.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
"Report," Kaoru said as the engawa swallowed the noise of the compound and the cicadas became muffled.
Harunobu followed behind her at the distance he always kept, close enough to block a blade, far enough to remember she was his Clan Head and not his child. "The outer kekkai is holding. Residual curses along the eastern river; we sent a unit this morning so that Tengen-sama's monks could work without worries. Patrols are rotating on the northern gate. Also, Tatsuhiro sent word from Nagoya-go. He said the elders grumble but comply."
"Grumble," Kaoru repeated, tasting the word for cracks. "That's not reassuring."
"He's learning." It wasn't praise so much as a prognosis. "Without you behind him, he has to. The elders still test him, and he listens more than he speaks for now."
"Imagine that," Kaoru muttered.
As they moved through the halls of the estate, retainers started to storm around her, falling into step as they presented Kaoru with an endless stream of scrolls, reports, opinions, each one requiring her attention, each one adding another stone to the ever-growing pile of her responsibilities. She barely looked up as she took scroll after scroll from an outstretched hand, eyes scanning the ink with a concerning speed.
A dispute between two minor retainers. Boring. She signed it off and passed it back.
A report on the clan's supplies and the state of the armory. She skimmed it, noted the small discrepancy in their rice stores, and made a mental note to investigate before handing it off.
The Oda survivors were requesting an audience. She didn't even read the whole thing. Useless.
Kaoru exhaled slowly, never stopping. "They want me dead by the end of the year," she muttered flatly.
Behind her, Harunobu let out a snort devoid of humor. "Unlikely. That would be too convenient for the elders."
"Do you know why Masanari Hattori has been ignoring my missives for months?" she asked suddenly. The change of topic was so abrupt that Harunobu's steps faltered for a second, but he recovered quickly. "Because—" She snapped the scroll shut "—he's acting under direct orders from Tokugawa-dono."
Opening the shōji to her chambers, she entered with quick steps, her energy drained. Harunobu followed her quietly, watched the way she absently worried at the edge of her thumb in her nervous habit; he resisted the urge to scold her for it because she did not give him the chance to comment.
"Tokugawa-dono's preparing to march south," Kaoru finally stilled. "It's only a matter of time now. We need to wait for Date-dono to arrive here in Edo, then we march on the Tōkaidō."
Silence settled between them. The war had been creeping closer for months, but now, its shadow was stretching over them, reaching even Edo. Harunobu paused mid-step as one brow rose, slow and skeptical, because that sentence had no beginning and no middle, and Kaoru had a bad habit of speaking as if everyone lived inside her head.
"…Should we prepare for an emergency fire?" he asked, mildly. "Is Date-dono planning to burn the barracks we spent months building, with his general approach to diplomacy?"
Kaoru stared at him for half a second; he had a point. Still, she couldn't explain with too many ears listening. "Out. Everyone."
The attendants froze for half a heartbeat, still waiting to submit scrolls to her attention; then they remembered whose Clan's mon was stitched into the hem of their robes and filed out without a word. The shōji slid shut, and she was finally alone with her second-in-command.
"This is Tokugawa's plan." Kaoru turned back to Harunobu. "The Iga front is a farce. Everyone is pretending to bleed for principle while Tokugawa-dono and the Toyotomi faction decide how much blood is convenient."
Harunobu's expression didn't change. "I assumed as much."
"Tokugawa-dono's not even trying to hide it anymore. He sent a handful of Date men to support Hattori-dono because the sight of the Date's flames keeps everyone focused there and keeps Mitsunari cautious. But Date-dono's major forces have already been ordered to move from Aizu."
Harunobu t went very still, the way he did when he was quietly counting casualties in his head. "And the real intention?"
Kaoru's mouth tightened; she stripped off her haori in a brisk motion and tossed it over a low stand. "He wants the front to collapse. He wants the Hattori to fall; he wants a breach into Iga."
"He's willing to... sacrifice Hattori-dono?"
"He's fine sacrificing them if it buys him the opening move." Kaoru didn't soften it. "And when it happens, the Zenin will march down the Tōkaidō with the Date and hit the Western Army from behind as they commit to that push. He wants the outpost at Nagoya-go to be ready by then."
"The outpost at Nagoya-go?" he asked, as if he'd misheard. "But Nagoya-go is—"
"Abandoned," Kaoru finished, unbothered. "Officially."
"And unofficially?"
Kaoru looked away and hesitated.
Harunobu blinked once. "...Kaoru-dono."
"Tokugawa wants the Mitsuboshi no Yari relocated to Nagoya-go. In secret. Positioned near the Tōkaidō pass that runs straight into Kansai, so that he can reach it the moment he needs to turn a border conflict into a campaign. Likely so it can be used to neutralize barriers should the need arise, or maybe to feed more curses suffocating Kyoto, if the Toyotomi resist and the capital becomes a battlefield—" She stopped, bit her lip. "And he wants me to escort it personally."
Harunobu stared at her for a long beat. His expression barely shifted, but she knew him too well; she saw the way his brows furrowed slightly, and Kaoru could already see the gears turning in his head, the way he was calculating every possible consequence of what Tokugawa was demanding of them. Finally, he spoke, very carefully, "That would violate the accords established with the Gojo and Kamo clans months ago."
"I know." Kaoru exhaled slowly. "He didn't exactly ask so much as order."
"It means Tokugawa-dono no longer cares about diplomacy," Harunobu observed.
