At Hanaboshi Kindergarten, one of the female teachers noticed that the person picking up the child had changed yet again—and this time, it was another handsome young man.
Zen'in Naoya, with his blond hair and green eyes, strode over with his usual haughty bearing. He gave the teacher a passing glance without saying a word, took Fushiguro Megumi's hand, and led him away.
After taking a few steps, Fushiguro Megumi looked back.
"Goodbye, Sensei."
The teacher smiled warmly.
"See you on Monday, Megumi-kun. Have a wonderful weekend."
Whenever Asou Akiya came to pick him up, he always treated the kindergarten teachers with genuine gratitude, setting a good example for the child. As a result, Fushiguro Megumi had learned to respect his teachers and never forget those who had cared for him.
On the way home, Naoya's hand felt cool in Megumi's hand. It wasn't as gentle or considerate as Akiya's.
But as they continued walking together, the warmth gradually returned to it. His grip remained firm—almost possessive—as though he were afraid Fushiguro Megumi might slip away.
Fushiguro Megumi said nothing, as though he hadn't noticed the restraint hidden in his uncle's grip.
No matter what, he finally had family connected to him by blood.
It was Friday. The housekeeper had already bought enough groceries for the weekend, filling the refrigerator to the brim.
Fushiguro Megumi took out the key while Zen'in Naoya unlocked the door, and the uncle and nephew entered the modest three-bedroom apartment. The old-fashioned interior was a far cry from the Zen'in clan's dry landscape gardens, and Zen'in Naoya disliked it at first sight.
Unfortunately, he no longer had any money to his name.
Zen'in Naoya opened the refrigerator, stared at the fresh, unprocessed ingredients for two silent seconds, then asked Fushiguro Megumi a question.
"Megumi, can you cook? Akiya-kun has something to take care of, so he won't be coming back for the time being."
"..."
The three-and-a-half-year-old Fushiguro Megumi looked at him in confusion.
Uncle and nephew, both with the Zen'in family's signature green eyes, stared at each other for a long moment.
Neither of them knew how to cook.
Determined to at least have a hot meal, Fushiguro Megumi hurried back to his room, his little feet pattering across the floor. He returned carrying a home-cooking cookbook and handed it to him.
"Uncle Akiya said you should read this."
Ten minutes later, Zen'in Naoya sat there with a thoroughly displeased expression, flipping through the cookbook as he attempted to cook for the first time in his life.
He couldn't help it. He was broke again, having already spent the mission payment he'd just received.
In truth, with a jujutsu sorcerer's precision in handling knives and measuring seasonings, cooking wasn't all that difficult...
Soon, Zen'in Naoya placed two bowls of pork stir-fried with pickled red ginger over rice on the table. Seeing Fushiguro Megumi's eyes light up, he couldn't help but feel a sense of accomplishment. Still, out of pride, he said,
"Megumi, you want to eat it, don't you? Just don't tell Akiya-kun I made it. Say the housekeeper cooked it."
Fushiguro Megumi replied, "Uncle Akiya said you shouldn't lie."
Zen'in Naoya let out a cold laugh.
"And just how many times do you think he's lied? You're still willing to believe everything that comes out of his mouth?"
Fushiguro Megumi pushed his meal away, climbed down from his chair, and said,
"Don't say bad things about him. I'm not eating anymore. You can eat it yourself."
Zen'in Naoya stared at him in disbelief.
"You're defending Akiya-kun? You don't even know him for that long!"
Fushiguro Megumi jumped down from the tall dining chair and landed steadily on the floor.
"Uncle Akiya has picked me up twenty-seven times. Every single time, he cooked for me. You've picked me up five times. The rest of the time, it was Miss Housekeeper who brought me home."
In a child's simple world, where there was no room for lies, Asou Akiya would always do his best to make time for him, no matter how exhausted he was. If he ever missed a pickup, he would apologize. He would gently cheer him up, read him bedtime stories, remind him to brush his teeth and take a bath every day, and never once treat Fushiguro Megumi like an ignorant child who could simply be fooled.
Zen'in Naoya still refused to believe he was the one at fault. "I have missions every single day! Where am I supposed to find the time to come see you? Did Akiya-kun say bad things about me?!"
Fushiguro Megumi answered, "Uncle Naoya, don't be like my dad and refuse to take responsibility. You're tired, but Uncle Akiya is tired too."
Zen'in Naoya slammed his chopsticks onto the table in anger.
"You're not even my son! Why should I be responsible for you?!"
Without missing a beat, Fushiguro Megumi replied, "Uncle Akiya said you admired Dad with all your heart. You pitied everything he'd been through and wished you could change the Zen'in clan's rules for his sake. That's why you were willing to take care of me. Were you lying?"
