Her modesty and sense of propriety made her shy and flustered by reflex. And yet, faced with a proposal this directtoo direct, reallywhat rose inside her, along with embarrassment and a flicker of fear, was something even stronger: excitement, anticipation, and a hard-to-name thrill.
She didn't get angry. She didn't feel even the slightest urge to refuse or run. If anything, his decisiveness and dominance filled her with the warm satisfaction of being wantedand a guilty, heady sense of surrender.
Maybe from the moment she nodded and agreed to the date or rather, from the very first tremor she felt for himthe kind she shouldn't haveshe'd already foreseen this ending. Maybe she'd secretly hoped for it.
Her rational struggle guttered like a candle in the wind, snuffed out by a tidal wave of feeling. Under Rei Ao's oppressive, irresistible gaze, Hiromi finally yielded. She bowed her head, as if she could bury her burning cheeks in her chest, and with a voice soft as a mosquito's buzz, trembling, she breathed a tiny "Mm."
That faint reply worked like a passkey. The corner of Rei Ao's mouth curled higher, satisfied and pleased. He said nothing more, tightened his grip on her trembling hand, and led herunhurried and suretoward the doors of that temple to desire and surrender.
The revolving glass reflected their joined silhouettes, and Hiromi's faceflushed scarlet, eyes hazy yet resolute. She knew that once she stepped through, something would change for good. But right now, she was willingeager, evento meet the sweet madness she knew was coming.
The night was still long. What began as playacting was sliding toward what was most realand hottest.
Morning in Fuyuki City lay under a thin, clammy veil of mist. It wasn't a pure white, but tinged with gray, as if the whole world had been steeped in a cup of cold, flavorless coffee.
There were few pedestrians and cars. Now and then a commuter train rumbled over the rails, distant and heavy. Everything looked blurredthe lines of the buildings, the road ahead, the way home behind.
The air was saturated with moisture; each breath carried a chill that slipped into the lungs, along with that distinct city-morning tang of dust and faint exhaust.
In that boundless fog, a small figure in a pale lavender dress trailed blankly behind a tall man in a dark suit. The girl walked with difficulty, steps tiny, hesitant, and heavy, as if the pavement beneath her feet were not solid concrete but a sucking mire.
She was Tohsaka Sakura. She wore her favorite dress, its collar and cuffs edged with delicate lace hand-sewn by her mother, Tohsaka Aoi.
Before they left, her father, Tohsaka Tokiomi, had, for once, personally combed her hairgathering those soft purple strands and fixing them with a pretty clip.
She looked like a little princess all dressed up for some important ceremony. But her face, which should have been bright with innocent joy, was utterly blanknumb with emptiness.
The amethyst clarity that should have shone in her eyes had lost its focus, a shadow clinging to her like a veil. Buried deep was a fear she dared not show and a vast, crushing sadness.
Beneath the calm surface of her heart, dark currents were surging. Ever since her father gently shook her awake before dawn, her small head had been foggy, unable to think.
His voice had been as steady as everperhaps even a shade more solemn than usual. He had said many things. For a five-year-old, the words were too complex and foreign"adoption," "a mage's fate," "the honor of the Matou family," "a better future"
But now each term hit the uncomprehending lake of her heart like a cold stone, sending out ripples of biting chill.
~~~
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Chapter 968: Arriving at Matou House, Sakura's Despair
Be adopted by someone else?
Become someone else's child?
Why?
Did I do something wrong?
Is it because I didn't try hard enough?
Or because I'm not as gifted as Onee-chan at magic practiceso Father doesn't want me anymore?
Sakura's heart swirled with countless fears and questions.
"This is for your own good."
That was how Father ended it, his tone leaving no room for doubt.
But none of it felt "good" to her.
All she knew was that she would be leaving the home whose scent she'd known since birth; leaving the mother who always smiled gently and made her delicious treats; leaving Onee-chan, who might tease her sometimes but would hug her tight when she was scared and say, "Onee-chan will protect you."
She would go alone to live with complete strangersa "great family," as Father had only vaguely put it.
Sakura didn't want to go.
Not at all.
A small voice deep inside was screaming.
She wanted to throw herself into her mother's arms and be coddled, to grab her sister's hand for comfort, to tell Rin she didn't want this.
But she couldn't.
Her upbringingthe Tohsaka family's bone-deep emphasis on "grace" and "rules," and especially her father's stern, distant mannerwere like invisible shackles binding every impulse and bit of self.
