While Leo and Asuna were meeting Miyamoto Musashi at the manor and being pushed straight into special training, Yukino was being driven back to the Yukinoshita household by the chauffeur familiar.
It wasn't as grand as Leo's estate, but still a lavish, extravagant mansion.
After stepping out of the long limousine, Yukino was greeted by the house servants and led inside, heading toward the sitting room.
Two people were waiting there: Yukinoshita Haruno—who resembled Yukino by about seventy percent but looked more mature—and an elegant, voluptuous woman in a kimono whose presence alone radiated overwhelming authority: their mother.
"Mom…"
Yukino had thought she was mentally prepared, but the moment she saw her mother, that timidness she never showed to anyone surfaced instinctively.
"You're here?"
Mrs. Yukinoshita's eyes flickered with something complicated, then returned to calm.
"Since you've arrived, sit."
Yukino pressed her lips together. After a moment she walked forward and sat across from Haruno.
Haruno didn't speak. She simply observed her younger sister—the girl she knew down to her bones—her eyes quietly searching Yukino's face as if trying to extract answers without asking.
Three women who were unmistakably mother and daughters sat together. Blood bound them, yet it felt like none of them had anything to say. A heavy, indescribable silence took over the room.
Yukino, unusually restless, tried to force her voice into sounding calm.
"Where's Dad? I don't see him."
At that, Mrs. Yukinoshita finally looked up and broke the silence.
"Your father isn't in Chiba right now, so we didn't tell him about your situation."
It was as direct as saying: You have no ally here.
Yukino's father was a kind man—gentle, accommodating, and the complete opposite of her domineering mother. Yukino always got along well with him.
Now that he wasn't here, Yukino stood completely alone.
But she wasn't surprised.
Her father was thoroughly henpecked and had married into the Yukinoshita family. The true head of the household was her mother.
Mrs. Yukinoshita was uncompromising, absolute in her authority. Even Haruno feared her, let alone Yukino.
For years Yukino had never been able to defy her. In fact, her mother was precisely the person Yukino wanted to get away from—hence moving out to live on her own.
Yet even so, in her mother's eyes, Yukino remained someone immature and incapable of independence.
"I already heard everything from Haruno." Mrs. Yukinoshita's gaze was full of doubt. "To be frank, I don't want to believe something so foolish."
"My own daughter becoming a devil… If Haruno hadn't insisted with such confidence, I wouldn't have bothered with this today."
"But since things have already come to this point, I may as well confirm it."
She looked straight into Yukino's eyes.
"Is what Haruno said true? Did you really become the servant of an older student at your school?"
For Mrs. Yukinoshita, both the "devil" part and the "servant" part were equally unbelievable. If not for knowing Haruno would never joke about something so absurd, she would have dismissed all of this completely.
Even then, she had refused to believe it—until Haruno had reminded her of something.
"Do you remember what happened on the first day of school?"
Haruno's single question had brought that strange morning back into sharp focus.
Of course she remembered—the day she nearly hit someone while driving Yukino to school. Before she could even react, an impossible phenomenon had swept over them.
She and Haruno had been frozen to the bone by a sudden burst of extreme cold. The car tires froze solid. The entire street was covered in mysterious patches of ice, and nearly everyone present fell ill or suffered frostbite.
Everyone except one person.
Her younger daughter—Yukinoshita Yukino.
They chalked it up to a freak weather anomaly, but really—could something so "coincidental" truly be coincidence? And if it were, why had every single person been affected except Yukino?
That one fact alone had been impossible to ignore.
Because of that lingering doubt, Mrs. Yukinoshita had reluctantly agreed to call Yukino home for questioning.
Yet Yukino didn't answer right away. After a moment of silence, she turned to Haruno.
"You met with people from the Church?"
Her counter-question made her mother frown, and even Haruno looked caught off guard.
"Is that important?"
Haruno countered right back without giving an inch.
"Did you go to them? Or did they approach you?"
Yukino's insistence on that particular answer pushed her mother to cut in.
"Do not change the subject while we are speaking about serious matters." Mrs. Yukinoshita's tone was sharp as steel. "Since when did you start answering questions with questions? We are asking you."
Yukino's fingers tightened around her skirt. She almost gave in.
A lifetime of habit made it nearly impossible to resist her mother's pressure. Her hands trembled slightly.
If no one else were present, Yukino might have broken—answering obediently as she always had.
But they weren't alone.
"How long are you planning to hide?"
Yukino suddenly turned her head, glaring at the direction of the sitting room balcony.
"Do you really need me to spell it out before you come out?"
Haruno and their mother froze.
"What are you—"
Before Mrs. Yukinoshita could finish, a figure stepped into the room from the balcony.
"As expected of a servant of the Eligos family. Even without the Eligos bloodline, you're quite good with detection-based demonic power."
A soft laugh accompanied the voice.
A nun—one they had crossed paths with not long ago—walked in.
Who else could it be but Sharon Holygrail?
"Who are you?"
Mrs. Yukinoshita shot to her feet, shock overtaking her composure.
"You were hiding inside my home?!"
Haruno jumped up as well, this time visibly angry.
"So it was you." Yukino stood too, her expression ice-cold. "You approached my family. That's how they found out, isn't it?"
Sharon let out a derisive chuckle.
"I merely wanted to warn your mother and sister that their family member had become a filthy devil."
Yukino laughed, furious.
"No wonder that guy said you were troublesome. You really don't care what methods you use. You don't act like a nun at all." Yukino's tone cut like a blade. "He was right about you, wasn't he? Since you can't deal with him, you decided to target his servant instead? Pathetic."
Sharon's smile vanished instantly—just as it had when Leo had provoked her.
Yukino met her gaze coldly. The atmosphere between them grew heavy enough to suffocate.
"You two—"
Just as Mrs. Yukinoshita and Haruno tried to intervene, Yukino and Sharon moved at the same time.
A sharp sound split the air.
Sharon vanished, reappearing right in front of Yukino. She swung a lightning-fast side kick aimed at Yukino's head. The force alone made the air howl.
But Yukino was ready.
She unleashed her demonic power without hesitation.
A thick ice wall shot up in front of her.
Sharon's kick smashed into it and shattered the wall completely.
Yukino leapt backward, avoiding the slowed follow-up strike, and immediately whipped up a freezing wind. Ice shards formed in an instant and shot toward Sharon.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang—
Sharon reacted instantly, her hands and feet moving in a blur. She punched, chopped, and kicked every incoming shard out of the air, reducing them to glittering fragments that scattered across the sitting room floor.
Mrs. Yukinoshita and Haruno could only stare, stunned beyond belief.
"Th-This…"
The surreal scene struck their minds like a hammer, shattering the poise they normally carried.
Especially when they saw Yukino—cold wind swirling around her—continuously forming ice shards, ice spears, ice knives, ice pillars, anything she could shape, launching them again and again without pause.
In that moment, the image of their timid yet stubborn daughter collapsed completely.
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