Top floor of the Arc City Tower, inside the game Director's Office.
The central air conditioning breathed out an even stream from its vents, and the sixteen-degree chill set the few pages of reports on the desk trembling.
Su Yu leaned back in his swivel chair. He had just finished monitoring a different livestream feed.
That hopelessly obscure little streamer, Sparks, had suffered a string of back-to-back gacha shipwrecks and come within a hair of performing an abstract piece of lighter-biting performance art live on camera. Entertainment value: maxed out.
He was reaching for the cap of his Iced Black Tea to wet his throat when the tablet on the right side of the desk - the one reserved for logging into miHoYo's official account - blared out an alert like an air-raid siren.
"Ding ding ding ding ding ding-"
The red notification counters piled up faster than the eye could track, rocketing from four digits into the hundreds of thousands, chewing through the tablet's memory until the screen visibly dropped frames.
Su Yu's fingers stopped on the bottle cap.
He set the Iced Black Tea back on the desk, swiped once across the tablet, and opened the unread message box.
[DM: Dog of a producer! Do you even have a heart? You don't have a heart!]
[Mentioned in your feed: Give me back my tears! You liar! You didn't just kill them, you killed my soul!]
[DM: I skipped my 8 AM to play in bed today, and now my roommate thinks I got dumped because I'm bawling like an idiot! miHoYo, clear my name!]
[Mentioned in your feed: Send me your address, I'm buying razor blades right now, shipping's on me!]
Exclamation marks filled the screen, all of them carrying the exact same grief and fury, like a pack of stray dogs whose bones had been stolen and who had then been kicked for good measure - all of them crawling up the network cable to bite him in his comment section.
Su Yu watched the venomous, deeply heartfelt greetings scroll past and raised an eyebrow.
He glanced at the clock. Nearly six in the evening.
Doing the math, the fastest of the frontrunner players had probably pushed the main story to somewhere around Chapter Seven by now.
Su Yu was in no hurry to soothe the players currently trying to climb through the network cable and eat him alive. Instead he moved the mouse and opened the official livestream room on the right-hand monitor - the one that had been pinned to the top of the entire site's homepage all day, wrapped in a halo of pink light.
The instant the feed loaded, Su Yu's breath stopped for half a second.
Before ten in the morning, the Elysia on that stream had been ethereal and radiant, delicately made up, wearing a smile that could melt a glacier. Now she was curled into her ergonomic chair with every scrap of that composure gone.
Both arms clamped around a pink HOMU-print cushion, she had buried the lower half of her face in the soft fabric.
Her normally silky pink hair lay tangled across her shoulders.
Worst of all were her eyes.
Those beautiful eyes, always glittering with mischief and life, were rimmed red as two overripe peaches.
Tears came down like beads off a snapped string, dropping without restraint along her cheeks, smearing the pale eyeshadow she had drawn so carefully at the corners into a ruin.
"Bad Su Yu..."
Elysia sniffled, her voice thick and stuffy - the sound only a girl whose heart had truly been broken, who had been wronged past all bearing, could make.
She lifted a hand and scrubbed messily at her face, hard enough that her fingertips left a red streak on her pale cheek.
"Big liar... it was all lies! You promised me it was a warm, sunny story-"
She faced the camera, chin propped on the HOMU cushion's ear, those wet eyes brimming with accusation.
"Miss Pink Elf... swears to be your sworn enemy from this day on! Waaah..."
The danmaku had lost all control. Dense text stacked into a thick wall that nearly buried Elysia's face entirely.
[Ellie, don't cry! My heart is in pieces!]
[Brothers, we're storming miHoYo HQ! Protect Elysia!]
[Dog of a planner Su Yu, come out and take your beating! Look what you've done to our goddess!]
[This game is poison! Sunny and healing, my foot - where's the sun, I'd like to ask?!]
Watching the little elf on screen weep like a rain-battered blossom, Su Yu leaned back and tapped his fingers lightly on the desk.
He knew the Emotional Engineering experiment he had personally designed had succeeded beyond all expectation.
