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March 1600, Kyoto, Gojo Clan Estate
"Gojo-dono."
The man across from Seijiro did not flinch when he spoke. Wrapped in layered winter cotton with the gold-stamped mon of the Uesugi at his chest, Kagekatsu Uesugi looked like a man who had run out of patience sometime within the first quarter hour and had spent the next half hour entirely regretting the conversation.
"I deeply appreciate your enthusiasm," he said flatly, one eyebrow subtly twitching, "but as I said, the answer is still no."
Seijiro blinked. His ponytail was crooked; so, increasingly, was his diplomacy. "Ah. Yes. Of course." His too-wide smile stayed in place. "But might I remind you, Uesugi-dono, that refusing to support the Gojo clan's spiritual infrastructure in the capital at such a critical moment is tantamount to—"
"I am fortifying Aizu," the regent cut in, completely out of patience, voice hardening at last. "I am managing funds for soldiers, supply chains, and mountain roads before the passes close, and I must now appear before Tokugawa-dono in Fushimi. My shugenja are exhausted. My carpenters are cutting lumber with swords, Gojo-dono." He paused. Then, he repeated for emphasis, "With swords."
Seijiro leaned in with all the charm of a man trying to sell a miracle he no longer believed in but was too deep into it to stop. "Well," he sang, too pleasing, "vision of that kind deserves to be remembered for centuries."
Kagekatsu closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose. "I am trying," he muttered with terrible dignity, "not to be remembered at all."
"A mere two thousand koku," Seijiro added quickly. "We can accept ryō, of course, if that makes the transaction feel less emotionally violent—"
"Two thousand koku—?!" Kagekatsu nearly choked; he set his sakazuki down with careful restraint, clearly trying not to commit a diplomatic incident against the newly appointed Gojo Clan's head.
Seijiro's expression brightened anyway. "So that's a maybe?"
The regent looked genuinely pained. "That," he said, "is still a no, Gojo-dono."
A very long moment passed between them. Then Seijiro leaned back and poured the dregs of the sake into his own sakazuki. "Well," he muttered, bringing it to his lips and drinking a mouthful, "it was worth a try."
The daimyo of Echigo rose with the impeccable dignity befitting one of the last true heirs of Uesugi Kenshin. He gave a courteous bow. "I wish you luck in your endeavor, Gojo-dono," he said, the words sounding more like a resignation than a benediction. "It was a... spirited proposal. I shall remember it."
Which, in the language of high lords, meant: kami preserve me from having to hear the rest of it. He left, vanishing into the rainy night with the grace of a man who still possessed men, money, and no intention to share.
Seijiro remained where he was, but his shoulders slumped, and his smile died as soon as the lord was out of sight. "Spirited proposal," he repeated under his breath, mimicking the tone and staring at the chabudai before him. "That's court speech for please stop talking before I have you removed, isn't it?"
His haori had slipped halfway off one shoulder, his hair was coming loose again, and there were bruised hollows beneath his eyes that no amount of posture or sarcasm could disguise. He stared at the last wet ring left by Uesugi's sakazuki, then lowered his forehead to the table. A defeated thunk followed. "I'm going to build a jujutsu training ground on this very chabudai," he informed the wood. "Right here. All the children can sit cross-legged around my humiliation and meditate on the Gojo clan's collapse." He slapped the surface once. "Cursed energy comes from negative emotions, right? Perfect. We'll weaponize my hopelessness."
From behind one of the pillars along the engawa, half-screened by drifting snow, Rensuke groaned and leaned his forehead against the beam.
"That's the fourth today," Payo stated flatly. Bundled in layered robes and looking deeply unconvinced that civilization deserved to continue, she stood beside him with her sleeves tucked high, not surprised anymore by male stupidity.
"Fifth," Rensuke corrected, one sleeve hanging limp where his right arm used to be. "That was the fifth. The fourth was Konishi Yukinaga, who laughed at Seijiro-sama's face. Then the third, Mori Terumoto, who fell asleep while Seijiro-sama was still speaking."
Payo frowned. "If he keeps drinking with every single daimyo who refuses him, he won't make it to this spring. He'll join his father in the afterlife, poor and absurd."
"Worse. He'll join his father before the war even starts," Rensuke muttered.
They shared a long look. Even the snow seemed to pause out of pity.
Then, Rensuke scratched the back of his neck with his remaining hand. "He's trying," he said at last, reluctant. "He just… doesn't know how to lead."
"Certainly he's not his father," Payo said quietly.
"No," Rensuke agreed. "And he shouldn't be." A beat. "But it would help if he at least knew what a budget is."
They both looked back toward Seijiro at the same time. He had begun stacking empty sakazuki into a narrow, precarious pyramid with the concentration of a man whose mind had finally slipped one degree past reason.
"Gojo Fortress," he muttered under his breath. "Symbol of national recovery."
"...Should we stop him?" Payo asked.
Rensuke watched, tired beyond reason. "No," he said. "Let him finish. It's the only thing he's successfully built all week."
The sakazuki pyramid promptly collapsed.
Seijiro stared at the ruins. Then he let himself fold forward until one cheek pressed against the table. "Traitors," he mumbled. "Opportunists. Cowards and traitors." To whom, he wasn't sure.
The silence that followed was not dramatic; it was plain pathetic. The Gojo clan, once the pinnacle of jujutsu supremacy, had been split at the spine in one night, and what Kaoru had left behind in Kyoto had not merely been corpses and broken walls. It had been a power vacuum. Authority gone, numbers gutted, reputation wounded, infrastructure in shambles, men missing, limbs missing, and supplies dwindling.
Other daimyo of influence were already calculating how much distance they could put between themselves and the falling giant.
The Gojo suddenly found themselves with no meaningful land reserves, no excess grain, no spare labor, and no relic. Only two assets of any real value remained: the bloodline that still produced the Six Eyes and Seijiro himself. Which would have been comforting, perhaps, if Seijiro, arrogant bastard as he was, had not been twenty-five, inexperienced, underslept, underfunded, and now somehow expected to serve as the sole structural beam holding up a clan he had no idea how to lead.
