"Dating?" Saki repeated the word in disbelief.
If they were really dating, why would Yukinoshita-san look like a walking corpse?
This wasn't dating at all!
"You see, she's admitted it herself." Seiji spread his hands, that toying victor's smile still on his face. "So, Kawasaki, would you mind not interrupting our little couple's late-night date anymore?"
His words were laced with undisguised mockery and provocation.
Saki was shaking with rage at his arrogance. She wanted to say something more, but the moment her eyes met Seiji's, those cold eyes that looked at her like she was something already dead, a fear born of pure animal instinct gripped her throat and stole every word from her.
She could only watch as the man, holding Yukino like a puppet, turned and walked toward the villa not far away.
That retreating image, one tall and one slender, looked so "harmonious" under the streetlights, and yet so deeply wrong.
Saki stood rooted in place. Only after the two figures had completely vanished behind the villa's heavy gate did she collapse limply onto the cold curb, as if every ounce of strength had been drained out of her.
The dream of the "hero saving the maiden" had shattered.
Shattered so completely, so cruelly.
The pure, perfect Yukino Yukinoshita she had idolized, it turned out... was just an ordinary woman, even a fallen one, who could be held in a man's arms and made to go buy obscene things in the dead of night.
The realization slammed like a hammer through the unrealistic, girlish fantasy she'd been carrying.
...
Inside the villa bedroom.
The moment she returned to this place steeped in humiliating memories, Yukino's body began to tremble violently, beyond her control.
A classmate had caught her...
The most lowly, debased side of herself, witnessed clearly by Kawasaki...
Massive shame washed over her like a tidal wave.
Seiji, on the other hand, settled lazily onto the sofa as if nothing had happened.
His gaze fell on the hand that gripped the convenience store's plastic bag, his expression cold, the look of someone about to grade a piece of homework.
"Where is it?"
Yukino shivered all over. Like a failing student who couldn't answer a question, she silently held out the plastic bag that felt as heavy as a mountain.
Seiji took the bag, pulled out the condoms and lubricant, glanced at them carelessly, then turned his eyes to Yukino's still-tightly-shut lips.
He stretched out a finger, tipped her chin up gently, and spoke in a tone that brooked no argument:
"Open your mouth. Spit it out. I want to inspect."
The command, saturated with the most extreme humiliation, brought tears bursting from Yukino's eyes again.
She knew the final judgment had come.
Slowly, shamefully, she opened her mouth.
But what she spat into Seiji's palm, apart from a sticky, half-melted residue of Pop Rocks...
There was nothing else.
The crucial piece, the one she had involuntarily swallowed at the register out of extreme tension and shame, had... vanished.
The task... had failed.
Looking at the pitiful residue in his palm, Seiji's toying smile slowly faded.
In its place came a calm, the calm of a coming storm, that made Yukino's very soul tremble.
"Yukino Yukinoshita." He spoke slowly, his voice flat, devoid of any emotion, but every word stabbed into her heart like an ice-tempered dagger. "It seems my earlier punishment was too lenient."
"So lenient that you developed the illusion that my orders could be carelessly disobeyed."
He stood up, walked to the window with his back to her, and his voice grew colder still.
"Now. Kneel."
"Face the direction Saki Kawasaki just left, and apologize for failing your task and deceiving your master."
"Loudly. Clearly. Say it one hundred times. 'I'm sorry, Master, Yukino is a useless, lying bad girl. Please punish me.'"
The order was more vicious, more cruel than any punishment before.
It wasn't merely punishing her. It was a way of reminding her, over and over, of that scene of utter shame the classmate had just witnessed.
It was using the cruelest means possible to grind her pride completely into the dust.
In that instant, Yukino's perception of herself collapsed.
She could no longer hold onto any sanity. A despairing wail, scarcely human, tore from her throat, and she broke down completely.
-
Inside the bedroom, dead silence.
Only Yukino Yukinoshita's hopeless whimpering, suppressed deep in her throat, like a wounded young animal.
She slumped on her knees on the carpet, body shaking violently from extreme shame and fear, tears pouring out unchecked, soaking the carpet in front of her.
To make her... kneel facing the direction an outsider had walked off in, and apologize?
To call herself a "useless bad girl"?
To... actively beg for "punishment"?
This was no longer simple humiliation.
It was a complete destruction of personhood.
It was a cruel ritual designed to debase her from a "person" all the way down to a "Slave" with no dignity, who knew only how to beg for her master's mercy.
All her pride, reason, and strength, in this very moment, were being ground into powder by this man with the lightest, most casual touch, and the most vicious intent.
