Arc City, First People's Hospital.
Kosma had his cap pulled down low, his whole body pressed into the corner as if trying to fuse himself into the concrete wall.
Daisy sat on the bench nearby, her hands wrung together so tightly the knuckles had gone white.
"What did the doctor say?"
Su Yu had raced here straight from the top floor of the tower, and his hands still hadn't fully unclenched.
"The doctor just came out and said all her vitals are fine, but she absolutely refuses to open her eyes."
"When they wheeled her into the ER, she screamed the moment she saw light. When the nurse tried to pull back the curtain, she wouldn't allow it. In the end she was crying and begging them to cover her eyes completely with something black — only then did she calm down a little."
Su Yu's fingers curled reflexively as he listened.
He didn't push open the door right away. He went to find the attending physician first.
The doctor was a middle-aged man in his forties, faint shadows under his eyes, a medical chart tucked under one arm. Seeing family arrive, he laid out the situation for Su Yu directly.
"For now, her physical readings are all normal."
"Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing — all fine. No external injuries, no obvious neurological damage."
He flipped a page in the chart.
"But her mental state is very poor. She's suffered a severe shock."
"Right now her reaction to visual stimuli is extreme. Even turning up the ward lights a little is too much. When the nurse tried to remove the blackout cloth just now, she curled up instantly and started shaking all over."
The doctor paused here, frowning slightly.
"We haven't given her sedatives yet. She's too young, and this isn't an organic injury — medication isn't necessarily the best approach in a case like this."
"It would be best to have someone she trusts go in first and see if they can settle her emotions."
Su Yu nodded.
"Understood."
After the doctor left, the corridor grew even quieter.
Kosma stood against the wall, his arms hanging limp.
Daisy sat with her head down, her eyes rimmed red, as if she'd already cried once in secret.
Su Yu's gaze swept over the two of them. Skipping past any hollow words of comfort, he raised a hand and clapped it firmly on Kosma's shoulder.
"Find somewhere to sit."
Kosma's throat bobbed violently. He forced out three words.
"I'm sorry."
Daisy spoke next, her voice completely strangled in her throat.
"I was right next to her. The moment she collapsed, I didn't even know what she'd seen."
Su Yu didn't respond to that.
Not because he didn't want to, but because something inside him had already sunk.
For Griseo to be frightened into this state — it was no ordinary accident.
He stood outside the ward door, his eyes settling on the frosted glass, his consciousness already sinking into another layer.
"Squad Monitor."
In the sea of consciousness, Fenghuang's voice rose quickly.
"I'm here."
"What exactly did Griseo see?"
There was a pause on the other end.
Then Fenghuang spoke.
"You know how she sees the world — it's not like ordinary people."
"To her, people, wind, trees, lights, cities — they're not simple shapes and objects. They're colors."
"Those colors aren't mixed from a palette. They're something deeper. What color is joy, what color is exhaustion, what color is danger — she can see all of it."
Su Yu stood outside the door, listening, his expression turning colder by degrees.
Fenghuang went on.
"Lately, the cracks in Arc City have been cleared fast, so on the surface nothing seems wrong. But the traces Honkai leaves behind don't wipe away like water on the ground."
"You kill the monsters, destroy the cores, seal off the sites — but the colors that belong to the apocalypse have already leaked out."
"They press down on this whole city. Ordinary people just can't see it."
Su Yu closed his eyes.
"Griseo saw it."
"Yes."
Fenghuang's answer was short.
"She looked the apocalypse straight in the eye."
Su Yu pressed his palm against the cold glass and said nothing.
He'd always thought he was playing his own version of The Truman Show rather well.
He'd believed that as long as he tried hard enough, he could keep this layer of false peace intact all the way to the final battle.
But Griseo was a genius.
And a genius who could see the true face of the world.
What was he supposed to say — that it was a hallucination? That some rest would fix it?
That kind of lie meant to soothe a child was, in front of those eyes of hers, no thicker than a sheet of tissue paper — one poke and it would tear.
But what if he actually told her the truth?
Telling a kid who still needed Kosma's help finishing her summer homework —
Hey, Griseo, everything you just saw was real. This world can't be saved. We've got maybe less than a hundred days left to live.
If he could actually say something like that, he thought, he wouldn't deserve to be called a savior — he'd be better suited to playing the final villain who destroys the world.
