Aoi Tohsaka realized an hour later that her daughter, Rin, was missing.
Perhaps due to the guilt in a child's conscience, there was a note left on the bedside table, stating that she was going back to Fuyuki City to search for her missing classmate.
Regret filled Aoi's heart, causing her vision to darken. During dinner, Rin mentioned Kotone and asked several times about the current situation in Fuyuki City.
At that time, Aoi shouldn't have been evasive. Even if it meant being firm, she should have explained clearly to make Rin understand—to forget about that friend.
She should have contacted Tokiomi—Aoi suppressed that murmuring voice with reason.
Although Aoi didn't possess magical aptitude, she was, after all, the wife of a magus. She knew very well that her husband, Tokiomi, was not capable of concerning himself with their daughter's safety. He was currently on the battlefield, and the situation he was in required him to be fully focused, putting all his efforts into preserving his own life.
No, there was one more person, a man who had been childhood friends with her and had returned to the Matou household after many years for the sake of their other daughter. This man genuinely loved Rin and Sakura, this man... wouldn't refuse her request.
Although it felt uneasy to contact him at this time, Aoi couldn't care about that anymore for the sake of her daughter.
Aoi pulled out the phone book and dialed the number that Kariya had specially left for her.
The result was disappointing, not because Kariya had refused her request, but because Kariya was not at home at all, and it was Sakura who answered the phone.
Now there was no one to rely on; only she could protect Rin.
Without changing her clothes, Aoi rushed out of the Zenjou household and sped back to Fuyuki City on the national highway at night.
She didn't know where Rin might have gone. All she could do was predict Rin's activity radius and search one by one.
If Rin had taken the train back to Fuyuki City, the initial starting point would be Fuyuki Station. Starting from Fuyuki Station, within a thirty-minute range of a child's pace...
The first place that came to her mind was the municipal park near the Minarai River.
The nighttime silence in the park evoked thoughts of a cemetery.
There was no sign of human presence on the square, and the useless streetlights illuminated empty spaces, making the darkness between them even deeper and the surrounding silence more eerie and frightening.
The air in Fuyuki City had become tainted during the night.
Living with magi, Aoi had grown accustomed to a certain degree of strangeness, and she could genuinely sense this abnormal air.
Aoi's gaze first searched for the bench she usually sat on when playing with Rin. It could be called a kind of intuition or a connection between their bloodlines.
And there, she found the small figure wearing a red coat that she was looking for.
In addition to her, there was another girl who secretly worried her.
Aoi subconsciously wanted to call out her daughter's name but was interrupted by a strong discomfort in her stomach.
She saw several strange monsters emerging from the shadows. They were monsters that human aesthetics could not accept, and her two daughters were confronting such creatures.
If it were a different time, facing these monsters alone, Aoi might have been paralyzed by the fear of death, unable to do anything, just like Rin before. But now, even if she had ten times or a hundred times the fear, it couldn't scare Aoi. Because she was the mother of those two children, a mother would not be afraid of any danger, including death, to protect her children.
"Rin!"
"Sakura!"
Aoi shouted as she ran towards her daughters, hoping to attract the monsters' attention in this way.
"Mom? It's dangerous!"
"Don't come closer!"
Rin and Sakura's reactions were identical. Just as the mother wanted to protect her daughters, the daughters also wanted to protect their mother. Not to mention, their mother was just an ordinary housewife who didn't know magecraft or how to fight.
Upon hearing their two daughters say that, Aoi ran even faster. She simply wanted to reach her daughters' side, to protect them, even if it meant gaining just a little bit of time.
The young sisters exchanged a glance and each threw something they held tightly in their hands.
Rin threw a crystal shard that she carried with her, while Sakura threw a runestone she had made herself.
Different materials and different magical principles led to the same result.
An excessive amount of magical energy infused into the crystal;
The rune "F" representing flames was released most intensely.
The result was only one thing—an explosion!
There was no visible flame, and the sound was very faint.
Not because the power was weak, but because the explosion occurred inside the bodies of the strange monsters, and both sound and light were blocked.
The sisters confronting the monsters were not doing so out of fear or the inability to escape. They wanted to get closer, to ensure they could throw the "bomb" into the monsters' mouths, just like Sakura had done when she defeated the first monster in the alley, saving her sister.
The sisters had similar magical aptitude, and the difference in the time they had practiced magecraft was only a few months, so the scale of the explosions caused by their magical powers would naturally not be much different.
The two monsters closest to them struggled, contorting as they fell to the ground, their heavily damaged bodies blocking the advance of the remaining monsters.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, the sisters ran away. As they passed by their mother, each of them grabbed one of her hands, leading her to escape together.
"Rin, Sakura, are you okay? Are you injured anywhere?" Aoi anxiously asked, no matter when, her greatest concern was always her daughters.
"Mom, I'm fine."
"I'm fine too."
The sisters answered simultaneously, with Rin, the older sister, adding an extra sentence.
"Where should we go now?"
"Go to the parking lot. I came by car, so once we got in, they won't be able to catch up. Follow me," Aoi said urgently.
Aoi was an adult with much more experience than her two children.
However, it seemed that the manipulators of these strange monsters had anticipated the escape route of the mother and her two daughters. They had set up several monsters in front of the parking lot gate, and the road back to the park was blocked by the pursuing monsters.
With a formidable enemy in front and pursuers behind, over ten strange monsters blocked all possible escape routes.
Rin looked at her sister and realized that her sister was looking at her too.
"Sakura, how many explosive ones do you have left?"
"Three."
"I have one crystal shard left... It's not enough. No matter which way we go, it won't be enough. What should we do? What should I do?"
Rin forced herself to remain calm and composed, her young mind racing.
"Five monsters in front, plus one... We can only give it a try."
Rin took out the crystal shard from her pocket, staring intently at one of the monsters.
"Sakura, let's—"
"Attack together." Before she could finish her sentence, the monsters seemed to receive some kind of command and tightened their mouth openings, leaving no space for the "bombs" to pass through.
If they couldn't explode from the inside, their "bombs" would be ineffective against the monsters, as Sakura had just told her.
"Are we going to die here? We were so close to the parking lot."
At that moment, Rin deeply regretted her recklessness. She not only endangered herself but also her mother and sister.
PS: Aoi is a typical traditional woman. After marriage, her focus was solely on her husband and daughters. She prioritized her family above all else. So when Tokiomi said not to disturb him, Aoi didn't bother him. That's why, Kariya... you're such a tragedy.