Kiana "gulp-gulp" finished that glass of warm water and set the glass down on the table with a "clack."
"Alright, resurrected! Let's continue."
She leaned back against the chair again, smoothed out Su Yu's oversized coat over her lap, and rested both hands obediently on top of it.
"After Wendy and Mei were taken away by those Anti-Entropy bastards, Auntie and Teacher Himeko immediately organized a rescue. The target was aimed straight at Anti-Entropy's main base in the Far East—ME Corp Headquarters."
"Mm, in other words, the old hag Cocolia's lair." Kiana's finger drew a circle on Su Yu's coat, her brow furrowing again. "The defenses on that run-down building were absurdly tight—even a fly would have to get its QR code scanned three times to get in. The three of us circled the outside several times and couldn't find so much as a dog-hole to squeeze through."
She tilted her head, as if recalling something.
"At the time I was pretty puzzled. Isn't the president of ME Corp Raiden Ryoma? That's Mei's own dad! I'd even seen it in the social news before—said he got locked up for some kind of economic crime. Back then I thought he was some black-hearted capitalist who'd absconded with the funds."
"And then? You found out the melon you were gobbling was about your own people?"
"Theresa said it was all Cocolia's doing—Raiden Ryoma was purely framed and set up by that old fox."
Kiana paused, curling her lip.
"Within Anti-Entropy, Cocolia belongs to the radical faction that yells 'kill, kill, kill' every day, and she's been at odds with Schicksal for years. Before, when Raiden Ryoma held power, Anti-Entropy and Schicksal could at least maintain a surface-level relative peace. But the moment he fell, Cocolia flat-out tore off the mask."
Su Yu finished typing this section without pressing further.
"Just when we were at our wits' end, Bronya suddenly patched into comms."
At this point Kiana's mouth quirked up a little.
"She said she wanted to help us rescue Mei. Teacher Himeko thought it was a trap, but I said I wanted to believe in Bronya."
"And Theresa?"
"Auntie? She said she didn't care." Kiana vividly imitated Theresa's crusty, slightly tsundere tone, dropping her voice by half a pitch. "If it really is a trap, worst case I just kick straight through the wall and walk out, and that'll be that. What's the big deal."
Su Yu's fingers paused on the keyboard.
He knew Theresa wasn't bragging when she said that.
An existence who could solo an Emperor-class Honkai Beast on her very first official mission—demolishing a building really was about the same as taking apart building blocks.
"Don't underestimate the power of the Judah launcher!"
"That was when I found out Theresa used to be seriously fierce back when she was an active-duty Valkyrie." Kiana's eyes brightened. "Even though she usually looks a bit reckless and likes reading manga, her strength was so strong she nearly got awarded the title of S-rank Valkyrie—but she turned it down."
"Why'd she turn it down?"
"Dunno. Teacher Himeko was just about to gossip about the reason when Auntie forcibly interrupted her by casting a spell." Kiana spread her hands, her face full of regret. "So to this day I still haven't figured out what the reason was."
"After we got into ME Corp, the whole way was full of Anti-Entropy's unmanned mechs."
Kiana gestured with her fingers on the coat, as if simulating the motion of firing.
"As I fought and fought, a question occurred to me: why can't Schicksal be like Anti-Entropy and whip up a whole bunch of unmanned mechs to fight wars? That way the Valkyries wouldn't have to take such huge risks, right?"
Su Yu looked up at her.
"Auntie answered me like this: those scrap-metal heaps of Anti-Entropy's use Honkai energy at less than twenty percent efficiency—they can't fire many shots before they have to be scrapped and sent back to the factory for a rebuild. And current Schicksal research shows that in this world, there's nothing more suited to being the vessel for this power than the body of a Valkyrie with extremely high Honkai energy resistance."
Kiana's fingers stopped for a moment, a complicated emotion flickering in her eyes.
"So I just casually asked, then why doesn't Anti-Entropy do the same as Schicksal and use living people as vessels? Auntie was silent for a long time, then said..."
Her pace slowed by half a beat.
"Maybe it's because the old man who founded Anti-Entropy back then... was a guy with more human warmth than those lunatics at Schicksal."
Su Yu's fingers stopped on the keyboard for a second.
Welt.
He silently recited that name in his heart.
Indeed, only the Anti-Entropy led by that man would stubbornly choose to use cold steel to replace living human lives.
He continued recording.
"Later, Theresa watched my back while I was fighting, and suddenly brought up my dad."