"It means," she corrected, shaking her head, "he's ready for war. And he wants sorcerers stationed where they can be mobilized. He wants the Zenin fully committed to his cause."
The word sat between them as a fact that couldn't be denied anymore.
Harunobu's expression darkened. "It would be a strong stance for the Zenin, one that makes us a target for the other clans. A skirmish along a border is one thing, but once the big three clans of sorcerers enter the war, there will be no turning back."
Damn it, she knew; she knew exactly what this meant, for her clan, for everything they had been trying to build.
Harunobu leaned back against the pillar, arms folding as he studied her silence for a long moment. Then— "…And?" he prompted.
It was the question he always asked when he knew she was about to do something reckless: Which part of this are we changing? They both knew she couldn't refuse an order from Tokugawa Ieyasu, but Kaoru was not a woman who simply accepted inevitability.
"I refuse to sit still and lay the foundation for a full-scale war without at least attempting to counter it. I want time." Harunobu didn't interrupt, and Kaoru didn't thank him for that. "If the front collapses, Tokugawa gets to drag us all into his war, but if the conflict stops—"
"—Then he loses his justification for escalation," Harunobu finished, his brow furrowing. "Still, Masanari Hattori does not seem eager to back down. Unfortunate as it is, the stalemate does not depend on one man."
Kaoru nodded, lips pressing into a thin line as she repeated the words in her mind: the stalemate does not depend on one man.One man. Damn that, I need a man that can stall the entire war. Before she could stop it, a thought surfaced, a single, inconvenient, infuriating thought.
"That idiot," she blurted.
Harunobu blinked. "Hattori-dono?"
"No. Seijiro," Kaoru snapped suddenly.
There was a pause; if Harunobu had learned anything in the years of dealing with Kaoru, it was that she was absolutely insufferable when frustrated. And right now, she was frustrated. His brow arched. "…Beg your pardon?"
"Do you know how much it did cost me to ask him to come to Edo, back then?" she ranted, grinding ink with entirely too much force. "Do you have any idea how much it wounded my pride? I gave up all my dignity, but no! Not only does he not show up—'Nobu, no." She chuckled low like a madwoman. "And now I find out he's neck-deep in the ongoing skirmish?"
"And is that... surprising?" he deadpanned.
Kaoru slammed her hand on the low table. "No! Obviously not! But why does it make me so—" She whirled on Harunobu, dramatic, half-serious, half-insane. "Ugh, rather than coming to visit me in Edo like a normal person, he's playing war with that bastard of Hattori-dono!" she grumbled, pressed a hand to her face, exasperated. "Mind me, it's not like I was hoping for him to show up here, but would a letter have been so much to ask for? A message? A single, damn missive? Tell me, 'Nobu, do you even think he's alive? Because I don't think he's even alive at this point! Knowing Hattori-dono, he's probably loosing arrow after arrow at Seijiro's stupid, perfect, pretty forehead right now—"
"Kaoru-dono." Harunobu cut in, pointedly. "Are you complaining because Gojo-sama hasn't sent you a letter?"
Kaoru opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Since no sound came, she squinted hard at Harunobu. Wait. Was she complaining about a letter that never arrived? No. No, of course— "No," she said, completely unconvincing.
Harunobu crossed his arms, waiting. Kaoru crossed her arms in reflex, suddenly defensive.
"I mean—what, is he waiting for an official summons? Formal documentation? Since when does he stick that much to etiquette?" She scowled. "Or, I don't know... Do you think he is actually... illiterate?"
"It wouldn't surprise me," Harunobu cut in, flat. "Kaoru-dono. If it bothers you so much, why don't you write to him?"
Kaoru resumed pacing furiously. "Oh, sure. And what would I even write? Oh, hello Seijiro, remember that wonderful project we worked so hard to establish? Well, my daimyo is probably going to war with yours, so I'd hurry and come visit before it all goes to hell. Oh, and how are you? Has Hattori-dono succeeded in turning you into a human pincushion yet, or can the two of you idiots stop with your stupid warfront in Iga—"
That was the part that stuck in her brain.
Oh.
Oh.
Unfortunate as it is, the stalemate does not depend on one man.
But actually, actually, it kind of did.
Her thoughts shifted. The conflict. Tokugawa was so sure the line would break because Seijiro Gojo was there, because the Western Army had put their most dangerous asset on the border, because Seijiro Gojo could turn a stalemate into a breach whenever it suited him. But if Seijiro wasn't there? Kaoru wasn't so convinced the line would collapse. Considering the Maeda and the Koga on one side, and the Hattori and the Date on the other, the border could stay in a stalemate forever.
She felt it click into place with a cold clarity that made her sit straighter. That was it; letters to Seijiro. Ieyasu Tokugawa wanted the Six Eyes on the Iga border? She would remove the Six Eyes from there.
Kaoru turned, grabbed an inkstone, and started grinding with more force than necessary. "'Nobu. Summon our fastest, most discreet messenger."
Harunobu watched her face change. "Kaoru-dono," he said, very cautiously. "Should I be concerned?"
"This letter," Kaoru muttered as she began writing, "must not reach Tokugawa-dono's ears. Or else, I will be strongly encouraged to commit seppuku before dozens of clans, and he will ensure to enjoy every second of it."
A pause. Harunobu didn't laugh.
"Are we... committing treason, Kaoru-dono?"
