**Zenin Compound, Japan — 1982**
**Ren: Age 6 | Toji: Age 5**
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The Zenin clan had a saying.
*Worth is measured in what you can do. Everything else is noise.*
Ren had heard it approximately four hundred times in six years from approximately forty different people in approximately thirty different contexts.
It was the kind of saying that a clan repeats until it stops being a saying and starts being the air — something you breathe without noticing, something that gets into everything.
He had decided at age four that it was the most honest thing the Zenin clan had ever produced.
Not because it was right. Because it was exactly what they believed and they had the decency to say it plainly instead of dressing it up in something softer.
Worth is measured in what you can do.
Fine. Then he would become someone who could do things that this clan had never seen before.
He had been working on that for two years.
---
The compound in spring was almost bearable.
Cold still, but with something underneath the cold that suggested the season was considering changing its mind.
The stone pathways between buildings collected morning light in a way that the winter ones didn't.
The ornamental garden in the main courtyard — which existed purely for appearances and which nobody actually used for anything as informal as enjoyment — looked slightly less severe with the first green coming back into it.
Ren noticed these things the way he noticed everything. Not sentimentally. Just accurately.
He was in the main courtyard on a Thursday morning because his grandfather had summoned him,
which was not an unusual occurrence but was always an occasion that required showing up on time and with his posture correct and his expression appropriately attentive.
Keomaru Zenin was seventy one years old.
He was not a large man physically — time had taken some of the height and breadth that old portraits suggested he'd once had — but he occupied space in a way that had nothing to do with size.
When Keomaru Zenin sat in a room the room became the room he was sitting in. When he walked through the compound the compound rearranged itself around him.
without anyone consciously deciding to do it. Seventy one years of being the absolute highest authority in a world built entirely on authority had produced a man whose presence was its own kind of cursed technique.
He was sitting in the courtyard on a flat stone bench with a cup of tea and the particular stillness of someone who had nowhere to be and several decades of practice at occupying stillness correctly.
Ren crossed the courtyard and stopped at the appropriate distance and inclined his head. "Grandfather."
Keomaru looked at him. The old man's eyes were dark and sharp and had the quality of tools that had been maintained carefully for a very long time — still functional, still precise, still capable of cutting if applied correctly.
"Sit," Keomaru said.
Ren sat on the ground cross legged. At six years old this was more comfortable than sitting on a bench anyway but he wouldn't have said so.
Keomaru looked at him for a moment without speaking. This was also not unusual. His grandfather did not fill silences with noise. He let them sit until they had served their purpose and then he spoke.
"The training supervisors tell me your morning sessions have not missed a day in two years," Keomaru said.
"No,."
"Your output readings have increased consistently each quarter."
"Yes,."
"And your combat forms are ahead of the standard track for your age by approximately eighteen months."
Ren said nothing because this wasn't a question.
Keomaru picked up his tea. Drank. Set it down with the precision of a man who did everything with precision because imprecision was a habit he had never allowed himself to form.
"The clan assessment is in three weeks," he said. "All children your age will participate. He paused. "I will be observing."
Ren kept his expression neutral. Inside he filed this information carefully. His grandfather observing personally was different from elders taking notes in ledgers.
Keomaru watching meant the result would be interpreted at the highest level of the clan immediately rather than working its way up through layers of administration.
"I understand, sir," Ren said.
Keomaru looked at him with those sharp maintained eyes. "Your father was talented," he said. It was not a frequent subject. "Not at your level. But capable. He had good instincts and poor discipline." A pause. "You appear to have both the instincts and the discipline."
This was, from Keomaru Zenin, approximately equivalent to another man weeping with pride.
Ren inclined his head. "I work at it,."
"I know you do." The old man looked away toward the ornamental garden. "Bring your brother to the assessment."
Ren went very still inside. Kept completely still outside. "Toji,?"
"Yes." Keomaru's voice didn't change. Flat. Factual. "He is a Zenin. He will also participates."
What he didn't say was also clear. Toji participated because excluding him would raise questions about the clan head's family that Keomaru didn't want raised.
Toji's zero cursed energy was a private embarrassment. Absence from a clan assessment would make it a public one.
"Yes, sir," Ren said.
