The brazier in the corner of her private hall had burned down to embers. Naobi did not call for more charcoal. The sake had warmed her body enough.
She was reading a report—a new trade on the family owned silk business, nothing of consequence—when footsteps approached the sliding door at a pace just short of running. The wooden frame rattled with the urgency of the knock.
"Enter."
A servant knelt in the doorway, his forehead pressed to the tatami. "Naobi-sama. There has been an incident at the training yard."
She set down the scroll. "Speak."
"Naoya-sama... has been beaten. By Captain Oiko of the Kukuru Unit."
Naobi's expression did not change. She picked up her sake cup, turned it once in her fingers, then set it down again. "Is he dead?"
"No, Naobi-sama. Unconscious. The physician has been summoned."
"Then he will live." She rose from her seat, her kimono settling around her. "Send word to the Hei. I want Captain Oiko brought to my hall. Now."
"Yes, Naobi-sama."
The servant fled. Naobi walked to the open door on the side and looked out at the snow-covered compound. Her breath fogged. A child she barely knew—a small, furious thing with his father's eyes and her own stubborn jaw—had been struck down by one of her own officers. That was not the issue. The issue was that another had presumed to discipline what was hers.
She did not have to wait long.
The Hei moved quickly. By the time Naobi had taken her seat in the main hall—the raised dais with the clan head's zabuton, the space below filled with the senior elders of the Zenin clan—Oiko was already being dragged through the doors.
The Kukuru captain's uniform was rumpled. Her wrists were bound behind her back with cursed rope. Her face, however, was calm. Defiant, even.
Naobi watched her be forced to kneel on the cold stone floor. The elders murmured among themselves—gray-haired women in fine kimonos, their eyes sharp and looked visibly ancient.
"Captain Oiko," Naobi began, her voice flat, unhurried. "You struck my son. My direct blood. Explain yourself."
Oiko lifted her chin. "Naobi-sama, the boy needed discipline. He came to the training yard screaming obscenities at my women. He called them sluts. He spoke of a man named Zaiki and acted as if men had any place in the Kukuru Unit. And then he attacked me." She paused. "I was merely teaching him his place. A male should never speak back against women. Not even one as pretty as your son."
The elders exchanged glances. Some nodded. One, the oldest—a withered woman with a single working eye—let out a dry chuckle.
"The girl has a point," the old woman said. "A spoiled boy needs correction."
Naobi felt it. Everyone's opinion had shifted from uncertainty. The elders were now satisfied. Oiko had done nothing wrong in their eyes—perhaps even something right.
But Naobi's fingers curled against her knee beneath the sleeve of her kimono. She could care less about that boy Naoya, but she's particularly irritated at the fact that some of them were trying to send a message. The clan head's own child could be touched by anyone with a stronger fist and a reasonable excuse.
They're trying to make her look weak. Undisciplined. A head who could not control her own household. Oh, what a shame that truly is.
She let the silence stretch. Then she spoke again, each word measured.
"Captain Oiko. You are not his mother. You are not his father. You are not his elder by blood, nor his appointed guardian. You are an officer of the Kukuru Unit." She leaned forward slightly. "If the son of the clan head requires discipline, that discipline comes from me. Or from Morinaka. Or from his older sisters. Not from you."
Oiko's jaw tightened. "Naobi-sama, I only—"
"You overstepped." Naobi's voice did not rise, for there's no reason to. "You have made me appear unable to manage my own child. You have invited the elders to question my authority. For that, there will be consequences."
She turned her gaze to the room at large. "Hear me. Oiko will retain her rank. She will retain her command."
A ripple of surprise. Even Oiko blinked.
"However," Naobi continued, "she will forfeit her officer's stipend for six months. She will surrender her personal blade to the Hei for the same period. She will write a formal letter of apology to me acknowledging her insubordination. And she will personally scrub the training yard's latrines for the next thirty days."
One punishment alone would have been light. But stacked together, even as a captain, she would be able to feel the weight.
Oiko's face had gone pale. "Naobi-sama, with respect, the latrines—"
"Are you refusing?"
A long pause. Then Oiko bowed her head, her bound hands trembling. "No, Naobi-sama. I accept."
"Good." Naobi waved a hand. "Unbind her. Return to your duties, Captain. And do not forget who decides what discipline is warranted in this clan."
The Hei guards cut the rope. Oiko rose on unsteady legs, bowed once—stiff and shallow—and walked out of the hall with her head high but her shoulders heavy.
The elders resumed their murmuring. The old woman with one eye looked at Naobi and smiled—a thin, knowing smile.
Naobi ignored her. She picked up her sake cup, but did not drink. Instead, she stared at the empty space where Oiko had knelt.
Naoya, she thought, you have caused me trouble already. And you are only five.
She would deal with him when he woke.
