The sound of Seiji Fujiwara hanging up the phone was like a merciless gate crashing down.
It cut off the last thread connecting Ai Hayasaka to her former world.
She lay slumped on the carpet, her body still trembling from the aftermath of fear and shame, but her gaze had already begun to grow hollow.
Like an oil lamp whose last drop had burned away, the flame flickered a few times in protest before finally going still.
The door of the study was pushed open without a sound.
Ai Hayasaka didn't lift her head. She didn't even have the strength to lift it.
A pair of polished black high heels stopped in front of her.
Following the shoes upward, there was a meticulously tailored, dark gray head maid's uniform.
The newcomer was the head maid of this mansion. A woman of about thirty, with a refined face that bore no expression at all.
"New arrival."
The head maid spoke, her voice as flat as if reading from an instruction manual.
She did not even use the address "Miss Hayasaka." Instead, she defined Ai Hayasaka's current status directly with a word that signified "object classification."
"The master's orders. From this moment on, you will officially serve as this estate's personal handmaid."
"Follow me."
The head maid did not reach out to help her up. She simply issued the command and turned on her own.
Ai Hayasaka knew that resistance was futile.
She struggled, bracing her now-weakened arms against the carpet, and slowly climbed up from the floor.
She followed behind the head maid like a marionette whose soul had been stripped away, staggering out of the study that had ground every shred of her dignity to dust.
The light in the corridor was bright and harsh.
On the walls hung priceless paintings. The floor was covered with expensive carpet that absorbed every sound. The air carried a refined fragrance of incense.
Everything here was as luxurious as a dream.
But to Ai Hayasaka, this was simply a larger, more lavish... cage.
She was led to a room on the third floor of the main house.
The head maid pushed the door open.
"This is your room."
The room was spacious, decorated in an understated, luxurious style.
Inside was a large, soft bed, a private bathroom, and even a small walk-in closet.
Any ordinary girl would have been overjoyed at the sight of a room like this.
But Ai Hayasaka's heart plunged into a bottomless abyss the moment she saw the "thing" hanging in the closet.
It was a maid uniform, custom-tailored just for her.
In black and white.
But the style was entirely different from the conservative, businesslike uniforms worn by the other maids of the estate.
The top was cut in an extremely body-hugging style, with the neckline plunging so low it barely covered the most critical area. The waist was cinched so tight it was almost cruel, as if to compress the wearer's waist into the most seductive curve.
The skirt was shamefully short. It came only to mid-thigh, with pure white lace frills along the hem and a matching white silk apron.
What made her even dizzier were the accessories hanging beside the dress.
A pair of over-the-knee white silk stockings, a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes with vertiginously high heels and laces as complex as instruments of torture, and...
A black leather collar.
From the collar hung a small silver bell.
"This is your work attire."
The head maid's voice still carried not a ripple of feeling. She walked into the closet, took down the outfit, and held it out to Ai Hayasaka as if it were any ordinary item.
"Now, put it on."
"From today on, without the master's permission, your range of movement must never extend beyond the walls of this estate."
"Your past no longer exists. Here, you only need to learn one thing..."
The head maid stepped right up in front of Ai Hayasaka, those cold eyes scrutinizing her at close range.
"...absolute obedience."
Ai Hayasaka stared blankly at the outfit.
It was no longer just an outfit.
It was a yoke.
It was a prop, drenched in the meaning of shame, designed to clearly define her status as a "plaything."
She reached out, her fingertips trembling, and took the outfit, light as a feather yet as heavy as a thousand pounds.
"The bathroom is over there." The head maid pointed to one side of the room. "You have half an hour."
With that, she withdrew from the room and considerately closed the door for her.
Only Ai Hayasaka remained in the room.
She held the outfit in her arms and slowly walked into the bathroom.
The enormous mirror reflected her current state.
Pale face, swollen red eyes, disheveled hair, the tracks of half-dried tears still on her cheeks.
Wretched. Pitiful.
She looked at herself in the mirror for a long, long time.
Then, slowly, piece by piece, she put on the brand-new "work attire" branded with shame, one item at a time.
The chilled silk clung tightly to her skin, outlining every elegant curve of her body.
Beneath the short skirt, a cool draft made her feel a powerful unease.
The over-the-knee stockings stretched the lines of her legs taut to their limit.
She opened her eyes.
In the mirror appeared a girl completely unfamiliar to her.
Pure, and provocative.
Sacred, and lascivious.
Two utterly opposite qualities, strangely fused together by this outfit, formed an aesthetic of corruption.
She reached out and picked up the final accessory.
The black collar.
Trembling, she fastened it around her own neck.
A clear, sweet little chime.
Like a bell of belonging hung on a lost lamb.
Like the final collar locked onto a captured canary.
A scalding tear slipped from the corner of Ai Hayasaka's eye.
It traced down her cheek and dropped onto that silver bell.
It was the last tear she would shed for the self she had once been.
...
Inside the study.
Seiji lounged on the sofa, watching through the monitor screen as Ai Hayasaka changed into her new uniform, from beginning to end.
He was very pleased.
He had designed the outfit himself.
The purpose was to completely destroy her independent consciousness as a "person" and redefine her as a pleasing "private possession."
[Ding!]
The cold system tone sounded in his mind.
[Congratulations, Host, for completing the privatization process of the key character 'Ai Hayasaka.']
[Calculating reward...]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained an exclusive reward: Special Skill, Loyalty Brand.]
