Faced with Miss Pink Elf's all-out flirtatious barrage, Su Yu didn't immediately fire back with his usual teasing.
He simply set down the branch in his hand, very calmly.
"Ellie."
Su Yu's gaze didn't turn to her. He kept staring at the fire in front of them.
"We don't have much fuel left."
His voice was flat, without a trace of emotion.
"Those dried palm fibers burned too fast, and the dead branches we picked up on the way are almost gone too."
Su Yu pointed at the shrinking flames before them.
The orange fire had shrunk to half its original height, and the heat it gave off was visibly fading.
"At this rate," Su Yu concluded, "it probably won't last past midnight."
The temperature in the cave was definitely dropping.
The violent tropical storm outside showed no sign of letting up—if anything, it was getting worse.
Cold rain seeped in through the cracks in the rock walls, chilling the already damp air until it settled deep in the bones.
Elysia watched the shrinking fire.
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
Even next to the fire, she could feel that damp, bone-deep chill creeping up through the moisture mat.
"So..." Elysia's voice grew small. "What do we do?"
Su Yu said nothing.
He glanced at Elysia, whose lips had already begun to turn faintly pale.
This thin blanket, normally used for office naps, might have been fine in an air-conditioned room.
But in a cave on a deserted island, with the temperature plummeting and humidity soaring, it was nowhere near enough to hold back the cold.
As for him.
With the dual boost of the second-stage Genetic Lock and Tai Xu Sword Qi, this body's cold resistance had long surpassed the limits of an ordinary human.
Never mind going shirtless in weather like this—he could spend a whole night in ten-below snow and ice and still not die.
"It's fine."
Su Yu looked away.
"You keep the blanket."
He leaned back, putting more distance between himself and the fire, giving more of the warmth to her side.
"I'm not cold."
To Su Yu, this was the most rational conclusion, based on basic physics and physical conditioning.
But to Elysia, wrapped in her blanket,
it sounded like the words of a complete and utter idiot.
Elysia stared at the bare-chested man across from her, who genuinely seemed to feel nothing.
She was so angry she almost threw the blanket at him.
This blockhead! Was he really that dense, or just pretending?
No matter how tough his body was, sitting in a cave wearing nothing at all—did he really think he was Superman?
"Hey."
Elysia poked her head out from under the blanket, her cheeks burning red, whether from anger or something else she couldn't say.
"Director Su."
She gritted her teeth.
"Don't you know that pushing yourself too hard alone is just going to cause trouble for your partner in the competition ahead?"
Elysia glared at him.
"Since we're partners now, the least you could do in this cave is trust me a little, don't you think?"
She could feel her cheeks burning alarmingly hot, and her breathing had grown a little unsteady.
In this enclosed space, the faint firelight cast flickering shadows across Su Yu's bare chest, giving her nowhere safe to look.
"And besides..."
Elysia's voice suddenly weakened, the words practically squeezed out of her throat.
"At a time like this, does a girl really have to be the one to invite you over herself..."
She buried her head in the blanket, only her eyes peeking out.
"...before you'll finally come closer?"
Su Yu sat there.
His hand, halfway to adding the last piece of bark to the fire, froze completely.
He lifted his head and looked at the girl across from him, wrapped up like a silkworm cocoon.
"What?"
Su Yu blinked, momentarily stunned.
He even wondered if the rain outside was loud enough that he'd misheard her.
Seeing his blank, short-circuited expression,
the last of Elysia's patience finally snapped.
"Huddle together! For warmth!"
She practically shouted it, her pink eyes glistening with a sheen of tears.
"You idiot Su Yu! How can you be so dense!"
In a cave with no fuel left and the temperature still dropping,
sharing body heat between two people
really was the most effective—and only—way to prevent hypothermia.
But the problem was.
Su Yu glanced at the thin blanket, barely large enough to wrap around a single person.
If he wasn't mistaken,
there was absolutely nothing underneath that blanket.
If he went over there and wrapped himself in it with her,
that would mean...
But when his gaze swept over Elysia's lips again—drained of color, trembling faintly in the firelight—
rational analysis reclaimed the upper hand.
She was just an ordinary person.
No matter how well she took care of herself normally, her body's tolerance could never survive the rest of the night in this cave with no fire.
If nothing was done, she'd suffer hypothermia—it could even be life-threatening.
This wasn't a question of propriety between men and women anymore.