Kiana's expression instantly became magnificent.
It wasn't grief or longing, but that peculiarly complicated look you get during the New Year when a relative brings up some unreliable elder in the family—a mix of disdain, gossip-hunger, and an irrepressible urge to punch someone.
"So I pestered Auntie, asking what kind of person that Siegfried guy was in his youth—whether he was as dashingly handsome as me."
Su Yu completely lifted his hands off the keyboard, leaning tactically back into the ergonomic chair.
Here it comes, here it comes—Siegfried's classic reputation-assassination segment.
What follows is a heavyweight bit of fun.
"Auntie sneered and said Siegfried was a thorough, out-and-out super big idiot. On missions he never listened to orders, especially loved charging alone into a pile of Honkai Beasts to go on a one-man rampage. And his brain definitely had some issues—he even set the startup password for his own dedicated warship to six eights and still couldn't remember it!"
At this point Kiana rolled her eyes.
"And also—"
She suddenly got stuck.
Su Yu noticed the tips of her ears had gone a little red.
"And also what? Murder and arson?"
"Auntie said..."
Kiana's voice instantly shrank, humming like a mosquito.
"He... he was also a shameless big pervert!"
"Apparently he groped the... butt of e·ve·ry·sin·gle·one of the Valkyries on the Hyperion back then."
The studio fell into a full two seconds of dead silence. Only the air conditioner hummed away.
Su Yu looked at Kiana expressionlessly.
Kiana stared fixedly at the mouse pad on the desk.
"My first reaction at the time was, I was, a little bit envious—cough cough cough cough."
Her mouth opened once, then closed again like a fish starved of oxygen.
Her ears went from pink to bright red.
Su Yu's expression didn't change, but he pushed his chair back two centimeters, shifted into a more comfortable posture, and crossed his arms over his chest.
That gaze was very subtle.
There wasn't the slightest trace of mockery, yet the gaze clearly said: "Please, begin your performance. I'm waiting for you to keep making it up."
Being stared at until she tingled all over, Kiana deliberately coughed loudly twice!
"Ahem! I mean! That stinky old man was really too much! He's an absolute disgrace to the Kaslana family! How could he do something so deranged! Once I find him, I'll definitely enforce justice on Heaven's behalf and severely punish her!!"
Her volume suddenly shot up a huge notch, her face forcibly crammed full of the eight big words "righteous and stern" and "impartial justice against one's own kin," trying to cover up the panic in her heart.
Su Yu didn't expose her.
He merely tapped out a note on his laptop: [The Siegfried reputation-assassination incident is actually a rumor spread by Shigure Kira; the Kaslana family's honor is not yet bankrupt; details to be supplemented as an easter egg after open beta.]
"Ahem." Kiana cleared her throat again, trying to drag this socially-fatal topic back on track. "A-anyway! In the end, under Bronya's secret guidance, we wound our way through and found the hidden entrance, and successfully infiltrated the core area of ME Corp."
"So, it really was a trap?"
"No suspense at all—it really was a trap." Kiana nodded numbly. "But Auntie waved her hand grandly and said things had actually become simple and crude instead. As long as we tore down this building, beat down the people inside, and rescued Mei, it'd be fine. What's the big deal."
She said this in a very relaxed tone, like she was saying "grab the cola out of the fridge."
Su Yu silently added another star to Theresa's "violence maniac" attribute.
"In front of the restraint device holding Mei, I saw Bronya again."
Kiana withdrew her hand from the coat and placed it on her knee.
"She told me about her past."
"Bronya lost her mother when she was very young. In her heart, Cocolia was her true mother."
"But later she met Mei, and met us bunch of idiots. She said she didn't want to hurt us."
The hum of the air conditioner in the studio filled the gap between the two lines.
"Bronya said—"
Kiana's gaze fell on that already-empty warm water glass on the desk.
"Compared to her own life, Big Sis Mei was more important. Bronya would no longer accept any command that would hurt Big Sis Mei."
She paused, her voice growing more nasal.
"Goodbye, Big Sis Mei. Kiana, I leave Big Sis Mei to you."
Su Yu's fingers finally landed on the keyboard, typing out this passage.
"Then she burned up her own biochip, which was no different from committing suicide on the spot."
Su Yu stopped typing.
He looked at Kiana.
Kiana lowered her head, tapping her fingers on her knee twice.
Then she raised her head, the corner of her mouth curving into a strained arc.
