"Do you believe... that beyond this world, there are other worlds?"
Eden's body stiffened almost imperceptibly, then relaxed again. She didn't answer right away, only watched him quietly with those probing eyes, waiting for him to continue.
"I'm not from this world."
Su Yu leaned back against his seat, looking up at the narrow patch of darkness on the car's ceiling.
"Eden, in my original world—"
"You, Elysia, Kevin, Mei, Kalpas, Fu Hua, Sakura—everyone in the Golden Courtyard, you're all characters in a story."
Eden's eyelashes trembled twice in the shadows the streetlights swept across.
"Fifty thousand years ago, there was a group of people who, before their fated destruction arrived, waged a desperate resistance. They knew they couldn't win, but they fought to the very last moment."
He turned his head to look at Eden.
"That group of people were called the Thirteen Flame-Chasers, and you were one of them."
"You were the last and most dazzling star of that old era on the brink of annihilation. You chose to burn away together with that world, drawing a final rest note for that vanished previous civilization."
The car fell into a deathly silence.
The expression on Eden's face became complicated in that moment.
First astonishment, then a sense of absurdity, and right after, a sudden, dawning clarity.
She finally understood.
Why this young man, when they first met a few years ago, had known every member of the Golden Courtyard—each with their wildly different personalities—like the back of his hand.
Why he could accurately name Kevin's favorite instant-noodle flavor, knew that Dr. Mei was hopeless at cooking, and could even strike up a conversation with that hot-tempered Kalpas.
Why, when everyone else thought he was utterly unremarkable, only that pink elf Elysia would say he was "very interesting."
That familiarity and composure, as if he'd known them for a very, very long time, didn't come from his personality, nor from some unfathomable shrewdness.
It was because he truly had, long ago in another world, known the story of every single one of them.
Even though those stirring, unforgettable stories were, for her and the others in this world, more like a distant dream taking place in a parallel timeline, one that had nothing to do with them.
"So..."
Eden finally found her voice again, and it carried a trace of trembling that she herself hadn't noticed.
"What... kind of person was I, in that story?"
Su Yu looked at her.
"You were the golden Diva, a generous, dazzling presence like the sun itself. With your song and your wealth, you brought the last light and hope to that crumbling era."
Eden fell silent.
She lowered her head and looked at her own hands, clad in black lace gloves. These hands had played the world's most magnificent compositions, and had signed business contracts worth tens of billions. But in another story, they had done something entirely different.
So... in another world she knew nothing of, there had been an "Eden" like that, who had lived so fervently, so heedless of the cost.
This realization stirred a strange throb in her heart, bitter and yet scalding.
But Eden quickly pulled herself out of that emotion.
"But that's not enough."
Her tone returned to calm, astonishingly fast.
"That you're a transmigrator—I've already experienced that firsthand. Earlier, at the studio meeting, that dimensionality-reduction-strike of a speech you gave about the free gacha business model was so mature and seasoned that it couldn't possibly have been bred by this world's gaming industry."
She leaned forward slightly, and the gaze beneath her mask bore down on Su Yu as if it were something physical.
"But what about the mutation of your body? And Kiana's combat power that defies all reason?"
That ordinarily lofty, perfect goddess, pressing her questions so eagerly now, looked like a student in class desperate to learn the answer to a riddle. The stark contrast made Su Yu's taut nerves relax a little.
"Your previous life should also have been a peaceful world with no supernatural powers, right?" Eden pressed.
Su Yu nodded.
"After I came to this world, I really did think it was a thoroughly peaceful world, one without any supernatural powers at all."
"That's how I lived all these years—drifting through each day, occasionally being a prop when I helped Ellie with her livestreams, mooching meals at Kalpas's place on weekends. Life was very flat."
"Until one rainy evening two months ago, when I picked someone up in the stairwell."
Eden's breath caught for half a beat.
"Kiana Kaslana."
"She really came—transmigrated from that world full of Honkai disasters, where Valkyries and Herrschers slaughter one another... a genuine Valkyrie."
"Not a game, not a story."
"But a world that genuinely exists, and people who genuinely exist."
The woman's breathing came to an obvious halt in that moment.
She leaned back into the driver's seat.
Those fragments she'd been unable to make sense of were instantly strung together in that moment.
Kiana's terrifying physical attributes, her reaction speed and strength far beyond human limits, and all the unreasonable things Su Yu had done to protect her...
