WARNING!!!!!
There will be a fun time between the severed head of a 59 years old elder and her own biological son.
So proceed with caution!
Nah, I’m just messing around with you. But hey, if you get that reference, we’re friends now.
Anyway, I’m back! Enjoy the chapter!
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The sitting room in Elder Natsuko's quarters was warm, almost oppressively so. A large brazier burned in the corner, its charcoal glowing a deep orange, casting flickering shadows across the wooden pillars. The tatami beneath Naoya's knees was older than he was—faded at the edges with the straw fibers worn smooth by decades of use.
"—Yes, Elder Chizuru said so, though it would be even better if—"
Currently, Naoya was chewing some sweets in Elder Natsuko's place, sitting beside her husband. A small lacquer plate rested on the low table before him, piled with yokan and rice crackers glazed with honey. He had already eaten half of them.
This body really loves sweets, he thought, reaching for another cracker. The sweetness spread across his tongue, cloying and thick. He did not particularly care for it—his original palate had favored bitter things, strong sake and grilled fish—but the child's body craved sugar like a drug. He indulged it for the sake of maintaining the vessel.
Taro's hand reached toward his head, fingers extended in a slow, grandfatherly gesture.
Naoya swatted it away without looking.
The back of his palm connected with Taro's wrist—a sharp, quick motion. Taro withdrew his hand with a soft chuckle, unbothered, and placed it back on his own knee.
"I see," Natsuko said to the man kneeling near the doorway—Chizuru's husband's most trusted and valuable valet, apparently. He was a thin, elderly man in a dark kimono, his head bowed so low that his chin nearly touched the floor. "If that's the case, I have no reason to refuse. Tell her I will come, though I don't know if little Naoya here would be able to come with me…"
She glanced sideways at Naoya, one eyebrow raised.
Taro's hand crept toward Naoya's head again.
"I'll go," Naoya said, biting into another cracker. The crunch was loud in the quiet room. He felt Taro's fingers brush his hair and swatted the hand away a second time—more forcefully this time. Taro's arm retreated with an exaggerated sigh. "Since I rarely have any free time these days, I want to spend it as much as possible with grandma Natsuko."
He said the words flatly, without warmth.
What? He tried his best.
"I see," the valet said, rising smoothly from his bow. His knees did not crack; he had done this a thousand times. "Well then, if that's the case, I shall convey your acceptance to Taro-san so that he may prepare to greet and talk to you most adequately."
He bowed once more—shallow but correct—then turned and walked toward the sliding door. His footsteps made no sound on the tatami.
The door slid shut behind him.
For a moment, only the sound of cracker was heard in that room.
Natsuko broke the quiet. Her voice was dry, almost amused.
"Well, that's definitely one of the more polite ways to say, 'I got your subordinate, better comply with us or else!'"
She lifted her tea cup and took a slow sip, her eyes fixed on the sliding door where the valet had disappeared.
Taro's hand drifted toward Naoya's face.
"Naoya-kun," he said, his tone gentle with a slight note of teasing just underneath. His thumb and forefinger pinched Naoya's cheek, squeezing the soft flesh.
Naoya's hand shot up and batted them away. The slap was sharp, audible. Taro's fingers withdrew, reddening slightly at the knuckles.
"Hanaya-chan has been captured, it seems." Taro rubbed his hand, his brow furrowed. His voice dropped lower, more serious. "Does she perhaps—?"
"No." Naoya reached for another cracker, his expression unchanged. "She doesn't know anything. I just used her to find information on you people."
He bit down. The cracker splintered.
Natsuko and Taro exchanged a glance.
"I see." Taro exhaled slowly, his shoulders sagging. "That's… she may currently be in mortal danger now, if that's the case."
Naoya chewed. Swallowed. His tongue swept across his teeth, collecting the last grains of sugar.
"What do I care about that?"
Taro blinked. His hands, which had been resting on his knees, curled slightly.
"She is your teacher, no? And also your number one and only helper in this whole situation?"
Naoya set down the remaining half of his cracker. He turned his head—slowly, deliberately—and looked at Taro with those cold, flat eyes.
"And she also loves to touch children inappropriately." A pause. The brazier crackled. "Your point?"
Natsuko's tea cup stopped halfway to her lips. Taro's hands went still. Naoya could tell that shifted their moods.
The elderly couple exchanged another glance—worried now, but he could tell mostly cautious. Natsuko leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to something almost maternal.
"Naoya-kun," she said carefully, "did she ever—"
"She tried." Naoya cut her off, his voice dismissive. "I beat her up real bad."
He picked up his cracker again and bit into it, crunching loudly.
Taro's mouth opened. No words came out of it. He closed it. His weathered face had gone pale beneath the lantern light. Natsuko set down her tea cup with a soft click and Naoya noticed her fingers trembling—just barely, enough to betray her age.
"But she touched you?" Taro pressed, his voice strained. "Naoya-kun, if she—"
"I said I beat her up." Naoya did not look at them. His gaze was fixed on the remaining sweets. "She won't try again."
The couple did not seem assuaged.
Natsuko's hand crept across the table, not quite touching Naoya's arm. Taro's knuckles had gone white where they gripped his own knees.