"Bronya really is a big idiot—an even bigger idiot than me."
Su Yu didn't respond; he knew she was toughing it out.
"But I'm not that sad, actually." Kiana's tone brightened. "Because before, in the Sea of Quanta, I saw with my own eyes the process of Bronya becoming the Herrscher of Reason. So I know that idiot pulled through in the end."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
"That girl is ten thousand times stronger than I imagined."
"Later, when we were breaking out carrying the unconscious Bronya, Cocolia had no intention of letting us go."
Kiana took a deep breath and forcibly sped up her pace, trying to skip over this painful memory.
"Wendy was cruelly... I won't say it. Anyway, the Gem of Desire inside Wendy's body was forcibly stripped out and implanted as a living battery into that giant mech named 'Wotan.'"
She gestured in the air, trying to describe Wotan's sheer size, but quickly gave up.
"It was really hard, but in the end we still defeated Wotan."
Su Yu finished typing this section and added a parenthetical after it: [Wotan mech battle details to be supplemented later by Welt from the perspective of Anti-Entropy's getting-beaten-up report.]
"In the end, we escaped ME Corp. Mei was rescued, but Wendy... was gone. And Bronya, because of brain damage, remained in a deep coma the whole time—St. Freya Academy's existing medical technology simply couldn't cure her."
Kiana's fingers stopped on her knee.
"To save Bronya, Theresa decided to go to the Central Cathedral of St. Freya Academy. Hidden beneath the cathedral was Schicksal's highest-level biotechnology—even Theresa herself didn't have the clearance to access it."
She took a deep breath, like a drowning person drawing in oxygen.
"I went in together with Theresa."
The light in the studio seemed to suddenly dim.
It wasn't that the sunlight was blocked by clouds, but that Kiana's expression had changed. That carefree, energetic spirit had completely vanished, and along with it, Su Yu felt the surrounding air had become somewhat viscous and heavy.
"After entering the cathedral's underground, I..."
Kiana's fingers clenched tightly onto the fabric of Su Yu's coat on her knees.
"At that time... I wanted to see my mom so badly, I wanted it so much I was nearly going insane."
Su Yu moved his hand away from the keyboard and gently placed it on the armrest of the swivel chair, without making a single sound.
"And then, completely defenseless, I fell into a real illusion."
Kiana's voice became very slow, as if sleepwalking, each word separated by a small, suffocating blank space.
"In that illusion, I actually saw the Siberian snowfield of the Second Eruption. I saw Cecilia... She and I fought side by side, mother and daughter joining hands, and together we struck down the arrogant, invincible Sirin."
Her fingers gripped the fabric tighter and tighter.
"Su Yu, you know what? I was really overjoyed then. I felt I'd finally found my mom, that I could finally be together with her. Finally..."
She didn't finish that heartbreaking sentence.
"And then, Squad Monitor Fu Hua appeared."
"She was clad in the armor of Shadow Knight Moonblade, standing before me."
Kiana's gaze fell on the desk, on that emptied water glass, on the water stains left on the glass walls, as if there lay an abyss she could never cross.
"She said, Kiana, your mother isn't here. This data space has never had any virtual environment or AI. Babylon Laboratory and Cecilia never existed in the first place."
Su Yu didn't move.
"She said that from the moment I entered the data space, I'd stayed in the same spot the whole time. It was the Herrscher who made me immerse myself in my own dream. Everything I saw, experienced, and felt of a mother's love... was all fake."
Kiana's voice went dry.
"The Cecilia I searched so desperately for, the mom I gave everything to embrace and protect in that illusion... was just a phantom that Sirin fabricated out of my longing."
"Back then I still remembered a single line—Ich liebe dich."
"I'd always thought... that was a magic spell from a fairy tale that could summon miracles. But actually, it was just the most ordinary 'I love you' in German."
Her fingers released the coat's fabric, then clenched it tightly again.
"That was no magic that loved me at all. It was just... the fatal trigger that completely awakened the Devil inside me, that awakened the Herrscher of the Void."
Su Yu reached for the kettle on the desk and refilled Kiana's cup.
Kiana watched the water flow from the spout into the cup, the water level rising bit by bit.
"I fought Squad Monitor."
Her voice recovered a bit of strength, carrying a trace of self-mockery.
"The result was obvious—I was beaten by Squad Monitor, lost horribly."
"After being beaten down, my mind wasn't too clear anymore. My consciousness started becoming extremely blurry, leaving only some red-and-black, fragmentary, horrific images flashing. Like watching the static snow on an old television."
