Chiba City. The Service Club room.
Yukino Yukinoshita sat in her usual chair, spine perfectly straight, like a lone cedar clinging to a cliff face.
On the low table before her lay a neatly printed dossier, its edges curled from being read too many tis.
"Seiji Fujiwara, age twenty. Over the past six months, companies under his na have launched at least three hostile acquisitions across the Chiba region, each one ruthless and underhanded. His personal life is a disaster. Every female companion the tabloids have caught him with has been an exceptionally beautiful woman. Dubbed the 'beauty killer.'"
Yukino read the contents aloud in that cool, asured voice of hers. With every line, the crease between her brows deepened.
Across the table, Yui Yuigahama fidgeted with her fingers. "Yukino, you've been... investigating this guy for a while now. Did sothing happen?"
Yukino closed the dossier. Those striking blue-violet eyes betrayed nothing, still as a frozen lake. She regarded her friend calmly.
"Yui, what do you think of my sister?"
"Huh? Haruno-nee?" Yui blinked, then broke into a smile. "She's amazing! Smart, gorgeous, like nothing ever fazes her..."
"Is that so." A pensive shadow crossed Yukino's face. "A woman nothing ever fazes has been slipping out late at night, keeping her phone glued to her side, and hanging up on the instant she hears a sound in the background."
Her gaze drifted to the window. Her voice turned colder.
"Last week, I watched her step out of Seiji Fujiwara's car with my own eyes."
The thought of what that might an gripped her chest like an invisible fist.
Haruno was the eldest daughter of the Yukinoshita family. The queen who wore a flawless mask and held the world in the palm of her hand.
But that day, Yukino had seen sothing entirely different in her sister's eyes.
And the man responsible for putting that expression there was this sa Seiji Fujiwara, whose rap sheet filled the pages in front of her.
Worry drove Yukino to start digging. The deeper she went, the worse it got.
Seiji Fujiwara was like a black hole hanging over Chiba, consuming everything it touched. rciless in business. And in his private life, a man who treated won as collectibles. The worst kind of predator wrapped in a tailored suit.
She couldn't fathom how her sister had gotten entangled with soone like him.
"Yukino..." Yui sensed the chill radiating from her friend and squeezed her hand.
"I'm fine, Yui." Yukino shook her head, that impenetrable composure sliding back into place.
She tucked the dossier into her bag.
No matter what it took, she would find out what was happening between her sister and that man.
...
After school, Yukino turned down Yui's offer to walk together and headed alone toward the black Bentley parked outside the school gates.
The window rolled down. Behind the wheel sat the family's usual driver.
But in the back seat was soone she hadn't expected.
Haruno Yukinoshita.
She wore a sharply tailored office suit, makeup immaculate, that trademark smile curving her lips.
"Hey there, little Yukino. Another hard day at school?"
"Sister, why are you here?" Yukino slid into the car and set her bag beside her.
Through the rearview mirror, Haruno studied her sister's flawless profile. Sothing unreadable deepened behind her smile. "I wanted so ti alone with my little sister, that's all. Things at ho have been... turbulent."
"Turbulent?" Yukino's gaze shifted from the window to Haruno's face. "You an leveraging the developnt rights to the south-side lot?"
Haruno's smile froze for a split second before lting into a weary, self-deprecating laugh. "That's the one. The lifeline of Yukinoshita Real Estate."
"Who's behind it?" Not a ripple in Yukino's voice. She might have been discussing a textbook case study.
"Soone we can't afford to provoke." Haruno's voice dropped. She pulled into traffic, the car swallowed by the evening rush. "A monster who arrived in Chiba and turned the whole city upside down."
Yukino said nothing.
Haruno hadn't nad anyone, but only one person fit that description.
Seiji Fujiwara.
She turned back to the window. Neon bled across the glass in long, sared ribbons of light.
Her sister's strange behavior. The looming threat to their family's holdings. And that na, whispered like an urban legend no one dared speak aloud. The three threads wove together in her mind, forming a map.
"Sister." Yukino's voice was quiet, but it left no room for refusal. "Tell everything."
"...Alright."
Haruno caught her sister's blade-sharp gaze in the rearview mirror. The faintest trace of a calculated smile tugged at her lips.