He pushed himself upright, and his shaking fingers found the tokkuri again and tilted it over his sakazuki. Nothing came out. "Funding," he moaned. "Provisions. Elders. Lumber. Labor. Fences. Godsdamned roof repairs—why does everything in this estate require a roof?" He dragged a hand down his face. "Chichiue made this look easy. Everything." Another breath. "She made it look easy, too."
That last sentence wasn't meant to leave his mouth. But it did anyway.
He stared into the empty sakazuki as though answers might gather at the bottom, but there was only his own blurred reflection and the possibility of liver damage. Kaoru. He had not understood—not truly—how hard it was to lead a clan until he had been forced to do it himself. Violence was easy; violence only asked for a target. Leading a collapsing clan was not easy. It was writing formal appeals to daimyō who already knew they would refuse him, deciding which broken wing of the estate got repaired first, which wounded man got the healer, and which one only got apologies, and smiling at men who smelled political weakness on him.
"When I saw her in Nagoya-go," he said, mostly to the sakazuki, "she looked tired, yeah. But not…" He gestured vaguely at himself. "Not like this." Not ridiculous. "She was always composed. She commanded like she was born for it." He gave a small, humorless laugh. "As if the world had no choice but to line up neatly in front of her."
And him? He was sitting in a cold estate full of leaks and dead retainers, trying to convince half the country to finance a dream.
"No land. No funding. No spear." His voice dropped to a whisper. "No her."
It was the truest thing he'd said all day. And because the room was full of people who knew him too well, no one pretended not to hear it. Seijiro pressed his thumb into the rim of the sakazuki. He could almost hear her voice in his head as clearly as if she had been sitting across from him with one eyebrow lifted and already irritated.
It isn't that hard, you idiot. Get up and lead.
Of course, she would make it look effortless.
Seijiro rubbed both hands over his face to scrub the humiliation off. "Damn. If this keeps up, she's going to win this war by accident." He let his hands fall. "I bet her books balance. I bet fences are probably lined up to true north. I bet she's probably hand-stitching banners while negotiating trade routes and insulting ministers." He stared at the empty tokkuri. "She's probably already seduced the Kamo into funding her." He reached for the sakazuki again.
"Probably arranged a marriage alliance too, while I'm here begging grown men for roof tiles, and—"
He stopped mid-sentence, and his spine straightened slowly. His eyes locked on the sakazuki. "…Wait." The sakazuki slipped from his hand and rolled sideways as Seijiro sat up fully, pale. "She wouldn't. She wouldn't get married just for politics, right?" His voice cracked on the last word. "Right?"
No answer came. He fell forward again, cheek to table, and one arm flung out like a man dying dramatically. That was it. He did not want the Clan Head title, didn't want the estate, the accounts, the roofs, the responsibility, and even peace. And he definitely did not want to imagine Kaoru standing somewhere in Kyoto or Edo or hell itself, dressed properly and looking magnificent beside some political husband with lands but boring eyebrows.
"I just want to see her," he said into his sleeve. "That's all. I want to see her so badly, not on a battlefield and not while she tries to remove my head. Just once." He swallowed. "Is that so awful? So pathetic?"
The answer, he feared, was yes.
He pressed his forehead harder into his folded arms and shut his eyes. Kami, please, he thought with all the solemn desperation of a drunk clan head, if anything, don't let her marry someone else.
The sakazuki barely reached his lips before a hand smacked his wrist. "Enough." Payo took the sakè from him with the authority of a woman who had raised men, buried men, and had no patience left for watching another one try to dissolve himself in alcohol. She lifted the tokkuri out of reach. "You'll kill yourself at this rate."
Seijiro looked up at her, dazed and offended. "Payo," he said, with wounded gravity. "You're cruel. Why are you cruel?"
"No wonder Rei won't come around anymore," she replied. "No woman wants to find the man she loves folded up in a puddle of sakè and self-pity."
"Love—?" Seijiro winced, then coughed too fast. "Kaoru—" he corrected himself too late as the wrong name surfaced. "Rei's absence has nothing to do with sakè," he muttered. "She didn't leave because of this. We just… had a disagreement. Strategic issues. And maybe betrayals. The usual."
Payo raised one eyebrow. "A lovers' quarrel, then."
From the corner, Rensuke made a low sound like a temple bell tolling for a fool.
"We're not—" Seijiro's mouth clicked shut.
True, maybe. Or maybe something worse.
He scrubbed a hand down his face to erase the heat that had risen there against his will. He was still Seijiro Gojo, still one of the strongest sorcerers of his generation, still a prodigy, and still the damn head of a great clan, whether he wanted the title or not. He would drag the remains of that clan through winter, debt, politics, and war if he had to. He had no other choice.
"Kami," he muttered, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. "I need funding. What would my father have done?"
Rensuke did not even pause to think about it. "Threatened the daimyo, bribed the magistrate, executed two or three debt collectors, and built the training ground overnight with slave labor."
Payo turned to stare at him flatly.
"What?" Rensuke shrugged with his remaining shoulder, cradling his missing arm. "He was efficient like that."
Seijiro let out a breath. That was not what he had wanted to hear; unfortunately, it was not wrong either. He rolled his neck until it cracked and then straightened, dragging his expression back into composure by force. "Fine. Recruitment, then," he tried again, tone clipped. "Tell me we have someone promising. Anyone."
Payo looked at Rensuke. Rensuke looked at the floor. "Two cadets, for now," Payo said at last.
Seijiro perked up with immediate, suspicious hope. "Two? That's double from last week."
Rensuke, perhaps out of principle, did not let him enjoy that for too long. "One is Shima."
Seijiro froze. Of course one was Shima; Payo's granddaughter had Payo's glare, Payo's instincts, and apparently Payo's affinity for reverse cursed technique. That made sense; it was also completely unusable as consolation.
"She's nine," Payo added fondly. "And mute."
Seijiro deflated on the spot, all the air hissing out of him at once as his hand dropped uselessly to his knee. "And... the other?" he asked, already sounding disappointed.
"A country girl from Ōmi," Rensuke said. "Rare cursed technique. Apparently, she can amplify other people's output. Potentially useful."
Seijiro narrowed his eyes. "Potentially useful," he repeated carefully. "That sounds... suspiciously like there's a problem."
