Zen'in Clan Estate — Interior
Through the gate and running immediately, as fast as the broken body would allow. The center of the Kukuru compound didn't take long to reach.
'Infirmary first.'
The door burst open. Several members lay injured inside, but none of them were Toji.
Back out, straight to the dormitories—typical military-style barracks, grim and uniform. Every room looked like the last, bunk beds in almost all of them, no variation, no personality.
Toji and I shared one of those rooms.
If he wasn't at the training grounds and he wasn't at the infirmary, logic said he'd be there. But the room was empty. Not just of Toji—of any sign of life at all. A thin layer of dust had settled over everything. Nobody had set foot here in days.
The panic spread with every second. Heart hammering, body screaming, legs moving anyway.
Every possible scenario started running on its own—each one worse than the last. When none of them led anywhere useful, there was only one option left: find someone who might actually know something.
Down the hallway at a full sprint, stopping in front of a dorm room door.
The door didn't survive.
BOOM!
Splinters scattered across the floor.
"Hey! Why the hell did you do that, you bastard?! You got a death wish or something?!"
The voice was ignored. Crossing the room in a few steps, fingers closing around his collar, and then his back met the wall hard.
The scene was almost absurd. A six-year-old acting like a hardened interrogator against someone nearly twice his size.
"WHERE IS TOJI?!"
Nobuaki's expression shifted the moment recognition landed. The color left his face. His hand moved instinctively to his chest, and his whole body started to tremble.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about."
The anger sharpened.
"STOP MESSING WITH ME! YOU KNOW EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS BETWEEN THE RECRUITS!" A hand moved to his throat—no real strength behind it, but the message didn't need strength. "SO YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME WHERE MY BROTHER IS!"
The fear in his eyes climbed past caution and into something closer to genuine terror. His voice cracked at the edges.
"I-I swear I don't know! These past five days I've been in the infirmary or in my dorm—that's it! Whatever happened out there, I wasn't part of it!"
Silence held the room for several long seconds.
Then the grip released, and he crumpled to the floor.
A long exhale left him. Visible relief.
But the conversation wasn't finished.
The coldest voice available came out quietly.
"Fine. If you don't know, I can't blame you."
Somehow, that made him more nervous, not less. He watched carefully, waiting.
"But now that you do know…"
He scrambled backward, nearly tripping over himself.
"You have thirty minutes. Find out where my brother is. After that—" A pause, deliberately long. "—I promise you the fate waiting will make our last fight look like a reward."
No interest in his answer. Back into the hallway, footsteps fading.
Behind the closed door, after a beat of silence: *"JOHN! GET OVER HERE!"*
Ignored.
---
Back in the room, door locked. One thing on the bed demanded attention—the cloth bundle Tsukumo Hyo had handed over at the gate. More of a container than a gift, really.
The knot came undone easily. What was inside was exactly what had been expected.
Under any other circumstances, the reaction would have been pure joy. But the situation was too heavy for that. The happiness was there, somewhere underneath everything—just unreachable right now.
Three katanas.
The first: almost certainly responsible for both the victory against the cursed spirit and the current inability to use Haki. The second: the most immediately useful of the three. The third: the most iconic.
Enma. Shusui. Wado Ichimonji.
Better weapons couldn't have arrived at a better time.
That said, only two of them were usable for now, and that was being generous.
Santoryu training hadn't even started yet—that was the first problem.
The second problem was considerably more pressing.
Enma would kill me. Surviving its first use had been pure luck, and using it again in this condition wasn't a risk worth taking. It went straight into hiding, out of reach and out of sight.
Wado Ichimonji came out of its scabbard next. To an untrained eye it looked like any other katana—except for the weight, or rather the absence of it. Trying to push invisible Haki into the blade produced an immediate surprise: it accepted it almost without resistance, as though the steel barely existed as a barrier at all. The conductivity was unlike anything encountered before.
Completely fascinating. But there were other things to focus on.
Sheathed. Set aside. Shusui next.
The blade cleared the scabbard and immediately demanded full attention. The guard, the patterns worked into the steel, and above all—the color. Every detail of this sword was extraordinary.
"Damn, this thing is heavy. Learning how to wield it is going to be a real headache."
Back into place. Then onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the weight of the past week settle.
*'What a damn awful week. Almost feel like crying.'*
A long sigh, then the events replayed themselves in order.
*'Join the Kukuru. Nobuaki mocks and attacks us. Get thrown into a pit of cursed spirits as punishment.'* That one in particular wasn't going anywhere. *'Toji takes a wound that'll scar permanently. Conqueror's Haki awakens.'*
And that was only the beginning.
*'A falsified mission. Little Tsukumo Yuki. A Semi-Grade 1 cursed spirit. Nearly dying. Defeating it somehow with a katana that appeared out of nowhere. Waking up in a stranger's room unable to use Haki.'*
There had been a quiet hope that things would slow down after that.
*'And now, the moment I get back, Toji is gone. Yeah. Terrible week.'*
Another sigh—cut short as pain flared through the chest.
"Argh!"
Breathing too deeply still came with consequences. The show of strength in front of Nobuaki had cost something. If he'd known the real condition behind it, the outcome of that conversation would have been very different.
Tears came, and they weren't entirely about the pain. Or at all, really.
"Sniff… Sniff… Where are you, little brother? Please tell me you're okay. I couldn't bear it—not on top of everything, not on top of that scar."
It wasn't rational and there was no pretending otherwise. Toji needed hardship. Needed adversity to build the instincts and the strength to protect himself one day. That was simply true.
But human emotions have never had much patience for logic.
Every time the mind drifted toward what state he might be in right now, something in the chest pulled tight. Imprisoned somewhere. Hurt. Worse. Limbs—
*'No. He's fine. He's strong. I trained him for this. He's the Tyrant of Heavenly Restriction, damn it.'*
The training was never going to be enough on its own—that was always known. But imagining him dead was a door that couldn't be opened, not even a crack.
So instead: *He's fine. He's strong. He'll make it.* Over and over, like a rhythm, like something to hold onto—repeated silently for the full thirty minutes until a knock landed on the door.
"Mon— I mean, Zoro. We found your brother."
The near-slip didn't even register. The door flew open before the sentence finished.
"Where is he?!"