Perspective: Satoru Gojo – Tokyo Wizarding Technical School
On the rooftop of the main building, the wind stirred his coat as Satoru Gojo munched a dango stick as if nothing mattered to him. But he heard it. Everyone heard it.
"Zen'in Naoya…?" Shoko Ieiri asked from her bench, an eyebrow raised. "That arrogant kid from the Zen'in clan? What did he do now?"
Suguru Geto arrived seconds later, throwing a folder to the floor in front of them.
"Mission report from Kyoto High School. The kid killed a Grade 3 spirit… with an unknown technique." The other students were frozen. The spirit narrowly outclassed them, and Naoya didn't lift a finger until the very end.
"So what?" Gojo shrugged, laughing. "A Grade 3 is nothing. That kind of spirit doesn't even make me take off my glasses."
"It's not that," Geto interrupted, more serious than usual. "It's how he did it. He waited. He saw his classmates fight, bleed… almost die. Only then did he intervene. He used something described as a 'displacement flicker.' Some think it altered time."
Gojo stopped chewing.
"Did he alter time?"
"Only for a second," Geto continued. "But it was enough to decapitate the spirit without anyone seeing him move."
Silence.
"So it wasn't a show of power…" Shoko murmured. "It was a statement."
"Exactly," Geto said, looking at the horizon. "He's saying, 'No one here is on my level.' Even in Kyoto, the teachers are restless. Utahime wrote a confidential note. He says he's afraid for his ego."
Gojo laughed, but this time not mockingly.
"Tsk." So, that little Zen'in kid is already thinking he's invincible? At this rate, someone's going to have to put him in his place...
Geto and Shoko exchanged a look. For the first time in weeks, Gojo was serious.
Perspective: Utahime Iori – Kyoto Technical School
The teacher slammed her office door shut.
It wasn't the report that bothered her. It was Naoya's look afterward. That light, satisfied, disinterested smile. As if killing was like breathing. As if his classmates were just noise.
She had confronted him. Alone. In silence.
"Why didn't you act sooner, Naoya?"
"Why would I?" he replied, without raising his voice. "They needed to understand their place. I needed to understand mine."
"We're not clan weapons. We're sorcerers," Utahime said. "And you're on a team. Not in a personal exhibition."
Naoya bowed his head. "I don't understand why you're so worried. I'm alive. They are too. The spirit is dead. Isn't that what counts?"
She didn't know how to answer at that moment. But now, in his office, she could feel it: fear. Not for her. For what that boy could become.
"It's not just power," she thought. "It's that absence of empathy. It's his contempt for anything other than himself…"
Perspective: Ayame Sasaki – Second Year, Kyoto
The room was silent.
Ayame held her tea in trembling hands. She could still hear the echo of that shriek, the cursed energy swirling out of control in the old factory… and the exact moment it all stopped.
Naoya Zen'in didn't walk. He didn't come closer. He simply disappeared, and when he became visible again, the cursed spirit was already decapitated.
"This was garbage," he muttered afterward. As if death were insignificant.
Ayame swallowed. Inside him, there was something he didn't want to name: a mixture of admiration… and fear.
"Is this what it means to be at the top? Not needing anyone else…?"
View: Hozuki – Second Year, Kyoto
Hozuki bandaged his forearm with suppressed rage.
During the fight, he had used his reinforcement technique to the limit. He had covered Riku, he had struck the spirit… and it hadn't been enough.
"Naoya… he let us fail," he whispered.
The worst thing wasn't the humiliation. It was the certainty that Naoya was silently judging them. And he found no courage in any of them.
"It's not that he doesn't respect us," Hozuki thought. "It's that… he doesn't need us. At all."
And that hurt more than any wound.
View: Riku – Second Year, Kyoto
Riku was the only one still trying to rationalize what had happened.
"Maybe... it was part of a strategy," he said to Hozuki. "Maybe he wanted to see how far we would go."
"What if you died?" Hozuki replied.
"I didn't die."
But inside, Riku knew he had indeed felt the edge of death. And that in that instant... Naoya just watched.
"How much is my life worth to him?" he wondered.
And he didn't like the answer.
Perspective: Masamichi Yaga – Headmaster of the Tokyo School
Yaga finished reading the Kyoto report for the third time. He put it aside and leaned back in his chair.
"A time user? At 15 years old?"
His mind went to Satoru.
Gojo was a natural storm. But there was still something human about him. Naoya... Naoya seemed more artificial. As if the Zen'in clan had built him in a forge of expectations and misdirected power.
"And now they want us to evaluate him," Yaga thought. "They want him to come to Tokyo for a shared mission. To observe him closely."
He sighed deeply. And thought about what Geto had told him days ago:
"A demon with manners is still a demon. But one with the face of a prince… is much more dangerous."
Perspective: Satoru Gojo (end)
From his bed, Gojo skimmed the report one last time.
Naoya Zen'in. The Kyoto brat.
"Time skips, huh?" he muttered, amused. "If it's true… then maybe someone is finally worth it."
He smiled. But it wasn't a friendly smile.
"I hope he comes to Tokyo. I want to see if that watch of his… can keep ticking when I stop it."