Just as he was standing outside the door, his chest tightening with that thought, something flashed across his vision.
[HIGHEST-LEVEL WARNING: Tarot Bond target — The Star — detected on the verge of mental collapse!]
[MANDATORY QUEST ISSUED: 'The Painted World's Dream']
[A child's dream is glass that shatters at a touch, and adults love to hoist the hollow banner of 'protecting dreams' — but if the nightmare bleeds straight into reality, what exactly are you planning to fall back on?]
[Did you really think that tired Truman Show script could fool everyone? Surprise — one little girl saw straight through your underwear.]
[Quest Tip: Get your ass in there and perform emotional first aid, immediately. If the bond target stays at the edge of collapse too long, Tarot Bond: The Star will suffer catastrophic imbalance — and then your carefully maintained fake normal life will collapse entirely, triggering an emotional chain reaction. Everyone you've been dying to keep in the dark will learn the real countdown to the apocalypse.]
["Good luck this time too, Mr. Greatest Liar."]
Su Yu stared at the pop-ups, drew a long breath, and let it out slowly.
He wasn't in the mood for the System's garbage talk.
Right now he only wanted to go in.
He turned back to the two still standing dazed in the corridor and gave them an instruction.
"Kosma, Daisy. Go buy some warm milk, and something sweet — the sweeter kind. I've got this."
Kosma raised his head, lips moving as if to ask something, but after one look at Su Yu's terrifyingly cold back, he simply nodded and pulled Daisy toward the elevator.
Once the corridor had gone completely silent, Su Yu finally pushed open the ward door.
"Griseo."
The instant his foot crossed the threshold, the small huddled shape on the bed scrambled backward, both hands clamping down on the edge of the blanket.
Su Yu walked to the bedside step by step, and without rushing to touch her, sat down on the stool beside the bed.
"Don't be afraid. It's me."
Griseo didn't answer.
Her small hand slipped out from a gap in the blanket, groping aimlessly, as if searching for a lifeline — and also as if afraid of touching one of those "monsters."
Su Yu watched for a moment, then gently reached his right hand out.
His hand was two or three sizes larger than hers, warm in the palm.
When he took hold of that cold, faintly trembling little hand, Griseo jerked as if burned, trying to pull away.
But Su Yu held on steadily, without much force, yet without letting go either.
"It's all right. I'm here."
The ward was silent.
After ten-odd seconds, her hand slowly loosened, bit by bit, and finally touched his fingers.
Very lightly, like a test — and even after touching him, she didn't dare hold on fully.
Su Yu simply enclosed her hand in his palm.
Then he closed his eyes.
Fenghuang's power spread through his consciousness, and Tier-3 Spiritual Power flowed down through his palm, bit by bit.
The first thing it touched was her tangled, chaotic fear.
Sharp, cold, fragmented everywhere.
Su Yu could even sense, as she trembled, how that fear kept trapping her alone inside colors that had gone black, unable to get out.
He didn't try to tear it open. He only smoothed it, little by little.
He pressed down the sharpest edges, slowed the parts moving too fast, pulled her whole self back from the brink of losing control.
About two or three minutes passed.
Griseo's tensed shoulders finally sagged just a little.
The hand Su Yu was holding — her knuckles slowly stopped being so rigid, and began, unconsciously, to grip back.
"...Brother Su Yu?"
The word came out shaking badly, thick with the sound of tears.
Listening to it, Su Yu felt as if something had seized his heart and wrung it hard.
"Yeah. I'm here."
He lowered his head and brushed a strand of loose hair away from her ear with his other hand.
"No rush."
"Take your time."
Griseo's hand clamped down on his.
Gripping tight, as if afraid that letting go even a little would send her falling back down.
Griseo began, haltingly, to spill out words.
She spoke in fragments, and not many words at that.
She said she'd been looking at the city — it was bright, beautiful.
She'd wanted to give the painting to Brother Su Yu.
Then the colors started going bad — first the lights upstairs, then the light on the street, and after that, the whole city seemed covered in something filthy.
"Gray..."
"Red..."
"So much of it, everywhere, pressing down until you can't breathe..."
As she spoke, her breathing turned ragged again, and her fingers started trembling.
"And black... like it wanted to... eat..."
"I don't even know what that awful thing was..."
"I really don't know anything..."
The last few words came out almost as a fully uncontrolled sob.
