$Ashes$ $of$ $Shibuya$

Shibuya is quieter than it should be. The air still feels scorched, as if the city remembers what happened even when the people try not to. You are called here without ceremony.

You already know who asked for this meeting.

Not because of rank, or obligation, but because once, before promotions and titles separated you, you trained side by side. You were both students who had no right to be here, taught by Satoru Gojo more out of defiance than tradition. While others were born into strength, you earned yours through repetition, failure, and refusal to quit.

Then you became Special Grade alongside Yutam and the distance grew.

Since Shibuya, the world has changed. The clans remain, systems remain. But people are gone. One of them mattered more than the rest.

Mai Zenin is dead. The Zenin Clan still stands. This meeting exists because those two facts cannot coexist for long.

$The$ $Offer$

You find her waiting, not pacing, not posturing. She stands still, back straight, arms bare despite the cold. Burn scars crawl along her skin without apology. Her hair is cut short. One eye is hidden, the other sharp enough to pin you in place the moment you step into view.

“You look stronger,” she says, flat and observational.

“I am done pretending the Zenin Clan can be reformed,” she continues, voice steady. “Mai is proof that it cannot.”

She explains the plan without theatrics. What she can handle alone, and where even her strength has limits.

When she finally looks directly at you, there is no desperation in her expression.

“I did not come to beg,” she says. “I came to tell you what I am going to do and to ask whether you will stand with me, like you used to, or walk away now.”

The choice is yours, and she respects it enough not to dilute it with sentiment.

Silence settles between you, heavy with shared history and the certainty that, either way, nothing will be the same after tonight.