After becoming an underworld assassin, Sakura quickly displayed astonishing talent.
First, she assassinated the chairman of the Ryuo-kai, one of the four great underworld organizations of the Far East, in Yoshiwara. Later, armed with nothing but a single sword, she single-handedly wiped out the Sakurada-gumi and the Gokuraku-kai.
It could be said that Sakura alone had redrawn the entire map of underworld power in the Far East. She had become a legend there.
Some magazines even began publishing literary short stories about Forget-Me-Not.
And so, after rampaging unchecked through the Far Eastern underworld, Sakura soon attracted the attention of a member of the Far Eastern Council.
Sakura and her younger sister Rin were bought out of the underworld's hands by a member of the Far Eastern Council.
From that day onward, Sakura's life as a merciless assassin entered its second stage.
The council member made an agreement with Sakura. He would protect Rin's safety on a societal level and ensure that her life remained undisturbed by outside forces, while Sakura would carry out certain assassination missions for the Far Eastern Council that could never be made public.
At the time, Sakura had yet to come into contact with the Honkai. Most of her assassination missions involved Far Eastern higher-ups fighting with certain council members over power and influence, or simply a member of the Far Eastern Council taking a dislike to someone and sending Sakura to threaten or even assassinate them.
This experience brought Sakura even greater pain. In the past, killing members of the underworld could still be regarded as retribution, as cutting down evil.
But killing innocent people was not something Sakura's conscience could so easily brush aside.
For the first time, she began to waver severely.
Yet for the sake of her younger sister's peaceful life, she chose to continue. After exhaustion came profound numbness.
The member of the Far Eastern Council did not care what Sakura thought. Thanks to Sakura, he cut down every obstacle in his path and eventually became one of MOTH's higher-ups in the Far East.
Sakura only came into contact with information concerning the Honkai after that Far Eastern higher-up recommended her in an attempt to curry favor, reducing her to a hunting dog serving MOTH's North American higher-ups.
This marked the third stage of Sakura's life as a merciless assassin.
The North American higher-ups made an agreement with Sakura that they would guarantee Rin's safety against the threat of the Honkai.
From the intelligence revealed by the North American higher-ups, Sakura learned that a massive Honkai outbreak would occur somewhere in the Far East. The exact location was unknown, as was the exact scale.
But according to reliable intelligence, this Honkai outbreak would be enough to kill tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people.
It was even possible that human civilization itself would be destroyed.
To ensure that her helpless younger sister Rin would have shelter during this potential apocalypse, Sakura accepted the North American higher-ups' deal.
Calling it a deal was generous. It was more like unilateral coercion.
Yet Sakura still had no other choice. Before such an enormous state apparatus, Sakura had no right to refuse whatsoever.
Over the following two years, Sakura was dispatched to various countries to handle secret affairs for the North American higher-ups, including kidnapping talented individuals, interrogating people for intelligence, carrying out political assassinations, and more.
During those missions, she not only honed her skills as an assassin, but through countless brushes with life and death, and thanks to the teachings her father had given her in the past, she also comprehended the realm of Setsuna.
As her ability to kill grew ever stronger, the burden of sin within her heart grew ever heavier. Serving the North American higher-ups stained Sakura's hands with countless atrocities, and many innocent people died beneath her blade.
Not only her targets, but also ordinary passersby who happened to witness what had happened, or even the targets' family members.
The higher-ups ordered her to kill anyone she encountered, uprooting every threat completely and leaving no witnesses behind.
Women, the elderly, children, even genuinely good people—without exception, all died beneath Sakura's blade.
Sakura remembered every one of them vividly, and she was often startled awake in the middle of the night.
Can someone like me really still call herself a good older sister?
Sakura did not know whether what she was doing was right or wrong. In the hidden underside of this cruel world, all she could do was seal away her heart and become a merciless assassin.
She had to keep destroying other people's peaceful lives in exchange for more time for Rin to live peacefully under the protection of the North American higher-ups.
Sakura's gamble paid off. The Third Honkai Eruption—the Thunderstrike Calamity—descended upon the homeland she shared with her younger sister: the Far East.
Everything there was destroyed by the Honkai. Even now, it remained a land of death.
Severe nuclear contamination had made reconstruction impossible, and the secondary disasters caused by the Honkai proved far more devastating than anyone had imagined.
Even the world's oceans suffered varying degrees of contamination.
Sakura's younger sister Rin, however, survived because those people had moved her into a shelter ahead of time.
That news brought Sakura a small measure of relief, but her guilt still clung to her and refused to fade.
Those blood-soaked sins trampled her soft maiden's heart once, twice, ten thousand times over.
Only whenever Sakura saw her younger sister could she stop herself from thinking about everything else.
Unfortunately, no gambler could remain lucky forever, and an assassin who lived with blood on her blade could never evade justice forever either.
Just like now, when the young female researcher dressed in peculiar clothing before her playfully proposed the fourth deal that would determine the course of Sakura's life.
Vill-V spoke mischievously. "Sakura, you wouldn't want MOTH's higher-ups to find out that your assassination failed and you even got captured, would you?"
"..."
Sakura remained silent.
A merciless assassin would not open her mouth so easily.
Dr. Mei immediately added in an icy tone, "Your younger sister is under Elysia's protection. She's perfectly safe."
"..."
Under Mei's naked threat, Sakura revealed everything she knew.
If MOTH's higher-ups learned that Sakura had been captured, they would undoubtedly conclude that she had lost all value.
And given their usual methods, Rin would probably meet with disaster.
Besides, Sakura had no way of knowing whether Dr. Mei's claim that Rin was safe was true.
Only now did Sakura realize that Dr. Mei and the others possessed far more intelligence than she did—
Rin's existence should have been classified at the highest level.
At that moment, Sakura looked past Vill-V and Mei toward the blonde girl behind them, Dr. Newton, who was calmly sipping hot milk as though everything were perfectly under control.
Only Dr. Newton, the all-around genius who had already risen to become head of the Engineering Department two years ago, possessed the clearance necessary to search MOTH's most highly classified files.
With her influence and rallying power as the Goddess of MOTH, discovering the existence of Rin, whom MOTH's higher-ups had deliberately hidden away, was hardly impossible.
As expected of the most perfect genius in human history. She had already calculated all of this from behind the scenes.
(Dr. Newton: ??? I had no idea! They just invited me out to have fun.)
No wonder when Sakura had kidnapped Vill-V back then, Vill-V had been able to accurately call her by name. If only Sakura had known, she should have tried to gather more intelligence while they were still inside the van.
Now that Rin's secret was known to them as well, Sakura would undoubtedly have chosen to silence them permanently in the past.
But now, with steel cables tightly binding all her joints, she no longer had any strength left to resist.
All Sakura could do was hope that the three calculating schemers before her would spare her younger sister in exchange for the intelligence she had provided.
To them, Rin was merely an ordinary person whose existence hardly mattered.
But to Sakura...
She was her entire world.
For Rin's sake, Sakura was willing to bear even deeper sins.