"There is," Rensuke admitted without shame. "Her father sold her to us, and we paid twelve ryō for her," he went on, because apparently the kami had decided Seijiro's day still lacked misery. "We are now down twelve ryō. And she currently sleeps on rice sacks." A beat. "Also, she's seven."
There was a silence so complete that even the rain outside seemed embarrassed.
Then Seijiro took the sakazuki anyway, discovered it was empty, and set it down with brittle dignity. "Seven. That's great. Combined with Shima, they're sixteen." For a moment, he thought about laughing. Then, he threw the sakazuki to the far-off wall. "If you do not find me at least one cadet with all their adult teeth by Setsubun," he snapped, pointing directly at Rensuke, "I swear on the grave of my father that I will cut off your other arm." He slumped again, head falling back. "Kami help me. We're building a training ground with orphans, child soldiers, and one terrifying nine-year-old who already judges me like Payo."
"It is difficult," Rensuke said mildly, "to attract talents when we have no food, no building, no funds, no reputation, and—"
"Enough!" Payo cut in, and before either of them could say another word, she reached into Rensuke's sash, yanked out a scroll he had clearly been hoping to introduce with better timing, and slapped it into Seijiro's hands. "The elders sent another message. Urgent."
Seijiro sighed before even reading it. "Let me guess. Another demand that I name an heir? A list of marriage candidates? A reminder that the Gojo bloodline must not end with me and my tragic lack of legitimate children?" He tugged the scroll loose. "I told them to pick a cousin. Any cousin. Hell, adopt one if they're desperate, pull one from a temple, I don't care."
Rensuke raised a brow. "They didn't drag you there in person. That means something frightened them enough to send a scroll this time."
"They probably found a dead sparrow in the garden and declared it a divine omen." Seijiro chuckled once and opened the scroll. Then he stopped. His eyes moved once across the page; then again, slower; then a third time, as if repetition might somehow rearrange the meaning. It did not. The scroll slid from his fingers into his lap. "Oh no," he said quietly.
Rensuke, already recognizing the tone of a disaster still unfolding, bent down, caught the scroll with his remaining hand, and scanned it quickly. Then he went still too. "Ah," he echoed.
"What?" Payo leaned in over his shoulder, and her eyes narrowed as she read the brief, merciless message:
You are formally and urgently requested to nominate an heir to ensure the continuity of command, given troubling reports from our intel suggest that the Zenin clan intends to secure a political marriage with Date Masamune of the Date clan of Iwadeyama. Though not officially confirmed, this match may irreversibly strengthen the Zenin clan's political dominance across the central provinces.
Silence, long and hollow, the kind that came only when a man has just been stabbed in a place no healer can bandage.
Then, very alarmed and small: "Kaoru's getting married?!"
Seijiro wasn't even aware he'd said it aloud. The words just came out in stunned boyish devastation.
Rensuke cleared his throat awkwardly. "They just mention a union between Zenin and Date, they don't say who's getting married," he offered with tired patience. "It could be—"
"Who else would it be?" Seijiro snapped up, voice rising an octave between disbelief. "She—" He bit down on the pronoun, shot a glance at Payo, then corrected. "Kaoru's the clan head! Young, unwed, dangerous, politically useful. Charming... if you squint. And perfect, and—" He cut himself off just in time, because the next word had clearly been beautiful and he choked on it.
Of course Date Masamune would want her. The thought made too much sense.
Seijiro stood so fast he clipped the chabudai with his knee and sent what remained of the sakazuki stack rattling sideways. His steps carried him across the room before his brain caught up with his body.
Married. To Date Masamune. The One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū, that fire-breathing antique in armor and honor. Twice her age and half her intelligence. One goddamned eye and—Kami help him— already married. And infuriatingly well-positioned to offer exactly the kind of alliance Kaoru would choose if she meant to secure her clan above all else.
"But Kaoru would never," he said. Then the thought turned over in his head and came back: Would she? Would Kaoru really do it?
Would Kaoru really kneel—Kaoru, who had never bowed to anyone—and confess the truth of what she was? Say aloud that she was never meant to be Kaoru-dono, but Kaoru-hime? Would she lay herself bare to Date Masamune, of all men, abandon the life she had welded together with blood just to become some carefully managed wife?
Or worse—
A...concubine?
A concubine?! The thought made his hands shake, and he slapped a palm to his forehead
She can't get married. The thought repeated like a curse, over and over, each time changing shape and getting worse. I have— I mean, that night we have—
He stopped walking, and his hands clenched. Had she truly moved on that easily? After everything? After Nagoya-go, after Kyoto, after him? He hadn't, not even a little, pathetic as that was. The memory had haunted him ever since, that night, the way she'd looked at him like she was choosing him, and only for a moment—stupidly—he had believed that maybe… Maybe they could be.
Idiot.
Seijiro resumed pacing, faster this time. Stopped. Turned. Stared at the far wall. Started again. No, it made sense, of course it made sense. It was politically perfect: secure Tokugawa's favor, strengthen the Zenin hold over the central provinces, and tie Date and Zenin together to protect the survivors and what was left. It was exactly the kind of sacrifice Kaoru made without blinking.
So he could not even be angry at her. He had no claim; he knew that. She owed him nothing. He had been the one to stand between her and her revenge that night; he had chosen his people, and he had known—hadn't he?—what that choice would cost him. Now the debt had come due. And yet—
Why, exactly, did it feel like choking?
Seijiro stopped again, turned to stare at nothing, then, with the authority of a man inventing a legal argument, "Still, by any means, I'm a better option than Masamune."
Rensuke stared at him. And stared.
Seijiro pointed at himself, as though the evidence were obvious. "Surely." He scoffed, bitterly, then began counting on his fingers. "I mean. Yes, I'm currently broke, but I'm younger. Better looking. I have both eyes. I'm difficult, yes, but not that difficult. And if Kaoru needs a political marriage that badly—" He recoiled from his own sentence before it finished forming. "No," he muttered. "No, absolutely not. Don't be stupid. Opposite sides of the war. This is how men get their heads cut off."
He crouched beside the chabudai and buried his face in both hands as if perhaps the world might forget he existed. Or, better yet, mistake him for a decorative mushroom and leave him in peace.
She could not get married. Not Kaoru, not to someone like her. It didn't suit her. The thought itself felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with his own rotting selfishness.
