The supermarket shopping bags were placed on the carpet, making rustling sounds. Kiana sat cross-legged there, taking items out one by one, muttering to herself.
"Instant noodles, check, essential... frozen dumplings, for dinner... I picked this chocolate, don't touch..."
Su Yu leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching her, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
This girl, who used to be as wary as a frightened stray cat, was now treating this pile of ordinary supermarket loot with an almost pious attitude. Her movements were brisk yet solemn, as if counting precious treasures.
"I'm going to the bathroom," he said casually, turning to walk away.
"Mhm."
Kiana responded without lifting her head, holding a bag of potato chips and scrutinizing the calorie label.
Su Yu closed the bathroom door and stood before the sink, looking at his face in the mirror, which couldn't hide his smugness.
Finally, the moment to verify the miracle had arrived—he deliberately stayed in this spot for a while, waiting for that familiar, annoying red warning box to pop up.
One minute passed.
Nothing happened.
No glaring red text, no noisy countdown, no damn "Distance Warning."
He silently gave a thumbs-up to the unscrupulous System in his heart, then quickly retracted that goodwill—after all, this guy did too many wicked things usually; doing one human thing occasionally couldn't cancel out those atrocities.
Sounds of rummaging came from the living room, followed by a suspicious silence.
Then—
"Su Yu!!!"
Kiana's voice carried a dangerous aura that made one's hair stand on end, like muffled thunder rolling across the horizon before a storm.
Su Yu opened the door and peeked out, seeing Kiana standing beside the pile of shopping bags, holding a bottle of neon-green beverage.
Bitter melon juice.
Crap.
He had meant to hide it secretly but forgot it in the bag.
"What is this?" Kiana's voice was suppressed very low, dangerous light flickering in her heterochromatic eyes. "You bought this?"
"Uh, that..."
"This kind of anti-humanity stuff!" She raised the bottle higher, as if displaying criminal evidence. "Do you know how awful this tastes? Auntie drinks this every day; how could anyone like this kind of thing! Why did you buy this? Are you trying to poison me?"
"You're overthinking it, it's not for you to drink."
"Then what do you mean by putting it in a bag I would look through? You know I don't like this stuff!"
Her logic was so unique it was irrefutable.
Su Yu opened his mouth, saw those narrowed eyes, and suddenly realized that reasoning was useless.
So he made the most instinctual choice for a man in this moment: Run.
"Stop!"
The hurried sound of slippers on the floor came from behind.
Su Yu circled the coffee table, rushing towards the bedroom, but this small rental apartment of less than fifty square meters really had no room to maneuver. He had just run to the bedside when he had to turn, almost tripping over the cushions piled messily on the floor.
"You, stand still!"
Kiana shouted behind him, the anger in her voice starting to be mixed with something else—something like suppressed laughter.
Su Yu ran half a circle around the small dining table, looked back, and found the corners of her mouth had already curled up slightly.
"Run for a lifetime if you can!"
"I can't run for a lifetime, but I can run until you can't run anymore—"
Before he finished speaking, his heel hit the edge of the sofa.
The moment he fell backward, the cheap ceiling light flashed through his vision.
Then came a muffled thud, his back smashing into the sofa cushions, followed immediately by a warm weight pressing down.
Kiana knelt over him, hands pinning his shoulders, white messy hair falling down, casting fragmented shadows on her cheeks.
Both were panting.
Her nose tip was only about ten centimeters from his; those heterochromatic eyes reflected his somewhat disheveled appearance.
"Caught you."
She announced proudly, her voice trembling slightly from panting.
The rise and fall of her chest was obvious; the oversized T-shirt she had swiped from Su Yu's closet swayed slightly with her breathing.
Su Yu lay on the sofa, feeling the strength of the hands on his shoulders, looking at the face before him, slightly flushed from running.
This distance, this posture, if placed in another context...
Forget it, can't think too much.
"Okay, okay, you caught me," he raised his hands in surrender. "I can explain the bitter melon juice—"
"I won't listen!"
"—But I have news to tell you."
Kiana frowned. "Don't try to change the subject."
