provided a hazy roadmap of what to expect.
Beside me walked Naobito Zenin—clan head, certified old bastard, and currently my ticket inside. He'd ordered me to accompany him with the kind of casual authority that suggested disagreement wasn't merely frowned upon but actively hazardous to one's continued existence. We'd taken a car most of the way, then switched to foot travel for the final approach, because apparently even clan heads had to observe certain protocols when visiting places where people took themselves too seriously.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Our feet pressed against gravel that had been carefully arranged to announce arrivals. Every step produced sound—deliberate, unavoidable, the kind of security measure that made sneaking up on anyone physically impossible. Paranoid? Absolutely. Effective? Also absolutely.
The council headquarters wasn't ordinary. Nothing about it was ordinary. Barriers layered upon barriers surrounded the structure like invisible walls, each one designed to repel curses and sorcerers alike with equal prejudice. Pure energy radiated from the building itself—not cursed energy, but something cleaner, something that made my skin prickle with the awareness that I was walking through defenses that could probably vaporize me if I stepped wrong.
Defensive measures dotted the landscape like acne on a teenager's face. Seals hidden in trees. Guards concealed in shadows I could only half-perceive. Individuals whose entire existence seemed to be watching, waiting, ready to eliminate anything that moved without proper authorization. The place made the Zenin compound look like a public park.
Whoosh.
Wind moved through the barriers, creating sounds that weren't quite natural—whispers that might have been voices or might have been my imagination playing tricks. I kept my face neutral, my Sharingan carefully deactivated, because activating it here would be like waving a flag that said "PLEASE INVESTIGATE ME" in flashing neon letters.
The contrast with the anime and manga struck me immediately. In those versions, this place had seemed almost mundane—a building where people talked, made decisions, generally acted important. The reality was something else entirely. The reality was a fortress designed by paranoid geniuses who'd spent centuries perfecting the art of not dying.
Of course, none of it would matter against Gojo Satoru.
That thought slid through my mind like a cold knife. All these barriers, all these guards, all these carefully constructed defenses—that blue-eyed monster could bypass them without even using Red or Purple. Just Blue. Just pulling. Just the casual application of power that made everyone else in this world look like children playing at sorcery.
The man who'd killed them all—the original Geto, the one whose face now belonged to that bastard Kenjaku—had been something special. But Gojo? Gojo was something else entirely.
Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh.
The sound of sliding doors opening ahead of us. We'd arrived.
The chamber stretched before us like a void pretending to be a room. Darkness pooled in corners, crept along walls, gathered in places where light should have reached but somehow didn't. And at the far end, arranged in a crescent that faced us like judgment personified, sat the Seven Shadows.
That's what they called themselves. The Seven Shadows. Seven seats of power that collectively decided the fate of jujutsu society. Seven individuals whose combined authority theoretically exceeded even the Three Great Families, though everyone knew that was diplomatic fiction designed to make lesser sorcerers feel represented.
I counted them without meaning to—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—as they sat in their elevated positions, looking down at us with expressions that ranged from curious to actively hostile.
The one who spoke first had a voice like gravel wrapped in wisdom and dipped in cruelty. Old. Commanding. The kind of voice that had been giving orders since before my parents were born.
"What is the reason for your presence, Head of the Zenin Clan?"
Naobito didn't bow. Didn't show deference. As a clan head, he existed in that comfortable space where he could meet these seven as near-equals, and he used that status like a shield.
"To provide information," he said, his voice carrying none of the warmth it sometimes showed when dealing with family. This was business voice. Cold voice. The voice of someone who knew exactly how much he was worth and expected everyone else to know it too.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
One of the Shadows—I think number three, based on positioning—drummed fingers against his armrest while waiting for more. The sound echoed in the chamber's unnatural acoustics, each tap seeming to hang in the air longer than physics should allow.
"And what is the nature of this information?" Curiosity colored his tone now, the kind of curiosity that comes from someone who's spent decades thinking they knew everything worth knowing.
I glanced at Naobito, watching the old man's face shift through micro-expressions I could barely track. This was the moment. The information we'd brought—the information Hana's cursed technique had purchased with an old man's life—was about to be deployed.
"It's clear, isn't it?" Naobito's voice dripped with the casual arrogance of someone holding all the cards. "The location of that cursed bastard, Geto Suguru."
Silence.
The kind of silence that has weight, that presses against eardrums, that makes you hyperaware of your own breathing. I watched the Seven Shadows process this information, their faces shifting through reactions too subtle for normal perception but perfectly visible to my enhanced senses.
One minute passed. Maybe two. Time in that chamber moved strangely, stretched by anticipation and the heavy weight of what had just been revealed.
