Rotten blood 1/5
Rotten blood:
The Substitution
The air in the Gojo clan’s dead archives room smelled of ancestral dust and charcoal ink. It was not a meeting room, but a repository of bureaucratic bones. [Name] understood, in that moment, that she too was a document to be archived.
Three elders, their faces as wrinkled as the scrolls they guarded, formed a rigid semicircle.
At the head of the dark oak table sat two pillars of silence: on one side, her father, Møki Takahiro, his posture so straight it looked painful. On the other, the Gojo Patriarch, a presence that did not fill the space, but drained the air from it.
Beside her, Satoru Gojo reclined in his chair, balancing on its back legs, a red lollipop spinning between his fingers with idle rhythm. His dark glasses concealed the Six Eyes, and his posture radiated absolute boredom, as if he were trapped in an unbearably tedious ritual.
To [Name], he was the antithesis of everything she respected: responsibility, discretion, effort.
None of them looked at her.
“Read the decree,” ordered the central elder, his voice a dry paper whisper.
The youngest of the attendants, a man wearing glasses who dared not lift his head, unrolled a scroll. His voice trembled slightly on the first syllable, then flattened into monotony.
“By the power vested in the hereditary councils of the Gojo and Møki clans, and in observance of the blood accords of the Heian period… it is hereby attested to the chronic energetic incompatibility of the primary heir, Haruka Møki, with the containment and stability requirements of the Gojo lineage…”
The words were heavy waters, drowning any hope in a sea of clannish jargon. [Name] felt her father’s eyes on her, not as support, but as weight. A silent order: Do not move. Do not breathe loudly.
“…Therefore, the right, duty, and obligation of the alliance marriage is transferred to the second heir, [Name] Møki, with immediate effect. The matrimonial bond shall be consummated after her eighteenth birthday, as stipulated.”
The silence that followed was the most complete [Name] had ever known. Even the faint click of Satoru’s lollipop against his teeth seemed muffled.
“Sign,” said the elder.
Her father went first. His quill scraped across the parchment with a final sound. His name was a straight line, without flourish, a blade cutting through a daughter’s future. The Gojo Patriarch gave a nearly imperceptible nod and stamped his family seal with a hollow thump that echoed through the room. Satoru stretched his arm, picked up the quill his father had left behind, and scribbled his signature with the disinterested fluidity of someone signing a receipt.
Then he pushed the scroll and quill toward her across the table. His eyes, invisible behind the glasses, seemed to pierce her anyway.
“Here, princess,” he said, his voice slightly distorted by the candy. “Your future in one line.”
Her hand trembled as she took the quill. The ink was thick, black as jet. She searched for her father’s gaze. What she found was not encouragement. It was imperative. The same expression he used when ordering her to maintain perfect posture for hours. Obey.
She signed. The ink ran slightly, smudging the edge of her name. A mistake. An imperfection. No one commented. The document was… almost complete.
That was when she noticed it.
At the bottom of the scroll, beneath the signatures of the patriarchs and Satoru, there were lines for three more official seals. Seal of Witness of the Zen’in Clan. Seal of Witness of the Kamo Clan. Seal of Registry of the Higher Council. They were empty. Without them, the contract was merely a gentleman’s agreement, a fragile promise. Politically crippled.
The marriage would occur, but her children would lack full legitimacy in succession, confined to a secondary branch. It would be a façade agreement, and she, the bride, would be disposable. If anything went wrong, the clans would wash their hands of it.
It was a crucial detail, final proof that this was a transaction, not a sealed fate.
“Everything is in order,” declared the elder, as if the blank spaces were not screaming. “The witness seals will be obtained later. This session is adjourned.”
And just like that, without further ceremony, they rose. The Patriarch and Satoru left first, without a word of farewell. Her father made a rigid bow and followed them. [Name] remained standing, staring at the black ink stain that was now her name, forever bound to Satoru Gojo’s by a contract she had not read, did not fully understand, and that was not even fully legitimized.
---
She found him in the eastern corridor, the administrative wing where he handled clan affairs. His hostility was environmental, like the cold marble beneath her feet.
“Father.”
He did not stop. “The matter is closed, [Name].”
“Why?” The word snapped out louder than she intended. He stopped, but did not fully turn, his profile a sharp silhouette against the lantern’s dim light. “Haruka is the firstborn. The agreement was always with the firstborn. This is… an affront to her, to our clan!”
He finally turned. His eyes, the color of wet stone, held no patience. “Haruka is not compatible. Her energy system is unstable. It fluctuates. It would be a risk. A hereditary defect we cannot afford to bind to the Six Eyes.”
The word “defect” echoed in her mind, rough and filthy. It was not mere incompatibility; it was something shameful, stained in the blood.
“A risk?” she repeated, disbelief choking her. “She’s been trained for this since birth! How can mine be more stable? I don’t want this! She… she wants it!”
“What she wants is irrelevant,” he cut in, his voice a sharpened blade. “What you want is irrelevant. Your lives are not defined by desire, but by utility. Hers ceased to be ideal. Yours, by a conjunction of factors that do not concern you, became so. End of discussion.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her stunned. The echo of his footsteps in the empty corridor sounded like hammer blows.