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He finally woke up and found his body hurting.
The ceiling above him was unfamiliar—different from his room in the compound. Darker beams. A faint smell of medicinal herbs. Every breath sent a dull ache through his ribs. His left arm, wrapped in bandages, lay heavy across his stomach. He couldn't really move his body because of how hurt it was.
A girl in her teens was hovering over him—close enough that he could see the worry etched into her face. Dark hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail. Eyes that looked like his own, but softer. The moment she saw his eyelids flutter, her face lit up. She was very happy to see him waking up, her hands clasping together beneath her chin, a relieved exhale escaping her lips.
But the casual way she was addressing him—"Oh, you're awake! Thank goodness, I was so scared"—irritated him. No honorifics. Just the familiar tone of someone who thought she had the right to speak to him as an equal. Or worse, as a subordinate.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked with a rough accent, his voice scraped raw from the beating.
Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. Her hands, still clasped, dropped to her sides as if struck.
She's shocked. At what? He didn't know. So he asked again, his voice harsher this time, his eyes narrowing despite the pain, "What the hell are you staring at?"
Her expression crumpled. It was subtle, but Naoya was able to catch the slight downturn of her lips. Then she said, quietly, "It's true that Naoya forgot about his own family, huh."
Naoya could only stare at her incredulously. His bandaged hand twitched on the quilt. But then he remembered the words from the woman who beat him near death's door—"A pretty boy like Naoya-sama should be playing with dolls"—and everything that had happened since he woke up in this twisted version of the Zenin compound.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that he's not sent back into the past, but rather, an alternate reality.
He was still processing this—the knowledge carving its way into his skull—when the girl interrupted his thoughts.
"I'm Aika," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Your older sister."
And in Naoya's mind, she's either Aiga or Kai, his older brothers from his world but they surely became his sister here. He doesn't know. The names blurred together—two older siblings he had barely acknowledged and they in turn had barely acknowledged him. Not that he ever needs to. His brilliance forced them to look at him all the same like everyone else in the clan.
But...they never cared about each other back in his original world. Cold glances across compound hallways. Silence at family gatherings. Nothing more. It seems the same could not be said here. Aika's hand hovered near his shoulder, as if wanting to touch him but stopping just short. Her eyes were still wet, and disgustingly soft, full of something that looked painfully like affection. Clearly, she cared about him. Well, the previous Naoya—the one before he took over, that is.
To the current him, that gaze is just very sickening. To think a woman would dare to look down on him. Not fear. Not respect. Just... concern. As if he were something fragile. Something to be pitied.
He feels like he's going to puke if he kept on staring at her. His stomach turned. A wave of nausea rose from his chest to his throat. So he averted his gaze, turning his face toward the wall—toward the paper window where pale winter light filtered through, casting the room in shades of gray and white.
Behind him, Aika said nothing. But he heard her breath catch, and soon after, the soft rustle of her kimono as she withdrew her hand.
Naoya just closed his eyes and tried to sleep off the pain, but Aika suddenly stood up and began pacing around the room
"How could this sudden change have happened?" She paced beside the futon, her wooden sandals clicking softly against the tatami. "Why did you suddenly act as if you forgot your family? Did you get cursed or something?" She stopped and turned to look at him, her brow furrowed. "Why did you suddenly begin speaking with a rough Kansai dialect like a thug when previously, you were very soft spoken?" She wrung her hands together. "Why did you suddenly pick a fight with the Kukuru Unit, even though you never once went to the training yard? And who is this Zaiki person?" Her voice grew more insistent, almost pleading. "Is he the one who made you change like this?"
Her tone as she spoke to him—like a baby, fragile and must be protected—irritated him to no end. His finger clenched tightly, so tightly that the bandages around his ribs began to get pulled, sending a sharp ache through his side, but he didn't care.
In the end, he shouted at her, his small voice raw and cracking, "Get out!"
Aika flinched at his voice. Her hands flew to her chest and her lips parted, then closed. For a moment, she looked as though she might cry. Naoya didn't care and turned to look at the walls. Then she turned and by the sounds of her footsteps, walked to the sliding door.
The door slid shut behind her.
Silence.
Then he heard a voice. His... mother in this world. And originally Naobito Zenin, in his world.
The sliding door opened again with a single decisive pull. What was her name again? Naobi? How uncreative. As expected, women could only copy after men, just like how Maki copied Toji.
And there she stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the gray winter light behind her. She stepped inside, her kimono sweeping the floor, and looked down at him with cold, unreadable eyes.
"You sure are lively, you damn brat." Her voice was flat but amused at the edges. She folded her arms inside her sleeves and tilted her head. "You caused me trouble and I even had to lose some face because of you." She took a step closer, her shadow falling over the futon. "You know what kind of consequences you will get for this, am I right?"
