The opening was perfect, and Masanari Hattori never missed.
Far off, deep in the forest, he'd been watching through gaps in branches and drifting smoke, and that's when he saw them: Kaoru engaged and locked in proximity with the Gojo heir, holding him in place with her katana. Seijiro's Infinity not projecting the shimmer in the air around him, not bristling, not active in the way that mattered.
He loosed a single arrow, and Trajectory activated; the arrow bent, and the shot didn't wobble, didn't care about anything but the line Masanari was imagining between bowstring and target.
Kaoru's eyes widened, and Seijiro felt it; first an itch at the edges of his mind, then a pressure. He jerked his head, and the Six Eyes saved him only in the most insulting way: too late.
He straightened. The arrow missed his skull by inches, but it didn't miss entirely.
It slipped between ribs from behind, then punched through the front of his chest, too close to the heart. The impact stole his breath and turned the world into a single, stupid sound.
Thump.
The sound of flesh giving way.
Before him, Kaoru flinched as a hot spray of his blood hit her cheek.
Seijiro staggered, one knee dipping before he forced it straight as his breath came in a rough pull and blood slicked down his front in a too-fast spill. Infinity flared belatedly, tangled in his hesitation, scrambled by proximity, scrambled by her.
At first, he didn't feel pain. He felt heat, the wrong kind. Then it bloomed, and his body reacted before his mind did; his cursed energy spikes violently and uncontrolled, lashing outward. Then, his Six Eyes went feral. They registered everything; every tiny fluctuation of his own output as he tried and failed to turn into Reverse Cursed Technique; every tiny fluctuation of Masanari's corrosive energy as it traveled through his body. The feedback made his ring high and hard, as if someone had struck a bell inside his skull.
Then his heart stuttered, and the world lurched. He slammed a shaking hand to his chest, pressing over the wound.
Control it. Control something. Reverse Cursed Technique. Now. Now.
His cursed energy bucked and scattered, spiked again, and panicked. His brain, usually smug and fast, scrambled as if a child left alone in a burning forest, and his heart kicked wrong. The corrosive energy was already in circulation, too close to the heart, and spreading too fast.
No—no, no-no, no—Get out, get away—
Cursed energy, fast, too close on his blind side. Kaoru was moving too. His Six Eyes caught her and dumped it into him all at once: her Divine Dogs burst from her shadow with a growl, sprinting toward him and positioning themselves to guard his blind side, ready to intercept, to take whatever came next.
Seijiro didn't see help.
All he registered was: a threat; a blade at his throat a second ago; her shikigami rushing him while his heart misfired and his cursed technique wobbled. He moved on reflex as his vision tunneled.
Crack.
His palm snapped sideways, Blue packed tight, and the blast caught the black Divine Dog in the skull mid-stride as he passed him. The shikigami made a pained sound and dissolved into shadows and ink on impact.
Gone. Dead.
Kaoru flinched as if slapped hard enough to ring her teeth. Her hand dropped, useless at her side, and for an ugly second her face went blank in a way that didn't belong on her, too shocked, too wrong. Seijiro's Six Eyes tracked the fallout before his mind caught up: the sudden hitch in her breathing, the way her cursed energy spasmed and died slowly, collapsing into a low, furious buzz. She stared at him as if he'd reached inside her and torn out something in a place that didn't bleed.
He realized too late; his hand lowered as he stared at the dissolving shadows where the Divine Dog had been, then at Kaoru. The look she gave him was openly disbelieving, wounded; it didn't suit her. It made his stomach turn. He tried to swallow, but blood bubbled at his mouth when he exhaled too hard. When he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, it came away red, and his skin had gone a shade grayer with each breath.
"Nice job." He scoffed because it was either that or falling over. "You and Masanari make a lovely pair. Was that the plan? Wait until I was distracted?"
"Seijiro." Kaoru's voice tightened. "That wasn't—"
Another sound cut her off. Another arrow, slicing the air, coming close.
This one didn't reach him. Rensuke did.
The shinobi dropped from the canopy, silent and concealed until the last instant, and cut the arrow mid-flight so cleanly it split into two dead pieces that buried themselves in the dirt on either side of Seijiro's feet. He landed and looked at Kaoru. No words; just pure accusation.
