Rin came rushing over, practically tripping and scrambling as she ran.
Her hair was already a mess. The ponytail that had been neatly tied was half undone. Strands stuck to her temples and cheeks with sweat and tears from an all-out sprint.
Her little face was flushed; her chest heaved as she gulped for air, every breath burning in her lungs.
Her expensive dress was visibly torn at the knees and elbows, exposing skin streaked with blood, and she was caked in dust and mud—obvious marks from falling again and again in her desperate run.
She'd even lost one shoe. One foot wore only a grime-stained white sock. She looked utterly bedraggled—nothing like the composed young lady of the Tohsaka household.
But Rin Tohsaka couldn't care less.
After the shattering answer she got from her mother, she'd shot out like a cannonball, pouring every ounce of strength and speed from her childhood into the run. Relying on the address of the Matou home she'd once secretly looked up, she tore in that direction without a second thought.
She didn't dare stop for even a heartbeat. She didn't dare wonder whether she would make it in time. Only one thought blazed in her mind:
Catch up to Father!
Stop him!
Take Sakura back!
Sakura, big sis will protect you!
This vow could not—must not—turn into empty words today, here.
At last… she caught up!
At the darkest moment, she saw her sister standing before the great gate like a lamb to the slaughter!
"Rin?"
Tohsaka Tokiomi's brows cinched tight, clear displeasure and surprise flickering across his face. He hadn't expected Rin to be this stubborn, much less to pinpoint this place and actually chase them down. It seemed that not only in Sakura's matter, but also in his discipline of Rin and his instructions to Aoi, things had slipped in ways he hadn't foreseen. It disrupted the "smooth transition" he'd planned—especially before Matou Zouken, an undeniable loss of composure.
But it had come to this.
The crying of a seven-year-old girl could not change established reality. He could not allow Rin to wreck an adoption that concerned the Tohsaka family's future and a magus's honor.
Sakura, whose soul seemed gone and whose consciousness drifted beyond pain, heard a voice etched into her bones—the shout that could only belong to her sister. In that instant, a faint but real light flared back to life in her hollow, unfocused violet eyes.
It's sis!
It's really sis!
She didn't lie to me!
She really came!
When the whole world had abandoned her, her sister had come to save her!
A hot rush of gratitude, grievance, and rekindled hope crashed through the numb barrier she'd forced herself to build, and her cold, stiff, almost senseless body found a sliver of strength. She whipped her head around. Through tear-blurred vision she saw her sister, staggering but throwing everything she had into the run. The figure wavered in the thick mist, yet it was like the lone beam of sunlight piercing heavy clouds—like a lighthouse torch guiding the way through endless dark.
Rin Tohsaka burned the last of her strength to close the distance. She couldn't even steady her ragged breathing. She ignored the horrifying old man—Matou Zouken—whose very look made her spine ice over and her stomach knot, and she crushed down the instinctive fear of her father's dark expression.
She saw only her little sister.
Like a lioness, she flung out her arms and yanked Sakura—standing there as if a touch would shatter her—away from her father's side, shielding her tightly behind her.
She was still a child, but she stood ramrod straight, trying to hold up the sky for her sister.
Then she lifted her head. Her gem-red eyes burned like a blaze—the flame of Rin Tohsaka's stubborn will, forged from searing anger, gut-ripping pain, disappointment in her father, and an iron refusal to yield.
She stared her father down without flinching—the man she had once revered and adored, now a stranger of ice: Tohsaka Tokiomi. Through ragged breaths, with a voice that kept breaking into sobs yet rang out loud and clear, she hurled the first and final question torn from her heart:
"Father, do you really have to hand Sakura over to this horrible old man?!"
"Do you not think of Sakura at all?"
"She's your daughter too! She's one of us!"
"How could she be happy in a place like this?"
The girl's sharp, grief-stricken cry echoed along the empty, damp street, striking the cold walls—and striking Tohsaka Tokiomi's heart.
It was the fury of a child ignored, and it mercilessly tore apart the Tohsaka family's fragile façade of "magus reason" and calm.
Blood-bonded kinship and the cold, brutal fate of magi collided—raw, direct, and heartbreaking—before the Matou gate veiled in morning fog.
Tohsaka Tokiomi's face went utterly dark. There was no reflection—only anger, a storm-laden sky whose weight pressed down and suffocated. His daughter's public defiance and accusations were a serious challenge to his authority as head and father.
Matou Zouken, meanwhile, kept that skin-crawling smile. His murky eyes narrowed with interest as he took in the sudden family drama. His withered lips seemed to move soundlessly, as if to say:
"See, Tokiomi—this is the excess of emotion… branches that need pruning, in the end."
The air seemed to freeze.
The sisters' hands clutched each other tight—one in a stance of fierce protection, the other like a drowning soul gripping the last piece of driftwood. Facing them loomed the cold wall of the magus world's unshakable rules.
The end of this uneven struggle seemed foregone.
Yet in that moment, the fire in Rin's eyes lit a spark inside Sakura, pushing back the darkness of her despair.
~~~
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