In the instant before her consciousness was about to be wholly devoured by that boundless void.
A voice rang out.
The voice she hated to her bones, yet desperately craved when her bloodline ran wild.
"Yukino."
Seiji Fujiwara's voice was flat.
But within this absolute void, those two syllables were like the first light at the dawn of creation, like a divine oracle splitting the chaos, piercing through the entire darkness in an instant.
The dying spark of Yukino's consciousness shuddered violently.
Like a drowning person seizing the only piece of driftwood falling from the heavens.
For the first time, she discovered that a single person's voice could become the fulcrum of an entire world, could become the sole coordinate defining "existence" itself.
"Who are you?"
The god's question echoed through the realm of nothingness.
It was a question of the utmost simplicity.
Yet to Yukino Yukinoshita, here and now, it was a blade sharp enough to throw her already blurred consciousness into confusion.
Who am I?
I am... Yukino Yukinoshita?
The name flickered through her blank mind with difficulty, like a faint electric current.
Following it came a flood of countless chaotic images, full of pain and humiliation.
Her sister Haruno's cruel, smiling face.
In the Service Club meeting room, behind that cold door, the posture in which she had been forced to undo her pleated skirt...
In front of the cold convenience store shelves late at night, mumbling indistinctly, picking up those adult products under Saki Kawasaki's stunned gaze...
In the end, every image froze on a single face.
That handsome, composed face, the corners of its mouth always curved in an amused smile.
Seiji Fujiwara.
Pain, hatred, humiliation, resentment...
Countless negative emotions surged up like dredged-up sediment.
Instinctively, she wanted to resist, wanted to flee.
And yet, she could not.
In this void where her senses had been entirely stripped away, Seiji's voice was the only coordinate by which she could perceive "existence."
To resist his voice was to resist her own existence, was to actively choose eternal annihilation.
"It seems you still need a little 'help.'"
A trace of amusement entered Seiji's voice, as though he could "see" every struggle inside her consciousness.
The next second.
A strange warm current surged ferociously from the depths of her body without warning.
The "Snow Woman Bloodline" stirred with desire once again.
But unlike before, this detonation was completely controlled.
The warm current did not become a blaze that burned away reason. Instead, it became countless ants, gnawing and crawling along every inch of her skin, every nerve ending.
An indescribable tingling and emptiness swept through her in an instant.
More terrifying than pain, more unbearable than death.
Yukino's consciousness was completely submerged by this sensation in an instant. The tangled images and complex emotions from before were all washed away clean.
What remained was only the most primal craving, transcending reason and dignity.
A craving to be filled. A craving to be soothed. A craving to be released from this boundless hell of emptiness.
In the moment when this torture of desire was about to drive her completely mad.
"Now, forget everything."
Seiji's voice flowed into her scorching, chaotic consciousness like a stream of ice-cold spring water, perfectly timed.
"Your past, your name, your pride... none of them have any meaning anymore."
"From now on, in your world, you only need to remember three things."
As his words sounded, the tingling sensation that had made her wish for death miraculously eased by a fraction.
Yukino's consciousness gained a precious sliver of breathing room, instinctively, greedily chasing after the voice that could grant her "salvation."
"First. I am absolute."
"Second. Obey me, and you will receive 'peace.'"
"Third. Defy me, and you will fall into 'nothingness.'"
Each of his words was like a red-hot steel brand, indelibly searing itself into the blank canvas of Yukino's consciousness.
And the warm current that had been tormenting her was drawn away thread by thread as his words ended, finally subsiding completely.
In its place came a kind of absolute serenity she had never experienced before, as though floating in warm amniotic fluid.
"Peace" and "Nothingness."
Reward and punishment.
Heaven and hell.
The simplest of binary oppositions, the most primal of conditioned reflexes. With every sense stripped away, this Pavlovian conditioning was inescapable.
In the observation room, Haruno watched all of this through the one-way glass. She could not see what was happening in the darkness, but she could read Yukino's vital signs on the control panel screens.
Heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves... those curves had spiked wildly in that instant a moment ago, to peaks that would have prompted any doctor to issue a critical-condition notice, then eerily settled back down to a level calmer than deep sleep.
That was not a brainwave curve a normal human being should have.
Haruno's fingertips went slightly cold.
She knew that from this moment on, the proud, prickly little sister she had watched grow up had perhaps "died" forever.
And a new "Yukino Yukinoshita" was being created in that darkness, by that man's own hands.
Just as she had been before.
...
In the darkness, Seiji continued.
