Chapter 34: The Bride's Choice
Natsume stood quietly near the edge of the room, her golden eyes drifting over Toshihiko Takasugi's pathetic, crumbling demeanor. Sonoko's earlier evaluation of the man suddenly made perfect sense. The wealthy heiress had called him indecisive, unreliable, and predicted that the Takasugi Group would inevitably rot in his hands. Natsume had initially brushed it off as typical teenage exaggeration, but looking at him now, the assessment was terrifyingly accurate.
According to his own dramatic confession, he had discovered seven years ago that Superintendent Kiyochika Matsumoto was the man who indirectly caused his mother's death. And his grand master plan? To slowly approach the man's daughter, Sayuri.
For seven entire years, he did absolutely nothing but play the role of a doting boyfriend.
Natsume crossed her arms, her pragmatic mind struggling to process the sheer inefficiency of it all. You are dating the daughter of your sworn enemy. Did it never cross your mind to use that connection to get close to Kiyochika Matsumoto himself? He could have gathered blackmail, fabricated evidence, or struck when the Superintendent's guard was down.
, Toshihiko was the sole heir to the massive Takasugi Group. His very identity was a weapon. Had he simply stepped in front of a camera, revealed his tragic past, and contacted the media, he could have dragged the Superintendent's reputation through the mud and ruined his career overnight.
Natsume certainly did not believe ruining a man's life was the morally correct choice, but from a purely logical standpoint, Toshihiko had infinite resources at his disposal. If he hated the Superintendent with such a burning passion, why didn't he aim his blade at the man himself? There were dozens of effective methods.
Instead, he chose the most cowardly, convoluted route imaginable. He targeted the daughter. He twisted his own twisted logic into a justification, claiming he wanted the Superintendent to taste the exact same pain of losing a loved one—all while destroying the life of the most innocent person in this entire mess.
"Then, have you ever actually liked Miss Matsumoto?" Natsume's voice suddenly cut through the heavy air, her tone flat and piercing as she stared directly at Toshihiko.
"No! Heh, that stupid woman probably still doesn't know I only approached her for revenge." Toshihiko let out a harsh, sarcastic sneer, his eyes flashing with bitter arrogance. "In my view, she only had her eyes on the Takasugi family's property anyway..."
Slap!
The sharp crack of flesh meeting flesh echoed through the room. Toshihiko's head whipped to the side, his sentence violently cut off. He stumbled back, clutching his rapidly reddening cheek, and stared in absolute shock at Kazumi Takenaka.
Kazumi stood before him, her chest heaving, tears of absolute fury spilling down her cheeks. "You're the one who knows nothing!"
Her voice cracked as she screamed at him, tearing down every illusion he had built. She laid the truth bare—Sayuri Matsumoto actually knew everything. She knew about the car accident twenty years ago. She knew the groom's true identity. She even knew that the boy who had offered her warm lemon tea all those years ago was the very same man standing before her. Kazumi ruthlessly revealed that Toshihiko was the unforgettable first love Sayuri had been holding onto for two decades.
The color completely drained from Toshihiko's face. The revelation hit him like a physical blow, leaving him frozen in place. His jaw went slack, his eyes wide and vacant as his brain short-circuited trying to process the magnitude of his own foolishness.
Suddenly, a soft, familiar voice broke the suffocating silence.
Everyone's heads snapped toward the source. Natsume calmly pulled her phone from her pocket, the screen glowing brightly with an active call on speakerphone.
Superintendent Matsumoto's massive frame trembled. He practically lunged toward the small device, his gruff voice cracking with desperate relief as he repeatedly asked about her condition, fully believing his daughter had just been resuscitated from the brink of death.
"Dad, I actually wasn't poisoned..." Sayuri's voice drifted through the speaker, laced with a heavy, apologetic sigh as she finally confessed the truth.
A collective gasp swept through the room. "Eh!!!"
Over an hour ago, in the quiet solitude of the bride's lounge, right after the rest of the guests had cleared out.
"Miss Matsumoto, you saw it, didn't you? Toshihiko Takasugi drugged the lemon tea." Natsume leaned against the doorframe, her golden eyes locking onto Sayuri's reflection in the vanity mirror. "You weren't planning on pretending not to see it and drinking it anyway, were you?"