"What? No!" Kaoru looked genuinely offended. She finished writing. "I'm simply delaying a war…Technically. We'll move the spear in secret just as Tokugawa-dono asked, and I will meet Seijiro Gojo in Nagoya-go. If he's not on the border, the border won't collapse. We'll buy some time."
Harunobu watched her in silence for a moment, then spoke. "And if he doesn't come?"
Kaoru's hand stopped for half a second. Then she dipped the brush, steadying herself. "He'll come, if I'm the one asking." It came out too certain.
Harunobu's gaze softened by a fraction, deciding whether this was a strategy or hope pretending to be a strategy. Kaoru didn't like hope; hope made people stupid, hope made people die. But she'd also learned that sometimes you used hope anyway, like you used any other tool.
Kaoru finished the last stroke, sealed the scroll, and sat back. Then, with genuine regret, she sighed. "You're coming with me to move the spear." Harunobu was the one person she knew would follow her to the ends of the earth. And that, perhaps, was the only comfort she had left. "Hajime, too, or he'll throw a tantrum. No one apart from us has to know the Mitsuboshi no Yari's being relocated to Nagoya-go."
Harunobu's eyes slid subtly toward the door, toward the compound outside.
"I know you would rather stay here with your family," Kaoru added quickly. She didn't apologize properly; that wasn't how she worked. "But I'm asking you to leave them here. Miyako will be safer here, and she can oversee the Edo affairs while I'm gone."
Harunobu's brow arched. "Miyako? She's a woman."
Kaoru met his gaze evenly. "She's more than capable. I'm sure she'll manage to prevent Date-dono from setting a roof on fire while his Clan joins our forces in Edo."
He held her stare for a long moment, then—unexpectedly—a small, knowing curve touched his mouth. "I see you're laying foundations."
Kaoru's grip tightened on the sealed message. "One step at a time."
Harunobu reached out and took the message from her. "Of course. I expected nothing less." He closed his eyes, then nodded. "Very well. Where you go, Kaoru-dono, I go."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
August 1599, Zenin Clan Estate, Nagoya-go
Nagoya-go was baking.
The air always stalled over their valley when the sun pressed down, and the cicadas that screamed from every tree with the dedication did nothing to help the migraine coming with the heat.
From the ridge, one could see what Nagoya-go really was now: not the militar fortress of the Zenin in the middle of a crucial passage connecting the Kansai region, but a village that happened to have a fortified heart. The old Zenin stronghold still stood at the center of Nagoya-go, with its walls, watchtowers, and roofs; the elders of the Clan still lived there, Tatsuhiro still lived there, too, because someone had to sign documents, so the keep had to be defended somehow.
But everything around it, though, had changed; civilians came and went through the main gate all day.
Since most of the military forces had moved to Edo, the estate had become a staging ground where families were packed, counted, and reassigned; storehouses were inventoried twice; carts were repaired; children were collected, lost, found again, and scolded. The fortress courtyard was no longer a place where men in armor marched but a place filled with farmers with sunburned necks, women with babies tied to their backs, boys too young to be trained but old enough to run errands, old women who bargained over whose turn it was to fill the water jars, and old men who sat under the engawa.
Harunobu hated how much it looked like peace. He knew the difference between "quiet" and "empty." Nagoya-go wasn't empty. It was simply missing the people who had made it dangerous, and that made Nagoya-go look like what it actually was beneath the Zenin name: just a village.
The biggest emergency this week had been a broken hoe and a well rope that snapped at the wrong time. Someone had cried over it like it was the end of the world until a twelve-year-old girl handed them a better knot.
It wasn't the Zenin Harunobu had grown up serving, not the violent face they showed other clans; this was the other side of the clan, the quiet side, the necessary side. People who didn't carry blades but still carried the clan.
This was what they were moving to Edo, eventually.
They just needed some more time to prepare food waiting in Edo, rooms that wouldn't kill them in winter, work that wouldn't starve them. A plan that didn't involve dumping half a valley's worth of families outside Tokugawa's walls and calling it a future.
No one cared about civilians, no one wrote war poems about pregnant women and old men and children crying over sandals. But a warlord could command soldiers, could order killings, but if one couldn't protect the parts of the clan that didn't fight, it wasn't ruling. And Kaoru?
Kaoru cared for them; those were her people, whether she admitted it or not.
So, Harunobu cared too. Harunobu, who had faced curses, armies, and assassins; Harunobu, who had endured and babysitted Kaoru Zenin in full command mode. Harunobu, who, as he led the two boys along the main engawa through the estate—two boys on opposite ends of civilization—had the feeling that this might finally finish him.
"Why do you keep looking at me?" Hajime said, casual and accusing.
Tatsuhiro didn't even blink, which would have been impressive if Harunobu hadn't already learned it was fear. "I was not looking at you."
Hajime's mouth twisted. "You totally were."
"Was not."
"Were too."
"Was not."
"Were—"
"Enough," Harunobu cut in.
Both boys shut up immediately because that was the one universal language they shared: Harunobu's tone. For one merciful second, there was only the cicadas and the sound of a cart wheel turning.
Then Hajime, miserable he was, opened his mouth again. "Why do you walk like that?"
Tatsuhiro frowned. "Like what."
"Like you've got a whole damn stick shoved up your—"
Harunobu grabbed Hajime by the collar mid-sentence, anticipating yet another disaster before breakfast. "Hajime," he said, calm in the way only a genuine lethal threat could be. "If you value your tongue, you will learn when to use it in the presence of your betters."
Hajime snorted, dangling from his grip like an unruly cat. "He's not better than me."
