While the air at the cemetery was thick with unspoken grief, the atmosphere at the restaurant had shifted into something surprisingly hopeful. Yamato looked at Yumi, a genuine, soft smile finally breaking through his usual stoic exterior.
"If you're willing to spend the second half of your life with a man like me," Yamato said, his voice steady, "then I have no objections. I'm ready, Yumi."
A radiant smile broke across Yumi's face, but it was quickly tempered by a lingering thought. "I just wish I knew what was going on in Naea's head right now," she sighed, glancing toward the door.
"Maybe she's just not ready for a relationship with woman," Yamato suggested practically.
Yumi shook her head. "No, if that were the case, things would be different. Did you see her? She spoke to everyone today—except Akira. She was deliberately looking everywhere but at her. That kind of avoidance isn't indifference; it's a defense mechanism."
"Poor Akira," Yamato muttered, leaning back. "I can only imagine how that felt." He paused, looking at Yumi curiously. "But tell me... since when did you become so open-minded about same-gender love?"
Yumi smiled softly. "After my divorce from Minato, I spent a lot of time traveling the world with the children. I saw so many different kinds of families, so many different ways people loved each other. I realized then that there's nothing wrong with it. Love is just... love." She tilted her head. "And what about you, Mr. Architect? What changed your mind?"
"A business trip to Paris," Yamato admitted with a shrug. "I was in a meeting with a high-level female colleague. She took a call in the middle of our session, and when she hung up, she casually mentioned it was her wife. I was the only one in the room who looked shocked. To everyone else there, it was completely normal. They told me that love has no gender, no age—it's just a feeling. It stayed with me."
"I just wish Naea could see it that way," Yumi murmured.
Yamato leaned in, his eyes sparking with a sudden idea. "Well, there's only one way to help her stop running from her feelings. We need to make her realize what she's losing."
"How?"
"It's a universal truth, Yumi," Yamato said with a smirk. "If a girl likes someone, she can't stand seeing them with anyone else. We need to make her jealous. Extremely jealous."
Yumi looked startled at first, her eyes wide as Yamato whispered the details of his plan to her. Slowly, a mischievous grin spread across her lips, and she nodded in agreement.
With the plan set, Yumi called the waiter to bring the children back from the nearby kid's park where they had been playing. The four of them piled into the car, the air light and full of laughter. Yamato drove them to the Sato Residence, dropping Yumi and the children off with a lingering look of promise before heading to his own home to prepare for the days ahead...
The transition from the emotional wreckage of the cemetery to the clinical coldness of her own home was seamless for a woman like Akira. As she stepped into the dimly lit apartment, the vulnerability she had shown Naea was locked away behind a mask of iron. She walked directly toward the room where the killer was held, her footsteps echoing with a predatory rhythm. The man was asleep on the floor, a temporary escape from his reality, until Akira delivered a sharp, brutal kick to his ribs that sent him sprawling across the hardwood.
The man gasped, his body curling into a ball as he whimpered from the sudden impact. "Why?" he choked out, his voice thin and parched. "Why are you keeping me here? If you're a Prosecutor, turn me over to the law! Why the hunger? Why this torture?"
Akira looked down at him, her eyes as vacant and cold as the steel she was about to use. "Because," she murmured, her voice a low, terrifying vibration, "you aren't the main culprit."
The silence that followed was heavy with dread. Akira reached for a roll of tools on a nearby table, selecting a pair of heavy shears. She hauled the man from the floor, shoving him back into the chair with a strength born of pure adrenaline, and gripped his hand. "I'm going to count to three," she whispered, the metal glinting. "I want the name of the person who ordered the hit on Mr. Sato. If I reach three and I don't hear a name, you lose a finger."
The man's breathing became a frantic, ragged mess. "One..." Akira began. "Two..."
"Kenji Takahashi!" the killer shrieked, the name spilling out of him like a confession at the gates of hell. "It was Kenji! I told you! I told you before three!"
The sharp, metallic snip of the shears followed instantly, followed by a blood-curdling scream that tore through the apartment. The man collapsed forward, sobbing in pure agony. "I said it! I said the name before you hit three! Why did you do it?!"
"Because," Akira said, cleaning the blade with a chilling, detached indifference, "you didn't tell the truth the first time."
