After leaving the restaurant, Taiga Fujimura noticed that she had picked up two little tails behind her.
"Hey, why are you two following me?"
She turned around, puzzled, and questioned the two children.
"Uh, this…"
Sakura did not quite know how to answer. She had simply followed Broly out on reflex when she saw him leave. Now that the big sister in front was asking why they were following her, Sakura felt at a loss, but soon thought of a reasonable and proper reason.
"I wanted to say thank you, big sister. Thank you for helping us."
The way young Sakura spoke so timidly stirred a strong protective urge in others.
"Ha, what a polite little sister. But you don't have to thank me. I helped you two on a whim, that's all."
Taiga bent down and gently patted the girl's smooth little head, then turned to the boy who was also trailing behind her.
"So, little brother, did you also come to thank big sister?"
Broly did not really understand what "thank" meant, and simply said to Taiga, "I'm not here to thank you. I'm here to find a wife."
"Find a wife?"
Taiga froze for a second. Hearing a very young boy say something like that with a straight face was more than a little surreal.
"And what does that have to do with you following me?"
She asked.
"You are the new wife I'm looking for."
Broly pointed at her nose and stated this very seriously. The Crystal Palace had already confirmed she was one of his figure wives, someone who could provide him with food.
"Is this some new-era way of scamming people?"
Taiga was a bit speechless. But seeing how cute the boy was, she reached out and pinched his cheek.
"You really are pretty cute, but you're way too young. If you want to be my boyfriend, you've got at least another ten years to go."
Compared to Taiga's teasing attitude toward kids, young Sakura was completely stunned by Broly's words.
"Am I not your wife?"
The girl asked.
"You are."
Broly nodded, acknowledging it. He had not forgotten the food she had just fed him.
"Then why are you looking for another wife?"
"Is there some rule that I can only have one wife?"
Broly countered, and Sakura fell silent. But it did seem like he had a point.
"Wow, already this fickle at your age, huh?"
After hearing this, Taiga immediately increased the force with which she pinched his cheeks.
"Do you want to be my wife?"
Broly did not feel a thing. However much strength Taiga put into it was still within normal-human range, which for him was painless.
"Of course not!"
Taiga answered as a matter of course, though she let go of him. She was afraid she might actually hurt the child.
"Oh."
Broly sounded disappointed. This new potential wife clearly did not want to continue providing him with food.
"Hey, where are you going?"
Seeing the boy turn around to leave with a dejected look on his face, Taiga blinked, then quickly asked.
"It's night. We have to find a place to sleep."
Broly answered honestly. On Planet Vampa, he had also lived by going out during the day and resting at night.
"Uh, you two don't have anywhere to sleep?"
"No."
"There's a slope over there. I'm going to dig a hole in it."
Broly was completely serious. The big cave he had lived in on Planet Vampa had also been dug out by him and his father, Paragus.
Of course, "digging" was flexible. If the mountain itself was hard enough, he could also just blast a hole into it with an energy blast, which was a lot more efficient.
Taiga rubbed her temples and said to the two children, "If you're not afraid of getting close to people who look kind of scary, I can take you back to my family's old estate to stay."
"Eh, big sister, you're going to take us in?"
"I'm just worried you two might run into some bad people out here."
Lately, a serial killer had been on the loose in Fuyuki, murdering quite a few people without being caught. Some of the victims had even been children.
Taiga knew about this from her grandfather, Raiga Fujimura, who was currently having her stay at the old estate. He had warned her to be careful going to and from school.
Originally, Raiga had wanted to assign people to escort his granddaughter, but Taiga had flatly refused.
Part of it was that she was confident in her own fighting skills. The other reason was that she did not want her background to be exposed at school.
"Welcome home, young lady!"
"Welcome back, young lady!"
When she returned each day, she would be greeted like this.
"Is this really necessary every single day?"
"Miss, this is what the boss told us—to be more enthusiastic toward you."
Her grandfather was a good man, but a bit too enthusiastic. Mainly, it was because her father had refused to inherit the family business that Raiga now wanted to groom her as the future head of the Fujimura Group. The problem was, she had no interest in becoming the next yakuza boss.
