Chapter Text
The flight from London to Tokyo felt longer than usual.
Not because of the hours — but because of the weight Karin Kurosaki carried in her chest.
She stared out the window as the city lights below began to blur into familiar shapes. It had been years since she left. Now she was coming back to a home that felt… nothing like home anymore.
⸻
At the arrival gate, she spotted two familiar figures.
Yuzu — her fraternal twin with a softer smile — waved eagerly, eyes already glassy with unshed tears.
Next to her, Hanakari Jinta looked awkward in a formal shirt, fidgeting with his sleeves.
“Karin!” Yuzu ran up and threw her arms around her.
Karin stood stiffly for half a second — and then hugged her back.
Tightly.
A little too tightly.
“It’s been four years,” Yuzu whispered into her shoulder. “Don’t ever disappear that long again.”
“I didn’t disappear,” Karin muttered, blinking fast. “I went to study.”
“Same thing,” Yuzu sniffed, pulling back to beam at her. “You weren’t there for our birthday. Three years in a row.”
“I sent gifts!”
“Not the same!”
Karin laughed under her breath — soft and worn.
God, she missed this.
This noise. This warmth.
“You look like you haven’t slept,” she said, stepping back to get a better look.
Yuzu just laughed, waving a hand. “Wedding stress. You’ll see soon enough.”
Karin raised an eyebrow. “Not if I can help it.”
Jinta gave her a small nod. “Welcome home.”
Karin looked at them both. Something about the way they stood close — too close — made her pause.
But she shook the thought away.
She had no idea, not yet,
that this wedding was never meant to happen.
⸻
On the drive home, Yuzu reached into her bag and pulled out a cream-colored envelope — sealed with an elegant gold monogram.
“It’s not printed yet,” she said gently. “You’re the first one I’m showing this to.”
Karin took it without a word.
The invitation was weighty, embossed in fine silver letters.
Hitsugaya Toushirou & Kurosaki Yuzu.
Her breath caught slightly.
Hitsugaya.
The name rang a bell — but faintly. She’d seen it before, somewhere.
An old article. A business magazine. A quiet but powerful name in the corporate world.
“Brilliant. Composed. Calculated.”
That was the impression the writer gave.
But that didn’t match Yuzu.
Karin frowned slightly.
She remembered Yuzu had met him — once or twice — but she never talked much about him. Just said it was arranged through the families.
Karin had assumed the man must be quiet. Gentle. Someone with a soft kind of warmth like Yuzu always gravitated toward.
And yet…
There was something uneasy about the silence in Yuzu’s voice every time his name came up.
Something that didn’t feel like love.
What kind of man agrees to marry someone like Yuzu…
and never even bothers to speak to her sister?
Karin stared at the card again — thick, expensive, cold in her fingers.
The name meant nothing to her.
But the feeling it gave her —
that quiet, sinking dread —
That… meant everything.
⸻
She turned her eyes back to the window, Tokyo blinking past in streaks of city light and distant memory.
She didn’t know him.
But soon, she would learn —
And she would regret ever thinking she had a choice.