Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
I know it's been like a week and a half since the last update but boy was the last week hectic for me. I work as a Chartered accountant and had an auditing gig to do in a city that is somewhat far away from home. Basically, I had to audit the accounts of a partnership firm where one of the three partners was accused of embezzling some funds. I did manage to find out that almost half a million dollars was unaccounted for which caused a lot of shit to happen. Now I have to attend a court hearing next week and present my findings there.
Anyways, this is a rather short chapter but I hope you guys enjoy it.
As far as he was concerned, life was not easy for one Yotsuba Genzou. He had entered the battlefield at the tender age of ten and had murdered more than a thousand people by the time he hit twenty. Not even love was free for him. His mother had arranged his marriage with Yasuyo for him for the purpose of keeping the bloodline strong. The fact that Yasuyo was a good woman that he grew to love, was dumb luck on his part.
The birth of his twin daughters was an event that changed his life for the better. The fear that his daughters might have to go through the same experiences that he had gone through was more than enough incentive for him to challenge his mother for the title of clan head. Ayame, for the most part, left the position without putting up any fight. Genzou was well aware of the contacts that Ayame had within and outside the clan but he ignored it for the most part. The woman was undeniably a psychopath but she put the interest of the clan first.
When Maya had almost been kidnapped, Genzou wanted nothing more than to personally make his way to Dahan and kill every single one of the perpetrators himself. The fact that someone else did it for him, in a manner that could not be topped by anyone he knew of, was nothing more than a welcome surprise.
Genzou held no ill will towards Maya's mysterious savior. The unknown figure rang every single alarm in his head as a clan head with how little information was available on him but Genzou still wanted to ignore it. Obviously, his mother did not feel the same way. In the last three years, she had spent a considerable number of resources and personnel on a wild goose chase that had ultimately led her nowhere. In fact, Genzou was the only member of the clan that had met the mysterious figure in person, a fact, that he knew, made his mother go crazy.
So, for the most part, life had been relatively peaceful for him. Until a random kid managed to completely ruin it for him, that is.
Shiba Tatsuya was an existence that Genzou couldn't wrap his head around. The kid obviously didn't do anything to him but his very existence raised some uncomfortable questions for Genzou. While he would never cheat on his wife, Tatsuya had him questioning whether he made any mistakes in the past for a moment.
The kid looked way too much like him to the point that they had to run a DNA test on the kid's biological material just to make sure that he wasn't one of them. The test had confirmed that he did not share any biological material with anyone in the family which ruled out all of his deceased uncles as well. However, the resemblance was unmistakable and some other families had taken notice of this as well.
If the kid had been just a random kid who looked like Genzou, he could have been ignored as a freak accident. However, the reality was that the kid was ridiculously talented in magic.
One of the things that Genzou had to learn early into his reign as the Yotsuba patriarch was the fact that the majority of the Hundred Families and to an extent, most of the Ten Master Clans took a lot of pride in the fact that they were at the top of the Japanese magic pyramid. Some even went as far as to make it a part of their personality. Therefore, the fact that a random kid from a family that held no connections whatsoever with any of the Numbered clans, managed to beat their children in something magic-related, even if that something was nothing more than the results of a childish exam, irked a lot more people than most would guess. Couple that with the kid's resemblance to him, Genzou had come under a lot of fire from his fellow Clan heads.
He had run a thorough investigation on the kid's background as a result and there were no discrepancies. Shiba Tatsuya was a person who was completely accounted for and had no dirt on him. Even the kid's parents were ordinary law-abiding civilians. The other clans had come to a similar conclusion that the boy was just an anomaly. As far as he knew, almost all of the Ten Master Clans and a good portion of the other families were keeping an eye on the boy's performance in school in order to decide whether or not to invite him into their fold. He as well, was keeping a close eye on the boy which was easier to do since both his daughters attended the same school as the boy. He just had to wait a bit to get results.
Miya Yotsuba was a genius. There was no better word to describe her. She had learned the basics of magic at the age of five and could perfectly tune a CAD at the level of a professional CAD Engineer, at the age of ten. However, Miya wasn't an arrogant person. She knew that she didn't know everything about magic and she couldn't retain information about branches of magic that didn't excite her. Her knowledge, therefore, while comparable to that of full-grown adults, was still incomplete in many ways.