It would kill her. Or worse, domesticate her.
His mind, traitorous thing, supplied images anyway. His hand shot back up to his temple and rubbed furiously. The scroll had said not officially confirmed. Right. Good. Fine. The world was not over yet. There was still time. He could still do something. He could still, for instance, find Date Masamune and carve his only remaining eye from his skull.
"Right," he said suddenly, lifting his head with erratic conviction. "I have to stop this. She's my—"
Seijiro clapped a hand over his own mouth. Absolutely not. Not in front of Payo, who still thought Kaoru Zenin was a man, and not while "Rei" remained a useful lie. A long, cautious silence followed.
Then Payo, who had watched this collapse with the seasoned expression of a woman too old to be shocked, spoke as one might to a patient with a fever. "You seem," she said, "very... emotionally invested."
Seijiro did not lift his face from his hands. "I'm not," he moaned at once.
It was the weakest lie he had told all week.
Then, by the grace of every merciful kami still willing to look at him, salvation arrived in the form of a retainer sliding the shōji open just enough to bow from the threshold. He looked terrified to be the one bringing news to a household already half insane. "Gojo-dono," the boy said, nerves pulling in his voice. "You have a guest."
Seijiro exhaled like someone surfacing from deep water. He dropped his hands, straightened his haori, and hauled the last scraps of composure over himself. "Another one?" he muttered. "Let me guess. Maeda Toshiie has risen from the grave just to remind me we're broke."
The retainer did not smile. "Ukita Hideie-dono," he said. "He is here to see you."
The room changed.
"Lord of Bizen Province. Member of the Council of Five Regents," Rensuke supplied helpfully.
Payo raised a brow.
Seijiro blinked once. Twice. Then, remembering himself, his social mask slid back into place with such smoothness it was unsettling. One moment, he had been a wreck, mourning the hypothetical marriage of an enemy clan head. Next, he was Seijiro Gojo again, upright and dangerous. "Excellent," he muttered, getting to his feet with brittle grace. He had just been mauled privately, and apparently, he must now go charm publicly. "One more regent to inspect the ruins of the Gojo clan and decide whether we're worth pity or investment." He adjusted his sleeves. "Bring the good sake."
Behind him, Payo and Rensuke exchanged a single long, haunted look. Here, it said, we fucking go again.
Ukita Hideie entered with the grace that could only belong to a man who had spent his whole life moving through halls and castles where one wrong word altered provinces. Layered in court-black and red, his hair impeccably tied, his movements unhurried, the mon of the Ukita perfectly visible at his chest. He crossed the threshold, knelt opposite Seijiro, and settled there as if he had already calculated the cost of the meeting and chosen to pay it.
Seijiro bowed in return, deeper than he had. He felt like a beggar. He probably looked like one, too. "Ukita-dono," he began, slipping neatly into performance. "As you may already have heard, the Gojo clan is preparing a jujutsu training ground in Kyoto, one intended to stabilize the next generation of sorcerers. Loyal, disciplined, aligned with the Toyotomi. A foundation, I hope, for peace in Kansai—"
Hideie lifted a single hand. "I am aware," he said with an seren smile. "The Kyoto Jujutsu Training Ground."
Seijiro straightened slightly, caught off guard. Straight to the point. "Then—"
"I intend to fund it."
Silence crashed in the hall. Even the snow outside seemed to pause in disbelief.
Seijiro stared. His mind—so fast, so unrelentingly brilliant, no matter how much sakè and despair he had poured through it—processed a dozen implications in the same instant. Then he returned to reality. "...Beg you pardon?"
"You require funds," Hideie repeated, as if Seijiro was being dense on purpose. "I will provide them. I can also secure suitable land near western Kyoto. Private enough to avoid needless scrutiny and large enough to matter."
From behind the supporting baeam of the engawa, Payo's tray nearly slipped from her hands. Rensuke's eyelid twitched violently. "That was… suspiciously fast," the shinobi muttered under his breath.
Seijiro's thoughts raced as he pressed the smirk back down and kept his face neutral, but hope had already struck, and he was looking at the regent as if he were a benefactor. "That," he said with a nervous smile, "would be roughly two thousand koku. And the land would need to support sorcery-adjacent infrastructure."
Hideie hummed once, sipping his sakè. "I can meet the cost."
Seijiro did not move. Inside, however, something snapped into motion. Two thousand koku was enough to feed people, to repair sections of the estate, to start building something real instead of surviving week to week. It was enough to matter again.
At last—finally—something had tilted in his favor. But this was politics; there was always a but.
"But," Hideie added, right on cue, "I ask for two things in return."
There it was. Seijiro managed to keep his expression under control. "Of course," he said. "Name them."
Hideie leaned forward slightly, neither aggressive nor relaxed. "First," he said, "We need the Kamo."
Seijiro frowned. "The Kamo?"
"You are the only one in our faction able to deal with them," Hideie said. "You know their pride and temperament. Convince them. They share our territories in the capital. I expect their support for the Toyotomi cause, or at least, if not their full support, then their silence when the war begins."
It was a bold request. The Kamo had spent too long curating their neutrality to surrender it for free, and convincing them to finally pick a side, or even to remain conveniently passive, was like attempting to negotiate with a mountain.
Seijiro nodded once. "It'll be delicate. But I'll try."
"Not try, Gojo-dono," Hideie corrected. "Succeed. Second, I recruited a new ward. A young boy under my protection, exceptionally gifted, but… unrefined." That pause did not reassure Seijiro. "As you know, the Ukita are not a jujutsu clan. But you are. My second condition is simple: you will take him under your personal tutelage and train him properly into an asset worth fielding. When the time comes, he will fight beneath my banner."
There it was again, just as Kaoru had predicted once. First, the Maeda, now even the Ukita, were adopting strays with talent in jujutsu sorcery into their ranks. A ward trained under Gojo's supervision, but politically tied to Ukita's interest. A long game, but then, all daimyo played long games.
"A powerful ward indeed," Seijiro said at last. "If Ukita-dono is willing to invest so heavily in his future, I would be a fool not to shape him."
Hideie nodded once, calm as before. "You will understand when you meet him."
Behind the beam, Payo whispered, "He's being vague. That is never good."