She slumped back against the chair as if drained.
"Whew... the memories I can extract end here. After that, it's all blackouts."
The studio was quiet for a while.
The hum of the air conditioner, the whir of the laptop's fan, the distant construction noise from outside the window—these sounds slowly filled back into the blank between the two people.
Kiana's face was very pale, a fine layer of sweat on her forehead.
But strangely, though her complexion was ghastly pale, her eyes remained astonishingly bright.
"Su Yu, all the fragments after that are scattered flashbacks—I simply can't piece them together." She turned to look at Su Yu. "Our Honkai Impact 3rd main story outline—what do we do next? Are we going to hit writer's block?"
Su Yu closed the laptop screen.
"It's fine, we won't hit writer's block."
He stood up and walked over beside Kiana.
"The first-person perspective you've provided is already plenty. As for completing the plot afterward, I'll think of another way. Squad Monitor has quite a lot of precious material, Mr. Welt's brain holds the entire Anti-Entropy perspective, and on top of that..."
He deliberately paused.
"On top of that, the personal cooperation of the one inside your body. Perfectly completing the plot all the way to the grand climax at the end of the war with Schicksal—that's no difficult matter at all."
Kiana blinked those eyes, the ahoge on top of her head standing up into a question mark.
"You mean Sirin? Will she really cooperate with you to write the script?"
"She absolutely will." Su Yu's tone was as certain as if he were saying the Earth is round. "After all, that's also her own blood-and-tears history—she wants the players to know how despicable Otto is more than anyone."
Kiana tilted her head and thought about Sirin's contrary personality, and unexpectedly found that Su Yu made a lot of sense—completely irrefutable.
"Alright, wage-slave! The memory capacity you extracted today is already more than enough to serve as the launch update content for our game's open beta version. From the cozy daily life at St. Freya Academy, all the way to the tragic climax of the ME Corp breakout battle."
"Then the snowfield reunion and the truth revelation at Babylon Laboratory—a full six major chapters of main story, plus a whole pile of miscellaneous character side stories and worldview settings. Definitely enough to make those first-test players wail and howl on the forums and grind away for a good while."
"Today's high-intensity extraction ends here."
"As a reward for you, our number-one hero, for not crying in your memories—come on, let's head downstairs and eat something good to nourish your brain. Nuwa was frantically hyping yesterday that a genuine tonkotsu ramen shop just opened on the commercial street. Supposedly the broth is so rich it can knock the freshness right off your tongue."
Kiana didn't immediately jump up on the spot the way she usually did upon hearing "eat."
She sat quietly in the chair, took Su Yu's coat—which had served as a security blanket for half the day—off her lap, carefully folded it twice, and hugged it to her chest.
"Su Yu."
"Hm? What's wrong? Legs gone numb, can't walk, need me to carry you on my back?"
"No." Kiana looked up at him, her gaze earnest and clear. "Thank you... for being willing to sit here and keep me company the whole time while I finished telling all this rotten past."
"What are you talking about." Su Yu smiled. "I should be the one saying 'thank you' to you."
The two exchanged a glance and shared a knowing smile.
Everything was understood without words.
Kiana strode with light steps to the studio door, yanked it open, then suddenly turned her head back and cockily raised an eyebrow at Su Yu.
"By the way, just letting you know—for the tonkotsu ramen later, this young lady wants two—no, three soft-boiled eggs added! Plus an extra-large portion of fried chicken chunks!"
Su Yu picked up his phone and car keys from the desk and unhurriedly followed after her.
"Friendly reminder: the money for extra eggs and fried chicken is billed separately, deducted from your allowance."
"Hey! You're the Boss, aren't you? You take your employee out to eat and you make me pay? Do you have any humanity left?!"
"Precisely because I'm the Boss, I have to understand controlling unnecessary expenses all the more. Even a landlord's family has no surplus grain."
"Su Yu! Cheapskate! Iron rooster! I hope for the rest of your life your gacha pulls only ever hit the pity rate!!"
The bickering of the two drifted farther and farther down the long corridor, full of the vibrancy and warm human bustle befitting their age, until it finally vanished entirely in the "ding" of the elevator doors sliding shut.
In the empty CTO studio, all that remained was the top-tier desktop screen that hadn't yet gone to sleep, on which a data waveform graph slowly pulsed.
And on the desk, that glass cup, just refilled with warm water, still quietly giving off steam.
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