But to understand how Elysia had gone, step by step, from a cheerful playgirl to a sobbing victim, we have to rewind to the moment the stream started.
Rewind to 10:15 AM.
Fifteen minutes into the open beta of Honkai Impact 3rd.
Elysia's official stream had already broken eighteen million concurrent viewers, and the danmaku refresh rate had hit the absolute ceiling of the platform's servers.
On this Monday morning, countless workers and students who couldn't log into the game themselves had made this room their only refuge.
It was nothing like Sparks' stream, where she hollered and picked fights in her rented apartment at maximum intensity.
Elysia's room ran on two things: peace and quiet, and watching a pretty girl.
Chapter One, "Girls of the Twilight Battleship," had only just begun.
On screen, Kiana - clad in the sleek, high-tech, youthful White Comet armor - finished a flowing combo atop a collapsed skyscraper, landing with a stylish side flip and twirling her dual pistols like blades.
Outside the screen, Elysia held a white controller, her eyes curved into two lovely crescents.
"Oh my, that outfit is really gorgeous."
She leaned forward slightly, closer to the display.
"Director Su has good taste after all." She tapped her chin lightly with an index finger. "A design that fuses that technological feel with a girl's particular energy - it really does grab the eye."
"And look at how she fights. Her moves are so fierce, but that tiny head-toss when she lands? Criminally cute."
The danmaku immediately rolled with [Ellie's right] and [Ellie, look at me, I'm cute too].
Soon the plot advanced and Raiden Mei made her entrance.
When the Yamato Nadeshiko with the long dark-purple hair and the tachi in her hand appeared on screen, Elysia's inputs visibly faltered.
In-game, Mei swung the tachi, the blade leaving a bitter afterimage in the air, purple lightning effects skipping along the edge.
She turned, and there was a faint melancholy in her eyes, along with the cool aloofness that belonged to the Lightning Queen.
"Wow..."
The sigh Elysia let out was completely sincere.
She set the controller down, cupped her cheeks in both hands, and let undisguised admiration shine in her eyes.
"This Miss Mei really strikes me right where it counts."
Her voice softened, taking on a resonance that turned bones to jelly.
"Strength wrapped inside gentleness, and inside all that coolness, just a little bit of fragility that makes you want to protect her... ah, and that serious look in her eyes when she swings the tachi. It really makes a person want to be-"
Before she could finish, a red System banner flashed across the top of the stream window.
[Super Admin Notice: Streamer, please mind your language. Refrain from excessively dangerous remarks. Yellow card issued: one.]
Elysia blinked.
She looked at the yellow card, and instead of reining herself in, she snorted with laughter.
She stuck her tongue out at the camera. "My my, the Super Admins are so strict these days. All I wanted to say was that I'd love for her to protect me with that blade. What exactly were you people expecting me to say?"
The danmaku filled instantly with [???] and [Yeah, sure, I totally believe you].
[Who was that swallowing halfway through the sentence?]
[Woman, thy name is playgirl!]
[She was praising Kiana's cuteness a minute ago, now she wants Mei to protect her?]
[Heh! I've seen through everything!]
A few minutes later, when the expressionless Bronya made her entrance seated on the mechanical arm of Project Bunny 19C, Elysia's true nature came out in full.
She looked at the deadpan little l0li on screen, with her spiral twintails and her flat, machine-like voice.
"Oh my, oh my!" Elysia squirmed in her chair with excitement. "This kind of icy little deadpan sister hardly ever smiles, right? And when you gather her up in your arms, that soft, cool feeling... it has to be wonderful! I'd love to pinch her cheeks and watch that exasperated, cross little face she'd make!"
That line detonated the gossip appetite of the entire room.
On the right side of the screen, the gift bar burst into a gorgeous firework, and a [Hyperion] effect swallowed half the display.
The attached Super Chat (SC) parked itself dead center: [Ellie, you're falling for a new girl at record speed! Confess honestly - who's your favorite out of the Trio?!]
Elysia looked at the SC, and her eyes rolled thoughtfully.