Finally, Shadow Number Seven—the one whose voice always sounded slightly unhinged, like he was one bad day away from burning everything down—leaned forward.
"Then where, exactly, is this place? Where in the bloody hell is he?"
Swish.
The sound of fabric moving as Naobito shifted his weight, settling into what I recognized as his negotiation stance. And then, for the next hour—a full sixty minutes that felt like sixty years—I watched a master at work.
Naobito Zenin didn't just provide information. That would have been too simple, too straightforward, too useless for someone of his caliber. Instead, he used his position as clan head, used the value of what he knew, used every ounce of political capital he'd accumulated over decades, to negotiate.
I stood beside him like a piece of furniture, watching the back-and-forth with mounting confusion that I carefully kept off my face. He wanted power for this information. He wanted concessions. He wanted the council to understand that the Zenin clan didn't provide intelligence out of civic duty but out of calculated self-interest.
At first, I thought this was inappropriate. These were the Seven Shadows, for fuck's sake. The people who theoretically ran jujutsu society. You didn't negotiate with them—you provided information and hoped they remembered your name when promotions came around.
But then, as the hour dragged on, as I watched Naobito extract concession after concession while giving away exactly nothing of real value until the terms were set, I understood.
He was making them work for it. Making them pay. Not because the price mattered—though it did, in the grand scheme of clan politics—but because information obtained easily was information easily dismissed. By forcing them to negotiate, by making them invest time and authority into acquiring this intelligence, he ensured they would believe it. Would act on it. Would treat it with the gravity it deserved.
Political genius. Absolutely ruthless political genius.
Thump.
The sound of a gavel—or something like it—striking wood. The deal was done.
We walked out of there with the council's commitment and the location of Kenjaku's hideaway still secure in Naobito's memory. A perfect transaction: they got what they wanted, we got what we wanted, and somewhere in the middle, a ten-year-old girl's cursed technique had made all of it possible without her even being present.
The car ride back was quiet at first. Engine hum—vrrrrrr—tires against asphalt—whirrrrr—the soft creak of leather as Naobito settled into his seat. I sat in the passenger position again, watching Tokyo scroll past the window, when suddenly:
"Tch."
Naobito's exhale carried frustration, satisfaction, and something that might have been amusement. He shook his head slowly, staring at nothing.
"Damn them. It's not every day I can extract more authority like that. This way, I can increase the Zenin clan's control."
His words hung in the air, and I realized—with the kind of delayed understanding that makes you feel stupid for not getting it sooner—that I was supposed to understand the political implications. The original body's memories provided fragments, but fragments weren't enough to build a complete picture.
The Three Great Families existed in a constant state of tension. The Gojo clan currently sat at the top—power, respect, control, all of it flowing their way thanks to one blue-eyed monster who made everyone else look like toddlers with sticks. With Gojo Satoru alive and active, there was no question about who dominated the landscape. The Gojo clan controlled resources, dictated policy, essentially ran the council through the simple expedient of having a weapon that couldn't be countered.
Then came the Zenin clan. Second place, which in this context meant "constantly scheming to become first place." They had resources, certainly. They had power, definitely. But they also had Naobito's particular brand of ambition, the kind that never stopped calculating, never stopped maneuvering, never stopped looking for advantages that could be leveraged into greater control.
And finally, the Kamo clan. Poor bastards.
Their blood manipulation technique was theoretically one of the strongest around—the kind of inherited power that had shaped jujutsu history for centuries. But theory and practice rarely aligned, and the current Kamo clan had spent years watching their members fail to master the advanced techniques that made blood manipulation terrifying.
Even their heir couldn't use the maximum technique without external blood bags. Couldn't manifest the full potential of their inherited power. Which meant the Kamo clan, despite their theoretical strength, had become the weakest of the three—a shadow of what they'd been in previous eras, when their techniques had commanded respect and fear in equal measure.
Did I understand all this at the time? Not really. I was too focused on survival, on eliminating future threats, on creating a life where I didn't have to constantly watch my back. The politics bored me. The maneuvering annoyed me. But I wasn't completely stupid—I grasped enough to follow the conversation, even if the nuances escaped me.
Screeeech.
The car stopped. We'd arrived at the Zenin compound.
I followed Naobito inside, through corridors that had become familiar over the past days, past servants who bowed with mechanical precision—bow, step, bow, step—until we reached the area where Shuji and Hana had been staying.
And there she was. Playing.
Hana, the ten-year-old who'd channeled enough cursed energy to manifest a five-meter mirror and kill an old man with the casual ease of someone swatting a fly, was playing. With her grandfather. Like none of it had happened.
Pat, pat, pat.
