She let go of Betty's hand and followed the guard toward the bathroom, each step careful.
Only once that small back had disappeared through the doorway did Seitenshi turn, her attention settling on Sumire.
Something complicated moved behind her eyes. Surprise. Curiosity. A thread of respect underneath, because whatever else was true, the woman's record spoke for itself.
"Miss Muroto. It's been a long time."
Warm, without a trace of hostility, without any of the distance her position allowed. She might have been greeting an old friend.
"Ah. Yes. Lady Seitenshi."
Sumire coughed twice to cover the awkwardness and answered flatly, keeping a wall up.
She had nothing to say to government leadership, and something sour sat behind her ribs at the sight of them. The way they'd treated her back then hadn't been kind.
Seitenshi was different, though. She'd been a child when most of it happened. None of the ugliness had been hers.
There was nobody to blame on that side of the room.
The exchange died, and the silence that followed sat heavily on everyone.
Seitenshi broke it. Turning to Gojo, urgency crept into her voice along with something close to hunger. "Mr. Gojo, the phone call left too much out. Could you tell me properly? About the Cursed Children, about the 39th Area, about what happened to Aii. And about what you want to do."
The 39th Area was what she needed most. What those children's days actually looked like. What she could put her hands on to change it.
He had no reason to soften any of it. He sat down on the sofa, gestured for the two of them to do the same, and laid it out from the beginning.
He described finding the children in the drainage tunnels beneath the 39th Area.
He described the wet dark they lived in, the winters spent pressed together for warmth, the summers of insects and rot and stench.
He described how adults treated them: spat on, beaten, driven off like something diseased. How stepping out to look for food could get them killed.
He described what had been done to Aii. Abandoned by her own mother. Tormented by everyone after. Blinded.
He described her clawing through despair to stay alive, and the look on her face when she finally saw her mother again.
He spoke slowly. Nothing light in his voice.
Every sentence landed on Seitenshi like a hammer.
All of it brutal. All of it true.
By the time he reached the part about winter, about huddled bodies and beatings and the risk of dying over a scrap of food, the color had drained out of her face.
Her fists closed around her skirt, knuckles going white. Her lips pressed flat, and grief and guilt and fury worked together behind her eyes.
Aii's story took her voice entirely. Tears gathered and she held them there by force.
She'd known about the Cursed Children. Known they suffered, known they were despised and beaten, known that none of them had homes.
But she'd been raised high above all of it, and the specifics had never reached her. She hadn't understood how far down that suffering went.
She'd told herself she was doing everything she could. That it was enough.
Now, listening, she saw exactly how small her efforts had been against the weight those children carried.
"I'm sorry." The words came out cracked. She bowed her head, shoulders trembling. "This is my failure. I rule this city and I didn't give those children anywhere to go. I didn't protect them. Everything they've suffered..."
"None of it belongs to you."
He cut her off, watching her fold in on herself, and his voice stayed calm with something gentle running under it. "I understand what you're up against. You've wanted to act and had nothing to act with. That's not a fault of yours."
She was kind. He'd known that from the start. She wanted these children safe, wanted the whole arrangement torn up and rebuilt, wanted them to have somewhere warm to sleep.
But ruling Tokyo and holding power over it were different things. Too many people stood in her way, too many opposed her outright, too many refused to hear her at all.
Every attempt ran into a wall she couldn't move.
That she still cared under those conditions counted for something.
"This is the society's disease." His tone hardened, and certainty came with it. "Where the Cursed Children are concerned, every mind in this city has been bent out of shape."
"They see monsters. Omens. Walking catastrophes. They've forgotten that these are children, innocent ones, who want warmth and someone to love them and a world that treats them gently."
"Until that changes, nothing changes. Those children never get free of it, and they never get a home."
She lifted her head, eyes rimmed red, helplessness and hurt fighting with something stubborn underneath. "I raised this at the last council session. I want to protect them through the New Gastrea Law. Give them legal status. Give them somewhere to belong."
"Almost nobody backed me. The Higher-ups rejected it out of hand. To them the Cursed Children are a threat, a disaster waiting to happen, and threats don't get protection."
