Late at night.
Inside the bedroom, Yukino Yukinoshita sat on the edge of the bed like an exquisite, fragile porcelain doll.
She wore a pure-white silk nightgown, her expression a perfect, ultimate numbness.
Those eyes that had once shone with intelligence and pride now held only a hollow, deathlike stillness, as though her soul had been drawn out, leaving behind only a stunningly beautiful shell.
Ever since the "late-night convenience store" incident and her complete breakdown that followed, she had seemed to enter a brand-new state of being a "doll" with nothing left but absolute obedience.
Any command Seiji Fujiwara gave, no matter how absurd or shameful, she would calmly carry out.
No more resistance, no more sorrow.
But beneath the ruins of her mental world, one final pillar of spirit still stubbornly held her up.
That was the "meaning of her sacrifice" she had constructed for herself.
Everything I am doing has meaning.
She told herself this over and over in her mind.
My humiliation, my obedience, my degradation... all of it is the price I pay to save my family.
This thought was the final wellspring that allowed her to endure every humiliation, and the last bulwark preserving the independent personality of "Yukino Yukinoshita".
What she didn't know, however, was that in Seiji Fujiwara's eyes, this "numb doll" state of hers had... lost its last bit of fun.
A toy that didn't struggle would always become tiresome after a while.
It was time for a thorough transformation.
Seiji lounged on the sofa, watching the girl who sat as still as a statue, the smile at the corner of his mouth cold and cruel.
He picked up his encrypted phone and sent a message to Haruno Yukinoshita.
[The script can begin.]
On the other end of the line, at an evening banquet in Chiba, Haruno Yukinoshita was being fawned over by a crowd of heirs like a star surrounded by her constellation.
Feeling the phone vibrate, she glanced at the screen without changing her expression.
The instant she saw that message, the perfect social smile on her face twisted in a way too subtle for anyone to notice.
She rose elegantly and gave the people around her a smile.
"My apologies, everyone. Something's come up. I have to excuse myself."
With that, under the regretful gazes of the crowd, she turned and left.
...
...
The next afternoon, a flame-red Ferrari pulled up in front of the Fujiwara villa.
Haruno stepped down gracefully on ten-centimeter crystal heels, dressed in an impeccably tailored black Chanel dress, radiating a confident, mesmerizing, and powerful aura.
Once inside the villa, she found her sister in the study that resembled a library.
Yukino was kneeling on the floor, meticulously polishing the books with a piece of pristine white silk.
Her movements were calm and professional, as if she were tending to a sacred work of art.
Seeing Haruno walk in, no expression flickered across her face. She simply paused her work, slowly rose to her feet, and looked at her sister with hollow eyes.
A pang of heartache and tender sorrow flashed through Haruno's mind, but she quickly suppressed it.
She strode forward and pulled Yukino tightly into her embrace.
"Little Yukino..." Haruno's voice choked as she gently stroked Yukino's cold hair. "You've suffered so much. Truly, you've suffered."
"Your sister... I know everything. The sacrifice you made for this family, for me... your sister has seen it all, and it breaks my heart."
She loosened her embrace, cupped Yukino's numb face, and spoke with the utmost tenderness, her voice trembling with emotion.
"You are the true hero of our Yukinoshita family."
Hero...
That word, like a faint electric current, struck Yukino's lifeless spirit in an instant.
A ripple stirred in her hollow eyes.
The tragic self-satisfaction she clung to was hugely gratified by her own sister's affirmation.
Haruno caught the change with sharp eyes, the smile at her lips flickering and vanishing.
The first step had succeeded.
"Come, Little Yukino, your sister wants to show you something."
Haruno took Yukino's hand affectionately and led her to the massive holographic computer.
She skillfully opened an encrypted website displaying Yukinoshita Real Estate's recently rocketing stock chart, along with bustling news of several core property projects fully resuming construction.
"Look,"
Haruno pointed to the screen, her face breaking into a relieved, proud smile. "Our crisis has been resolved. Those bastards who wanted us dead are now wagging their tails like lapdogs, begging to cooperate."
She turned her head, her gaze burning as she looked at Yukino, her tone weighted, declaring it like the heroic deeds of a champion.
"And all of this... is because of you, my dearest little sister."