This was a matter of life and death.
Su Yu took a deep breath.
"Well then, I won't refuse your kind offer."
"About time!"
Elysia watched him approach, still muttering under her breath.
But when that tall figure, radiating heat far beyond a normal person's, actually reached her and reached to lift the blanket,
Miss Pink Elf's body instinctively recoiled.
"Ahem!"
She clutched the edge of the blanket tightly, refusing to let go.
"You! Close your eyes first!" she said, eyes wide. "Don't look, is basic decency really so hard for you?"
Elysia's face had turned an unspeakable shade of red, her voice trembling.
"Honestly! It's only because Miss Pink Elf is being so generous about this!"
She stammered, scrambling to save face.
"Otherwise, once we're off this mountain, people would call you a pervert for this, you know!"
Su Yu stopped where he was.
He looked at the girl hiding behind her blanket like an ostrich, and finally couldn't help the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
"Fine, fine, fine."
Su Yu raised both hands in a gesture of surrender.
"I won't move an inch."
Right in front of her, he squeezed his eyes shut tight.
"Eyes closed. Not looking, I promise."
In the cave,
only the howling wind and rain could be heard outside.
With his sight cut off,
his other senses sharpened infinitely.
Su Yu felt a faint disturbance in the air in front of him.
Then,
a light rustle of fabric.
A thin blanket, carrying a hint of dampness and warmth, was pulled up over his shoulders.
Then.
A warm body, trembling slightly, pressed up against him.
Su Yu's breathing fell completely out of rhythm.
Though there was a thin layer of blanket between them, the fabric offered no real barrier at all in that moment.
Elysia's shoulder pressed tightly against his.
Her arm, in order to hold the position, inevitably ended up pressed against his chest.
That girlish body warmth, faintly sweet, was right there, so close.
"Why—why are you so close!"
Elysia's voice rang out by his ear, clearly flustered and nervous, her breath even brushing against his neck.
Su Yu opened his eyes.
He looked down at the girl curled up into a tight ball, as if trying to wedge herself into the crack of the rock wall, and couldn't help a wry laugh.
"Sis," Su Yu said, lowering his voice, "let's be reasonable here."
He tilted his chin toward the thin blanket barely covering the two of them.
"This blanket's only so big. If we're both under it and there's still room to fit another person between us, then it's not a blanket anymore—it's a tent."
"And besides," Su Yu added, a hint of teasing in his tone, "weren't you the one who moved closer first?"
"You!"
Elysia was so choked up by that she couldn't catch her breath for a good while.
She lifted her head.
That delicate face, now less than ten centimeters from Su Yu's, was flushed red as if it might bleed.
"You—you can only bully me like this at a time like this!"
Elysia glared at him, gritting her teeth.
"You awful Su Yu!"
Su Yu leaned against the rock wall and didn't respond.
He turned his head and looked at Elysia, wrapped up in the blanket.
By now, all the bravado she'd shown earlier across the fire, spouting a stream of provocative remarks, was long gone.
Her body was tense as stone from nerves and cold, and she was still muttering some unintelligible complaints under her breath.
Watching her rare display of flustered embarrassment, Su Yu thought this whole ordeal today had somehow been worth it.
"Ellie."
Su Yu called her name softly.
"Wh-what?"
She was still trying to maintain that stubborn tone, but there wasn't much conviction left in her voice.
"Nothing."
Su Yu looked at her, half-joking.
"I was just thinking, weren't you laughing so happily just now?"
The corner of his mouth curved up.
"Why aren't you laughing anymore?"
Hearing that blatant taunt,
Elysia's eyelashes fluttered violently.
She jerked her face away, avoiding Su Yu's gaze that seemed to see through everything.
"You, I, um..."
She stammered for a long moment.
Finally, like a deflated balloon,
"At a time like this,"
Elysia's voice softened, tinged with a grievance even she wasn't aware of.
"...don't say such mean things, okay..."
She tucked her chin completely into the blanket.
"Miss Pink Elf is a girl too, you know..."
She kept her head down.
"Can't you just... not ask such mood-killing questions?"
High offense, low defense.
That was Elysia, through and through.
Su Yu said nothing more.
He simply shifted his body a little closer to her, quietly tucking in the drafty edge of the blanket for her.
Half an hour later.
The last branch in the bonfire finally burned out, reduced to a heap of ash glowing faintly red.