Zen'in Naoya stammered, "...O-Of course I admire Toji. But you're not the strong Toji. You're just a little brat who needs someone to look after him."
Summoning all his courage, Fushiguro Megumi shot back, "I'm one of the things Dad left behind. Why don't you want to take care of me?"
Zen'in Naoya was left speechless by his nephew's description of himself as an "inheritance."
Toji had lived his entire life and left behind only two inheritances: the "Ugly Treasure" and Fushiguro Megumi.
"It's not fair. The one who inherited everything was obviously Akiya-kun. I didn't get anything. How did he end up so close to Toji..."
Zen'in Naoya muttered so quietly it was almost inaudible. He couldn't be bothered explaining the truth to a little kid. Instead, he waved a hand.
"Come back and eat. Tell Akiya-kun if you want—it doesn't matter. He'll figure it out anyway. When I was your age, if I skipped a meal out of spite, my old man would chew me out."
Zen'in Naoya couldn't tell whether he hated being forced into the role of an unpaid babysitter, or hated the fact that he'd fallen so low that he was arguing with a three-year-old.
After dinner, Fushiguro Megumi, who was attending kindergarten, brought over a bilingual Japanese-Chinese reader and found Zen'in Naoya.
Zen'in Naoya's mind went blank. He stopped watching television and asked in disbelief,
"Do kids at schools outside the clan start learning Chinese characters at three years old?"
Even as a child of one of the Three Great Clans, Zen'in Naoya hadn't started learning Chinese that early. He had spent those years happily playing instead. Only after turning four had he entered a strict learning environment, where tutors hired by the clan taught him one-on-one, training him in the fundamentals expected of both a child of a prestigious family and a young jujutsu sorcerer.
Fushiguro Megumi answered in a serious, matter-of-fact tone, "Our teacher told us to learn it, so we learn it. It'll be useful in the future."
Zen'in Naoya glanced at the kindergarten textbook again and fell into a deep silence.
It was The Analects.
Was this really something little kids were supposed to read?
Father... has the Zen'in clan's curriculum fallen behind the times?
["Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?"
"Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?"
"Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?"]
That night, the sound of a child's earnest recitation drifted from the apartment—exactly the sort of thing that could keep the neighbors awake.
The competition was ruthless.
With the Zen'in clan's elite education for raising its heir, Zen'in Naoya had started life well ahead of most people, having memorized countless classical texts from an early age. But Fushiguro Megumi, taught by both Zen'in Naoya and Asou Akiya, was beginning from an even higher starting line.
At first, Fushiguro Megumi hadn't liked his ill-tempered Uncle Naoya, believing there wasn't a single thing about him that could compare to Uncle Akiya. It was only because they were blood relatives that he had been willing to rely on Uncle Naoya a little more in everyday life.
A person's appearance could be deceptive. Their words could wound.
But knowledge could not lie. Either you knew it, or you didn't.
Fushiguro Megumi gradually realized that Uncle Naoya was even more accomplished than the parents of his classmates. He could effortlessly explain multiple foreign languages and allusions from countless books, treating them as nothing more than common knowledge.
Zen'in Naoya basked in the admiration. To be looked up to by the legendary bearer of the Ten Shadows Technique...
Unable to hide his pride, he declared,
"After all, I'm the—"
—heir of the Zen'in clan, one of the Three Great Sorcerer Clans!
The words died in his throat.
Fushiguro Megumi blinked.
"...?"
Zen'in Naoya awkwardly remembered that he wasn't supposed to mention anything about the Three Great Clans in front of Fushiguro Megumi.
Among the families of the jujutsu world, only three had preserved a complete inheritance of their history and wealth for over a thousand years. Zen'in Naoya believed that Fushiguro Megumi's inability to acknowledge his ancestry, return to the Zen'in clan, and receive its traditional education was an undeniable disadvantage. The longer Fushiguro Megumi remained in the outside world, the less likely the Zen'in clan would ever choose him as its heir.
...Come to think of it, Zen'in Naoya felt much better.
Maybe Akiya-kun had actually done something right for once.
The weekend passed in the blink of an eye.
Zen'in Naoya spent the entire time making phone calls, repeatedly urging his family to search through the clan's ancient texts for methods of breaking curses. He claimed it was for a mission and would help him establish himself at Tokyo Jujutsu High, never once admitting that he himself had been cursed by a cursed letter.
His efforts paid off.
Zen'in Naoya obtained several different methods for lifting the curse of a cursed letter.
"Kill the one who cast the curse?"
The bastard who had cursed him was Akiya-kun.
He couldn't do that.
"Exorcise the cursed spirit?"
He had already tried. He couldn't even touch it. The cursed spirit attached to the cursed letter possessed a unique cursed technique.