Though phrased as a question, Natsume's tone carried absolute certainty.
Sayuri lowered her gaze, her fingers tightening around the fabric of her pristine white dress. The silence stretched between them for a long moment before she finally spoke. "Natsume, thank you for your concern, but I have a reason for doing this. I..." She swallowed hard, her voice trembling slightly. "I owe Toshihiko. And I want to atone to him."
Natsume's brow twitched. She had anticipated many things, but this absurd level of self-sacrifice was not one of them. What could she possibly have done as a child that required paying with her own life?
"Um... why don't you just talk to him?" Natsume pushed off the doorframe, taking a step closer. "Maybe there's a massive misunderstanding here. And what about your father? Your friends? If something happens to you, won't they be completely shattered? Are you really going to let your father spend the rest of his life drowning in the agony of losing his daughter, all for a man who might not even love you?"
Natsume simply could not comprehend it. Normally, if someone knew another person was actively trying to murder them, even if they felt a deep sense of guilt, they wouldn't just offer their neck to the blade so easily. Was the lingering ghost of a childhood first love truly that blinding?
"Miss Matsumoto, let's make a bet..." Natsume offered softly, watching closely as the absolute resolve in Sayuri's eyes finally began to waver.
Back in the present.
"She made a bet with me," Sayuri's voice echoed through the phone, bringing everyone back to reality. "She asked me to pretend to drink that can of lemon tea and see if Toshihiko felt even a single hint of hesitation. We were betting on whether he had any genuine feelings for me at all. If I won, I promised I would ask my father to mobilize the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department to help her find someone. If I lost... she demanded I stop interfering with my own life and drop this foolish decision."
A soft, hollow chuckle came through the speaker. "Looking back, she probably just wanted to stop me from throwing my life away. And from the result... it seems I lost."
Sayuri's tone was low, but surprisingly, it lacked the crushing despair one might expect. Instead, she sounded as though a massive weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders. She had sorted through the tangled mess of her heart and finally let go. Her voice carried a quiet, open-minded clarity.
Hovering invisibly near Natsume's shoulder, Paimon tilted her head, her childish voice echoing only in the Traveler's mind. 'Traveler, are you really planning to look for your brother here?''Of course not. It was just a bet I came up with on the fly.' Natsume kept her expression perfectly neutral. She hadn't actually needed Sayuri to do anything for her, so she simply pulled out her default excuse.
Still, looking for Aether was such an incredibly useful and versatile alibi. She fully intended to keep using it in the future.
"Dad, let's leave today's events at this," Sayuri pleaded through the phone, her tone firming up. She explicitly stated her desire not to pursue any criminal charges and begged everyone present to bury the truth of today's incident.
Then, the line grew quiet for a second before she addressed the frozen man across the room. "Toshihiko, I'm sorry I never told you the truth. Natsume was right. Maybe I should have sat down and talked to you a long time ago. At the very least, I should have formally apologized on my father's behalf and begged for your forgiveness. Perhaps if I had, you would have felt some peace, and you wouldn't have spent all these years drowning in hatred."
A soft breath hitched over the speaker. "Toshihiko—no, Mr. Takasugi—I'm sorry. I'm sorry for wasting seven years of your time."
"Sayuri..." Toshihiko's knees finally gave out, and he slumped against a nearby chair. Knowing she was alive and unharmed brought a sudden, overwhelming wave of relief crashing down on him—a relief he hadn't expected to feel.
But hearing how she addressed him felt like a knife twisting in his gut. He knew her personality better than anyone. Once Sayuri made up her mind, she never looked back. She was letting him go.
When Natsume heard the shift to "Mr. Takasugi," she mentally nodded. The choice had been finalized. Combined with Toshihiko's earlier confession regarding the accident twenty years ago, the narrative threads had fully aligned.
She quietly opened her system interface and scanned the glowing text. Just as she suspected, the world mission that had refreshed earlier that day now glowed with a soft golden hue.
[June Bride Murder Case - Completed]
Satisfied, Natsume closed the prompt, entirely missing the fact that right beneath it, buried in the logs, another world mission silently pulsed with the exact same status.
[Completed]
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