“A cotton… a cotton-candy monster ate Sakura up…”
The girl lay sprawled on her back, murmuring incoherently.
Her half-raised legs swung lightly, and her arms hung weak and useless around Asagami Fujino’s neck.
Those sky-blue eyes had lost focus, and looked faintly empty.
Her soft little face was flushed pink from oxygen loss.
Her mouth had parted, just a little.
Sakura sucked in shallow, hurried breaths.
The breath she let out carried a delicate sweetness.
The way her chest hitched with each shallow breath made one worry she might pass out at any moment.
Asagami Fujino lay flat across Sakura’s chest, her own feet kicked up behind her, swaying back and forth.
She was in an excellent mood.
Ehe.
So cute.
She extended a finger and gave Sakura’s lower lip a small, exploratory poke.
The soft, peach-pink lip was bouncy, yielding, just a tiny thing.
Poking it felt rather like poking a pudding — though one couldn’t be sure if the taste was the same.
“Mn-mm.” A soft little moan slipped from the girl’s throat.
Her eyes blinked, and bit by bit, focus returned to them.
“A familiar ceiling…”
“How… white…”
Hearing Sakura’s mumbling, Fujino gave a proud little wriggle forward.
The sudden weight on her chest jolted Sakura the rest of the way out of her daze.
Memory began to return to her, piece by piece.
She had stayed up late last night, so she had slept hard this morning.
And then she remembered—
Sister had grabbed her ankle and woken her up in the most maliciously playful way.
And then — and then a faceful of facial cleanser came at her.
The sky-blue eyes blinked.
The sweet, milky scent washed over her.
Not a hallucination.
Sakura’s cheeks puffed out at once.
The color in her face — which had only just returned to normal — surged back into a deep red, visibly, until even the tips of her ears were burning crimson, radiating absurd amounts of heat.
“Sis, sis, sis — Sister!!!”
Sakura groped for the pillow beside her.
Two pillows were kept in both her and Fujino’s rooms, to make visits between them easier — though such visits, in practice, were rare.
After all — when Fujino wasn’t being awful — what pillow could compete with sleeping in her arms?
Bonk-bonk-bonk—
Sakura was now beating Fujino over the head with the pillow, furiously.
“Awful, awful, terrible!”
The cute little wails of indignation rang clear through the entire Asagami estate.
Out in the courtyard, where she was overseeing several of the staff digging holes, the maid raised her head and looked at the open window on the second floor.
“The Eldest Miss is bullying the Little Young Miss again.” Something faintly envious bled into her indigo eyes.
“How nice.”
The other servants fell silent, not daring to speak.
Miss Shigure was demanding.
But no one ever complained.
Because next to how unsparingly she treated herself, what she expected of them was nothing.
Only with the Little Young Miss — only there — would Miss Shigure, on rare occasions, let the faintest, softest smile slip across her face.
That smile was one of the loveliest sights in the entire Asagami estate.
…
Caught in Fujino’s arms, Sakura held her breath.
Her eyes lowered.
Her long lashes trembled.
She couldn’t help wanting to burrow further into her sister.
Sakura glared up at her, indignant, scrunching her small nose in a way that suggested she was about to bite.
…though, looking at that flushed little face, being bitten wouldn’t be so bad either.
Asagami Fujino held Sakura unhurriedly.
Those deep-red eyes only ever turned soft, indulgent, when they landed on Sakura.
Otherwise they were like a person looking at scenery — disinterested, oddly insect-like, inorganic and devoid of warmth.
If someone were to visit the Asagami house and the Ryōgi house in turn, they would notice that the two young heads of household had the same bottomless eyes.
Fujino caught the girl in her arms.
“Sakura — yesterday… you encountered a Dead Apostle, didn’t you?” Fujino kept going about the business of pulling stockings up over Sakura’s feet.
Her chin rested on Sakura’s shoulder.
Her voice was low.
Thump—
Sakura’s heart felt as though an unseen hand had clamped down on it.
The girl’s pliant body went rigid.
“Sis… what is Sister saying?
Dead Apostle?
What…”
The answer came faster than thought.
Sakura’s instinct was — never let Sister be drawn into the world of True Ancestors and Dead Apostles and vampires.
In her mind’s eye, she saw again that single sweep of her blade.
The thick, black blood smearing across the floor.
Sister looked like a fragile, pitiable thing.
Sakura was afraid of what kind of terrible monster Fujino might one day cross paths with.
“The Asagami are a demon-hunter family.”
Fujino let go of the slender ankle in her hand.
The words landed in Sakura’s chest like a stone.
She turned.
She looked up at Fujino, dumb-struck.
The deep-red eyes were full of indulgence, full of softness.
“We’ve been in decline for generations, thanks to certain ancestral choices.
But we are, nominally at least, still a demon-hunter family.” Fujino tilted her head toward the window.
The Asagami had once been a flourishing demon-hunter house.
Unfortunately, some among them had coveted greater power, and had captured a being of mixed demon and human blood to serve as the household’s guardian spirit.
The result had been a thinning of the Asagami bloodline — to the point that even the color of their eyes had taken on the dark crimson of demons.
Sakura followed Fujino’s gaze toward the window.
Her heart gave a sharp lurch.
She saw it — the axis of the space the curtain occupied — gently twisted.
With that single motion, the curtain warped instantly into a twist of fabric, like a braided cord.
The dazzle of sunlight burst through into Sakura’s field of vision.
The source of it — of all of it — was the sister holding her gently in her arms.
Thump—
Sakura’s heart pounded.
She realized, abruptly, that she might be the one who’d been kept in the dark all along.
Suddenly the conversation between Sister and Big Sis Shiki, that day, made perfect sense.
They — and Big Sis Rouge as well — had already known Dead Apostles had entered Tokyo.
That was why they had told her not to go out at night.
“And Big Sis Shiki’s Ryōgi house… is the same?”
Sakura’s voice came out a little dry.
“Yes.” Fujino nodded.
Her eyes slid away.
The curtain, untwisting, sprang back like a blooming flower.
Wrinkled now from the violent torsion.
A sliver of sunlight poured in through one curled edge.
The revelation about the Ryōgi was, oddly, less of a shock — after all, Big Sis Shiki did look quite strong.
Sakura held out a hand.
The sunlight slanting in along the edge of the curtain fell into her palm, with a warmth that felt almost unreal.
“The Ryōgi, and what was once the Asagami, and two other families, were once known as the Four Demon-Hunter Houses.” Fujino went on quietly.
“And Nanaya… too?”
Sakura slowly drew the small black knife out from her front.
Fujino took it.
The blade was still faintly warm, and a trace of soft, sweet fragrance still clung to it.
“Yes.”
“…And — never speak that surname in front of Shigure.”
She slipped the knife back into Sakura’s clothes, then placed her own hand atop Sakura’s — the hand cupping sunlight — and laced their fingers together.
Unreal warmth was filled in with real softness.
Sakura nodded once, lightly.
Fujino looked out toward the courtyard.
The thick walls seemed unable to obscure her sight at all.
On the other side, the maid slowly raised her head, as though meeting Fujino’s gaze through the stone.
Because… she is the last person of the Nanaya house.
Asagami Fujino kept that last sentence quiet in her heart.
(If we had to find a reference image for Shigure)