Sakura Renxin.
Current head of the Sakura family.
Fifth Sequence Healing-type Esper.
A Healing-type... sure.
When the Sakura family said it with a straight face, everyone listened with a straight face.
But just try actually believing it. Anyone reckless enough to provoke Sakura Renxin would find that whether they walked out of the Sakura family estate alive depended entirely on her mood that day.
"History's Strongest Healing-type Esper" was no empty title. She truly was the strongest — in the most literal, physical sense of the word.
Sakura Renxin had once said, "I only heal Senpai."
Not long after that, the line became: "Senpai, look~♪ I've cut down all the enemies — Senpai is safe now."
It had been at a Sakura family banquet, years ago.
When the old patriarch of the Sakura family — a clan of swordsmanship lineage — announced that his only daughter, Sakura Renxin, was a Healing-type Esper who aspired to become a doctor devoted to healing the sick and saving the dying, there were still people sighing about the poetic justice of it all.
The Sakura family, infamous for their killing intent, had produced a Healer — and an only daughter at that.
But a few years later, everyone noticed that this healer's... style was just a tiny, microscopic, infinitesimal bit off.
Especially at the Trial Tournament.
When Sakura Renxin started wielding the Sakura family's Sword of Erasure as a standard weapon, the entire atmosphere of the Trial Tournament... shifted right along with it.
In everyone's mind, the Sword of Erasure was an object of terrifying, demonic nature. Even the Sakura family's Sixth Sequence patriarch could only barely control it, drawing it only at critical moments.
So what in the world was that healer doing, swinging the Sword of Erasure around and chasing other competitors across the field like she was rolling them in the dirt?
She even used the Sword of Erasure to chop firewood.
The Sword of Erasure's effect of continuously inflicting grievous wounds on its wielder... oh, wait, she's a healer. Never mind.
Like hell never mind!!!
Ability users of the same Sequence didn't dare test their mettle against her blade.
And it wasn't like Sakura Renxin was some mindless berserker swinging a sword around either — her swordsmanship ran deep with the Sakura family's true inheritance.
She had even learned the Tennoji family's sword style.
In Sakura Renxin's presence, even Soga Yura could only be a good, obedient girl — calling her "Sister" with meek compliance.
Well, she was the elder, after all.
But Soga Yura watched Sakura Renxin with something close to incomprehension — and then glanced at Sakura Mai, who stood behind her like a docile little kitten.
Hadn't the head of the Sakura family gone on a honeymoon world tour with Tennoji-sama? Why had she suddenly turned up in the Tokyo metropolitan area?
Though — if Lady Sakura had returned to Tokyo, then that Aberrant probably wasn't much of a threat anymore.
As the tension in Soga Yura's chest eased, there was also just the tiniest, most grudging flicker of dissatisfaction.
"I wanted to be the one to protect Yuzu with my own hands."
"Mmm-mm~" Sakura Renxin's eyes curved upward at the corners, gorgeous and coquettish in an instant, radiating a world of charm.
She glanced back at Sakura Mai, who was being unusually well-behaved, with an expression that practically said: "Look at that, look at that."
"Look how well-mannered the Soga family's child is."
Sakura Mai's face was completely blank.
The Knight Princess was silently protesting: "That's still no excuse for complaining when I call you Mother!!!"
What was it like to have a mother who never read the room?
She had absolutely no self-awareness as either a mother or a wife.
At home she had zero dignity. She was always wearing her clothes wrong, and her socks and underwear were constantly scattered everywhere.
She acted like a child — always throwing tantrums and wheedling her way out of things.
She would try to coax her own daughter into calling her "Big Sis" with some nonsense excuse like, "Ugh... if you call me 'Mother' it makes me sound so old."
She would burst into the bathroom uninvited, reaching out with wandering hands and claiming she was "just checking up on you, as your loving mother."
Don't let the imposing, commanding aura fool you.
The more rigorous the Knight Princess was, the more absolutely unhinged this woman was in her daily life.
"Mmm..." The woman gave Sakura Mai a lazy, gorgeous sidelong glance, then turned her gaze toward Yuzu.
Her eyes drifted slowly downward.
"Oh my, oh my... so this is little Yuzu?"
"She doesn't look very little at all..."
"Sssslp—" Su Yuzu actually heard the woman audibly inhale.
Su Yuzu's expression flatlined into a wall of black lines, while the corner of Soga Yura's brow began to twitch.
"MOTHER!!!" Sakura Mai was half a second away from drawing the Sword of Erasure and bringing it straight down on this woman's skull in an overhead cleave.
In the conference room, only Kujou Katora watched Sakura Renxin with grave, measured calm.
She could clearly sense how terrifying that woman was.
Beneath all that apparently scatterbrained behavior, with what seemed like just a casual glance, the woman made every hair on her body want to stand on end — as though something monstrous had locked its gaze onto her.
"Sakura..." Su Yuzu hesitated, trying to figure out how to greet the woman.
She looked at Sakura Renxin's expression — expectant, almost hopeful — and then at Sakura Mai standing behind her, jaw clenched like she was grinding her back teeth to dust.
"Lady Sister Sakura!" Su Yuzu ultimately chose to just flatter Sakura Renxin.
Of course —
This had absolutely nothing to do with Sakura Renxin's looks or figure.
Not even a little bit.
Absolutely not.
"Awww, Yuzu is such a good girl~" Sakura Renxin wrapped her arms around Yuzu on the spot, and Yuzu could feel the burning warmth and softness of the woman's body pressed against her.
But... what had everyone utterly tense was —
— too fast —
— when did she —
Without giving any of them even a moment to react, Sakura Renxin, a Healing-type Esper, had already wrapped herself around Su Yuzu.
"MOTHER DEAREST!!!" Sakura Mai peeled a weeping, reluctant Sakura Renxin off Su Yuzu and then frantically turned to apologize.
"I'm sorry, Sister Yuzu... Mother sometimes just doesn't know how to behave..."
"I was not yet born when you were born; by the time you were born, I was already old..." Cradled in Sakura Mai's arms, Sakura Renxin wept pitifully, waving her handkerchief.
Sakura Mai, at her absolute limit, delivered a knife-hand chop straight to Sakura Renxin's head. "Will you please ACT YOUR AGE?!"
"Father will cry."
"That's fine! I don't mind sharing Yuzu with her." Sakura Renxin thumped her chest.
Crack —
Sakura Mai's fist squeezed shut.
"Haaah~" Sakura Renxin put on a show of dabbing tears with her handkerchief. "Mai has grown up... even bullying her own mama now."
"But Mama understands."
"Mai likes Sister Yuzu so much — Mama really shouldn't be stealing her love interest away... wuwuwu, Mama is already so old..."
Frozen in place, Sakura Mai's ear tips suddenly flushed deep crimson, red as blood.
"You — you — you — you — what are you even SAYING?!"
The corner of Sakura Renxin's lips curved up in a sly, knowing arc. "Oh my~~ You're blushing~"
"Mai is blushing~"
The Knight Princess was absolutely, thoroughly, completely played.
But —
In the conference room, watching the girls gathered together, after that brief moment of chaos, Sakura Renxin quickly recovered her composure and her expression turned serious.
"Tsukimisato, was it?"
"Leave the mission of scouting that place to me."
She struck a pose of righteous, noble resolve. "It just so happens — I've been wanting to pay that place a visit for a long time."
"Unfortunately... Jurei never allowed it."
Crack —
Squeezed to death.
Sakura Mai's fist squeezed shut.
"Will you PLEASE act your age?!"
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