Completed (a week late) for the sake of closure, not because I'm proud of this monstrosity. Just pretend that it never happened.

Leo tried to resist the urge to slam his fist into the nearest wall. He failed, his knuckles making a thud as they smacked the drywall.

"Damn him. Vandalism and assault. How is it possible that Hans could be so careless?"

His uncharacteristic show of anger drew a concerned look from Xander. It was Leo's second night at home since Sakura had been unceremoniously deposited at the deserted warehouse, and into his supervision. He was having a late dinner alone with his brother, a rare occurrence given how infrequently their schedules lined up.

"He was drunk, as I'm sure you've guessed by now. It will be difficult to get the charges dropped, but we must do it. If we cut him off, Hans may choose to take his chances and testify against us for a reduced sentence."

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll put some thought into it tomorrow." Leo pushed back his plate, his food having only been picked at. The Krakenburg family employed a small collection of staff, all of them paid to tune out any words that weren't directed specifically at them. Although his dinner had been prepared by a professional, he suddenly had a craving for one of Camilla's sandwiches.

"Leo?" Xander inquired cautiously, his expression similar to that of one about to poke a sleeping bear. "You seem… a little off. If there is something bothering you, please, speak up. I am listening, even if you don't believe that I am."

I'm so sick of this, is what Leo wanted to say. I want to stop all of this madness, even though I know I can't. For so many reasons.

But he couldn't form the words in his mouth. Instead, he said what was perhaps the most blatant lie in his life. "I'm fine, Brother. Now then, how are negotiations with the Shirasagis going?"

Xander accepted his change of subject without question. "I believe that we will have something worked out by tomorrow. It doesn't feel as though I am dealing with the Shirasagi patriarch. Their correspondence reeks of desperation."

"It's her brother, then."

"Her br—" Xander nodded in understanding. "Of course. That would explain it why they want her back as fast as possible. I assume this mean that you have been talking with our… guest?"

Once again, the word 'prisoner' or 'captive' or 'hostage' was carefully avoided. "Yes," Leo answered in a measured tone. "Only a little bit."

It wasn't a complete lie, with how two of his conversations with Sakura had ended with her in tears, and a silence that stretched on for hours.

"Don't get too attached," Xander warned him. "For your sake as much as the rest of ours."

"I won't." Leo slid his chair back, stood up, and walked away.

"Wh-what's wrong?" Sakura asked him.

Leo couldn't bring himself to respond. He thought back to the previous night, and Xander questioning him about the same thing.

"W-would you like to talk?"

Silence returned for a brief moment.

"You don't want to hear me rant about my responsibilities as a Krakenberg," Leo finally said.

"I can listen."

When he hesitated again, Sakura pushed on without him.

"Father always told me that the company will never be my responsibility. He w-was… a little upset when I told him that I wanted to be a doctor, and only when I agreed to join the school orchestra did he let the issue go. I think he wants me to fall in love with m-music, or really anything that's far from medicine. Once, I told him how much I enjoyed sweets, and by the next week he had found a baking teacher for me."

Sighing, Leo hung his head. "He doesn't want you to dig too close. To know too much. I can empathize with him. I try— we all try, so hard to keep Elise away from the… family business. So she can do what she wants to do, not what she has to do. But we can't. She's more than sharp enough to understand what goes on behind her back, only she pretends otherwise to make us worry less."

He huffed in frustration.

"I hate this. My greatest desire is to be free from this life… But I am obligated to protect my siblings, even if it means wading deeper into this immoral cesspool. Maybe one day I'll be so entrenched in it all that I won't be able to get out."

Sounding genuinely curious, she prodded him with another question. "What would you pr-prefer to be doing instead?"

"I want to be a scholar. History, or perhaps sciences. Botany, maybe? Something innocuous, that I still find interesting."

"Botany? I-Isn't that about plants? It's what Father studied in university."

"Your father? I thought he was a chemist."

"He was actually a b-botanist when he founded the company, not a chemist. M-most of his first medicines were based on plants that my grandparents taught him about. They were herbalists."

Leo couldn't stifle his snort at the mention of herbalism. Sakura looked at him with a puzzled expression. "I-Is there something wrong?".

He shook his head sheepishly. "My apologies. Please, continue."

"Before he moved out of their house, they gave him a graft of a special cherry tree that was growing in their yard for years and years, which he planted outside of his first home. When we moved, it moved with us. 'This is the source of my wealth,' he said to us. He loved it so much that he named his second d-daughter after the cherry blossoms it produced in the spring. M-me."

"Sakura means… cherry blossoms, then?"

"Yes. It's a common name in my culture, but he found it f-fitting, I guess."

