The room was dark, save for the pale moonlight creeping through the gaps in the screen.
Yami Zenin: heir to most distinguished sorcerer household in the country, current predicament: facedown in a silk blanket was having what he would generously describe as a rough night.
'I have the mind of a grown man and the body of a rice bag.'
He tried to roll again, his arm flopped uselessly against the mattres, his leg kicked at nothing. The blanket ate his face.
'If anyone saw me right now, they'd think I was just drooling. Which... I am. I am literally drooling right now.'
From the next room, the voices continued, completely unbothered, completely unaware that they were ruining the sleep of someone who, in another life, had known the weight of books.
'I will remember their faces,' Yami decided, very seriously, staring into the darkness of his blanket. 'Both of them. I will remember their faces and I will hold it against them forever.'
"Did you know Hotoya's child was a failure? Even though he was a grade 2 prodigy,"
'...Hm.'
Yami went very still.
"Yeah, everyone's been talking about it. I heard he was sent away,"
"Talk about scary,"
A long pause stretched inside the crib.
Outside, the servants moved on, a mop hitting the floor, water swishing in a bucket.
Yami's tiny fist curled into the blanket.
He didn't know which cousin it was, nor did he know the details but in a household like his, "sent away" didn't mean boarding school.
It meant they found nothing useful inside you, and they'd moved on.
Yami laid there, facedown, drooling, completely unable to roll himself back over and thought about what kind of world he'd been born into.
The answer was already sitting in his chest like a stone.
'A harsh one.'
***
Five months gone in the blink of an eye.
Five months of staring at ceilings, losing arguments with blankets, and conducting what Yami had privately titled Operation: Please Just Let Me Stand Up Already.
It had not been pretty.
But today! today, Yami Zenin stood on his own two feet, crossed the length of his room, and faced the tall wooden door like a man approaching his greatest enemy.
'Look at that,' he thought, chest puffed, legs trembling only a little. 'Actual walking I did that.'
He gave himself exactly three seconds of pride.
Then the door swung open and nearly took his head clean off.
The servant on the other side froze.
Yami froze.
A very long moment passed between them.
Then the man's face cracked open like a dropped pot with pure horror, pure disbelief and he screamed.
"OH MY GOD, HE'S WALKING!"
'Was that necessary,' Yami thought flatly, ears ringing.
It didn't matter, the damage was done, footsteps came thundering down the hall and then the door swung wider and an old man came barreling through like a dog had been chasing him.
Yami looked up.
The old man looked down.
'...Who is this guy,' Yami thought.
The face looking back at him was something else entirely he was sharp eyed with a distorted face, carrying a walking stick.
'What is wrong with his teeth.'
They were red, and not slightly.
'How much vimal does this guy chew? That's insane. Someone needs to take him aside and have a conversation.'
The old man who Yami did not yet know was Fufu Yaku of the Thousand Seals, semi-grade 1, renowned talisman user, fifty-plus curse users put in the ground and counting.
He reached into his robe and pulled out a talisman.
He pressed it against Yami's chest.
Yami looked down at it, then up at the old man.
'What are you doing.'
The talisman was an extension of Yaku's cursed technique Talisman Armament built specifically to read cursed energy output. He'd used it on dozens of children across a dozen great families, being a reliable way to read cursed energy and it's output.
It had never, in his entire career, burst until it met Yami zenin.
Yaku stood very still.
'...It's way too much.'
He'd spent forty years reading cursed energy, he knew what a "prodigy" felt like under that talisman.
'Even if you stacked all of them together,' he thought, staring at the child in front of him, 'it's still not close.'
Joy welled up in his chest.
'HAHA, Zenin Clan's Crown Jewel, it's YOU, Yami Zenin!'
He wanted to shout it and he almost did.
Instead he just stood there grinning, red teeth and all, looking down at the heir like he'd just won something.
Yami looked back up at him.
'Please,' he thought, with complete sincerity, 'brush your teeth. I'm begging you. Whatever's going on in there, fix it.'