"I don't understand..."
"I have no idea what I actually saw..."
Su Yu listened, something clogging his throat.
She hadn't failed to understand.
The sheer volume of information underlying what she'd understood was too vast, and at her current age and level of cognition, she simply had no vocabulary that could match that ultimate horror.
So any comfort felt useless.
"Don't be afraid" meant nothing.
"It's all over now" was pure garbage.
That thing was still hanging directly over Arc City's head. It hadn't fallen today — who could promise it wouldn't tomorrow?
He only raised the output of his spiritual power a little higher.
A vast pressure, like a sealed net, wrapped around Griseo completely, airtight.
Griseo's voice grew smaller and smaller.
Finally, it turned into the steady sound of even breathing.
The ward fell completely silent.
Only the monitor beside her occasionally beeped, repeating its monotonous rhythm.
Her grip on Su Yu's hand loosened bit by bit, but never let go entirely.
In the end, her fingers simply rested against his, her breathing fully steady, tear tracks still wet at the corners of her eyes — she was already asleep.
The shadow of the sunset began creeping slowly along the floor toward the base of the wall.
Outside the door, a sudden rush of footsteps.
Then the ward door was flung open, bringing in a gust of noise from outside.
"Griseo!"
Eden's voice dropped low the instant she stepped through the door.
Behind her came Kevin, and Su and Aponia, who had just arrived.
Everyone caught sight of the scene at once.
The ward was dim. The little painter, wearing her black eye-cover, lay quietly buried in the blanket, asleep, two dried tear-tracks still visible on her pale little face.
And Su Yu sat with his back to the door.
The hem of his coat trailed over the edge of the stool, his spine held ruler-straight, and yet the silhouette he cast on the wall carried a weight, a pressure, that made people afraid to breathe too loudly.
Su Yu didn't even turn his head.
He simply sat there, upright, like a statue, guarding Griseo through this nightmare that had already been drained of every last color.
Griseo's small hand still twitched now and then in his palm, but under the soothing spiritual power, the terror that had been on the verge of snapping had finally been covered by a layer of soft drowsiness.
Aponia strode quickly over.
Normally she walked with a quiet, saintly grace, but right now her broad shawl was slightly disheveled from the wind.
She reached the bedside, and her first instinct was to touch Griseo's face — but seeing the way Su Yu held her hand, her own hand froze in midair.
Su walked over at that point.
Though his face showed the same exhaustion as everyone else's, as a doctor he immediately picked up the chart at the head of the bed.
He didn't look at Eden's questioning glance. He only looked at Su Yu first, lingering two seconds on that frighteningly cold face, before pulling Su Yu outside the door.
"It's worse than I expected."
In the corridor, Su held out a palm-sized micro-diagnostic terminal in front of Su Yu.
It was a System reward Su Yu had handed out before — a Deep Consciousness Diver.
On the screen, a dark-red line jumped as if possessed, against a background nearly saturated in deep purple.
[Target Spiritual Contamination Index Detected: 98% (Extremely Critical)]
"Su Yu." Su kept his voice low and fast. "Were you about to use the diver directly just now?"
Su Yu said nothing, just stared at the number nearly pegged to the ceiling.
"You can't force this."
"Her Brain Domain is extremely unstable right now. Combine your Tier-3 Spiritual Power with that device and going in would be nothing short of murder."
Su Yu turned his head to look at him.
Su continued.
"Do shallow-layer soothing first — pull her back from the brink of collapse, suppress the outermost layer of the nightmare. Once the number drops back under the safe line and the foundation stabilizes, then we talk about going deep."
"It's like treating a shock patient — stabilize first, operate second. Get the order wrong and the patient dies."
Su Yu stared at Su for a long moment.
Finally, he closed his eyes and nodded.
That whole night, the ward lights never came on.
Su Yu and Fenghuang worked together in the sea of consciousness, like two people mending a piece of porcelain shattered beyond repair.
Bit by bit, using gentle spiritual power, they worked around Griseo's sharpest fragments of fear, sealing the color that belonged to Honkai temporarily into the deepest layer of her subconscious.
Near dawn, the System panel flickered.
[Contamination Index: 45% (Shallow Dormant State)]
The number brought a sigh of relief — and, at the same time, a tightness in the chest.
The next morning, not long after dawn, Griseo woke up.
