"Let go! You're going to fall!!"
Kiana screamed in despair, tears blurring her vision.
She could feel Su Yu's arm trembling violently, could see his hand—originally fair—now congested and red from excessive exertion.
She could even imagine the sharp concrete edge biting little by little into his flesh.
He was just an ordinary person.
He had no Honkai resistance, no damn monstrous strength of the Kaslana family, and certainly no Valkyrie armor.
Carrying a burden like her who wanted to die, the laws of physics would ruthlessly drag him into hell along with her.
"Shut—up!"
Su Yu gritted his teeth, squeezing the two words out through the gaps.
His face was flushed crimson from the congestion, the veins on his temples throbbing wildly.
But that hand, the hand that would usually whine for half a day just from a cramp while gaming...
At this moment, it was like a welded iron clamp. Not only did it not loosen, it tightened inward with even more force, his fingernails nearly sinking into Kiana's flesh.
"Can't you understand human speech, you idiot? Then we'll just fall together and turn into meat paste!"
He roared viciously, his voice hoarse as if a bellows was leaking air, yet carrying a reckless madness that disregarded everything.
"Anyway, even if we fall, I'll be the one acting as the cushion!"
Kiana's struggling abruptly froze.
She looked at the man above, his features twisted, disregarding even his own life to save her. The line of defense built on self-loathing in her heart finally collapsed with a crash.
Why?
Why go to such lengths for a monster?
"I don't have the right to be happy at all..."
She cried out, her voice shattered by the howling wind.
"I am a star of disaster, a Herrscher who could explode at any moment! I am the murderer who killed Teacher Himeko!"
"Without me, you wouldn't have to stare at that broken countdown every day! You wouldn't have to write those so-called scripts for someone like me!"
"You could go back to that stable life of just muddling along and waiting to die!"
"You wouldn't have to worry if an idiot like me would disappear, wouldn't have to constantly consider a burden... like... me..."
"Why just won't you understand!!"
"Because..."
Su Yu sucked in a sharp breath of turbid air, a sharp pain shooting through his lungs as he forcefully interrupted her roaring.
He stared dead at Kiana's eyes, which were drowned in tears—those heterochromatic pupils filled with despair.
"Because you said the pizza was delicious."
Kiana froze.
In this moment where life and death hung by a thread, this moment where both of them had one foot in the grave, he actually brought up... pizza?
"Wh... What?"
"Because you said the pizza in this world has a lot of cheese... Because last time you ate the Family Bucket... you absolutely refused to waste that leftover Orleans chicken wing..."
Su Yu's voice was trembling, every word accompanied by violent panting.
"Because you said the peaceful life in this world is quite nice. Because you said seeing this world's Mei happy... made you very glad."
"Because in the fitting room, even when you were about to disappear, you still foolishly remembered to remind me to close my eyes..."
Su Yu struggled to lift his head, glancing at the sky full of exploding, gorgeous fireworks above, the rims of his eyes frighteningly red.
"Because... I once watched you all bleed across a screen, watched you burn yourselves to ash for this crappy world, watched you wandering alone in the ruins..."
"And I, apart from typing a few words of heartache on a keyboard, apart from sending blades to the devs, couldn't do anything..."
Those feelings of powerlessness that once belonged to a player, that pain of being 'knifed' so hard he couldn't sleep late at night while pushing the story, those regrets of only being able to watch helplessly as the girls walked down divergent paths.
In this moment, it all transformed into adrenaline, igniting all the potential within this mortal body.
"But this time..."
Su Yu's gaze became incredibly fierce—the ferocity of resisting fate.
"This time, you are right in front of me. You are right in my hand."
"If I let you fall even now... then I don't deserve to ever clear another game in my life!"
"Fuck fate! Fuck sacrifice! I don't buy that crap!"
"I won't let go... I absolutely will not let go!!"
He let out a roar that didn't sound human, using the very last bit of strength in his entire body. His waist muscles contracted and exerted force violently, like a wild beast driven into a desperate corner.
"Get—up here!!!"
Accompanied by this hoarse, exhausted roar, Su Yu fell backward.
Massive inertia carried Kiana's body into the air, tracing an arc of life and death.
Bang!
Their bodies slammed heavily onto the rough concrete floor of the rooftop.
Kiana landed directly on top of Su Yu. Their chests were pressed tightly together; in that moment, there was only the sound of each other's heartbeats, violent enough to explode.
The dizziness of surviving a disaster struck, bringing with it a wave of nausea from churning guts.
Su Yu swallowed air in great gulps, his throat making sounds like a bellows being pulled.
He felt his right arm was probably dislocated, his lungs felt like they had exploded, and his knees were so painful they had lost sensation.
But he was still laughing.
While gasping like a dying fish, he looked at the spinning night sky above, laughing until snot and tears flowed out together, looking incredibly wretched.
"Se... See..."
He spoke intermittently, lifting that still-trembling hand.
He pressed it with incomparable firmness onto the back of Kiana's head, forcing that still-dazed head tightly into his embrace.
"Caught you. SSR. Hit pity... not a loss."
"Why! Why didn't you let me die! Why!"
The person in his arms did not cry tears of gratitude. Instead, she struggled like she had gone mad, crying and shouting hoarsely, like a wild cat that had been hurt and was desperately trying to bite someone.
She didn't understand. If she just died, the Bug would be fixed, everyone would be safe. Why did this idiot have to risk his life to pick her, this ticking time bomb, back up?
Kiana's crying swirled in the empty night wind of the rooftop, like an injured bird flapping its wings in vain.
Her fist pounded on Su Yu's chest, but the force was soft, carrying the floatiness of complete exhaustion.
Su Yu didn't move.
He just lay on his back. His lungs were still burning with pain, and his right arm felt like it was filled with lead from shoulder to fingertips, numb and heavy.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something more, but his throat was so dry he couldn't make a decent sound.
Just then, he felt the body lying on him stiffen.
A very subtle change.
The sobbing stopped. The fist pounding his chest also loosened, the five fingers slowly curling inward, fingertips pressing against his clothes.
Su Yu lowered his gaze.
Kiana was still lying on him, her face buried in the side of his neck, white hair scattered messily.
But her shoulders were no longer trembling. The rhythm of her breathing had changed—it had become slow and steady.
Then, the hand that had been pressing against his chest lifted up.
The hand paused for an instant in the air, as if adapting to the control of this body.
Then, without hesitation, it clamped onto Su Yu's throat.
The force wasn't heavy at first, just loosely circling it.
But the temperature of the fingertips was very low, so cold it gave Su Yu goosebumps.
Su Yu's gaze crashed right into a pair of vertical pupils that looked like molten gold.
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