The bedroom door opened.
The little ahoge poked out first.
Then a pair of heterochromatic eyes, not yet fully in focus. The blue one was squinting; the gold one was half-open.
Her whole face wore the dazed look of someone whose soul hadn't quite finished downloading back into their body.
Kiana stood in the doorway barefoot, her feet flat against the floor.
Her nose twitched.
Twitched again.
"...What's that smell? It smells amazing!"
Su Yu leaned half his body out of the kitchen.
"Noodles are ready. Go wash your face and brush your teeth first."
Kiana's gaze locked onto the two bowls on the table.
More precisely, it locked onto the one piled into a small mountain.
She padded over on bare feet, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
No washing her face. No brushing her teeth. She just picked up her chopsticks.
For anyone raised in Shenzhou, this was practically tap-dancing through a minefield.
Su Yu materialized behind her just in time, one hand pressing down on her chopsticks.
"Go wash your face and brush your teeth first."
Kiana's face scrunched up like a dumpling.
Three minutes later.
She came back and sat down.
There were still water droplets on her face, and a small smear of toothpaste foam she hadn't wiped off the corner of her mouth.
She snatched her chopsticks up twice as fast as before, like she was afraid the noodles had grown legs and were about to make a run for it.
She sucked in the first mouthful.
Kiana stopped.
Her chopsticks hovered over the bowl. The tail end of the noodle still dangled from her lips, and a single drop of broth slid down the strand and fell back into the bowl.
She chewed.
Chewed again.
Then she looked up at Su Yu, who had picked up his own bowl and was settling into the seat across from her.
"Did you get better at cooking?"
Su Yu pinched a clump of noodles with his chopsticks and blew on them.
"A qualified feeder naturally has to keep sharpening their skills."
He put the noodles in his mouth, chewed twice, his expression entirely composed.
"Otherwise I worry that one day the cat at home gets unhappy and flips the food bowl."
Kiana's chopsticks paused.
Her gaze drifted sideways — on the armrest of the sofa, the white cat Chongchong had curled himself into a fluffy ball, tail draped over his nose, dead asleep in a completely sprawled-out heap.
Cat.
Feeder.
Food bowl.
Kiana looked at Chongchong. Then she looked at Su Yu's perfectly straight face.
"You're talking about Chongchong, right."
Su Yu's eyes curved into a smile. He didn't answer, just lowered his head and kept eating.
The tips of Kiana's ears went red.
"Oh, get lost! Who's your cat?!"
She rapped her chopsticks against the rim of her bowl with a sharp clink.
But her mouth didn't stop — the very next second after she finished yelling, she sucked in another enormous mouthful of noodles.
Her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's.
Su Yu scooped at the noodles in his bowl.
On the other end of the Spiritual Link, Fenghuang watched all of this in quiet silence.
She could feel Su Yu's five senses — the rising heat of the braised noodles, the sharp clink of Kiana rapping her bowl, the faintly astringent, floury scent of noodles hitting the tongue.
And Su Yu's emotions in this moment.
While Kiana had her head buried in her bowl, her phone in her trouser pocket buzzed.
She ignored it.
It buzzed again.
Still ignored.
The noodles were more important.
On the third buzz, Su Yu tilted his chin toward her.
"Your phone."
Kiana, mouth stuffed with noodles, mumbled something vague that roughly meant "I know, stop nagging."
She chewed and swallowed as fast as she possibly could, then fished the phone out with one hand.
The screen was lit.
It was Carole's contact icon — a little pink cartoon figure in boxing gloves.
Kiana tapped it open and read while she ate.
As she read, her chewing slowed. Her eyes got wider and wider.
"Look at this."
Su Yu put down his chopsticks and took the phone for a look.
Carole's message was long, written with the particular brand of breathless enthusiasm unique to cheerful, slightly scatterbrained girls — the kind that wanted to cram eight exclamation marks into every sentence.
"Kiana sis!! The guy you helped catch yesterday is a wanted criminal with a huge bounty!! The warrant has a reward of 100,000!! Mom says since you acted as a Vigilante you can claim the full amount!"
Su Yu finished reading.
He handed the phone back to Kiana.
Kiana's expression was that of someone who had just laid eyes on the legendary Holy Grail.
"A hundred thousand."
She murmured it.
Softly, like she was reciting a sacred incantation.
"A HUNDRED THOUSAND!"
The second time, three times louder.
Her fingers slid back and forth across the screen twice, as if she was terrified she'd misread the number.
"This... this is my first pot of gold in this world, isn't it!" Kiana's voice was filled with excitement she couldn't hold back.
A moment later, another message from Carole came through.
Kiana read it. Her expression became a little complicated.
"Carole says—" She looked up at Su Yu. "Because of what I did, the chief of police has been... singing my praises. They want to contact the media, do an interview with me as the brave Vigilante who stepped in, and hold an award ceremony."
She paused, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice.
"She's asking if I want to show up at the ceremony."
Su Yu didn't answer immediately.
He put down his chopsticks and looked at Kiana.
Her face held excitement, and anticipation — but also a thread of tension and hesitation, barely visible.
He didn't answer the question she'd been asked. He asked a different one instead.
"Do you want to go?"
Kiana blinked.
She looked at Su Yu.