The cave fell into complete darkness.
Outside, the storm still raged on.
The temperature dropped another few degrees.
Even wrapped in the blanket, that damp, biting cold still crept in through the cracks of the moisture mat.
Elysia's body began to tremble faintly.
She gritted her teeth, not wanting to look too pathetic in front of Su Yu.
But the cold seeping out from deep in her bones made her curl up even tighter, whether she wanted to or not.
Just then.
In the darkness,
Su Yu's voice rose up.
"Ellie."
"Mm..."
She was so cold that even her voice trembled.
"I won't do anything to you."
Su Yu's voice, in the pitch-black cave, carried a sense of safety that was impossible to refuse.
"Come closer."
Elysia was silent for two seconds.
"I know you won't do anything..."
Her voice was so quiet it was almost lost in the sound of the rain.
"I'm worried that..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
But her body had already given the most honest answer.
She shifted slightly toward him.
Su Yu reached out his powerful arm, straight through the blanket, and pulled the still-shivering, small body into his embrace.
"Ah!"
Elysia let out a startled gasp.
The next moment.
Her body was pressed against Su Yu's solid chest.
No barrier.
No distance.
That distinctly male warmth wrapped around her like a scalding hot current.
Elysia's face was inevitably buried against Su Yu's chest.
She could clearly hear his steady, powerful heartbeat.
Thump. Thump.
Right beside her ear.
That reassuring warmth kept flowing from his skin, and her body—stiff and resistant from the cold and nerves—slowly melted away in the darkness, bit by bit.
Instinct.
Completely overpowered reason.
Driven by the need for warmth,
Elysia's body unconsciously curled deeper into Su Yu's embrace.
In her hazy, sinking state,
her leg unconsciously wrapped tightly around one of Su Yu's.
Like a cat, half-frozen, that had finally found a heater.
"Your body,"
Elysia spoke in the dark.
Her voice sounded muffled, pressed against his chest.
"...why is it so hot..."
Su Yu, feeling the soft body in his arms,
felt his breathing falter for a moment, but quickly forced down that warmth stirring within him.
"Didn't I tell you before, that I'd been training with Ah Hua?"
Su Yu rested his chin on the top of her head.
"Martial artists have a lot of yang energy. This little bit of cold is nothing."
A soft huff came from the darkness.
"Hmph..."
She buried her face even deeper.
"You've only been training for a few months. I don't believe that for a second..."
Her voice grew smaller and smaller, gradually fading into his embrace.
Outside, the fierce wind still howled, the rain still lashed against the deserted island.
But in this dark cave,
Elysia felt not the slightest trace of cold or loneliness.
Instead, she felt a sense of peace unlike anything she'd known before.
Silence lingered in the cave for a while.
"Su Yu."
Elysia called his name softly.
"I'm here."
"Do you remember, years ago, that autumn team-building trip at the Golden Courtyard?"
Her voice sounded a little distant in the dark.
"I remember. You organized it, and proposed we all go camping in that valley in the eastern suburbs."
Elysia wiggled her fingers under the blanket.
"That evening, when we were starting the campfire, I noticed the bracelet on my wrist was gone."
That bracelet had really been worthless.
Compared to the custom jewelry Eden had given her, pieces worth five or six figures sitting in her walk-in closet, that string of beads bought for a dozen yuan at a street stall was laughably cheap.
But it had been the first bit of extra money Su Yu ever earned from a side job, and his first birthday gift to her.
"Everyone took flashlights and searched the entire campsite for you, but we couldn't find it."
Su Yu picked up where she left off.
"Right. And then I was so panicked I almost cried. I said it might have slipped off into the water when I was washing vegetables by the little stream."
Elysia leaned against his chest.
"By then it was already dark, the water was freezing, and everyone waded in to help look for a long time, but we found nothing."
She still remembered.
Back then, standing at the riverbank with red eyes, she'd said to Su Yu,
sorry, I lost the gift you gave me.
Back then, that man—wearing a white shirt, even thinner and scrawnier than he was now—had just casually wiped the mud off his hands.
And smiled, waving it off.
"It's fine," he'd said. "Out with the old, in with the new. Worst case, I'll just buy you a prettier one next time."
The memory continued unfolding in the dark cave.
"That night," Elysia's voice grew slow, "everyone went back to their own tents to rest."
"I felt sad and couldn't sleep, so I decided to open the tent flap and go get some air on the grass outside."
