Three hundred meters south down the shopping street sat a coffee house called "Laurel Crown."
The decor leaned European, and the private rooms were soundproofed well enough to spin records in.
More importantly, this shop's VIP room had two exits, so if some fresh ethical brawl broke out in a bit, escape would be easy.
When Su Yu picked this place, that was the only criterion running through his head.
Two forty in the afternoon.
Second-floor private room.
Four people sat down around a round table.
The seating arrangement was interesting.
Siegfried sat at the twelve o'clock position, facing the door.
Kiana sat at three o'clock, with Su Yu pressed right beside her at four o'clock.
Theresa sat at nine o'clock, the farthest from Siegfried.
But her eyes never left him.
That kind of stare, Su Yu had seen in nature documentaries.
It was the exact look a lioness gave a hyena that had wandered into her territory.
Siegfried was staring at someone too.
He was staring at Su Yu.
To be precise, this doting old father was using a nuclear-grade benevolent gaze that said "I still haven't fully ruled out the possibility that you're my son's bride" to scrutinize every tiny movement Su Yu made, from every angle, no blind spots.
Su Yu lifted his coffee cup and took a sip, and Siegfried's brow knotted into a dead tangle.
Su Yu set the cup down, and Siegfried's brow eased open by maybe two millimeters.
Right now Su Yu felt like this caramel macchiato tasted of crimson-crowned crane poison.
Were the Kaslanas top-tier idiots in every single world?
The moment he thought about three Kaslanas sitting here at once, with even a fourth Kaslana about to show up for what would be a full Kaslana congress, Su Yu felt like he was suffocating.
It was exactly like being a lone wolf that had wandered into a pack of Huskies!
Meanwhile Kiana sat stiff in her chair, both hands clamped hard between her knees, as if she meant to bore a hole through the sugar bowl on the table with sheer glaring.
Su Yu snuck a covert glance at her from the corner of his eye.
He knew perfectly well that the tears at the corners of her eyes back on the street, when Kiana had knocked over her chair, charged over, grabbed Siegfried by the collar and shouted "Stinky Dad," absolutely had not been an act.
In Kiana's fragmented memories, Siegfried was that unreliable old man who was never home all year round and couldn't even remember the passcode to his own battleship.
But at the same time, he was also family who mattered to Kiana.
So when, in this strange alien world, she suddenly saw a face that was identical, right down to the exact placement of the stubble, her body's instinct had simply overtaken her not-so-bright brain.
But now she had to swallow that nuke she'd hurled with her own hands back down her own throat. She had to pretend it had all been some brain-dead case of "mistaken identity."
Su Yu reached his hand across under the table and gently touched the back of Kiana's hand.
Kiana's fingers twitched, but she didn't pull away.
The door to the room was pushed open.
When Kevin walked in, the perceived temperature in the room dropped two degrees.
This absolutely was not some figure of speech, but the freeze-you-to-death final-boss villain aura he carried on him.
But nobody would think of him as careless or casual.
Because of his eyes.
Those eyes were pale blue, identical to Kiana's left eye.
But Kiana's eyes held light, warmth, emotion.
Kevin's eyes held nothing at all.
Clean.
Clean enough to make your skin crawl.
The first second Siegfried saw his factory-original, genuine-article son appear, his whole body launched off the chair like a frog hit with a jolt of electricity!
His gaze started ping-ponging manically back and forth between Kevin on the left and Kiana on the right, a full three times!
Two living, separately existing people.
Siegfried's mouth hung open, and the stubble on his chin quivered twice.
"You…" he said, trembling, pointing at the expressionless Kevin, "you didn't… go…"
Kevin casually pulled out the chair beside Siegfried and sat, picking up the single-page menu from the table and flipping it over.
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't go do… that… the… fore… ver…"
"Speak like a human."
Siegfried swallowed hard, his Adam's apple rolling up and down. "You… you're still, right now, a man?"
Kevin set down the menu and gave his old man one look.
