The first thing Jin noticed when he opened his eyes was the noise.
Not the normal kind.
The room was quiet.
No television played downstairs.
No footsteps moved through the hallway.
Even the traffic outside was distant enough to ignore.
Yet Jin could hear everything.
The faint hum of electricity inside the walls.
The soft movement of air beneath the door.
The uneven texture of the ceiling.
Dust drifting through the sunlight.
The tiny changes in temperature across his skin.
His eyes had only been open for a few seconds, but his mind was already drowning in information.
Jin shut them.
It didn't help.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the darkness behind his eyelids while the world continued pressing itself into his awareness.
"Okay," he muttered. "That's a lot."
He rubbed his face and immediately regretted it when he became aware of every tiny shift in pressure against his skin.
"Yep. Still a lot."
The Six Eyes weren't simply enhanced vision.
They allowed him to perceive cursed energy, movement, distance, and the smallest changes in his surroundings with terrifying precision.
The problem was that Jin had no idea how to filter any of it.
For the first hour, he did nothing but experiment.
He let the Six Eyes run freely, forcing himself to endure the flood of information. At first, everything seemed equally important.
The dust in the air demanded as much attention as the movement outside his door.
The faint warmth of the floor competed with the sound of his own breathing.
Then Jin noticed something.
His mind was already trying to sort the information.
Movement mattered more than dust.
Energy mattered more than temperature.
Anything approaching him mattered more than the shape of the ceiling.
He followed that instinct.
Instead of trying to shut the Six Eyes off, Jin began deciding what deserved his attention.
That was his first lesson.
He didn't need less information.
He needed better control.
By the time he left his room, he had created a crude mental filter. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough to keep him from feeling as though his brain was being buried beneath an avalanche.
He made it halfway down the stairs before another problem appeared.
He was starving.
Not normal hungry.
Jin entered the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, stared inside, closed it, and opened it again.
"Come on," he said. "There has to be something in here that doesn't look like sadness."
Nothing looked satisfying.
Then he spotted a box of pastries on the counter.
He grabbed one and ate it in three bites.
A minute later, he reached for another.
Jin stared at the empty wrapper in his hand.
"Huh."
He looked toward the ceiling.
"Is this the famous superpower metabolism, or am I just stress-eating?"
No one answered.
He ate another pastry anyway.
He didn't know it yet, but sugar was about to become a regular part of his life.
Over the next few days, he learned that using the Six Eyes demanded more from his body than simply looking at things. His brain was constantly processing information, and the harder he pushed his perception, the more energy he burned.
The result was simple.
He was always hungry.
And he wanted sweets.
At first, Jin found it irritating.
Eventually, he accepted it as another cost of the power he had gained.
If his body needed sugar, he would give it sugar.
If his eyes needed filtering, he would learn to filter them.
And if the Tainted Satoru Gojo template demanded mastery, then Jin would master it.
Preferably without eating the entire kitchen.
That decision became the foundation of the weeks that followed.
Scott noticed the change almost immediately.
He didn't comment on it.
Jin appreciated that.
Mostly because he wasn't sure how he would explain, "Sorry, I was distracted by the electrical current in the walls," without sounding completely ridiculous.
Their training sessions had already become part of his daily routine. Scott understood that Jin learned better through repetition than lectures, so he kept the exercises simple at first.
Moving targets.
Reaction drills.
Thrown objects.
Sudden changes in direction.
Attacks from blind spots.
The first few sessions were humiliating.
Jin could see Scott's movements with perfect clarity, but seeing an attack and reacting to it were two different things. His eyes understood what was happening.
His body didn't always know what to do about it.
During one session, Scott slipped behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
Jin turned too late.
"You saw me," Scott said.
"I know."
"You still didn't move."
"I know."
Scott smiled.
Jin narrowed his eyes.
"Don't."
Scott laughed.
"You're the one who keeps staring at the wall."
"The wall is very interesting."
"It's a wall."
"You don't know that."
Scott glanced at the wall.
"Pretty sure I do."
The training continued.
Slowly, the Six Eyes became less overwhelming. Jin learned how to focus on one object without losing awareness of everything around him. He learned how to track movement without following every detail. He learned how to let the ability remain active without allowing it to control his attention.
He also learned that Scott had an irritating habit of looking pleased whenever Jin made progress.
"You're smiling again," Jin said during one session.
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I'm concentrating."
"Your concentration looks smug."
Scott threw another training ball at him.
Jin caught it.
"See?" Scott said. "You were distracted."
"I caught it."
"You still got distracted."
"I can multitask."
"Then catch the next three."
Scott threw three balls.
Jin caught two.
The third hit him in the shoulder.
Scott's smile returned.
Jin pointed at him.
"That one was defective."
"That one was a ball."
"It had bad intentions."
Scott laughed again.
Then, one afternoon, something inside Jin shifted.
There was no warning.
No sound.
No visible sign.
Jin simply felt a new instinct settle into place.
For several seconds, he didn't move.
Then the system appeared.