Tatsuhiro's face tightened, offended in a very courtly way. Good. The young heir needed to learn the world didn't always rearrange itself because he'd been born expensive and with the Zenin name.
"Tatsuhiro-sama is your superior," Harunobu said, flatly. "And you will treat him with respect."
Harunobu released him with a small shove that put him back in line, and Hajime's eyes narrowed, thinking: a rare event. He turned to Tatsuhiro, studied him like a problem, then asked, reluctant, "Do I really have to follow him around all day?"
Harunobu just sighed and kept walking.
Tatsuhiro Zenin, Zenin by blood and dressed like it; deep blue robes, black hair and eyes, and posture assembled. He kept his hands tucked into his too-wide sleeves as if he'd read a manual titled How to Look Like You Belong Here. His gaze constantly flicked sideways toward the other boy, probably wondering whether Hajime might bite. It wasn't a stupid concern. To be fair, Hajime's grin, when it appeared, was all canines.
The other boy looked like a feral creature.
Hajime walked barefoot because he had declared war on footwear and intended to win; his hair was a mess; his expression was too cunning for a child; he moved like he'd spent years with nothing but his own instincts to keep him alive, because he had. And—more importantly—he was loyal to a fault to Kaoru.
Harunobu almost smiled because the contrast was absurd; a noble statue and a stray. After Harunobu had spent months stopping Kaoru from throwing Hajime into the nearest well, she had decided it was time for Hajime to take on responsibility, to be given something to protect.
Hajime's first assignment? Watching over Tatsuhiro.
Harunobu thought for the first time in his life that Kaoru was an idiot, but Kaoru had left those two boys, her future, in his hands while they moved a cursed spear in secret and tried to delay a war, so he didn't complain and led them further into the estate.
They passed a group of women under a tree, sleeves pushed up, hands moving fast as they sorted beans into bowls. One of them was heavily pregnant. Then they passed a toddler wobbling between their legs, almost making Tatsuhiro stumble, followed immediately by an older child who shouted an apology. Then they passed two old men who argued. The conversation would have ended with blood if it were Zenin warriors; here, it ended with one of them spitting to the side and stomping off.
Peace, for now, looked like that; unfortunately, Harunobu had been alive long enough to know how temporary it could be. None of them knew about the relocation of the Mitsuboshi no Yari, inside that very estate. None of them knew that if the wrong person knew, it would put all of them at risk. Only Kaoru, Harunobu, Hajime, and Tatsuhiro. And, of course, the mastermind behind it all: Tokugawa Ieyasu.
They'd traveled light—Kaoru, Harunobu, Hajime—from Edo to Nagoya-go; no banners, nothing that screamed we are Zenin and we're moving the most politically volatile object in the country.
It would have been stealthy if Hajime understood stealth; Hajime was incapable of stealth. Hajime had spent his life as an unsociable, near-mute street rat, barely speaking, then he'd discovered human speech, and he'd never stopped talking since. Somewhere between Edo and Nagoya-go, he'd become a constant stream of commentary, complaints, observations, and insults delivered with Kaoru's attitude and confidence. Except that he wasn't a Clan Head.
Kaoru had bribed him once with food to shut up; Harunobu had never been prouder of her.
Then, they'd arrived in Nagoya-go, and Kaoru had thrown herself into work with an obsession that bordered on self-destruction. Scrolls, plans, patrols, supplies, instructions, and training, still, because she refused to avoid training even when she was clearly running on three hours of sleep and no meals.
Harunobu knew she hadn't slept well in weeks because he could see the shadows under her eyes. He knew she skipped meals because he could see the way her robes hung slightly looser around the waist. She waved him off every time he tried to talk sense into her as she sat beside stacks of scrolls and political strategies.
"Have you seen the state of the country? I'm fine. Get in line."
Harunobu stopped arguing, not because he agreed but because it was useless; Kaoru had always been careless with herself, but with anyone she considered hers, she was strict to the point of cruelty. And she would die for any of the people she deemed hers without hesitation.
Harunobu disapproved, privately. If anything happened to her—no, it won't. Not while he still drew breath. His life had not been his own for a long time; it had belonged to her for as long as he could remember, and if Kaoru walked into an inferno, he went with her. That was the rule he lived by. Especially now that Kaoru had done him a kindness he didn't have language for: she'd sent his family away from the war.
Miyako. Yoshinobu. The unborn child. Safe in Edo, with the clan's major forces, far from the warfront, where his children would not grow up under the shadow of a war that had been inevitable since the day Hideyoshi Toyotomi died. Kaoru had ensured Miyako would be more than just a wife waiting; she had given her a position of respect within the Zenin clan, something to secure her in place in case he... well.
Miyako had always known that his life would never be his own. From the very beginning, she'd never asked him to choose, never resented Kaoru; she just accepted the simple truth that Kaoru would always come first.
So yes. Harunobu's patience would have been intact... if not for one other constant irritation. His eye twitched, a very Gojo-specific kind of twitch; that smirking, arrogant, blue-eyed bastard.
Ever since Kaoru sent that damned coded letter, she had asked about Seijiro Gojo constantly.
At least three times a day: Any news? Any response? Any word from the Iga warfront?
And the answer, every time, was the same: No news. No response. Nothing. No, Kaoru-dono, the idiot hasn't written back yet.
