It was something the girl had already said once before.
But... when Little Yuzu pressed down on her thighs, wearing that apologetic look, and repeated those exact same words all over again—
Tsukiyomi Fuya still felt something ominous stir inside her.
The woman's knees knocked together, and her slender waist arched up on its own, a little, and then a little more.
A very... strange feeling.
At the most cramped, most helpless moment imaginable, someone had suddenly pinned her legs down.
Though it didn't look like Little Yuzu was pinning her legs on purpose. It was just... convenient?
Tsukiyomi Fuya's right arm wouldn't move.
Her left hand hung limp beside her head, the pale arm twisted backward, fingers clenched tight around the soft pillow on the hospital bed.
She didn't even understand why she was in such a panic.
Her heart, which had only just crawled part of the way back from that awful sluggishness, suddenly slammed into a wild, racing rhythm.
All Tsukiyomi Fuya could do was strangle the pillowcase in her fist.
Su Yuzu looked down at the woman beneath her.
Tsukiyomi Fuya looked soft enough to melt, refusing and inviting at the same time. Her left hand had crushed the pillow out of shape, and her eyes, glossy with something dangerously close to allure, didn't dare meet Yuzu's directly. They flicked away in alarm instead, then came back to her, again and again, brimming like spring water.
And the instant their gazes touched, they fled again.
Tsukiyomi Fuya's moon-white hair had gone messy from the sweat she'd broken out in earlier, and the woolen coat, pulled halfway down so the wound on her shoulder could be cleaned, was in even worse shape.
She was squirming, uneasy, lifting her body—and yet to Su Yuzu,
it really didn't look like resistance.
Little by little, it started to taste like an invitation instead.
The Tsukiyomi Fuya lying here and the Tsukiyomi Fuya from the character art—divine, stars cupped in her palm, gazing down on everything—might as well have been two different people.
But... Su Yuzu liked this version.
The woman was far too good at this.
Su Yuzu honestly couldn't understand how a Tsukiyomi Fuya this provocative was still single to this very day.
Of course—
from Tsukiyomi Fuya's side, not just anyone could make her set down the mask she wore, let alone smile like the weight had come off her shoulders. And being reduced to this degree of embarrassment? That was rarer still.
The reason Tsukiyomi Fuya seemed to keep no guard up at all around the girl wasn't only that Su Yuzu had voluntarily laid her single greatest secret bare for her to see—
there was another point, an important one. That night, the girl had smiled so beautifully, her brows and eyes curving into a lovely arc, a smile that looked shy and yet carried that sly little edge unique to young girls.
And there was the girl huddled trembling in the dark, shaking, not relaxing even slightly until Fuya took her hand and filled the whole room with stars—that pitiful sight.
The way Tsukiyomi Fuya saw it,
Su Yuzu hadn't taken advantage of her weakness at all.
Rather... she had been the one to grab Little Yuzu's hand in the darkness first.
She had been the one to exploit the suspension bridge effect first.
While Little Yuzu was shivering in the dark with her pulse hammering from fear, Fuya had planted the seed of disaster right then and there.
She had let Little Yuzu interpret a racing heart caused by the situation as a physiological reaction to her—as being moved by her.
She was the one... guilty of the greater crime.
Her guard against Yuzu had gone into the negative.
Su Yuzu looked at her Material Inventory.
There, in the most conspicuous spot on the first row, lay a quiet, waiting weapon of mass destruction.
A glowing blue feather, covered in strange writing.
[War Maiden's Contract].
[A contract with the power of forced binding. Once the contract is signed, the target's Favorability toward you will be locked at "Obedience."]
That had been Su Yuzu's trump card, prepared for Kujou Iruka.
Kujou Iruka had already gone half mad chasing Lady Fate's Blessing before ever falling into the Abyss.
So the attitude that a post-fall Kujou Iruka—cut off from Lady Fate's Blessing forever—would hold toward the word "Blessing" wasn't hard to guess at all.
Rain after a long drought.
Su Yuzu thought that described it perfectly.
Even if the forced-contract power of the [War Maiden's Contract] itself couldn't bridge the enormous gap in strength between her and Kujou Iruka—
Su Yuzu believed that as long as she claimed signing this contract would grant Lady Fate's Blessing, then no matter how unreliable that sounded, Kujou Iruka might still bite.
Not to mention... beyond simply tricking Kujou Iruka into signing, it could also serve as a bargaining chip.
Judging from the mission flow of the Abyss Interception Battle, Su Yuzu was certain Kujou Iruka could be negotiated with.
It was just... Su Yuzu's left hand settled lightly on Tsukiyomi Fuya's stomach.
At the touch of the girl's hand on her belly, Fuya's body instinctively wanted to arch up again, just a little more.
Su Yuzu watched the movement.
"Honestly... if Senpai keeps tempting me like that, I'm going to have to slip a pillow under her waist."
"For Tsukiyomi-senpai's sake, it looks like I'm handing over most of my trump cards."
Both the "Saint's Blessing" and the [War Maiden's Contract] had been set aside for Kujou Iruka.
And now they were being spent clean here, on the "Seat of Evil."
Still... that seemed to line up with Fate nicely enough.
On the timeline of "Fate," the one who attacked the Tokyo metropolitan area first should have been Kujou Iruka. These things had been prepared for Kujou Iruka in the first place.
And after defeating Kujou Iruka, with her own strength massively boosted, she would naturally have gained the nerve to face the "Seat of Evil."
All that had happened now was that the order in which the World Bosses appeared had been swapped.
For Su Yuzu, that changed nothing much.
The ones who ought to be losing their minds were organizations like the "Eye of Insight."
The fate of the world itself had been rewritten, after all.
Su Yuzu stroked Tsukiyomi Fuya's stomach gently, and Fuya could barely breathe. She stared at the girl's hand in alarm, her slender waist trembling.
And then... Su Yuzu tore open the woman's dress.
There was no helping it. If she didn't tear it from the top, she'd have to push it up from the bottom.
Of the two options, the first still struck Su Yuzu as marginally more normal.
"Nn..." Tsukiyomi Fuya hugged the pillow over her chest to cover herself.
Ripples of light swam in those pale violet eyes, glossy with moisture. She watched Yuzu's hands with nervous tension, her slim stomach drawn taut by the sudden rush of cold air, arching upward into a beautiful curve.
Tsukiyomi Fuya wasn't the body-enhancement type of Esper.
She had no defined abs either.
But the woman had clearly taken good care of herself. Yuzu's palm slid over her without finding a single ounce of excess softness.
"Yu... zu?"
Su Yuzu leaned down without warning and looked her seriously in the eye.
Then she pressed a light kiss beside the woman's ear.
"Senpai."
"There's no road back anymore—"
"Senpai..."
"You already belong to me."
The huge glowing blue feather dropped into Su Yuzu's hand, line after line of text written across its surface.
Since Recruit and Public Recruitment had both failed her, the only option left was to take her by force.
Tsukiyomi Fuya looked at that feather and seemed to understand something.
The left hand clutching the pillow lifted, lowered, and pushed her body upright.
Su Yuzu's eyes went wide as those pale violet eyes suddenly closed in on her.
Right up until the very end... Tsukiyomi Fuya wanted to take the initiative too, a little more, and then a little more.
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