Then.
She'd pulled open the zipper.
"I saw a light down by the riverbed."
A beam of flashlight, sweeping erratically across the black autumn night water.
"It was you."
Elysia closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing lightly against Su Yu's skin.
"You were standing there alone in that freezing cold water, bent over, one hand holding the flashlight, the other hand searching endlessly through that pile of moss-covered pebbles on the riverbed."
She later found out that the idiot had snuck back there in the middle of the night, after everyone else had given up, because—
he'd reasoned that if they couldn't find it in daylight, with everything cluttered and hard to see,
then at night, shining a bright light through the pitch-black water, any metallic glint underwater would stand out sharply, making it much easier to find the bracelet.
Amid the sound of rain outside the cave,
Elysia replayed that scene in her mind.
"I don't know how long you stayed out there in the water."
She'd stood at the tent entrance back then, watching that thin figure, shivering in the cold autumn wind, yet still bent over, stubbornly sweeping the flashlight beam across the water's surface.
Before she knew it, her eyes had blurred completely.
It wasn't until a long, long time later
that a shout of unmistakable joy suddenly rang out over the river.
"Found it!"
In that instant, Elysia felt as if struck by lightning.
She spun around as fast as she could and dashed back into her tent, burrowing into her thick sleeping bag, closing her eyes, desperately pretending to already be asleep.
But her heart pounded wildly in that silent tent.
"The next morning, when everyone was packing up to head down the mountain,"
Elysia sniffled.
"You strolled over to me all casual, like nothing had happened, and pressed the bracelet into my hand."
"You said to me then,"
Elysia mimicked Su Yu's tone from back then,
"'Here, take it. Take better care of it this time. If you lose it again, I'm not buying you another one.'"
She let out a soft laugh at that old memory.
"And then, once the bus started driving back to the city—"
"That giant idiot, who was scared to death of the cold, but had gone and soaked himself half the night in that late-autumn river, came down with a fever that lasted three days straight once we got back."
Of course he'd caught a cold and gotten a fever.
It was late-autumn river water, freezing cold to the bone.
In the cave,
as that buried memory came to an end, a silence stretched on for several minutes.
In the darkness, Su Yu's fingers absently traced the edge of the blanket.
He chuckled.
"Back then," Su Yu's voice was calm, "I didn't think that much about it."
"I just felt like, if I didn't even try when there was still even a small chance of finding it, I'd always feel like I had a regret whenever I thought back on it."
"Yeah."
Elysia hummed in the darkness.
"You've always been like that. Instead of weighing all the complicated consequences, calculating gains and losses, your body always acts first, in the way that best matches what you truly want."
But then.
Elysia paused.
When she spoke again, her voice had lost the soft, nostalgic tone from her reminiscing moments ago.
"But... but..."
In the dark, she bit down hard on her lower lip.
"It's exactly because you're the kind of person who, once you've made up your mind about something, will barrel ahead no matter what and shoulder all the consequences alone—"
"—that you always end up dragging so, so much trouble onto yourself."
Su Yu's arm, holding her, tensed for a brief moment.
What came next was no longer a warm trip down memory lane.
This was a long-premeditated interrogation of the soul, launched here in this cave cut off from the rest of the world.
"Do you know, Su Yu?"
Elysia's voice echoed in that confined space.
"You've really changed so, so much."
Her tone carried a piercing quality that left Su Yu with nowhere to hide.
"The Su Yu I used to know had no interest in any grand goals, any troublesome undertakings. He looked like he had nothing to do all day, lukewarm about everything."
"Back then, I also thought you were a lazy fool with no ambition at all, and every day all I thought about was how to get you off your couch, get you doing some business deals, earning some money, or picking up some other hobby."
"But."
Elysia's tone shifted.
"These past six months."
"Ever since that rainy night, the change in you has been so drastic that it's left me, Eden, and even everyone at the Golden Courtyard who used to know you best, absolutely baffled."
In these few sentences, Elysia laid out every detail she'd observed over the past six months, amid all those seemingly casual, joking day-to-day moments.
"It's as if you suddenly woke up overnight, and pulled off a project that stunned and drove the entire gaming world into a frenzy."
"The talent you showed left even someone as picky as Eden full of admiration—so much so that he was willing to hand over an entire building to you."
"You somehow got the entire Schicksal Foundation to throw its full weight behind your potential."