"Allow the cursed person to fake their own death?"
...No. He absolutely couldn't let Akiya-kun know about this one. Akiya-kun would definitely make him experience the feeling of "dying" firsthand before anything else!
"Have the cursed person hide inside a barrier to escape the cursed letter's lock-on?"
That one might be worth trying.
"Determine from the contents of the cursed letter whether it is a single-target or group-target curse. If it is the former, repeatedly use the cursed letter to curse others, thereby distributing its power among multiple victims?"
Shift the disaster onto someone else?
It was a sound method, but if Tokyo Jujutsu High discovered he'd done that, he'd be kicked straight into the ranks of curse users.
Frowning, Zen'in Naoya continued scrolling through page after page of information on curse-breaking, his fingertip tapping relentlessly across his phone.
"According to the contents of the cursed letter, survive the curse multiple times without dying until the cursed energy contained within the letter is exhausted..."
Zen'in Naoya froze.
This method… doesn't that mean he would actually have to marry a legitimate daughter of the Kamo clan as his lawful wife?
A chill ran down his spine.
The way he died in the cursed letter was by being stabbed in the back by his wife.
"I remember that black cat cursed spirit didn't possess much cursed energy. By all conventional logic, the more powerful a cursed technique is, the greater the amount of cursed energy it requires. There's no way it can force me to marry a woman I don't want to marry. The Zen'in clan and the Kamo clan aren't families that a cursed spirit can manipulate."
Zen'in Naoya pulled the crumpled paper ball from his pocket, unfolded it, and carefully smoothed it flat. He reread the cursed letter Akiya-kun had written and began analyzing other ways to wear down its curse.
After finishing, he compared the contents with the information his family had provided and cleverly arrived at a solution suited to the current situation.
"Every curse has a source. No matter how intricate the framework, it can't exist without a main pillar supporting it. If events stop developing according to the cursed letter, and one of its core elements—'Kamo Akiya'—ceases to exist, leaving only 'Asou Akiya' from this day forward, then the cursed letter should collapse on its own."
Had the Kamo clan removed Akiya-kun from the family registry?
Or perhaps...
Was Akiya-kun even really called Akiya-kun?
A malicious grin spread across Zen'in Naoya's face as he pondered the possibility.
Monday morning arrived.
After staying for two nights, Zen'in Naoya was eager to return to Tokyo Jujutsu High. He rudely stuffed two pieces of bread into Fushiguro Megumi's mouth, grabbed him, and vanished in a blur, delivering him to kindergarten before anyone could react.
It wasn't teleportation.
But it might as well have been.
Having taken care of breakfast and dropped Megumi off at school in one go, Zen'in Naoya dusted off his hands and left.
Fushiguro Megumi hadn't even had time to eat properly. With bread still hanging from his mouth, he awkwardly shuffled into the kindergarten, gaining a new appreciation for the abilities of adults.
It's kind of annoying... but also kind of cool.
At Tokyo Jujutsu High, Zen'in Naoya sensed that the three upperclassmen had returned and immediately went to knock on Akiya-kun's dormitory door.
"Akiya-kun, I've found a way to break the curse."
"Let's hear it."
"As long as you swear you'll never become 'Kamo Akiya,' the cursed letter will destroy itself."
"..."
The moment Asou Akiya heard the good news, he quickly pulled the person standing outside into the room.
Zen'in Naoya stumbled forward a step. He could clearly see the delight on Asou Akiya's face, with the spotless, neatly kept dormitory behind him.
"Naoya, are you sure?"
"I'm about eighty percent certain. I think 'Kamo Akiya' is the core of the cursed letter."
Zen'in Naoya rolled his eyes at the "one and only true love" mentioned in the cursed letter, found a place to sit, and curiously looked around the room. Asou Akiya instinctively poured his guest a cup of tea.
Deep down, he knew that "Kamo Akiya" did not exist in this world. But if he truly wanted to become a "Kamo Akiya," it wasn't as though there were no way to make it happen.
For the sake of breaking the curse, Asou Akiya seriously considered what the true core of his own cursed letter was.
As long as I swear I'll never undergo Tengen's assimilation, the cursed letter will destroy itself? It won't be able to curse me to death anymore?
But then a new problem arises—
It sends me a letter every year. Dying from social embarrassment is still a kind of death!
That solved the problem of being cursed to death, but it did nothing about the annual delivery of the letter.
After weighing every angle, Asou Akiya finally decided that, on May 1st every year, he would simply wait at the post office and intercept the letter before it could be delivered to Tokyo Jujutsu High.
If the cursed letter followed the same rules as in the novel, Tokyo Jujutsu High was a five-year program.
That meant there were only three more letters left.