Chapter 502: The Meeting, Part 5

It was almost as though someone had changed the results of a competition after everyone had already decided who the winner was supposed to be. Unfortunately for them, the saint’s power wasn’t interested in their expectations, and it certainly wasn’t going to reconsider its decision just because a few dozen people had difficulty accepting it.

Still, their personal expectations didn’t change the reality of the situation.

The saint’s power wasn’t something that could simply be inherited through bloodline, nor was it something that could be awarded to whoever had worked the hardest or demonstrated the greatest talent. Instead, the power chose its bearer on its own, regardless of what anyone else wanted or believed should happen.

That was the frustrating part of the entire situation.

People could spend years preparing themselves for the position, but all that effort meant nothing if the saint’s power ultimately chose someone else. There was no ceremony they could alter, no decision they could overturn, and no amount of arguing that would make the power recognize a different person. The people gathered in the hall could complain until their throats became sore, but their opinions weren’t going to change anything.

Even if they wanted to protest, there wasn’t much they could do about it.

The decision had already been made, and the person chosen was standing right there among them.

Hiyori herself was just as speechless as everyone else, perhaps even more so because she was the person at the center of all this confusion. She had never seriously expected to become the saint, and the announcement had caught her completely off guard. She hadn’t prepared herself for such a responsibility, nor had she imagined that she would suddenly become the person everyone had expected her sister to be.

However, as surprising as the announcement was, her attention soon shifted toward someone else.

Haruna.

More than anything, Hiyori was worried about her older sister’s reaction.

Haruna had been preparing herself for this moment since she was young. She had spent years working toward becoming the perfect successor to the Ichinose Family and the Demon Hunter Association, devoting herself to her training and doing everything she could to prove that she was worthy of inheriting the saint’s power.

Becoming the saint wasn’t merely another achievement she could add to her list of accomplishments, either. It was the culmination of everything she had worked toward, the future she had envisioned for herself, and the role she had believed she was destined to fulfill.

After all, becoming the saint practically guaranteed that she would eventually become the head of the Association as well.

For someone like Haruna, who had spent so much of her life preparing for that future, the announcement was nothing short of devastating.

In a single moment, the future she had worked so hard to secure had been taken away from her, leaving her with nothing but the painful realization that she had never been guaranteed the outcome she wanted.

Everything she had prepared for, everything she had sacrificed, and everything she had believed would eventually be hers suddenly seemed meaningless. The position she had spent years pursuing had gone to someone she had always regarded as her younger sister, someone she had never expected to surpass her in this particular regard.

"G-Grandmother..."

Haruna slowly stood up from her seat, her voice trembling as she looked toward the Former Head. She seemed to be struggling to find the right words, and even then, she couldn’t completely hide the disbelief written across her face.

"Y-You’re joking, right? I mean, why... why isn’t it me?"

Her question sounded less like a demand for an explanation and more like a desperate attempt to find some way out of the situation. She was still searching for a reason to believe that the announcement had been a mistake, something that would allow her to wake up from this nightmare and return to the future she had spent her entire life preparing for.

Unfortunately, the answer she received was far from what she wanted to hear.

"The saint’s power didn’t choose you, Haruna," the Former Head replied calmly. "That is all there is to it."

The simplicity of the answer made it even more painful.

Haruna stared at her grandmother as though she hadn’t fully understood what she had just been told. Her lips trembled, and for a moment, she seemed incapable of responding. She had expected an explanation, perhaps even a correction, but instead, she had been given a statement that left absolutely no room for argument.

"Y-You’re kidding..."

She shook her head slightly, still unable to accept what was happening.

"I mean, how can you be so certain that the saint’s power didn’t choose me and chose Hiyori instead? I don’t understand how this could happen. There isn’t anything she can do better than me, is there? I’m better than her at practically everything, so why would the power choose her instead of me? This doesn’t make any sense at all!"

Her voice grew louder as she continued speaking, and the frustration she had been trying to contain finally began to spill out. She wasn’t simply asking why she hadn’t been chosen. Deep down, she was struggling to understand how the entire world she had built around herself could suddenly fall apart when she had done everything she believed was necessary to secure her place.