Naoya stared up at her. His throat tightened. Not from fear—never from fear—but from the sheer wrongness of seeing that face, that posture, that tone, on a woman. On the person who was supposed to be his worthless, drunken father.
He said nothing. But his jaw was set so hard that his teeth ached.
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The room stank of medicine and the foul smell didn't help the spilled anger. Naobi stood over the futon, looking down at the small, bandaged form of her son. His face was pale beneath the bruises. His eyes, however—those eyes burned, which shocked her by no small amount. The occasional time she sees him, he never has this kind of burn in his eyes.
Then he spoke.
"A woman like you doesn't deserve to be the clan head."
Naobi tilted her head in confusion. Her brows drew together, not in offense, but in genuine puzzlement. She had heard reports of his strange behavior—the rough dialect, the violence at the training yard, the nonsensical questions about male servants and men belonging in the Kukuru Unit? Hmph, as a stress reliever maybe. But never as a combatant.
Whatever the case, he's truly becoming more bizarre by the hours.
"Hmm..." She folded her arms. "There's truly something wrong with you. I'm not really familiar with you, but from what other people said, you're basically a perfect male. Obedient, soft spoken, and whatnot." She took a step closer, her shadow falling across his broken body. "I truly don't know whether you're cursed or you're just mentally defective. But…"
She extended her hand onto his prone body—pressing her palm flat against his chest, just above his bandaged ribs. His small frame went rigid beneath her touch.
"At least we can confirm whether or not you're cursed."
Cursed energy flowed from her palm—a torrent of it, dense and cold. She began to output massive amounts into his body, probing it for something—a foreign presence, a parasitic seal, anything that did not belong. The energy spread through his veins, his muscles, his cursed pathways, searching for something.
Naoya could only writhe in pain at the foreign energy moving inside his body. His back arched off the futon. His teeth clenched. A strangled cry escaped his throat, but he did not scream. She noted that. Strangely disciplined, even now.
After a long moment, she withdrew her hand. The energy receded. Naoya collapsed back onto the pillows, gasping, his small chest heaving.
"Hmm... it seems like there's no curse." She studied her palm, then looked back at him. "Or if there's one, it's not something obvious..." She tapped her chin. "I could borrow the Inverted Spear of Heaven from Toko to really make sure, but so far, you haven't proven that you're worth that much effort…"
She trailed off, watching him struggle to breathe.
"As if…" The words came from his mouth—low, venomous, barely audible.
Naobi's eyes narrowed. "Hmm? Did you say something, you brat?"
He lifted his head. His gaze met hers—and in that gaze, she saw something she had never seen in any male of the Zenin clan. It was not fear or submission. Nor was it the soft acceptance of his place in the world.
Rage. And beneath it, something that looked almost like... conviction.
"As if I'm letting a woman like you become the clan head! I'm going to take your position, you damn bitch!"
Naobi stared at him.
The room was silent except for his ragged breathing.
Then, slowly, her lips curved. Not quite a smile, as she feels pleased at finally having solved this puzzle but is quite irritated at having to deal with it.
"I see," she said quietly. She lowered herself to kneel beside the futon, bringing her face closer to his. Her voice dropped, almost conspiratorial. "You're not cursed, are you? You're not defective either."
He glared at her, uncomprehending.
"You finally opened your eyes, is that it?" she continued, gesturing vaguely toward the walls of the compound. "All your life, you've been pampered and spoiled. Kept in a beautiful room with your piano and your books. Told that you were pretty. Told that your only duties were to learn poetry and flower arranging and how to be a good wife to some warrior woman who would marry you for your looks."
Naoya's face contorted with what she assumed to be anguish.
"And today—" she leaned closer, "or maybe since a while ago, you stepped outside. You saw what this clan truly is. You saw that men are nothing here. Servants. Ornaments. Breeding stock." She tilted her head. "And instead of crying and retreating back to your room like a good little boy, you fought back. You insulted the entirety of the Kukuru Unit. You attacked Oiko. And when she beat you within an inch of your life, you did not apologize. I heard you didn't even beg. Or maybe it's because you're beaten so bad that you can't even beg? Hahahahaha."
She reached out and, almost gently, brushed a strand of hair from his bruised forehead.
"You are still a child. Your words are crude. Your understanding of the world is laughably simple. You think that because you hate how the women treat men here, you can overthrow me." Her hand dropped. "But…"
"You are wrong," she continued. "You cannot overthrow me. You cannot change a thousand years of tradition with a child's tantrum. This world is not the fairy tale you have in your head."
She turned and walked toward the sliding door, then paused with her hand on the frame.
"I will give you mercy this one time. But shall you ever speak or dream of being anything that you are not ever again...even if you are my son, I will not save you."
The door slid shut behind her.