Shu didn't respond to Otto's words, just as Otto hadn't responded to his questions.
But in reality, both had already given their answers in their own ways.
From today on, you are no longer the wings that carry us in flight, but the nest that can support our countless takeoffs.
You just need to be here, and we are the fledglings who need to fly into the sky.
And Shu had also given his answer.
"Actually, I think..."
"No 'thinking'," Otto's eye twitched, and he deliberately emphasized his tone. This was the first time in his life he had shown such pure malice.
However, the effect was remarkable. Shu trembled all over, immediately fell silent, and nodded hastily, afraid that Otto wouldn't realize he had agreed.
"Tsk," Otto didn't hesitate to show his disdain for Shu's "submission."
Why don't you dare to stand up and fight me? Where's that resentment you had when you punched me? Let it out, argue with me.
Otto felt that he was really at his wit's end. You say Shu is soft-hearted, but the Herrscher consciousnesses in those Divine Key cores scream louder than anyone else. But you say he's tough... when was the last time Shu made a tough demand?
Even when he was dismissed from his post, he had held it in and wanted to resist through normal means, instead of just punching him in the face.
Hmm... we usually call this a double standard.
But this also showed that Shu was quite receptive to his proposal. Otherwise, he wouldn't have nodded in agreement so quickly with just one deliberate sentence.
Forget it, as long as he agreed.
Otto sighed and waved his hand at Shu. "That's fine. You can start your post from today... you don't need me to supervise you eating and sleeping, right?"
Sleeping was hard to say, but eating...
The thought of the "three meals a day, two bowls per meal" he had promised Kiana made Shu feel that it was so troublesome.
He had never lived such a regular life in his life. He didn't expect to have to go back to the days where his life was supervised, did he?
Good news: this time his room had a door.
Bad news: Kiana used the window.
According to Otto, the farthest place Kiana and the others would go was Sapphire City, which was a day trip by train. And Shu was skeptical about whether Kiana would really take on missions and go out.
In other words, at every mealtime, a white-haired Tuna would appear in his kitchen on time to steal food or get a free meal. If she found that he hadn't cooked, this white-haired Tuna would probably tie him up and take him next door to eat Mei's cooking.
Sigh... it felt like his future life was already a predictable two-point line. He didn't expect that even after hiding in another world, he still couldn't escape this "pre-quality life"?
But this was probably the norm of life, right? How could there be so many adventures and uncertainties in a normal person's life?
Shu finally took a sip of the coffee Otto had given him. The strange bitterness and watery taste directly shattered his imagined coffee flavor, which was full of richness and milky fragrance.
As expected, it was better not to touch this kind of thing from the beginning, because in most cases, reality would shatter imagination.
Shu made a bitter face, took another sip, and then his face completely turned into a bitter gourd.
He held the cup of coffee and wearily got up from the chair to go back to his residence.
He had said everything he wanted to say. The singularity had also been "placed" on Otto's desk.
Otto had said that Future City had cultivated the Imaginary Tree. His glasses also seemed to be some kind of special tool for "singularities," so he should have a way to deal with this thing.
"Oh, and one more thing."
But as Shu was opening the door to Otto's office, Otto suddenly spoke up and stopped him.
Shu looked back in confusion and met Otto's eyes.
After a moment of silence, Otto gave him his trademark smile. The moment he saw this smile, Shu knew that Otto was about to start speaking in riddles again.
"I have to correct one of your views," as expected, Otto began to be coy in a way he had probably learned from Shakespeare.
"Ana has never died. She has always been alive. This is the real direction of this world.
"And the world where you think Ana died... I'm afraid you dreamed of a parallel universe that made a different choice at some node, right?"
A parallel universe... huh?
Shu didn't understand Otto's meaning at first. But on the way back, he kept thinking about the meaning of his words.
According to his feeling, Otto's meaning was... Ana had never died in this timeline?
No, it shouldn't be called a timeline.
On this branch of the Imaginary Tree, Ana had never died. And whether Ana had died or not was indeed a branching point. The world had taken two different paths at that node.
And this world line should have been a world that continued to evolve over time on the option of "Ana has died." But after that ceremony, the world had been quietly replaced by another world line of "Ana is alive."
So the essence of that resurrection was to eliminate the possibility of [Ana has died], to modify the law of causality from the Imaginary level, and to forcibly make the past Ana "live" to the present.
At least from an objective point of view, the past Ana was the real Ana, and the Ana who had lived from that time to the present could only be the real Ana.
After all, even the possibility of a parallel world's existence had disappeared along with the elimination of that possibility.
Unless someone insisted on arguing about "the me of this second is not the me of the previous second"... hiss, this is the Honkai world.
Sigh... thinking about philosophy only gives people a headache. The value of Otto's words was still rising.
It was best not to have any communication on this kind of issue where everyone had their own final interpretation.
Shu sighed and raised his hand to push open the door.
"Shu!" The white-haired Tuna behind the door came at him with a surprise attack, tears and snot streaming down her face as she threw herself at him and hugged his leg.
"I was wrong! I was really wrong! I self-criticize, I repent, I sincerely feel ashamed of what I have done..." Kiana's little mouth began to spit out words fluently.
Shu leaned back, his expression twisted. "Who helped you write these lines?"
"Eh? Is it that obvious?" Kiana looked up abruptly, her azure eyes trembling. Shu could see the traces of eye drops at a glance.
Shu's gaze silently moved down to the dense cheat sheet in Kiana's hand.
You should at least memorize it... forget it, expecting Kiana to memorize something is a bit too harsh...
"Silly Kiana," Bronya said with a straight face, walking out of the house next door, followed by a regretful-looking Bianka.
Obviously, these two had also been planning this for a long time.
"An apology should be like Bronya's," Bronya said, taking out an envelope with a HOMU sticker on it. "And Bronya wrote this herself."
"Blegh, you little shorty, you don't understand what can move Shu at all!" Kiana made a face at Bronya, still hugging Shu's leg and not letting go.
Seeing the two people who were probably here to apologize to him childishly arguing, Shu took a deep breath, feeling that he could see the end of his future days at a glance.
...
This is for the best.
(End of Volume IX: The Day the Fledglings Fly)