Kaoru took a half-step back, mouth parted and hands hanging at her side as if she'd forgotten about them.
"Guess I was right," he said, trying to smile again. It didn't help. It came out wrong. It was the kind of smile someone made right before passing out.
Seijiro's cursed energy bleeding in the air changed before Kaoru saw it. It turned hot like fire, like something wrong too quickly, charged. Her head snapped toward Seijiro in time to see the tremble around him: wind recoiling, and small red particles bending as if the very space was being bullied into place. Silver hair clung to the nape of his neck, disheveled, a dark streak of red matting one side. The wound in his shoulder bled freely; when his left hand rose, it was soaked in blood.
Too calm; his expression was too calm now, in a way Kaoru had learned to recognize as dangerous.
His chest rose with one heavy breath, and his ice-blue gaze snapped past her shoulder, locked on something hidden in the forest. The Hattori defense line.
Kaoru had little time to try reasoning with a small, "Wait—"
But the air screamed before the blast did, cutting her and urging her instinct to move to survive. Summoning Piercing Ox's trait underfoot, in a burst of momentum that cracked the ground, Kaoru skidded to two shinobi staggered near the impact zone, dazed from the earlier clash, seized both by their collars, and launched out of the way as pressure built behind her.
The Red detonated, and it wasn't like the earlier ones. Not a warning or a measured correction. Seijiro channeled every furious attempt at applying Reverse Cursed Technique into his Reversal instead. A pulse of raw, destructive, cursed energy carved through the battlefield, vaporizing air, compressing space, no, rejecting it entirely. The trees at the forest's edge buckled and disappeared, broke and splintered.
For a heartbeat, as she sprinted, Kaoru genuinely thought she'd gone deaf.
Then the screams arrived. Gojo and Date sorcerers, and Hattori shinobi alike were thrown backward, bodies rag-dolled by a force that didn't care which mon they wore or which daimyo they served. The forest behind the ridge lit with fire, and somewhere deep in the trees, Masanari Hattori vanished, status unknown.
Kaoru had barely made it to cover, rolling with the shinobi in tow. They landed in the shelter of a sunken ridge as dirt fell in wet clumps from above; her kosode torn along one sleeve as debris passed, cutting skin and flesh beneath it.
One of the shinobi let out a ragged, terrified sound. "That was a damn act of a kami," he rasped.
Kaoru didn't argue; she'd felt it in her bones. When she stood and turned back—
Seijiro was gone.
No flash of movement and no closing blow. A vacancy where he'd stood, in the empty and smoking clearing he had created. Had he collapsed somewhere in the smoke? Had he Blue-blinked to escape? Was he lying under a tree with that damn arrow still through his chest? Had Rensuke dragged him out? Had—
Her breath hitched; she took one step forward, hand half-lifted, then stopped. Voices. Movement. The line between friend and foe had dissolved, and the battlefield had become a scorched mess too chaotic for tactics. Someone—Kaoru couldn't tell who—called a retreat on both sides; no one could fight through the ruin he'd left behind.
She staggered forward, coughing ashes into the crook of her elbow. Scorched dirt coated her tongue, and blood lingered in her mouth, but she didn't care. She had more pressing matters. She pushed through the smoke, gaze sweeping over the ruined field, and for a moment, she looked for him.
"Seijiro...?"
Nothing.
Just craters and more silence, and the weight of her Divine Dog that wasn't there anymore. The feeling was new. It wasn't the feeling of when she dismissed a shikigami too quickly. It was... Dead-dead. A bond severed, a clean cut that screamed painfully at the back of her skull before going silent.
It was the first time she'd lost one of her shikigami; she hadn't even known it would hurt like this.
The others still stirred, dimly, in her shadow, but that one Divine Dog—one of her firsts that had been with her for as long as she had memory—was gone. Gone because Seijiro had destroyed it. Gone because she'd summoned it and he'd thought she meant to kill him.
It made sense, she supposed. She'd been the last thing he'd seen before the arrow hit.
Still—
Her feet found ground again near the ridge where the Hattori retreated in clusters, and Date sorcerers and Hattori shinobi gave her wide berth. No one dared speak with her. She stood straight, kosode smeared with blood that wasn't hers and blood that had hit her cheek like rain.
