Su Yu caught the cushion and said with a chuckle, "All right, all right, we won't talk about that anymore. So what about after the Valkyrie exam? Did anything else interesting happen?"
Kiana picked up the Happy Water from the table and took a hard, big slurp of cola; the sensation of the carbonated bubbles bursting in her mouth seemed to clear her head considerably.
She tilted her head, her gaze settling on the pendant lamp on the ceiling, as if dredging up those glittering seashells from the ocean of memory.
"Interesting stuff…ah, there really was one such episode!"
As if recalling something, she abruptly sat bolt upright, her eyes lighting up all at once.
"Su Yu, do you still remember that armor we talked about before—White Knight: Moonbeam?"
Su Yu nodded. That was Kiana's S-rank armor in the game, and also the dream-armor of many players.
"Actually, it was only after that incident that I found out the Domain Unit: White Comet I'm wearing now is, in fact, the base form of White Knight: Moonbeam after its power was sealed."
Kiana tugged at the oversized T-shirt on her body, as though it were a Valkyrie's battle robe.
"But this story isn't on the same timeline as the rank exam I just talked about."
"That was two years ago... Back then, Mei, Bronya, and I had just been rescued from Nagazora by Teacher Himeko, and we'd only just joined St. Freya Academy."
Her voice grew lively, like leaping musical notes.
"We'd been enrolled about a month by then, and had slowly gotten used to that kind of life. But—"
Kiana's expression suddenly turned a little odd, as if she were holding back a laugh, and also a little put off.
"Back then, every morning when I woke up, I'd face a huge survival crisis."
"A survival crisis?" Su Yu raised an eyebrow. "A Honkai Beast raiding the dorm at night?"
"Way scarier than that—it was a survival crisis in the chastity sense!"
Kiana waved her arms, her face the picture of an unbearable memory.
"It was Teacher Himeko! Every time she got drunk, she'd burrow into my bed!!"
She mimicked Himeko's drunken state, going completely limp against the sofa, even making grabbing motions.
"And she's a super bad drunk! She tosses and turns like crazy in her sleep! She'd come straight at me, hug me and rub all over me, hands groping everywhere! And she'd reek of beer from head to toe!"
Kiana hugged her chest, her face full of indignation, yet her cheeks faintly flushed from embarrassment.
"Thinking about it now, that was basically sexual harassment! She was blatantly copping a feel off this young lady!"
"I mean, sure, I know this young lady is gorgeous by nature, beloved by all, but as an elder, couldn't she show at least a little restraint?! Every time I woke up, I felt like I'd been wrapped up by an octopus!"
Su Yu couldn't help but laugh out loud.
An image instantly surfaced in his mind: the mature, gorgeous red-haired onee-san, utterly defenseless, hugging a Kiana who was still just a little kid—the scene really was…very yuri-flavored.
"And then?" Su Yu pressed, holding back his laughter. "You just let her hug you?"
"As if! Of course I struggled with all my might! Yelling and shouting at that drunkard to let go! And then kicking her off the bed with one foot!"
Kiana rolled her eyes.
"But every time I yelled, the savior didn't come—the bringer of doom arrived first."
She sighed, her face the very image of having lost all will to live.
"That little squirt Bronya... She'd always show up at the door hugging her Homu plushie, expressionless, and then—"
Kiana made a throwing motion.
"Whoosh—smack!"
"A pillow would just nail me right in the forehead with perfect accuracy! That really hurt!"
She rubbed her own forehead, as if the pain from two years ago still lingered there.
"I even complained to her, said, 'Bronya, you little shorty, smacking me in the head with a pillow is gonna knock this young lady dumb!' And guess what she said?"
Su Yu played along and asked, "What did she say?"
Kiana took a deep breath and imitated Bronya's utterly ripple-free, mechanical voice:
"'According to Bronya's calculations, idiot Kiana's IQ is already at rock bottom, and there is no room for it to drop any further.'—It pissed me off so much! How can her mouth be that venomous!"
Su Yu really couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing with a snort.
That really was something Bronya would say.
"But still..."
Kiana's expression softened, a warm curve hanging at the corner of her mouth.