"It was you, who with your own sacrifice, saved our entire family."
Looking at the prosperity on the screen, listening to her sister's affirmation and praise...
Another warm boulder dropped into Yukino's frozen heart-lake.
So everything I endured, all that humiliation, really did... bring about such a beautiful outcome.
Yes, I... really am that important.
The thought brought a trace of "warmth" to her numb spirit.
"Well then, to reward our family's greatest hero..." Haruno laughed and affectionately pinched Yukino's cold cheek. "Tonight, your sister has prepared a 'victory celebration' just for the two of us."
That evening, in the luxurious dining hall on the top floor of the villa.
Haruno opened a bottle of wine.
She kept refilling Yukino's glass with the crimson liquid.
"Come, Little Yukino, our great hero, have another glass."
"This glass, to your sacrifice."
"This glass, to the rebirth of our family."
Under Haruno's stream of "praise" and "affirmation", and the influence of the alcohol...
Yukino's spirit fully relaxed.
For the first time, her steel-like mental walls voluntarily lowered all their defenses under the gentle "offensive" of the sister she trusted most.
A sickly, beautiful flush spread across her face.
The atmosphere in the dining hall, catalyzed by the wine, grew increasingly hazy and ambiguous.
Yukino's gaze had begun to drift.
She leaned half-reclined against her chair, her cheeks flushed with an enchanting blush, those usually cool eyes filmed over with mist, like a kitten caught in the rain that had lost all of its wariness.
It had been so long since she had felt this relaxed.
Her sister's affirmation, the family's rebirth, all of it brought a faint, false comfort to her heart, which was riddled with countless wounds.
She even felt that everything she had endured had been worth it.
This sense of "being worth it" gave rise in her to a sickly self-satisfaction.
Watching her completely defenseless, naive expression, Haruno Yukinoshita knew the time had come.
Haruno swirled the wine in her glass, then suddenly spoke in a casual, laughing tone.
"That said, Little Yukino, you really are adorably naive."
"...?" Yukino looked up in confusion.
"You see, even if you hadn't agreed to Mr. Fujiwara's 'conditions' back then, even if you'd refused him on the spot, nothing at all would have happened to our Yukinoshita family," Haruno said with a smile in her eyes.
What?
Yukino's clouded brain stalled the instant she heard those words.
She looked at her sister, her hazy eyes filled with confusion.
"Sis... what are you saying?"
"I'm saying,"
Haruno's smile grew brighter, but also colder, like a poisonous flower blooming on an icy plain. "That so-called 'family crisis', that so-called 'financial report', that so-called 'project being blocked'... from beginning to end, all of it was fake."
"That was just a little 'stage play' that I and my dear Mr. Fujiwara meticulously designed for you."
The words crashed through Yukino's mind like a thunderclap from a clear sky.
Fake?
All of it... was fake?
Yukino stared at her sister in shock, at the bright, malice-filled smile on her face, unable to believe what she was hearing.
"No..." she shook her head, trembling. "Sis, you're joking, right? This joke isn't funny at all..."
"Joking?" The smile on Haruno's face thickened, laced with pity and mockery. "My foolish little sister, even now, how can you still be so naive?"
Haruno wasted no more words.
The truth was far more devastating than any words could be.
She simply pulled out her phone, opened an encrypted video folder, and held the screen up in front of Yukino.
On the screen played one unspeakable video after another.
The settings of the videos: hotel suites, high-end private clubs, and even Seiji Fujiwara's bedroom inside this very villa.
And the leading lady of every single video, without exception, was her: Haruno Yukinoshita herself.
In the videos, sometimes she wore sexy black lace lingerie, sometimes she was dressed in shameful cosplay uniforms, and sometimes, like a docile cat in heat, she crawled bare on the floor at that man's feet...
Catering actively to Seiji Fujiwara's desires in every kind of lewd, fawning posture.
There was no trace of coercion or humiliation on her face.
There was only an immersed, sickly, savoring... rapture!
Watching these videos, watching her own sister, beneath the man who treated her as a plaything, wearing an expression of intoxicated, infatuated enjoyment...
Yukino's brain crashed completely.
"Why... why..."
Her lips quivered, her teeth chattered uncontrollably, unable to form a single complete sound.
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