"More and more people—monster-level talents each in their own field—started gathering around you."
"They've all, without even realizing it, been won over by you, by everything you've done."
In the dark, Elysia's hand tightened around Su Yu's arm.
"You're finally not that person from before, the one who had no interest in anything, who just wanted to lie flat and do nothing."
"But—"
By the last dim red glow of the dying fire, she studied Su Yu's profile, half-hidden in the darkness.
"But now, you give me the feeling like you're being pushed forward relentlessly by something invisible."
Elysia had struck at the secret Su Yu kept buried the deepest.
"That thing is too vast. Too heavy."
"It won't let you catch your breath, even for a second. It won't let you stop, even for a moment."
"I do have a bit of confidence in my own powers of observation..."
She let out a barely audible sigh.
"You run yourself ragged every day. You watch the company's account numbers climb, you watch more and more new hires join, the company's clearly doing better and better in every way—but—"
"But haven't you noticed it yourself?"
"Your smile isn't what it used to be, back when you were just a lazy layabout with nothing going on. It's a lot dimmer now."
"Sometimes when I run into you in the meeting room, or in the hallway, I catch you spacing out."
"Your brow is always furrowed tight, like a knotted stone."
Elysia's fingers tightened.
"I don't understand."
She questioned him softly.
"Why is it that the better our game does, the more everyone at the studio celebrates their achievements—yet that knot in your brow only ties itself tighter and tighter?"
Su Yu said nothing.
He had never been much of a liar to begin with; when faced with a question too hard to answer, silence was his only option.
Elysia was no fool—far from it. Her powers of observation and initiative were terrifyingly sharp.
That Su Yu was hiding something—that much was easy enough for her to notice.
But he couldn't admit it.
Five months from now.
When that countdown hit zero, if Arc City's defenses failed and the Honkai Beast swarm broke through the World Barrier,
this city, this world, even this very girl right in front of him, would all be torn to shreds.
"You're overthinking it, Ellie."
Su Yu forced himself to put on his usual smile.
"After all, my position is different now."
He tried to fend her off with the most ordinary workplace excuse.
"Before, I was just running errands—someone taller always had it covered if the sky fell. Now I've got this huge operation weighing on me, hundreds of people below me counting on me for their paychecks, and plenty of eyes above watching this whole pie. The pressure is enormous."
"A couch potato suddenly turning things around is bound to come with a rough adjustment period."
Su Yu shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
"Every day I open my eyes to nothing but cash flow, data, servers—of course I worry whether I'm doing well enough."
"If one wrong decision from me wipes out everyone's hard work, I can't shoulder that kind of blame either."
What he said was perfectly reasonable.
Both the logic and the motive behind it were airtight.
But the girl in his arms showed no sign of being convinced. Elysia just quietly watched him in the darkness.
"Su Yu."
Her voice turned completely cold.
"I never thought I was some kind of clever girl, but—"
"Even so, I can tell easily enough that you're lying."
Elysia's fingers loosened on his arm, inch by inch.
"Have you forgotten?"
Her tone carried a heartbreaking disappointment.
"We've known each other for years now."
"When you try to lie to me, there are certain little tells you can never hide."
Like how, when he felt guilty, his breathing would unconsciously grow lighter.
Like how, when he was rushing to cover up some fact, he'd speak a little faster than usual.
Su Yu's expression froze.
This was Elysia—universally acknowledged as a social terror, with a mind so sharp and meticulous it was almost frightening.
In this world, as long as she chose to regard you as her most important companion, as long as she let her gaze linger on you long enough,
then Miss Pink Elf, with eyes only for you, could see through every mask you wore.
"Really," Elysia's voice sounded muffled against Su Yu's chest. "Not even to me?"
As those words left her lips.
In the cold cave, Su Yu heard a faint, sharp intake of breath.
"Aren't we... good friends?"
"Didn't you promise me before, that if there was ever something you couldn't solve, you wouldn't just go to that stone-faced Kevin—you'd talk to Miss Pink Elf first too?"
That voice had lost all of its usual composure and coquettishness.
It was trembling.
"Have you never, deep down, considered me a real friend at all?"
By the occasional flash of lightning outside, Elysia looked at the silent man before her.
On her long eyelashes hung something—whether rainwater or something else, it was hard to tell.
That question stopped Su Yu's breath cold.