"Even though every morning was utter chaos, the moment that time came around, Mei would appear."
"She'd be wearing that pretty apron, carrying the breakfast she'd just made, standing in the kitchen doorway and calling out to us with a smile."
Kiana closed her eyes, as if she could smell the aroma of that food.
"Just like a virtuous wife… As long as I saw Mei's smile and ate the food she made, it didn't matter whether I'd been harassed by Teacher Himeko or sniped at by Bronya's sharp tongue—none of it mattered anymore."
A faint warmth pervaded the living room.
Su Yu watched the side of Kiana's face as she immersed herself in memories.
The her of back then didn't yet know what destiny was; she only knew that today's breakfast was the tamagoyaki Mei had made.
"Come to think of it…"
Kiana suddenly opened her eyes and scratched her cheek, her tone turning a little wavering.
"That day... seemed to also be an exam—it was the first exam after we transferred into St. Freya Academy..."
She covered her face and let out a long, drawn-out groan.
"I just feel like Kiana Kaslana is fated to be at odds with those two words, 'exam,' for her whole life."
Su Yu keenly caught that keyword.
The first exam.
As a veteran player, he of course knew the result of that exam.
But watching Kiana in this state, the "troublemaker" soul within him suddenly awakened.
"Since it was the first exam, the difficulty shouldn't have been very high, right?"
Su Yu deliberately put on an expression brimming with anticipation, his tone full of trust.
"After all, you're a genius of the Kaslana family, with such strong combat ability—surely our Miss Kiana came in first place?"
That high hat was placed on her ever so steadily.
Kiana froze for a moment.
She opened her mouth, but the boastful words she'd meant to say got stuck in her throat, unable to go up or down.
Her gaze began to drift, looking left and right—anywhere but into Su Yu's eyes.
"Um... I think..."
She fumbled and wrung her fingers.
"This Valkyrie exam thing... can't directly serve as a standard for judging strength... You see, real combat and exams are two different things, right? The battlefield changes in an instant—how could a few sheets of paper decide anything..."
The smile on Su Yu's face grew even more brilliant.
"So? Classmate Kiana, just what rank did you place?"
He pressed on relentlessly, like a merciless Dean.
"Ahem ahem..."
Kiana gave two tactical coughs, trying to bluff her way through.
"Well... Mei was third place, Bronya was second place, and as for first place..."
She dragged out the trailing syllable, her eyes darting around wildly, trying to fabricate a plausible excuse.
Just then.
In Su Yu's mind, a voice that was cool, wistful, yet carried a trace of helplessness suddenly rang out.
"It was me."
Fenghuang's voice echoed through his consciousness, as if crossing through time and space.
"I still remember how Kiana, in high spirits, rushed up to the results board, vowing with utter confidence that she was definitely first place."
"And in the end... she searched from top to bottom for ages and couldn't find her own name."
"At last, she found her name in the 'failed' column."
Su Yu nearly lost his composure.
Squad Monitor, so you're a natural at deadpan roasting too! That follow-up jab was way too precise!
Watching Su Yu's half-smiling expression, as though he'd seen through everything, Kiana's defenses finally broke.
"Aaaah! Fine, fine, I'll just say it!"
She tousled her own hair in self-abandonment, her face flushing bright red like an overripe tomato.
"Because I failed every single written test! I even got a zero in history! A zero!"
She buried her head in the cushion, her voice coming out muffled, carrying the sobbing tone of someone consumed by shame and indignation.
"Bringing up an embarrassing thing from the past on my own... so stupid! So humiliating!"
She abruptly lifted her head and glared fiercely at Su Yu.
"Go ahead and laugh! Laugh all you want! I know a zero or whatever is still too much!!"
"Not at all."
Su Yu reined in his smile and looked at her with a serious face.
"Why would I laugh at you?"
His voice was tender to an almost unbelievable degree.
"Everyone has things they're not good at. You're the practical-combat type; being a little weak in theory is completely understandable."
Kiana was stunned.
She blinked, and the shame and indignation in her eyes slowly faded, replaced by an emotion called "being moved."
This guy… though he usually has a snarky mouth, at the crucial moment he really is gentle.
"Su Yu, you really are..."
