Mission 3: A Memory of Snow p1
The Domik(House) is a criminal organization based in Irkutsk, a major city in southern Siberia.
Its history is long. It is said to have originated as a secret mutual aid society formed by prisoners within the penal colony that this land once was during the era of Imperial Russia.
The bond of the prisoners, united under harsh conditions, was strong, and its members spanned a wide range of social strata, including nobles and military officers imprisoned as political offenders, as well as scholars and merchants.
In a world where everything outside was an untrustworthy enemy, their bond naturally took on a quasi-familial character. The name Domik, an internal code word, eventually became their official designation.
Its members are “family,” comrades bound by a bond that can never be betrayed in this world. Therefore, the harsh penalty of certain death for traitors is not uncommon for a mafia-like criminal organization.
But in the case of the Domik, this tendency was exceptionally extreme and fanatical.
This was demonstrated during the Cold War era after World War II, when their connections, which had infiltrated the cutting-edge fields of medicine and chemistry, produced a killer virus—the Krov’vy Klyatva, the Blood-Soaked Vow—which was administered to all members.
Once activated, it was a curse of death, from which escape was impossible unless the symptoms were suppressed by the inhibitor developed in tandem. The “family” bound by this curse was thus connected by an iron bond that literally did not permit betrayal.
The Domik, which had maintained its existence in this manner for ages, would eventually change its nature with the flow of time.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 20th century, ethnic independence conflicts erupted in various places. The chaos that resulted produced countless war orphans.
The Domik absorbed these children, whose lives were cheap, as human resources, and grew larger by using and consuming them as loyal “family.”
***
Yuki Petrisheva was a girl with a different origin from those orphans.
Yuki’s father, whose wife was Japanese, was an executive of the Domik. It was when she was fifteen that she was assigned the same job as her father by the organization. Two years later, her father died suddenly, leaving Yuki behind.
Her exceptionally young promotion was not only due to her brilliant mind with an IQ of over 150. It was also because Yuki had inherited the same special skill as her father.
That skill was brainwashing—what is known as mind control.
The children bought from the human trafficking market had their futures determined according to their respective aptitudes.
Those who excelled intellectually. Those with outstanding physical abilities. Those with beautiful appearances—the sorted children would receive education and training appropriate to make them useful to the Domik.
Children who showed no remarkable aptitude in any area were liquidated in a way that would directly benefit the organization. Namely, through the sale of their “materials,” such as spinal fluid and organs.
Yuki concealed her identity as a member of the organization and interacted with the chosen children. Her method was an online role-playing game provided during the children’s free time.
As the only entertainment allowed in their harsh training life, the boys and girls were dependent on it. Yuki became the “wonderful, understanding friend who gets everything about them” that they met in that “free world,” and interacted with each of them.
Through voice chat via on-screen avatars, Yuki used conversation to enter the children’s subconscious. She performed maintenance to remove obstacles to their growth into the “people they were meant to be” and provided guidance to draw out more of their appropriate abilities.
For one boy, she erased his guilt and taboos against murder and violence.
For one girl, she lectured on sweet words and coquettish attitudes to ensnare powerful men.
Wielding skillfully indirect words that were not obvious on the surface, Yuki raised the children as excellent “family” and shipped them out one after another.
Yuki’s eloquence entered the young minds and, without them even realizing it, set them on the rails of their predetermined aptitudes. This was the mind control technique of manipulating human psychology that she had inherited from her late father.
She was of the same teenage years as them. Yet she had never once felt sentimentality or doubt.
Because this was the only way for Yuki to live in this world.
In that sense, her circumstances were no different from those of the children who were consumed day by day.
The other adults belonging to the organization were all the same.
No one was allowed to engage with this world except in the role they were destined to play. To live freely, as one’s heart desires, was impossible for humans from the very beginning.
Day after day, while raising the children as members of the “family,” Yuki calmly accepted her own fate.
—Until she encountered two particular events.
***
The first event was the discovery of her father’s inheritance by chance.
The data was stored in a cloud space on the internet, disguised in a way that only Yuki could understand.
One piece of information hidden within was the truth about her father’s death.
A video confession stating that he was currently embroiled in an internal factional struggle within the Domik, and that if he were to die suddenly in the near future, it would be an assassination by the corrupt mainstream faction that coveted power.
Yuki had been told by the organization that her father, Alexei Petrishev’s, death was an accident.
Upon learning this concealed fact, Yuki did not feel any particular desire for revenge.
For Yuki, her father’s existence was a mystery that could never be solved. Because even when they were together, she never knew if he truly loved his family.
He never showed his raw emotions, always speaking only in what seemed like model answers for the situation at hand.
Her mother had finally given up on such a man and, leaving a young Yuki behind, had returned to her homeland of Japan. But parting with her mother had been Yuki’s own choice.
She wanted to know the heart of her father, which no one could touch—that was undoubtedly the driving force behind Yuki’s choice of this path.
Yuki remained with her father and became a diligent student of his mind control techniques.
It was solely because she wished to solve the great mystery by learning the art of entering another’s heart.
But before that could be achieved, her father Alexei died.
There was nothing left in this world that Yuki desired. In the face of a dry resignation that everything would be as it would be, revenge was meaningless.
The inheritance was not just the video confession.