He didn't know yet that Yaku's teeth weren't red from vimal.
They were red from blood.
****
The hall was closed off from the rest of the compound.
Several children stood in a line. A couple of elders observed from the side with the particular stillness of men who had long since stopped seeing children as children.
Fufu Yaku stood at the front, red teeth hidden behind a closed mouth, talisman already in hand.
Yami stood slightly apart from all of it, next to Ogi Zenin.
He looked at the kids in the line.
'A couple years older than me,' he thought. He was three while they were probably five.
Ogi surveyed them with scrutiny.
"Filthy trash," he muttered.
Yami raised his brow and said nothing.
The test was simple, show basic cursed energy usage.
Three passed, but the fourth didn't.
Yaku noted it without expression, that was that.
An adult stepped forward placed a hand on the child's shoulder, and walked him out.
The kid didn't cry, he didn't say anything, he just went.
The door closed.
Nobody looked at it, nobody said a single word.
Yami felt something move through him, started in his chest and settled.
He realized he was shuddering.
Ogi noticed it and chuckled.
"Don't worry," he said, glancing down at Yami with something that might have been fondness had it been someone else, "They are talentless trash. A little prodigy like you, you'll never be them."
'I understand now.'
Yami looked at the closed door.
'This isn't a family.'
'It's a farm and they don't keep what doesn't grow.'
He looked at Ogi.
'Fine.'
He thought about the child who had walked out without crying.
He thought about the door, and what was on the other side of it, and whether anyone had followed to say something human, yet deep down he already knew the answer.
'I either soar until they can't reach me, or I die badly trying.'
There was no third option here and yet.
Beneath the cold logic of it.
'...How fascinating it is!'
His eyes moved to Ogi, to Yaku, to every face in the room.
'Bring it on, you Zenin scum.
I want to see everything.'
***
"Your cursed energy usage is flawless."
Ogi Zenin's brow climbed his forehead, he showed genuine surprise.
"It's almost as if you have two brains."
Yami said nothing.
He stood in the center of the hall, fists loose at his sides, breathing evenly.
Ogi's eyes gleamed.
'Good,' the man thought, though Yami couldn't hear it. 'Keep surprising us, little prodigy. Keep giving me reasons to invest in you.'
The greed in that gaze was not subtle, it was out for show.
Yami looked back at him and thought his own thoughts entirely.
'At first I didn't want to show anything but then I saw the kid.'
'This is the Zenin clan.'
A cage was easiest to escape when the keeper thought you'd accepted it.
'So, the long game, then.
'Rule one: Never show your full hand. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.'
'Rule two: Never be useless. The Zenin discard weakness,'
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.
'I don't have Satoru Gojo's fate armor. He can only be sealed, I don't have such guarantee for myself,'
Ogi nodded at the gesture, something almost paternal flickering across his face.
"Such things are simply stepping stones," he said, sweeping a hand at the exercise space.
"Do not forget." He let the pause sit for a moment.
"You are the crown jewel of the Zenin clan."
"Yes sir."
Ogi's mouth curved with satisfaction. 'Good boy.'
"Now." He turned and gestured toward the far end of the hall. "Hit that target fifteen times using cursed energy. Your reserves are exceptional, we'll train until dawn if we have to."
Yami looked at it, the target was a slab of compressed stone studded with iron spokes and jagged rock clusters ,hit wrong, and the shock would shoot up your arm hard enough to drop a grown man.
For a child, it was supposed to be a lesson in patience about the limits of the body, however this did not apply to Yami zenin.
The rule was simple: break them apart, but expect to pay for every single one.
Yami stepped forward.
'Rules', he thought, almost fondly.
'I'm the crown jewel of the Zenin clan.'
'What would it look like if the crown jewel followed the same rules as everything else?'
He hit the first rock and almost instantly the the second.
He didn't give himself the mercy, because he didn't need it.
Ogi watched in silence, a sensation he hadn't had in years, something he had seen in someone long ago.
He looked at Yami's face.
"What a monster," Ogi breathed.