Back to the present...
Inside the Himura residence in Azabu neighborhood, located at Minato Ward, Tokyo.
June 18th, 2026
8:25 AM 21° Celsius/69.8° Fahrenheit
The Himura mansion was quiet, unnervingly always. The type of silence that presses into the walls, that thickens the air like perfume - sweet, expensive, and dangerous.
Sakura sat alone in the grand lobby, poised like a queen on her velvet throne. Her wine glass glistened in her hand, filled with Vevet De Noir - the rarest chocolate wine known to the wealthy elite. She swirled it lazily, eyes half-lidded, mind far, far away from the present.
The air was cool, fragrant with lavender incense curling from the ornate burner beside her. Her robe-black silk, trimmed with crimson lace- clung to her skin like shadow. Beneath it, hidden from view, was a 45. Caliber pistol, the same pistol she used to murder Nakamura nights ago, strapped to her thigh, always.
She stared at nothing.
No, not nothing...
She was thinking about him..
Ray Shigeyoshi..
Her Ray Shigeyoshi..
Her dark, brooding, perfect man.
A killer.
The word repeated in her head like a secret love letter.
He killed someone...
Her daughter Arashi never lies. She knew it from the day she was born. Her little girl speaking as if it were some terrible thing.
But Sakura...
She didn't flinch. She didn't feel fear.
She felt warmth.
Her thighs subtly clenched together.
A killer, her killer. Cold, brutal, efficient. If only she was there to witness Ray brutally murdering Arashi's male friends last night.
To her, he wasn't like the other men she'd encountered in the upper circles - weak-willed CEOs who blabbed secrets after three drinks, old tycoons with shaking hands, pathetic playboys who thought money made them gods.
No, Ray was real and different. Far better than those men she met throughout her life.
She imagined it again. And she will. Everyday.
Them together, standing over the corpses of their enemies. Their hands bloodied, but intertwined.
What was it Arashi said?
He murdered someone...
God...yes.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her heartbeat skipped.
She sipped her expensive chocolate wine with a dreamy expression, eyes glazed with love and madness.
"He's mine...and no one can have him...
.....only me."
Just as her fantasies began to twist into darker, hungrier thoughts, the sound of heavy, clumsy footsteps echoed from the front doors.
Her smile vanished like a blade sheathed.
Shinjo.
Ray's father, her husband.
He stumbled in like a wounded animal. Disheveled. Stinking of alcohol and cigarettes. His expensive dress shirt was half untucked, stained. His hair, greased and unkempt. He looked like a man already dead, clinging to a life that hated him back.
"Ugh." He groaned.
"My head's pounding. Honey, why it so damn bright in here?" He asked, his breath stink of alcohol.
Sakura didn't even look at him at first.
She was still staring at her wine, holding it up to the light like it was far more fascinating than her husband, Shinjo.
He blinked, wobbling toward the couch.
"You just gonna sit there?"
"We need to talk." Finally, she spoke.
Flat, distant. Like a doctor informing a patient of terminal illness.
Shinjo slumped into the couch across from her and gave a lazy smirk. "What? You mad I didn't come home last night? Come on, babe...don't be like that."
She looked up at him now.
That gaze..
Black eyes sharp as obsidian. Cold. The eyes of a woman who didn't just see a man, just a mess she couldn't clean up..
She just couldn't...for a specific reason.
"You didn't come home. Because you were too busy drinking with girls who don't even know your name." She said, ice in her voice.
Shinjo flinched but tried to laugh it off.
"You spying on me now?"
"I don't need." She said, gracefully sipping her wine.
"You're predictable. Like a mold. You grow wherever there's darkness and rot. " She added.
Shinjo frowned, shifting in discomfort.
"That's uncalled for."
"What is called for?" She continued, voice laced with sugar-coated venom.
"Look at you..." then she looked at him with disappointed and disgust.
"You don't act like a husband, you don't act like a partner....You're a hollow thing wearing a suit and pretending to matter." She added.
He looked down, chewing on shame and the bitter taste of truth.
"I never needed you." She added, softly now."
"You're just my.....leverage." She added, almost too soft.
Then, she smiled.
It was the wrong kind of smile.
Beautiful and radiant, and dripping with malice.
"I used to fantasize about smothering you in your sleep. A pillow over your bloated, snoring face. Quiet, clean, and intimate." She said sweetly.
Shinjo stiffened. "Sakura-san, what the fuck..."
She tilted her head like a curious cat. "But then I realized....you're not worth the effort."
He tried to stand, but she was already moving. Slowly, languidly, she stood and crossed the room in her bare feet, each step deliberate.
She crouched beside him, leaned close and....
"Do you know what it is like to love someone so deeply, so obsessively...that you'd kill the world for them?" She whispered against his ear.
He trembled.
She giggled.
"Awww." She cooed.
"You don't. Of course not. You're not capable of that kind of love. You've never even had the spine to slap me during argument. That's how I knew...you were never the one." Sakura roasted him.
He swallowed har, unable to look at her.
Then, suddenly, her expression shifted.
Gone was the sweet insanity. The smile.
It was ice again.
"Go upstairs." She ordered.
"Sleep, drink, decay. Do what you best. We'll talk later once you're sober." She added.
"And if I don't?" He muttered, defeated.
She turned her back to him, already walking away.
"If you don't...maybe I'll test that pillow after all." Sakura answered.
And with that, she ascended the grand staircase, the robe trailing like black fire behind her.
Shinjo sat in the silence, heart racing, skin cold.
He was a man with no control. No power.
Not in this house, not with that woman.
And somewhere upstairs...
Sakura was already thinking of Ray again...
The Dawning Devil and the Obsessive Queen..
Let the world burn.