Following her signature pattern of psychological warfare—inflicting the trauma only to provide the cure—Akira opened a first-aid kit. With the steady hands of a surgeon, she treated and bandaged the wound while the man watched her in absolute, paralyzed terror.
Just as she snapped the kit shut, her phone vibrated. Seeing Yumi's name, Akira stepped out of the room and locked the door. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Prosecutor," Yumi's voice came through, sounding suspiciously cheerful.
"No. What is it?" Akira asked, her voice still tight.
"Dinner is at the Sato Residence tonight. Eight o'clock sharp. Don't be late," Yumi commanded, and before Akira could offer a single word of protest, the line went dead.
Akira stared at the darkened screen, a frustrated sigh escaping her. "They really are made for each other, aren't they? One forces a lunch, the other demands a dinner—both at the Sato Residence. And neither of them stays on the line long enough to hear 'no.' Ugh... what am I supposed to do with people like this?"
The cold efficiency of the Prosecutor's mind was on full display as the clock ticked toward 7:30 PM. The dinner at the Sato Residence was a looming obligation, but Akira still had a debt of basic humanity—or perhaps a calculated psychological move—to pay in the shadows of her own home. She retreated to the kitchen, her movements fluid and detached, as she prepared a gourmet sandwich with the same precision she used to dismantle a legal defense. Carrying the plate into the locked room, she found the man slumped in his chair, his world still reduced to the pitch-black void of the blindfold she refused to remove.
She reached out, her grip firm and uncompromising, and pressed the sandwich into his hand. The killer ate with a desperate, ravenous energy, the sustenance finally allowing his voice to find its strength. "Tell me something," he muttered, his mouth half-full of bread and meat. "How did you know? How did you catch me in that lie so quickly?"
Akira stood over him, her silhouette a jagged, dark pillar against the dim light of the hallway. "Your lie was wrapped in a color that didn't exist," she said, her voice a low, terrifying vibration.
The man paused, his chewing slowing as he waited for her to elaborate.
"You tried to paint a picture of obsession," Akira continued, her tone clinical and devoid of any warmth. "You told me that the moment you saw Naea in that yellow dress, you were captivated. But that very afternoon, after she left your sight, I asked her a simple, seemingly trivial question. I asked if she owned anything yellow. Her response was immediate and visceral: 'I hate yellow.' You built your entire confession on a fabric she would never touch. It was clear from that moment—every word you spoke was a scripted performance."
The killer went still, a dry, hollow chuckle escaping his throat as he processed the sheer depth of her observation. "Impressive. They weren't joking about the Prosecutor's mind, were they?" He tilted his blindfolded head toward the sound of her breathing, a twisted curiosity in his voice. "When you finally hand me over to the police... I really want to see the face of the woman who outplayed me."
Akira offered neither a reaction nor a reply. Her silence was a wall he could not climb. Without a word, she turned on her heel and exited the room, the heavy click of the lock signaling his return to isolation. Stepping into the living room, she collapsed onto the couch and switched on the television, the flickering blue light reflecting in her eyes as she waited for the final half-hour to pass. The storm at the cemetery had settled, but the dinner at the Sato Residence was a different kind of battlefield entirely.While the drama was unfolding in the shadows of the city, the atmosphere inside the Sato Residence was one of secret alliances. Earlier that afternoon, right after Yumi had made the forceful call to Akira, she had pulled Hikari aside. With Mrs. Takahashi away at her mother's house for business and Natsuki and Saeko buried in their college finals, the house was left to the four of them—and Yumi's children.
"Hikari," Yumi had whispered, her eyes sparkling with a hidden agenda. "I've invited the Prosecutor for dinner tonight. But we must keep it a secret from Naea. She's already exhausted,To keep Naea away from the kitchen, Yumi had strategically assigned her the role of "Chief Babysitter." Naea, completely unaware of the storm brewing in the dining room, spent her evening fully engaged with Sui and Suzo. The children were having the time of their lives with their "Aunt Naea," their laughter echoing through the halls as they played, providing Naea with a temporary, joyful distraction from the heavy memories of the cemetery.
It was only when the doorbell rang at 8:00 PM that the reality hit. As Naea walked toward the door, still laughing at something Suzo had said.
But as she opened the door, Akira was standing there, her face completely void of expression.