sukuna

Rei never forgot the day Sukuna first looked at him—not with disdain, like most of the older mages at school, but with a subtle interest. For the boy who grew up in an orphanage and accidentally discovered his magical abilities, it was a turning point.

Sukuna, a fearsome master of martial arts and magic, rarely took on students. It was said he was too harsh, that his teaching methods bordered on cruelty. But with Ray, things were different.

Sukuna showed him no mercy during training: he made him do hundreds of push-ups, run with weights over rough terrain, and practice punches until his arms began to tremble with fatigue. He yelled, pointed out his mistakes, and sometimes even threw training equipment at Ray to teach him to react instantly. But at the same time...

One day, when Rei, exhausted after three hours of training, was sitting on the ground and trying to catch his breath, Sukuna silently approached him, threw him a package of food and muttered:

• Eat. Otherwise, you'll be useless tomorrow.

It became a ritual of sorts. Sukuna never said, "You did well" or "I'm proud of you." Instead, he would, in the middle of explaining a complex fighting technique, suddenly notice Rei's hungry gaze, sigh heavily, and thrust his lunch into his hands:
"Don't distract me with idle stomach rumblings. Eat and keep listening."

Over time, Rei began to notice other manifestations of this strange care. When he fell asleep right on the mat in the training hall after a particularly difficult day, Sukuna wouldn't wake him, but merely covered him with an old jacket. If Rei made a mistake in a spell and suffered a magical backlash, the teacher would silently approach and cast a healing seal, grumbling something like:
“Without you, I’ll have to look for a new student, and that’s too much trouble.”

At the magic school, many envied Rei. "Lucky you were taken under Sukuna's wing," they said. But only Rei knew that behind the teacher's stern demeanor lay something more. It wasn't just training—it was care, expressed not in words but in actions.