Everything had its answer now.
"I understand now..."
She gazed at the thick night beyond the windshield, as if talking to herself.
"If that's the case, then it all makes perfect sense. If the outside world were to learn that this city harbors an otherworldly visitor wielding that kind of inhuman power..."
She finally fully understood, too, why Su Yu had kept this hidden from Kevin and the others all along.
If it were her—if she learned that her most treasured friend Elysia was also a visitor from another world.
She would probably use every means at her disposal to bury that secret deep in her heart, carrying it into the grave, and never breathe a single word of it to anyone.
She looked at Su Yu again.
"So you came to possess that kind of power in just two short months—that's also because of her, isn't it?"
Su Yu didn't deny it.
He nodded, then, as if a thousand-pound burden had been lifted, slumped limply into the passenger seat.
He'd finished.
Apart from the System mechanics that were too outrageous to put into words, he had held nothing back from Eden.
He had laid out for this woman nearly everything he could possibly say.
This conversation had drained the last of his energy.
Right now he just wanted to close his eyes and sleep deeply.
Even with Bronie, he hadn't said this much—at least Bronie didn't know that Su Yu didn't belong to this world.
He closed his eyes.
The driver's side was very quiet.
Eden asked no more questions.
The woman sat there like a statue lost in thought.
Every word Su Yu had just spoken was reshaping the worldview she had built over the past few decades.
So parallel worlds really did exist.
So on another timeline she could never reach, there was a self she had never met, who had burned vigorously and lived fervently in a way so tragic, so utterly without reservation.
That tragic grandeur of marching to her death to fight an unconquerable fate—compared to her own boring life in this world, racing along cliff edges in search of even a trace of fake thrill—which of the two was more pitiful?
But that no longer mattered.
What mattered was that the absurd, dangerous, fatally alluring real world was now sitting in her passenger seat.
The woman's breathing slowly steadied from its earlier rapidity. She stared at her own hands gripping the steering wheel.
Those hands were long and fair, having never known the smoke of war, much less gripped a weapon capable of destroying heaven and earth.
But now, these hands had touched the edge of that world.
She drew a deep breath of the stale air in the car, then pushed the door open.
The cold mountaintop wind instantly poured in.
"Come on, Su Yu."
She stood outside the car door, the night wind lifting her wine-red hair.
Her eyes, faintly visible beneath the dark-gold mask, now reflected the city's neon lights not far off.
"Let's get out and feel the wind."
Eden raised her hand and first removed the dark-gold mask that had concealed her for most of the night, tossing it into the driver's compartment with its window wide open.
Then she bent down.
One hand braced against the side of the car, the other deftly undid the side zipper of her flat-soled ankle boots.
A pair of black leather ankle boots was slipped off and set neatly beside the right front wheel.
Having done this, she turned around, her long legs wrapped in dark-gray pantyhose.
Without any reserve, she braced both hands behind her, drew power from her waist, and lightly hopped up to sit on the broad hood.
Her black miniskirt rode up a stretch with the motion of her sitting.
Those long, stockinged legs swung twice in the night air, then finally crossed casually together, resting in front of the bumper.
She tilted her head, looking at the man still standing by the passenger door.
Su Yu shut the door and walked around the front of the car.
To Eden's left, there was still a spacious enough patch on the hood. Without thinking too much, Su Yu braced his hands on the metal edge and climbed up to sit as well.
Their shoulders were very close.
The thin fabric of her black knit top and the sleeve of Su Yu's wrinkled casual jacket brushed against each other now and then in the night breeze.
Each brush of fabric magnified, several times over, the scent on Eden—a blend of high-end perfume fermented by the heat and the female-hormone aroma evaporating from her faintly cool sweat—and poured it straight into Su Yu's nostrils.
The mountaintop air was very clean, free of the city lights' interference, and the stars were more than a grade brighter than usual.
The Milky Way stretched all the way from the eastern ridge to the west, as if someone had scattered a basket of shattered glass across a black curtain.
Neither of them spoke.
Eden's gaze did not fall on those stars.
Her head was tilted slightly back; though her eyes faced the sky, her pupils were not focused.
Within those deep eyes, a violent storm was raging.
The words Su Yu had just said were still turning over and over in her mind.
Another world.
Honkai.
Valkyries.
The Thirteen Flame-Chasers.
Another Eden who chose to perish along with her civilization.
