Guess who's back, back again?
Joe's back, tell a friend
Guess who's back, guess who's back
Guess who's back, guess who's back
Guess who's back, guess who's back
Guess who's back
(Na-na-na, na, na, na, na, na, na)
(Na-na-na, na, na, na, na)
Hello there!! Missed me?? Maybe you did or maybe you did not, but I am happy to be back!! I am finally done with my stuff, and dialy chapters are back. Enjoy!
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Masanori sighed yet again, repeating the same line, because saying it one time was not enough.
"This is going to complicate things."
He stared at the ink pot for a long moment, lost in thought. The black stain was still spreading across the wood, ruining a revenue report he no longer cared about.
Then he stood up and started walking.
"Follow me."
Hirito looked at him and understood what they were going to do.
Sigh.... this is going to be trouble, Hirito thought.
He knew where they were going.
"Clan leader, perhaps we should discuss this further before-"
"Follow me, Hirito."
Hirito simply gave up and followed.
Kami, help me.
They exited the honke and started heading east.
As Masanori passed by the clan members and servants, they bowed. Every single one of them. But unlike a normal day, Masanori didn't acknowledge any of them.
He walked past them as if they didn't exist, and the message was received instantly.
Conversations died instantly. People who were about to shout out a greeting swallowed their words and stepped aside.
The clan leader is in a mood again.
Shut your mouth.
Mind your business.
The eastern wing of the Gojo estate was quieter than the rest. The buildings here were older, predating the current generation's renovations.
At the very end of the eastern wing, set apart from every other structure on the grounds by a gap of an empty space, was a building that didn't match anything else on the estate.
It was squat, built from dark stone, which looked more like a prison.
Two guards stood at the entrance. They got ready the moment they saw Masanori approaching with Hirito at his side.
They bowed low and opened the heavy door without a word.
Masanori walked in as Hirito followed. The door closed behind them.
However, this was weird.
Why?
Here is an interesting fact: the Gojo clan did not keep prisoners.
The clan did not spoil their grounds with criminals. Offenders were dealt with through the external judicial systems, or through the sorcerer society's own enforcement mechanisms, or, in cases that required more permanent solutions, through methods that didn't leave enough evidence to require a cell.
That was the policy, and it was always followed.
Sadly, that was a lie.
Because years ago, something had happened that the policy couldn't.... let's just say, handle. A situation so complex, so deeply entwined with the clan's internal power structure, that no external solution could contain it.
And so this building was made.
The interior was a little dark. Lanterns were placed at wide intervals, providing just enough light to walk by. The air was cool due to the lack of sunlight, carrying the faint scent of incense that someone had lit.
There were no rows of cells, just a single, long hallway that led to one large room at the end.
Masanori walked through without slowing.
Hirito walked behind him, his hand resting near his hip out of habit rather than necessity. He'd been here before. He knew what was at the end of this hallway. And every time, without exception, it made him uneasy.
The cell at the end of the corridor was not a cell.
Not in any traditional sense. It was a large room. Spacious enough to be comfortable, furnished with the kind of care and expense that looked like a guest quarter, rather than a place of confinement.
The cell was furnished with a low table with cushions, shelves lined with books and scrolls, a writing desk with fresh ink and paper, sleeping quarters separated by a painted screen, and a tea set, clearly expensive, sitting on a tray beside a still-warm kettle.
And on the far side of the room, beside a window, sat two people.
A man and a woman.
The woman was leaning against the man's shoulder. Her white hair, long and loose, fell across his arm. Her eyes were closed, and her expression was of someone who had made peace with her circumstances a long time ago.
The man sat upright with a stone-like expression. His white hair was shorter than his wife's and tied back simply. Even in confinement, he radiated something that filled the room like a presence.
The kind of presence that made other people feel smaller just by existing in the same space.
Masanori and Hirito stopped in front of the cell's barrier.
The man didn't turn around.
"What do you want, Masanori?" He said as he turned.
This is Gojo Takehiro.
Masanori's older brother. The firstborn son of the previous clan head. The man who, by every law of succession and every measure of ability, should have been sitting behind the desk in the honke right now.
He was in his early seventies, but the years had been kinder to him than they had any right to be. The Gojo bloodline aged well, and Takehiro had aged better than most. His face was lined but sharp, carrying the same angular features as Masanori but a lot sharper.
And his cursed energy, even suppressed, even contained by the barriers woven into the walls and the floor, was immense.
Masanori stared at his elder brother.
And for a moment, just a moment, the clan leader of the Gojo clan felt like a boy again. Standing in his older brother's shadow, looking up, knowing with the unshakeable certainty that the person in front of him was better.
He was... in every aspect.
Takehiro was stronger, smarter, more capable, more respected, and more everything.
Time hadn't changed that.
Masanori pushed the feeling down. Buried it under decades of practice.
"Takehiro-"
"You didn't answer my question."
Masanori's jaw tightened. "This is about your daughter."
The room changed.
The woman's eyes opened, which were filled with fear. She sat up straight, her hand griping Takehiro's arm.
Takehiro placed his hand over his wife's, trying to calm her.
Then he leaned close and whispered something in her ear. Which made the tension in her shoulders ease, just slightly.
Then he looked at Masanori.
His eyes changed. The calm was still there, but now there was added chaos.
"After all these years.... have you finally decided to go against Father's order?"