The sheer volume of information packed into that one look could've been written up as an eight-hundred-word argumentative essay.
It roughly covered three rich layers of meaning: "did a Honkai Beast kick your brain," "why on earth did I inherit genes from you," and "is there still time for me to stand up right now, walk out, and sever our father-son relationship."
"I have always been a man. Pure."
Kevin's face stayed blank.
"I have never undergone any surgery that violates human physiology. My legitimate girlfriend is named Mei. She is female, black hair, currently doing research at a top university. She is not—"
Kevin's emotionless gaze slid precisely over to Su Yu and rested there for half a second, like Death staring you down.
"She is not him. His name is Su Yu. He is my friend, and also my boss. And—I do not harbor that sort of worldly desire toward him."
Su Yu raised both hands to show his innocence.
Siegfried dropped heavily back into his chair.
The chair legs scraped out a dull thud against the floor.
He covered his face with both hands and let out a long, relieved sigh through the gaps in his fingers.
"Thank goodness… thank goodness… ancestors be praised… the Kaslana family won't die out after all…"
Siegfried's celebration lasted about eight seconds.
"Smack!"
Theresa slammed a savage palm down on the tabletop.
The solid wood round table shuddered violently, the surface of Su Yu's caramel macchiato sloshing wildly, a few drops of brown liquid splashing innocently onto the snow-white tablecloth.
"Siegfried."
Theresa's voice dropped extremely low, but every breath in the room froze in an instant.
"Since Kevin didn't go get that damn surgery."
Her slender finger rose slowly off the tabletop, like the scythe of Death, and pointed straight at Kiana, who was frantically trying to lower her presence beside her.
"Then I have some serious questions for you! This girl—who exactly is she?! Just now on the street, why was she sobbing her heart out, grabbing your collar and calling you Dad?!"
"Fwip—!" The single drooping ahoge on top of Kiana's head shot bolt upright in an instant, as if it had been hit with high-voltage current!
Under the table, Su Yu kicked Kiana hard in the shin.
The meaning was clear: Shut up! Play dead! Let me, the scriptwriter, spin the story!
But what Su Yu never expected was that the Paramecium's mouth was way faster than his foot.
"Th-that…"
Her eyes started darting everywhere.
She looked at the ceiling, looked at the oil painting on the wall, looked at the sugar bowl on the table, anywhere but at Theresa.
"Actually… it's because my own dad is also a decrepit middle-aged guy with a head of messy white hair, stubble he never fully shaves off his chin, and terrible taste in clothes…"
Siegfried looked down at his own jacket.
"Just now I only caught a view of his back… plus I really hadn't seen him in ages, my brain cramped up for a second, and I… I accidentally mistook him for someone else."
Kiana's voice got smaller and smaller as she went, until by the end it was barely a mosquito's whine.
A dead silence fell over the room, lasting a full two seconds.
Su Yu covered his face and, in despair, mentally graded this garbage excuse.
If ten was a perfect score, this excuse probably earned negative three hundred and eighty.
This thing had so many holes you could use it to launch a super aircraft carrier! First off, when you charged over just now, you were face to face, staring right at Siegfried's old mug while yanking his collar! Where's this "only saw his back" nonsense coming from?!
Second, you were grabbing the man's collar and bawling your eyes out for a solid thirty seconds, lady!
Can one "my brain cramped" explain that kind of emotional detonation?!
Third, "terrible taste in clothes" may be spot-on, but using that as the basis for a biological father-daughter identification is way too absurd, isn't it?!
Su Yu drew a deep breath, his brain whirring at full speed, and had already prepared three airtight PR damage-control plans, ready to forcibly patch the logic back together.
But before Su Yu could even open his mouth—
"Smack!"
Siegfried slapped his own thigh hard!
"Well hell, why didn't you say so! So it was mistaking me from the back, huh?!!!"
The three PR plans in Su Yu's head were instantly blown to smithereens by that roar.
