[Right then, your phone buzzed insistently against the desk.]

[Tsumiki Fushiguro’s name flashed across the screen.]

[The moment you hit answer, her voice came through breathless and panicked.]

["Hayase! Megumi... Megumi’s gone!"]

[At first, she hadn’t thought much of it. Megumi was always like that, a loner by habit, never one to walk home with the girls after school. She’d assumed he was off wandering somewhere or feeding strays again.]

[But dinner had gone cold. The sky had turned black. And the familiar sound of his footsteps at the front door never came. That was when the dread hit her all at once.]

[She’d grabbed Nanako and Mimiko in a panic, and the three of them had retraced every route Megumi usually took. The park, the convenience store, even the empty lot he liked to visit. They’d circled the whole neighborhood and come back with nothing. By the time Tsumiki dialed your number, she was fighting back tears.]

[You could hear her voice cracking on the other end, trembling despite her best efforts to hold it together. Your expression stayed calm, but your tone softened.]

["Take a deep breath, Tsumiki. There’s no need to worry. Megumi’s going to be fine. I’ll head out right now and check the places he might be. Lock the doors, stay inside, and wait for me to call back."]

[Maybe it was the steady certainty in your voice, something almost magnetic in the way you said it, but Tsumiki’s ragged breathing gradually slowed. She murmured an obedient "okay" and hung up.]

[You set the phone down and glanced at the calendar on the wall. The answer came to you almost immediately. By your estimate, the Zenin Clan had finally lost patience and made their move.]

[Even so, the thought of Megumi being dragged off by that bloated, rotting institution barely raised your pulse. You weren’t worried about his safety.]

[To put it bluntly, with Megumi’s current setup, you didn’t believe a single sorcerer below Special Grade in the entire jujutsu world could pose a real threat to his life.]

[And even if he had the rotten luck of running into a Special Grade... so long as it wasn’t someone with Satoru Gojo’s absurd Limitless, the sheer brute force of his shikigami would buy him more than enough cover to get out alive.]

[With that sorted, you picked up the phone again and dialed another number from memory.]

[A few rings passed before a woman’s voice came through, mature and languid, laced with the kind of careless amusement that never quite left her tone.]

["Oh my. What a rare guest. You’re calling me at this hour? Let me guess... surely you’re not asking me to dinner?"]

[A faint smirk tugged at the corner of your mouth, and you cut straight through her banter without missing a beat.]

["You’ve got sharp instincts, Ms. Mei. I do have something urgent, and I’d appreciate your company on a little trip. Compensation will be settled at your highest rate, naturally."]

[The words "highest rate" landed like a switch being flipped. On the other end, Mei Mei perked up instantly.]

["If you’re offering that kind of money, I’m curious. What sort of trouble requires you to specifically bring me along?"]

[You grabbed your coat off the rack with one hand, your reply light as air.]

["Picking up a kid."]

["..."]

[For a long, deeply bizarre moment, the seasoned Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer on the other end of the line had absolutely nothing to say.]

---

[Roughly half an hour later, on a winding mountain road cutting through the outskirts toward the deep hills.]

[Inside a black luxury car, Mei Mei sat behind the wheel, one hand draped over the steering wheel. Half her face was veiled behind silver hair, but through the rearview mirror, those sharp eyes studied you where you sat in the back seat, eyes closed, conserving your energy.]

["I have to say, I never imagined you’d spend a fortune hiring me as your personal chauffeur... to pick up a child from the Zenin Clan."]

[She trailed off, momentarily at a loss for where to even begin unpacking that sentence.]

[Where had a student who hadn’t even graduated from Jujutsu High, an orphan no less, found a child important enough to warrant this kind of operation?]

[And what in the world had happened to make tonight the night you decided to waltz into the stronghold of one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families to collect someone?]

[How was this any different from reaching into a tiger’s mouth to yank out a tooth?] 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

[Granted, Mei Mei had done her homework when she first took you on as a client. Old habits from her days as an information broker. She knew that beyond the dead parents, your family’s former line of work, certain gray-market dealings, had once been tangled up with the Zenin Clan in ways that ran deep.]

[But those threads should have been severed completely after your parents died. You should have had nothing left to do with that decaying family.]

[Even now, curiosity clawed at her. But professionalism won out. Since you hadn’t volunteered an explanation, she swallowed her questions with admirable restraint.]

[Your eyes drifted open. Deep within your pupils, a faint glow of Cursed Energy stirred.]

[Through your Innate Technique, Phantom Night Parade, you’d perfectly replicated and activated Mei Mei’s own Innate Technique: Black Bird Manipulation.]

[Your consciousness now threaded into the eyes of several crows borrowed from her, soaring through the night sky above.]

[Through the pitch-black panorama of a bird’s-eye view, you scanned the mountains below and spoke, your voice level.]

["This is exactly why I came to you, Ms. Mei, and not someone else."]

[The crows’ razor-sharp night vision picked it up almost immediately. There, above the layered canopy of forest bathed in darkness, a shape tore through the air.]

[A massive hound, pitch-black from head to tail, but sprouting from its back were enormous wings crackling with arcs of lightning.]

[The fusion of Divine Dog and Nue. And clinging to its back, small frame pressed flat against the beast as it hurtled downward, was the unmistakable figure of the missing Megumi Fushiguro.]