She sniffled, just about to say a couple of touching words.
The next second, Su Yu's tone took a sharp turn, and that familiar, punchable expression appeared on his face.
"But—"
He held up a single finger and asked with utter sincerity:
"A zero in history is still a bit too abstract, isn't it?"
"Classmate Kiana, didn't that test paper have multiple-choice questions? Even if you guessed everything, by the laws of probability it'd be impossible to score a zero."
Su Yu leaned in a little closer, as if genuinely discussing some academic conundrum.
"How did you manage to perfectly avoid every single correct answer? I suppose that counts as a kind of unconventional talent too, doesn't it?"
The air froze for a second.
The being-moved on Kiana's face instantly froze, then cracked apart, and finally transformed into a sky-engulfing rage.
"Give me back my being-moved, you jerk!!!"
Accompanied by an angry roar, that cushion on the sofa slammed viciously into Su Yu's face.
After the cushion attack, the tense, sword-drawn atmosphere in the living room actually dissipated quite a bit.
Kiana sat cross-legged on the carpet, still hugging that Homu cushion tightly to her chest, as if clutching a shield.
She grabbed the cola off the coffee table and chugged a big mouthful; the carbonated bubbles burst on the tip of her tongue, giving her the courage to keep griping.
"The zero's one thing… the most outrageous part was Teacher Himeko!"
Kiana indignantly slapped her thigh, and those fair thighs rippled with a wave of flesh under the slap.
"At dinner, she actually said in front of everyone that I was flat-chested and brainless! She even told me to eat less fried chicken and drink more papaya milk!"
She abruptly straightened her back, planting both hands on her hips, doing her best to show off the curve at her chest that wasn't all that towering to begin with.
That loose T-shirt was stretched taut—though it didn't have that suffocating sense of oppression Himeko had, it carried the kind of taut, perky arc unique to a young girl, like a green apple.
"I was still really young back then! Still in my growth period! Just give it a few more years... I'll definitely grow bigger than her!"
Su Yu sat across from her, the mouse in his hand coming to a stop.
His gaze did not look toward Kiana's face, but rather shifted downward—very honestly and very gentleman-like—settling on that focal point rising and falling with her breaths.
As she thrust out her chest, that thin cotton T-shirt clung tightly to her chest, outlining a pair of contours that, though not full, were unusually upright.
Like freshly peeled lychees—round, taut, with a faint upward tilt.
Su Yu stroked his chin, the expression on his face as grave as if he were reviewing an important game design proposal.
He nodded most solemnly.
"Indeed."
His voice was steady and forceful.
"I think so too. A promising stock—the future looks bright."
The air went quiet for a second.
Kiana blinked, and only then noticed where Su Yu's undisguised gaze, brimming with the spirit of academic inquiry, was landing.
Boom—
Her face instantly flushed bright red, and that blush spread along her neck all the way to the roots of her ears.
In a fluster she snatched up the cushion to shield her chest, shrinking back her whole body.
"Wh-what are you staring at?! Pervert! Creep!"
"It's not like it's the first time I've seen them."
Su Yu looked utterly grieved and aggrieved, spreading his hands as though he'd suffered the greatest injustice in the world.
"It's not as if I haven't seen them before. Back then, to keep you from disappearing, we even had to report through the door just to use the toilet. When buying clothes, wasn't I right there with you in the fitting room? You didn't say anything back then—why are you being so standoffish now?"
He sighed and shook his head.
"It seems... in the end, we've grown distant after all."
"Th-that's not the same thing!"
Kiana's voice shot up an octave, so embarrassed she practically wanted to find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
Those memory scenes flashed wildly through her mind like slides—
The cramped bathroom, her sitting on the toilet, Su Yu standing at the door with his back to her—she could even hear the sound of Su Yu's breathing.
The mall fitting room, the two of them squeezed into that tiny space, the sound of fabric rubbing clearly audible, Su Yu's body heat transmitting through the thin clothing...
Back then, she'd been too preoccupied worrying about whether she would disappear to have any mind to think about these suggestive little details.
But now...
Why was her heart beating so fast? Why was her face so hot? Why, when he stared at her, was there—besides the embarrassment—also a strange, tingly, numbing sensation?
