Toji grimaced and pulled Zoro into his arms, holding him like a father bear growling protectively with a cub in his embrace. He spoke in a low voice.
"Don't get the kid overly excited."
"Overprotection, huh. If the exchange is happening, you'll have to go to Kyoto too, Toji. You can't leave Zoro alone. It'd be good for you to participate while you're at it."
Toji glanced at Yaga as if asking for confirmation. Yaga understood Toji's intent and nodded. When the exchange took place, all faculty members from both schools were required to go to the hosting school.
Zoro, still held in Toji's strong arms, asked,
"What do we do there?"
"From what I've heard, there are individual and team competitions. The team competition involves catching curses as school teams, and the individual competition is literally fighting until only one person is left."
Hearing about the individual competition, Zoro seemed intrigued and chuckled,
"Have another go at it?"
"Weren't you left feeling unsatisfied last time?"
Before Zoro could respond, Toji turned him around to face him. As Zoro tilted his head slightly to the right as if asking 'why?', Toji was momentarily speechless.
It was a gesture Chie had shown in front of Toji a long time ago.
'Why, Toji?'
Toji cupped Zoro's face between his palms. Seeing his son, who looked like a marimo trapped between rocks, and still finding him cute, Toji admitted to himself that his love was indeed blinding.
'He'll change as he grows.'
Being cute when small is a trait of mammals. How big Zoro would grow, Toji wasn't sure, but given he had Toji's blood, he wouldn't be small.
'When he's a big man, he might not be so conspicuous to my eyes.'
One fact Toji overlooked was that he had never found young creatures particularly cute. It was his love that made Zoro appear adorable to him.
True to Toji's nature, rarely loving someone but not changing his heart once he does, his thick love would likely last much longer than he anticipated.
Even when the still small marimo grows to resemble Toji's physique and starts being called another gorilla.
Unaware of this, Toji pressed Zoro's cheeks with his palms and muttered,
"Just like your mother."
"?"
"But still, some things can't happen."
"What can't (what)?"
"Don't do anything dangerous."
"It's not dangerous."
While Satoru might not be entirely sane, he was definitely not someone who would use lethal techniques against a friend, let alone a young child. He wasn't careless enough to cause harm by mistake. The same went for Suguru. As for Shoko, she had no interest in exchanging blows with others.
As for Nanami and Haibara... frankly, even if they each found a powerful Devil Fruit somewhere, they wouldn't be a match for Zoro. Neither lacked talent in combat, but they were still too green.
I don't know much about the Kyoto side, but Zoro asked Gojo,
"Are the guys at Kyoto Jujutsu High strong?"
"Who knows? They're probably not as strong as us. If there was someone that strong at Kyoto Jujutsu High, we would have heard rumors by now."
At the Jujutsu High, being a Grade 2 sorcerer upon admission makes you a genius, and anything above Grade 1 makes you a monster. It's not for nothing that Satoru and Suguru, who quickly reached Grade 1 after enrolling, are called 'troublemakers but the strongest.'
...Well, Gojo and Geto weren't actually the strongest back then, and there could have been strong people who weren't known.
Gojo looked at Toji, the person in question. The overprotective gorilla, still thick-skinned from love, looked anxious even after hearing the earlier conversation. His overprotectiveness was quite severe, even considering Zoro was just a kid and prone to getting lost.
'Honestly, Zoro seems like he could chew up iron.'
Zoro turned to Toji and said,
"Did you hear? It's not dangerous."
I want to go. Zoro declared firmly. Toji tried to dissuade him again.
"Even so—"
"I'm not in danger. If anything, it would be dangerous for them."
Toji couldn't argue with that. Even with his biased love, Toji knew that if there was a fight, it wouldn't be Zoro who would get beaten up.
Toji clicked his tongue.
"Always have to win to satisfy your temper, my silly marimo."
"Who's silly?!"
Megumi, who had marched up with a sulky face, stood in front of Toji, hands on his hips, and tried to sound stern.
"Brother isn't silly."
"What?"
"To—ji. Sorry, done!"
"Chk!"
"Phahaha!"
Geto and Gojo couldn't help but burst into laughter. Ah, these kids. Shoko shook her head in disbelief as she watched her classmates.
"Hehehehehe."
Laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach and roll on the floor, Gojo made Toji so mad he almost stomped on him. But seeing Tsumiki giggling next to Megumi, somehow he just didn't have the heart to do it.
