Sakura looked at the others, bit her lower lip, and said, "Hah... Why are you discussing all this right in front of me... If you're trying to play good cop and bad cop, there's really no need."
She raised her head and glanced at her arms, which Kevin had firmly bound with iron chains.
"Do I... really have any other choice?"
Vill-V walked up to Sakura and gave her a charming smile. "Of course you do, Sakura. We should never give up the will that makes us human. Right now, I want you to immediately imagine a happy scene. What's the first thing that comes to mind, Sakura?"
"..." A trace of complicated emotion flashed through Sakura's eyes.
Pure Evil: Captain hits hard pity on every supply pull. Captain gets zero drops from every stage.
Conductor: Go away! There's nothing happy about that!
"Even if this wicked life forces us all the way to hard pity, we still get to choose which pity we go for, don't we?"
Then, under everyone else's astonished gazes, Vill-V suddenly undid Sakura's chains.
"See? Some choices that look incredibly difficult aren't actually that hard once you really make them~"
With a little grunt, Vill-V tossed the heavy chains aside, then cupped Sakura's hands in her own. As she rubbed Sakura's stiff, blood-deprived hands to restore circulation after the chains, she said expectantly,
"All right, Sakura. The rest depends on your choice~"
...
Vill-V's actions pushed the tension in the room to its absolute limit.
This was nothing like the recruitment script they had agreed on beforehand!
"Teacher, be careful!"
Seeing this, Newton sprang to her feet with an anxious cry, spilling warm milk all over herself.
Sakura was a Cocoon assassin who killed without blinking. If they released her restraints here, what if she suddenly attacked?
Even without a weapon, a professionally trained Cocoon assassin had hundreds or thousands of ways to kill someone, and Vill-V's head was practically within arm's reach.
This assassin might have her younger sister as leverage, but that leverage only mattered if everyone present remained alive.
What if she suddenly went on an assassin rampage, killed everyone who knew the truth, completed her infiltration mission, and went back to report success?
Kevin pulled out a metal baseball bat and stood ready, prepared to smash Sakura's skull apart at any moment.
Kevin had personally experienced Sakura's Realm of Setsuna. That extreme speed was something even he still had not thought of a particularly good countermeasure for.
Dr. Mei, meanwhile, watched the scene thoughtfully. It was unexpected, yet somehow perfectly reasonable.
After all, Vill-V's personality was simply that unpredictable. You could never know what earth-shattering thing she might do next.
But once Dr. Mei understood that much, she was no longer thrown into disarray by Vill-V's actions.
After all, no matter how many arrangements you made beforehand, you would end up scrambling when the time came anyway, so she might as well—
Sakura had not expected to be released from her restraints so easily either. The deal had not even been finalized yet.
She stared expressionlessly at Vill-V, still sitting on the floor with her legs folded to one side.
She did not attack. In fact, to ease the tense atmosphere, she even kept her now-unbound hands raised where they were.
Of course, Vill-V was still holding those hands as though they were a pair of treasures.
Even though Sakura herself hated those hands so deeply—the hands that had killed innocents and left countless people weeping through sleepless nights.
"..."
Sakura silently looked into Vill-V's silver, star-like eyes, trying to discern something from them.
Was it confidence born of having nothing to fear? Arrogance born of talent?
Or deliberate affectation and deception? Perhaps another trap?
Yet no one could understand the thoughts hidden behind the great swindler's smile, just as no one could easily understand abstract phrases like her "will that makes us human."
But Sakura could see something inexplicable in Vill-V's gaze: encouragement and support... along with a trace of affectionate warmth?
Aside from her younger sister, Sakura, a Cocoon assassin, had not felt anyone look at her like that in far, far too long.
Just as a Cocoon assassin trusted no one, no one trusted a Cocoon assassin.
Facing Vill-V felt almost as though Sakura were facing her own younger sister.
And that was only natural. Ever since Vill-V had reincarnated into this world, the only people capable of inspiring a sense of familiarity and closeness in her were the Thirteen Flame-Chasers.
Sakura's crimson lips parted slightly as beautiful scenes involuntarily surfaced before her eyes.
I want so badly to return to those days, drinking tea and admiring cherry blossoms with Father in the courtyard, wandering the streets carefree with my younger sister...
The words rose to her lips, but in the end, she could not bring herself to say them.
But those days are gone, just like my homeland. Like cherry blossoms, they were beautiful and fleeting.
Rin is also being kept under disguised house arrest by the higher-ups under the pretense of medical treatment. No matter how reluctant I am, I have to face reality.
Forget-Me-Not has no right to pursue the dawn. She can only bloom for a single night before withering alone.
In the end, Sakura raised her head and changed her answer. "I... am willing... to join your Cocoon, Dr. Mei."
Everyone's expressions became extraordinarily colorful.
An elite assassin cultivated by MOTH's Project Cocoon had really been poached just like that?
It did indeed seem unexpectedly easy.
Dr. Mei nodded as expected. She extended a hand and, together with Vill-V, helped Sakura up from the floor. "Welcome aboard, Sakura."
Hearing Sakura's answer, however, Vill-V's mood dropped as violently as though she had just ridden a roller coaster.
Sakura had practically been ready to accept a marriage proposal and skip straight to the final step... Her eyes had already begun flashing with memories of her life, and hope had started burning within them.
How had she retreated on her own when she was only one step away?
A person's sins were also her destiny. Those words bound Sakura like a curse.
As expected, Sakura was not a hero capable of invoking a miracle and breaking through a curse. She was only an ordinary girl.
It was merely fate that had forced upon Sakura the suffering and sins meant for a hero.
...
Sakura herself did not really know who had ordered her to assassinate Dr. Newton and Dr. Mei.
Earlier, she had indeed mentioned "Lucifer," which corroborated Dr. Mei's intelligence and made it seem genuine.
But in reality, the person who delivered her orders changed every single time, and even the method of contact constantly shifted. There was simply no trail to follow backward.
Sakura only knew the codename "Lucifer" for her superior. As for who "Lucifer" actually was, she had never even met him.
Regarding that, Sakura could only offer three conjectures of her own. Although Sakura had been working for him all along, she had also maintained a measure of vigilance toward her superior, so she had secretly probed the people who delivered her orders and gathered whatever information she could about Lucifer.
Mei took a sip of the coffee Kevin had brought her and nodded. "Sakura, your conjectures make some sense, but we must consider that the other side acts with extreme caution. Those three possibilities may all be smokescreens he deliberately released. So we need to consider secondary possibilities as well and broaden the pool of suspects."
If one had to name the people with the greatest personal grudge against Dr. Newton and the others, it would unquestionably be the North American higher-ups whose plans had been repeatedly ruined.
But who could say for certain that someone claiming to be one of the North American higher-ups actually was one?