Enzworth, backyard.
Sakura Tohsaka looked at the two similar faces before her, who had arrived aboard the Sky Ark Ma'anna. Her tightly pursed lips and expectant pretty face instantly darkened.
"Why is it you two again?!"
"Sakura, do you hate seeing us that much? Or did the person you were waiting for not come?"
The goddess-like Rin Tohsaka lightly leaped down from the lavish vehicle and quietly looked at her younger sister, speaking as if casually.
Yet however flat her tone was, it sounded incomparably sharp and grating in Sakura Tohsaka's ears.
"Shut up..."
The girl's shoulders trembled slightly as she lowered her head. Her clenched pink fists had turned bluish-white from the force, and her nails had unknowingly dug into her palms, cutting her skin and bringing a faint sting.
"Is it because of that person?"
"Shut up."
Sakura Tohsaka's voice became even more gloomy and low, her head lowered further still.
"You're always like this."
Rin Tohsaka glanced at her sister and shook her head faintly in judgment.
"You work so hard. You'd rather wrong yourself than disappoint anyone, yet you place all your hopes in others; you never say what you want; then in the end, you get nothing and can only resent others for ignoring you. Sakura, when are you going to change that gloomy, self-abasing personality of yours?"
Sakura Tohsaka's body stiffened slightly. That condescending tone sent stabs of pain through her fragile heart. Her tightly clenched teeth bit a bloody mark into her lips, and the taste of rust flooded her mouth.
"Shut up!"
The resistance forced from the girl's throat carried a little more cold severity beneath its suppression.
Rin Tohsaka realized that her attempt at comfort had not only failed to enlighten her sister, but had made her emotions even more unstable.