"You idiot," she whispered, low. She lifted her finger to smear Seijiro's blood on her cheek. "You complete idiot."
She wasn't sure if she meant him or herself.
A shadow loomed beside her. She didn't need to look to know it was Masanari. His arm was hastily wrapped; one shoulder of his armor half-caved in from impact, jingasa singed. That Red had reached farther than Kaoru expected; she saw it in the way he held his side.
Apparently, Seijiro hadn't missed him entirely. Even from that far back, he'd landed the message.
Masanari scowled at the distant retreating Gojo's line. "Tch. Almost had him."
Kaoru's voice came quietly, and from a faraway place; she wasn't even realizing she was humoring him until she spoke. "Almost is irrelevant, Hattori-dono."
He huffed. "Would've collapsed the front. Damn, you saw him. You saw him, Zenin-dono."
Kaoru couldn't answer; she just kept her gaze lowered and her finger smearing blood from her cheek too harshly.
Masanari clicked his tongue. "I mean, kami above, you two were practically touching. He had his stupid defense down, and you had a blade at his throat. I gave you the chance, what the hell happened?"
Kaoru slowly turned her face toward him, her expression still blank and cold. She looked through him, not at him, and the moment stretched. The hand on her cheek stopped when she realized she had cut herself open with her nails. For a second, she resisted the urge to snap at him and maybe do something worse.
Then she nodded once, dismissive. "Sorry. I missed," she mumbled.
Masanari looked away first, clearly uneasy; he stalked off, muttering about wasted opportunities and incompetent timing, leaving Kaoru alone. Retreat continued around her as Hattori and Date forces fell back into secondary lines, still shaken by the blast. Gojo and Kōga were gone, scattered; there would be no fighting for the rest of the day, week probably.
She let herself sink to the ground near the ridge where the smoke was thickest. She knelt, katana at her side. Her hand stayed there, lowered, smeared with blood that had started to dry.
The blood on her cheek had been necessary, she told herself. This was war; she'd done what she had to do. But that didn't explain why her hands were still shaking. It didn't explain why the look he'd given her, before the chaos, haunted her memory. As if she'd taken something from him. And maybe she had; maybe they both had.
Kaoru stared for a long time as the world tilted slightly around her, smoke drifting, voices fading. She realized something strange in the haze.
For some stupid reason, she hadn't believed Seijiro would bleed that much. And she hadn't believed that seeing it would hurt.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
When night came, the smoke from Seijiro's last Red still drifted lazily over the hills in the moonlight. The battlefield had gone quiet, but not the peaceful kind; it was the aftermath, the silence that waited for consequences to settle over them. The wind moved low through the trees. And Kaoru could still smell blood.
For the record, she was fully aware this was idiotic. Not mildly reckless, or debatably questionable. Plain stupid. Strategically irresponsible. Politically suicidal. Juvenile. And yet here she was, crouched at the edge of the Hattori–Gojo front as if she were a common thief instead of a dignified Clan head, ponytail already snagged by leaves, blending into underbrush that had no business hosting someone of her rank.
The truce was over; the border had exploded; she should be asleep in her quarters, regaining strength for another day, another battlefield. Instead, she slipped from shadow to shadow, cursed energy concealed to a whisper as the night bent around her easily. Her thoughts did not.
Seijiro.
That arrogant, silver-haired menace, the idiot who, as far as she recalled, couldn't perform Reverse Cursed Technique. The fool who bragged about recklessness and the Six Eyes prodigy who got migraines bad enough to knock him flat when he overdid it.
He had been bleeding. Bleeding. And no matter how many times she told herself it was irrelevant, her mind hadn't stopped circling the image since.
So—technically—this was recon for medical recon. That was the official version. Unofficially, it was the worst decision she had made since sneaking out of Kyoto with him. Worse, actually; she knew better now, she was older, supposedly wiser. Technically responsible for half an army. And yet she was slipping between enemy patrol lines like a girl with a crush.
Which she absolutely did not have.
She had prepared, at least. Told Masanari she was exhausted, filed her report, and asked—again—for word from Nagoya-go. Silence, as always. She had bowed out with the composure of a proper Zenin head and vanished into the only place that ever felt honest to her.
The shadows.