Kaoru thought she was being subtle: she wasn't. The kitchen staff knew; the guards knew; Hajime probably knew, and Hajime didn't even understand what a marriage was, which meant it was obvious enough for even him to pick up; Tokugawa probably knew, too, because Tokugawa knew everything. The only two people who somehow didn't seem to understand the full extent of it were Kaoru and Seijiro themselves, which was impressive considering they could read each other's intentions across a country but couldn't say anything directly to save their lives.
And now that Seijiro was missing in action on a warfront, Kaoru—who was usually a wall—had become visibly restless. She paced; she chewed her thumb; she snapped faster.
Harunobu wanted to be angry at Seijiro on principle. He couldn't; Kaoru trusted him. Which meant Harunobu, by extension, had to at least tolerate him. Even knowing deep down that Seijiro was involved in the events that killed Takahiro Zenin and Kaoru had chosen to look away, his loyalty was to her, not to his own suspicions. That didn't mean he liked it.
He was still thinking about it when voices rose near the main gate. Not children shouting this time, but clustered, urgent voices. He turned his head to see guards moving in a way that made Harunobu's spine go stiff.
"Wait here," he told the boys without looking back. "Hajime. That means you. Do not move."
Hajime's grin flashed, offended by the assumption he might be obedient, but Harunobu didn't care. He walked straight to the gate where a knot of guards had formed, uneven and tense, scanning the surroundings of the gate as if they'd lost something. Or someone.
"Report," Harunobu ordered.
A guard snapped to attention, bowing fast. "An intruder, Harunobu-sama. An outsider attempted to enter through the main gate, and when denied, he offended us, circled the perimeter, and scaled the outer wall."
Harunobu stopped. "...He what."
"Scaled the wall, sir. Fast. The compound is being searched."
Harunobu's mind jumped to the worst-case scenario immediately. Spy. Assassin. Test run. If they'd been compromised, Kaoru would be the target, not the elders, not the children. Damn. Kaoru-dono. She's alone and tired in her study—
"You're telling me... someone bypassed the defenses of one of the Big Three Jujutsu Clan's estates, in the middle of an impending war, just because you told him 'no' at the front gate?"
...Who was this insane bastard?
His hand settled on his katana before he could decide. "Describe him."
The guard swallowed. "T-Tall."
No.
"White hair. Battle robes, blood-stained, as if he came straight from a battlefield. He acted… oddly casual, considering he was trespassing."
No.
"Eyes—"
Stop.
"—pale blue"
Harunobu's stomach sank in pure, furious recognition; he closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Oh, for the love of—
Of course, Seijiro Gojo would arrive unannounced, climb a wall, and trigger a security crisis in a village full of infants in the middle of an almost-total war. Of course he couldn't simply walk through the gate without offending anyone like a decent human being. Harunobu inhaled slowly and opened his eyes. They hadn't recognized him, then. Good. No one had to know what was going on there; the last thing they needed was for the entire estate to know a Gojo had just broken in like an invading force.
"Call off the search," he said.
The guard hesitated. "Harunobu-sama—"
"No," Harunobu leveled him with a look, and the guard snapped his mouth shut. "I'll handle it. Return to your posts. Quietly."
The guards dispersed, still tense and confused, but obedient because he was the clan head's second-in-command, and Harunobu turned back to the engawa. Hajime and Tatsuhiro were exactly where he'd left them, which was either a miracle or proof Hajime had decided to cooperate for once.
"Hajime," Harunobu said, and waited until the boy's eyes locked on his. "Until I'm back, you are responsible for Tatsuhiro-sama."
Hajime blinked, then, slowly, stood straighter, and his expression flashed with pride. "Got it."
Harunobu narrowed his eyes at him. He had to understand this was important, more than just a lesson. Tatsuhiro was the heir of the Zenin clan, Kaoru's bloodline. "Do not fail Kaoru-dono."
Hajime's grin turned reverent in a way that was, frankly, unsettling. "Never."
Good.
Harunobu gave the estate and the boys one last look as he stepped away; Hajime, Tatsuhiro, and even Kaoru herself.
The Zenin clan, in Nagoya-go, was mostly made up of children. And a war was coming anyway.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Seijiro had absolutely no idea what he was expecting from the Zenin estate.
Something grim, probably, a fortress made of angry angles and angrier people, full of humorless sorcerers who slept with a tantō under their pillow and woke up even angrier. That was how his father talked about the Zenin: blood and cruelty, a clan that existed purely to exterminate the others.
Which, in retrospect, wasn't entirely wrong since Kaoru was the only Zenin he had ever willingly spent time with. And Kaoru—well. Kaoru was an exception to every rule in his life.
So maybe he shouldn't have been surprised when the first thing he encountered at the estate wasn't grandeur or ritual or even the cold, competent hospitality of a rival clan. It was a wall of spears and a wall of men behind them.
"Oi. You."
Ah, that kind of welcome. Just Oi.
Seijiro had stared at them; they stared back, stiff and suspicious and sweating through in the August heat.
"State your business," a guard snapped.
"State my—?" Seijiro actually blinked.
He hadn't even finished inhaling before another guard stepped forward, hand already on his katana like he'd been waiting all day for a reason. "Nothing? Then you are not permitted entry."
Seijiro's gaze drifted over the line. None of them had recognized him; not a single hint of hesitation, not even a nervous whisper of Not Gojo-sama, heir of the Gojo clan. He was almost offended because he had a formal summoning document signed by Kaoru, their Clan Head.
"Now, wait just a moment—" he began, trying to reach for the scroll inside his sleeve.
"Leave," the first guard said louder.