Of course, men like Ukita Hideie never spent all the information at once. But the facts remained simple: Seijiro had no money, no heir, no training ground, and only the frayed beginnings of a plan. Kaoru, meanwhile, was rebuilding with the kind of competence that still haunted him. She had a training ground, she had cadets.
Worse, she had a storm of lightning in the form of Hajime.
But now Seijiro had a regent with a lot of money and apparently a powerful ward.
He weighed it all in silence. It was not ideal; it was a gamble. Then again, he was Seijiro Gojo. At this point, his whole life appeared to consist of taking unsound gambles. If he had to build their future out of rice sacks, political wards, half-trained children, and debts that would outlive him, then fine. He would do it, he would make it work. For Payo, Shima, his mother, and Hideyori.
That, at least, was within reach.
"Very well," Seijiro said, solid. "I'll train him. And I'll win over with the Kamo."
Hideie inclined his head. "Wonderful. Expect the boy within a few weeks. He is very… earnest."
That word landed badly; Seijiro could tell already. Still, he poured himself another sakazuki and took a slow sip, because finally—finally—he had a foothold. All he had to do now was train some mysterious prodigy, build a training ground, prove he was not catastrophically unfit to lead, and persuade the Kamo to side with them in the upcoming war. Entirely manageable.
And of course—
Of course he still had to find some way to stop Kaoru from marrying a one-eyed bastard with a fire technique, political value, and no sense of proportion.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
April 1600, Kyoto, Fushimi Castle
There were four of them outside the main audience chamber of Fushimi Castle.
It should have been an honor, the kind of appointment that said, you matter. In reality, it said, please stand quietly outside while history decides which part of your country burns first.
Behind the closed shōji, Tokugawa Ieyasu was already seated in judgment, wrapped in gold and negotiating the future of Japan with a boy barely old enough to hold a fan, let alone an empire. The Council of Regents had taken their places. The Uesugi, somehow, had not yet stabbed anyone, and everything was proceeding according to plan.
Which, Seijiro reflected, probably meant it was already a disaster.
A glorified barrier in silk, posted at the door like a particularly irritated folding screen. That's what he was.
Seijiro adjusted the stiff formal haori hanging from his shoulders, the Gojo mon stitched in silver thread across the back. His late father's scent still clung to the fabric, no matter how many times it had been aired. He knew how to play a losing game better than anyone; he knew how to smile through it, still, one foot tapped in irritation against the floorboards. That morning, Payo had tied his hair properly under direct threat of bodily harm, and the result was neat enough to pass, though it annoyed him on principle. At his side, the ceremonial katana was for show more than violence, though at Fushimi, both were viable options.
Beside him stood Maeda Keiji, who had not stopped rocking on his heels or humming for the last twenty minutes. He was exactly as Seijiro remembered from their last time together on the front of Iga. Still nearly a head taller than Seijiro and flamboyantly dressed in layers of deep crimson embroidered with sakura blossoms, entirely inappropriate for a council gathering of national consequence. Bright feathers had been braided into his chestnut hair, which was tied into a careless high tail. The ōdachi—if one could even call that oversized blade a ōdachi—was, as always, tied across his back.
Somehow, it fit.
Adopted in the Maeda clan because he was a walking calamity of brute strength and catastrophic amounts of cursed energy, Keiji Maeda was a battlefield poet, a shameless flirt, and a walking contradiction. Men called him a fool until they saw him swing his ōdachi and split three horses and their riders in half.
Across the hall, on the far side of the corridor, stood Date Masamune, the One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū. The patch over his right eye was unmistakable. He wore a sleeveless dark blue haori over black, with four swords strapped across his back. Seijiro had seen it before; he still thought it was overkill. The crescent-crested helmet was absent today, which somehow made the man look more dangerous, not less.
One eye. No smile.
At Masamune's side, as always, stood Katakura Kojūrō, his right-hand man who looked exactly like Seijiro had left him after their clash in Iga: that is to say, with a twisted arm. Seijiro suspected the man still resented him. Still, even with the arm tied suspended, he seemed to be already calculating where to throw himself should his daimyo spontaneously ignite the room. Which, statistically speaking, could happen.
A ghost of a smirk touched Seijiro's lips and disappeared. He had not come to posture, not entirely.
He'd come because Hideyori had asked for him. Personally.
The boy was still too young to sign his name without someone guiding his hand, but he had asked Seijiro to stand outside the council all the same, a human shield, just in case the old tiger inside, Tokugawa, decided today was a good day to eat a cub.
So Seijiro had come. Not because of duty alone, but because a child had looked at him as if he might actually care. Because he remembered that feeling, being too young and surrounded by wolves. Because once he had waited for someone to stand between him and the machinery of his clan, and no one had.
No one expected Hideyori to rule, and that was the cruelty of it. He was just meant to exist as a breathing banner and pretext. Without him, everything became treason; with him, men could still call it ceremony.
But the country had already begun to split.
East and West were already fracturing. The Uesugi fortified Aizu in open defiance as the west clung to the Toyotomi out of loyalty, fear, habit, or all three. Meanwhile, the east shaped itself around the rising shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. And every clan from Dewa to Satsuma was waiting for the one spark that would turn cold ambition into open carnage.
It was coming. War was about to begin.
So here they were: two sorcerers aligned with the Western Army, two with the Eastern Army. Four high-level sorcerers with too little trust and enough cursed energy between them to bring the castle down if one of them sneezed angrily.
Perfect balance; perfect farce.
Keiji, still swaying gently on his heels, broke the silence first. "I give it ten more minutes," he said in a stage whisper. "Then either Date-dono starts a fire, or someone loses a limb."
"Odds?" Seijiro asked without looking at him.
"Three to one you."
Seijiro snorted. Masamune said nothing. Kojūrō said less.
Lovely.
Seijiro cast Masamune a sidelong glance and immediately regretted it. He had dressed properly; he had tied his hair; he had worn the clan colors and his dead father's haori, and for what?
To share the air with the man Kaoru might marry.
It wasn't even the hypothetical marriage that bothered him—fine, it was absolutely the marriage—but what burned most was the idea that Masamune looked at Kaoru Zenin and thought that he was worthy.
