Things had unfolded almost exactly as Loki predicted.
At Yuto's prompting, Hestia finally told him everything that had happened that day.
The gods' meeting had actually been peaceful at first, peaceful enough that she had begun to think Loki's warning might have been unnecessary and the whole thing would end without incident.
Unfortunately, just as the meeting was drawing to a close, one of the gods finally stepped forward and challenged her.
And the target was Sakura.
What followed was a long confrontation that eventually ended with a War Game being formally declared.
The gods of Orario had already been bored out of their minds, and as beings who lived for excitement, they were always eager for some enormous incident that could break the monotony of their endless lives.
Among all the entertainment Orario could offer, a War Game between Familias was precisely the sort of spectacle capable of sending the entire city into a frenzy.
Fortunately, the god who challenged Hestia had not demanded that the War Game begin immediately.
She had been given one day to prepare.
After leaving the gods' meeting, Hestia had spent the rest of the day running around Orario, calling in every favor she could think of and desperately trying to gather anyone willing to stand beside her.
Yet after exhausting nearly every connection available to her, she had managed to secure the help of only a handful of people.
For a War Game...
It was barely a drop in the bucket.
By the time Hestia finished explaining everything, the worry weighing on her was impossible to hide.
The pressure had clearly been building all day, and now that she was finally sitting somewhere safe enough to speak openly about it, exhaustion seemed to settle over her all at once.
Beside her, Sakura quietly looked toward Yuto.
The hope in the little girl's eyes was unmistakable.
Yuto noticed immediately and gave her a reassuring smile before turning back to Hestia.
Several of the customers nearby had also fallen silent, listening carefully to everything she said.
"So what are you planning to do now?" Yuto asked softly.
Hestia did not answer right away.
She remained silent for a moment before slowly raising her head to look at him.
Her normally bright eyes were clouded with exhaustion, dejection, and the lingering pain of someone who had spent the entire day struggling against a problem she could not solve.
For a brief moment, she simply stared at him.
Then something changed.
The uncertainty in her eyes did not disappear completely, but beneath it came a flicker of hope, followed by the fragile courage of someone finally deciding to place everything on one last gamble.
"Help me."
Her voice was quiet.
The courage that had flared inside her seemed almost ready to collapse the moment the words left her mouth.
Yuto could not help smiling.
He did not offer a grand speech or make her explain anything further.
He simply nodded.
"Okay."
That single answer seemed to bring Hestia back to life.
Warmth immediately returned to her expression, and the relief spreading across her face was like that of someone who had spent far too long carrying an unbearable burden alone and had finally been told she could set it down.
The moment Yuto agreed, several of the people nearby visibly changed expressions.
Until now, they had allowed him to answer first.
Now they could speak as well.
"A war against the followers of gods?" Gilgamesh's lips curved upward with unmistakable arrogance.
"Hmph. This king is rather interested in seeing what these so-called divine Familias are capable of."
His tone was as proud as ever, and when speaking about gods, his usual lack of respect somehow became even more pronounced.
Enkidu merely smiled faintly beside him.
El-Melloi II adjusted his glasses, a trace of genuine academic interest appearing in his expression.
"Followers of deities from another world... They may prove useful to my research into magecraft."
"Ahahahahaha! Interesting!" Iskandar immediately laughed. "A battle against the followers of gods? Count me in!"
His reaction could hardly have been more different from El-Melloi II's.
One approached the matter with restrained scholarly curiosity.
The other responded with the enthusiasm of a man who had just been invited to an especially entertaining war.
To the King of Conquerors, even gods were merely another existence that could someday be conquered.
Hestia stared at all of them in shock.
She genuinely could not understand why so many people she barely knew were suddenly volunteering to help her.
It was not until Sakura explained what had happened several days earlier—how she had somehow ended up becoming the student of Gilgamesh, El-Melloi II, and the others—that Hestia finally understood.
At this point, there was no longer any reason to keep it secret.
The moment Sakura finished explaining, Hestia pulled the little girl tightly into her arms, so deeply moved that she almost seemed ready to cry again.
"Hmph! Since I have accepted her as my student, naturally I must stand up for her." Gilgamesh spoke with obvious displeasure, as though the very idea of anyone interfering with Sakura offended him personally.
"This king's student is not someone a few insignificant gods can manipulate however they please!"
Unusually enough, Professor El-Melloi II nodded in agreement.
Sakura might have studied under him for only a short time, but that hardly mattered.
If she called him "Sensei," then he had accepted a teacher's responsibility toward her.
And El-Melloi II had always taken his students extremely seriously.