"It's not changing the subject," Su Yu's expression became serious. "Did you feel... anything wrong just now?"
She was stunned for a moment, seeming to just come back to her senses.
The hands pinning his shoulders relaxed slightly, her gaze becoming a bit drifting.
"Just now when you went to the toilet..." Her voice gradually lowered. "The countdown box didn't appear."
"Correct."
"I thought the thirty minutes of absolute freedom hadn't been used up yet... but that's not right, today's was used up long ago..."
"Correct."
Kiana straightened up, straddling his waist, but she completely disregarded the impropriety of this posture.
An incredulous light gradually surfaced in those heterochromatic eyes.
"You mean...?"
"Guess." Su Yu deliberately kept her in suspense.
"Speak clearly!" She grabbed his collar and pulled him up. "What do you mean? What exactly does it mean?"
"When you got your ID card today, the System sent me a reward."
Su Yu looked into her eyes, speaking word by word.
"From now on, in this home, which is the address written on your ID card, you no longer need to stay within one meter of me."
The living room suddenly fell quiet.
Kiana straddled him, hands still gripping his collar, her whole person seeming to have pressed the pause button.
"...Say it again."
Her voice was a bit dry.
"In this home, you can move freely."
"Whether I'm here or not, no matter which room I'm in, as long as you stay within the range of Room 302, you won't disappear."
Su Yu reached out, gently prying open the hand crumpling his collar.
"Do you understand?"
Kiana's throat moved.
She slowly released her other hand, flipping off him to kneel on the carpet beside the sofa.
Then she looked up at him again, something rapidly accumulating in those eyes—like clouds compressed to the limit before a storm.
"I can..."
Her voice was trembling.
"I can stay in the living room alone?"
"Yes."
"I can go to the kitchen to get things alone?"
"Yes."
"I can... get up at night to use the toilet without calling you?"
"Yes."
"I can take a shower alone without... without you guarding outside the door?"
"Yes. And I don't have to recite 'Chu Shi Biao' anymore. The Prime Minister can finally rest."
The final dam collapsed at this moment.
Kiana suddenly stood up, raising her arms high above her head, letting out a scream that could almost shatter the window glass.
Not fear, not sadness.
It was an emotion approximating ecstasy.
"I'm free—ahhhhhhh!!!"
She started spinning in the living room, her bare feet stepping on the carpet, on the wooden floor, her toes even kicking over the bottle of bitter melon juice forgotten on the ground.
She didn't care at all.
"No need to sleep against the wall anymore! No need to worry about turning into a ghost when going to the toilet! No need to—no need to—"
Halfway through, her voice suddenly choked.
She stopped, standing by the window with her back to Su Yu, her shoulders beginning to tremble slightly.
The cool night breeze poured into the room.
"I have a home..."
The voice was so low it was almost inaudible.
"I really have a home..."
Su Yu sat up from the sofa, looking at that back, suddenly not knowing what to say.
In the corner of the living room, the heterochromatic-eyed kitten named Chongchong poked its head out of the cat nest, tilted its head to look at this human who was inexplicably cheering and then inexplicably silent, then yawned and shrank back to continue sleeping.
Kiana turned around, two tear tracks on her face, but the corners of her mouth were grinned to the maximum arc.
It was a strange, contradictory expression.
Like laughing yet like crying, like extreme happiness but carrying too, too many things that could finally be unloaded.
"Thank you."
She sniffled, wiping her tears messily with the back of her hand. Her voice still carried a crying tone, but she had started to smile like a child who got candy.
"Although I might have said this sentence many times, but—thank you, Su Yu."
Saying this, she rushed over in two steps, hugging him before he could stand up from the sofa.
This hug had no technique to speak of.
Stiff, forceful, even a bit painful.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck, arms tightening, as if to lock something in her embrace forever.
Su Yu's hands hovered in mid-air, hesitated for a moment, and finally landed gently on her back.
"Alright, alright," his voice was somewhat hoarse. "You're crying so much my clothes are wet."
"I'm not crying!"
A retort with a nasal tone came from his shoulder, followed by the sound of sniffing, loud enough to be impossible to ignore.
