Your Life As A Tokyo Jujutsu High Background Student

Chapter 36 - As the sky darkens

Most of these days, you spent your nights alone in the school library, neck-deep in your scheming. There was something magical about having the entire grand space to yourself, especially at this late hour.

As you strolled through the dimly lit main hall, the soft ambient illumination from the antique glass lamps cast a warm glow across the row upon row of books lining the walls. The scents of aged paper and polished wood filled the air, smells that never failed to soothe your soul.

You meandered between the towering shelves, running your fingers along the weathered spines, savoring the quiet whispers of centuries' worth of knowledge and stories. The silence was punctuated only by the occasional creak of floorboards underfoot.

Finally, you settled at one of the large reading desks positioned beneath the high arched windows. You flipped open your laptop, the soft glow from the screen casting shadows across your determined features as you dove headfirst back into your covert research on the High Council of Elders. Know your enemies and all that.

The easier play would've been just hitting up Shoko for the insider scoop. As an esteemed figure in the jujutsu world, she definitely had to be clued into the shadier institutional shit going down behind the scenes with the Council's upper ranks.

But you wanted to do your own homework first before barging into Shoko's office with your frankly treasonous, completely unhinged scheme. Best to get all your ducks in a row with a bulletproof game plan.

You gotta admit you loved a good puzzle. And digging up intel on the Council was the kind of challenge that tickled your brain in the right way. It wasn't like these dinosaurs have their own Linkedin profiles with job titles and experience neatly presented, though. Just figuring out who the hell sat on that stupid board required you to pull some truly chaotic feats of investigation and cross-referencing the mountains of decrees and regulations you managed to extract from the school archive.

So, this cabal of dusty old men consisted of eight councilmen sporting the lofty "Elder" title, all answering to a single, withered Head Councilman perched at the top of their archaic pyramid scheme of unchallenged authority.

The three major jujutsu clans, of course, each had a council seat reserved for their decrepit representatives. For the Gojo clan, that position belonged to Gojo's grand-uncle, Gojo Oshiro. The Zen'in clan's council seat, unsurprisingly, was occupied by their supreme overlord, Zen'in Naobito. It was probably the same for the Kamo clan.

Of the remaining five Elders, you were personally acquainted with two – Gakuganji Yoshinobu, your arch-enemy and Yanagi Ryoga, Shino's father. Through your exhaustive research, you had also uncovered the identities of the other three Elders: Kimura, Fukui, and Yamamoto. Presiding over this shadowy cabal was the Head Councilman, Elder Yoshida.

Except for Yanagi Ryoga who was in his forties or so, the rest of them were ancient. Considering that sorcerers as a breed tended to die young, the very existence of these men must have defied some sort of natural laws.

As your mind wandered, morbidly hypothesizing what sort of twisted jujutsu techniques or binding vows (aside from general cowardice) could allow these fossils to shamble on for decades past their expiration dates, a sudden knock on a nearby bookshelf jolted you from your scholarly musings.