Seijiro exhaled slowly through his nose, looked down at himself, and conceded—grimly—that he was not making a strong first impression. He'd come straight from the Iga border after days of travel with any proper rest, and that last "skirmish" had been the sort that left your clothes stiff, torn, and filthy. His hair had been tied up at some point out of necessity, but it had blood on it that wasn't his, and he was almost certain he smelled like sweat, smoke, and whatever sad excuse for food they'd been feeding soldiers at the front.
He must have looked like a very arrogant corpse that had crawled out of a ditch; he could understand why they didn't want to let him in; he could also understand that he didn't care. For a brief, tempting moment, he considered saying his name and adding: Bow properly this time.
Then he remembered: Zenin and Gojo were on the brink of war, and humiliating Zenin's guards at the gate would turn Kaoru's delicate work into ash. Also, maybe the fact that he was being summoned was kind of a secret even inside those walls.
So he tried diplomacy. "Listen," Seijiro said, measured, "I'm here on urgent business. It concerns your clan head—"
"Our clan head does not entertain himself with filthy rats."
Right. Fine. At this point, Seijiro might have insulted them. "You know, if the best defense the Zenin have is a line of men who can't recognize a threat standing in front of them, then it's a miracle you've survived this long."
A spear tip twitched closer to his chest. "Leave."
Seijiro had smiled. "With pleasure."
Then he turned around, walked away like he was obeying, and circled the perimeter until he found a section of wall that looked climbable. He scaled it like a common burglar. This was not how he had planned to enter. He would have liked to say he regretted it.
Kaoru owed him for this.
Inside the outer grounds, Seijiro moved low and fast along the engawa. The layout was practical, nothing like the Kamo excess, or Gojo elegance, no ornamental waste; every corridor led somewhere useful, every courtyard had a purpose, and even the open-air walkways felt designed for patrols.
A fortress first, a home second. What he did not expect was everything beyond the fortress. The village that wrapped around the Zenin stronghold. He paused at the edge of a courtyard and stared.
No one, apart from the guards at the gates, was really armed. There were women carrying bundles, hanging laundry, hauling buckets. There were children everywhere, darting between carts, yelling at each other. There were elders sitting and watching everything.
Seijiro blinked once; this… was the Zenin? This was what his father had described as "bloodthirsty dogs"?
He knew that Kaoru had moved their military forces, the real Zenin bloodthirsty dogs, to Edo; that was the pact, everybody knew that much. Still, seeing the people still left in Nagoya-go did something unpleasant to his expectations.
Seijiro's first thought was stupidly literal: If there's a war, where do they put the babies? His second thought was worse: Oh. That's the point.
He forced his gaze away and made himself move as his Six Eyes and his focus snapped hard; there, beneath the ordinary noise of village life, there was a pressure, a familiar wrongness. He stopped so abruptly he nearly caught his sleeve on a post.
No. No, this is not possible.
But wasn't it? He'd touched the Mitsuboshi no Yari with his own hands; he knew its presence, and it was not a subtle thing. It left cursed energy in the air for his Six Eyes to see.
The Mitsuboshi no Yari was here, in Nagoya-go. Not in Edo, serving the greater cause in neutrality. In the Zenin's former stronghold.
Seijiro's irritation snapped into something colder. Damn it, Kaoru. What the hell is the Mitsuboshi no Yari doing here?
If his father learned the spear had been moved, if the Kamo learned, if anyone outside Kaoru's tight circle learned, it would not just be a political misstep but a war declaration. He could already hear the accusations: The Zenin have claimed the spear. The Zenin have broken the pact. The Zenin are entering the war with Tokugawa.
Kaoru had known that, which meant she had no choice.
Seijiro pressed his hand against the wooden frame and forced himself to breathe. So this was why she'd summoned him? Not to—gods forbid—check on him since he'd been on a warfront for months?
Of course it's the damn spear all over again.
Yes, yes, it was important, of course. Still, a part of him—a deeply stupid part of him—was almost disappointed. What had he expected? That she had called him here for... For—what, exactly? Absolutely unfair. Why? Why did she do this to him? He scowled at himself, then realized he was pouting and corrected his face. Still. She could have handled it alone, but she had called for him; it meant she trusted him, or she trusted that he'd be useful. It was… irritatingly pleasing. Also incredibly annoying.
Damn her.
Damn her and her cunning mind; damn her and the way she always thought two steps ahead of everyone; damn her and—
Seijiro let out a slow breath, rubbed at his temples, and tried to picture her as she paced, biting at her damn thumb like she always did when she was frustrated. She was probably planning something reckless and clever.
And him? He had the feeling that whatever it was, he was getting along with it.
He slipped between walkways, keeping close to the shoji, fingertips grazing the grain as he went. He had a plan. Well—plan was a generous word. "Get inside" had been the extent of it; what came after? Eh. Improvisation, preferably the kind that didn't end with someone cutting his head off. His Six Eyes caught the threads of Kaoru's cursed energy. She was close. Just a few more turns, just beyond—
He rounded the corner and stopped.
Oh no.
Two figures at the far end of the hall; one was all wild cyan hair and voltage, standing barefoot like he owned the building. Hajime, Kaoru's feral ward. The other was black-haired and looked too much like her, posture too composed for a child. Kaoru's cousin, Tatsuhiro Zenin. The kid had been too damn good with a bow months ago, and that had stuck in his memory.
Seijiro's brain did an ugly little stutter. Shit.
