"Then why are they targeting you and not me?" Minamoto Tamako gently lectured, "You should learn to look for problems within yourself!"
Fushimi Roku treated her words as if they were wind; he wasn't interested in hearing them, his ears directly blocked his sense of smell.
He could see that Taira Sakurako's journey to find her family wasn't going smoothly, and in all likelihood, Minamoto Tamako would eventually find out the truth—before that happened, he needed to think of a story in advance to fool Minamoto Tamako.
Each person was lost in their own thoughts; Taira Sakurako and the three-person group of reporters led the way, while Fushimi Roku and the Minamoto Tamako's strange ninja duo followed behind.
They crossed mountain paths, heading to the coast, where early cherry blossoms bloomed on the cliffs under the Ishiraki Lighthouse, their petals falling like snowflakes onto the ink-colored ocean.