Now she was halfway into what could generously be classified as a war crime, heart beating faster than she liked, repeating a single thought with the discipline of a mantra: I'm just confirming he's not dead. It would be strategically relevant information if the enemy's general were dead. Right? Right. After all that, the arrow had gone clean through his chest, and she had felt his blood hit her face. That was all this was. Practical.
Kaoru slipped deeper into the shadows, crossing the boundary between camps because night wasn't an obstacle for her. She let herself dissolve, passing through tree lines and tent shadows, skimming over tired sleeping soldiers without disturbing so much as a breath. Except for the Gojo sorcerer, who had almost raised his lantern directly over her head.
That had been inconvenient.
She crouched in a shallow ditch that smelled of latrines, eyes narrowing. If Masanari finds out, he won't kill me. He'll give me that look. The one that says you are the last functioning brain cell in this alliance, and even you decided to sabotage us tonight.
Kaoru exhaled slowly, then sank back into shadow.
The Gojo encampment was impossible to miss; just over the hill and offensively orderly, with rows of white tents aligned perfectly. Trust the Gojo to wage war like they were competing in calligraphy.
She located the command tent easily: the largest structure, naturally. The cursed energy leaking from it was so unmistakably familiar that Kaoru had to press a hand over her mouth to keep from making a sound. Arrogant and loud. Even unconscious, probably.
The realization made her release a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. He's alive.
Getting here had been easy; getting past Rensuke would not be. He stood like a statue in front of Seijiro's tent, arms crossed in pure irritation and gaze fixed on some distant point as if he could kill a tree with disappointment alone. His foot was tapping nervously on the ground.
Kaoru winced. Maybe he'd seen her, or maybe he always radiated that level of judgment. Hard to tell, and after today, she couldn't blame him. Not after the battlefield. Not after she and Seijiro had very nearly rewritten Iga's geography.
So. Not the front entrance.
Kaoru slipped into the shadows and circled the perimeter instead, skimming along the canvas seams until she found the right pocket of darkness. Then she emerged behind the tent, crouched low beneath the rear where the lantern light thinned.
Voices.
Seijiro's, dry, unmistakable, infuriatingly intact and vaguely childish and petulant in this moment. "—I said stop poking it like I'm some overcooked dumpling—"
An older voice cut him off, efficient. "Then stop squirming like a child and let me work. You'll reopen it."
Kaoru blinked. Payo...? Ugh. Of course. The nursemaid who'd once held him as an infant and now scolded him like one. The one he had explicitly mentioned could perform Reverse Cursed Technique on others. The secret weapon she absolutely knew existed and had completely failed to account for.
You complete idiot.
Of course, Seijiro hadn't been bleeding out alone in the dirt, and of course, he'd dragged his clan's most competent healer into the war zone, and she was inside right now repairing the damage while scolding him like he was five.
Kaoru crouched lower, pressing one hand to the earth as if it might stop her from physically facepalming. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
Inside, Seijiro let out a pained grunt. "If I knew this came with a lecture, I'd have stayed bleeding out in peace."
Payo huffed. "And if I knew I'd be stitching the last heir of the Gojo clan while he whined like a spoiled child, I'd have left you on the field."
"I'm not whining."
"Mm. And I'm not aging."
Kaoru snorted before she could stop herself, clapping a hand over her mouth too late. Silence inside.
Silence in the tent. Then Seijiro muttered, "Tell Shima to stop judging me."
Payo's answer was a faint chuckle. "She hasn't blinked once."
Kaoru felt her shoulders loosen as the corner of her mouth twitched despite herself. It reminded her, unwillingly, of Harunobu; the way he used to scold her for slipping out of training, for returning home with bloodied sleeves. He would grumble, fix her hair, lecture her about decorum, then stay up half the night drafting explanations for the elders and checking if she got a fever from infections. Her chest squeezed. Nagoya-go still hadn't answered.
Now she should leave; she had what she came for, Seijiro was alive, irritating and verbally combative, entirely himself. There was no strategic value in remaining here any longer. And yet. She stayed kneeling behind the tent, hugging her knees like a child eavesdropping. Listening to him breathe, listening to him argue, listening to someone competent take care of him.
Just for a moment longer. Just to hear the sound of him being alive.