Too late; both boys looked up and saw him. The silence that followed was awkward. Both boys assessed him, as if he'd walked into the wrong room, which was fair.
Tatsuhiro's frown was small, restrained; he didn't widen his eyes like the first time, when he'd looked at Seijiro with the fascination of a child seeing his hero for the first time. That version of him was gone, dead with his uncle; this was a boy being trained to survive.
Smart kid. Young, but not stupid; he was acutely aware of what was happening between the Gojo and Zenin.
Tatsuhiro spoke, voice cautious. "...Gojo-sama." Not welcoming and not openly hostile. Respectful enough to be correct, and far enough to be dangerous.
Seijiro didn't even get a chance to respond before something much worse happened; Hajime's eyes locked onto him. The brat moved, one small step, a shift that put his body between Seijiro and Tatsuhiro without making a show of it. Guard dog posture; the street rat had grown, and now he was looking at Seijiro like prey that had wandered too close.
Oh, hell.
A Gojo sneaking into the Zenin estate, during a time of war? Yeah. If the roles were reversed, he'd have attacked first and asked questions never.
Seijiro kept his hands visible. Diplomacy; he could do diplomacy. He could be mature, he could be an adult who did not immediately start a fight with a fifteen-year-old in the middle of a rival clan's hallways.
He plastered on his best innocent smile. "Now, now," he began, "let's take a moment to consider that I was personally invited by Zenin-dono, so this is all perfectly legal—"
Hajime did not care. One second, the boy was still. The next—
Blue lightning snapped over his arms as he launched forward. Seijiro jerked back on instinct just as a bare foot slammed toward the shoji where his head had been a fraction earlier, crackling like a miniature storm that didn't know what direction to take.
"Kami, do you even remember me, Thunderbrat?" Seijiro snapped, stepping back again as he avoided a follow-up strike. "I knew you weren't the brightest, but I didn't think you were actually fucking stupid—"
A second punch came in fast, too fast for a normal fight. Seijiro twisted aside in time to avoid his skull getting caved in, and the air stung with heat from Hajime's cursed energy.
Hajime, utterly unimpressed, growled. "I remember you just fine, dumbhead." He grinned as lightning arced along his forearms again in a very concerning way. "I'm guarding Tatsuhiro. I won't fail Kaoru."
Another strike, a fist wreathed in raw, cursed energy, aimed for Seijiro's face. Seijiro leaned just barely out of the way. "That's great, very responsible of you! Now calm the hell down—!"
Another blow came, this time a wild kick. Seijiro swore under his breath, then loudly. Hajime was relentless in the way feral children were relentless, with no sense of pacing and no sense of consequence, just forward, forward, forward until something broke. Meanwhile, Seijiro? He'd come here from a battlefield, he probably smelled like a dead man's armor, getting fried by Kaoru's rabid ward in a hallway was not on today's list.
Oh, come on. His Infinity flared up on instinct. A bolt of cursed energy slid along an invisible pressure, inches from his chest, crackling violently as it tried to reach him without success. Hajime paused, head tilting, and studying. For a second, he looked almost curious. Then the little bastard grinned wider.
"Perfect, you're enjoying this," Seijiro muttered, half-impressed, half-exasperated. "Damn it, Kaoru's turning you into a monster."
Hajime charged again with his lightning, and Seijiro caught the punch with his bare hand, felt the jolt shudder up his arm. He twisted Hajime's wrist, pivoted, and launched the boy far down the engawa.
Hajime flew, rolled on his side before coming up in a wild crouch, ready to attack again.
Seijiro found himself in the middle, Tatsuhiro far on one side, Hajime far on the other. He lifted both his hands to placate both of the boys. "Alright, alright, let's just—"
And suddenly he couldn't move.
His entire body locked up, as if invisible cords cinched around his joints and held. His Six Eyes snapped to the side, to Tatsuhiro's side. The boy's hands were slightly lifted toward him, his gaze fixed on Seijiro with the focus of someone under a very hard pressure. There was strain in his face; then, a small, dark bead at his nostril, a single drop of blood, trembling.
Seijiro smirked despite himself. A binding cursed technique? Clever. Crude, but clever. And for a child to even attempt to hold me—
But his nose was bleeding in backlash. Too young to be able to keep Seijiro Gojo in place. Tatsuhiro wavered after a few seconds, knees softening, breath turning shallow as the blood at his nose thickened, threatening to run.
Alright. Enough.
Seijiro eased a thread of resistance into the hold, trying not to innescate a backlash that would punish the kid for trying. Just… a little pressure. Come on, kid, drop it before you get hurt.
At last, the effect dissolved as Tatsuhiro stumbled, blinking hard in exhaustion.
In the same instant, Seijiro moved before Hajime could get at him again. A blue-blink, a shift of space; he dodged Hajime's incoming strike behind him by a hair and slipped past Tatsuhiro with the kind of speed that made the world feel slow around him. He was behind him, gone down the walkway—
But not before ruffling Tatsuhiro's hair in passing, because if he didn't misbehave at least once, he'd stop recognizing himself. "Nice try, kid."
Seijiro ran like he belonged there, which, in his mind, he did because he had been invited. For a brief moment, he wondered why the hell he was even running. Then he felt Hajime's outraged string of insults hit the engawa behind him, and Seijiro heard the scramble of bare feet, the slap of movement on wood as he launched after him.