"Then what is this?"
"This is... this is from happiness!"
Su Yu couldn't help but laugh, patting her back gently twice.
"I know, I know, happiness."
But he quickly changed the subject, pointing to the forgotten bottle of bitter melon juice on the table.
"But this bottle of drink still can't be wasted; I spent five yuan on it."
"Su—Yu—!!!"
The heartwarming atmosphere was instantly broken.
Kiana bristled again, grabbing a cushion and smashing it over.
"You atmosphere-destroying idiot! Go die!!!"
The living room was filled with laughter and horseplay again.
Chongchong was startled, quickly jumping onto the shoe cabinet, staring wide-eyed at these two fighting creatures.
The heterochromatic eyes were filled with big confusion, as if asking "What means?"
It was late at night.
Su Yu lay on that long-lost 1.5-meter single bed, every bone in his body issuing a comfortable sigh.
This feeling... he hadn't experienced it for too long.
He had almost forgotten what it was like to sleep alone.
Su Yu stretched his limbs, assuming a 'big character' pose, his toes even deliberately reaching for the four corners of the bed.
Freedom.
This was the taste of freedom.
The bedroom curtains weren't drawn tight; a sliver of moonlight slipped in through the gap. From Himeko's room next door came the faint sound of a TV; that woman was probably drinking while watching some late-night variety show again.
Further away, he could hear the unique white noise of the city night: traffic, the hum of AC units, and a dog barking somewhere.
These sounds would have felt noisy before, but right now, they sounded with a strange sense of security.
He turned on his side, adjusting the pillow.
Then he smelled that scent.
A faint aroma mixing shampoo and a girl's body warmth.
Although Kiana had helped change the sheets and covers this afternoon, that scent belonging to her still stubbornly remained deep in the pillow, like some invisible imprint.
Su Yu paused, then smiled helplessly.
The girl had slept in his bed for so many days; it was impossible to remove the traces completely.
However, he didn't have any lewd thoughts.
That scent just reminded him of the bits and pieces of this period.
From picking up a wary white-haired stray cat in the rainy stairwell, to the stress reaction in the convenience store, the accident in the live stream, the thrill on the rooftop, the sparring at the police station, and finally the silly girl crying tears of joy holding her ID card this afternoon.
She had taken a big step in this world.
A truly big step.
No longer a ghost, no longer a wanted criminal, no longer a wandering soul with no place to stay.
She had a name, a residence, a home she could return to righteously.
And in this home, she could even stop sticking to him like a frightened kitten.
Thinking of this, Su Yu's mouth corners rose unconsciously.
He closed his eyes, sliding into the edge of sleep with a certain sense of satisfaction.
In the living room, Kiana, lying on the sofa, didn't fall asleep that quickly.
The sofa cushions were much softer than the bed, but they lacked that solid support.
She lay on her side, hugging the kitten named Chongchong, fingers stroking its soft fur intermittently.
Moonlight spilled in through the gap in the floor-to-ceiling windows, plating a layer of silvery frost on her short white hair.
"—You really are becoming more and more hopeless."
That voice rang out again.
Consistently cold, arrogant, carrying a condescending tone of mockery.
"Shamelessly sticking to that man, even sleeping next to him, and now that you're finally separated, you're here hugging a cat as a placebo."
"Truly pathetic, Kiana Kaslana—or should I call you K-423?"
Herrscher of the Void.
The other consciousness parasitic in her body, who once completely occupied her body and used her hands to create endless destruction and death.
She was the fear deep in Kiana's heart, the shadow she tried hard to suppress but could never truly shake off.
In the past, whenever this voice sounded, Kiana would fall into deep self-loathing.
She would remember those who died because of her, remember Teacher Himeko's final sacrifice, remember that she was just a created replica, a container holding a monster.
But tonight, she wasn't drowned by these thoughts as usual.
"Are you done?"
Kiana's voice was surprisingly calm.
"...What?"
The Herrscher of the Void clearly didn't expect this reaction.
In her expectation, Kiana should start self-doubting, should fall into painful struggle, should desperately try to grab something like a drowning person.
