(Inside the light screen, the air was as suffocating as the deathly hush before a storm.
Yukino stood frozen, her soul seemingly drained. Her older sister, Haruno Yukinoshita, rushed forward and hugged her trembling frame, patting her back again and again, her voice cracking with forced calm: "No... it's not like that, Yukino! Mom and Dad love you—he's lying!"
"Yes, they love you," Kuchiba Hiro drawled, his voice a devil's whisper laced with lazy amusement. "Only, that love... comes with priorities, a little cost-benefit analysis."
The precise stab shattered Yukino's last mental barrier. All her grievance, resentment, and terror of abandonment burst forth like a dam giving way.
She wanted to scream, to demand what she'd done wrong, why fate treated her so unfairly—yet she found she couldn't even complain with conviction. Her parents had given her comfort, a seemingly free upbringing; they'd simply... never taught her the real rules of survival. That cruelty cloaked in "for your own good" left her accusations hollow.
At last she broke, sobbing quietly, her shoulders heaving, her cries steeped in despair. A dark thought surfaced unbidden—perhaps dying right now would be a release.
Just then, hurried, disheveled footsteps sounded through the shattered doorway.
A dusty middle-aged man burst in, his clothes torn by branches, his face scratched and exhausted—Yota Yukinoshita.
Artoria's earth-rending Excalibur had obliterated the mountain path; he had clearly clawed his way up with immense effort. The lines of anxiety and fatigue on his face deepened, yet when he saw his wife and daughters still standing, relief flickered in his eyes.
The final target Kuchiba Hiro had been waiting for had arrived.
Kuchiba Hiro rose slowly from the sofa. No anger or hatred showed on his face—only a bottomless calm, as though this were not vengeance but a long-ordained rite.
Yota's gaze swept over his wife, her face swollen as she knelt on the floor, and his daughters clinging together—one weeping, one barely holding on—and his heart clenched. Without hesitation, he strode to Kuchiba Hiro and dropped straight to his knees a few paces away.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
He kowtowed hard, his forehead bruising purple, then lifted his tear-streaked face and stammered out a confession, taking all the blame upon himself: "It was me! I ordered your father's death! Every command came from me! I was the mastermind, the executioner!"
Trembling, he pulled out a dark-gold card that glimmered faintly and offered it with both hands, nearly pleading: "A hundred thousand gold coins in here—scan the code and it's yours instantly! Take it all! Just... don't harm my family. Kill me—kill me now, I beg you!"
Kuchiba Hiro listened in silence, still expressionless. He accepted the heavy card, glanced at it casually, and slipped it into his pocket.
Ignoring the plea, he asked the pivotal question in a level voice: "Where is Noah's Ark?"
Yota froze, then shook his head desperately, genuine bewilderment and fear on his face: "I don't know—truly I don't! It's top-level classified; my clearance can't reach it!"
Kuchiba Hiro studied him a moment, as if weighing the truth. Then, unexpectedly, he bent, helped the limp Yota to his feet, and even brushed dirt from his shoulders with a chilling sort of "kindness."
"Stop sniveling," he said, his tone almost gentle. "Everyone must pay the price for their choices."
He paused, meeting Yota's terrified, confused eyes. "You ruined me. You left me without a single family member alive."
"So here's a fair deal," he proposed, as though discussing how to split an apple. "Wiping out your whole family would be excessive. Let's be even: you left me one survivor—I'll leave you one."
"You," he said, tapping Yota's chest, "will definitely die."
"The remaining two spots... pick from those three." His gaze swept over Ayano, Haruno, and Yukino.
Before Yota could claw his way out of that crushing terror, Kuchiba Hiro had already produced a pistol with practiced ease. A metallic click sounded as he thumbed the safety off; the black muzzle breathed death.
"Choose," he urged, his voice flat yet heavy with unquestionable force. "Hurry."
"No... you can't... you can't do this..." Yota shook like a leaf, tears and snot streaming. He looked from his wife to his two daughters, the terror and the torment of choice tearing him apart.
Seeing his hesitation, Kuchiba Hiro's eyes flashed with impatience. Without warning, he swung the barrel—
Bang!
A sharp report echoed through the living room.
Yukinoshita Ayano's body jerked; a ghastly red hole blossomed on her forehead. The complex expression still lingered on her face, but the light in her eyes died fast as she folded to the floor, lifeless.
"Mom!!" Haruno and Yukino screamed in one voice, the sound raw and ragged.
"Now there are only two left," Kuchiba Hiro said, his voice frigid, the muzzle drifting between Haruno and Yukino. "Pick one. If you don't—" a lethal pause—"I kill them both."
"Dad! Pick Yukino! Let Yukino live!!" Haruno shouted through her tears, a desperate resolve in her eyes as she tried to trade her life for her sister's.
Yota stared at his elder daughter's despairing, steadfast gaze, then at his younger daughter's ashen face—already hollow, already surrendered. Agony and selfish calculation warred in his skull.
At last, under Kuchiba Hiro's narrowing stare, Yota's spine seemed to dissolve. With his final scrap of strength, he raised a trembling finger toward Yukino, his voice barely a whisper:
"Yu...kino..."
Boom—!!
The word struck Yukino like lightning. She had sensed it coming, but hearing her father abandon her at the brink of death froze her with a chill no warmth could ever reach. The last spark in her eyes went out.
Haruno's face, caught between horror and relief, froze before the expression could fully form.
A cruel arc tugged at Kuchiba Hiro's lips. He lifted the gun.
Bang!
Another shot rang out.
But it wasn't Yukino who fell.
The bullet drilled cleanly into Haruno's brow. She toppled backward without a sound.
Kuchiba Hiro had ignored Yota's brutal choice—he had killed Haruno.
"Sister!!!" Yukino shrieked, her voice cracking as she flung herself over her sister's still-warm body, sobbing until breath itself seemed impossible.
Yota, watching the daughter he had "chosen" to die lie dead while his other daughter shattered before his eyes, gaped like a fish. Hoarse, choking noises came from his throat; in an instant he looked twenty years older, his mind broken.
Kuchiba Hiro regarded the scene with detached coldness, then hoisted the limp Yota from the floor. Under Yukino's vacant stare, his black and gold Hardened fist, hot as a branding iron, punched into Yota's chest.
Thud—
A wet, grating crunch. Blood sprayed.
Expressionless, Kuchiba Hiro tore the still-quivering heart from Yota's ribcage and tossed it aside like trash.
He gave one last glance at Yukino—clutching her sister, her eyes as empty as a corpse's—then stepped through the gore and wreckage, out of the villa that now resembled a charnel house.
His pace was unhurried, as though he had merely finished some trivial chore, while in his mind he counted.
One... two... three... Just as he reached the shadowed tree line below, a silhouette dropped from the villa's roof with a heavy thud.
Thump.
Kuchiba Hiro paused mid-step but did not look back. An icy, knowing smile curved his lips—no joy, only a contemptuous certainty.
He raised a hand, flicking a casual middle finger at the house that had swallowed four lives.
Then his figure melted into the dark.
The blood-smeared villa and Kuchiba Hiro's vanishing, mocking silhouette painted a tableau of utter despair.)
Upto 15 chapters ahead on patreon :-
patreon.com/Vristikk