Seiji didn't rush her. He simply stood quietly at the window, his back to her, admiring the night, as if waiting for a pre-scripted drama to enter its climax.
He knew this was the final straw that would break the iceberg.
The moment she spoke that first "I'm sorry," the last spiritual pillar of "Yukino Yukinoshita" as an independent being would come crashing down.
From then on, she would be his. A Possession, nothing more.
Time crawled by, second by second.
Each second, for Yukino, was the slow torture of a soul.
Finally, beneath that drowning despair and fear, beneath the crushing weight of responsibility to her family that she could never shake off...
Her tightly clenched lips slowly parted.
A broken syllable, thick with sobs, so faint it was nearly inaudible, forced its way out of her throat.
"I'm... I'm sorry..."
Those three words seemed to drain her of every last ounce of strength.
And Seiji, the moment he heard them, slowly turned around.
A smile spread across his face, the smile of a victor, pitying as a god, cruel as a devil.
He knew that from this moment on, his most perfect work of art had finally been thoroughly, completely, branded with a mark that belonged only to him, eternally.
He didn't push her any further.
There was no need.
He walked slowly over, crouched in front of her, and with the gentle gesture of someone soothing his most beloved pet, reached out and lightly wiped the tears from her cheeks.
Then he lowered his head and pressed onto her forehead a cold, possessive kiss, full of dominion.
"Good girl," he said softly.
And Yukino, soothed by him, stopped crying. She only trembled in his arms, like a small lost animal that had finally found its master.
Her spirit had been completely destroyed.
What remained was a beautiful doll that breathed, wept, and obeyed orders.
And on the other end of the street, Saki Kawasaki walked home in a daze.
In her mind, the scene she had just witnessed played over and over.
That demon-king of a man... Yukinoshita's hollow eyes... and that line that had shattered her worldview, "We're... just dating."
Dating?
She didn't believe it!
This was absolutely not dating! There had to be something far more terrible going on behind it!
Strong intuition and the spark of justice that hadn't yet died in her drove her to a decision.
She had to find out!
She had to find out who that man really was, and what he had done to Yukinoshita!
She pulled out her phone and, relying on the modest hacking skills she'd never put to honest use, started frantically searching online for information about that Rolls-Royce Phantom she had only glimpsed.
She had no idea that this decision of hers would send her plunging into that bottomless abyss called "Seiji Fujiwara."
...
...
Inside the Fujiwara villa bedroom, the "apology ceremony" finally ended with Yukino Yukinoshita losing consciousness completely, fainting in Seiji's arms.
Seiji lifted her up like a rag doll, tossed her carelessly onto the bed, and even kindly pulled a silk quilt over her.
Tonight's haul had far exceeded his expectations.
Not only had he successfully turned Saki Kawasaki, that "unexpected variable," into the key catalyst for Yukino's complete collapse.
More importantly, he had thoroughly crushed every shred of resistance in her, training her into a perfect Slave who could only obey and beg.
From now on, he could imprint any shape he wanted onto her soul, as pure as a blank sheet of paper, however he pleased.
Listening to the girl's even breathing on the bed, a satisfied smile rose on his face.
His gaze fell again on the copy of Pride and Prejudice on the carpet.
"Intellectual Cultivation..." he murmured to himself, eyes glittering with malicious anticipation for the next "game."
Meanwhile, in a run-down apartment building.
Saki Kawasaki sat in her tiny room, eyes bloodshot, fixed on her battered laptop.
After a full night of searching, she had finally uncovered that man's identity.
Seiji Fujiwara.
Sole controller of the Fujiwara conglomerate.
The legendary "business tyrant" who had upended the entire Japanese business world in just a few months.
Looking at the mythic feats listed about him online...
Looking at his face on the cover of a finance magazine, handsome as a god, eyes cold as an abyss...
A chill ran straight up Saki's spine to the crown of her head.
She finally understood what kind of terrifying being she had picked a fight with.
A frightening guess slowly took shape in her mind.
This man... had something on Yukinoshita-san, and was coercing her!
The thought made her blood run cold, but it also fanned the flames of justice in her heart hotter still.
She had to do something!
...
And in Seiji's mind, that cold system prompt sounded slowly, as if it had foreseen all of this.
[Ding!]
[Detected new A-rank target Saki Kawasaki has entered the main story arc.]
[Target's core weakness: Family (younger brother and sister).]
[Projected reward: [Transformer Model Complete Architecture & Frontier Applications Database].]
Seiji looked out the window at the sky that was about to break into dawn, the smile at the corner of his mouth growing colder.
"Transformer, huh..."
"Perfect. My Invisible Eye is due for a major upgrade."
"Saki Kawasaki... why don't you do me a little favor."
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