Sakiko Toyokawa lowered her head and gently covered Wakaba Mutsumi's hand with her own. Her fingertips traced slowly along Mutsumi's knuckles—light, indulgent, almost tender.
"All right," she said softly to Mutsumi. "After I finish explaining what happened back then to Soyo, I'll send you the invite to join the chat."
Only then did Mutsumi loosen her grip on Sakiko's arm—just a little.
She didn't let go, though. She kept the half-hug, cheek pressed to Sakiko's shoulder, her faint warmth still seeping through the thin fabric.
Now that Sakiko had accepted the truth—that she wasn't human—Mutsumi, as a Shadow, no longer bothered suppressing her feelings. Human restraint and "appropriate distance" meant nothing to her anymore.
She wanted to stay at Sakiko's side. Always. Not a second apart. To obey that desire completely.
After soothing her, Sakiko turned to Soyo Nagasaki.
"Where should I start?"
She lifted her gaze toward the dim ceiling as if searching through memory.
After a brief pause, she spoke.
"Let's start with the night CRYCHIC performed for real. After the show, I got a text from my father."
Soyo's shoulders jolted. The night that should have been the happiest memory of their lives—the night that had somehow become the starting point of everything breaking—flared back to life in her mind.
Sakiko's voice echoed in the quiet room.
"I'd invited him on purpose. I thought he'd come. I truly believed he would. I even kept looking for him in the crowd. The performance went well, so when I got offstage, I pulled out my phone—expecting praise."
She lowered her eyes from the ceiling and looked at Soyo.
"But what he sent me wasn't praise. He said: 'I'm sorry. From now on, don't see me anymore.'"
Soyo remembered it—how Xiao Xiang had been smiling just a second earlier, then her face turned frighteningly blank after one look at the screen, and she ran out without saying a word.
"So that's why you changed so suddenly," Soyo whispered.
Sakiko nodded. She didn't linger on that night. Her tone stayed oddly even as she continued.
"After that, I tried to contact him, but I couldn't reach him no matter what I did. The day before, he'd been eating breakfast with me at home—and then he sent something that sounded like a farewell. I didn't know what had happened until I went back."
She drew a slow breath.
"My father got set up by the Toyokawa branch family. A huge mistake in his business dealings caused the Toyokawa family a loss of 16.8 billion yen."
"Sixteen point eight… billion?"
Soyo's eyes blew wide. Her voice came out sharp, nearly cracking. For an ordinary high school girl, it wasn't even a number she could picture—something that only existed in news reports or movies.
Sakiko looked at her calmly and nodded once, confirming she'd heard correctly.
Soyo's face went ghost-white.
"Xiao Xiang—were you dragged down with him too? That money—"
"No." Sakiko cut her off gently with a shake of her head. "I wasn't implicated."
Soyo almost exhaled in relief.
Then Sakiko's next line dropped her into ice.
"But my grandfather threw my father out of the Toyokawa family."
She didn't need to spell out how brutal that was.
Power struggles in wealthy clans weren't elegant. They were cold, precise, and utterly merciless.
Sixteen point eight billion yen was a warning shot.
And the price was a man's pride—his entire life.
Sakiko continued. "I couldn't leave him alone, so I left the main house to look for him."
Her gaze dimmed for the briefest moment.
"And I found him… completely wrecked. He drank all day. The father I'd known—driven, upright—was gone."
She turned toward Soyo, apology in her eyes.
"Sorry. Back then, I was cleaning his place, and working nonstop."
Her voice was quiet, but every word landed like a hammer inside Soyo's chest.
"I wasn't even an adult yet. Jobs were scarce. A minor gets turned away everywhere. If I could get a convenience store shift or back-of-house work, it was already luck. If there was work, I couldn't refuse—no matter how late, no matter how exhausting."
"So I kept postponing band practice."
Soyo stared at her. Her gaze drifted down to Sakiko's hands.
Hands that had once been pale and soft—without a trace of callus—now held faint roughness, the kind only repeated labor left behind.
Pain flooded Soyo's eyes.
Cleaning. Working late into the night for a few hundred yen an hour. Swallowing her pride on the street.
Xiao Xiang was supposed to be a Toyokawa heiress. She was never meant to suffer like that.
Soyo crossed the distance in two steps and grabbed Sakiko's hand.
Tears fell in steady drops, splashing onto their joined fingers.
"That's not… that's not your fault," she choked out. "But Xiao Xiang—why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you tell the band?"
Sakiko looked down at the hands holding hers. Warmth radiated through Soyo's trembling grip.
She didn't pull away. She only gave a faint, almost carefree smile—strangely accepting.
"Back then… I still couldn't let go of my pride as the Toyokawa family's young lady."
She lowered her lashes and admitted the part she'd never said aloud.