Hestia repeatedly bowed to Gilgamesh and the others, thanking them with such sincerity that she looked almost overwhelmed by the support suddenly appearing around her.
Help from people of this caliber was far too precious for her to refuse, especially when she had spent the entire day desperately searching for allies and finding almost none.
The moment she finished thanking them, however, another voice eagerly jumped into the conversation.
"Hey, hey! I want to help too! I want to join! Can I?!"
Marisa stared at Hestia with sparkling eyes.
The witch was already accustomed to causing trouble around Gensokyo on a daily basis, so the possibility of traveling to another world and creating an even bigger commotion naturally sounded extremely appealing.
Judging from the expressions around the Gensokyo table, several others were thinking more or less the same thing.
Even Saitama had begun rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
"If they're gods... does that mean they're strong?"
There was a clear hint of anticipation in his voice.
Genos immediately analyzed the possibility with complete seriousness.
"If these gods possess strength comparable to the deities described in mythology, then they should be relatively powerful. It is possible they could provide a suitable opponent for you, Sensei."
Saitama immediately looked a little happier.
Listening to one person after another volunteer, Hestia's expression crumpled again.
This time, however, it had nothing to do with fear or despair.
She was simply overwhelmed.
"Thank you! Thank you so much!"
Hestia bowed deeply to everyone, her voice trembling with barely contained tears.
At that moment, a hand gently settled on her head.
She looked up.
Yuto was standing in front of her, his expression calm and reassuring.
"Everyone's here. You don't need to carry this by yourself."
His voice was soft.
Somewhere along the way, the restaurant had long since stopped being a place that belonged only to Yuto.
Through countless nights, arguments, meals, battles, and strange encounters between people from entirely different worlds, it had gradually become something closer to a group.
A place where people could rely on one another when it mattered.
Hestia stared at him through tear-filled eyes before finally nodding.
For perhaps the first time since the gods' meeting ended, the young goddess no longer felt as though the entire problem rested solely on her shoulders.
...
It took Hestia a while to fully calm down.
Not long afterward, the Gensokyo group left as well, and the restaurant immediately became much emptier.
Freed from the crushing anxiety that had been weighing on her since the gods' meeting, Hestia gradually regained some of her usual energy, and a smile finally returned to her face.
Even her conversation with Yuto became noticeably more relaxed.
Throughout all of this, however, almost nobody noticed anything unusual about Rin.
Her expression had changed completely from the moment she first saw Sakura.
Excitement and joy were mixed together on her face, yet beneath them were nervousness, uncertainty, and a fear that seemed to prevent her from acting on what she was thinking.
Her eyes had remained fixed on Sakura almost the entire time.
Several times, her lips moved as though she wanted to say something, only for hesitation to stop her before a single word came out.
Illya, sitting beside her, eventually noticed.
Curious, the little girl studied Rin for a moment before following her gaze toward Sakura.
Illya could not understand why seeing Sakura had affected Rin so strongly, but that only made her even more curious.
Eventually, Sakura herself noticed that both girls were staring at her.
She turned toward them.
The instant Sakura's gaze met Rin's, Rin instinctively looked away.
Sakura continued watching her, her eyebrows twitching faintly.
For some reason...
This girl felt strangely familiar.
"What's wrong, Sakura?"
Standing opposite her, Yuto immediately noticed the change in the little girl's expression and casually followed her gaze toward Rin.
The moment he saw the Tohsaka heiress, something suddenly clicked in his mind.
It went all the way back to Rin's first visit to the restaurant.
Even then, there had been something about her that left Yuto with a lingering question, but as one thing after another happened, the thought had gradually slipped from his mind.
Only now did he remember.
The relationship between Rin Tohsaka and Sakura.
"Miss Tohsaka?"
He called softly.
Rin flinched like a startled rabbit.
Only then did she realize that everyone's attention had begun shifting toward her.
A faint embarrassed blush appeared on her cheeks, and for a moment she lowered her head, clearly struggling with herself.
Then she stubbornly raised it again.
There was something she needed to say.
If there had not been, Rin would never have forced herself through this much hesitation.
She looked directly at Sakura.
Sakura stared back.
For that brief moment, both of them seemed to experience the same strange sensation.
Familiarity.
Yet mixed within that familiarity was an inexplicable distance, as though they knew each other deeply and not at all at the same time.
"Haa..."
Rin pressed one hand against her chest and drew in a long breath.
"Can I ask... what your name is?"
She stared at Sakura while waiting for the answer.
The little girl in front of her looked almost exactly like the younger sister Rin remembered, but after everything she had experienced, she still did not dare leap immediately to the conclusion her heart was desperately trying to reach.