Watching her look so much like she wanted to boil herself alive, the smile at the corner of Su Yu's mouth deepened.
"Because back then, she was doing it to survive."
Fenghuang's voice rang out in Su Yu's mind right on cue, carrying a trace of worldly-wise clarity.
"When a person is drowning, they don't care what the life-saving straw looks like. But now... she has a stable environment, has people she can trust. The coldness she put on as a disguise for survival is gradually melting away, and what remains is simply an ordinary girl who blushes."
Indeed so.
Su Yu looked at the vibrant girl before him.
Compared to that cornered beast bristling with thorns and ready to lash out in stress-response combat at any moment when they first met.
Compared to that ghost whose body went stiff from accidental contact, enduring it with all her might.
He preferred the her of now.
This Kiana who would puff up over a single teasing remark, who would call him a creep at the drop of a hat, who vividly expressed her own emotions.
The her of now—the radiance on her face was so much more dazzling than on that gloomy rainy night two months ago.
This "raising-her-up" kind of sense of accomplishment filled Su Yu with an indescribable gratification.
His gaze involuntarily turned tender, that gentleness almost overflowing from the depths of his eyes, like a fine, dense net gently wrapping Kiana up.
Being looked at with that kind of gaze made Kiana's skin crawl.
She hugged the cushion, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"B-big idiot..."
Her voice dropped lower, her eyes dodging, not daring to look directly at Su Yu.
"How long are you going to keep looking? I know I'm good-looking... but if you stare at me like this every single day, won't you get sick of it?!"
"It's fine." Su Yu instinctively replied, "I like it."
Those three words were like a depth charge.
Kiana completely crashed.
Visible steam practically rose from the top of her head, and she curled up like a boiled shrimp, burying her face deep into the cushion.
"Wh-what are you suddenly going on about again——?! Honestly!!"
The muffled roar came from inside the cushion, carrying obvious fluster and a sliver of hard-to-detect secret delight.
To cover up this about-to-explode sense of embarrassment, Kiana abruptly lifted her head and forcibly changed the subject.
"R-right! In order to pass that makeup exam... that little squirt Bronya was a huge help to me!"
She spoke at lightning speed, as if a Honkai Beast were chasing her from behind.
"You know what? That day, Bronya actually broke with tradition and didn't play online games! She pulled out this super cool thing—the Homu Homu Virtual Reality Connector!"
At the mention of this, Kiana's eyes lit up again, that novel excitement temporarily overpowering her bashfulness.
"She said it was an interface for Schicksal's core database, that it could take me in to experience the most detailed Honkai history."
"The funniest part was that the little squirt actually changed into a whole new getup for herself in the virtual space!"
Kiana gestured, unable to keep from laughing out loud.
"She put on this kind of... magical-girl-like dress, even holding a staff, saying she was the Guiding Witch or something!"
"And then she pulled me along and jumped straight into the long river of history!"
Kiana waved her arms, as if she were right there in the thick of it.
"That feeling was so amazing! It wasn't reading a book, and it wasn't watching a video."
"It was an experience just like living it firsthand... a hundred times more thrilling than watching a movie!"
"I still remember, the first stop Bronya took me to was the year 2717 BC..."
Kiana paused, seemingly recalling that distant and savage era.
"In the forests of southern Asia, beasts mutated by infection with Honkai energy appeared for the first time."
She gestured, as if those ferocious monsters were right before her eyes.
"The humans of that time didn't have Valkyrie armor yet, nor modern weapons. Facing those monsters, all they could do was fight desperately with stones and crude bronze implements."
"But..."
Kiana's eyes lit up.
"Just when everyone was in despair, a maiden named Jilin appeared."
"She was the first human in history to possess the power to resist the Honkai. It's said she had a very formidable weapon called the Xuanyuan Sword. She led the people in resisting the Honkai Beasts and building their own homeland."
"Even though she looked like a girl about as tall as that little squirt Bronya, I never imagined she'd be this incredible. As expected, this place Shenzhou really does have a lot going for it!"
Indeed it does.
Su Yu snarked inwardly.
After all, the first stop of Fu Hua and the others' Fire Seed Project was Shenzhou.
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