She should have really left five minutes ago.
Inside the tent, Seijiro lay flat on his stomach on what had once qualified as a respectable sleeping roll and now looked like it had survived a war of its own; the fabric was twisted under his weight, sweat-soaked and stiff with blood, and the cloth clung to his skin, damp with humiliation and sweat that glazed his bare back, sliding in slow lines between his shoulder blades. His breath came shallow because pain still pressed against his ribs where the arrowhead had pierced flesh. The corrosive, cursed energy it had carried still coiled in his veins, pulsed in time with his heart. It made him nauseous.
"Fucking poisoned," he muttered into the cloth beneath his cheek, with irritation and a very specific kind of pettiness, the kind reserved for Masanari Hattori. "That bastard wanted to make sure I stayed down for good."
Payo didn't pause as her palms hovered over the wound, glowing with the pale sheen of Reverse Cursed Technique. "Of course he did. You think Hattori-dono aimed to wound your big ego?"
"Honestly?" Seijiro hissed as her RCT flared and pain lanced through his chest, where skin was stitching together. "That sounds exactly like something he'd do. And it worked."
Payo sighed. "You are a grown man, Gojo-sama. Stop flinching like an oversized infant."
He almost snapped back—almost—but she pressed down again the pain shut him. The poison from the cursed arrow had burrowed deep, and every sweep of Payo's RCT dragged at it, clawing rot from bone. She had removed the arrow, and the bleeding had slowed. Not the pain.
Kneeling beside them, silent as falling snow, Shima worked. His hair—usually tied clean at the nape—had come loose, with silver strands that hung across his cheek, tangled, sticky with blood and heat. Shima teased out dried blood and dirt with great focus and small hands.
Her silence was deeply judgmental.
"Stop looking at me like that," Seijiro muttered into the cloth.
Shima blinked; one eyebrow lifted a fraction.
"I'm not stupid. I just didn't see it coming."
She combed out another clot of blood in a silence that translated clearly to: Exactly.
Payo didn't even twitch. "You used Red like a tantrum and collapsed half the forest. You're lucky I didn't slap you when they dragged you back half-conscious."
"I had to," Seijiro shot back, more defensive than he liked. "The bastard lined up a perfect shot, and I was—"
"—Distracted?" Payo cut in, flat.
He grimaced and pressed his cheek harder into the cloth, as if it might absorb his embarrassment. The glow around her hands flickered slightly as she adjusted output; she swiped a sleeve across her brow, where she was sweating. "I cannot purge this kind of corrosion quickly," she muttered. "Not with how deep it spread and not with you squirming like a spoiled cat."
"I'm built to avoid damage," he muttered, voice slightly slurred from fatigue. "I don't usually get hit."
"And now that you have," Payo said sharply, "you're acting as if the sky fell."
He groaned. "Why the hell is it so hot? It's autumn. This is unnatural."
"That's Reverse Cursed Technique," she replied without missing a beat. "Not the weather. If you're not used to it, you may feel a little feverish and lightheaded. Possibly hallucinate if I push too hard." A pause. "Not used to it, are you?"
"No," Seijiro admitted. "I can't use it." He paused. "Last time it was used on me…"
He didn't finish because last time it had been her. Kaoru. Or rather, her shikigami. A shallow cut, insignificant; he remembered her hand checking the injury and the brief press of warmth, the brush of her cursed energy against his senses. Now another memory intruded. The snap of jaws, the Divine Dog lunging for his blind side, and his own cursed energy lashing out before thought caught up.
Instinct. Pain. Panic. Seijiro could blame a lot of factors.
Then, the shikigami dissolved instantly, destroyed. He hadn't meant it, well, to his credit, he was kind in a life-or-death situation. But that didn't matter. What mattered was her face when it happened, the split-second fracture in that would not leave him alone.
Idiot.
For a Ten Shadows' user, shikigami weren't disposable tools but extensions, fragments. Killing one probably meant wounding her on a deeper level. She hadn't planned the arrow; he knew that much if he stopped to think about it, but in that moment, all he'd seen was proximity and threat and betrayal.
Seijiro shifted with a low exhale, ignoring the dull throb in his shoulder. The pain had slowly settled into something steady and bone-deep. Annoying and persistent but manageable. His eyes drifted toward the side of the tent where something outside buzzed in his perception. Too familiar and pressed low to the ground, like it desperately wanted to be overlooked.