Su Yu looked at her.
His mind churned wildly inside him.
Everything he had forcibly suppressed at the deepest depths of his heart through sheer willpower—
about the Honkai, about the other world, about Kiana, about that near-hopeless apocalyptic battle five months from now...
Those truths, heavy enough to crush a person, were crashing wildly against the locked gate, desperate to burst free.
He wanted to tell her.
But he couldn't.
The girl in his arms, and everyone back at the Golden Courtyard, represented the purest, most untainted goodness in this everyday world, untouched by bloodshed and disaster.
This was exactly why, in this brutal countdown, he was fighting tooth and nail to gather strength, to protect it with everything he had.
Precisely because he wanted to protect this ordinary life,
he couldn't say it. He was unable to say it.
At least for now, before everything was settled, not a single word could be revealed.
If they could get through that crisis, even if Elysia beat him black and blue afterward, he would gladly accept every bit of punishment without hesitation.
But if the final outcome turned out to be—
rather than living in dread, knowing the apocalypse was coming, perhaps it would be kinder for her to know nothing at all, and simply meet the world's end without ever seeing it coming.
This was a kind of arrogance—the arrogance of making a choice for someone else without their consent.
Su Yu knew this perfectly well.
He took a deep breath.
That breath, filled with the cold, damp night air of the island storm, chilled its way down his windpipe straight into his lungs.
"I promise you."
Su Yu didn't refute her accusation, nor did he cobble together some clumsy new lie.
"Once this whole thing is finally over,"
Su Yu's arm tightened around her beneath the blanket.
"I'll tell you everything. All of it."
No hiding anything.
No deception.
[If I'm still alive to see that sunrise.]
He silently added that last unspoken half of the sentence in his heart.
The girl in his arms fell silent.
No more pressing, no more crying.
She simply lay there in that quiet darkness, watching him for a long, long while.
Then, beneath the blanket, a small, cold hand—chilled from the cold—reached up and felt around.
In that lightless space, Elysia found Su Yu's right hand unerringly.
She held up her slender pinky finger, wiggling it in the air.
"So."
She sniffled.
"Pinky swear."
Su Yu looked at that little finger curled in the darkness.
He let out a wry laugh.
"You're a grown adult, not a kid anymore, and you still want to do this?"
He complained, feigning exasperation.
"I don't care."
The girl who'd nearly been in tears a moment ago was gone, replaced once more by Miss Pink Elf's usual willful, unreasonable self.
"I'm a girl, so I get to pinky swear~"
In the end, Su Yu caved to her stubborn insistence, as he always did.
Or rather, he'd never once won against her.
"Fine, fine, fine."
Su Yu held out his own right pinky finger.
In that quiet space, with nothing but the sound of rain,
two pinky fingers—one large, one small, one warm, one cold—hooked tightly together.
"Pinky swear, cross my heart, never change for a hundred years! Whoever lies is a stupid dog who can't even catch a fish at the beach!"
Elysia recited that childish oath under her breath, word for word.
She pressed her thumb firmly against his, sealing the promise with a stamp.
The two fingers let go.
In the darkness, Elysia finally smiled.
Even with her eyes still a little damp beneath that smile,
the fear born from feeling untrusted had, in this moment, finally been soothed.
Right now, she still simply believed that whatever Su Yu was hiding from her was nothing more than the usual scheming and treachery of the business world.
Not in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that the man holding her so tightly right now carried, beneath that ordinary-seeming body, such a cruel fate on his shoulders.
Outside the cave.
The violent tropical storm that had raged for hours finally exhausted the last of its strength.
The wind died down, and the raging downpour turned into a steady drizzle.
The last embers of the fire finally went dark.
The entire cave sank into complete darkness.
In that quiet, Elysia remained pressed tightly against Su Yu's chest.
The two pinky fingers that had been hooked together earlier had, at some point beneath the blanket, tangled together again—now, ten fingers interlaced.
Her breathing, in that warm embrace, grew slow and even.
After a whole day of grueling physical exertion, the unstoppable Miss Pink Elf finally leaned against his shoulder and drifted into a deep sleep.
Su Yu didn't move.
He held that embrace, letting her rest the full weight of herself against him.
He turned his head to look at the pitch-black night sky beyond the cave entrance.
Under that starless night sky,
"Pinky swear."
Su Yu silently repeated that childish word in his heart.
"We pinky swore."
____
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