Foolish worrywart elderly couple, Naoya thought, reaching for the last cracker. Almost dust and sand, and they waste their concern on me.
"She's almost worthless as a person," Naoya said, his voice unchanging, but felt a little irritation at how there’s only honeyed rice crackers left. "Her only value is in her expendability. After all, even I know you're a mentally ill person for liking brats below fourteen."
He picked it up anyway and began to munch again.
Taro blinked. His weathered face shifted—confusion, then something like discomfort. He exchanged a glance with Natsuko before speaking.
"…Did you know, Naoya-kun, the outside world has begun to change?" His voice was measured and careful. "Not all, but very slowly, people seems to think that you should only start being in a serious relationship when you're… around eighteen years old, I believe. Or is it seventeen? I don’t quite remember.”
Naoya swallowed the rice cracker, the honey and sugar giving him pleasure.
"And what does that have to do with us?" He dusted the cracker crumbs from his fingers onto the lacquer plate. "We're the Zenin. Unmoveable and unchanging even as the passage of time continued on and on."
Natsuko's lips pressed together. Her tea cup had gone cold in her hands.
"For better and worse, yeah…" she murmured.
Naoya's mouth opened. And moreover, I—
He caught himself.
The words died in his throat as he forced his jaw to click shut. He had almost said it. In my world. Almost admitted that he had went through this whole ordeal of searching for partners.
He swallowed again, tasting the lingering sweet of honey.
"Someone I knew here," he said instead, carefully reconstructing the sentence, "has his first relationship when he was fourteen with a twenty-one-year-old woman. Nobody cared about it."
Taro's expression darkened. Not angry, more like thoughtful and… troubled. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers tracing the loose skin there.
"…The more I think about it," Taro said slowly, "the more I realize my values align more with the outside world, huh?"
Naoya's lip curled down.
A sneer spread across his face—slow, deliberate, ugly. He could feel the expression pulling at his cheeks.
"Hmmph." The sound came out low, almost a growl. "What, so you're one of those people who say they're politically correct, huh? What's next? You're going to let Black people into the Zenin clan? And don't tell me you're actually supporting LGBT shit or whatever."
He leaned forward, his small hands flat on the table. The wood was warm beneath his palms.
"It's because of people like you that one day Japan is going to be filled with black fat women supporting gay people. The Yamato is going to disappear because of you people."
The words hung in the warm, stuffy air.
Taro and Natsuko looked at each other.
Their faces were not angry. They were not offended. They were… baffled. Genuinely, deeply confused. Natsuko's brow had furrowed so deeply that the lines on her forehead looked like cracks in dry earth. Taro's mouth hung slightly open, his tongue visible between his teeth.
"Naoya-kun," Natsuko said slowly, as if speaking to someone who had just woken from a fever dream, "what are you talking about?"
"I don't understand half the things that you just spouted out," Taro added, shaking his head. His silver hair caught the lamplight. "But I feel like you just said some very bad stuff."
Naoya opened his mouth to retort—
And Taro's hand shot out.
Calloused fingers pinched his cheek. Hard. Not the gentle, teasing pinch from before.
"Stohp—!" Naoya's voice came out distorted, his cheek pulled sideways. He grabbed Taro's wrist with both hands, but his small fingers were useless against the old man's grip. "Shtop shtop SHTAP—!"
His cheeks—damn these sensitive child cheeks—throbbed with pain.
"Stohp it you olf man—!"
Taro finally released him, smiling gently, as if he hadn't just committed an act of war.
Naoya rubbed his cheek with both hands, glaring.
I hate this body, he thought.
"Naoya-kun," she said, her voice carefully light, as she set down her tea cup—the ceramic scraped softly against the lacquer—and folded her hands in her lap. "how do your parents view this whole charade of you seeing us as grandparent figures?"
An obvious attempt at changing topics.
Taro busied himself with pouring fresh tea, his eyes fixed on the stream of amber liquid.
Naoya's hand finally lowered from his reddened cheek. The skin still stung. He could feel the heat radiating from the spot where Taro had pinched him—a small, throbbing sun on his face.
My parents.
The word felt foreign in his mind. In his world, he had a father—Naobito, drunk, indifferent, but clearly favored him because of his ability as a sorcerer. A mother who favored his brothers and barely looked at him. That was normal. That was correct.
Here, he had Naobi. A woman who pretends to be a man, as if she’s any qualified to bear the weight of being a clan head.
And Morinaka. Practically a stranger, even more so than Naobi. At least that fact made it a little more tolerable.
He reached for the last sweet—no, there were none left. The lacquer plate sat empty, only a few grains of sugar scattered across its surface.
"They don't view it at all," Naoya said. His voice was uncaring. He brushed the sugar grains into a small pile with his fingertip. "Naobi doesn't care what I do, so long as I don't embarrass her in front of the elders. And Morinaka…"
He paused. The sugar grains were white against the dark lacquer.
"Morinaka looks at me like I'm something that crawled out of a curse's belly.”
Natsuko's smile faltered.