"I asked if you are done," Kiana repeated. "If you are done, I want to ask you a question."
"...What are you pretending for?"
"Do you like bitter melon juice?"
Silence.
Three seconds of long silence.
Then a confused rhetorical question: "What kind of question is that?"
"Just the literal meaning."
Kiana sat up from the sofa, put the curled-up Chongchong aside, those heterochromatic eyes flickering with a certain sly light under the moonlight.
"You are another consciousness in my body, right? Since we share the same body, many senses should be shared too."
The Herrscher of the Void seemed to realize something, her voice becoming wary:
"What do you want to do?"
"Verify my guess."
Kiana stood up, stepping barefoot on the slightly cool floor, walking lightly towards the kitchen.
Her movements were light, trying not to make too much noise.
That was the instinctual caution before some prank.
"Hey, you stand still—"
She ignored that voice.
The refrigerator door was pulled open, cold air rushing to her face, provoking a slight shiver.
The white fridge light illuminated a corner of the kitchen brightly; those ingredients bought this afternoon were arranged neatly on the shelves. Kiana's gaze swept across quickly, soon locking onto the target—
That bottle of neon-green bitter melon juice.
"I warn you—"
The Herrscher of the Void's voice became urgent, that arrogant tone already starting to crack.
"Don't—"
Kiana unscrewed the cap.
"You dare—"
She aimed the bottle mouth at her own lips.
Then, she poured it into her mouth without hesitation.
The moment the cold liquid rushed into her mouth, an indescribable bitter taste exploded.
It wasn't ordinary bitterness; it was the kind of extreme bitterness that drilled from the root of the tongue straight into the brain marrow, making one's whole face wrinkle into a ball.
Kiana's eyebrows almost knotted together, but she forced it down, then poured a second mouthful.
"Ahhhhhhhh—!!"
A miserable howl came from the depths of her mind.
That was absolutely not a voice a majestic Herrscher should make.
It was a hysterical, armor-discarding scream, like a cat whose tail was stepped on, or a child who ate wasabi.
"Stop!! No, stop your mouth!!"
The Herrscher of the Void's voice had completely lost its previous calmness, turning into a near-collapsing plea.
"So bitter! So bitter!! You lunatic!! It's bitter to death!!"
Kiana put down the bottle, wiping the remaining green liquid from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
Her tongue was numb, taste buds suffering unprecedented torture.
But the corners of her mouth hooked up in a satisfying arc.
"What's wrong? The majestic Herrscher of the Void can't even stand a little bitter melon juice?"
"You—you are burning jade and stone together! Aren't you suffering just the same!!"
"I'm used to it."
Kiana shrugged. Although her expression was slightly distorted by the bitterness, the smile in her eyes was real.
"And even if it's bitter, seeing you like this makes it worth it."
"You—"
"You're nothing special either."
She put the bitter melon juice back in the fridge and gently closed the door.
The cold air dissipated, darkness shrouding the kitchen again.
"Goodnight, little brat who can't even stand bitter melon juice."
A flustered roar came from the depths of her mind, but that voice was much weaker, as if the bitterness had knocked out most of its power.
Kiana could even feel that consciousness angrily curling into a ball, like a wronged small animal hiding in a corner to lick its wounds.
So that was it.
The existence that had frightened her for so long was just like this.
She would fear bitterness, would make ugly screams, would roar in exasperation after being counterattacked.
Not some unreachable god; in this world, she was just a chuunibyou with a bad temper.
Kiana walked lightly back to the living room and lay back on the sofa.
Chongchong had come over again, rubbing its furry head against the back of her hand.
She reached out and gathered the kitten into her arms.
Moonlight still spilled in through the curtain gap.
From the bedroom direction came the occasional sound of Su Yu turning over.
In this rental apartment of less than fifty square meters, lived a kind idiot, a chubby kitten, and a girl who finally started learning to fight back.
"Goodnight, Su Yu."
She whispered to the ceiling.
Then she closed her eyes, sinking into a calm sleep without nightmares.
This night, she slept very soundly.
Sleeping until dawn.
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