None of this should have been happening. There had always been an implicit agreement, never spoken aloud, but solid enough to support her: Haruka would follow the destiny prepared for her, and [Name] would remain on the margins. Invisible. Free. When she turned eighteen, she would leave that world where even the air seemed to belong to someone else.
Now they had swapped the pieces. Without warning. Without choice.
Haruka was not unstable. She was alive. If that was called a defect, then the problem lay not in her blood, but in the clans’ fear of anything that did not obey perfectly.
Still, the Gojo had decided. And her father had accepted.
That was what burned the most.
As for Satoru Gojo, thinking of him stirred not anger, but revulsion. A man raised to never hear “no,” to consume people as distractions, shielded by his own genius and the name he carried. The rumors did not need repeating. Different bodies, forgettable faces, no consequences. And now they demanded from her permanence, purity, commitment.
The thought of belonging to that system made her nauseous.
She did not want to be a wife, a link, a vessel, an heir. She wanted to disappear from the hierarchy. To live without every gesture carrying political consequence. To love without it being an investment. To err without it becoming clan shame.
With her chest tight and throat dry, a childish, almost pathetic impulse surfaced: to seek her mother. Perhaps, faced with such blatant injustice, she would be seen. Not as a solution. Just as a daughter. Even if only once.
---
Haruka’s room was a sanctuary of a shattered future. Expensive fabrics, bridal gown sketches, and books on clanic etiquette lay scattered, but everything felt dead. The air smelled of salts and salty tears.
Her mother sat on the edge of the canopy bed, holding Haruka’s hand. Haruka was curled in on herself, face buried in a silk pillow, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
[Name] stopped in the doorway, feeling like an intruder. “Mother?”
Her mother did not turn. Haruka lifted her face. Her swollen, red eyes met [Name]’s. The hatred in them was so pure that [Name] took a step back.
“Did you come to show off?” Haruka whispered, her voice a hoarse blade. “Satisfied now?”
“Haruka, I didn’t—”
“Stop.” Haruka pushed herself upright, trembling and unsteady. “Spare me. I know what you always thought. That I was a fool, shaping myself for a decorative marriage. That you were the clever one, dreaming of freedom.” Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “And now look. Who was the fool?”
Their mother tightened her grip on Haruka’s hand. “Please, daughter. This isn’t about—”
“No, mother. It is.” Haruka did not look away from [Name]. “It’s about merit. I prepared. I studied every rule, every history, every nuance of Gojo energy. And she?” A short, sharp laugh. “She can’t even sit through a tea ceremony without getting bored. She dreams of running off to the world of commoners. And now they’re handing her to him. Like a misdelivered package.”
[Name] felt the words as physical blows. “You think this is a prize? Marriage to someone like Satoru Gojo? You think he’ll see you as anything more than another clanic accessory?”
“He is the peak,” Haruka spat, eyes shining with conviction bordering on fanaticism. “The closest thing to a god this world has ever seen. And you… you stole him from me.”
[Name] felt compassion for her sister despite the accusations. The fate she rejected with revulsion was another’s gilded dream. The irony was so cruel it bordered on grotesque.
“Get out. GET OUT OF MY ROOM!”
Their mother sighed, a sound that seemed to rise from her feet. She stroked Haruka’s hair mechanically. “Forgive her, [Name]. Haruka is shaken.” The sentence closed a door. An apology for the scene, not its content.
[Name] frowned. Only Haruka suffered? And me? If she is shaken, I am shattered. My destiny was compromised, my right to choose stripped away. I was imprisoned with Satoru Gojo. And I was supposed to understand her insults and dismissal? Her mother’s coldness was worse than her sister’s hatred. It was the denial of her own humanity, her own pain.
“You only care about Haruka,” [Name] snapped, voice breaking. “I’m your daughter too! I’m just as devastated as she is!”
Her mother finally looked at her fully, and what [Name] saw made her feel even emptier. It was not love, nor even reproach. It was resigned detachment. The gaze of someone seeing a logistical problem, an emotional obstacle to be managed, not a daughter in agony.
“Your role is different, [Name]. Accept it.”
The reply was soft, cold, and final.
Unable to endure another second in that suffocating room of grief, hatred, and diseased jealousy, [Name] turned and left. Her tabi sandals made a muted sound against the tatami as she ran down the corridor without looking back. Everything was coming apart, and no one seemed to care about the fragments she represented.
---
But unlike Haruka, [Name] did not allow herself to collapse into tears.
A deeper cold settled in her chest, solidifying rage, despair, and revulsion into something sharper and more dangerous: determination. She would not accept her tragic fate.
She did not go to her room. She diverted to the small secondary library her father allowed her to use for supplementary studies.
The “blood defect” he had mentioned and the blank seals on the contract spun in her mind, two intertwined riddles. A defect was something hereditary, filthy, hidden in records. A contract without its principal witnesses was a house of cards in clanic politics.
Perhaps the answer to one was the key to sabotaging the other.
[Name] pulled out a heavy oak chair and sat at the desk. The oil lantern’s light flickered, casting long, unstable shadows over tomes of genealogy and clanic law. The smell of old paper and waxed wood, usually calming, now felt like the scent of a battlefield to be explored.
She would investigate.
She would find the truth.
(...)
I promise, it’s promising. Darker than romance.
