Chapter 412: Facing One's True Heart (Patreon)

Of course, Jhin had no intention of pulling the old "sleep together and settle all grudges" routine. He put the dessert into the drone, then turned to Chisato, who sat in the room looking utterly lost. "I'm going to take a shower. Don't you run away on me."

The main point of the shower was to wash off the smell of blood. It was faint, but to Chisato it was unmistakable.

Listening to the water running in the bathroom, a little light finally returned to her blank eyes. She slapped her cheeks hard, then shook her head violently.

No extra thoughts. Jhin-nii is my lifesaver. I can't demand that he act according to my principles.

When he comes out, I have to be back to my usual self.

When the bathroom door opened, Chisato's heart skipped a beat. Her face felt so stiff she couldn't manage even a decent smile. The corners of her mouth might as well have been welded down, and her expression looked miserable.

Jhin didn't mind much. He was more worried that she wouldn't want to keep talking, so seeing her still sitting there let him breathe a sigh of relief. He sat down across from her in his bathrobe.

"You don't have to force a smile. I know what I did earlier was hard for you to accept. Since Kazuki went and gave you a push from behind, I guess I have no choice but to be honest with you."

"Being honest… Jhin-nii, why so serious?" A terrible feeling washed over Chisato, as if something she'd deliberately ignored and forgotten for a long time was about to be dragged into the open.

"I won't waste words. Chisato, you're a smart girl. You must know that the debt of gratitude you feel toward me far outweighs any romantic feeling."

Her heart was pounding and she was panicking, but Chisato still pulled off a masterful performance. In an instant she was back to the cheerful girl she always was in the café.

"Ahaha, what kind of joke is that? Chisato likes you more than anyone, hands down~"

"You forgot to use that very convincing 'Jhin-nii.'"

Jhin's words were like a sharp needle, and they pierced her disguise with ease. She slowly let the smile fall from her lips, as if giving up, and answered limply with her head bowed.

"…I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize. If anything, I'm the one who should. The rose-tinted image you have of me has been shattered again and again. That must have been painful."

"Jhin-nii, you did that on purpose?"

"Of course." Jhin nodded. "The moment we met, I could tell you had far too heavy a 'benefactor filter' on me. I'm no flawless saint. Rather than have you find out later that I don't match your imagination, I figured it was better to smash that filter right from the start. It's better for both of us."

Chisato didn't understand his reasoning. "Then why not just tell me everything from the beginning?"

If he disliked her being like this, he could have just said so. There was no need to take such a roundabout path and go through so much trouble.

"Why do you think?"

"…I don't know."

"Haah~" Jhin sighed regretfully, then teased her without mercy. "You're as bad at this as you are at picking romance movies."

Chisato shot back immediately. "My taste is not bad! They're all really good… Huh??"

Halfway through the sentence, something clicked. She shot up from her seat, her mouth hanging wide open in shock.

"You guessed right, Chisato. I like you. That's why I did all this."

The sudden confession fried her brain's CPU. All she could manage was a meaningless "Ah~" as she stood frozen in place.

Jhin went on. "Precisely because I like you, I took the trouble to break your filter on me again and again. I wanted you to see the real me, and to fall for the real me."

"Then why didn't you just accept me when I confessed at the very start?"

"No, no, no. That's not what I wanted."

"But then you'd have gotten me!" Her tone suddenly turned agitated. She couldn't understand why he had turned her down back then.

"That's exactly the problem…" Jhin stood, pressed her back down onto the sofa, and calmly met her beautiful eyes. "If I did that, would I be getting the body called Chisato, or a tool called Chisato?"

"That's…"

"That's why I can't stand the DA. You and Takina have the same problem. You always treat yourselves as tools without a second thought, and you don't care at all what you actually want." He pinched her soft cheeks and tugged them gently outward. "I'm angry. Because of their influence, I can't have all of you."

Before, Chisato would have been thrilled to hear this, since it would have let her repay her debt. But now, with the feelings in her heart dissected and laid out in plain view between them, she felt only dejection and shame.

It wasn't aimed at Jhin but at herself. Everything she'd done had been exactly as he said. She had carried the desire to repay him, used "Jhin-nii" to close the distance, and treated herself as a tool for that purpose. As long as the mission got done, the process and her own feelings didn't matter.

"I'm sorry."

As soon as Chisato said those three words, she was drawn into a warm embrace. Jhin lowered his head and spoke softly by her ear. "You don't need to apologize. I was hoping we could be together as our truest selves from now on. Can we?"

She nodded, by an amount that was almost imperceptible. After hesitating for a moment, she wrapped her arms around his sturdy back to show her decision.

When the embrace ended, the two sat face to face, and Chisato told Jhin about her history with the organization called Lilybell.

During the Radio Tower Incident, the Lilybell unit that took part had been wiped out. Because of how she had acted, the standing of Lilybell and Lycoris within the DA had reversed. As a result, Lilybell came to see her personally as a thorn in their side and made several assassination attempts, but she had driven them all off.

Jhin shook his head as he listened. "So those three were the Lilybell members who've been trying to assassinate you all this time, right?"

"Yeah."

"Against enemies, a no-kill principle is a fatal weakness. But you won't run into this kind of thing anymore. Just stay in the café and work in peace."

"Okay." Chisato didn't have much to say about their [Death]. It was payback, in a way, for all those assassination attempts. Besides, they had planned to kidnap Jhin this time. If they were still alive, what about next time, and the time after? Who else around her would they go after?

Since they threatened the safety of the people close to her, she naturally couldn't see them through her old way of thinking anymore. And she had no need to force Jhin to follow her principles, either.

Once her mind was clear, Chisato patted down her skirt and stood. "Jhin-nii, let's go back to the office and eat dessert."

Looking at the small hand held out to him, he smiled. "You won't dodge my hand this time, right?"

"Geez, you always remember such tiny things! My affection level toward you is going to drop!"

"Then can I at least ask how high it is right now?"

Chisato gripped his big hand tightly and grinned playfully. "I'm not telling!"