Older. One eye. Cursed energy strong enough, but nothing exceptional. Not like Kaoru's. Not like his. A basic fire-type technique, that single eye, that permanent frown, that dumb reputation as the "One-Eyed Dragon"—
How could he look at Kaoru Zenin and think, Yes, her. I'll take her.
The sheer arrogance of it.
Kaoru was leagues above him. Stronger. Smarter. Funnier when she let herself be. She could crush him with a raised brow. Why—why exactly was she even considering this?
Not that it mattered. Not that it was Seijiro's business. Not that it ever stopped him.
The words slipped out before he had properly decided to speak. "So," Seijiro said, far too cheerfully, letting his eyes drift from Kojūrō to Masamune and back again, "what a touching reunion of great warriors. Shame Zenin-dono isn't here to enjoy it."
Masamune did not turn his head. "Only a fool would place a Zenin and a Gojo in the same room after what your clan did in Nagoya-go."
"Fair," Seijiro chuckled lightly. "What comes next, then? A reenactment of the siege of Odawara? I can play Hideyoshi-dono's ghost."
Keiji smiled, spinning one of the red feathers braided into his hair between his fingers. "I could be Hōjō Ujimasa. At least until the part where he cuts his stomach open."
Masamune did not laugh. He turned his head slowly, his single eye fixing on Seijiro with the expression of a man who had just found a cockroach in his rice and was deciding if killing it was worth the effort. "At least we were there," he said flatly. "Alongside your father. You, Gojo-dono, were likely still wetting yourself. Or perhaps too occupied piercing your ears like a brothel courtesan."
Seijiro's eye twitched as he reached up and brushed the jade earring at his left lobe in a quick defensive motion. So we're not being subtle today, he thought, completely ignoring the fact that he had started it. Fine. He bowed just enough to qualify as insulting. "Ah, forgive me, Date-dono. I forget myself. The pressures of planning a wedding must be exhausting. Especially at your old age."
Keiji gasped, delighted. "You're getting married? Again?" He turned toward Masamune, eyes wide with delighted oblivion. "Man. Must be nice."
There was a pause.
Masamune blinked once, then tilted his head a fraction, clearly confused, but not enough to clarify any misunderstanding, only enough to make clear that the conversation had disappointed him. "The future marriage is not my concern right now," he said. "Not with the country about to burn."
That was not a denial.
Seijiro's smirk twitched. "Then, perhaps you should reconsider. Did you know the Zenin are known to sleep curled around a wakizashi? I'd hate for you to learn that the hard way when someone gets gutted."
Kojūrō stirred. Keiji stopped humming entirely. The temperature in the corridor dropped despite embers lifrint from Masamune's frame.
The Dragon did not flinch. "You seem unusually concerned with this arrangement, Gojo-dono," he observed. "Odd, given Zenin-dono slaughtered fifty of your men in a single night. Or so I heard."
"A massacre, yes," Seijiro sighed as if pained, his voice dropping. "But I'm only concerned for your finances, Date-dono. Marrying a Zenin requires more than fire and flattery. You'll need land. Dowry. Stamina. A great deal of it, trust me. I would hate for you to enter the war already at a disadvantage."
Masamune's eye narrowed. "And I would hate for you to enter it with fewer limbs than necessary. As I understand it, your clan is already missing several."
Kojūrō's fingers twitched at his side. There it was; his daimyo was running out of patience, which implied he had possessed some at the outset. Generous assumption.
"Besides, the marriage," Masamune added, turning his head slightly toward Keiji, "can wait for some more years. I reached an understanding with Zenin-dono. She is still a child—"
He stopped only because Seijiro had stepped forward. Not much, barely enough to register as movement, but enough to let tension spark hard through the corridor.
Seijiro had gone very still, as his mind spun dangerously. A child? So he realizes he's twice her age? Wait. She...? Kaoru told him about her secret? Wait. She definitely told him! And he's still standing here thinking himself worthy? Kami help me, if he touches her—
Kojūrō tried to intervene before the tension turned to murder. "Gojo-dono," he tried with forced diplomacy, "I doubt you truly intend to contest the logic of an alliance between Zenin and Date—"
"Oh, of course," Seijiro snapped. "I'm certain the Zenin clan has spent generations dreaming of pairing with a mid-tier fire-breathing relic and his painfully average cursed technique." He paused. Looked Masamune over. "Tell me, did the one eye sealed the deal?"
That did it. Masamune's patience died like a candle. His cursed energy ignited hot and immediate, so dense that the air around his hand shimmered with distortion as his fingers brushed the tsuka of one of the four swords on his back. A thread of scorched air prickled at Seijiro's neck. Fire. Entirely inappropriate behavior in a castle built of wood and paper.
Cute.
Kojūrō said nothing now, because there was nothing left to say. He was too busy silently praying to all the kami in Kyoto that neither of those two fools started a war in the hallway before the men in the main hall did.
Masamune stepped forward with fire already gathering at his fingertips. Seijiro mirrored him, Blue snapping into place around his clenched hands so fast it barely seemed to happen. Flame to Infinity. Arrogance to arrogance.
"Gojo-dono," Masamune said, the spark brightening at the edge of one finger, "if it is a fight you want, I could oblige."
Seijiro grinned slowly and was entirely too pleased with himself for a man standing one insult away from combustion. "I don't know, Date-dono," he tilted his head sweetly. "Think you can keep up with youth?"
Keiji moved between them in a blur. He was still smiling, hands raised, posture easy, but the floorboards groaned under his weight and cursed energy. That alone said enough. Keiji Maeda joked like a fool and blocked like a fortress. "Now, now," he said brightly. "You are both very handsome and very terrifying. But you'll have time to flirt on the battlefield."
Too late.
A spark leapt between them, tiny and perfectly avoidable. It hit the wooden pillar beside Seijiro with a hiss, and smoke curled up at once. A small tongue of flame bloomed along the edge.
"Ah," Kojūrō said.
With the weary speed of a man too experienced in exactly this kind of crisis, he produced a damp cloth from within his robes and smothered the flame in three motions. He did not break eye contact with the smoking wood.
"Third this week," he muttered. "We have discussed this, Date-dono."
Masamune growled as his visible eye twitched. "Then perhaps Gojo-dono should stop provoking me."
"And perhaps you should reconsider the damn political marriage. She's my—" Seijiro snapped, then caught himself.
