The classroom held its breath.
Five desks. Five students. One white board with nothing on it but a faint chalk smear that refused to die. Genzo stood in front of it, mask on the desk like a second face, pale hair combed back so precisely it looked carved there.
"Perception is a battlefield," he said. "Today, you learn to fight on it."
No one joked. Not even the boy who had tried earlier, the one who coughed to hide his nerves and got the scar of Genzo's attention for it. The air itself felt balanced on a knife; Raizen could hear its weight—the soft grainy hiss of chalk dust sliding down the board, the small sealing click when Genzo's fingers rolled a piece of chalk between them, the stretch-and-release of uniforms when someone shifted in a chair. His hearing drew a sketch of the room: Atsuro two seats left—steady breath, antennae a faint tick against his headband—two general-course kids across—one foot bouncing, one shallow-breathing like a trapped rabbit—another Kumo clan kid by the window, trying not to blink.
Genzo's gaze moved without hurry. "We covered triggers," he said. "Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. You open a door with one—sometimes two. You dye the water of their senses with your chakra, and once they drink it, they no longer know where they end and you begin." He lifted the mask by its ribbon. "And if you're very good, they thank you for the lie."
A thread of fear tugged at Raizen's gut. He pressed it down; fear could be a metronome. Count it, shape it, move with it. That was something his father had taught him long before Genzo's name had existed in his world.
Genzo pointed at the boy by the window. "You. Up."
The boy startled to his feet like he'd been yanked by a wire. "Y-yes, sensei."
"Eyes on me," Genzo said. "Do not look away."
He didn't weave a grand sequence of signs. He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers once—soft, almost lazy.
The boy's shoulders slumped. He swayed.
Raizen heard it—no, he didn't hear it. That was the point. The snap wasn't a snap; it was the absence of a snap—an interruption engineered to draw the ear and pour tempered chakra through it. Sound trigger. Clean, elegant, almost delicate.
The boy began to flinch. His gaze darted across empty corners, trying to track something that the rest of them couldn't see. He gasped. "Sensei, there—"
He lunged away from nothing and hit the door with his shoulder. It clapped in the frame. "Sensei!"
Genzo's voice didn't change. "You are safe."
The boy shook his head hard enough to rattle his teeth. "No, no, there's—" He clawed at his neck, fingers trembling.
"Break," Genzo said.
The boy squeezed his eyes shut and tangled through a hurried release—"Kai!"—but it came out brittle and unfocused. He sagged again, pale.
Genzo sighed the way a surgeon might at a sloppy cut. He flicked his fingers; the boy jerked as if strings had been cut. The panic emptied out of his face. Where terror had been, there was just a thin shock-sweat smell and a stare somewhere a foot in front of his shoes.
"Sit," Genzo said. "You didn't verify the trigger before you cast your release. You brute-forced an exit, so I gave you another door to run through."
The boy nodded too fast and collapsed into his chair.
Genzo's eyes shifted. "Atsuro."
The Kamizuru heir stood without fuss. No swagger. He adjusted his headband by a finger-width, antennae twitching once. Raizen watched Genzo's hands, watched the teacher not move. For a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then Atsuro frowned.
"Smell," he said quietly, and pinched his nose shut. He drew a slow breath through his mouth, then stopped halfway, grimaced, and exhaled sharply. "Taste piggyback," he muttered, almost to himself. "Dust."
He pushed chakra through his palate and sinuses like a thin blade, and Raizen could hear it—a tight, careful pressure that changed the shape of his breathing from the inside. Atsuro's hand flashed a compact seal. "Kai."
Nothing dramatic broke. There was no shatter, no gasp. Atsuro simply straightened, looking faintly annoyed.
Genzo lifted a brow. "Explain."
"Incense," Atsuro said. "But not obvious. Chalk dust carrying something that smells neutral unless you know what to look for. You seeded it earlier when you wrote on the board. Taste rides smell on the inhale; most won't realize they've taken it in." He shrugged a shoulder. "I used to work hives with my uncle. If you breathe wrong in a cloud, you make them angry. If you breathe right, they ignore you."
A sliver of approval cut Genzo's mouth. "Sit."
He pointed at the nervous foot-bouncer next. "You."
The boy shuffled forward. Genzo didn't look at him. He looked down at his own hand and traced a slow line on the desk with his index finger.
The boy blinked. His face went empty in a different way.
Raizen's chest prickled. Touch trigger, but not on the boy.
On the room.
The boy took a step and sank. His knee bent as if the floor had turned to water. He flailed, grabbed for the desk, then yelped and snatched his hand back as though scalded. His breaths pitched into high, wet animal sounds.
Genzo's voice stayed soft. "Find a fixed point. If the ground lies, choose a wall. If the wall lies, choose your breath. The one thing they cannot counterfeit is the rhythm inside your own chest—unless you give it to them."
The boy gulped air, too fast, nowhere near a rhythm. He tried a flurry of seals, tripped them, and the genjutsu flexed around his panic like a net. When he fell, he didn't hit anything; he just kept falling.
"Break," Genzo said at last, and the boy landed in his own body with a thud. He staggered back to his desk in shame-hot silence.
Genzo raised the chalk and looked at Raizen.
"Tsukihana."
Raizen stood. The nausea was there in the background already—the memory of pressure behind his blind eye, the echo of a night where it ached and ached until sleep made the ache somebody else's problem. He put his hands at his sides to keep them from making seals too soon.