Seriously?
His jaw tightened as he stared harder at the canvas. "You absolute idiot," he muttered, but not at himself this time.
Seijiro would know that cursed signature anywhere. Across a battlefield, across a country. That menace of a woman was crouched just outside his tent, undoubtedly convinced she was being, kami help him, subtle. As if he wasn't equipped with the most efficient cursed sight in the country.
He pushed himself upright with a grunt and instantly regretted it because his spine protested, and his shoulder flared as hair fell around his face. Shima huffed softly and set aside the comb.
"Enough," he snapped, batting Payo's hands away. "I don't feel poisoned anymore."
"You are still bleeding," Payo replied, unimpressed. "That shoulder requires another round. Do you want to pass out mid-sentence again?"
"It'll keep," he muttered, rolling his shoulder and immediately wincing. "Go help the others."
A beat.
Payo narrowed her eyes at him, not doubting his physical state, but assessing how much stupidity she would tolerate tonight. "That is your fault," she said flatly. "They require healing because you attempted to vaporize the forest."
"All the more reason you should see to them."
She arched one brow; he matched it. Five seconds of silent warfare.
Finally, she clicked her tongue. "Fine. But I will finish later. And if that wound splits again, I will allow Shima to stitch it shut with her teeth."
Shima paused and nodded solemnly, but Seijiro ignored her. Mostly. Her eyes had that look again: You're an idiot.
Seijiro rolled his good shoulder, testing the joint. It throbbed, and it would continue to throb, but it was no longer screaming, and no fresh blood seeped down his side. He could function. "Oi. Rensuke."
The tent flap rustled, and Rensuke entered, arms crossed, face in perpetual irritation since Seijiro took the arrow. His gaze took in Seijiro's bare chest, the half-healed wound, then flicked to Payo and back. "What."
"Take her to the injured tents," Seijiro said flatly. "Escort her."
"She knows the way," Rensuke muttered.
"It's night. And she's the only person preventing this side of the camp from collapsing."
A beat of silence. Rensuke didn't budge.
Seijiro raised his voice slightly, just enough for the stupid shadow outside to hear. "What," he drawled lazily, "do you think Zenin-dono is going to sneak in here at midnight to finish the job? That would be crazy and suicidal."
Rensuke arched a brow. "Wouldn't surprise me."
Payo bowed with too theatrical precision. "And stop sulking," she added, smirking. "What would Rei say if she saw you now?"
Seijiro's mouth twitched. Rei, huh. If only she knew. "If she saw me?" he replied. "She'd probably be impressed I'm still not dead."
As they moved toward the exit, Shima lingered; she stood beside the cot, scowling as if compiling a list of his failures.
"You too," Seijiro said, nudging her gently. "Go, go. Don't need you brooding here."
She scowled, and then, without a word, she stepped close and tapped his cheek. A soft pulse and warmth flickered. The shallow cut on his face sealed cleanly.
Seijiro blinked. "Oh. Of course," he muttered, almost fond. "Just like your granny. Little monster. Now go and don't let anyone catch you doing that."
Shima rolled her eyes with the confidence of an orphan who had survived worse than clan politics. She dusted off her yukata and slipped into the dark. And then, finally—blessedly—Seijiro was alone. Well. Almost.
He turned toward the side of the tent again; her cursed energy was still there, stubborn. Of all the reckless, self-destructive decisions, she was actually there, in the middle of his camp after midnight, with half the Gojo forces on edge and every shinobi twitching from the earlier skirmish. One wrong step and someone would start a brawl on instinct. What the hell was she thinking?
Seijiro waited. She wasn't going to come in; knowing her, she would probably crouch there in shadow, convince herself she had completed her "recon," then disappear the way she always did. Like that night at the hatago. Best-case scenario, she was verifying he wasn't dead. Worst-case scenario, the one he absolutely should not be entertaining, she was worried.
And Seijiro? He was supposed to ignore it. Sleep. Let her go. Let her slip away, pretend none of it mattered. That was their pattern. Strike; withhold; repeat. He should. But he was tired. His head still buzzed, and his body felt overheated, heavy, slightly off-center. Reverse Cursed Technique had stabilized him, but left his nerves on edge. He did not feel entirely like himself, and he wasn't sure if that made this better or worse.