"Miss, these two are…?"
A scar-faced man—who clearly lived on the wrong side of the law—saw the two kids following behind her as she came in and could not help asking.
"Two homeless kids I ran into on the street. I didn't feel safe leaving them outside, so I brought them back."
Taiga explained.
"Ah, so the young lady is finally building her future inner circle for taking over the Fujimura Group?!"
The scar-faced man's fierce features actually went a bit emotional as he shouted.
"They're not my inner circle, you idiot!"
"Boss Fujimura, the young lady's finally seen the light! She's willing to be your successor!"
The scar-faced man ran into the main house to spread the good news, with Taiga chasing angrily after him.
She wanted nothing more than to kick that idiot, who had completely misread her intentions, into next week.
"All this racket. Have you no sense of decorum?"
Raiga Fujimura, who had been discussing business with a guest in the main house, pulled a face when he saw the panicked scar-faced man rush in.
But after the man told him his granddaughter had suddenly brought home two homeless orphans, the longtime underworld boss of Fuyuki broke into a broad grin.
For people in their line of work, taking in orphans was how you cultivated loyal subordinates. Only children raised from a young age could be molded into true loyalists to the organization.
The scar-faced man in front of him was one such orphan Raiga had once taken in. Even now, with a family of his own, both he and his children remained utterly devoted to the Fujimura Group.
"Stop overexplaining my actions to Grandpa!"
The sliding door of the main room was kicked open. Taiga launched a flying kick and sent the scar-faced man sprawling.
"Ahem, Taiga, we have a guest here, you know."
The sailor-uniformed girl stood with her foot on the man's back like a tigress bringing down prey. Hearing her grandfather's reminder, she noticed the composed-looking man seated at the side. After shooting the scar-faced man one last vicious glare, Taiga put away the manner of "Fuyuki's Tiger" and tried to look demure.
"Mr. Emiya, my apologies. My granddaughter's temper takes after mine."
"It's fine. In our world, a bit of a violent temper is a virtue."
Kiritsugu Emiya's face did not change, his tone utterly flat as he offered the compliment.
"About the property."
"We'll go with the price you suggested, Mr. Emiya. As for the goods you ordered, I'll have them delivered to the warehouse of the neighboring property tomorrow."
"Good."
Kiritsugu nodded and pushed the case he'd brought with him across the floor. It was full of cash—the payment for the house and the arms.
As a once-notorious magus killer in the underground world, Kiritsugu still had his connections there.
Before coming to Fuyuki for the Holy Grail War, he had contacted the city's largest underworld group and arranged, through the Fujimura Group's channels, for a shipment of firearms.
"You don't need to count it?"
Seeing the old man signal for his men to put the case away without even opening it, Kiritsugu could not help asking.
"I trust Mr. Emiya's reputation."
Raiga said, then told his subordinate to see the guest out.
Kiritsugu rose and followed the Fujimura man out. In the hallway, he ran into the two children Taiga had brought in.
"Mr. Emiya?"
Kiritsugu suddenly stopped, confusing the underling escorting him.
"Nothing. Just reminded me of something, is all."
He brushed it off, but frowned slightly once he left the estate.
He did not recognize the boy he'd seen in the corridor, but the girl, he did. Having thoroughly researched the participants in this Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu knew she was the Tohsaka family's younger daughter.
According to the most recent intel, however, she should have been adopted into the Matou family. So why was she here, in the Fujimura Group's estate?
"Could it be that my whereabouts have already been discovered? But if they had, sending a child to approach me would be pretty half-baked, wouldn't it?"
Weighed down by doubts, Kiritsugu responded "It's nothing" when Maiya checked in through the earpiece, but inwardly resolved to investigate the matter.
….
"So you're the two orphans my granddaughter brought home?"
Raiga looked directly at the children brought before him and asked.
"Grandpa, I just saw they had nowhere to go, and with that serial killer still on the loose, I couldn't leave them outside. Don't scare them by misunderstanding."
Taiga said from the side.
"Is that so? But I see this little guy's got plenty of nerve."
