She could feel that cursed sword shift, ever so faintly.
Su Yuzu looked at the Knight Princess in front of her — robe parted, lower lip caught between her teeth.
After a brief hesitation, she chose to slowly loosen her grip and give it up, drawing her arm gradually back out.
Su Yuzu glanced up at Tennoji Jurei and gave a small shake of her head. "I'm sorry... Honored Aunt, it seems I can't draw it out."
Sakura Mai let out a long breath, then drew her robe back into place with utter mortification.
Even now... she felt she could still smell the citrus fragrance lingering between the strands of hair of the girl who, just moments ago, had pressed close against her in order to draw the sword and shield her from view.
Wave after wave of it, invading her nostrils.
The Knight Princess's small face was, for once, flushed a rare bright pink.
"Didn't manage to draw it?" Tennoji Jurei nodded, looking perfectly composed. "It's of no consequence that you couldn't draw it out."
"The fact that Yuzu was able to wield the Sword of Erasure that earlier time... was probably because she'd gained a portion of your sister's 'Domination' power, and so used it to forcibly 'dominate' the Sword of Erasure."
Su Yuzu just nodded along in agreement, reaching out a hand to lightly straighten Sakura Mai's robe for her.
The truth was... a moment ago, she'd already been perfectly able to draw out that cursed sword.
Su Yuzu could feel the Sword of Erasure shifting within Sakura Mai's chest.
The cursed spirit of the Sword of Erasure had already acknowledged her.
If she'd wanted, with just a little more strength, she could have drawn the Sword of Erasure straight out of Sakura Mai's chest just now.
But... Su Yuzu had chosen to give up.
Su Yuzu had once heard Sakura Mai say that the Sakura family's Sword of Erasure was a very peculiar sort of Holy Relic — or, more accurately... an evil relic.
A sword that only an heir of the Sakura family could possess.
Beyond its formidable power, that sword carried a very particular symbolic significance as well.
Did Su Yuzu have Sakura family blood in her?
Perhaps she did.
The Soga clan and the Sakura family... had been joined in marriage in years past.
But... was it really because of that drop of Sakura family blood that Su Yuzu had been able to draw the Sword of Erasure?
Probably not.
Setting aside the Sword of Erasure, the Holy Relic that even Saint Michael in her day had failed to tame — the "Godmother's Laurel" — was utterly docile, utterly submissive, in Su Yuzu's hands as well.
If one were to argue that the "Godmother's Laurel" was simply a special-case exception... then what about "Immaculate Pure Land"?
At first, "Immaculate Pure Land" had resolutely resisted Su Yuzu.
The result... was that Su Yuzu had simply heard a helpless soul give a faint, sorrowful wail.
An indifferent will had wiped clean away "Immaculate Pure Land"'s very standards of recognition, reshaping "Immaculate Pure Land" outright into a form that belonged to Su Yuzu.
Su Yuzu had wondered about it... what would happen if she forcibly drew out the Sword of Erasure?
Perhaps she'd gain the recognition and protection of the Sakura family.
But... what if she forcibly drew out the Sword of Erasure, and the Sword of Erasure also reshaped itself to her form — no longer recognizing Sakura Mai or Sakura Renxin — what then?
Then the situation would probably turn into a real mess.
The version of herself who'd drawn the sword would probably have to change her surname to Sakura, transitioning in one stroke into a daughter of the Sakura family, inheriting the Sword of Erasure as the next head of the Sakura family.
Or, alternatively——
Just like Tennoji Jurei, with Sakura Mai... she supposed.
Su Yuzu shot Sakura Mai a sidelong glance.
Honestly, that wouldn't be such a bad choice.
The version of herself who'd become a daughter of the Sakura family would also have, in every sense of the word... a status and standing on equal footing with Soga Yura.
But... it was just too much trouble.
Contemplating everything that would follow on the heels of drawing the sword, Su Yuzu simply found it all far too much bother.
A life like the one she had right now — that wasn't bad at all, really.
It wasn't as though she was lacking some evil relic whose aftereffects would be more troublesome than the prospect of ascending the Throne herself.
Just look at the "Godmother's Laurel" — same tier of artifact.
Look how obedient that one was.
