"Get out. I don't have a daughter like you!"
Ms. Yukinoshita pointed at the door and shouted angrily.
Yukino's face remained expressionless. Carrying her school bag, she silently walked out through the Yukinoshita family's gate.
Seeing Yukino's completely unrepentant attitude, Ms. Yukinoshita's expression changed drastically. "The apartment you're living in now was also rented for you by the family. You can't live there either."
"Only when you realize you were wrong will I allow you to come home."
Yukino paused and said calmly, "I understand, Mother."
After speaking, she left without looking back.
Yukino clenched her teeth tightly. She did not dare look back, afraid that she would see her mother's sad and distressed expression, and that it would make her regret everything and lose the resolve to make this decision again.
Seeing that her daughter had actually left, Ms. Yukinoshita was the one who became flustered.
After a long while, she returned to the living room in dejection and sat on the sofa, tears filling her eyes, as she said to Haruno, who was standing silently beside her,
"Haruno, do you think Mother really did something wrong? Mother is doing this for your own good. How can Yukino be so ignorant and not have any of Mother's strength?"
Ms. Yukinoshita sobbed, her shoulders trembling.
Haruno stood silently to the side, feeling an immense pressure that came from her mother's desire for control.
She understood even more clearly that neither she nor Yukino had any real freedom to make their own decisions, especially in love and marriage. Their mother had always kept a firm hold over them.
In her mother's heart, it was not that she objected to Haruno and Yukino falling in love. Her only requirement was that the man who became their partner could never be superior to them.
That man had to be obedient, weak, and someone the Yukinoshita family could control. After marriage, he would even have to take the Yukinoshita surname.
This had been her mother's life, and she was now forcing her daughters to live the same kind of life.
If Haruno and Yukino had only liked a boy from an ordinary family, someone with some ability but nothing outstanding, just a mediocre boy, then their mother would definitely have strongly supported them.
But when the person they liked was too outstanding, so outstanding that as Yukinoshitas they could only become his dependents, their mother would never allow it.
Because that would remind her mother of her guilty younger sister, the younger sister who, in her mother's eyes, had taken everything from her and enjoyed all the happiness.
Mother really is selfish.
Haruno sighed inwardly.
But no matter how selfish her mother was, she was still her mother in the end.
Ms. Yukinoshita was a little worried. She said to Haruno, "Go check on Yukino. Don't let her be bullied."
"I understand, Mother."
Haruno responded. She walked out of the house, but Yukino was nowhere in sight.
After thinking for a moment, she took a taxi to the apartment Yukino had rented.
She made her way up to Yukino's floor with ease, and then saw a moving company helping Yukino move out.
"Sister, why are you here?"
Yukino, who was directing the movers, asked in surprise when she saw Haruno.
"Yukino, are you moving out?"
"Yes."
"Where are you moving to? Do you have enough money?"
Haruno asked worriedly.
She knew that Yukino still had some private savings of her own, all from her New Year's money.
But how many months could that little bit of New Year's money really support Yukino living alone?
Food and rent were not small expenses.
Yukino said softly, "I borrowed some money from Toru-kun and found a new apartment. It's not as high-end as this place, but it's clean and tidy."
Haruno hesitated, then asked in a low voice, "You and Toru-kun... did you do it?"
Yukino looked a little embarrassed.
In fact, she had not gone all the way with Toru, but Toru had asked her to learn how to use her mouth and feet.
She was far too shy to say something like that, so she only let out a quiet hum with a cold face.
As for what her sister thought, that was her own business.
Haruno opened her mouth, not knowing what to say.
"Is Mother okay?"
After hesitating for a moment, Yukino still could not help worrying about her mother.
"Mother is fine, you don't need to worry. I'm keeping an eye on her," Haruno reassured her sister.
"Did Mother... say anything bad about Toru-kun?" Yukino asked again.
Haruno shook her head. "Mother didn't say anything bad about Toru-kun. She just kept scolding you."
Something like this should have involved scolding the man too, but Ms. Yukinoshita had only scolded her own daughter.
Yukino smiled knowingly and said, "The adult world really is disgustingly hypocritical. Mother is afraid. She doesn't dare say anything bad about Toru-kun, so she can only scold me, her daughter."
Haruno stayed silent. She knew very well that her mother really did think that way.
Although this was human nature, thinking about it still made the sisters feel a little sad.
The mother who had always sheltered them from the wind and rain was not as strong as they had imagined, nor as powerful as they had imagined.