Masamune's cursed energy spiked. "Yours what?" he asked. "You are dangerously invested in the marital status of a child."
Keiji leaned just enough further between them to physically disrupt the line of a strike if it came. The wood beneath his heel groaned in protest. "I swear I will bodily pick up both of you," he muttered, still smiling, "and throw you into the Kamo River if neither of you calms down." Given his size, temperament, and cursed output, no one in the corridor doubted for a second that he meant it.
And with that threat of casual godhood hovering in the air, before the whole thing could finally collapse into the full humiliation of an actual duel in the hallway of Japan's most politically volatile castle—
The shōji slid open.
All four men straightened at once, not subtly. It happened with the abrupt, overcorrected innocence of guilty boys trying to look like statues before a teacher looked too close. Masamune's flames vanished; Seijiro's Blue disappeared; Keiji lowered his hands; Kojūrō folded the damp cloth. They returned to their posts with such forced dignity it would have been funny if the air had not still smelled of burned wood and damaged pride.
They had not fooled anyone.
Out came Tokugawa Ieyasu first, relaxed to the point of insult, as if the meeting had been no more taxing than a pleasant tea. One glance was all he gave Seijiro and Keiji, brief and measuring, and then he passed between them. Behind him, pale and drained, came Uesugi Kagekatsu with the expression of a man who would have started a second war on principle if it meant escaping the first one. He refused to make eye contact with anyone, and no words were exchanged. The corridor simply split, east and west, and everyone pretended not to notice that the country had already done the same.
Seijiro did not move. His feet remained planted exactly where they were, his eyes locked on Date Masamune's single visible eye. If I could, he thought, with clarity that felt civic duty, I would take that last eye from you. As a favor to the country.
Masamune turned as if he had heard the thought, and Seijiro felt the silence that always came a breath before something expensive caught fire.
"I do hope, Gojo-dono," Masamune said lightly, which on him sounded worse than open hostility, "that the next time we meet, it will be on soil that allows me to legally start a fire."
Seijiro bowed with exaggerated elegance. "And I do hope, Date-dono, that next time you bring a fifth sword. One for every decade your cursed technique has been irrelevant."
Keiji moved before the insult had properly landed. He slung an arm across Seijiro's chest like a man restraining a friend and a wild dog at the same time, applying just enough pressure to remind Seijiro that mortality, regrettably, still applied to him too. "Now, now. Let's not burn down Fushimi Castle," he said, voice cheerful. "There are people inside. Expensive ones."
Masamune's fingers twitched again, and heat rippled from him.
Kojūrō, diplomat by suffering, bowed. "If you'll excuse us," he said, already steering his daimyo away. They turned, Masamune's haori snapping at his heels.
Seijiro did not move until they were gone. Perfect. Just perfect. Kaoru hated him. Masanari Hattori already wanted him dead. And now Masamune Date, the One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū, was apparently fantasizing about reducing him to ash.
Only then did Keiji release him. "Ah. I've known Date-dono for twenty years," he said mildly. "Don't think I've ever seen him that close to melting someone alive."
Seijiro kept his gaze on the empty corridor. "Didn't know he was so sentimental about his ocular symmetry."
Keiji clapped him on the shoulder, friendly, casual, and nearly dislocating in force. Seijiro barely noticed; Infinity had reasserted itself by then, thank the kami for habits stronger than his judgment. "You're a dead man walking, Gojo-dono," Keiji said, grinning in the way of a man who meant it kindly.
Then a soft voice came from behind them. "Gojo-dono?"
Ukita Hideie stood half-emerged from the audience hall, smiling serenely as he always did, almost as if the whole war didn't apply to him. One hand rested lightly on Toyotomi Hideyori's shoulder. The boy looked too pale. His eyes lifted to Seijiro, then toward the corridor where Tokugawa had disappeared, then back again. He did not look at Seijiro the way children were supposed to look at great warriors, but more the way one trapped animal might look at another.
Seijiro straightened at once, and the nonsense dropped off him. No foolishness. Not while Hideie—blessedly, suspiciously—was still smiling as though the meeting behind him had been civilized.
Seijiro approached and knelt with ease at the boy's level. "Take heart, Toyotomi-dono," he said softly, low enough that only Hideyori could hear. "You did well. Let them talk. Stand proud anyway."
Hideyori's lower lip trembled. "Gojo-dono… do you think it's really going to happen?" he asked, smaller than he had any right to be for someone who held a country together simply by continuing to exist.
Seijiro hesitated. He thought of Tokugawa's face as he had left the room, like a man mentally crossing names from a list. There was no point lying, not to this child. "Yes," he said simply. "But it won't be your fault."
Hideie gave him a long look, no softness but merely honesty with manners. "Come, Toyotomi-dono," he murmured, already guiding the boy away. "There are better places to be terrified." He turned, but before disappearing fully down the corridor, he glanced back. "By the way, Gojo-dono. The ward I mentioned has likely arrived by now." His smile widened by barely a fraction. "I am counting on you. Do not forget our arrangement."
Keiji followed after them with a grin, already sauntering. "You'll be fine," he called back. "Probably. See you on the battlefield, Gojo-dono."
And just like that, they were gone.
Seijiro remained where he was, still vibrating with the heat of Masamune's flames, the pressure of political obligation, and the increasingly humiliating fact that this absurd new world expected him to build a future out of debt.
He pressed a hand to his face. "Poets and fools," he muttered. "The Toyotomi faction is made of poets and fools."
A beat.
"And apparently I'm one of them now."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The ground beneath Seijiro's boot was still cold, stiffened, and brittle, not yet fully surrendered to spring. Each step cracked the foliage in an unsympathetic sound. The Rokuhara district, caught between a dried canal and the half-forgotten bones of an old Muromachi shrine, had once been a place of prayers. Now it was a beginning. The Kyoto Jujutsu Training Ground had walls only halfway raised, a roof that had already collapsed once, and books poorly balanced. The cadets were fewer than the rumors actually suggested.
Two girls. One was nine. One was seven. Their combined age was sixteen. Still, Seijiro thought, which was more optimistic than he felt, it was something. More importantly, it was theirs. And today, they were welcoming a new temporary cadet.