She picked up the teacup on her desk, took a shallow sip, and gave the camera a smile loaded with meaning.
"Dear Captain, your question is far too narrow."
She raised one slender index finger and waved it gently.
"My favorite is Kiana and Mei... standing together."
She watched the scene where Kiana threw herself in front of Mei to shield her, and her voice went soft. "What's between them, that Bond where they'd throw away everything for each other - it really is one of the most beautiful things in the world."
The danmaku started egging her on at once.
[Oh ho, she's shipping them outright!]
[So who's the top and who's the bottom?]
[Mei's the top for sure, her presence is way too strong.]
['Mei' even sounds like 'Mei-the-one' - she's the top, right?]
Elysia saw those lines, arched an eyebrow, and squared her shoulders with total confidence.
"What exactly are you all debating?" Her tone carried a pride that brooked no argument. "Whoever they are to each other, when it comes to me, Ellie is obviously the absolute top! Do you even need to ask?"
A wall of question marks swept the screen again.
Then a red premium comment floated up, its font conspicuously large:
[Ellie, you've already stolen away Kiana, who's based on the Little Junior Sister, and now you're eyeing other people too - what about Director Su Yu? He's your boss!]
Elysia didn't panic in the slightest.
She propped her chin on both hands, the corners of her eyes tilting up, smiling like a little fox.
"Oh my, isn't that simple?"
She leaned close to the microphone and dropped her voice to the breathy whisper two people use when sharing a secret.
"Then we just tie up bad Su Yu along with everyone else and haul them all back to my Hyperion. We're family, and what matters most for family is that nobody gets left out - that's what you call a perfect monogamous marriage, isn't it?"
In that instant the stream's speedometer hit two hundred miles an hour, and the pink Frenzied Flame flooding the screen nearly burned straight through the servers.
[What the hell! Is that how monogamy works?!]
[I have never in my life heard such a shamelessly confident player-girl statement!]
[Director Su, run! This woman is a black hole!]
[Coach, I want to work at miHoYo too! I don't need a salary, just include the tying-up!]
[I need to use [Position Swap] with Director Su immediately!]
[Su Yu: Do... do I have to be the bottom too? Elysia: Yes.]
Seeing the stream barreling toward territory that couldn't be described in polite company, Elysia caught the backstage moderation panel flashing red out of the corner of her eye once again.
She coughed twice, packed away that dangerous allure with impressive speed, and sat up straight.
"All right, all right, no more teasing. We're going to focus on the story now."
She picked up the controller and started clearing stages with a properly serious tone.
"You should know that Director Su Yu thumped his chest and gave me his personal guarantee."
While steering Kiana through a branching attack combo on screen, she winked at the camera.
"He said this game tells a very, very healthy and sunny story, full of love and justice!"
"Absolutely nothing dark, nothing that would make anyone sad."
The smile on Elysia's face was as pure as spring sunlight.
"So let's put aside all those strange ideas and enjoy this bright, healing game together!"
As the story rolled on, the mood in the stream settled into cheerful, easy warmth.
Chapter One, "Girls of the Twilight Battleship," played out like a well-produced, straight-down-the-middle shounen anime.
Elysia's play was elegant and smooth, clearing stage after stage with genuinely watchable technique.
When Kiana shouted her line in the story - "Having Mei here is worth a hundred people!" - Elysia sighed with feeling on the other side of the screen, nodding again and again, saying, "This is the purest kind of trust between girls."
When the Lightning Queen's persona briefly awakened and swept the battlefield with that look of contempt for all living things, she even leaned in and breathed a "so cool" from her chair.
The Trio's everyday bickering aboard the Hyperion had the audience laughing until they couldn't close their mouths.
"Look at them," Elysia said, pointing at Kiana and Bronya squabbling on screen. "Strip away the Valkyrie titles and they're just a bunch of carefree schoolgirls."
Chapter One's ending did make her sweat a little, when Bronya briefly turned dark under the control of her chip - but seeing the squad pull together, defuse the crisis, and reconcile in a fully happy ending, Elysia let out a long breath of relief.
