It wasn't just the damp, wintry morning fog of Fuyuki City hanging in the air.
There was a taut edge to it now—tension and heartbreak, drawn like blades.
Rin Tohsaka's cry, like a question torn from her very blood, still seemed to echo:
"Dad! Do you really have to hand Sakura over to this horrible old man? She's your daughter!!!"
In that suffocating standoff, Matou—no, Tohsaka—Sakura, held tight behind her sister, stared at that small yet unshakably steady back. The tiny flame of hope that her father and Matou Zouken had nearly doused at last flared again—and with it came courage. She broke free of fear's paralysis, and like a fledgling finding its nest, she called out through tears, "Sis!" Then her little arms locked around her sister's waist, as if pouring every fear and grievance into that embrace.
Feeling Sakura's trembling and total reliance, Rin's heart clenched—sour and aching. She immediately hugged Sakura back, one hand gently patting her shoulder, and in the calmest, most dependable voice she could manage, murmured:
"Don't be afraid. I'm here."
"I'm right here, and I will protect you."
It was a promise to Sakura—and a stand against her own fear.
But this moving scene stirred only irritation and anger in Tohsaka Tokiomi's eyes. His carefully groomed heir—the Tohsaka family's future head—now stood here without a shred of decorum: hair a mess, clothes in disarray, barefoot, sobbing loudly at another family's gate (and of all places, the Matou gate), even defying her father. It flew in the face of the "grace" and "composure" he prized as Tohsaka doctrine.
"Rin!"
Tokiomi's voice rose, imperious and tight with restrained fury.
"Why have you come here?"
"Who taught you to run off without my permission?"
"Look at yourself—hair in disarray, clothes a mess, barefoot. Do you have any of the bearing a Tohsaka lady should?"
His rebuke was ice water meant to douse Rin's resistance. He expected shame and obedience.
What he met instead, when his daughter lifted her head, were gem-red eyes fixed on him with undisguised disappointment and anger.
"Father."
Rin's voice was hoarse from running and shouting, but every word was clear and cold.
"Did you expect me to know nothing—just watch, even tacitly accept you sending Sakura to a place like this?"
"Is doing nothing what counts as the 'grace' of the Tohsaka heir?"
She wasn't merely disappointed anymore. She felt the sting of a blood bond betrayed. She could not understand how the father who, though strict, sometimes cared about their studies could so coolly decide her sister's fate.
At her direct, piercing challenge, Tohsaka Tokiomi's brow furrowed deeply. He had not expected Rin to be this fierce, this resolute. In his view, she might be sad, confused—but in the end, like her mother Aoi, she would understand and accept a necessary sacrifice for family and magecraft.
He paused, then tried a gentler, more "reasonable" tack with his stubborn elder daughter, softening his tone with patient guidance:
"Rin, you're still young; there's much you don't understand.
Sakura's talent is wasted if she stays with the Tohsaka.
The Matou family has water-aspected crests and an old lineage suited to her constitution.
Here she can walk a stronger path and, in the future, stand shoulder to shoulder on equal ground.
As her sister, don't you want Sakura to have the best prospects? Why block her from a better future?"
He had rehearsed this speech countless times, convinced it was airtight—entirely "for Sakura's sake." But he underestimated Rin's acuity, and overestimated how such hollow logic stands against real feeling. Most of all, he failed to see that Rin now knew more of the truth.
Rin's lips curled into a cold, mocking smile far too sharp for her age. She didn't refute him directly. Instead she lowered her head and, with surprising gentleness, looked at the sister still shivering in her arms.
"Sakura," she asked softly, "tell me—and tell Father—do you want to go to the Matou house?"
"Do you want to leave home, leave Mom and me, and go live with that old man?"
Blunt and cruel in its simplicity, the question ripped away every false wrapping and—if only in name—returned the choice to the one who mattered.
"…"
Cradled in Rin's arms, Sakura seemed to find a measure of courage. Timid and still shaken, she lifted her head, stole a glance at her father's darkened face, and immediately burrowed back into her sister. Then, in a nasal, mosquito-thin but unmistakably clear voice, she choked out:
"I… I don't want to… I don't want to be apart from Sis. I don't want to leave home. I'm scared…"
Those few simple words were a dagger, cutting through all of Tokiomi's grand reasons.
Rin raised her head, that dust- and tear-smudged chin tilting up, eyes blazing as she bore down on her father.
"Did you hear that, Father?" Her voice carried a deeper sorrow.
"Sakura says she doesn't want to go. She doesn't!"
"You keep saying it's for her own good—have you asked what she wants?"
"This isn't for her sake at all. It's just your willfulness—your selfishness!"
"Heh… heh heh…"
At that moment, Matou Zouken, who had been lurking like a shadow, finally let out an owlish, skin-crawling laugh. Leaning on his twisted cane, his murky gaze slid between Tokiomi and Rin, the mockery and needling plain.
"The Tohsaka heir you've trained is certainly… unusual."
He stretched each word, every syllable scraping across the face Tokiomi guarded so closely.
"Sharp-tongued, ruled by emotion… but lively, I'll give her that. Heh heh…"
For a man who prized family honor and personal dignity, even such airy taunts landed on Tohsaka Tokiomi like the loudest of slaps.