Be obedient.
Be sensible.
Submit to your parents' decisionsespecially your father's.
That was the rule drilled into her. Any willful act "unbefitting a daughter of the Tohsaka family" was forbidden.
So she swallowed all her discomfort, fear, confusion, and wrenching reluctance like bitter medicine, forcing it down into the deepest part of her heart.
She felt like a puppet tugged by unseen strings, stripped of the power to move on her ownsilently, passively following the tall, familiar back ahead of her, into the thick fog, toward an unknown fate that would tear her life apart and remake it.
Her little red shoes tapped faint, monotonous clicks on the wet pavement. Every step felt like stepping on icy needles, a sting that ran from her soles straight into her heart.
Now and then she stole a quick glance at the man aheadTohsaka Tokiomi. His stride was steady and even, his back straight as a rod.
Even in the damp cold of morning his suit was immaculate, as if he were heading to an important meetingnot to personally hand away his own flesh and blood.
Sunlight tried to pierce the heavy mist, laying a blurred halo over him, but it couldn't dispel the chill that clung to him.
To Sakura, the father she once knew felt distant nowcold, unreachable. He never once looked back. He didn't ask if she could keep up, didn't soothe her nerves, didn't even slow his pace for her small steps.
That silence made her feel more hopeless and helpless than any scolding could.
Before bed last night, Rin's unusually solemn promise still echoed in her ears
"I'll definitely protect you."
"I absolutely won't let anyone hurt you."
At the time, lying on her soft bed, watching her sister's face in the moonlight, she'd felt warm inside and thought it was just a childish vow between sisters. But now it seemed Rin might already have known. That must be why she had seemed so different.
Thinking of her sister stirred the faintest warmth and hope in Sakura's heartso faint it was almost drowned by despair. Rin was so capable, so brave. Would she would she appear like a hero in a story and stop all this?
The thought flickered like a candle in the windwobbling, but keeping her from collapsing entirely.
That sliver of hope was quickly crushed by her father's resolute, icy back and by the looming outline aheada gloomy mansion crouched like a slumbering beast. The fog seemed thicker around it, carrying a rotten, unsettling smell.
She didn't know how long they walked. It felt like a century, and also like a single suspended instant of pain.
At last, Tokiomi halted before a sprawling estate whose exterior looked shockingly old and decrepit. A high wall of dark stone was slick with moss, laced with the dry vines of creeping ivy.
The wrought-iron gate was scabbed with rust, twisted into intricate, unsettling patterns. The mansion's architecture was oppressive and heavy, exudingeven through the hazy morning mista tomb-like stillness and the stink of decay. Less a residence than a relic forgotten by time.
This was the Matou Estatea place whose appearance alone could give a child nightmares.
Tokiomi turned to face his daughter. His expression was as unreadable as ever, touched only by the solemnity of someone about to complete an important rite.
"Sakura, we're here."
His voice was low and calm, without a ripple of emotionstating a fact that crushed her.
Two simple words, yet they branded Sakura's heart like a red-hot iron.
!!!
Her heart seized, then plummetedfalling into a bottomless, freezing dark.
Every last scrap of wishful thinking, every impossible fantasy shattered at once.
She lifted her head, timidly. Her small body trembled beyond her control, violet eyes wide with fear. Following her father's gaze into the black maw of the iron gatelike a beast's greedy, open mouthshe thought she saw something moving in the shadowed depths.
And then, slowly, step by dragging step, a hunched, shriveled figure emergednear inhuman, leaning on a wooden cane twisted into a shape that seemed disturbingly alive.
Chapter 969: Rin Panic! Where is Sakura?
The cane struck the paving stones with a dull "thud, thud," a rhythm so slow it set the nerves on edge.
It was an old manso old it was almost frightening. His skin was a dark, ashen brown, like the bark of a thousand-year-old tree, carved with deep, fissured wrinkles. It clung tight to his jagged bones, with hardly a trace of flesh beneath.
He was bowed so deeply his whole body seemed folded in on itself, as if crushed by an invisible weight. He wore an old, dingy kimono whose wide sleeves hung limp and empty.
Most unsettling were his eyessunken beneath the brow, the sockets a murky yellow-brown in which iris and sclera nearly melted together. Yet in that murk flickered a cold, slick, greedy gleam, like a viper lurking in a swamp.