Feeling a mix of absurdity, an odd sense of injustice, and a faint warmth, Toji tousled Zoro's hair roughly.
"...It's all because of you, you know? My round little marimo."
"That's really too bad."
Zoro said in a voice not sorry at all. Haibara laughed and added,
"You really have a good relationship with your son!"
"...Yeah."
Nanami couldn't help but feel relieved. In this crazy world, there seemed to be one or two things that weren't mad.
...And exactly 3 seconds later, he regretted having that thought.
Toji, who had been tugging at Zoro's cheek in revenge (though he barely applied any force for fear of hurting him), looked at the first-year students with gleaming eyes and said,
"From tomorrow, you're all starting special training."
"Excuse me?"
"You have to face third-years, right? Then we need to intensify the training right away."
I can't stand to see my students losing. Toji said this with a menacing smile.
Nanami and Haibara felt a shiver run down their spines at that smile. Toji's reasoning seemed plausible, or at least it wasn't unreasonable.
But no matter how you looked at it, this was...
Haibara's eyes widened and he jumped up.
"Are you taking out your frustration on us because of what happened with your son?!"
"Frustration? I've already disciplined my marimo."
Toji asserted confidently.
Of course, that 'discipline' had involved nothing more than ruffling his hair and fiddling with his cheek, which, for Toji, was an unusually affectionate form of punishment, and he hadn't even punished the very young and vulnerable Megumi. For Toji, who saw a stark difference between family and others—as significant as the difference between this world and the next—it was a natural course of action.
Toji cracked his knuckles loudly.
"Brace yourselves. For the next two weeks, I'll show you what real combat experience is like."
Quick to grasp the situation, Haibara shouted at Zoro,
"...Senior Zoro! Save us!"
"Sure. I'll protect you when we're not at school."
"What...?"
Nanami's mind raced. Zoro, being a good kid, tried not to miss school, so he usually left for school on the shuttle bus by 8 AM at the latest. And he often returned to the Jujutsu High by around 2 PM.
...That meant they could potentially be at Toji's mercy for at least 6 hours on weekdays.
They might be lucky if Toji or they had missions so that there was no time for training, but seeing Toji burning with enthusiasm right now, the prospects didn't look bright.
Nanami stated calmly,
"We're screwed."
"...Huh? Nanami, what did you say?"
"We're scr—"
"Watch your mouth."
There are kids here, Nanami. Toji warned him. Of course, Nanami felt it was unfair. Who was it that created this swear-worthy situation, after all?
Geto glanced at the two juniors trembling in front of Toji, then sneakily looked at Ieiri.
"Shoko, should we intervene?"
"Nah, you'll get dragged into it too. You know what his temper is like."
"But we're their seniors. We should be kind to our juniors."
"Being too kind might just lead to us losing at the exchange because of them."
"Ah, that's a point."
"Hehehehe."
"...Satoru, stop laughing now."
Yaga held his aching stomach as he watched the entire chaotic scene. It seemed he might need to switch to a stronger antacid.
...
Two weeks later, on the day they were heading to the Kyoto Jujutsu High.
"...Hello."
"Hi, senior!"
Zoro stared at Haibara, who was smiling brightly in front of the chartered bus. Despite his cheerful smile, Haibara seemed to be emanating a dark aura. Nanami was no different.
'Given what they've been through the past two weeks, that's understandable.'
The training up to now was like child's play compared to how mercilessly Toji pushed them. Zoro did his best to protect them, but Toji cleverly exploited the times Zoro was at school to push Nanami and Haibara to their limits. Their training was reminiscent of the days with Mihawk in a previous life.
'I trained like that with him, too.'
Of course, Toji was slightly more merciful than Mihawk. Unlike Mihawk, who, with a somewhat fatalistic view, had slashed Zoro's left eye thinking if the boy died or was seriously injured, that was as far as he'd go, Toji did not inflict permanent physical injuries on them.
'The flow of their energy has clearly changed from two weeks ago.'
While they couldn't completely control the flow of their energy like Satoru or Suguru, at least they didn't feel green anymore.
It was honestly surprising. Zoro watched Toji adjusting Tsumiki's yellow picnic hat.
"I noticed this last time too, but you're pretty good at this teacher thing, Dad."
Toji shrugged.
"I have my moments."
Hearing Toji's words, Nanami and Haibara shuddered. If being a good teacher twice means risking the students' lives, they really were in danger. For real.
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