Despite not needing to train or study—despite being under Sukuna’s protection, despite Sukuna’s wealth rendering grades and honors meaningless—Yuji persisted.

It was the kind of stubbornness Sukuna despised most: the sort that harmed no one but its owner.

Yuji continued to attend jujutsu lectures, continued to spar, continued to grind himself thin between technique drills and exam preparation. He ran through the daimyo-yashiki at odd hours with ink-smudged hands and restless energy, slept in fractured intervals, and took all-nighters as if exhaustion were a challenge to be met head-on rather than a warning. Each time Sukuna noticed the signs—slower reactions, hollowed focus, that faint lag between thought and motion—his patience wore thinner.

Yuji, for his part, had insisted he would cut back. He would sleep more. He would stop chasing honors. He would focus on enjoying himself instead of proving something to systems that no longer held power over him. Sukuna had allowed the promise to stand, not because he believed it, but because correcting the boy required more effort than observing the outcome.

The outcome, currently, lay sprawled on the floor.

Sukuna sat nearby, settled with one leg folded neatly before him while the other bent, heel planted against the tatami. He was shirtless as usual, the black haori draped loosely over his shoulders, sleeves hanging unused from his upper arms. In one of his four hands, he held a narrow slip of paper bearing a haiku—old, spare, written in a disciplined hand. His attention appeared to rest on the poem, eyes tracing its careful economy of language, though one of his four eyes had drifted elsewhere entirely.

Yuji lay on his stomach a short distance away, textbook open beneath his chin. Another of Sukuna’s haori had been thrown over him without ceremony, blanketing his back and shoulders, its weight clearly familiar. His legs were bent at the knees, feet lifted and swaying idly in the air as he read, the motion slow and contented rather than restless. There was a smile on his face—small, unguarded, the kind that came when he was absorbed rather than pleased.

The contrast was irritating.

Sukuna had little tolerance for self-sabotage. He had even less for unnecessary struggle. Power existed to be used, resources to be exploited, protection to be accepted without apology. Yuji had all of it and still chose discipline, still chose effort, still chose to exhaust himself chasing knowledge he no longer needed to survive.

And yet.

The boy was alive in ways others were not. The yashiki had adjusted around him without resistance—paths worn where he paced while memorizing, blankets relocated to wherever he collapsed, the steady background rhythm of movement and presence. Even now, drained and overworked, Yuji radiated a quiet satisfaction, as if the act of learning itself was rest.

Sukuna’s grip on the haiku did not tighten, but the paper ceased to hold his attention. His gaze lingered on the rise and fall of Yuji’s back beneath the haori, on the slow sway of his feet, on the ease with which he occupied the space as if it had always been meant for him.

The boy was foolish. Stubborn. Determined to carry burdens no one had asked him to lift.

Sukuna did not interfere.

He remained where he was, vast and still, allowing the scene to continue unchanged—watching, waiting, tolerating the quiet defiance of a child who studied beneath a curse’s roof and smiled as if exhaustion were nothing at all.