When she took the exams for Magic High, Miya was able to recognize a pattern in the questions. Every single topic aside from the relatively unimportant topics like History, comprised of questions that had no business to be in a high school exam with how advanced it was. This was true for almost every branch of the modern magic system. She understood that this was done with the purpose of identifying the strong suit of every candidate. Since children tend to focus on things that they excelled in, they would be knowledgeable about the magic branches that they excelled in. She herself was extremely proficient in Mental Interference Magic which was considered as outer magic. Therefore, the fact that someone had managed to perfect their answers in the theory portion of the exam was shocking to her.
Miya might not have been arrogant but she had her pride as one of the best in her generation. The fact that someone had managed to beat her at her own game irked her to no end. She carried this ire with her when she joined First High where the man that beat her was present.
Miya didn't think much about Shiba Tatsuya at first. Yes, he looked a lot like her dad, to the point that even her mom had entertained the concept that her father might have cheated on her, but the boy had been largely unremarkable to her at the time. He wasn't very responsive to Maya's questions and felt like he was somewhat uncomfortable in dealing with her. They hadn't talked much then.
As the heiress to the Yotsuba, Miya was well aware that she would have to eventually marry someone for the purpose of improving the bloodline and Shiba Tatsuya was a good specimen. The man's biological material had been analyzed by the scientists that they had managed to get their hands on and was found to be a great match for her. The man had an unnaturally high psion count that could be passed on to his children which would pair extremely well with their Mental Interference spells. Although her father was in denial, she knew that there was a very high chance that her grandmother would make either her or Maya marry the guy unless they met someone better suited. If you asked her, she would prefer to open her legs to someone who was at least as smart as her and Tatsuya fit the part as of now. Obviously, his actions in the future would determine his worth but the potential is there.
Life had changed a lot for Yotsuba Maya a lot since the events of her attempted kidnapping. She had trained a lot under the guidance of her uncles, to the point that she was sure that another attempt of a similar nature could be thwarted by herself. Therefore, she had a bit of leeway when it came to having fun.
Anyone close to her knew that Maya was a little sadistic. She liked seeing how uncomfortable she could make people, especially those of the opposite gender feel when interacting with her due to her natural charm. In all honesty, not even the Saegusa had been able to resist her charm when they were engaged. So, imagine her surprise when she came across someone who seemed to be completely immune to her.
Maya might have only been fifteen, but she was undoubtedly one of the best-looking fifteen-year-olds on the planet, much less Japan. The fact that one Shiba Tatsuya had been able to ignore her advances was somewhat of a shock. To be fair, she originally just wanted to get a profile of him due to his close resemblance to her father in appearance. However, as she had a conversation with him, her interests went in a different direction.
For some reason, he wasn't charmed at all by her which was strange because he was a bit uncomfortable by her presence even if he was unconsciously trying to avoid showing it. Something about his body language suggested that he was tired of dealing with her which was strange considering that they had met for the first time. However, he had remained courteous till the end and they parted on a positive note.
Maya had been a part of the Yotsuba forces that had been tasked with digging up dirt on Tatsuya purely out of curiosity. They had collected samples of his DNA from his house while he and his family were away on a family visit.
When the results of the Magic High Entrance Exams were released, Maya's curiosity about the boy peaked. She knew her sister very well and there were hardly any adults that could match her knowledge about the theory aspects of magic, much less someone her age. The fact that he somehow managed to beat her, that too by a considerable margin, was unbelievable. She knew that her sister had a thing for intelligent people and Tatsuya fit the bill. She was ready to support her sister if they decided to get hitched in the future but there was no denying that he was somewhat interesting to her as well. Therefore, Maya had been looking forward to starting high school to find out what made Shiba Tatsuya tick.
When the principal had invited Miya and her to form a Club Committee and a Disciplinary Committee respectively, Maya had originally wanted to decline since she wanted to enter the Student Council. However, Miya decided to agree on her behalf, and being the good sister that she was, she couldn't say no to her sister. Therefore, she was stuck with the disciplinary Committee and her hunting time would be way less in the future.
She had decided to maximize her available opportunities to try and push Tatsuya's buttons by spending as much time as possible with him before both of them got too busy with the committee work. She had invited him to walk with her to the front of the school and he had obliged. Although they only talked for a few minutes, with her talking and him answering for the most part, Maya concluded that the boy's nonchalant behavior in front of her was not a fluke. He didn't seem to mind having eye contact with her and could talk comfortably without letting his eyes wander. Even her normally stoic sister was mildly impressed by his knowledge.
When her mom had offered to drop Tatsuya off at his house, she was somewhat glad. The stoic boy was quickly becoming a friend of hers and she kind of liked talking to him. All in all, her school life looked like it was going to be fun.
All in all, it was a rather short chapter but hopefully the next one will be longer and take less time to finish. I'll see you soon.