From her perspective, she was the better candidate.

She had more experience, greater talent, and a longer history of preparing for the responsibilities that came with the position. She had spent years proving herself to the people around her, and she had every reason to believe that all her efforts would eventually lead to the outcome she wanted.

Hiyori, meanwhile, had never been the person everyone expected to inherit the position.

So why had the power chosen her?

Why had all those years of preparation failed to give Haruna the future she had worked so hard to obtain?

The more she thought about it, the less sense the situation seemed to make, and she couldn’t find a single explanation that would make the result any easier to accept.

"You’re making a mistake, Haruna, if you believe that being more talented than Hiyori or working harder than she does means you can simply acquire the saint’s power whenever you want," the Former Head said.

Her voice remained steady, but there was a certain authority behind her words that immediately silenced several people in the hall. Even those who had been whispering among themselves seemed reluctant to interrupt her, knowing that she wasn’t someone who needed to raise her voice to make people listen.

Strangely enough, she didn’t sound like someone suffering from Alzheimer’s at all. Instead, she sounded exactly like the woman she had been decades ago, when her authority over the Association had been unquestionable and even the most stubborn people had thought twice before challenging her.

There was something intimidating about the way she spoke. Her voice carried the kind of commanding presence that made people feel as though they were being swallowed by her words, leaving them struggling to find anything meaningful to say in response. It was the sort of authority that reminded everyone why she had once been the person responsible for leading the entire Association.

"I understand that this feels unfair to you," she continued, directing her attention toward her granddaughter. "You’ve worked hard for years, and you’ve done everything you believed was necessary to become the next saint. However, the saint’s power isn’t something you can claim simply because you’ve worked harder than someone else. You know that better than anyone, don’t you?"

Haruna fell silent.

Of all the people present, she was probably the one who understood that statement best, which only made the situation more painful for her.

After all, she had been the one who repeatedly told Hiyori that hard work didn’t always guarantee success.

Hiyori was a hardworking girl who constantly pushed herself to improve, while Haruna was naturally talented enough to accomplish things that would take other people considerably more effort. Even when she barely seemed to struggle, Haruna could still outperform her younger sister, and that difference had always been painfully obvious to both of them.

It was unfair to Hiyori, who had to work so much harder just to keep up with her sister.

Haruna had understood that, of course, but she had always treated it as an unavoidable reality of life. She had never believed that being more talented was something she needed to apologize for, nor had she thought that her natural abilities made her any less deserving of the things she worked toward.

In fact, she had often reminded Hiyori of that very lesson whenever her younger sister became frustrated with their differences. She had explained that working hard didn’t mean someone was automatically entitled to win, and she had expected Hiyori to accept that reality rather than spend her time complaining about things she couldn’t change.

Now, however, Haruna was the one being forced to confront the same truth.

She had worked hard, prepared herself, and done everything she could to become the saint, yet the power had chosen someone else regardless of her efforts.

For once, she was standing on the other side of the very argument she had used to comfort, or perhaps discourage, her younger sister.

Haruna could understand her grandmother’s reasoning.

She knew that the saint’s power had its own criteria, and she knew that neither talent nor hard work could force it to choose someone it had already rejected. She had understood that principle for years, and she had repeated it often enough that she couldn’t honestly claim it was something she had never considered.

Understanding the truth, however, didn’t mean she could accept it.

How could she possibly accept something that had just destroyed the future she had spent her entire life building?

How could she simply let go of everything she had wanted when the person who had received it instead was her own younger sister?

And, perhaps most painfully of all, how was she supposed to look at Hiyori now, knowing that the very thing she had worked so hard to obtain had been given to the one person she had always believed she could surpass?

Haruna lowered her head slightly, struggling to contain the emotions building inside her as the reality of the announcement finally began to sink in. The expectations she had carried for so many years had collapsed in front of her, and she had no idea how she was supposed to pick up the pieces.

For the first time in her life, she had encountered something that her talent, hard work, and determination couldn’t help her overcome.

And she had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do next.