After the day they had just endured, after the look she had given him and the one he had given her, there was a part of him that didn't want her to vanish again. Maybe he wanted an apology; maybe he owed one; maybe he just wanted to hear her voice without arrows in the air.
And to be honest, Seijiro had never claimed to be wise.
He closed his eyes, cursed softly under his breath, and opened them again. He cleared his throat and stared at the canvas before he raised his voice. "Pretty Boy…" he drawled. "Are you planning on crouching out there all night?"
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The smell of scorched bark still clung to the easter ridge of the hill where Masanari Hattori stood over a folding map of the Iga border, one hand braced on the edge of the chabudai, the other pressed to his temple as if he could bully the numbers into behaving. The troops had regrouped faster than expected, not because of discipline but because fear is efficient. He had barked orders at the remaining unit commanders, shifting formations along the northern and eastern flanks, and redistributing the sorcerers who could still stand without swaying.
Three outposts were lost on the edge of the forest. Fifteen sorcerers dead. Twenty-nine wounded. Several more were too shaken to channel cursed energy without a visible tremor.
All from a single blast of Seijiro Gojo's. One. He had turned half a ridge into a crater and called it a response to an arrow, and tomorrow, if the kami had even a hint of cruelty left, he would come again. Injured, yes, because Masanari was not stupid enough to believe he had killed him, and injury where monsters were concerned.
"Missed," Kaoru Zenin had said.
Masanari spat into the dirt. Missed, my ass. He had eyes, damn, he had watched her shift, watched her angle her body between Seijiro and the second arrow, he had watched her hesitate when the kill was clean and available.
She had him, the Gojo heir, the Six Eyes. Wounded and distracted. She could have ended him. Instead, she had blinked, stared at him like he was something more than an enemy with a target on his throat, and let the moment decay in her hands. Masanari had seen that look before. On fools; on men who mistook sentiment for strategy; on his own father the week before he died.
Kaoru Zenin had hesitated for Seijiro Gojo.
She was going to get them killed. All of them.
Masanari exhaled slowly. Perhaps next time he would aim for her head instead. Remove the variable. Maybe Seijiro would dive in on instinct and impale himself trying to shield her. One arrogant prodigy ending another. Poetic.
The shuffle of hurried feet outside the command post broke the rhythm of his thoughts. A younger attendant slid the shoji open and bowed quickly. "Hattori-dono. Apologies for the interruption. There is… a visitor."
Masanari's fingers stilled on the map. "Visitor," he repeated without turning. "Someone with a death wish?"
"No. It's… Kamo-dono and his delegation. They were intercepted at the southeastern boundary, near the old well path, with no banners. They claim safe passage under neutral clan law."
Masanari went very still. "Kamo-dono?"
What the hell was that old fox doing here now?
"Yes, sir. Himself. He claims the matter is urgent. Says he must speak with Zenin-dono."
That made him turn. "Zenin-dono...?" he repeated.
Not Hattori-dono, not the commanding officer, not Tokugawa's representatives. Zenin-dono. But that made no sense. No one was supposed to know she was here; she had appeared on the field this morning for the first time, and by midday, she was nearly skewered. The battle had barely concluded, and there was no way news had traveled to Kyoto that fast.
Unless it hadn't needed to. Masanari's jaw tightened. Unless the Kamo patriarch already knew where to find her.
A slow, cold unease slid down his spine. That old bastard. That polite, pacifist puppetmaster wrapped in silk and apologies, always arriving precisely when the board shifted, always claiming neutrality while counting pieces. He had a very bad feeling about this.
"What game is he playing now?" Masanari muttered. He looked back at the attendant. "Escort Kamo-dono to the southern hall. And send for Zenin-dono immediately. I don't care if he's asleep or meditating in a tree. Get him out of his damn bed."
"Yes, sir."
The attendant vanished, and Masanari turned back to the map; his attention was no longer on flanks or supply lines. He was thinking about Kaoru Zenin and the way she had said I missed like it was an administrative detail.
And he was thinking about the old Kamo fox who had arrived once again with impeccable timing.