Her father Alexei had secretly analyzed the component data of the organization’s top-secret suicide virus, the Krov’vy Klyatva. With this, vaccine development was theoretically possible.
The reason he entrusted that data to his daughter, Yuki, was unknown. Perhaps it was a kind of insurance against assassination.
But Yuki accepted the dangerous inheritance purely to satisfy her intellectual curiosity. It was a substitute for the life purpose of solving the mystery of her father that had been taken from her—Yuki chose to interpret the meaning of her own psychology in this objective way.
And then, the second event. It was the encounter with the information of who the Domik‘s assassin who had murdered her father was.
When she learned the assassin’s name, Yuki was struck by a shock she had never felt before.
“Anya—”
Anna Grazkaya.
She knew the name, of course.
A promising rising star of the organization, whom Yuki herself diligently maintained as a “friend.” Though currently only thirteen, she was a girl expected to one day become one of the greatest killer machines the Domik had ever produced.
The first time she saw her face was when Anna was bought from the human trafficking market at the age of ten. Yuki was sixteen at the time.
She was a war orphan who had lost her parents in the 2008 South Ossetia conflict, but she had somehow managed to survive on her own for six years since she was four.
Seeing Anna, who was as adept at hiding as a stray cat, Yuki understood why this girl had been assigned the aptitude of an assassin. With her angelic beauty and petite frame, it would not have been strange for her to be trained as a high-class prostitute for high-ranking officials or a honey-trap agent.
It was Yuki’s own work that had made Anna’s talent bloom and fashioned her into the best assassin according to her aptitude.
A killer elite who could make calm decisions under any circumstances, show no mercy to her opponents, and sometimes carry out her missions without regard for her own life.
Thus, Anna had once again, as ordered by the Domik, taken the life of her target.
The life of Alexei Petrishev, an outsider in the organization… and Yuki’s father.
When she learned that, Yuki…
“That’s surprising.”
She murmured to herself in front of her PC monitor in her room.
“Surprisingly, there’s nothing.”
What Yuki had imagined was something like this.
The deeds of Yuki, who had manipulated the fates of children through mind control. The depth of her sins had come full circle to take her father’s life.
Wouldn’t she suffer from karmic retribution, repent her past actions, and have a change of heart?
Yuki observed her own psychology from such a quasi-scientific perspective. But no such emotional change as she had imagined occurred.
Come to think of it, it was perfectly normal.
Yuki had long since realized that she, too, was equally a slave to fate.
Therefore, she had never felt particularly sorry for the children whose fates were sacrificed. The foundation for suffering from guilt was simply not there in the first place.
That is why she could not hold a grudge against Anna for killing her father.
But.
“…”
But she felt a special, indescribable emotion for Anna being born.
It was not anger or hatred, but a human interest she had never felt for anyone other than her father.
That day, Yuki waited for Anna’s login in the online game world.
Her latest mission had been the assassination of a powerful mafia figure in the Yekaterinburg underworld. Having dispatched the target with ease, Anna had just returned to the Domik in Irkutsk today.
『Hey Anya, welcome back. Looks like it was another brilliant job this time.』
As usual, Yuki spoke to Anna’s avatar, a warrior with a greatsword.
『I’m back, Yuki.』
Anna’s voice, now in her Detskaya in the facility, echoed from Yuki’s headset via the in-game voice chat.
There was a slight bewilderment in her voice. The reason was probably that Yuki’s avatar was different from usual.
『By the way, Anya, do you like cats?』
As if reading Anna’s thoughts, Yuki began.
The avatar Yuki had chosen was not a humanoid character, but a cat. A Russian Blue with a bluish-gray, velvety, glossy coat.
『…I’ve never thought about it.』
『Well, I suppose not. But Anya, cats are everywhere humans are. Whether you like them or not, you’ll encounter them when you encounter them, regardless of your own convenience. Just as fate is.』
The special emotion, or rather, the strength of her interest in Anna, unconsciously imbued Yuki’s words with a heat that was not an act.
『That’s why cats may be a mirror that reflects people. Whether you like them or dislike them, I think I can get to know you, the person, more deeply by the reason for it. It’s like a little thought game. Do you dislike this kind of thing, Anya?』
『No, it’s fine. But what’s with the sudden question?』
Yuki’s avatar, walking with its elegantly curved body, stopped and slowly raised its emerald-green eyes to look at Anna.
『My late father had a cat all his life. A Russian Blue like this one. I was allergic to cats, so it was a real nuisance. Something happened recently that made me remember that.』
And then, Yuki gently planted a small bomb.
She had no grudge against Anna, but it was a mischievous whim mixed with a sadistic desire for an interesting reaction.
『He was a person who never showed his heart to anyone, but maybe he opened up only to his cat. But that’s an eternal mystery now. Not after he was taken care of by an assassin.』
Would Anna realize that she had killed Yuki’s father? And would she feel a sense of guilt towards Yuki and feel a pang in her heart?
The thought of it made a dark excitement stir in her lower abdomen.
(No, that could never happen.)
But Yuki quickly dismissed her own fantasy. Anna Grazkaya was the highest quality killer machine that she herself had poured her heart and soul into raising.
Eventually, after a long thought, Anna opened her mouth.
『I hate cats.』
And after saying that, she continued.
『Because they are too free.』