Keomaru dismissed him with a slight inclination of his head and returned to his tea.
Ren walked back across the courtyard.
*So grandfather will be watching,* he thought. *Which means whatever I do in that assessment gets interpreted by the highest authority in the clan in real time.*
*No pressure.*
*Except completely all the pressure.*
He kept walking. Posture correct. Expression appropriate.
*Fine. Let him watch.*
---
The other kids his age had names and faces and techniques that Ren had been cataloguing since he was old enough to move around the compound unsupervised.
**Zenin Koji.** Seven years old.
Body reinforcement specialist — he pushed cursed energy through his entire physical structure simultaneously, amplifying strength and durability across the board.
Considered the strongest child of the current generation before Ren's readings had started producing interesting numbers. He carried this the way a seven year old carries an established identity — completely and without examining it.
Broad shoulders for his age. A fighting style that was straightforward and powerful and had never needed to be anything else because straightforward and powerful had always been enough.
He and Ren had a relationship that wasn't quite rivalry and wasn't quite anything else. They acknowledged each other in the compound the way two things acknowledge each other when they occupy the same space and both know the other is there.
**Zenin Sora.** Six years old.
Wind technique — she generated and directed compressed cursed wind with enough precision to cut at close range and enough force to push at distance.
Fast, Technicaly The kind of fighter who used the environment and angles rather than direct exchange.
She was the only girl in the children's combat track, which the clan had opinions about that it expressed through the specific way it scheduled her training sessions at inconvenient hours and assigned her the worst practice equipment without acknowledging it was doing either of these things.
Ren had noticed this and noted it in the cold patient place in his chest alongside everything else.
**Zenin Daisuke.** Seven years old.
Cursed blade technique — he coated his hands, forearms, or any held weapon with razor sharp cursed energy that could cut through standard reinforcement.
Brutal and direct. He had the personality of someone who had discovered early that being frightening was easier than being liked and had made his peace with that trade.
**Zenin Masa.** Six years old.
String and puppet technique — he could attach cursed energy threads to objects or people and manipulate them remotely,
which at age six was limited in range and payload but already showed the bones of something that would be genuinely dangerous in a few years.
Quiet. Watchful. The only one of the four who had ever looked at Ren with something other than competition in his eyes — more like recognition. One careful person noticing another.
These were the children Ren would grow up alongside in the Zenin compound. His generation. The people who would define what the clan's next decade looked like.
He had assessed all four of them thoroughly.
The Sharingan behind his eye — still dormant, still dark, still waiting for its time — logged everything anyway out of habit.
---
The morning of the assessment arrived cold and clear.
The main training ground was laid out formally — measuring stones on stands along one wall, observation platform above with the elders in their seats,
Keomaru at the center of the platform in the chair that was slightly higher than the others because everything about Keomaru's position was expressed in small precise ways like that.
Naobito stood to Keomaru's right.
He was 38. Keomaru's eldest surviving son. The presumptive next clan head in a line of succession that everyone in the compound understood and nobody discussed openly.
He had his father's sharpness without his father's absolute stillness — Naobito moved more, talked more, processed things at a slightly higher temperature than the old man.
He was watching the assembled children on the floor below with the assessing expression of a man who was already thinking about which of them would be useful to him specifically.
To Keomaru's left stood Ogi.
Ren had been watching Ogi since he was old enough to understand what he was looking at.
Zenin Ogi was thirty three. positioned close enough that the gap between him and Naobito was a constant source of friction that neither man acknowledged out loud.
He was a large man — physically imposing in a way that he clearly knew and used. His cursed technique was classified — Ren hadn't been able to confirm it yet — but his reputation as a fighter was well established within the compound.
He had the kind of face that had decided on its permanent expression a long time ago and settled there comfortably. Cold. Evaluating.
The expression of a man who sorted everything he encountered into useful and not useful and had very limited patience for the second category.
He was looking at Toji right now.
Not at Ren. At Toji. Standing at the end of the children's line in his compound clothes with his arms at his sides and his face completely still.
The look on Ogi's face was not complicated. It was the look of a man observing a problem that reflected badly on people he was in competition with.
Ren noted it. Filed it. Looked away.
*Not yet,* he thought. *But remember that look.*
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