Sakura hesitated slightly.
"Tohsaka... Sakura..."
The moment that name left her mouth, Rin could no longer remain calm.
Her expression trembled.
Tears instantly filled her eyes.
"Do you... have an older sister named Tohsaka Rin...?"
Her voice had become unsteady.
Sakura froze.
At first, there was only surprise on her face.
Then the meaning of Rin's question sank in, and that surprise rapidly transformed into joy and excitement.
"You... You're Rin?!"
Sakura pointed at her and cried out happily.
That was enough.
The tears Rin had been desperately holding back finally spilled from her eyes.
There was no longer any doubt.
The little girl standing in front of her really was her younger sister.
It was Sakura.
No one knew how many nights Rin had spent crying alone over her.
From the moment she learned that her father had given Sakura to the Matou family, something inside her had gone cold.
She had been too young to stop what happened, yet knowing that had never erased the helpless guilt she carried.
Then, years later, she heard that the Matou family had been completely destroyed by some mysterious force.
That news had driven her heart even lower.
Rin had always assumed Sakura died when the Matou household was wiped out.
The destruction had been frighteningly complete, with virtually every trace of the family disappearing.
How could she possibly have imagined otherwise?
For years, Rin had lived with the belief that the little sister taken away from her had died somewhere beyond her reach.
And yet...
Sakura was standing directly in front of her now.
Alive.
Healthy.
Smiling at her.
For once, fate had not been cruel enough to take everything away.
As the shock began to settle, countless things suddenly made sense.
The restaurant could connect not only different worlds but also different periods of what was essentially the same world.
Perhaps Sakura, while still living in the past Rin remembered, had somehow stumbled into this restaurant by pure chance.
From there, everything else had changed.
The mysterious force responsible for the destruction of the Matou family...
The sudden disappearance that Rin had interpreted as Sakura's death...
All of it had actually been connected to the restaurant.
Sakura had been taken away from that fate.
And from that moment onward, Rin had spent ten long years carrying grief and guilt for a sister who had actually been safe somewhere else.
For the restaurant, only a few days separated Sakura and Rin's first visits.
But for Rin...
Those few days had lasted an entire decade.
"Rin!!!"
Sakura suddenly ran forward and threw herself into her sister's arms.
The little girl cried out happily as Rin instinctively wrapped both arms around her.
For Sakura, the time since she last saw Rin could still be counted in days.
Her feelings therefore contained very little of the grief Rin had carried.
Mostly, Sakura felt surprise.
And happiness.
She had wanted to see her sister again, and somehow Rin had simply appeared in the restaurant.
For Rin, however, the emotions were far more complicated.
The difference in time between their lives had created two completely different experiences of the same separation.
Her little sister was still almost exactly as small as the day they had parted.
Rin herself, however...
Had already grown into a high-school girl.
Holding Sakura like this filled her with an emotion she could barely describe.
Ten years of guilt, grief, longing, relief, disbelief, and love tangled together until she no longer knew where one feeling ended and another began.
But beneath all of them was something wonderfully simple.
She was happy.
Whatever had happened in the intervening years no longer mattered as much as this.
Her sister was alive!
Being able to hold Sakura in her arms again was already far more than Rin had allowed herself to hope for.
Even if someone told her to withdraw from the Holy Grail War right now...
She doubted she would hesitate very much anymore.
"I actually wanted to go back and see Rin too!" Sakura complained playfully from within her arms. "I didn't expect to meet you here instead. Rin's gotten so much bigger already... That's cheating!"
Sakura had originally been a quiet and introverted child, but after following the rather unreliable Hestia around, her personality had gradually become much brighter.
Working at Mia's tavern and interacting with adventurers every day had also forced her to open up and grow much faster than before.
"I thought..."
Rin tightened her embrace around Sakura.
Her voice broke into a quiet sob.
She could not even finish the sentence, but the relief and lingering sadness written across her face made the meaning clear enough.
Sakura was clever.
She froze for only a moment before understanding.
The little girl raised one hand and gently tried to pat Rin's head.
Given their difference in height, it was not particularly easy.
"Sorry. I made Rin sad."
Sakura softly comforted her.
For a moment, it almost seemed as though the roles of older and younger sister had somehow been reversed.
Everyone nearby watched the reunion in stunned silence.
Few of them had understood what was happening until the sisters called each other by name, and seeing Rin go from shocked disbelief to openly crying while holding Sakura was enough to leave almost everyone speechless.
Yuto was one of the few who remained relatively calm.
He slowly breathed out as he watched them embrace.
'Looks like my original guess was pretty accurate after all~'
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