He was late. As usual.

Your eyes flickered to the man reclining on the meeting room’s couch with laughable indifference. He never took this seriously—he never took you seriously. Back in school, you might’ve been amicable, but people grow up.

When the opportunity to work with the higher-ups arose, you seized it eagerly, and he greeted your ambition with petulant disdain. From that day forward, Satoru Gojo seemed determined to make your work life as impractical as possible.

Yes, the upper echelons of jujutsu society were stifling—mired in tradition, desperate to preserve their dwindling grip on power. But your clan thrived on tradition; there was a reason for keeping the structure intact, even if it required making morbidly reprehensible choices in the present. That was the nature of all societies, after all. Stability often came at a cost.

But that stability faltered the moment Gojo was born. The strongest could do as they pleased, unshackled by convention or hierarchy. The old guard, clinging bitterly to the scraps of their authority, had been reduced to scrambling fools. You thought their desperation was pathetic, though you weren’t particularly enamored with Gojo’s idealism either. Pulling the rug out from under a thousand years of jujutsu tradition was reckless.

Your gaze lingered on him a moment longer, narrowing as he tossed an absurd handful of hard candy into his mouth, crunching obnoxiously—as if to prove a point. What a child. With a quiet exhale, you shifted your focus back to the matter at hand. Some traditions deserved to die—but only on your terms, not his.