This was the current head of the Matou family, a demonic relic of magecraft who had lived for who knew how longMatou Zouken.
Mornings at the Tohsaka house were usually quiet and orderly. The estate woke in the first light; dew beaded on the garden's leaves, and the air held a faint mix of sandalwood and fresh greenery.
Tohsaka Rin woke from a restless sleep. Worried about her sister Sakura, she had tossed and turned until very late, her dreams a jumble of unsettling images.
Instinctively she rolled over, reaching for the comfort of her sister's sleeping face on the neighboring bed. Ever since Sakura was old enough to understand things, the two of them had often slept in the same room.
Her hand met only cool, empty sheets.
Rin's heart dropped; she snapped fully awake. Sakura's bedding was neatly folded, the pillow smoothno sign anyone had slept there.
A cold foreboding wrapped her heart like a snake.
"Where's Sakura?!"
She sprang from bed, barefoot, and ran out into the corridor, heart pounding a terrified drumbeat. Turning toward the kitchen, she saw her mother, Tohsaka Aoi.
Aoilike a figure stepped out of a classical paintingwore a simple pale-green dress and moved with calm, refined grace.
She was the very image of a yamato nadeshiko: gentle and resilient, like a quiet lake. Rin had inherited her mother's striking looks; Sakura had taken more of her mother's soft, serene manner.
Aoi came from the Zenjou family. Her forebears had produced magi, though by her generation they were ordinary people, long separated from magecraft.
Even so, thin traces of magical blood still ran in her veinsprecisely what had drawn Tohsaka Tokiomi to propose. After marriage she bore two daughters with remarkable aptitude for magecraft: Rin and Sakura.
Now Aoi stood with her back to Rin, quietly preparing breakfast. Her movements were as elegant as ever, yet Rin sensed something thinner than usual about her mother's silhouettea desolate undertone she couldn't name.
"Mom!" Rin called from the doorway, her voice gone sharp with panic. "Where's Sakura? Have you seen her? Her bed's empty!"
Aoi's hands stilled for the briefest instant. She turned, forcing a gentle smile that looked like a brittle maskbitter and strained. Her gaze wavered.
"Rin you're up?"
Her voice was soft as always, but with a faint, betraying tremor. "Sakura your father took her out."
"Took her out?" Rin's heart plunged. The bad feeling hardened into ice. "Dad took Sakura out? Where?!"
She rushed forward and grabbed her mother's arm. "Mom! Is Dad sending Sakura away? To the Matou family? Is he?!"
Aoi flinched under her daughter's burning, desperate stare. She turned her face slightly, dodging those sharp eyes, and said in a low, strained voice, "Rin Sakura will go to the Matou house, where she'll have a better life and education. It's a prestigious lineage of magecraft. You don't have to worry"
It sounded less like she was comforting Rin and more like she was trying to convince herself. Her fingers twisted the edge of her apron until her knuckles went white.
"A better life?" Rin almost screamed. "Mom, do you know what that Matou family is like? What kind of person Matou Zouken is?! That place is a pithell itself! Sakura will suffer there! We have to stop Dadright now!"
She tugged hard at her mother's arm to pull her along, sure Aoi had been misled and would side with her once she knew the truth.
But Aoi didn't move, as if rooted to the floor. She lifted her head to look at her frantic daughter, eyes full of pain and a bottomless helplessnessthe numbness of someone bound completely by tradition, a husband's will, and the "logic of magi."
"Rin listen," Aoi said, on the verge of tears, her voice exhausted. "This isthis is your father's decision. It's for Sakura's good, and for the Tohsaka family. We we can't"
"Mom you" Rin stared at her mother's troubled, compromising gaze and understood at once.
So you knew from the start.
You knew Father would send Sakura away. You knew everything. And you chose silence. You chose to obey.
A chill even sharper than the one she'd felt on learning Sakura was being sent away swept through Rin. She let go of her mother's arm and stumbled back a step, fixing Aoi with a look that mixed shock, disappointment, and utter heartbreaka look like a knife, plunging into a heart already riddled with wounds.
~~~
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Chapter 970: Stop! Rin to the Rescue?
"Rin"
Tohsaka Aoi opened her mouth to say somethingonly to find she couldn't force out a single syllable. She could only watch as the last flicker of reliance and trust in her daughter's eyes guttered out like a candle in the wind.
