The Bride's Choice
Watching Takagi Toshihiko now, Xiayu had to admit that Sonoko's assessment of him carried at least a kernel of truth — indecisive, not particularly reliable, the kind of man who might well preside over the collapse of the Takagi Group. She'd always assumed that last part was an exaggeration, but seeing him like this, it was starting to look entirely plausible.
By his own account, he had discovered seven years ago that Matsumoto Sayuri was the daughter of the man indirectly responsible for his mother's death — and that discovery was what had drawn him to her in the first place.
Seven whole years, and all he had done was get close to her?
He'd been dating the daughter of the man who indirectly killed his mother, and it had never once occurred to him to use her as a stepping stone — to get near Matsumoto Kiyonaga and quietly dig up dirt on him, fabricate a little evidence, anything of the sort?
Forget that — he himself was an enormous liability for Matsumoto Kiyonaga. Even just revealing his own identity and taking the story to the press would have been enough to ruin the man's name forever.
—Ahem. Of course, Xiayu didn't think doing any of that would be right. It was just — as the heir to the Takagi Group, if he hated Matsumoto Kiyonaga this much, why on earth hadn't he gone after the man himself? He had any number of options, didn't he?
Instead he had fixated on the man's daughter, telling himself that making someone else taste the pain of losing family was justified — and on those grounds, With a clear conscience hurting the one girl in this entire affair who was completely innocent.
"So did you ever actually love Matsumoto-san?" Xiayu asked suddenly, breaking the silence.
"Love her? Ha! That fool of a woman probably has no idea to this very day that I only got close to her for revenge." A sneering smile twisted his lips as he answered. "If you ask me, she was only ever after the Takagi family fortune any—"
SLAP!
The blow landed across his face before he could finish the sentence, and Takagi Toshihiko stared in stunned shock at Takenaka Kazumi.
"You're the one who doesn't know anything!"
She roared the words at him, shaking with fury — and in doing so, she revealed the truth: Matsumoto Sayuri had known everything all along. The car accident twenty years ago, the groom's true identity — none of it had been hidden from her. More than that, Takenaka Kazumi told him that he himself was the first love Sayuri had carried in her heart for a full twenty years.
Blindsided by the revelation, Takagi Toshihiko simply froze where he stood, utterly unable to react.
Then, abruptly, Matsumoto Sayuri's voice rang out through the room. Everyone turned toward the sound — it was coming from the phone in Xiayu's hand, its speaker set to maximum.
Matsumoto Kiyonaga could hardly contain his joy, convinced that his daughter had been rescued in time, and he fired off question after question about her condition.
"Dad... the truth is, I was never poisoned at all..." Sayuri's voice carried a note of apology as she confessed what had really happened.
Everyone: "Whaaat?!"
— — —
More than an hour earlier, after everyone else had left the bride's waiting room.
"Matsumoto-san, you saw it, didn't you? Takagi Toshihiko put something in your lemon tea." Xiayu looked her straight in the eye. "You weren't seriously planning to close your eyes and drink it anyway?" The words were phrased as a question, but her tone brooked no denial.
Sayuri was silent for a long moment. "Xiayu... thank you for caring. But I have my reasons for doing this. I—" She paused, then went on. "I owe Toshihiko. I want to atone."
Xiayu hadn't expected that to be the reason. What could Sayuri possibly have done that required atoning with her life? And besides...
"Hmm... why not just talk to him first? What if it's all a misunderstanding? And what about your father — your friends? If something happens to you, are you telling me they won't be heartbroken? Are you really going to sacrifice yourself for a man who might not even love you, and leave your father to spend the rest of his life drowning in the grief of losing his daughter?"
Xiayu simply couldn't understand it. Ordinary people, even when they believed they were in the wrong, didn't usually choose to lie down and die this easily just because someone might want them dead.
Just how powerful was the spell of a first love — of the one who got away?
"Matsumoto-san, let's make a bet, then..." Xiayu said, watching as the expression on Sayuri's face began to waver with reluctance.
Back to the present.
"She made a bet with me. She told me to pretend to drink that can of lemon tea, and then watch whether Toshihiko showed even a flicker of remorse — to gamble on whether he had even the slightest bit of feeling for me. If I won, I'd have to ask my father to help her find someone through the Metropolitan Police Department. If I lost, she wouldn't interfere with my decision anymore. Looking back... I think she was only trying to stop me from doing something foolish. And by the results — I suppose it's me who lost..." Sayuri's voice was low and subdued, but without much sorrow in it. It sounded as though she had already pulled herself together sometime in the past few minutes — as though she had set something down at last, and her voice carried a strange, light acceptance.
Paimon, listening in, tilted her head in confusion. "Traveler, were you really planning to look for your brother here?"
Of course not — it was just a random wager I came up with on the spot. Xiayu hadn't been able to think of anything she actually wanted Sayuri to do, so she'd simply improvised.
Looking for my brother really is such a convenient excuse. I'll have to keep using it!
"Dad, let's leave everything that happened today behind us." Matsumoto Sayuri made it clear she had no intention of pressing charges over the incident, and she earnestly begged everyone present never to breathe a word of it to anyone.
Then she turned to Takagi Toshihiko. "Toshihiko... I'm sorry I never told you. Xiayu is right — perhaps I should have talked to you long ago. At the very least, I should have formally apologized on my father's behalf and begged your forgiveness. That much might have eased your pain, might have kept you from drowning in your hatred all these years."
"Toshihiko — no. Takagi-san. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for wasting seven years of your life."
"Sayuri..." When Takagi Toshihiko learned that Sayuri was safe, he felt, for some reason he couldn't name, a weight lift from his chest.
But hearing her change how she addressed him, he understood — she had decided to let go of her feelings for him. She had always been that way. Once Matsumoto Sayuri decided something, she rarely wavered from it again.
The moment Xiayu heard the words "Takagi-san," she knew the bride had made her choice. And coupled with what Takagi Toshihiko had confessed about the events of twenty years ago, Xiayu was fairly certain she had just completed today's refreshed world quest.
She opened her quest log for a quick glance — and sure enough, the new world quest had been marked complete.
⊳ The June Bride Murder Case — COMPLETED ✓
⊳ The Stolen Soul Swap — COMPLETED ✓
What Xiayu failed to notice was this: in her quest log, beside the refreshed June Bride Murder Case, another world quest had quietly flipped to the same status — completed.