Naturally, Raiga was referring to Broly. As he was brought in to be questioned, Broly was busy looking around the room, curiously taking in how people lived in civilized society, completely unafraid of the scar-faced old man in front of him.
Sakura, on the other hand, really was a little scared of the elder, and shrank behind Broly's back.
"Got anything to eat?"
After he finished looking around the room, Broly quickly lost interest and went straight to the point, asking the old man this question.
Sakura's grandfather had been very generous—on their very first meeting he had "offered" Broly a bunch of worms to eat. Even though that had turned out to be a misunderstanding later, Broly could not help having high expectations of the new wife Taiga's grandfather.
"Brat, watch your mouth in front of the boss!"
"Ah, you're still not full?"
The scar-faced man and Taiga spoke at the same time.
Broly rubbed his small belly and only answered Taiga's question. "Not yet."
Being ignored, the scar-faced man felt his dignity trampled and was about to step forward to teach the kid a lesson.
"Stand down."
But Raiga stopped him.
"A kid with an appetite, one who dares ask for more, that's a good thing."
He turned to Broly.
"However, if you want to eat at my Fujimura house, there are conditions."
"What conditions?"
"The Fujimura family doesn't feed freeloaders. Only those who contribute to the Fujimura family have the right to eat here."
"What do you need me to do?"
Broly asked directly. Working for food was something he understood from Planet Vampa: only by hunting could you eat. He accepted that logic.
"You're still too young. For now, the Fujimura family has nothing for you to do. All I need is for you to remember, while you're eating our food, that it's the Fujimura family's food. In the future, you will owe loyalty to the Fujimura family. You must see yourself as one of us, as our own. Can you do that?"
Education started with children. Rather than picking up stray thugs halfway through, all of the Fujimura Group's upper ranks had been orphans raised from childhood. The loyalty and cohesion cultivated that way were what made the Fujimura name the only one that mattered in Fuyuki's underworld.
"One of us, our own… what does that mean?"
Broly frowned slightly, thinking it over.
"Crystal Palace, do you know?"
He even asked the voice in his head, having come to treat all the information that popped up as coming from the Crystal Palace.
"Searching. Based on context analysis, 'one of us' and 'our own' are terms similar in meaning to 'wife.'"
The Crystal Palace actually did give him an answer, and Broly blinked in surprise. Looking at Raiga, he asked, in a line that nearly made everyone choke, "So… do you want to be my wife too?"
At those words, the room fell silent. Everyone stared at him in disbelief. Even if it was just a child's words, they were still pretty explosive.
"So it turns out you weren't just after me, you're after my grandfather too?!"
Taiga felt thoroughly thunderstruck and muttered to herself.
"What, he's after you too?"
Raiga's hair practically stood on end. His granddaughter was only fifteen—a bona fide middle school girl. Anyone who laid a hand on her, he would happily break their legs.
But then he took in the sight of the boy, who looked completely innocent, with no idea what he had said, and was clearly of kindergarten age at best.
Well, if it was a brat much younger than his granddaughter saying it, then it was fine. If a teenage girl "ate" a little boy, that hardly counted as his granddaughter getting the short end of the stick.
"Did I say something wrong?"
Broly was puzzled.
"Host, please note: at present, the Crystal Palace does not accept anyone other than figure wives as members."
The Crystal Palace reminded him in his mind.
"So he can't become 'one of us'…"
Broly sounded a little disappointed. If he could not make the old man one of his own, did that mean he could not eat here?
"Grandpa, this kid has some issues with how he understands things. Don't hold it against him."
Taiga spoke up for Broly, then pulled him and Sakura out of the room.
"Does this mean I can't eat here?"
Broly asked once they were outside.
"No, of course you can."
"But you wouldn't agree to be my wife, and your grandpa can't be my wife either."
"You really want my grandpa to be your wife, huh?"
"I can only eat if I have a wife."
Broly answered.
"So you just want to eat. You don't actually care about finding a wife, do you?"
Broly nodded briskly.
"All right then. If that's all 'wife' means to you, I guess I can agree to be your wife."
Taiga finally understood how this kid thought.
"So I can eat here now?"
"Yes!"
"Where do we eat?"
That was all Broly cared about.
"I'll take you."