Her small feet moved across the wooden floor as she chased something—a ball? A toy? I couldn't tell, and it didn't matter. What mattered was that she showed absolutely zero signs of exhaustion. No fatigue lines around her eyes. No trembling in her limbs. No indication that she'd done anything more strenuous than take a nap.
Shuji noticed me watching and offered a small wave, his expression caught between relief and bewilderment. He'd asked her, apparently—asked if she was okay, if the technique had hurt, if she needed rest. And she'd answered, in that casual way of children who don't understand why adults worry, that she was fine. Perfectly fine. Better than fine.
He'd been playing with her ever since. Watching her run, watching her laugh, watching her be normal in a way that should have been impossible given what she'd done. And every moment of normalcy chipped away at his fear, replacing it with something that looked almost like hope.
I stopped walking. Just stood there, watching a grandfather play with his granddaughter, and felt something complicated twist in my chest.
I'd expected her to be exhausted. Debilitated. Paying some kind of price for wielding power that shouldn't belong to a child. Instead, she was... fine. Completely, utterly, inexplicably fine.
Which made me wonder: why had everyone been so nervous about bringing her? If she could handle this level of technique without visible strain, what was the problem?
Then I remembered.
Her condition. The way she sometimes resembled a curse more than a human. The energy that pulsed beneath her skin in patterns I'd never seen before. They hadn't been worried about the technique—they'd been worried about her. About what using that technique might awaken. About changes they couldn't predict or control.
And nothing had changed. Or maybe everything had changed, and we just couldn't see it yet.
Swish.
The sound of my own movement as I turned away. Hana's future wasn't my concern. Her potential—and she had potential, enormous potential, the kind that could reshape battlefields if properly developed—was interesting but irrelevant. My goal remained fixed: find Kenjaku, eliminate threats, survive.
I walked to my room.
The Zenin clan, for all their flaws, knew how to treat useful assets. My previous accommodation—the one belonging to the original body—had been a closet compared to this. Cramped. Dingy. Decorated with what I could only describe as "aggressive minimalism." This new room was something else entirely.
Traditional Japanese design executed with the kind of precision that spoke of generations of craftsmanship. Tatami mats that smelled faintly of rice straw. Sliding doors painted with scenes from nature—mountains, rivers, cherry blossoms frozen in eternal bloom. A low table polished to mirror shine, its surface reflecting the soft light from paper lanterns that hung from the ceiling like glowing fruit.
Creeeeak.
I sat down on the floor, feeling the tatami give slightly beneath my weight. The silence here was different—not the oppressive silence of the council chamber, but the peaceful silence of a space designed for rest. For a moment, I let myself relax.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three raps against my door. Precise. Measured. The kind of knocking that said "I'm following protocol" rather than "I have urgent news."
I hesitated, briefly debating whether to respond or pretend I was asleep. But hesitation couldn't last forever, and eventually:
"Come in."
Shoosh.
The door slid open, revealing a servant. Female, based on the silhouette, though her head was bowed so deeply I couldn't see her face. She moved with the mechanical precision of someone trained from birth to be invisible, to serve without being seen, to exist only as an extension of the clan's will.
"Sir Obito." Her voice carried no emotion—not cold, not warm, simply absent, like she'd learned to disconnect her feelings from her words. "The clan head has sent me to inform you that you need to prepare. The council has contacted us. They've declared war."
She delivered this information like she was announcing the weather. No excitement. No fear. Just... words.
Then she left. Shoosh. Gone. Without telling me when the battle would start, where it would happen, or what "prepare" actually meant in practical terms.
I sat there, staring at the door, processing.
The council had declared war. Which meant they'd contacted Gojo Satoru—obviously, you don't go to war without your nuclear option. Which meant the Zenin clan had committed their forces, which meant other sorcerers were being mobilized, which meant—
This was going to be massive.
All-out war against Kingaku. But they didn't know it was Kingaku. They mistook him for Jetou, because the mirror showed his face, and because that bastard, as expected, hadn't used Jetou's body in alliance with him. They were preparing to fight a dead man while the real enemy...Kinjaku will exploit this; unlike the original story, this time he doesn't need to control Geto's body like with clothes. Now Geto will be an ally to him.
And I would be there. In the middle of it. Watching it unfold.
Thump, thump, thump.
My heart performed its usual anxiety rhythm as I considered the implications. War meant chaos. Chaos meant opportunity. Opportunity meant—what? Finding Kenjaku? Killing him? Dying horribly in the process?
The room's peace had evaporated. I could still smell the tatami, still see the cherry blossoms painted on the doors, still feel the soft give of the floor beneath me. But none of it mattered now. None of it could matter.
War was coming.
And I was right in the middle of it.
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End of Chapter.
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