Each of these words she recognized on its own, but combined they formed a picture she had never once imagined.
All this time, she had felt her life was like a glass of plain water, carefully prepared and held at a constant temperature.
Perfect, elegant, yet bland and flavorless.
She used alcohol, money, and fame to try and stir some ripples into that glass of plain water, but those were only fleeting anesthetics.
What she yearned for was a genuine thrill, the kind that made even the soul tremble.
And now, that thrill had appeared.
It was not in some distant story, nor in empty fantasy.
It was right beside her.
Right here on this young man within arm's reach.
Just now, on that racecourse between life and death, when Su Yu's voice had sounded in her ear, when their hands had clasped tightly together, the moment she had entrusted her life entirely to him without hesitation...
The moment their souls had become tightly entangled and resonated amid that ultimate speed and danger...
Eden knew.
She was already done for.
In this life, she would probably only ever truly and completely fall in love with one person.
And that was this madman before her, who descended into frenzy alongside her and was even more insane than she was.
She couldn't describe the emotion in her heart at this moment with any precise words.
It was a mix of the ecstasy of discovering treasure, the excitement of meeting a worthy opponent, and a possessiveness that wanted to knead the other person completely into her own flesh and blood.
The way she looked at Su Yu had already changed completely.
No longer the affection of an elder for a junior, no longer that distant maternal radiance.
But a woman, looking at a man.
Nothing more.
As long as this man was here.
Her life from now on would never feel boring again.
And in this half-minute that Eden's gaze underwent its drastic change, Su Yu, sitting beside her, was also waging an extremely brutal melee in his mind.
"This atmosphere is just way too..."
Su Yu groaned in his consciousness space.
"Squad Monitor, are you still there?"
"I'm here." Fenghuang's voice surfaced, sounding as calm as ever, without any fluctuation.
""You be the judge here—a lone man and woman, in the dead of night, out in the middle of nowhere, having just finished a wild race, and now the two of us are sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of a sports car, watching the stars."
Su Yu swallowed.
"If Elysia saw this, tomorrow she'd absolutely grab a megaphone and play it on loop in the Golden Courtyard for three days and three nights—'Shocking Scoop: Unscrupulous Producer Su Yu's Late-Night Tryst with Megastar Eden, Suspected Bodily Sugar-Daddy Agreement Reached.'"
Fenghuang didn't reply right away.
Two seconds passed.
"Your heart is beating very fast." Fenghuang's voice sounded in his mind, precisely pointing out a physical fact. "Your ventricular systolic pressure has already exceeded the normal threshold by thirty percent."
Su Yu's expression stiffened.
"Obviously."
He retorted in his mind.
"Open your eyes and look beside you."
Actually, there was no need for Fenghuang to look.
Through the Spiritual Link, everything Su Yu perceived at this moment, Fenghuang could receive in sync as well.
Su Yu knew Eden was looking at him.
He didn't even need to turn his head to feel Eden's fiery gaze.
"Squad Monitor, do you see it? The way Sister Eden's looking at me is exactly like she's looking at the last piece of tuna belly at a buffet—she's one step away from just opening her mouth and biting."
"If in a moment she really wants to make a move on me, to take advantage of me, what should I do? Waiting online, pretty urgent here!"
The consciousness space went quiet for a while.
"Telling me all this won't help you."
Fenghuang's answer, as always, carried no personal emotional bias.
"First, I am not male. Within this era's ethical framework, I cannot provide effective preventive strategies for this kind of emotional interaction of yours that crosses age and class boundaries."
"Second, I have never been in a relationship."
Su Yu rolled his eyes hard in his heart.
"However," Fenghuang added, "if you truly feel this is an offense—when you need to resort to force to resist, I can assist you in invoking Tai Xu Sword Qi. Although in the current close-range state, her grappling technique is hard to guard against, you have a high probability of breaking free."
"That's not what I mean!"
Su Yu nearly shouted out loud in reality.
Use Tai Xu Sword Qi to send Eden flying?
Tomorrow morning the Golden Courtyard would be one investor short, and have one dismembered game-producer corpse extra.
Elysia would absolutely tear him apart and feed him to the cats.
"If things really develop to the point you describe," Fenghuang's voice rarely carried a faint, barely perceptible note of helplessness, "I will sever the Spiritual Link. Look not upon what is improper—that is my bottom line as a bystander."