Siegfried burst out into big, carefree, brainless laughter, laughing so hard even the chair he sat on rocked wildly.
"Scared me half to death! I was just thinking, how could two people who look exactly alike possibly appear out of thin air in this world! So it was a mix-up! Hahahaha! What a mess this whole mix-up turned out to be!"
"Kid! Your dad's got white hair too? Now that's real fate! Some day when you get the chance, call your old man out and we'll grab a drink and get acquainted. Go back three generations and maybe we're even distant relatives!"
Su Yu lifted his coffee cup and hid half his face behind it.
He needed a moment to laboriously digest the absurd objective fact that "a single-celled organism like Siegfried actually bought this load of nonsense."
Kevin sat beside them, his gaze sweeping over Kiana, then drawing back.
He said nothing.
"Ahem… I'm really sorry, Kiana kiddo."
Once Siegfried had laughed his fill, his tone made a sudden one-eighty.
From the loud fussing of a moment ago, it switched eerily into a gentle old-father voice that gave everyone goosebumps.
"It was me, the adult, who got it wrong. Reacting that big on the street just now, I must've scared you too, huh."
He rubbed his hands together, his old face flushing slightly, actually looking a little embarrassed.
"Let me properly reintroduce myself! I'm Siegfried, the dad of this breathing ice sculpture next to me."
He jerked his thumb at the expressionless Kevin beside him with distaste.
"Since we could run into each other in a place as huge as Arc City, that's fate on a grand scale! From now on, if there's anything here you can't sort out, just holler. Whatever Uncle can help with, he definitely will!"
Siegfried looked at Kiana, and the more he looked, the more agreeable she seemed.
White hair, blue eyes, cheeks puffed out round when she ate—she was cast from the exact same mold as Kevin as a kid, absolutely adorable!
"I find you so agreeable, kiddo, why don't you… just take me on as a godfather! That way I can treat you to a good meal now and then!"
Kiana's fingers tightened on her knees.
She kept her head down, her bangs covering half her face.
"…Thank you, Uncle Siegfried."
Her voice was very soft.
Under the table, Su Yu touched the back of her hand again.
This time Kiana's fingers hooked around his, squeezed once, then let go.
"Aiya, listen to the fuss I've made, so sorry, interrupting your date with your boyfriend—"
That one thoughtless line from Siegfried nearly made Kiana's eyeballs pop right out of her head.
"Cough, cough, cough—"
"Stink—no, Uncle Siegfried, wh-what are you talking about?"
Siegfried, a bit puzzled, glanced at Su Yu coughing away from being choked on coffee, then glanced at Kiana, whose face had gone red as an apple.
Tsk tsk, young people, that sour-sweet reek of love, ahh~
Kiana ducked her head, her face flushed so red it looked ready to drip.
Is that so? In this world's stinky dad's eyes, she and Su Yu were actually a boyfriend-girlfriend thing?!
Well hell, why didn't you say so! Here I was going on about Mei this, Mei that—turns out that from the very moment this guy mistook me for Kevin, he'd already pegged Su Yu as my other half!
Didn't this count as meeting the family in another sense?
But this same scene, falling into Theresa's stern eyes, painted an entirely different picture.
Theresa sat across the table, not having touched a single sip of her coffee.
Her hands rested on the tabletop, all ten fingers interlaced and clasped together.
She was watching Kiana.
Watching Kiana's lowered head.
Watching Kiana's tightened fingers.
Watching that barely perceptible pause when Kiana said "Thank you, Uncle Siegfried."
Theresa clenched her teeth together.
Lies!
This child is lying!
She clearly recognized her own biological father at a single glance! That heart-rending cry of "Stinky Dad" on the street just now—there was no way in hell a case of mistaken identity could produce something like that—
How many years of grievance, how many days and nights of longing, how much abandoned-child despair were packed into it!
And yet… she forced herself to hold it all in!
