Slowly, she carefully pouring the creamer into her cup with delicate handsas if afraid to ruin the tea's purity.
From across the table, Akifumi couple watched this scene unfold, their jaw slowly dropping in disbelief.
'Wait Mugiho don't tell me you've already put your hand on Yor too?!'
[250] Safe Haven
After a brief visit, Akifumi's parents only stayed for a short while before heading back to the airport, skipping dinner.
Following a casual lunch in the airport lounge, the two boarded a private jet and returned to their Alan Institute in Singapore.
Meanwhile, Mugiho sat slumped in a chair in Narita Airport's lounge, the air conditioner humming softly as cold air brushed against him.
His eyes fixed on the large window, watching the distant plane shrink into the clouds until it vanished. With a heavy sigh, Akifumi muttered to himself,
"So what am I supposed to do with this?"
He lifted his hand, examining the small bronze owl pendant his father had given hima silent, cryptic gift.
Just an hour ago, after their meal, Mugiho's mother suddenly grabbed Yor's arm, who was sitting beside herand pulled her into an enthusiastic hug.
"Yor~! I just realized I forgot to buy souvenirs! Would you mind coming with me for a bit?"
"Eh?" Yor's voice wavered with uncertainty as she glanced at Mugiho and his father.
She wasn't sure if splitting up was a good idea.
The VIP airport lounge felt eerily empty, with only a handful of staff lingering nearbyeach handpicked by Akifumi Ye himself.
Noticing Yor's hesitation, Akifumi Ye simply smiled.
"Go ahead, Yor. My wife could use the company. Meanwhile, I'd like to have a little father-son talk with Mugiho."
With that, he hooked an arm around Mugiho's neck in a playful headlock.
"Every now and then, a man needs some quality bonding time with his son."
'What is this old man even saying' Mugiho, stuck in his father's grip, could only sigh with a deadpan expression.
"Come on, Yor! I bet we can find some cute clothes for you too! It's been ages since you went shopping, hasn't it?"
"No, Nakui-sama, you really don't have to"
Before Yor could protest further
Nakui's was already dragging her toward the exit, bubbling with excitement.
"Maybe we can even get your formal kimono!" Nakui chirped, her voice full of glee as she whisked Yor away.
Mugiho watched as his mother exited with Yor in hand, but a sudden headache made him wince. He turned back to his father.
"So, what's this about? Why did you want to talk to me alone?"
"Heh. As I thoughtsharp as ever."
'Of course I know' Mugiho thought.
Ever since tea time, his father had avoided any meaningful conversationespecially about their family.
He'd chatted about everything else while Yor was in the room, skirting the subject as if he either didn't want to discuss it or didn't want someone else to hear.
Akifumi Ye raised a hand and gave a casual wave.
The staff on standby immediately filed out of the VIP lounge. In under a minute, the room was emptyjust father and son left in the silence.
'Is this the power of money?' Mugiho mused.
Having been raised as an ordinary person, this kind of treatment still unsettled him. The only times he'd experienced something similar were during visits to anime studios or publisher offices.
Akifumi Ye pulled a sleek white box from his jacketPrimeros by Davidoff Dominican printed in elegant script.
He flipped it open, retrieved a single cigarette, and tucked the rest away.
Mugiho watched as his father carefully trimmed the tip with a straight cutter.
"I didn't know you smoked," he said, surprised.
In all his memories, he'd never seen him touch a cigarette.
Akifumi Ye chuckled. "I quit after marrying your mother."
"Then why now?"
His father didn't answer. Instead, he lit the cigarette, took a slow, deep drag, and exhaled before setting it down.
"Well a lot of things." Akifumi Ye's face grew distant, exhaustion creeping into his voice.
"You know my given name is 'Ye,' right?"
"Yes. What's wrong with that?"
"It's the bloodline. Your grandmother wasn't Japaneseshe was Chinese. These days, people here are slowly opening up to foreigners, but back then?" He let out a dry laugh. "I wasn't so lucky."
"Your grandfather adored her. Truly. He pampered hergifts, affection, all of it. The man who ruled boardrooms with an iron fist would melt in her presence. People whispered, 'Who is this woman who tamed the Fujiwara heir?'"
Akifumi's knuckles whitened around his cigarette. "But not everyone approved. The old familiesthose relics clinging to a dead eraraged."