"Don't!" Su Yu wailed in his mind. "Squad Monitor! You're the only one who can prove my innocence. If you cut the link, then even jumping into the Yellow River won't wash me clean."
"Su Yu."
Fenghuang suddenly called his name, cutting off his babbling in the consciousness space, slicing straight through the nonsense he used to mask his awkwardness.
"If you truly remained unmoved with a woman in your arms, if there were not a single thought in your heart," Fenghuang said in a tone of objective fact-stating, "then you naturally wouldn't feel guilty."
Su Yu's voice in the consciousness space came to an abrupt stop.
"In truth, you harbor anticipation in your heart," Fenghuang continued. "You're hoping something might happen between you and Eden—on this deserted late night, after the two of you just completed that degree of spiritual entrustment."
"This is only human nature."
"I understand."
Su Yu's fingers resting on the edge of the hood abruptly tightened.
He had nothing to say.
Because Fenghuang had hit the mark entirely.
He was a man.
And the woman sitting beside him, less than a hand's width away, was Eden.
That golden Diva with hundreds of millions of fans across the world.
That megastar who was forever dignified, forever refined.
Now.
This megastar was wearing a black miniskirt that could expose her at any moment.
Those long legs, wrapped in pantyhose, just now drenched with sweat in the car, radiating a deadly heat and fragrance, swung so casually before him.
And the way she looked at him now was utterly undefended, even a silent invitation that expected no refusal whatsoever.
At this distance.
Su Yu only had to tilt his head slightly.
Only had to lean his body forward ten centimeters.
And he could kiss those lips that countless people couldn't reach even in their dreams.
As long as he took that step.
Go with the flow.
Everything would happen as a matter of course.
Adults, in the wilderness in the dead of night, after that deathly mad race that sent adrenaline soaring to its limit, seeking a little deeper comfort and release.
It was about as normal a thing as could be.
But.
"However," Fenghuang's voice sank.
"Even though Eden has already shown the willingness to join us, even to trade everything she has for this chance," she continued, "you should understand Kiana's current situation better than I do."
Su Yu's fingers tightened on the hood.
"Kiana has no freedom of choice right now. Her existence depends on you, her life and death are bound to you, and you should know very well what the word 'Honkai' means."
"I know." Su Yu looked at his own hands braced on the hood.
Yeah.
He knew all too well.
He knew better than anyone in this world.
That word—"Honkai"—just what kind of crushing weight it carried.
It was not the sort of thrill-game Eden spoke of, the kind that "lets you feel your heart race."
It was a bottomless abyss that countless people filled with their lives, treading over mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Kiana's existence was a nuclear bomb that could detonate this peaceful world at any moment.
And he was the only person in this world who knew the bomb's structure, and the only one who could stop the countdown.
Behind that smile she revealed because of a single joke from the white-haired dumpling.
Behind that seemingly warm daily life built up out of instant noodles and bitter-melon juice.
Was a death marathon with no path of retreat whatsoever.
As long as that countdown was still running.
As long as Sirin's threat still hung overhead.
As long as Kiana had not truly gained her freedom.
He, Su Yu, had no right to build, with anyone in this world, that kind of worldly, comfortable, rest-of-your-life-enjoying intimate relationship.
He had already told Eden the truth.
That was selfish enough already.
If he couldn't even guarantee the most basic right to survive, what right did he have to drag the woman before him—who had, with such difficulty, attained a perfect life in this peaceful world—into that bottomless pit where one could be smashed to pieces at any time?
Telling her the truth was already the bottom line.
He couldn't let her cross the line any further.
Su Yu drew a deep breath of the night wind.
He turned his head and met that gaze from his left, one that nearly burned through him.
Eden's eyes reflected a faint glow in the darkness.
What they held was too much, too heavy, that he didn't even dare to look closely.
"Sister Eden..." Su Yu spoke up.
Three words.
Merely these three words, without any warning, severed the ambiguous air between them that had grown so thick it was almost stringy.
It was a form of address, but more than that, a line of defense drawing a clear boundary.
Su Yu looked into Eden's eyes.
He saw, in those pupils once brimming with possessiveness, a flash of astonishment in an instant.
He felt as if a wad of cotton had been stuffed into his throat.
"I..." Su Yu opened his mouth.
"I don't know what to say. Everything that happened tonight... I'm happy, very happy." He tried to make his voice sound steady, but his pace was still uncontrollably a bit fast.