...
...
Late that night. The Yukinoshita family's traditional Japanese estate.
Only a dim desk lamp lit Yukino's room, stretching the sisters' shadows long and distorted across the tatami.
Tea scented the air, but it couldn't cut through the suffocating weight that filled the space.
Haruno sat in a loose yukata, every trace of makeup washed away, her face pale and drawn. The effortless confidence she wore during the day was gone. In its place was sothing fractured and vulnerable, a version of herself Yukino had never seen.
"It all started with that lot." Haruno's voice ca out raw, like she was recounting a horror story. "Seiji Fujiwara wanted it. But he didn't bother with conventional business tactics. What he enjoys is... the hunt. The ga."
From her yukata sleeve she produced a docunt, folded with ticulous care, and slid it across to Yukino.
Yukino unfolded it. A professionally drafted "Personal Assistant Service Agreent," but the clauses inside were monstrous.
Phrases like "Party A holds unlimited rights to the physical person of Party B," "Party B shall comply unconditionally with all directives from Party A," and "Party B voluntarily relinquishes all personal rights" stabbed at her eyes like poisoned blades.
"What is this?" Yukino's voice could have frosted glass.
"My ticket through his door." Haruno laughed bitterly. She pulled the collar of her yukata aside, exposing a mark below her collarbone that hadn't fully faded. "I thought this body, passable as it is, could at least buy the family so breathing room."
Yukino's pupils contracted sharply.
She stared at the mark on her sister's neck. Her hands balled into fists.
"What did he do to you?"
"Nothing." Haruno shook her head, despair brimming in her eyes. "He watched strip naked and kneel in front of him like a clown. And then he told ..."
Her voice began to shake. She slipped into an imitation of Seiji's amused, imperious tone:
"'Haruno Yukinoshita, you're beautiful, I'll grant you that. But you're too... soiled. Your body and your soul reek of scheming and flattery. To , you're a greasy dish I've had one too many tis.'"
"He said I didn't interest him."
Haruno buried her face in her hands, shoulders heaving with stifled sobs.
"What he wants is sothing purer. Cleaner. Sothing no one has ever touched."
She snapped her head up. Tear-filled eyes locked onto Yukino with desperate intensity, and each word fell like a hamr blow.
"He said he wants you, Yukino."
The room plunged into silence.
Yukino looked down at the humiliating contract, then at the shattered woman her sister had beco, and a storm tore through her.
In her world, Haruno had always been untouchable. Cynical, yes. Playful. But perfect.
This was the first ti her sister had ever failed. And she'd failed because she "wasn't pure enough."
And Seiji Fujiwara had asked for Yukino by na.
She rose slowly, crossed to the window, and pushed it open.
Cold night air rushed in, catching her long hair and sending it streaming behind her.
"Sister." She kept her back turned. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. "Give his address."
Haruno watched her sister's slender silhouette against the window, that fragile spine held impossibly straight. Deep behind her eyes, sothing dark flickered.
Foolish little sister. She took the bait.
What Yukino didn't know was that every word of Haruno's performance had been a script. Written by Seiji Fujiwara himself, tailored specifically for Yukino.
Haruno had surrendered to him long ago.
And beyond that...
The Snow Woman trait running through Yukino's veins was dangerously concentrated. Once her desires awakened, if a man like Seiji wasn't there to channel them, the fire would consu her from the inside out. Self-destruction was inevitable.
Pushing her sister into the abyss with her own hands served two purposes. It pleased her master. And it "saved" her sister.
...
...
Three nights later, rain hamred Chiba in sheets.
A black taxi pulled up before a modern villa on the city's outskirts, a structure that lood against the downpour like a dark fortress.
Yukino Yukinoshita paid the fare and stepped out.
She didn't carry an umbrella.
The freezing rain soaked through her dress in seconds, plastering the fabric to her slender fra, tracing every line of a body still caught between girlhood and sothing more.
But her eyes remained clear. Resolute. A deep pool battered by wind and rain, its surface refusing to break.
She pressed the doorbell without hesitation.
The chi echoed through the empty courtyard.
A mont later, the front gate slid open in silence, revealing a brightly lit foyer with no one inside.
An invitation.
Yukino stepped forward and walked in.
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