He dismounted without ceremony, tossing the reins to a retainer so nervous he bowed at a precise but deeply unstable angle and nearly tripped over nothing at all. Seijiro kept walking; his formal haori came off first and landed in the mud, and his ceremonial katana followed. Then the tie in his hair; one pull, and the arranged tail unraveled at once.
Too stiff; too proper; too much like his father. He did not need the illusion of propriety here, h needed, with some urgency, a reason not to scream.
He ducked beneath the warped beam of the main building, where tea, ink, and fresh carpentry saturated the air.
So did Rensuke; the man had, with inevitability, shifted from battlefield shadow to administrative nightmare. With one arm gone, he now haunted desks instead of treelines. He looked like he hadn't slept in three days, and that was probably generous. His robes were askew. His expression was that of a man who had gazed into the abyss and found it full of construction permits and not enough money.
"I'll give you five ryō if you kill me," Rensuke muttered, adjusting a stack of scrolls with his remaining hand. "You're early. Did someone die?"
"Me," Seijiro said. "Almost. I may or may not have insulted Date Masamune in front of Tokugawa Ieyasu. I need someone here who can block a damn fireball."
Rensuke looked up at him and started, perhaps, to ask; then, he thought better of it.
"The boy arrived this morning," he said instead, rubbing at his temple. He waved him off, already heading back to a chabudai covered in unfurled scrolls. "The boy arrived this morning," he rubbed his temple with his only hand. "Ukita-dono's miracle child. He's in the inner courtyard, training."
Seijiro's steps did not slow. "Excellent. I could use the distraction of someone who doesn't intend to lecture me about diplomacy."
A pause.
"He's… spirited," Rensuke warned.
"Perfect," Seijiro replied. "So was Tokugawa, and look where he is now." He stopped at the doorway and turned just enough to speak over his shoulder. "Tonight," he added, "get your things. We're going out, and we'll bring this prodigy. We're paying the Kamo clan a visit. Quietly."
Rensuke looked up again. "Quietly?"
"Inconspicuous," Seijiro amended with a crooked smile. "Possibly illegal. But inconspicuous. There's a festival tonight in Higashiyama, we can use the distraction to slip through the town unnoticed."
With that deeply reassuring plan in place, Seijiro stepped past the doorway and into the courtyard.
Then he stopped.
The inner yard was a disaster of mud and broken dummies, split posts, and torn straw. And at the center of it: a lake. Not a puddle or a slick patch of rainwater, no, an actual, contained, perfectly circular little cursed lake centered around a teenage boy standing ankle-deep in his own cursed technique.
The so-called blessing of Ukita Hideie.
The boy looked around sixteen, all limbs and motion, his back to Seijiro as he moved through forms with tireless enthusiasm. Two wooden bokken whirled in his hands, striking a battered dummy in escalating bursts—tap, crack, slam—faster and harder each time. It should have looked messy, but somehow it did not; it looked untrained in the way true instinct often did, too natural, too fluid, too irritatingly correct.
Not taught, Seijiro thought at once. Born.
The sleeveless uwagi was fully soaked in water and stuck to the boy's back; stitched across it in bold characters was what looked very much like Miyamoto.
宮本
Seijiro squinted. "…Is that written backwards?"
Then his attention shifted, and the joke died on arrival. His Six Eyes snapped properly into focus, and the analysis came all at once.
Exceptionally high reserves. Unrefined, yes, but naturally stable, its density fluctuating with direction. Defensive adaptation made possible through instinct alone; not explosive like his own cursed energy, and not predatory like Kaoru's. It was fluid and curving, gathering and receding. Beautiful, if one had the leisure to admire problems. It moved like water; no—that was too simple. It thought like water, adjusted like it: dangerous, unrefined, and completely unpredictable like a river.
Seijiro stared at the boy; then at the lake; then at the boy again. If he had not seen it himself, he would not have believed a sixteen-year-old capable of wielding cursed energy with that kind of effortless, miserable potential.
Kami. Hideie had not sent him a prodigy; he had sent him a monster.
No, better.
A possible rival for Kaoru's lightning monster.
Seijiro stepped carefully over the soaked stone, the boy's cursed energy rising automatically beneath his boots, slowing his movements and throwing his perception off balance. Beautiful; probably the boy was not even realizing what he was doing. "Oi," Seijiro called, tone authoritative. "Are you Ukita-dono's ward?"
The boy froze mid-spin, both bokken halted above his head in an absurd X, while water spiraled lazily at his feet. He spun his brown eyes on him. Too bright; too wide; too sincere. The kind of eyes that did not know how to blink properly. A messy black hair had been gathered into a single overlong braid tied with what might actually have been a fishbone, and was dripping with water.
Then, the boy smiled the sort of smile that made birds pause midflight. "You must be Gojo Seijiro-dono!" the boy said, bowing so hard he sloshed more water across the courtyard. "At last!"
Seijiro took a step back on instinct, deeply concerned.
"I have dreamed of this moment!" the boy went on, crossing both his bokken behind his back in what was presumably meant to resemble formality. "To meet the Demon of Iga! The Moonlit Blade of the South!"
Seijiro blinked. "I… suppose that is me?"
"It is an unparalleled honor to learn beneath you!" the boy declared. "I am a humble warrior, student of the blade, and faithful vassal of bushidō! I pledge myself to your instruction, Gojo-dono—no, my shishō! Please mold me into the strongest warrior and jujutsu sorcerer of the coming age!"
"Please don't," Seijiro muttered, unsure whether he meant the title, the volume, or the entire general existence of the boy.
Of course, Ukita Hideie had funded the whole training ground in exchange for this. This half-drowned, twin-bokken-swinging enthusiast adolescent, standing in a lake of his own making and radiating the cursed energy of an overeager disaster, was the ward of one of the Five Regents.
The future sure is loud.
The boy waited, braid twitching at his back like an optimistic dog's tail. Wet and glorious and standing ankle-deep in his own element. His eyebrows—a tragedy of boldness—twitched with the power of excitement.
Seijiro looked up at the sky and counted to five, pressing two fingers to his temple. "What is your name, boy?" he asked, already regretting it.
"I am Musashi Miyamoto," the boy replied proudly, puffing out his chest. "Of the Miyamoto clan!"
Seijiro stared at him for a long moment. "…Never heard of it."