"Chapter One was really wonderful. Building everyone's Bonds this deep right at the start - the rest of it has to be about protecting those Bonds and beating the big villain together, right?"
Elysia's review was thoroughly positive.
Then the story moved into Chapter Two: The Voice in the Dream.
For this chapter, Su Yu had smuggled in a great deal of personal material during development - extra scenes built on all the "everyday life" settings he happened to know about.
The scene cut to the residential district of St. Freya Academy.
The game showed a genuine academy morning.
Kiana sprawled spread-eagle in her blankets, drool at the corner of her mouth, her alarm clock knocked into the wall by a single swat.
In the end it took Mei in an apron, carrying a plate of steaming omelette rolls, coaxing her out of bed with that gentle voice.
The camera swung around to Bronya's room.
The clock on the screen read three in the morning, and the girl with the ID [Metal Gear Bronya Fang] sat there with headphones on, face blank, slaughtering everything in sight in-game.
The next morning she drifted down the hallway on too little sleep, and Mei confiscated her controller without mercy, leaving her standing there in pieces.
"Oh my, so Bronya really is a hardcore gaming addict." Elysia laughed until she shook. "The way she bowed her head over that controller - I just want to hug her."
Then came Academy Director Theresa's office.
To play up the height-difference charm, Su Yu had specifically produced a CG of Theresa holding a briefing for the Valkyries.
On screen, Theresa stood at the head of the long table, hands clasped behind her back, laying out tactics with a stern face.
Then the camera panned down - and under her feet were two copies of Introduction to Honkai History, each thicker than a Xinhua Dictionary, wobbling badly. She nearly toppled several times and had to grip the table edge to keep up her composed front.
On top of that, the unfinished HOMU's Great Adventure manga stashed in her drawer, and the crate of bitter melon juice hidden under the desk, were all laid out for the world to see.
The funniest of all, though, was Fu Hua.
This Squad Monitor, established as unfailingly serious, was caught in a hidden quest secretly grinding the Abyss in her dorm - and thanks to her cursed luck, she'd hit the pity counter over and over, her face dark as the bottom of a pot.
With no other options, she finally dragged Kiana into her room and had her pull instead.
Kiana clicked the mouse at random.
Golden light flashed.
One pull, straight to the soul.
The CG froze on Fu Hua holding up the phone, bathed in the radiance of Kiana's absurd luck, two silent lines of bitter tears running down her face.
These slice-of-life, faintly reputation-destroying comedy beats set off a tsunami in the stream.
Countless workers and students, on this Monday morning, looked at the vivid girls on their screens and roared with laughter.
[HAHAHAHA Theresa's book platform is way too real!]
[Squad Monitor Fu Hua's unlucky tears are literally a documentary about me!]
[This everyday stuff is so good, I love watching them bicker.]
[A whole day's worth of office grind and 8 AM wake-up rage, all healed by these girls.]
The danmaku flew past, all of it praising miHoYo for understanding daily life and understanding people.
Elysia laughed herself silly in her chair too, picking up a wet wipe to dab at the corners of her eyes.
She adjusted her posture and said earnestly to the camera, "Captains, do you all believe me now?"
She pointed at the screen, where Kiana was clinging to Mei's arm and wheedling.
"Dear Su Yu didn't lie to me! This really, truly is a story about girls' everyday lives, full of sunshine and healing! Seeing them laugh this happily makes my own heart feel warm."
Backstage, Su Yu watched all of this, watched that flag get planted so high it pierced the clouds, and sighed quietly to himself.
It was rather like feeding a condemned prisoner one last hearty meal.
The better that meal tasted, the crueler the blade that came after.
Su Yu, you really are a man steeped in sin.
He held himself in contempt for exactly one moment, then went right back to watching the data panel without a trace of guilt.
Nothing to be done. This is what it's like when you've been made a Captain-in-crime by decree.
But in the back half of Chapter Two, the mood of the story shifted a little.
After the Valkyrie Rank Assessment arc arrived, Kiana - stuck in remedial lessons - was pulled into a dream.