"'The Fujiwara have fallen to outsiders,' they said. Power is a cruel game, Mugiho. When you have too much, others scavenge for flaws. And your grandmother blood? To them, it was a stain."
"Your grandfather fought to silence them. But the moment he died" The ember of his cigarette flared as he inhaled sharply. "They came for me. The heir with 'outsider' blood."
Mugiho stay silence.
Humans were like this, weren't they? Even among their own kinddividing, mocking, carving wounds over meaningless differences.
Like Eriri said some people are just idiots.
Akifumi Ye studied Mugiho's annoyed expression and chuckled, stroking his son's hair before continuing.
"When you were born, we both wanted the best for you. We wanted you to live freelyto never have to worry about any of this."
"We wanted you to have the power to choose your own future."
He took a slow drag from his cigarette, exhaling smoke into the dimly lit room.
"So, we created new identities and moved to Japan, hoping to give you something close to a normal life."
"But the Fujiwara family still has obligationsduties we couldn't abandon. That's why we often traveled overseas: to manage things while keeping our other lives hidden."
His voice turned cold as he crushed the cigarette into the ashtray.
"To the outside world, the Akifumi familyyour mother's side was just another ordinary household. That's how it should have stayed."
Mugiho frowned. "What happened?"
"Mugiho, remember what I told you before? Our family owns a security company here in Japan."
"Yeah What about it?" Mugiho feigned confusion, though his mind raced, comparing his father's words to what he already knew.
"When I said Japan was safe, especially TokyoI wasn't joking. You've lived here your whole life. Haven't you noticed?" Akifumi's gaze sharpened.
"No terrorism. No murders. No kidnappings. No illegal arms trafficking. Hell, not even any robberies. Doesn't that strike you as unnatural?"
"Now that you mention it, yeah. It is weird." Mugiho played along, letting his father unravel the truth piece by piece.
In any normal society, it was strange. No matter how well-governed, crime was inevitablea symptom of human nature itself.
Society was built on inequality. At birth, everyone might appear equal, but gaps quickly emergedthrough effort, privilege, or sheer luck.
Weaknesses festered. Resentments grew. And where there was imbalance, crime followed. Humanity had never been good at accepting unfairness quietly.
"Because it is unnatural," Mugiho father leaned forward, his voice dropping. "This is all happen because of DADirect Attack. Their mission is to keep Japan 'clean' by any means necessary."
"'Clean'?" Mugiho echoed.
Akifumi's eyes locked onto his son's. "You're smart. You've spent enough time with Yor. Surely, you've noticed something off about her?"
Mugiho stayed silent. It wasn't just himMahiru and Eriri thought so too.
And that meant something, considering Mashiro was hardly a benchmark for normalcy.
But Yor? She didn't just blur the line between odd and unsettlingshe erased it entirely. She'd once asked them what manga was, for god's sake.
Akifumi chuckled. "That's how effective DA is. But recently something unexpected happened."
"Do you remember?"
Mugiho frowned, sifting through memories.
His mind raced, stitching together his father's cryptic hints.
'DA is the reason why they left me in Tokyoright where Lycoris agents roam the streets, "cleaning" threats before they even surface'
Then it hit him.
"Wait." His breath caught. "Are you talking about that car accident?"
[251] Misunderstanding
[PS, Sorry the previous one I upload was an unedited chapter this is the correct one!]
[And please leave Power Stone and review Q-Q]
"Wait are you talking about that car accident?"
"Yes, that's right," Akifumi Ye replied with a heavy voice.
He grabbed his cigar again, took one last deep drag, then stubbed it out in the ashtray.
"Sigh What happened to your friend, Taki Tomoya, wasn't it?is a damn shame. That poor boy wasn't supposed to die young like that."
"Are you saying it wasn't an accident?" Mugiho asked.
He waited for an answer, but Akifumi didn't respond immediately. Instead, his father just sat there, turn his head up and stare blankly at the ceiling before continuing.
"That's what I thought tooat first. When I heard you were involved in an accident, your mother and I panicked."
"We thought someone finally found out about you."
"We thought we already lost you and it terrified us, but when we found out it wasn't you who died we couldn't help feeling relieve, and let our guards down."
"We wanted to pay our condolences to the Taki family and make sure the driver responsible faced justice, but when we tried to track them down the police kept delaying the accident report."
Mugiho's narrowed his eyes hearing that. "You mean someone's covering it up?"