When faced with a real problem, Mother had not truly resisted it, but chosen to retreat.
And Mother's excuse was very simple, everything was for the Yukinoshita family, the excuse that could be used for anything.
"Sister, by always silently accepting everything, you're only encouraging Mother's desire for control. It's time for you to refuse her unreasonable demands."
"I'm doing this for your own good too. If you won't resist, then I will. I don't want to marry someone I don't know or like. Sister, do you really want to find a weak man who can only marry into our family as a husband?"
"Even if there is no future for Toru-kun and us, and this relationship ends badly, at least we took control of our own lives instead of being Mother's puppets and obeying her arrangements forever."
Yukino watched the movers carry cardboard boxes toward the elevator, and then she walked toward the door as well.
Standing at the doorway, Yukino turned her back to her sister and said softly, "It's your turn to catch up to my pace."
"Sister, now you are the challenger!"
Yukino left.
Haruno stood in the empty apartment, leaning against the wall with a dispirited expression. "To be beaten by my own sister, I'm really pathetic."
"I suddenly understand how Mother feels."
But she was Haruno, and she did not want to become Ms. Yukinoshita!
...
Tokyo, FBI Office.
Shuichi, wearing a knit cap, parked his car downstairs. Looking at Jodie as she got out of the passenger seat, he said, "I'm leaving now."
Jodie said with a warm smile, "Drive safely, Shuichi."
Shuichi gave her a cold nod and drove into the traffic.
Jodie stood at the entrance of the building without going inside, watching Shuichi's car leave.
She liked Shuichi, but Shuichi did not like her, only treating her as a colleague.
That made Jodie feel depressed, but she did not dare show those feelings in front of Shuichi, especially when they were on a mission. She tried even harder to restrain herself then.
One hundred meters away from the FBI Tokyo office building was an intersection. Shuichi's Toyota happened to hit a red light and stopped in front of the crosswalk.
At that moment, Jodie's instincts, sharpened by facing danger for so long, suddenly told her that something was wrong.
She quickly looked around, and on a building a hundred meters away, a flash of reflected light caught her eye.
Was that... the reflection from a sniper scope?!
Jodie had no time to think about why the sniper was so amateurish that he had not concealed the lens. She immediately shouted at the top of her voice, "Shuichi, be careful, there's a sniper!"
Shuichi, whose sense for danger was even sharper than Jodie's, had already sensed that something was wrong before she shouted, and had opened the car door.
Jodie's expression brightened. As long as he was not trapped inside the confined space of the car, then with Shuichi's ability and so many nearby obstacles, it would be impossible for the enemy to snipe him.
But in the very next instant, Jodie's limbs turned cold, and she watched in horror as everything unfolded before her.
Whoosh!
Boom!!!
A rocket was fired from the tall building a hundred meters away, dragging a blazing tail behind it as it slammed directly into Shuichi's car.
The rocket carried a huge warhead and was clearly some kind of special weapon. In the deafening explosion, the fuel in Shuichi's car ignited, turning the vehicle into a gigantic fireball that shot into the sky.
Single shot, scoped, powerful, one-hit kill, it really was a sniper!
Jodie had no time to think. She did not even want to chase the killer. With terror on her face, she ran toward the site of the explosion.
"Shuichi!!"
Her scream pierced the Tokyo sky.
Before long, the fire department, ambulances, and the other FBI agents in Tokyo arrived, silently looking at the charred corpse.
...
At Iroha Sushi, a burly old man was enthusiastically making a piece of sushi for a customer.
The phone on the counter rang.
"Excuse me, I need to take this call."
Rum, using the alias Kanenori Wakita, apologized to the customer. He washed his hands, dried them with a clean towel, then picked up the phone and walked into the back kitchen, leaving the shop through the rear door.
"Rum?"
"It's me."
"I'm Fujiwara Toru. The mission you requested has been completed."
In a tall building three hundred meters away, Toru stood by the window, holding binoculars as he stared intently at the old man who had stepped out of the sushi shop and was now on the phone.
Beside Toru was a sniper rifle.
At this distance, with Toru's ability, he could achieve a 100 percent kill rate.
"No threat. I can kill him at any time. It seems he hasn't been active on the front lines for a long time and has lost his sense of danger."
Toru sneered.
Then, once he had fully investigated all of Rum's connections, he could kill him and take his place to issue orders to the Organization!
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)