"Even in these last few minutes, sitting here, my mind kept running wild." He looked straight at her. "You are the most charming woman I have ever met. In my not-so-long life across two lifetimes, absolutely."
"But I... can't."
"I can't respond to what you just said. And I can't agree to bring you into that dangerous world."
Su Yu gritted his teeth.
"You have no idea what it stands for. It's not a hundred and eighty miles per hour on a racetrack, not the thrill where one mistake means a wrecked car and a dead driver."
"It is pure despair—a total erasure where, even if you give it everything you have, in the end you might not even leave a whole corpse, not even a trace that you ever existed in this world."
He finally turned his head and met Eden's gaze.
"To me, you, Elysia, Kevin, Mei... everyone in the Golden Courtyard, you are the most important people to me in this world."
"Without you all, I couldn't have gained a foothold in this world so quickly, couldn't have had that studio, and couldn't have won Kiana the space to survive."
"But it is precisely because of this that I all the more cannot—"
Su Yu drew another breath.
He wanted to lift his head and force out a carefree grin, the way he usually did at the convenience store, at the studio.
He wanted to use a few corny jokes like "A megastar's free meal ticket is too unpalatable" or "I'd better go back and hug my instant noodles" to fudge his way past this topic.
But he couldn't.
He realized.
That when a person truly wanted to take out their heart and explain it clearly, wanted the other to understand the reason for his refusal, and most importantly, wanted the other not to feel frustrated or hurt by his retreat—finding a suitable word turned out to be a thing more difficult than cursing out ten Herrschers of the Void in his head.
He didn't know how to describe that bloody future.
Nor did he know what words to use to depict the terror of watching, helplessly, as the people around him were dragged into the vortex.
He could, in that consciousness space without a single ray of light, be run through the heart by Sirin's lance, be sliced into pieces by spatial blades, be tortured to death a full thousand-plus times, and still clench his teeth and refuse to yield.
He could, his face covered in blood, headbutt that lofty Queen until she lost her sanity.
But.
On this late night.
Facing this woman sitting beside him, her eyes full of nothing but him.
He felt like a mischievous child who had lost all his weapons and been stripped of his armor—not only powerless, but unable to utter even a single sentence that could properly bring things to a close.
Su Yu lowered his head.
The reflection off the hood flickered in his eyes.
A long silence lay between the two of them.
Only the night wind still blew on, tirelessly.
Eden sat where she was.
Her gaze still rested on Su Yu.
She could clearly catch that trace of resolve to retreat in Su Yu's eyes.
To protect her, to keep her from being drawn into danger, he had chosen to draw a boundary in this clumsy way.
Deep in her heart, it was suddenly as if something extremely sharp had stung her.
Bitterness, flooding out of control.
She was a madwoman who, in pursuit of the ultimate thrill, could even toss her life away on a winding mountain road.
But what about this man before her?
He was even more insane than she was. Even his soul had been crushed over and over in that hell of a world, and yet he still fought with all his might to protect the peace of everyone around him.
How heavy a burden had he carried, all alone, and how far had he walked in this absurd world?
Since he had already turned over all his trump cards for her to see, how could she possibly still care about those so-called dangers?
She didn't need his promise.
Nor did she need him to take her to her death right now.
She only needed, in this moment, to let him know that in this peaceful world where no one but him could see that apocalyptic scene, he was not alone.
"Su Yu." Eden didn't call him "good junior," nor did she use any form of address with a qualifier.
At the very instant Su Yu lifted his head, still wanting to search for more words to make this refusal seem less hurtful.
A wave of heat mixed with the scent of haute-couture perfume and hormones rushed at his face.
At that extremely close distance where their breaths intertwined, Eden's lips, painted with a retro dark-red lipstick, pressed down without allowing any argument and kissed Su Yu's lips fiercely.
Su Yu's brain crashed completely in an instant.
That kiss was fervent.
Frenzied.
Aggressive as fire, utterly impossible to fend off.
Eden's hands wrapped directly around the back of his neck, and the position of sitting side by side instantly became her whole body pressing over onto him.
Her thin knit top couldn't possibly block the transfer of heat between two bodies still burning because the adrenaline hadn't yet faded.
Fragrant and soft, yet carrying an absolute sense of pressure.
Su Yu instinctively wanted to lean back, to pull away.
But Eden gave him no such chance at all.