There she learned that her mother had been an S-rank Valkyrie of Schicksal: Cecilia.
The normally rowdy, careless Kiana showed a rare fragility.
And under the relentless pressure of that voice in the dream, Kiana came to understand her own past, piece by piece.
The stream fell quiet along with her.
Elysia put away her earlier carefree grin, and her gaze turned uncharacteristically gentle and serious.
Her fingers tightened slightly on the controller as she watched Kiana on screen, and she said softly, "So the girl who always laughs the loudest is hiding loneliness this deep inside..."
Though the story had taken on a heavier undertone, after all the lighthearted daily-life comedy that came before, Elysia and her millions of viewers alike read it as the standard shounen development where the protagonist shoulders her pain and keeps walking forward.
Gravity at that level was still well within everyone's tolerance.
Then, near the end of Chapter Two, Rita's entrance pushed the stream's heat to a brand-new peak.
When that elegant character appeared on screen in an impeccable, instantly iconic maid outfit, scythe in hand, and bowed to the main cast with etiquette so flawless it left no seam to pry at, the danmaku went through another baptism by beauty.
Watching Rita arrive, Elysia found that the gossip-loving soul of a Golden Courtyard insider could no longer be restrained.
She rested the controller on her lap, leaned toward the microphone, and adopted the conspiratorial tone she reserved for leaks. "Captains, let me tell you a big secret."
The danmaku slowed to a crawl as everyone waited.
"This perfect maid Rita you're seeing in the game..." Elysia blinked. "In real life, she's miHoYo Entertainment Studio's private housekeeper."
The danmaku went silent for one second, then exploded.
[What the hell! She's real?!]
[I thought her animations were way too fluid to be made up from scratch.]
[Coach! I want to work at miHoYo! No salary needed, just let me sweep floors for Rita!]
Elysia surveyed the reaction with satisfaction and kept stacking bricks on the fire.
"Not only are her skills incredible, her cooking is world-class too!"
"The black tea she brews, and the little pastries she makes by hand - honestly world-class delicious. If I ever get the chance, I'll sneak a stream on so you can all see her bustling around the kitchen in her apron."
Just as everyone was going wild cheering for the "real-life maid," a conspicuous line of large red text drifted through the danmaku.
ID: [Leeuwenhoek·Benke]
[Hold on! Everybody! I've found the blind spot!]
The comment was long enough that it took two posts to finish.
[Think about it! Kiana's model is that white-haired Little Junior Sister God Su brought on stream before! And isn't Theresa's model magical girl teriri?! And that drunkard teacher in the game, Murata Himeko... let me quietly tell you something, I'm a student at St. Freya Comprehensive University, and my professor Himeko looks exactly like her!]
[Every core character in this game has a real-life model! Did God Su just put every famous person he knows into the game?!]
That deduction struck like lightning, splitting open the blind spot in a million viewers' minds.
The danmaku drowned instantly in [holy crap] and [he's really built an empire].
[Damn, this isn't making a game! This is building the producer's own cyber harem!]
[Putting that many real-life big shots into a game - how much are the licensing fees?]
[Are you stupid, guy above? Haven't you heard who Su Yu's angel investor is? The world's richest woman, Eden! Licensing fees mean nothing!]
Following that thread, the tone of the danmaku swerved in a fanatical direction.
Countless comments began flooding the screen, all asking the same question:
[If they're all based on real people... then what about Ellie?!]
[Right! Elysia's this gorgeous, is she going into the game too?!]
[And Goddess Eden! Besides doing the music, will she be made into a character?! I'll roll until I break the bank!]
Faced with the fevered anticipation practically overflowing the screen, Elysia smiled.
This was the sanctioned leak segment Su Yu had briefed her on before the stream went live.
She didn't answer right away. Instead she leaned elegantly back in her chair, winding a strand of pink hair around one slender finger.
"My my, your minds work fast."
She faced the camera and delivered the answer that would set off a tsunami.
"Well, since you've all guessed it, I suppose I can reveal just a tiny bit - dear Su Yu did sign a special contract with me."