"Now, while you describe it, picture it... the scene of you on the rooftop, in the cold wind, pleasuring yourself."
A jolt slammed through Yukino's consciousness.
Shame.
This emotion that she had deliberately forced herself to forget surfaced again like a cunning virus.
Instantly.
The warm current of "peace" vanished.
That sense of "nothingness" capable of tearing the soul apart, like the whip of punishment, lashed across her consciousness carrying the flames of desire.
"Ah..."
A suppressed cry of grief escaped her, mingling pain and desire.
"It seems you haven't fully understood the rules." Seiji's voice turned cold. "I told you. My voice is absolute."
"When I tell you to imagine, you must imagine."
"Your emotions, your shame, your thoughts... these are 'impurities' that must be thoroughly purged."
"Now, again."
He triggered the maddening warm current of desire once more, but this time held it at a threshold just barely tolerable to her reason while still inflicting unbearable agony.
"The punishment will continue until you complete the task perfectly."
"Begin."
In the darkness, Yukino's voice rose again, faintly tearful and ragged with breath, yet straining to stay level.
She was forced to replay, over and over in her mind, the images that shamed her most.
Reason and desire.
Precise logic and unspeakable bodily memory.
These two extreme opposites were violently bound and fused together. Her mind was crushed, torn, and reshaped under this dual torment, again and again.
Gradually, the tearfulness left her voice, and so did the ragged breathing.
The trembling stopped.
In its place came an absolute steadiness.
She was still imagining.
But the shame was gone.
Because Yukino had "learned" to strip the "impurity" of shame entirely from her own consciousness.
The two could run perfectly in parallel.
"Very good."
Seiji's satisfied voice rose.
The "nothingness" and the warm current of desire that had been tormenting her vanished in an instant.
That warm, ultimate sense of serenity representing "peace" enveloped her once again.
It was the reward she had earned.
In this moment, the last corner in Yukino Yukinoshita's consciousness that still belonged to "herself" was thoroughly swept clean.
She had been successfully "formatted," and an operating system that belonged solely to Seiji Fujiwara had been installed.
Just as Seiji watched the brainwave curve on the observation room screen, now nearly perfectly flat, and let a satisfied smile show on his face, a cold notification chime rang in his own mind.
[Ding!]
[Detected: Host has completed the final conquest of Yukino Yukinoshita!]
[Three-stage reward dispensed...]
[Congratulations, Host, for obtaining: Graphene Wafer Fabrication Process under Standard Temperature and Pressure!]
[Capability Description: You have mastered the complete process for growing centimeter-scale, wrinkle-free, defect-free, perfect single-layer graphene wafers on a copper substrate via chemical vapor deposition (CVD), under standard atmospheric pressure and room temperature. This technology will completely overturn the existing landscape of semiconductors, new materials, energy, and many other fields.]
Graphene.
The "king of materials" of the twenty-first century.
The corner of Seiji's mouth curved into a cold arc.
If the earlier FinFET Architecture and EUV Light Source technologies had merely been about "overtaking" on the existing silicon-chip track...
Then the appearance of the Graphene Wafer Fabrication Process was a complete, foundation-pulling "switch of tracks."
It directly proclaimed the dusk of the silicon age and ushered in a new carbon-based era to be ruled by him alone, Seiji Fujiwara.
Damn... what a perfectly timed reward.
He closed the system panel, his gaze returning to the pure white space.
As the "Personality Reconstruction" program ended, the lights inside the space slowly brightened. The heavy alloy door slid open without a sound.
Seiji walked at a measured pace to the recliner and undid the restraints binding Yukino.
"Get up." He issued the first command.
Not the slightest hesitation.
The Yukino Yukinoshita who had been lying still a second earlier, in the next second, like the most precise of robots, smoothly sat up, then stood before him, head slightly bowed, posture perfect.
Her bearing remained dignified and noble, as though she were still the ice-cold queen feared and admired throughout Sobu High.
But her eyes had changed.
Those beautiful eyes were crystal clear, yet unfathomably deep.
When she gazed at Seiji, there was no longer any hatred, humiliation, or fear in them, only a pure obedience.
She had become a perfect work of art.
The observation room door opened, and Haruno Yukinoshita walked out with her swaying steps.
When her eyes met her own sister's calm, unrippled gaze, even she felt her heart skip a beat involuntarily.
"Haruno." Seiji's voice rose.
"Yes, Master." Haruno immediately collected herself and answered respectfully.
"Prepare a new set of clothes for her, then take her back to her room to rest," Seiji said.
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