Everything Su Yu had built up in his mind, under the other's almost proactive, even deadly offensive—
Reason.
Responsibility.
The bottom line.
In that instant, they were ground into powder by that body in close contact with his and that almost predatory deep kiss.
His hands, with nowhere to go, hung still in midair for half a second, and finally, almost out of a surrendering instinct, Su Yu's arms drew back and forcefully clasped Eden's slender waist.
The moment their lips parted, Su Yu's lungs were practically screaming as they sucked air in.
Three minutes.
A full three minutes.
His brain had undergone an unprecedented oxygen-supply crisis in those three minutes.
Eden's lips had sealed off his breathing passage, her movements had scrambled his last capacity for thought, while the scent on her—a blend of sweat and fragrance—was in charge of carrying out the final strangulation of his consciousness.
By the time their two pairs of lips finally separated, Su Yu felt there was nothing left in his head at all.
Truly nothing at all.
Like that long black-screen phase when a computer reboots after crashing.
Eden didn't pull away.
Her whole body shed all its strength, and she lay limply against Su Yu's chest.
There was no gap at all between their bodies; Su Yu could even, through that thin black knit top, clearly feel the heart in her chest beating at an overloaded frequency.
That beating rhythm overlapped perfectly with his own heartbeat.
The air in this space of less than half a meter became extremely thick.
Su Yu stared at the Milky Way overhead.
A small part of his brain finally rebooted.
"Sister Eden." His voice squeezed out of his throat, carrying an obvious pant.
"This was... my first kiss, you know."
Eden, lying against his chest, stirred.
Her breathing hadn't fully settled either; her hot breath slapped against the side of his neck in wave after wave, and with each wave, a layer of goosebumps rose on the back of his neck.
"Me too." Eden's voice was very soft, every syllable seeming to swirl against his eardrum. "So... does that make us even?"
Su Yu didn't answer.
He didn't know how to answer.
A few minutes ago, his head had still been full of thoughts about how to draw a clear line with this dangerous woman, how to hold the bottom line of his own little patch of turf.
But now.
That bottom line had already been thoroughly crushed.
Su Yu lay on the hood, watching the sky full of stars, his mind processing three things at once:
The first—he had just been forcibly kissed.
The second—the person who forcibly kissed him was Eden.
That Eden—the world-class megastar Eden with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide, a regular at Vienna's Golden Hall, in the top ten of the Forbes rich list.
The third—she said this was her first kiss too.
An ecstasy he absolutely refused to admit but couldn't suppress no matter what surged up from the bottom of his stomach, burning all the way up his esophagus to the back of his head.
Eden was still lying against his chest.
Her body heat transferred through that thin knit top, scorching until his entire chest was burning.
His right hand still rested on her waist, where the strip of skin exposed between the hem of her knit top and the waistband of her skirt pressed against his palm—smooth and slick, with a faint dampness left behind after the sweat had evaporated.
His left hand was wrapped around her.
His fingers tightened a little.
Not on purpose.
It was the body reacting ahead of the brain.
Eden gave a soft hum in his arms.
That sound leaked out from her nose—brief, its ending note curling up a touch.
Su Yu's body instantly tensed.
Every cell in his entire body was clamoring wildly.
The sensation beneath his palm was too real—so real that he even wanted to tighten his fingers and knead that voluptuous body more deeply into his own.
And then—
The phone rang.
It was Eden's phone.
The ringtone came from the bag she'd tossed on the driver's seat, passing through the half-open window, sounding especially jarring on the quiet mountaintop.
It was Eden's private phone, and the people who knew this number could be counted on two hands.
Eden didn't move.
Like a leopardess who had finally captured her beloved prey, she lay languidly atop Su Yu, the tip of her nose nuzzling his neck, greedily inhaling that unique scent on him, mixed of sweat and male hormones.
She was afraid that the moment she let go, this interesting man beneath her would slip away like a slippery fish, seizing the chance to escape.
Until that annoying ringtone finally vanished and the world returned to silence.
Su Yu's heartbeat had spiked to an absurd frequency in those few seconds. This was no longer a question of thrilling or not—in the dead of night, in the pitch black, someone suddenly calling to do a "room check"—what kind of textbook-of-textbooks plot was this?
"Not going to answer?"
Eden lifted her head, those eyes shimmering with moisture under the moonlight right before him, and countered: "Do you want me to answer it?"
Su Yu's lips moved.