To keep that scumbag Siegfried from being disgraced in front of Kevin, his legitimate son, to give this bastard father who abandoned her a flawless way to save face…
This foolish child forced every drop of blood and tears and grievance back down into her stomach and made up a clumsy excuse that couldn't fool even a three-year-old!
And you, Siegfried! You worse-than-a-beast old scum!
Not only did you shamelessly take the easy way out and play dumb, you even had the nerve to talk about "taking her on as a goddaughter"?!
You're literally her real father! Saying that line right now is like taking a rusty saw and dragging it straight through this child's heart!!!
Right now there was only one crazed thought in Theresa's head: flip the table! Smash this whole room, along with that scumbag Siegfried, into mincemeat! Slam the bloody truth hard into this blind man's face!
But…
Theresa remembered Bronie's warning that afternoon.
"Theresa! If you expose it to her face, with a personality as tsundere and Impair as Kiana's, she might flee reality on the spot to protect the last shred of her pride and vanish from this world entirely!"
"You have to get incontestable, ironclad proof first, and then go find her in private and talk to her gently!"
Theresa shut her eyes in anguish and drew a big breath of coffee-bitter air.
Ironclad proof.
Right… I need ironclad proof!
Siegfried, you just wait!
Now is the perfect moment to get that ironclad proof!
Theresa hopped down from her chair.
"Sieg. Fried."
True, her one-meter-forty-something legal-loli height meant the move carried zero mob-boss menace and looked more like she was trying to act cute.
But the terrifying I'm-going-to-kill-you expression on her face perfectly made up for the lack of stature.
"You lecherous old pervert!"
The kindly smile Siegfried had just piled onto his face froze there in an instant.
"The poor girl was already embarrassed and hurt enough over the mix-up, and you, you old bachelor, are still climbing up the pole here, trying to take advantage of her and become her godfather?! Go home and look in a mirror at that old mug of yours—how thick is your face?!"
Halfway through her rant, Theresa suddenly lunged.
The move was absurdly fast.
Her right hand precisely seized a tuft of white hair at the back of Siegfried's skull, five fingers tightening, and yanked with a sharp jerk.
"Ssss—son of a bitch!!!"
Siegfried let out a shrill scream.
"What are you doing, you little shorty! Have you lost your mind?!!"
"Executing heaven's justice! Teaching you a lesson, you old lech!"
Under cover of her furious roar, Theresa's left hand had already, in the blind spot behind Siegfried's field of view, completed a delicate bit of microwork with the terrifying hand speed of someone single for decades—
Three white hairs, discreetly tucked into the deep, hidden-snap pocket of her pleated skirt!
The whole sequence was fluid and seamless, one continuous motion, from the sudden assault to the withdrawal, the entire process absolutely no more than one and a half seconds!
She let go, stepped back twice, and dusted off her palms.
"Hmph! Utterly shameless!"
Siegfried rubbed the back of his head, grimacing and baring his teeth in pain.
"Little shorty, you're way too heavy-handed! You pulled out a whole bunch of mine!"
Theresa gave a haughty cold snort and snatched up the high-end brand-name handbag from the table.
"I can't be bothered to share the same space as you pack of stinking men with heads full of garbage. You're polluting the very air! This Academy Director has an announcement to attend, so I'll take my leave first!"
She stomped in a huff over to the door of the room, her hand on the brass handle.
Then, all at once, she turned her head and shot a complicated look at Kiana, who was still sitting in her seat.
Kiana was just lifting her head, staring back at her in bewilderment.
For a brief moment, their eyes met in midair.
Theresa's lips moved faintly, as if she wanted to say, "Don't be afraid, child, Auntie's coming to save you soon."
But in the end, she restrained herself to a single "tsk," turned, and walked briskly out.
With a "bang," the door slammed shut behind her.
The room went quiet for three seconds.
Su Yu was the first to break the silence.
If not now, when?!
"Ah! Um… Uncle Siegfried, Kevin! I'm so terribly sorry!" Su Yu jolted to his feet and theatrically whipped out his phone, glancing at its black screen. "Our miHoYo studio servers just sent a severe red alert. Looks like the top-up system's had some deadly technical glitch! I need to rush back and handle it—every second late is hundreds of millions in losses!"