[The tension in your chest unwound completely. Your initial guess was confirmed. The Zenin Clan had taken him by force.]

[But the appearance of that particular fusion form, carried a brutal implication. Megumi had already clashed head-on with the Zenin Clan’s people.]

[Under the rules of the Ten Shadows Technique, Nue’s power could not simply be inherited and absorbed by Divine Dog unless Nue itself had been utterly destroyed in battle.]

[Looks like tonight got loud...]

[The details were still unclear. You didn’t yet know exactly who the Zenin Clan had sent, or whether events had unfolded the way you’d anticipated.]

[Through the crows’ shared vision, you could see shikigami’s flight path wobbling, its altitude dropping in uneven lurches.]

[The strain was obvious. Forcing a fusion shikigami of that caliber without prior conditioning was crushing for a boy not yet ten years old. And that was before factoring in whatever fight he’d already survived.]

["Ms. Mei, pull over at that stretch ahead with no streetlights."]

[You released the shared vision and gave the order, voice low and steady.]

[Mei Mei glanced at the GPS, one elegant brow arching.]

["Right here? The straight-line distance is close, sure, but we’re still a fair way from the Zenin main compound’s barrier."]

[Your answer came without hesitation.]

["Here is fine. He’s already arrived."]

[The moment Mei Mei brought the car to a smooth stop beneath the canopy’s shadow at the road’s edge, you pushed the door open and stepped out.]

[You dropped Black Bird Manipulation without a second thought. Inside you, Cursed Energy meshed and reconfigured like interlocking gears, and Phantom Night Parade’s replication target snapped over to the Ten Shadows Technique in a single, seamless transition.]

[Both hands rose to your chest. Your fingers laced together in the ancient summoning formation, quick and practiced.]

[The shadows at your feet erupted. A piercing shriek split the air alongside a blinding flash of lightning as an enormous Nue, launched skyward from the depths of the shadow pool.]

[At that same instant, high above, Megumi and his shikigami finally hit their limit.]

[Shikigami’s massive body dissolved into black mist, scattering on the night wind. And Megumi’s small, spent body dropped like a kite with its string cut.]

[Your Nue swept beneath him with pinpoint precision, catching his fall so gently it was almost tender, and glided him down to land safely at your side.]

[In the driver’s seat, Mei Mei rested one pale arm on the half-lowered window. Every trace of her usual indifference had evaporated.]

[Through the glass, she stared at the seamless relay of shikigami you’d just performed against the night sky, and the shock rolling through her defied description. Speechless didn’t begin to cover it.]

[With her razor-keen experience as a Grade 1 sorcerer, she’d recognized at a glance that the winged canine dissolving in the sky above and the lightning-wreathed bird you’d just summoned were both extraordinarily rare and powerful shikigami.]

[What shook her even more was the boy you’d just caught, now unconscious in your arms. The residual Cursed Energy pulsing through his small body shared the same lightning signature as those creatures.]

[Even if Mei Mei hadn’t yet connected the dots to the Zenin Clan’s long-lost Ten Shadows Technique, the mere fact that a child this young could unleash potential this terrifying was enough to send shockwaves through the entire Japanese jujutsu world.]

[This boy’s value was beyond calculation.]

[But even as her mind raced to quantify the staggering implications of what she’d just witnessed...]

["Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta..."]

[From the far end of the pitch-black mountain road, a sound erupted. Rapid, staccato, alien, like space itself being sliced apart and stitched back together by force.]

[Something invisible to the naked eye was closing the distance at a speed that broke every law of physics, barreling straight toward them.]

[Your eyes narrowed. Those sharp pupils locked onto the source in an instant.]

[You knew that rhythm intimately. That distinctive stutter of a single second being carved into frames.]

[There was no question. Someone from the Zenin Clan was bearing down on you at full output, Projection Sorcery tearing through the night like a gale.]

[As the crushing pressure wave rode in ahead of the approaching figure, Mei Mei felt it too. The raw, almost tangible wall of Cursed Energy rolling in from the distance made her brow tighten for the first time all night.]

[Every instinct honed through years as a Grade 1 sorcerer screamed the same warning: whatever had happened tonight between this boy and the Zenin compound was no minor scuffle. This was the kind of incident that would shake the jujutsu world to its foundations.]

[You turned your head toward the car and spoke to Mei Mei, calm as ever.]

["Stay in the car and keep an eye on the kid. I’ll handle this."]

[Cursed Energy surged through you again. The gears of Phantom Night Parade spun into a frenzy. This time you shifted directly from Ten Shadows Technique to the same art as the incoming enemy: Projection Sorcery. And without waiting another heartbeat, you fired off a preemptive freeze toward the approaching figure.]

[The rhythm died mid-beat. A hideous screech of shoe rubber grinding against asphalt tore through the air, kicking up a plume of dust and gravel. The figure, moving so fast it had nearly dissolved into the darkness, was wrenched to a dead stop less than ten meters from where you stood.]

[The dust cleared under the wash of headlights, and you finally saw the face.]

[A tall man in an expensive traditional kimono, distinguished by the unmistakable brushstroke mustache. His eyes, still wild from the breakneck pursuit, now brimmed with shock and a heavy, guarded intensity.]

[The one who’d chased Megumi all the way here was none other than the current head of the Zenin Clan, the man known as the Fastest Sorcerer: Naobito Zenin.]