He wanted to say "Answer it."
That was the rational thing to do.
Someone calling in the dead of night—what if it was an emergency?
But what his mouth said was two other words.
"I don't."
The instant the words fell, he felt the hand he had wrapped around Eden's hip being pressed, by her, with a suggestive force, more deeply into that soft, full flesh.
Eden looked at him and gave a soft laugh.
That was the expression!
That very look of clearly wanting it yet desperately suppressing it, and in the end honestly losing to desire!
That Su Yu who was usually unmoved with a woman in his lap, who couldn't muster interest in anything, who turned a blind eye even to Elysia's elf-grade "teasing"—before her, he was practically no different from a big boy in the first flush of love, at a complete loss.
That little fool Ellie had used every trick she had and still couldn't see this adorable side of Su Yu.
That "block of wood" that couldn't be pried loose no matter what was now lying beneath her, breathing erratically, his hand on her body, his fingers still unconsciously tightening.
An inexplicable, intense sense of immorality—of "sneaking a bite" behind her best friend's back—surged up into Eden's heart in an instant, like the most intoxicating alcohol.
Her thigh hooked up slightly.
Her knee bent, and her calf slowly rubbed upward along the side of Su Yu's leg.
The nylon fabric of her pantyhose grazed the fabric of Su Yu's trouser leg, making an extremely faint rustling sound.
Su Yu's body tensed again.
Eden could feel the muscles at the side of his waist tightening one by one beneath her fingertips, exactly like the feel of tuning piano strings one after another.
Twelve years since her debut, ten years famous, rolling around for the better part of her life in the vanity fair that was the entertainment industry.
Never a single scandal.
Not even once.
It wasn't that no one pursued her.
Those who pursued her could line up from Arc City all the way to the capital.
It was that she looked down on them from the bottom of her heart.
Those men in fine suits, mouths full of "Miss Eden, you're so beautiful," were in her eyes all assembly-line products cast from the same mold.
The things they could offer—money, power, social status—she had all of them herself.
But that didn't mean she had never fantasized about a strong, reliable embrace that understood her madness, wrapping firmly around her.
And now, that embrace was right at hand.
That desire of a mature woman, suppressed for years, at this moment nearly burst out of this perfect body to utterly devour the man beneath her.
Her fingers, too, began to roam restlessly across his chest, tracing circles.
Since she was the "big sister"—though she had no practical experience whatsoever—she had nonetheless seen those scenes in movies and TV dramas.
So let her... properly guide this adorable "good little brother" whose mouth said no but whose body was very honest.
One of Eden's hands left the back of Su Yu's neck, sliding all the way down his chest, and covered the hand of Su Yu's that still rested at her waist.
Su Yu felt that slightly cool hand cover the back of his own.
Then Eden guided his hand, along the curve of her body, slowly moving upward.
Sliding over her flat belly, past the hem of her knit top.
Finally stopping.
Just as Su Yu's palm, through the fabric, truly and tangibly touched that soul-stirring warmth, and that close-at-hand fragrance kept demolishing Su Yu's already teetering reason—
"Beep beep beep—beep beep beep—"
A cheerful, even somewhat playful ringtone suddenly went off in the pocket of Su Yu's trousers.
Su Yu's body abruptly froze.
It was a specially edited audio clip.
It was a special incoming-call ringtone he'd had no choice but to set specifically to deal with a certain social terrorist.
"Hi~ It's the most super-duper adorable Elysia~ Hurry and pick up~"
The air seemed to freeze solid in that moment.
Elysia's lively personalized ringtone sounded extremely grating in the empty night.
Eden's hand resting on Su Yu's chest stopped.
Her eyes, glazed with a layer of moisture from that deep kiss, narrowed slightly. Her gaze followed the direction the sound came from, landing on the pocket of Su Yu's trousers.
Su Yu's spine instantly went stiff as an iron plate.
He instinctively wanted to back away, to put distance between himself and Eden's body that burned like a furnace.
But Eden's arms not only didn't loosen, they tightened further, and her other hand even slid straight down along his sturdy waistline and, through the denim fabric, pressed onto that pocket still vibrating wildly.
Eden's chin rested on Su Yu's shoulder, her warm breath landing right on his carotid artery. Su Yu had wanted to read something in her eyes, but he only saw, over Eden's shoulder, the starry sky, and heard her voice—
She said only one word.
"Answer."
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