He stood up and tugged at Kiana's sleeve.
Kiana was busy stuffing the third slice of tiramisu on the table into her mouth, still mulling over Siegfried's line about "you two lovebirds" and feeling all sweet and gooey inside.
"Let's go! We're heading back!"
And there was Su Yu, about to drag her off in a getaway.
"Mmf mmf! Wait a sec! This lady hasn't swallowed this bite yet—"
"Pack it up! Eat it back at the company!"
Su Yu wrapped up the remaining two slices of tiramisu, shoved them into Kiana's hands, then pulled her toward the door.
"Uncle Siegfried! Thanks for the coffee today! When I've got time some other day I'll treat you to a meal! Kevin, your dad's all yours! Farewell!"
Kiana's mouth was crammed full, yet she still didn't forget to turn and wave at Siegfried and Kevin as, just like that, Su Yu hauled her off in a hurried escape from this hotbed of trouble.
Only two people were left in the room.
Siegfried and Kevin.
A prize pair of father and son.
The air-conditioning vent blew straight at the back of Siegfried's head, and the spot Theresa had yanked felt chilly and raw.
The coffee on the table had gone stone-cold, a film of water beads condensing on the outside of the cup.
The crumbs of Kiana's half-eaten tiramisu were scattered around the edge of the plate, the fork left resting crookedly across the dish.
Siegfried lifted his coffee and took a sip.
Cold.
He set the cup down and looked at his son across from him.
"Ah, haha, little Kiana and Su Yu really get along well, don't they."
"Mm."
Then came a stretch of silence.
Kevin sat there, in the exact same posture as five minutes ago.
Back ramrod straight, both hands on the tabletop, fingers interlaced.
No expression on his face.
Siegfried rubbed his hands.
"Ahem… so, uh, Kevin."
Kevin looked at him.
"You're working under this Boss Su—what did he say you were again… CEO?"
"CEO."
"Oh, CEO." Siegfried nodded. "Does it come with the full benefits package?"
Kevin didn't answer the question.
He glanced at the tiramisu crumbs Kiana had left on the table.
"If you really had taken that glutton on as a goddaughter just now, my salary probably wouldn't be enough to feed her."
Siegfried blanked for a beat.
"You brat… out there a few years and since when did you learn to tell this kind of deadpan joke?"
Kevin didn't pick up the thread.
He picked up the menu, flipped to the dessert page, looked at it for two seconds, then closed it again.
"How long are you staying in Arc City this time?"
Siegfried spun his finger once around the rim of the coffee cup.
"Not sure. Might stick around a while."
"Where are you staying?"
"Haven't decided. I'll just find a hotel to make do for a few days."
Kevin stood up.
"Let's go."
Siegfried looked up at him.
"I'll introduce you to a hotel. You don't know your way around here, don't let anyone rip you off."
Having said that, Kevin gave Siegfried no room at all to refuse or be moved, and strode straight for the door of the room.
Siegfried sat in his chair, staring blankly at his son's back.
A big guy, one meter ninety.
Broad, dependable shoulders.
When he walked he stepped forward in big strides, never wavering, never looking back.
That prickly temper… was exactly like his own when he was young.
Siegfried abruptly grabbed that cup of stone-cold coffee and drained it in one heroic gulp.
Then he snatched up the old jacket beside him, hefted that heavy black suitcase, and strode after him in big steps.
The instant he walked out of the room, Siegfried's hand reached out on reflex.
He wanted to give Kevin's broad shoulder an affectionate pat, just like the old days.
But his hand rose halfway into the air and stopped there, stiff.
Then, awkwardly, he drew his hand back and shoved it deep into the pocket of his worn leather jacket.
And just like that, in silence, he followed behind that son who had already grown taller than him, walking together into the harsh afternoon sunlight of Arc City.
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