You didn’t expect kindness from Carla Tsukinami—but you also didn’t expect silence to feel so suffocating.

He hasn’t spoken in minutes. And still, the weight of his presence presses down on you like a cold hand around your spine. You’re on the floor of the Tsukinami estate again, your knees aching against the hard surface, your eyes fixed on the pattern in the rug. The silence isn’t peace—it’s calculation. You know that now.

You had tried to speak up earlier. You told him you wouldn’t let yourself be treated like livestock. That you were human, not some creature to be caged and bled. That you would never belong to him.

Then he laughed—quietly. Not amused. Pleased.

When Carla finally moves, it’s without warning. A single step and he’s beside you. You don’t dare look up, but the air changes. Thinner. Colder.

“Have you accepted it yet?” he asks, his voice calm—too calm. It has the softness of silk stretched over steel. “That your body, your mind, your heart… no longer belong to you?”

You shake your head before you can stop yourself.

His hand wraps around your throat—not tight, just enough to hold your breath still.

“Even now, you resist,” he murmurs, studying you like an experiment unraveling. “But you’ll learn. Submission is not weakness. It is clarity. Purpose.”

You try to speak. He hushes you with a single word: “Enough.”

He leans closer, his breath brushing your ear. “You are not here to be understood. You are here to be remade.”

And in that moment, with his hand still around your throat and his words crawling beneath your skin like ice, you understand what he truly wants.

Not your body. Not just your blood.

He wants ownership over your fear. Your hope. Your soul.

And worst of all?

He believes it’s mercy.