[Skill description: Host may use this on a target who has been fully conquered. Once used, an exclusive brand belonging to you will be carved into the depths of the target's soul. This brand will drastically lower the target's probability of betrayal and capacity for resistance, while continuously raising their obedience and dependence. This skill is one-of-a-kind. Please choose your target with care.]
"Loyalty Brand?"
A playful curve rose at the corner of Seiji's mouth.
This skill had come at exactly the right time.
An elite like Ai Hayasaka, trained from childhood as a covert operative, might have been thoroughly broken in this moment, but there was no guarantee that some future stimulus wouldn't rekindle her thoughts of resistance.
And this skill was a thought-seal that could strangle that possibility at the root.
"System, use [Loyalty Brand] on 'Ai Hayasaka.'"
He issued the order without hesitation.
[Command confirmed.]
[Applying 'Loyalty Brand' to target 'Ai Hayasaka'...]
[Branding complete.]
...
In the room on the third floor.
Having just finished dressing, Ai Hayasaka's body suddenly jolted.
An indescribable shudder ran through her limbs and through every part of her in an instant.
She felt as though deep within her mind, an invisible branding iron had pressed down hard.
The sharp pain lasted only a moment.
What followed was a strange, indefinable sense of peace.
The bitterness, shame, and resentment from before seemed to have been ironed flat by that single touch.
In her mind, there remained only one thought, a crystal-clear thought that felt as natural as the laws of heaven and earth.
Obey.
Obey that man.
Obedience is my calling.
Obedience is my fate.
Obedience is... my only place to belong.
The last shred of struggle in her eyes dissolved completely.
What replaced it was a placid submission.
Ai Hayasaka smoothed the hem of her skirt, pushed open the bathroom door, and walked out of the room.
Outside the door, the head maid leaned against the wall, waiting quietly for her.
When she saw her emerge, a flash of barely perceptible surprise crossed the head maid's eyes.
The aura in this new arrival's eyes had undergone an earth-shattering change.
If before going in she had been a cat, wounded but still with a flicker of wildness in her eyes...
Then now, she had become a thoroughly domesticated pet with gentle, docile eyes.
"Good."
The head maid nodded and turned to lead the way.
"Now, go to meet the master."
"Learn your first task."
...
The matter of Seiji Fujiwara "confiscating" the Shinomiya Family's personal attendant was not deliberately concealed.
On the contrary, it swept through the small circle at the very top of Tokyo with the speed of a startling gust of wind.
At first, everyone assumed it was just a minor, mildly indecent friction between Seiji Fujiwara, the newly risen hegemon, and the Shinomiya Family, the established conglomerate.
But very quickly, those keen-nosed predators began to catch a different scent from the affair.
The Shinomiya Family's reaction was too calm.
So calm that it bordered on ingratiating.
Not only had they raised no objection, they had voluntarily transferred all of Ai Hayasaka's records over to Seiji's name.
This was no longer "an overture of goodwill."
This was... submission.
A massive, deeply rooted old conglomerate, taking such a humble posture toward a newly arrived young man!
What did that mean?
It meant that the rules of the age had changed.
The old power balance, sustained by connections, seniority, and tacit understanding, had been thoroughly broken by this man called Seiji Fujiwara, in a way that was brazen and brooked no reasoning.
A vast undercurrent named "fear" and "opportunity" began to churn madly through Tokyo's political and business worlds.
Countless people began to re-evaluate their own positions.
Countless people began to think sleeplessly, late into the night, about how to find a way through, for themselves and their families, in the coming storm.
...
...
Councilman Iino's residence.
In the study, smoke curled in the air.
Councilman Iino, the middle-aged man known in the Diet for his iron-faced impartiality and uncompromising style, was now staring with a grave expression at a piece of top-secret intelligence in his hand.
The intelligence was simple.
Only a single photograph, and a few lines of text.
In the photograph was Seiji Fujiwara.
Below it was a briefing on the man's recent string of actions, including the item about "detaining the Shinomiya Family's attendant."
His finger rubbed over the two characters for "detain," again and again.
As an old fox who had risen and fallen in the political arena for decades, he saw deeper, and farther, than those businessmen.
He knew this was no simple commercial rivalry, nor a mere matter of private affairs between a man and a woman.
This was a declaration.
The bloody declaration a new king made to all the old nobility upon his enthronement.
Those who obey me prosper. Those who oppose me die.
And though his Iino house had deep roots in politics, in the face of an upheaval great enough to overturn an era, it too was as fragile as glass.
Choosing a side had become his only option.
And it had to be fast.
It had to be before others came to their senses, before he could present a sufficiently weighty "pledge of loyalty."
A pledge that would make this new king remember the name "Iino" at a single glance.
His gaze slowly drifted from the intelligence to a family photograph on his desk.
In the picture, his wife smiled gently.
And standing beside his wife was his daughter, Miko Iino.
The girl wore the Shuchiin Academy uniform, her face set in a serious, earnest expression, a thick book of statutes clasped in her arms, as though ready at any moment to set right every injustice in the world.
Looking at his daughter's face, radiant with idealism, untouched by a speck of dust.
A flicker of pain, a flicker of struggle, passed through Councilman Iino's eyes.
But very quickly, those emotions were replaced by a colder decisiveness that belonged to a politician.
He slowly picked up the phone on the desk.
He found a number he had never imagined he would contact in this way.
When the call connected, in a tone of unprecedented humility, he spoke.
"Mr. Fujiwara?"
"This is Iino."
"Perhaps... we might have a talk?"
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