Normally, whenever something big like this came up, her first instinct was always to ask, "Su Yu, what do you think?"
But this time, Su Yu hadn't offered his opinion. He'd handed the choice back to her.
At that moment, Fenghuang's voice surfaced through the link.
"Su Yu."
"What happened last night — I've processed it, but Kiana's mental state is still very fragile."
"An award ceremony means large crowds, cameras, the stares of strangers. For her current condition, excessive external stimulation could trigger a stress response. It would be better if she didn't appear in that kind of setting."
Su Yu quietly acknowledged this in his mind.
But he didn't relay Fenghuang's words directly to Kiana.
Because he had already handed the choice to Kiana.
This was something he had been deliberately doing lately —
Moving from "deciding for her" at the beginning, to "letting her start making her own decisions" now.
From "you can't go" to "do you want to go?"
If life was a ship sailing the open sea, then the one who had to hold the wheel could only be the ship's owner herself.
At best, he could serve as first mate. Where this ship ultimately sailed — whether it would slam into an iceberg and pay homage to the Titanic, or something else entirely — depended on Kiana's own choices.
Kiana held her chopsticks and poked at the noodles in her bowl.
Three pokes.
Then she picked up her phone and typed out a reply at lightning speed, and sent it.
Su Yu glanced at her. "Made up your mind?"
"Made up my mind." Kiana smacked her phone down on the table. "Not going."
Su Yu raised an eyebrow slightly.
He'd expected Kiana to agonize over it longer, but she'd made the call faster than she ate her noodles.
"Why?"
Kiana held up one finger with complete and righteous confidence.
"Are you kidding?"
Her expression was so grave it almost made it seem like she was discussing matters of national importance.
"If I make the news as a Vigilante, every wanted criminal in Arc City is going to know there's a gorgeous girl Vigilante in Arc City!"
Su Yu's chopsticks stopped over his bowl. He listened to her boast about herself and found it a little funny.
Though she was, genuinely, gorgeous. That part was true.
Kiana held up a second finger.
"Criminals will recognize me, and they'll run the second they see me."
"I can't catch — wait, yes I can catch up! But what if they prepare in advance and set up some kind of counter-surveillance? It'll be way harder to catch them!"
A very subtle tremor had begun to appear at the corner of Su Yu's mouth.
Kiana held up a third finger.
"Can't catch wanted criminals, no bounty money. No bounty money—"
Her expression grew even graver.
"When is the number in my bank account ever going to catch up to the money you fronted for me?"
Su Yu looked at her.
He looked at this white-haired girl sitting in front of him, face radiating "I'm extremely smart," every inch the picture of a little money-grubber.
He blanked for a moment.
Then, unable to stop himself, he let out a low laugh.
It rolled up out of his throat — carrying a note of helplessness, but more than that, a kind of relief. Of warmth.
"Right." He said it with a smile still in his voice. "You're absolutely right. The reward money is more practical."
Seeing him laugh, Kiana broke into a smile too.
Whatever tension and hesitation had been there a moment ago vanished entirely, replaced only by the smugness of someone who had just made a brilliant decision.
Su Yu watched as she mixed the braised sauce into her bowl, sucked the noodles in, and puffed her cheeks out like a squirrel — and the smile on the corner of his mouth lingered there a little too long to be taken back.
Fenghuang had been quiet for a long time on the other end of the link.
"...She made the right choice. Though the reasoning was nothing like what I expected."
Su Yu went to the kitchen, turned on the tap, and started washing the bowls.
"She's always known what she's doing better than we give her credit for."
He said it quietly.
Water ran over the rim of the bowl, flushing the last of the braised sauce down the drain.
"It's just that her logic circuits work a little differently from everyone else's."
He turned off the tap and set the bowl upside down on the drying rack.
"A normal person thinks: 'I'm scared of crowds, so I won't go.' She thinks: 'Going would hurt my earning potential, so I won't go.'"
Fenghuang was silent for a beat.
"Same result."
"Same result."
Su Yu dried his hands and leaned back against the edge of the sink.
"But the process is the most interesting part — don't you think?"
Fenghuang said nothing. She had the vague sense that Su Yu was talking about Kiana, and yet somehow not just about Kiana.
Out in the living room, Chongchong had been stirred awake by the noise. He jumped down from the sofa and padded over to Kiana's feet on silent cat steps, then craned his neck and let out a "meow."
Kiana glanced down at him.
"You want some too, Chongchong? This is noodles, not cat food — fine, fine, stop looking at me like that, I'll give you one piece of meat. Just one, okay!"
Su Yu stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Kiana crouch down, pinch a small piece of pork belly with her chopsticks, set it in her palm, and hold it out to Chongchong.
Chongchong sniffed at it, took it in his teeth, and settled a little ways off to chew it at his leisure.
Kiana's fingers rubbed the top of Chongchong's head twice, and she muttered, "Just this one piece, don't ask for more, I don't have enough either."
Su Yu hung the hand towel back on the rack.
He thought about something Kiana had said before — that she was eating his food and living on his dime, and that once she earned money she would absolutely pay him back.
He didn't actually care about the money.
But if this fixation on "earning money" and "paying it back" could become an anchor — something that gave Kiana her own sense of drive and purpose, her own reason for being, in this peaceful world —
Then that wasn't a bad thing at all.
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