After school, Suzu was still in the classroom after everyone else had gone home because she had been asked to stay behind.
Across from her stood the person who had been animatedly chatting up Hana earlier: Yukizasa.
“Um, I don’t understand. Why?” Suzu asked in consternation.
“You don’t need to know,” Yukizasa said. His frosty, cold gaze scared her. “Just do as I say and bring your best friend, Hana Ichise, to the abandoned factory north of the school.”
“Why do I have to take her there? Plus, the Association forbids entry to that place…,” she said timidly.
The words were hardly out of her mouth before a loud crash rang through the room. Yukizasa had kicked a desk and chair and sent them flying.
Suzu flinched at the noise.
Yukizasa’s smile was reflected in her pupils.
“The only answers you are permitted are yes and of course.”
The words were neither angry nor loud, but his quiet, threatening tone was terrifying.
Suzu looked as if she were ready to burst into tears. She clenched her shaking hands and said, “N-no way…” She forced the words out of her mouth, her voice a high and tight whisper.
But they were erased by Yukizasa’s menacing “What?!” He went on to say, “My bad. I didn’t hear you. Say that again?”
They were inches apart. There was no other sound in the classroom. There was no way he hadn’t heard, and yet he was asking her to repeat herself.
Pressured by his threat, Suzu bit her lip. Then, determined, she declared in a louder voice than before, “No way! I won’t bring Hana to such a dangerous place!”
She looked down at her feet, afraid of Yukizasa’s reaction. When she looked up again, she found his face, smooth and cold like ice, much closer than she had expected. She gulped.
“Who do you think you are, huh?” he growled.
“Uh…um…”
“Your family belongs under the Sankourou clan. You’re not going to listen to a request made by the next clan lord? You’re going to disobey me?”
Suzu was quaking. “I won’t do it… I don’t know what you’re planning to do to Hana, but I won’t put her at risk…”
“You’re picking your friend over your loyalty to the head family? That’s courageous, in a manner of speaking.”
“P-please excuse me!”
She couldn’t stay there.
Sensing the dangerous position she was in, she scrambled out of the classroom.
Suzu ran and ran and ran until she was finally away from the school grounds. She looked back to make sure Yukizasa hadn’t followed her and sighed in relief.
That was when…
“Are you Suzu Mitsui?”
She flinched in surprise and turned toward the voice to see a middle-aged man and woman she didn’t recognize. She looked at them suspiciously. “Who are you?”
“Oh, please don’t be so wary. We’re Hana and Hazuki’s parents,” the man said.
“Wh— Really?!” Turmoil warred with shock as she remembered her manners and bowed. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“No, no, there’s no need for all the formalities. We heard you’re friends with our daughters. You seem like a lovely girl.”
“Aw, shucks. I can’t believe Hana talks about me,” she said bashfully, not knowing that Hana was on bad terms with her parents.
Hana had thought there was no need to expressly tell Suzu about the nature of their relationship, so Suzu talked amicably with the Ichises under the assumption that they had a normal parent-child relationship.
“Actually, we have a favor to ask of you,” Hana’s father said.
“What is it? I’m happy to do anything I can to help,” Suzu said with a smile.
There was no way she was going to refuse a request by the parents of her cherished best friend. However, her smile soon turned into bewilderment.
“Can you contact Hazuki and ask her to come to the abandoned factory nearby?”
“Um, you said the factory…?”
Yukizasa’s face popped immediately into her head, and her smile disappeared—soon replaced by a confused expression.
“Yes. Right away. Can you do that?”
“I’m sorry. I…don’t know Hazuki’s number,” she lied. She had a feeling that she shouldn’t tell them.
The moment Suzu refused, Hana’s father clicked his tongue. Startled, she glanced at him. The warm smile he had been wearing a second ago was gone. Instead, he was glowering at her, his features twisted in irritation.
“In that case, I’ll give you her number. Can you call her?”
“Um…ah…”
If they know her contact information, why can’t they contact her themselves? she wondered.
They were her parents…
Suzu sensed danger, realized it would be best not to get involved, and slowly started to back away. “I’m sorry. I have somewhere to be, so please excuse me.”
I’ll have to contact Hana right away when I get home, Suzu thought and turned away. At that moment, her mouth was covered with a cloth.
She breathed in, and in the next second, she started feeling dizzy. The strength slowly drained from her limbs, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Hurry, dear,” Hana’s mother said.
“I know without you telling me!” Hana’s father snapped.
He lifted the unconscious Suzu and loaded her into the car. The two of them climbed in and drove off.
A distance away, Yukizasa had witnessed the entirety of the brief incident. He picked up the phone Suzu had dropped.
“…Christ. If she’d just cooperated, we wouldn’t have had to resort to violence,” he muttered.
With a snap of his fingers, he dispelled the concealment barrier that Suzu hadn’t noticed.
He tapped on Suzu’s phone to bring up her newly added contacts. She had exchanged numbers with Hazuki only recently, and Hazuki’s name was on the list.
Having found what he had been after, Yukizasa’s lips curved into a cruel smirk.