Her eyelashes moved first, the black cloth still tied over her eyes.
The ward was quiet, only a faint light seeping in past the curtains.
She lay still, and her fingers touched a bit of warmth.
It was Su Yu's hand.
She pulled off the blackout cloth herself.
Her small face was pale as paper, her fingers still gripping the sheets and trembling — but when she saw Su Yu's furrowed brow, she pulled up the corner of her mouth into a forced smile.
Su Yu sat by the bed. Further off, Su sat on the sofa with his arms crossed, and Kosma stood leaning against the wall.
Both of their faces were written all over with lack of sleep, looking even more exhausted than the patient herself.
"Brother Su Yu... Griseo just had a bad dream."
She spoke with a bit of a nasal tone, her small hand clumsily trying to smooth the crease from his frown.
"I'm already... all better now. See, I even have the strength to carry my backpack."
As she said it, she started to sit up, her movements carrying an almost desperate pretense.
She was afraid.
She was afraid these adults who guarded her would show that expression again because of her.
In the limited understanding of a little girl, as long as she acted like nothing was wrong, the grayness and heaviness in these adults' eyes would disappear.
"My classmates are still waiting for me, and the exhibition needs preparing too. Griseo can go to school."
When she finished, she bent down and tidied her backpack strap, as if she'd really only gone to the hospital yesterday because of a nightmare, and now that she'd woken up, she could just go back to normal.
Su Yu watched her, his hand tightening on his knee.
Of course he could see through it.
This kid was far, far too mature for her own good.
She didn't want them to keep suffering because of her. She didn't want the adults frowning around her anymore. She didn't want to let anyone's expectations fall through.
In the end, Su Yu didn't call her out on any of it.
He only reached out and pressed down the stray lock of hair sticking up on her forehead, and kept his voice slow.
"Okay."
"No Company today. I'll take you to school."
Griseo nodded, the smile still hanging on her face.
But that smile was too well-behaved — well-behaved enough to make his chest ache.
Outside the ward, Bronie's drone had already quietly linked in.
At the same time, Su Yu's System backend had pulled up Griseo's status separately, pinned to the top of his side screen.
[Target Spiritual Contamination Index: 45%]
[Emotional Fluctuation in Progress]
[Monitoring: Ongoing]
By the time she walked into her classroom and the other kids swarmed around her, that number started jumping.
"Griseo, you actually came! I thought you'd be out sick today!"
"My dad got me VIP tickets to your exhibition next weekend!"
"The news said you're a once-in-a-century genius, your paintings are amazing!"
"Griseo, are you going to paint another one of those pieces that leaves everyone stunned?"
A child's enthusiasm is direct, and clean.
They genuinely liked her, were genuinely happy for her, genuinely thought being her classmate was something worth being proud of.
But to Griseo right now, those words landed on her like stones, piling up one after another.
She stood at her desk, her fingertips gripping the hem of her uniform so hard the fabric wrinkled.
The forced smile stayed on her face, but her eyelashes had already started to tremble.
She tried to answer.
"Thank you."
"Mm... Griseo will try hard."
"The exhibition... will be ready."
The classroom went on as usual, everyone still chatting around her, someone even pressing a piece of candy they'd brought into her hand.
Then came the third-period art class.
The light in the classroom was good, easels lined up in rows, a clean autumn sky outside the window.
The art teacher stood at the front explaining today's still-life subject, students bent over mixing paint, the only sound the faint scrape of brushes against palettes.
Griseo sat by the window.
She picked up her brush too.
The moment the brush dipped into a clean pale yellow, a sticky wisp of purple bled out from the depths of her retina, without warning.
The classmates who'd been sitting in the sunlight a moment ago began, on the paper, to split open.
Red, white, fractured.
The girl who'd reached out to pat her shoulder in comfort — in Griseo's eyes, she'd become an octopus arm covered in suckers, oozing a thick stench of death, thrashing.
"Don't."
A plea, barely audible, escaped Griseo's throat.
"Don't touch me!"
Suddenly a scream shattered the ordinariness of the classroom entirely.
Griseo knocked over her easel like she'd gone mad.
The clean paint spilled across the floor, garish colors pooling on the wood, like a puddle of blood no one had bothered to clean up.
Under everyone's horrified stares, she clutched her head and stumbled, crashing out of the classroom.