For a brat who'd barely known how to speak in full sentences months ago, he was obnoxiously competent at tracking, but Seijiro had the advantage, the Six Eyes, the experience, and a very strong desire not to get struck by lightning.
Kami above, kid, give up already.
He pivoted down a quieter hallway as his senses stayed locked on one presence: Kaoru. He was still following her cursed energy; he'd memorized it long ago, traced it until it felt stupidly normal to know where she was. His heart beat a little too fast. Not like he had been thinking about her every damn day, of course.
Seijiro slipped past a patrolling guard, took another turn, and avoided a burst of voices coming down an adjacent walkway in split-second decisions. He pressed himself to a shōji door, slid it open in one fluid motion, stepped inside, shut it behind him—
—and collided straight into someone smaller.
The impact was an exchange of weight, of startled movement, of instinctive defense. Both of them recoiled on instinct, muscles tensing, before the room snapped into violence in the space of a heartbeat.
In the dark of the room, steel flashed; Seijiro had no time to process it before a tantō that came up toward him in one lethal motion with no hesitation, pure reflex. It went straight for his stomach. His Infinity flared automatically, and his hand shot out to catch the attacker's wrist just before the blade could reach him. His back hit the shōji with a dull thud. The paper behind trembled.
His grip tightened, forcing the strike to stop there without reaching, but at the exact same moment, a hand clamped over his mouth. Or tried to.
Infinity denied the contact, leaving the palm hovering inches from his lips.
He breathed in, and oh.
Kaoru...?
Infinity dropped on instinct for her because his body had learned that reflex before his brain agreed with it, and her hand crashed down, firm over his mouth. For one agonizing second neither of them moved, as if the room had tilted and neither knew how to level it again. His brain took a moment to register that she was right there, in her usual crimson and black. Seijiro's grip stayed locked around her wrist, feeling her pulse under his fingertips. Steady and strong. It spiked for a fraction of a second anyway.
He had imagined this meeting a hundred ways: formal, tense, political, maybe a quiet room, maybe even a battlefield, standing on opposite sides; anything where he could prepare his face and his words and his temper. Not her trying to gut him at first sight, then clamping a palm over his mouth. Although—really—it was Kaoru; maybe he should've expected exactly this.
Then, he remembered the tantō was still poised between them, and the scowl came naturally. He blinked down at her with narrowed irritated and exhausted eyes, as if to say; drop it. It's me, you murderous little thing.
She blinked up at him with wide, innocent, and exhausted eyes, as if to say; oh. It's just you. My bad.
Seijiro's scowl deepened as his gaze slid down on her, taking in everything. He should have said something about how this was hardly the welcome he deserved; he should have been furious that she had dragged him across the country without an explanation, that she had moved the damn spear from Edo without warning; he should have been furious about a thousand things. Instead, he was furious about how the weight of leadership, of exhaustion, had settled into the corners of her eyes, about how she had lost weight, about how she had obviously not been sleeping.
Kaoru. For fuck's sake.
Then, reality came crashing back, and Seijiro could almost hear the exact moment her brain caught up, because her expression changed, processing how very, very bad this looked. Her expression shifted from instinctive defense to confusion, and something he almost hoped was relief. Then—ah.
Irritation.
There it was; he'd missed that.
Outside the shoji, just behind Seijiro, footsteps passed. "Zenin-dono? Everything alright?"
Kaoru's eyes snapped to the shōji, then back to Seijiro, and he could practically hear the internal screaming. Oh, she knows exactly what kind of mess I've gotten myself into. He made a muffled noise against her palm, deliberately unhelpful.
Her expression darkened instantly. Don't. Say. A word.
He shut up. Yes, my lord.
"No problem!" Her hand pressed harder against his mouth to make it very clear that if he so much as breathed too loudly, she would end him where he stood. "I just—just squashed a bug. Return to your posts."
Seijiro blinked at her over her hand, thoroughly impressed and deeply offended at the same time. She had just referred to him—to him—as an bug? Oh, she was so lucky he couldn't talk right now.
Footsteps receded, and the corridor quieted again.
After what felt like an eternity, Kaoru finally moved, carefully, as her fingers dragged away from his mouth. Her touch left behind a phantom warmth against his skin, but Seijiro had no time to process it before she took a measured step back, enough to put space between them.
Seijiro exhaled hard; he hadn't realized how tightly he'd been holding his breath. He released her wrist and leaned back to the shoji, pretending he hadn't just been pinned to a wall like an intruder. He dragged a hand through his hair, but nothing helped.
Kaoru's gaze flickered over him in a quick, ruthless sweep: the torn robes, the grime, the dried blood, the exhausted edge he hadn't bothered to hide, and probably the smell. The faint, unavoidable reality that he'd come straight from the warfront.
She didn't make a face, which, somehow, was worse because she was absolutely judging him silently. Great. He had been here less than five minutes, and she was already looking at him like he wasan unsalvageable mess.
To be fair, he was, but that wasn't the point. The point was: he needed to say something.
His lips curled into a smirk. "Kaoru." He tilted his head slightly, deliberate, and just the slightest bit amused. "You know, this is the second time you've tried to stab me."
Just a test. Their usual banter, just to see how she would react.
Her lips twitched barely, the smallest betrayal of relief; then, a shift of color at the tips of her ears; for one unfair, infuriating second, she looked happy. Seijiro's stomach did something deeply inconvenient; no, she was not happy to see him. That would be absurd.
"If you keep trying to stab me," he added, leaning into the banter because he needed it to breathe, "I might start to think you enjoy it."