An idea was itching at the back of Leo's skull. "What made the tree so special?"

"It's a hybrid that my grandparents bred, many years ago, supposedly with special pr-properties. One of a kind, until my Father planted his own sapling, and made grafts from that, too."

Something sparked in his mind. "Could it be possible that…" he began slowly. His idea was beyond ridiculous, but he still chose to air it out. "That the source of Shirasagi's miracle drug is from that cherry tree? Some abnormal, unusual compound, in the leaves, or the fruits, or the seeds? Something so simple, but hidden in plain sight? It is just a theory, but perhaps with this information I could try to reverse engineer the drug..."

"Is that e-even possible?"

"It would be difficult," he murmured distractedly, his mind wandering away from the conversation. He wasn't going to delude himself into believing that he could do it by himself. "But if I find the right people to help, and maybe get my hands on a graft of that tree..."

A two-tone melody pinged softly from his pocket, cutting Leo's words short. He freed his cell phone and unlocked its screen, revealing a text message from his brother.

Bring her to the agreed upon point. We settled on 60 units.

"Only sixty?"

Sakura, to her credit, deciphered his vague statement of dismay immediately. "H-how much time will that give you, Leo?"

"Four months, perhaps? Four and a half? But that's not any of your concern. If my luck holds, I won't need that long. Gather your things. I will bring you to the exchange point, and you'll be finished with this craziness. I'll be finished with it."

"No, I'm st-staying here."

He stared at her, baffled. "Excuse me?"

"Leo, you can negotiate for more of the medication by continuing to keep me here. So you have more time to do your research."

"Are you even listening to what you're saying?" Even considering what she had proposed was enraging. "There is no way that your family would ever—"

"Yes, they would!" she interrupted, just as vehemently. "If you don't g-give them a choice, they'll agree to anything. You know that! Leo, p-please, let me help you help your family!"

"I can't accept that. Sakura… It's not that I don't appreciate what you're offering, but it won't change the fact that my Father's idea was never going to work in the long-term. I need to find another way, and the ideas you've given me are more help than I deserve."

Her eyes, a dark maroon, met his brown ones. "This will give you more time to r-reverse engineer the drug. I promise, I'm serious about this."

"I want you to go home, Sakura," Leo said firmly. "To be done with this mess."

"And if you can't find the solution? What will you do?"

"Then… perhaps we will see each other again."

"Someone is here to see me?"

It was three months since Sakura's ordeal. She had returned to school, with the excuse of an abnormally high fever to explain her absence. It had taken a great deal of pleading to convince her father to not pull her out of classes in the middle of the year. No longer was she allowed to walk home, and instead one of her siblings, often Hinoka, was tasked with ferrying her and Takumi to and from their high school. While Sakura couldn't be certain, she also had suspicions about two new students, claiming to be cousins, who had shown up one day, coincidentally having transferred into all of her courses.

Hinoka gently pushed her towards the front door. "Yeah. Is she one of your friends?"

"Maybe? I wasn't expecting anyone today…"

"Well, go take a look. Just tell me if you're going anywhere, okay?"

A blonde girl, about Sakura's age, was waiting on the front porch, crouching to observe the flowerbeds beyond the railing. She jumped up as the door opened.

"Hiya! Are you Sakura Shirasagi? I think this belongs to you!"

The girl held up a pink messenger bag. The one Sakura had lost months before. She inhaled sharply when she recognized it. "Wh-where did you find that? I thought that it was gone forever."

"Yup! I found it under some bushes, saw your name written on the tag, and asked around until I found your house. Detective Elise is triumphant again!"

The name was vaguely familiar to Sakura, as thought it was said in the passing to her few times before, but she ignored the fledgling thought. "Th-thank you for helping me. I-Is there a way that I can repay you?"

Elise giggled, and waved her hand at the offer. "Nah, it was no problem! I'm just glad that I could help you out. I do have to get home now though, so until we meet again, Sakura!"

Skipping down the steps, Elise wandered down the sidewalk, humming cheerily to herself. Sakura inspected the bag as she reentered the house. It still held all of her original binders and sheet music, which had to be replaced when she returned to school. Tucked into a small pocket was a piece of notebook paper that she didn't recognize. Anything that she had to keep track of was written into her agenda, or her phone's calendar, so the random scrap seemed out of place. Curious, she plucked it from pouch and unfolded it.

The message was neatly lettered in black pen, unsigned, and without any other marks that she could use to identify its writer.

Thank you for your help.

But she knew exactly who had written it.

Fin.

Only four chapters with an incredibly stupid ending, but it was all planned from the beginning. I promise.

What's that? This story makes no sense? I agree.