When Su Yuzu told her to morph into a laurel, she became a laurel; switched out for a collar, earrings, a bandeau, a stocking band, an ankle ring — she didn't put up the slightest resistance to any of it.
If the cursed spirit residing within the Sword of Erasure ever learned that the girl had chosen to give up on it — on something so powerful, possibly even one of the very strongest Holy Relics in the present world — purely because she was worried about how troublesome the aftermath of drawing it would be... it would probably feel rather glum about that too.
Behind Su Yuzu... Sakura Renxin shot Tennoji Jurei a look heavy with meaning.
Tennoji Jurei simply straightened her posture, slowly.
Neither of their expressions betrayed the slightest oddity.
Years upon years of sharing every hardship at each other's side had brought Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei to the point where a single shared glance was enough to read each other's thoughts.
The Sword of Erasure, as it was called, was a sword that only those of Sakura family bloodline could possess.
The process of drawing the sword was, in fact, a passing down of inheritance.
As far as Tennoji Jurei and Sakura Renxin were concerned, the only outcomes that really mattered were these two: utterly unable to even find a way to it, versus being able to actually touch the Sword of Erasure.
Successfully drawing the Sword of Erasure would have been an unexpected windfall.
But even if it couldn't be drawn, what they'd wanted to find out had already been confirmed.
Even Tennoji Jurei could not reach a hand into Sakura Renxin's bosom and so much as touch the Sword of Erasure.
Old ginger, after all, packs the sharpest bite — the drawing of the sword had been nothing but a pretext.
The outcome had been settled the very moment the girl began to draw the sword.
It was just that... Su Yuzu and Sakura Mai had no idea, that was all.
But——
Should they let the cat out of the bag?
Not really necessary.
Girls had their own ways of thinking about these things.
Since Little Yuzu was unwilling to draw out the Sword of Erasure, unwilling to inherit the Sword of Erasure's brand——
Then they'd leave it to Little Yuzu's own discretion.
In Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei's eyes, from the very moment Su Yuzu had reached her hand into Sakura Mai's bosom and gripped the hilt of the Sword of Erasure to begin drawing it, Su Yuzu had already been stamped with the seal of the Sakura family.
Even if that fellow Soga Retsu came marching back from the Abyss Battlefield this very moment, it would change nothing!
Little Yuzu had to belong to the Sakura family.
Of course——
As for the question of how, exactly, Su Yuzu would become part of the Sakura family... there were any number of routes — a friendly negotiation with the Soga family was one Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei wouldn't mind at all.
As for the old master... Tennoji Jurei and Sakura Renxin called to mind the way the old master had stomped out of the dojo just a little while ago, huffing and bristling, eyes glaring.
It looked precisely like the way the old master had looked all those years ago, the first time he'd seen Sakura Renxin draped around Tennoji Jurei's waist, staking her claim of sovereignty.
This sort of business — Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei could fairly be called old hands at it.
By the time the whole thing was a done deal, the old master would have no recourse left.
Once it happens once, it can happen twice, after all~
They had every confidence that the old master would get used to it.
Su Yuzu could only sense that Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei's manner toward her had abruptly grown a great deal more affectionate.
If she'd successfully recruited Sakura Renxin and Tennoji Jurei, Su Yuzu probably would have been able to watch the two seniors' Favorability ticking upward.
And just at that moment — beep, beep, beep——
A message had suddenly come through for Su Yuzu.
Su Yuzu had had absolutely no intention of checking her phone, but Tennoji Jurei and Sakura Renxin were both very open-minded elders; far from minding, they urged the girl on to take a look — what if it was something urgent? Such a shame, to miss it.
Su Yuzu opened her phone.
To her surprise, the message had come from Yamabuki Nanako.
Yamabuki Nanako said... last night, the holy radiance Saint Michael had left behind had suffered another drop.
And what's more... the scale of this drop was unprecedented.
Su Yuzu studied the data and the charts Yamabuki Nanako had sent over, fixing her gaze on the time of the drop.
The time was yesterday evening.
Which was also... when Su Yuzu had returned from Imperial Capital University, back to Keigunen Private Academy, and met up with the little rabbit and Lyudmila.
A sudden whiff of the crux of the matter struck Su Yuzu——
Lyudmila.
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