"I was arrogant, Soyo. I didn't want you to see me like that. I kept thinking it was temporary. I really believed I was special—that if I worked hard enough, if I worked myself to the bone, I could pull my father back up. I thought I could pay back the 16.8 billion. Fifteen-year-old me thought… if I didn't bow my head, if I just endured long enough, the world would give me a miracle—and I could return to the rehearsal room smiling, pretending nothing had happened."
She paused.
"But…"
The moment that word left her mouth, Soyo's fingers froze. A chill ran up her spine.
In her mind, she was back in that rain-soaked night—the air itself heavy with despair.
Sakiko felt the stiffening in Soyo's grip, but she kept going. Her voice turned distant, as if she'd stepped back into the downpour.
"That day, I'd worked so hard I actually finished early. And that's when you messaged me—asking if I was coming to practice. Everyone was waiting."
Soyo's breathing sped up. She remembered sending that message. She'd been sitting in the practice room, full of hope, pressing send with shaking fingers.
"I looked at your message," Sakiko said, "and for the first time in a long while, I felt… a little lighter."
She drew a slow, controlled breath.
"My finger was on the screen. I was about to say yes."
Her lips tightened.
"Then my phone rang again. The police station."
Soyo's face drained of color.
"They told me to come pick up my father."
Sakiko's eyelids lowered, hiding whatever was in her eyes.
"And the reason they detained him… was drunken misconduct."
Soyo sucked in a ragged breath.
"That's… that's too much—"
She could barely imagine it.
A fifteen-year-old girl, exhausted from work, finally about to go see her friends—
And then reality grabbed her by the throat and dragged her into the mud.
Walking into a police station under strangers' stares.
Bowing and apologizing.
Signing papers to claim a grown man reeking of alcohol.
For the girl who'd once been cherished like porcelain, and for the man who'd once been dignified, it was cruelty in its purest form.
Sakiko watched Soyo's shaking fury and only smiled faintly.
There was no self-pity in it. No bitterness. Only something like calm acceptance.
"It's not 'too much.' It's just reality."
"In the moment I signed the papers and led him out—he stank of liquor—your message came again."
Sakiko's voice quieted, but each syllable cut clean.
"And right there at the police station entrance, staring at the screen… and then at my father, drunk and collapsing against me…"
"I suddenly understood."
She lifted her gaze, steady and unflinching.
"That everything I'd believed was just my own wishful thinking."
"The world doesn't revolve around me. I'm not some protagonist who can force a miracle with grit."
"I can't keep living the old life while working part-time and somehow scraping together 16.8 billion yen."
For the first time, Soyo saw the shape of it—not as a story, but as a wall.
Sakiko continued, voice almost hollow.
"That was the first time I truly realized I'd already failed."
"And I didn't have the strength left to chase my dream."
Sakiko slid her hand out of Soyo's grasp and patted the back of Soyo's hand instead—light, reassuring.
"So that night, in the rain, I chose my father over the band."
"And after I settled him, I went to the rehearsal room… and told everyone, face-to-face, that I was leaving."
Soyo recoiled like the words had struck her.
She covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head hard, choking on her own sobs.
"I'm sorry… I really didn't know…"
She remembered how she'd clung to Sakiko that night, begging, demanding answers. Why? Did we do something wrong?
How could she have known?
Before Sakiko had even opened that rehearsal room door, she had already crushed every fantasy she had left—crushed her pride with her own hands—and walked in on legs that could barely hold her up.
Soyo's desperate pleading had been salt on a wound that was already torn wide open.
Sakiko didn't let her drown in guilt. Instead, she turned her head—toward Mutsumi, who was still pressed close to her arm.
Sakiko reached up and gently combed her fingers through Mutsumi's hair, eyes soft as she looked into that clear, empty gaze.
"Back then," Sakiko said quietly, "Mutsumi said she'd never found playing in a band fun."
Sakiko's voice didn't accuse. It didn't judge. It explained.
"Part of that was because Mutsumi is a Shadow. She doesn't experience human joy the way people do. So when she followed us into practice and played with us… she truly didn't feel 'happy.' She was stating a fact."
She exhaled.
"But the bigger reason she said it that night… was because of me."
"She's a Shadow. She's more sensitive to emotion than anyone. She felt my pain in that room. She felt the desperate wish inside me—to end everything right then and escape."
"So she followed my wish. She answered it."
"She delivered the final blow for me."
Sakiko's fingers tightened briefly over Mutsumi's hair.
"She became the villain… so I could run."
Soyo's head snapped up. Red-eyed, shaking, she stared at Mutsumi as if seeing her for the first time.
For the past year, Soyo had treated Mutsumi as the murderer of CRYCHIC.
Outwardly, she'd kept up the shape of friendship.
Inside, she'd blamed her—sometimes even hated her.
If Mutsumi hadn't said that, Xiao Xiang might have hesitated. The band might still have had a chance.
She'd thought it was coldness. Cruelty.
But the truth was the opposite:
Mutsumi had taken the ugliest role with the clumsiest kindness—without saying a single extra word—and carried the blame so Sakiko didn't have to.