Taro's hand, holding the tea pot, stopped mid-pour. A single drop fell from the spout and splashed onto the tatami—dark, absorbed instantly.
The brazier crackled.
Naoya looked up at them—this elderly couple who had no reason to care about him, yet kept pinching his cheeks and asking after his well-being like he was their own grandchild.
Fools, he thought. Sentimental, soft-hearted fools. They'll be the death of each other.
"It doesn't matter," he said, returning his gaze to the empty plate. "They don't matter. Only the end result matters."
"I… I had thought that Morinaka genuinely cared about you." Natsuko's voice was soft, almost hesitant. She tucked a strand of gray hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling slightly. "It seems that way to me. He often gazed at you with affection."
Naoya's hand stopped mid-reach for the empty plate.
Did he?
The question lodged itself in his chest. He turned it over, examined it from every angle. Morinaka's face rose in his memory—the way the man had looked at him in the infirmary. Not with warmth. Not with the soft, stupid affection that Natsuko described.
Then why? Naoya thought. Could his nasty attitude be because he noticed I'm not really Naoya?
His pulse ticked up. A thin film of sweat bloomed on his palms.
But no. If that were the case, Naobi or some other sorcerers would have been dispatched to "exorcise" him already. The clan did not tolerate possession—not even of its own children.
So that meant…
"It was all just acting." His voice came out cold, flat, final. He lifted his gaze to meet Natsuko's eyes. "Both of you are truly foolish to think there's such a thing as genuine affection. I bet to him it's all a matter of liking and disliking based on your usefulness. That damn old fox."
Taro opened his mouth, but Naoya was not finished.
"No, you guys really are the biggest fools in this entire clan."
He remembered these informations from Hanaya—the things she had whispered during their sessions.
"When was the last time either of you used your positions to advance your own standing?" He gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the compound beyond. "You give away rice to the western villages every winter without asking for tribute. You petitioned Naobi to reduce the servants' work hours during the solstice. You even—" He paused, searching his memory, "—you paid for the funeral of a servant's mother out of your own pocket. A servant. From another family. Not even Zenin."
He leaned back, his small shoulders pressing against the cushion.
"Just what kind of people willingly let themselves get used by the public? Sure, you may be looked upon favorably by the ordinary clan members and civilians. But your political power won't increase much just by doing that." His voice dropped, sharp with disdain. "You're getting used and won't do anything against it."
The brazier hissed. A log shifted, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
Natsuko's face had gone still. Strangely not offended, but plain thoughtful. Her hands, which had been folded in her lap, slowly uncurled.
"Naoya-kun…" she said gently, "did you know you can help people without expecting much in return?"
Naoya stared at her.
The silence stretched. The lantern flame flickered, casting her shadow large against the wall.
"I'm not mentally ill," he said finally.
Taro burst out laughing.
It was a genuine laugh—loud, wheezing, old-man laughter that shook his whole body. His shoulders bounced. His hand slapped his knee.
"Hahahahaha, such a potty mouth." He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, still chuckling. "I think it deserves some punishment, don't you think?"
Naoya's eyes widened.
He shot backward on his cushion, nearly tipping over.
"Don't you even think about it!" His voice came out higher than he wanted—cracking, childlike. "I have the Ten Shadows."
Taro's hand hovered in the air, fingers wiggling.
"Oh yeah?" His grin was wide, almost playful. "And? Are you going to use that on little frail old me?"
Naoya's mouth opened but gritted it close in irritation.
This is why, he thought bitterly. This is why I can't stop Taro carelessly.
He looked at the old man—the paper-thin skin, the liver spots on his knuckles, the slight tremor in his extended hand. A single clean hit with cursed energy would shatter his ribs. A Demon Dog's bite would tear through his arm like wet paper.
The old frog is damn old and weak. If he used just a little bit of force, the old frog is gonna croak.
hat's why he let it happen most of the time.
And so—
Taro's fingers found his cheek.
Pinched.
"Gah—!" Naoya's protest was swallowed by the stretch of his own skin. He grabbed Taro's wrist with both hands, pulling, but the old man's grip was surprisingly firm.
Then another hand descended from above.
Natsuko's palm landed on his head—warm, dry, gentle. Her fingers began to pat his hair in slow, rhythmic strokes.
"Such a fierce little thing," she murmured.
"I am NOT—" Naoya tried to twist away, but Taro's pinch held him in place and Natsuko's hand followed his head like a shadow. "—a LITTLE thing—"
"You are," Taro said, still pinching, "very little."
"And very fierce," Natsuko added, patting.
"And very red in the face," Taro observed.
Naoya's cheeks burned. This humiliation…
He’ll remember it for life!
"I will summon the Demon Dogs," he hissed through stretched lips.
"No, you won't," Taro said cheerfully.
"I will."
"You won't."
"I WILL—"
Natsuko's hand moved from his head to his shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Naoya-kun," she said, "you're adorable when you're angry."
Naoya's soul left his body.
He stopped struggling. His arms hung limply at his sides. His eyes went blank.
This is my life now, he thought. Being patronized by a pair of senile do-gooders.
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I FUCKIN LOVE CHARACTERS INTERACTIONS!!!
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