That color belonging to Honkai had already killed this child's ordinary life, completely.
Dusk, Griseo's bedroom in the Golden Courtyard.
The door was locked from the inside.
The room was pitch black, like a dead cave.
The curtains had been clamped shut with every kind of clip Griseo could find, not a sliver of light escaping, and even the crack under the door had been stuffed with clothing to block that last bit of glow.
The little girl was curled into the foot-wide gap between the wardrobe and the nightstand.
The black blindfold was tied at the back of her head with who knew how many knots.
She'd even stopped crying out loud — only, in that deathly silence, letting out small, barely audible sobs.
Any footstep outside the door made her flinch violently.
Someone knocked. She didn't answer.
Aponia called to her. She didn't answer either.
Only thin, thin sobs leaked out from under the door.
Su Yu stood outside, listening to the muffled crying within, his expression turning frighteningly grim.
Su glanced at the screen and let out a breath.
"The shallow-layer defenses have collapsed completely."
"But there's good news too."
Su looked up at Su Yu.
"All her contamination has surfaced now — it's not hiding deeper anymore. In other words, that color belonging to Honkai has already condensed into a clear, singular nightmare core in her subconscious."
"The foundation we laid earlier is still there. Now we can go deep."
Su Yu said nothing.
He simply stepped forward, without bothering to find a key, without knocking.
"Step back."
The moment the words left his mouth, he pressed a hand to the door panel, and his spiritual power drove straight in like a needle.
A faint metallic tremor sounded from inside the lock, and with a click, the locked door popped open.
The room inside was dark.
Griseo was deep in the corner.
She was still curled up there, blindfolded, shoulders shaking, like a shadow that a puff of wind could scatter.
Su Yu was about to walk toward her when his footsteps suddenly stopped.
In the center of the room, an easel stood crookedly.
On the paper, the colors hadn't dried yet.
Even in such a dark room, the brushstrokes were still vivid, bright, clean.
It was a panoramic view of Arc City.
Buildings, streets, clouds, wind, the distant bridge, and light rendered in very soft colors.
In the corner of the painting, there were two tiny silhouettes.
A little girl with a sketchpad on her back, standing at the edge of a hillside.
A young man reaching out a hand, touching her head.
The painting was only a bit more than half finished.
Where the sky should have been, a few drops of blinding, violent purple had defiled it.
The paint trailed in long streaks, as if someone had dragged a dirty finger across it, crushing the brightest part of the entire painting.
"She won't let anyone see it."
Kosma had appeared behind Su Yu at some point, his voice hoarse.
"Even when I sneaked a peek, she'd rush to hide it away."
Kosma leaned against the doorframe, his nails digging hard into the wood.
"She said... she wanted to finish it before the exhibition opened, as a gift for Brother Su Yu. She wanted to thank this city... for letting her meet you here, for the first time."
Su Yu stared at the painting, his hand trembling unconsciously.
In that instant, it felt exactly like being stabbed straight in the chest, and then having the blade twisted for good measure.
He slowly turned his head to look at the small figure in the corner.
"Kosma."
His voice was very low.
"Go stand guard at the door. Don't let anyone in."
Kosma nodded, wasted no words, and turned to leave.
Su also stepped back half a pace, but didn't leave.
He knew he needed to stay.
Su Yu pulled up the [Deep Consciousness Diver] from his System space, flipped it in his fingers, and clipped it onto his temple.
The pale blue connection light flared instantly, casting his profile in a cold glow.
He looked at Griseo as if speaking to her, and also to himself.
"That filthy color that made you cry — I'm going in right now to wipe it out, stroke by stroke."
"This kid's painting isn't finished yet. I won't let her put down the brush."
Watching him, Su finally drew a deep breath too, and activated his own connection.
The neural stabilization curve on the medical terminal linked in instantly. He raised a hand, clipped the device to his temple, and his voice steadied.
"I'll be your Anchor. Go in without worrying — I've got things covered out here."
The System panel lit up again before Su Yu's eyes.
Pale blue light spread out from Su Yu's body, first enveloping him, then the small huddled figure in the corner.
Griseo seemed to sense something and shuddered again, but the spiritual power didn't provoke her — it simply wrapped around her like the deep sea, slow and heavy.
Su Yu closed his eyes.
And plunged headfirst into that deep, corrupted nightmare belonging to a child, choked in purple fog.
____
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