She dropped her voice, her tone pure temptation.
"In a certain major update down the road... Miss Pink Elf, and dear Eden as well... will both formally join the game as S-rank characters."
The line landed like a deep-sea nuke, blowing the entire internet's traffic pool wide open.
For a moment the danmaku actually froze for half a second.
[AAAAAAAAAH!]
[I'm dead! I have died on the spot!]
[For Eden! For Ellie! Su Yu, open the banner! I want to spend money right now!]
[Brothers, stop watching! Go download it! Clear the main story and save up crystals first!]
On the backstage monitoring panel, Su Yu watched that single sentence drag the Honkai Impact 3rd download curve - already sitting at a high peak - into another steep vertical climb.
Countless players who had been hesitating over hardware or simply waiting to see hit download without a second thought, all so they could one day meet Elysia and Eden inside the game.
That was the lethality of a top-tier idol.
That was real commercial machinery at work.
Backstage, Su Yu quietly gave Elysia a thumbs-up.
Amid the celebration of "Long live God Su" and "miHoYo is heaven," the stream's atmosphere reached the peak of boiling oil poured on a raging fire.
Elysia was in a fantastic mood too.
Looking at the wall of praise and at the character she was steering through the game, she thought this had to be the most wonderful job in the world.
Not only did she get to play something this fun and this warm, she got to pass that joy on to several million people.
"All right, Captains, let's save the excitement for later."
She picked up the controller, pressed back, and exited the Chapter Two results screen.
The cursor moved across the main menu and hovered over the large, still-locked icon for Chapter Three.
In that moment, over two million pairs of eyes in the stream were all fixed on that icon.
[Chapter Three: Poem of the Wind]
Elysia propped her chin on both hands, her eyes shining with the purest anticipation for an unknown adventure.
"Our Hyperion's next stop is New Zealand."
She read the chapter summary on screen, her voice as gentle as a spring breeze, without the faintest trace of guard.
"The summary says the Fourth Herrscher Core - the Gem of Desire - is in New Zealand. And there's a little girl there named Wendy."
She looked at the figure in the wheelchair on the cover art with genuine sympathy.
"Poor thing. It says she once had a real chance of becoming the next S-rank Valkyrie, but some accident took the feeling from her legs. It's all right, though..."
Elysia gave the camera a brilliant, unclouded smile, a smile full of absolute faith that fairy tales must end happily.
"With Kiana and Mei there, they'll definitely be able to help her. I wonder what fun, warm things Kiana and the others will run into in New Zealand?"
She tightened her grip on the controller.
"I can't wait! Everyone, let's set out together!"
Her fingertip pressed down.
The mouse gave a soft click.
The screen cut to the Chapter Three loading page.
And in that moment.
Inside the game Director's Office, Su Yu looked at the Elysia on his screen - brimming with anticipation, smiling like an elf who knew nothing of the world.
He slowly closed his eyes.
He knew that the cup of poison, coated in the sweetest slice-of-life sugar, had finally been drained to the bottom by these utterly defenseless people.
What came next, every player who had gone through the original Honkai Impact 3rd already knew.
What waited for Elysia, what waited for those millions of players, was not some fun, warm trip to New Zealand.
It was human betrayal.
It was Cocolia's conspiracy.
It was the agony of Wendy having her core torn out of her in despair - the girl who longed to fly, dying at last in a freezing laboratory like a bird with broken wings.
Every bit of setup, every bit of laughter, every promise about "sunshine and healing" would take its plunge in this chapter.
If The Queen's Descent marked the beginning of Honkai Impact 3rd's narrative summit, then Poem of the Wind, Betrayal Is a Silver Smile, and afterward Reunion in the Snowfield and Prisoner of Babylon-
Those were where the whole tragedy of Honkai Impact 3rd began.
And right now, Elysia laughing as brightly as a flower in her stream, along with every oblivious viewer watching her, had no idea at all that they had already fallen into a trap carefully prepared by a certain unscrupulous producer.
Want to run? Ha.
Too late.
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