[M.O.T.S.]
[Tainted Satoru Gojo]
[Assimilation Threshold Reached: 40%]
[New Ability Acquired: Six Eyes]
Jin stared at the notification.
His expression tightened.
The ability was already active, but the notification confirmed what he had begun to understand.
The Six Eyes were not merely a temporary effect.
They were now part of the template's assimilation process.
The change was not dramatic.
No wave of power knocked him off his feet.
No flood of memories appeared in his mind.
Instead, his perception sharpened.
The information he had been struggling to process suddenly became more organized. The world did not become quieter, but it became clearer. His mind began separating movement from stillness, energy from background noise, and threats from harmless details.
Jin blinked.
Then he looked toward the far end of the training room.
He could see every object.
Every fluctuation.
Every shift in Scott's posture.
He could even tell which foot Scott would move first before Scott moved it.
Scott noticed his expression.
"What?"
Jin looked back at him.
"I think I just got better at seeing."
Scott glanced around the room.
"That was already your thing."
"Apparently, I needed practice."
The change continued settling into him.
His balance adjusted.
His posture straightened.
His center of gravity became easier to understand.
When Jin moved, the motion felt smoother than before, as if his body had begun recognizing the correct path before his mind finished choosing it.
He raised one hand.
Shifted his weight.
Moved.
The action was simple, but Jin immediately understood what had changed.
Before, he had consciously decided how to move.
Now, some part of him simply knew.
It wasn't the same as gaining years of combat experience overnight. He still lacked practical knowledge, timing, and the instincts that came from surviving real fights.
But something within the template had begun influencing his body.
Not just his abilities.
His instincts.
Jin spent the next several days testing the change.
His movements became cleaner.
His reactions became faster.
He started noticing openings without deliberately searching for them.
During their next training session, Scott attacked from the side.
Jin moved before he consciously registered the strike.
Scott stopped.
Jin stopped as well.
"What?"
Scott studied him.
"Nothing."
"You were about to say something."
"I was."
"But?"
Scott shook his head.
"You're getting better."
Jin nodded.
"That sounded almost disappointed."
"It wasn't."
"Good. I was worried I would have to become worse again to make you happy."
Scott laughed.
The next stage took longer.
Jin spent weeks refining his control while life at the school continued around him.
The X-Men remained active.
Students came and went.
Training sessions filled the days.
News reports continued discussing mutants, public fear, and the growing presence of the X-Men in the world.
From the outside, Jin looked mostly unchanged.
That was exactly how he wanted it.
He didn't want people asking questions.
He didn't want attention.
He needed time to understand what was happening to him before anyone else noticed.
That didn't stop people from noticing other things.
Like the amount of food he was eating.
One afternoon, Jin returned to the kitchen and found Scott staring at the empty cereal boxes on the counter.
"Before you say anything," Jin said, "I can explain."
Scott looked at the boxes.
"Can you?"
"No."
"How many bowls?"
"That depends on how you define a bowl."
"Jin."
"Seven."
Scott stared at him.
Jin lifted a finger.
"Small bowls."
"That doesn't make it better."
"It makes it technically accurate."
His progress slowed enough that he nearly forgot about the next breakthrough.
Then, after another long training session, something new answered his concentration.
Jin's expression changed.
For the first time, he understood that he had reached a completely different level.
The system appeared.
[M.O.T.S.]
[Tainted Satoru Gojo]
[Assimilation Threshold Reached: 50%]
[New Ability Acquired: Infinity]
Infinity wasn't just another technique.
It was one of Satoru Gojo's defining abilities.
Jin raised his hand.
Nothing happened.
At least, nothing visible.
He stared at his palm.
The ability was there.
He could feel it—not as an object inside his body, but as an understanding of space itself. Distance no longer seemed like a fixed thing. It felt like something that could be divided, stretched, and controlled.
Jin picked up a small training ball and held it in front of himself.
Then he looked at Scott.
"Touch my hand."
Scott raised an eyebrow.
"That's the test?"
"Yes."
"You couldn't come up with anything more dramatic?"
"I considered asking you to throw a car at me, but I thought we should start small."
Scott shrugged and reached forward.
His hand moved toward Jin's.
Then it slowed.
Scott continued pushing, but the distance between them refused to disappear. The closer his fingers came, the slower they moved, until they stopped just short of Jin's skin.
Scott frowned.
"That's new."
Jin watched the invisible space between them.
Infinity didn't feel like a shield.
It felt like control over the distance between two points.
Jin lowered his hand.
The effect vanished, and Scott's fingers immediately touched him.
"That's going to take some getting used to," Scott said.
"Probably."
"Can you turn it off?"
"Yes."
"Can you control it automatically?"
Jin considered the question.
"Not yet."
Scott nodded.
"Then that's what we work on."
Jin looked at the space between them.
"Can we work on something less likely to make everyone think I'm haunted?"
"No."
"Had to ask."
And they did.
The following weeks were exhausting.
Infinity was powerful, but possessing it wasn't the same as controlling it.