The question hung in the air.
Father's order.
The pact that had prevented the Gojo clan from tearing itself apart years ago.
It had started with Gojo Fuyomi.
Takehiro's only daughter. Bright, joyful, caring, not that talented, but was beloved by her grandfather, the previous clan head, the last Six Eyes user the Gojo bloodline had produced.
And she had fallen in love with a man from the Yuki clan.
In any other family, in any other world, that would have been nothing. A young woman choosing her own husband was normal.
Alas, in the Gojo clan, it was treason.
The bloodline was sacred, and is not something you can spread outside. Marriage outside the clan was not just discouraged but forbidden, enforced with a brutality that had maintained the purity of the Gojo line for a long time.
When Fuyomi announced her intention to marry Yuki Soran, the clan's response was immediate.
Denied.
When she ran away and married him anyway, the response escalated.
Execution was the way a situation like this was normally handled. Both the husband and wife, in this case, the Yuki husband and the Gojo wife. Their deaths would serve as a reminder and a symbol of what happenes when someone defied the clan's most fundamental law.
That was the protocol.
Sadly for the Gojo clan, the situation was not normal.
Because Fuyomi was not just any Gojo. She was Takehiro's daughter, and Takehiro was not just any clan member.
He was the current strongest sorcerer of the Gojo clan, after pervious clan head. A man whose combat ability was so far beyond the rest of the clan that the gap wasn't a gap at all but a chasm. A man who, if pushed or if given a reason to unleash what he kept so carefully contained, could dismantle the Gojo clan's military force even if it meant death.
And he had made his position clear.
Touch my daughter, and I will end this clan, even if it cost's my life.
Not a threat, but a statement of fact.
The clan had believed him.
So a deal was struck.
Takehiro and his wife, Gojo Shiori, would surrender themselves. They would accept confinement and would live out their days within the estate, in comfort but without freedom. They would not interfere with clan affairs. They would not attempt to leave and would never contact their daughter.
In exchange, Fuyomi would live. She would be disowned, stripped of the Gojo name, erased from the records. But she would live. She and her Yuki husband and whatever children they might have.
The previous clan head, Takehiro and Masanori's father, had agreed. Not because the deal was fair, but because he had loved his granddaughter. Because he had held Fuyomi as a baby, read to her as a child, and watched her grow into a woman full of kindness who reminded him of his own late wife. Due to that he could not bring himself to sign the order that would end her life.
A soft spot, the elders had called it, but there was nothing they could do.
Still, the deal had been respected for years. Through the old clan head's death. Through Masanori's ascension. Through every political storm and internal power struggle that had followed.
The deal had held because everyone understood one fundamental truth.
If it broke, Takehiro would have nothing to lose.
And now Masanori was standing in front of his brother's cell, about to tell him something that could shatter the fragile deak that had kept the Gojo clan intact for a long time.
Takehiro's eyes bored into him.
"Do you really want to see this clan burn to ashes?"
Masanori held his brother's gaze.
Then, against every instinct that told him to maintain dominance or to project strength, he said something unexpected.
"That's why I need your help."
Takehiro just stared.
His blue eyes searched Masanori's face, trying to see if he was telling the truth or not.
"I'm listening," Takehiro said.
Masanori took a breath.
"Fuyomi's youngest son. Yuki Reizan." He paused. "He has awakened the Six Eyes."
Shiori gasped as her hand flew to her mouth.
Takehiro did not react; he just stared.
He sat perfectly still, with his hand still resting over his wife's.
"The Six Eyes?"
"Confirmed," Masanori said. "Multiple sources. He awakened them two years ago. He's six now."
"Six?"
"Yes."
Another silence.
Then Takehiro exhaled.
"I told you to make the Yuki clan a close ally years ago. When Fuyomi married Soran. I told you to embrace it and turn what the clan saw as a humiliation into a strategic advantage."
He looked at Masanori with pity.
"Alas, you never listened to me. Not once."
Masanori said nothing as there was nothing to say. His brother was right, like always. And they both knew it.
Takehiro turned away back toward the window.
"Fuyomi is free to do whatever she wants," he said. "That was Father's wish, and that is my wish. The deal protects her, her husband, and her children."
He paused.
"I hope you intend to honor his wish, little brother."
The word little carried weight. The weight of an older brother reminding a younger one where the line was drawn.
"If not..... you know very well what will be coming your way."
As he said that, cursed energy surged around the cell.
Masanori felt it, Hirito felt it, and the guards outside the building felt it, though they didn't know what it was.
It was a reminder that said, I am still here.
Masanori held his brother's gaze for one final moment.
Then he nodded.
"I will honor Father's wish."
He turned and walked away as Hirito followed.
The door closed behind them.
In the cell, Takehiro sat in silence for a long time.
Shiori pressed her face into his shoulder. He could feel the dampness of tears against his sleeve.
"Our daughter's boy," she whispered. "Has the Six Eyes."
Takehiro said nothing.
But his hand tightened over hers.
And in the quiet of their cage, the strongest sorcerer the Gojo clan allowed himself to smile a little.
Well done, Fuyomi, he thought. Live your life well, we've got your back.
--<<>>--
Welp, some deep dive into the Gojo family working. Wanted to show that not all members of the 3 clans are assholes. Some of them have a heart.
Hope it you liked it.
Let me know your thoughts.