Genzo cocked his head, as if considering which knife to sharpen. He smiled a fraction.
"Eyes on me," he said.
Sight trigger then. Simple. Raizen let his focus fall a hair short of Genzo's face—at the chest line, the collar—the way Takuma had taught them when fighting opponents who liked to cheat with their gaze. He didn't try to be clever past that. If Genzo wanted a door, Genzo would make one.
Genzo lifted his left hand. Index finger up. Down. Up.
Raizen's stomach dropped.
He was back in the ring.
Everything was the same as that night.
The air trembled with the roar of the clan grounds. Raizen could hear the shuffle of sandals on stone, the crackle of torches swaying in the wind, the layered breaths of cousins, aunts, and elders who leaned forward as though the outcome of the world itself hung on his back. The stares pressed against him, heavy, suffocating, full of expectation and doubt in equal measure.
Then came the sound.
A scrape, a push, a body exploding forward from the mat. Renji. That rhythm of footfalls was burned into Raizen's bones—the same cousin who had fought him months ago, the same rival whose eyes burned with envy that night.
It's an illusion, Raizen reminded himself. He knew it, his chakra told him so… yet instinct betrayed him. His arms rose, guard snapping into place. His legs coiled for the counter.
Renji blurred.
Too fast. Faster than he had ever been. The strike came like lightning, a fist smashing across Raizen's jaw with a crack that reverberated through his skull. White pain flared in his vision. His balance shattered.
Stunned, Raizen staggered—just long enough for Renji to pounce. Blows rained down, vicious, unrelenting, every strike heavier than the last. Fists, elbows, knees. Each impact drove deeper, folding Raizen under a tide of humiliation.
Why does it hurt? he thought desperately. Genjutsu isn't supposed to feel like this. These aren't real wounds… are they?
But the world gave him no time to question.
Voices rose above the fists. Murmurs. Whispers. Cruel truths carved into the air.
He heard his father's voice first—low, cutting, full of disappointment.
"You've shamed us, Raizen. I thought you had strength. I was wrong."
Taro's voice followed, sharp and bitter.
"Why can't you ever get it right? You're supposed to be heir, and you can't even stand?"
His mother's scream tore through him.
"Jairo, this is your fault! You pushed him too hard! You cursed him with this weight!"
Then the elders. Their laughter spread like fire through the crowd.
"We knew it. Renji was always the one. That boy—Raizen—blessed, yes, but talentless. The gods gave him a spark and he wasted it."
Each word struck harder than Renji's fists. Each syllable dug hooks into Raizen's chest.
His breath caught. Panic swelled. Chakra flared out of him like a wild storm, crashing against the boundaries of his coils, making the air around him vibrate. His limbs shook, vision blurred, his body folding under phantom blows and the crushing weight of voices that felt too real.
It's not real… it's not real… He clung to the thought like a rope in floodwater. This is just an illusion. Just an illusion.
He forced his focus inward, dragging the storm of chakra back under his control. Slowly, shakily, he funneled it toward his fingers, locking them into the seal.
"Kai!"
The world fractured.
The crowd shattered into silence, Renji dissolved into mist, the laughter cut mid-echo. For a moment, Raizen felt himself pulled in every direction at once—then the threads snapped.
When his senses cleared, he was curled in the corner of the classroom, chest heaving, knees tight to his chest like he had been trying to fold into nothing. His forehead was damp with sweat. The taste of blood clung to his tongue, though he knew there was none.
The other students stared. Wide-eyed, murmuring. One smirked. Another let out a low snicker that cracked like glass in the silence.
Genzo's head turned. His gaze—cold, gray, merciless—cut across the room. The laughter died instantly. The silence afterward was heavier than before.
Raizen uncurled himself slowly, every movement stiff as if his body still remembered the phantom bruises. He stood, spine straightening by force of will alone, and walked back to the center of the room.
Genzo's pale eyes locked onto him.
"Better," he said quietly, though his tone carried like a knife scraping stone.
Raizen drew in a breath, steadied it, and met that gaze without flinching.
Genzo's gaze lingered on him a beat longer, then shifted to the others.
"This is the shape of illusion," he said. "It does not need grand seals or elaborate theater. All it requires is the right trigger, the right weight, and the weakness you already carry inside. Every one of you has such cracks. Every one of you will be tested through them."
He let the chalk fall against the board with a sound like a coffin nail.
"Learn to wield them. Or learn to break."
No one moved. The classroom was a held breath stretched thin, every student sitting straighter, afraid to be next.
Raizen's hands curled at his sides. His body still trembled with ghost-pain, but his breath was steady now, anchored, unbroken. The voices of the illusion clung like smoke to his ears, yet beneath them, a quieter vow had begun to form.
They won't be the ones who decide what I am. Not my father. Not Renji. Not even Genzo.
He lifted his chin just enough to meet the teacher's pale eyes. And for the briefest flicker, Genzo's mouth curved—not approval, not kindness, but something colder. Recognition.
The bell cracked through the silence, shrill as a blade. Chairs scraped. The spell of the moment fractured, and students spilled out into the hallway in uneasy murmurs.
Raizen stayed a heartbeat longer, gathering his breath, gathering himself. Then he stepped into the corridor, the ghost of the arena still echoing in his bones.
He did not notice the shadow that lingered at the far end of the hall, watching him leave.