Her voice sagged toward the end, frustration bleeding through. Ruler or not, she couldn't simply do what she wanted. Too much of her was held in place by other hands.
None of it surprised him. He nodded slowly, and his mind went back to the world he'd come from.
He'd stood at the absolute ceiling of the Jujutsu Society there, and the Higher-ups had still boxed him in, frozen him out, maneuvered around him. Even with that power, he hadn't been free to act.
It took a conversation with Betty before he saw the shape of the problem clearly, broke the constraints, and stopped letting them steer him. After that he protected what he chose to protect.
Seitenshi had none of that. No overwhelming strength, no ability to overturn the table whenever she pleased. Strip away the title of ruler and nothing remained.
Almost no allies, resistance in every direction, and a leadership that regarded her as furniture. A puppet with a nice chair.
To those men she was a child who hadn't finished growing. Her proposals carried no weight, and her convictions carried less.
"The New Gastrea Law?"
His brow lifted, curiosity in it. "Mind if I read it?"
Light came back into her face. She'd found someone who wanted to look, and the defeat lifted off her.
Rising quickly, she crossed to the desk, pulled a thick stack of documents from a drawer, and handed it over with both hands. "That's all of it. Please, tell me what you think."
He settled the stack on his lap and started turning pages.
The text laid out legal status for Cursed Children. Dedicated institutions to house the ones with nowhere to go. Schooling, ordinary lives, protection from discrimination and violence.
Page by page his expression cooled. A crease formed between his brows.
Fifteen minutes or so and he was done. He set the stack on the coffee table beside him, having already dismissed the whole thing.
The document was beautiful. Full of good intentions. And so detached from reality it might as well have been fiction.
The rift between Cursed Children and ordinary people had been decades in the making, and no law, no appeal to better nature, was going to close it.
That fear had been driven into the bone. People believed those girls would turn into Gastrea. They believed their families would be torn apart.
Until someone solved that problem, until nobody had to fear a Cursed Child becoming a monster, the hatred stayed. The law stayed unenforceable. Push it through by force and the result would be worse than the disease.
"Well? What do you think of it?"
She'd been watching him finish, hope and dread crowding her face together, terrified he'd say the same thing everyone else had.
"As things stand now, getting this passed will be close to impossible."
He looked up and gave it to her straight. "The bill's too idealistic. It doesn't connect to the world it's describing."
The hope went out of her at once. Her head dipped, lips tightening, something unwilling to surrender still burning under the disappointment.
She'd known. Of course she'd known how thin the odds were.
But she'd wanted to try. To do something for children who'd done nothing wrong, to bend their futures into a different shape. However small the chance, however tall the wall, she wasn't walking away from it.
Watching her sit there like that put a pull in his chest. He let out a breath, and his voice softened. "Don't take it too hard. The bill won't move and the situation won't shift easily, but that's not the same as hopeless."
"Find the key to the problem. Find a way to stop Cursed Children from turning into Gastrea. Do that, and we change everything. Those children get real homes. The world learns to be gentle with them."
Her head came up, light returning to her eyes, resolve fixed behind it. "You mean we could actually do it?"
"Yes."
No hesitation. Absolute certainty in it. "Of course we can."
That confidence carried across the room and took hold of her.
She nodded hard, and the smile finally came back.
"I understand. I'll work for it."
"Work, yes. But work in the right direction."
"The reason the New Gastrea Law can't move is simple. You don't have the strength to make it move."
He'd settled back into the sofa, weight tipped slightly backward, hands loose on the armrests. The sunglasses hid whatever was behind them, but every word landed clean.
"And I don't mean your strength alone."
He paused, taking in the pallor of her face, and continued with the patience of a man leading someone toward an answer. "Supporters. Enough leverage to stand against the ones blocking you. The means to actually enforce a law once it exists."
She looked down, lashes lowered over whatever was in her eyes, fingers digging into the fabric of her skirt as she turned it over.
The office had gone quiet, nothing but wind against the window and the sound of breathing. The weight in the air pressed on all of them.
He was right.
She had nothing.
No one behind her.