And then—
Mutsumi, who'd been burying her face into Sakiko's sleeve, slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes met Soyo's—eyes full of tears and shame.
Mutsumi's lips curved into a faint, gentle smile.
With Metis's memories synchronized, she could feel how Soyo had worried for her these past days—how Soyo had worried even for Metis.
In a light, airy voice, Mutsumi said, "It's okay now."
Soyo's hand flew to her mouth.
Fresh tears spilled out, unstoppable.
Sakiko drew a slow breath and turned back to Soyo.
"After the band broke up… the next time we met was at your new band's performance."
Soyo's face stiffened.
That concert—early spring. That song.
Haruhikage.
It was a nightmare branded into Soyo's heart.
Sakiko saw her expression and sighed, a trace of self-mockery in her voice.
"Sorry."
"Even though I was the one who decided to break CRYCHIC with my own hands—who abandoned all of you—people are contradictory."
"That day, in the audience, when I saw my place replaced so easily… when I heard the song I wrote—something that belonged only to us—played so brilliantly without me…"
"I still felt angry. I still hurt."
Jealousy. Grief. A bitter sense of being discarded by the world.
Soyo tried to speak through tears.
"Xiao Xiang, that day it was because—"
Sakiko shook her head, cutting off the frantic explanation with a strangely light tone.
"It's fine. I understand now. That anger wasn't your fault. It was just my pride."
"I didn't want to admit you could shine without me. I envied the new band onstage. I hated the version of myself hiding in the dark, watching."
She paused, then her voice turned quieter—sharp with honesty.
"And if that concert was one blow… then the next time, Soyo, you truly pierced me clean through."
Soyo went rigid, mouth open, completely lost.
Sakiko met her panicked eyes and kept speaking.
"On Asukayama… when you begged me not to leave CRYCHIC, when you tried to resurrect the band—"
"You even knelt."
"You said you'd do anything."
Soyo's face twisted with pain and humiliation. That had been the lowest moment of her life. She bit her lip hard, head bowed, unable to meet Sakiko's eyes.
Sakiko, however, didn't flinch. She repeated the words she'd once used to stab Soyo—calmly, without dodging them.
"I said you only ever thought about yourself."
She breathed out.
"But now… I think the one who only thought about herself… was me too."
Soyo's head lifted a fraction, trembling.
Sakiko's voice stayed steady, stripped bare.
"At that point, I had nothing left."
"No status. No band. No father. No comfortable life."
"When everything external was stripped away, the only thing I still had was my pride."
"And the way you knelt—how easily you threw away your pride for the band…"
"To me back then, it felt like a slap."
"It told me the last thing I had left wasn't worth anything."
"It was something other people could discard without hesitation."
Soyo froze, stunned.
She had always believed she'd pushed too hard—that Xiao Xiang had come to hate her because of it.
She had never imagined her sacrifice had struck directly at the core of Sakiko's last remaining dignity.
Sakiko's expression softened.
"Sorry, Soyo. I said something that cruel to you."
Soyo's lips shook violently. Every thread holding her together—reason, composure, resentment, guilt—snapped.
She lunged forward.
Arms outstretched, she pulled Sakiko and Mutsumi into her at the same time and broke into a sob so loud it tore through her chest.
Her face buried between them. Her shoulders convulsed.
She cried like a lost child who'd finally found home—pouring out an entire year's worth of swallowed bitterness in one breathless flood.
Mutsumi's head tilted slightly from the impact.
Still smiling faintly, she lifted her hands and wrapped them around Soyo's back too—holding both of them.
Sakiko staggered half a step backward from the force of Soyo's embrace.
She drew in a shaky breath, forcing the tears stinging behind her eyes back down.
Then she raised her hand and patted Soyo's trembling back, slow and steady.
The room held only the sound of Soyo's unrestrained crying.
So many things in adolescence weren't born from monstrous conspiracies, or unforgivable villains.
Their relationships had fallen apart for a far simpler reason:
Each of them stayed trapped in her own perspective.
Each of them tried to "protect" the others in her own way—convinced she was right—until nobody wanted to be the first to lower her head and apologize.
Coldness became a mask for fragility.
Barbed words became tests.
And beneath every accusation, the same questions repeated, over and over:
Why don't you understand me?
If you truly understood me, why would I need to say it out loud?
Why can't you just understand me—without me having to beg?
Everyone hid inside a thin shell called pride, building walls out of guesswork, until they bled each other dry.
That was the awkward arrogance and helpless vulnerability of teenagers.
But Sakiko wasn't trapped inside her pride anymore.
The things that had crushed her had become shadows of the past.
She had seen a broader world.
On that staircase of failures, she had faced the weak, ugly version of herself, admitted her defeat—and stepped beyond it.
After awakening her Persona, the invisible shackles around her heart had already snapped.
Sakiko Toyokawa was no longer the blue-haired girl who had nothing but pride left.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 110
My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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