"At the time, we didn't care," his father admitted. "We just thought maybe the culprit was on the run, or connected to some powerful family in Japan so that is they try to cover it. That's when we made our mistake."
Mugiho furrowed his brow further, massaging his temples as the pieces clicked together.
'So that's why you sent Yor away'
"Sending Yor-san to me that was your mistake, wasn't it?" Mugiho said slowly.
"Yes" Akifumi Ye sighed. "After experiencing that we thought that the protection that you have in Japan is still lacking, we become too paranoid and hastily decided to sent Yor to protect you."
".."
Mugiho couldn't bring himself to believe it, thinking the possibility that Yor is conspiring to kill him is unlikely, Yor have a straight personality if she give an order to give rid of him, she will just do it.
'If Yor was really involved why was he still alive?' None of her actions from back then made sense.
Akifumi Ye studied his son's conflicted expression and sighed.
'Did he already cross paths with Yor?' Akifumi thought bitterly. He wanted freedomhappinessbut his son had to understand his own limit.
'He already have 2 girlfriends now, if this continue to happen how many girlfriends do you want?'
He just hope that the parents of those girls can be understanding, otherwise he probably get killed by them rather than by his enemy.
Akifumi Ye just sigh before continuing, "Don't worry, It probably wasn't Yor herself, but people connected to her."
"But one thing is for sure that the moment Yor made contact with you, the police report we received stated, 'No car accident occurred at that time.' That's when we knew something was wrong."
"I sent my own people to investigate," Akifumi Ye admitted. "And what they found was worsethe car involved had vanished entirely. If this were years ago, I could understand records being lost. But for a recent case to disappear? That means someone was tipped off."
A cold realization settled between them.
"Taki Tomoya died because whoever did this knew of you existbut doesn't who you are. and they knew us very well."
"First, they knew your mother and I left you in Tokyo the place where Fujiwara most trusted agent DA resided, believing it was safe."
"Second, they had a rough estimate of your age."
"Third, they anticipated that DA agents would be shadowing you to protect you."
"And fourth They predicted that we wouldn't return to Tokyo often, because hiding you meant keeping our distance from the persona family we created."
"After knowing all of that searching for your identity is just a matter of elimination process."
A bitter laugh escaped Mugiho.
Now that he thought about it, how easy would it be to narrow down these 2 seemingly "normal" high school students living alone in Tokyo yet somehow DA surveillance often tailing them without direct contact?
"" Mugiho sat there, staring at the ember in the ashtraystill clinging to life, flickering weakly.
Back when Mugiho had been a hardcore otaku, he'd spent more time with Tomoya than he cared to admit.
'Had they marked Tomoya too? Dragged him into this mess by mistake? Just because they often hanging out?'
'So it was all just a fucking misunderstanding?' Mugiho thought to himself.
Previously, he'd brushed it off as an accident. But now? Guilt gnawed at him. Even if his past life hadn't known Tomoya well, but the memories of his friend lingered like a ghost.
He took a sharp breath before turning to his father. "Did you find who did this?"
"No but we have a lead." Akifumi Ye snatched a tissue from the table, then pulled a pen from his jacket.
"After a while, they must've realized you were still alive and that they'd gotten the wrong person. Especially since Yor contacted you."
He pressed the pen to the flimsy tissue. "The moment we started digging more, rumors spread like wildfire in Japan that 'The Fujiwara family descendant is Akifumi Mugiho.' It's like they tried to vanishburying themselves in the shadows before we could even trace them."
Mugiho's head felt headache. "So it's a dead end. If everyone knows about me now, how the hell is that a lead?"
"Because we got lucky." Akifumi's pen scraped across the tissue as he scribbled names. "After cutting off the rumor, we confirmed only four families in Japan are still actively chasing that rumors."
He tapped the tissue, the ink bleeding faintly into the fibers.
"First is the Shinomiya family."
"Second is the Ayanokouji family."
"Third is the Sakayanagi family."
"And finally the Yukinoshita family."
[252] Can I Have a Support?
"Some of these families have had trouble with the Fujikawa family beforeespecially the Ayanokouji family. We've always had... differing opinions about how to handle things ," Akifumi Ye said, his tone calm but firm.
"The rest of the families are pretty harmless for now. But just in case, keep these names in mind."
Mugiho picked up the tissue from the table where several names were scrawled in neat handwriting. The moment his eyes scanned the list, his head throbbed.
