When Griseo opened her eyes again, she did not see the so-called blue sky and white clouds she expected.
The air around her was thick with a smell of black tea gone nearly rancid, mixed with a jam-sweet scent so cloying it turned the stomach.
This was a wonderland, but certainly not the one Alice had ever visited.
The porcelain cup that should have been full of tea instead bubbled with green venom, roiling like molten lava.
All around, playing-card soldiers let out shrieks like Honkai Beasts, their bodies thin as cicada wings slicing lethal arcs through the air.
The Mad Hatter sat at the head of the table. Beneath that enormous top hat there was no face at all — only a single bloodshot eyeball, spinning wildly.
"Care for some tea? Or... how about death?"
The eyeball rolled. Griseo shrank back into her chair, fingertips clenched white around the hem of her dress.
The sticky shadows had already crept up over her ankles.
Boom—!!
The oak double doors, inlaid with a heart motif, were kicked off their hinges by some unreasonable force, crashing down and smashing a mountain of dessert towers.
A figure strode in.
Su Yu wore a skin-tight white rabbit suit, the long ears bouncing ridiculously atop his head — but the look on his face was colder than any assassin's.
"Tea time's over, you lunatic."
Su Yu spat out the stub of a cigarette from his mouth.
He wasted no words. The instant the card soldiers lunged at him, his body blurred into an afterimage.
His Tier-3 Spiritual Power perception let him pinpoint every angle of attack with precision.
He swung the giant gold pocket watch like it was nothing more than a brick, and slammed it dead-center into the Hatter's eyeball.
Fluid sprayed everywhere.
"Let's go, Griseo."
He grabbed her small, ice-cold hand.
Before Griseo could react, that overwhelming strength had already yanked her clean out of her seat.
Her toes skimmed over shattered porcelain scattered across the floor as Su Yu, like a bulldozer, plowed a massive hole clean through the twisted maze walls, dragging her along.
The scene flipped again.
Griseo landed on damp stone flagstones.
This was an impossibly tall stone tower, pitch black all around.
Countless thick green poison vines, thick as pythons, were bursting out from the windows, the floor, even the cracks in the ceiling.
The vines were studded with purple-black barbs, their tips oozing green venom.
And on a dust-covered bed at the top of the tower, Griseo saw a female corpse in a tattered princess gown, its eyes open and staring silently, fixed directly on her.
A chill crept up from her ankles.
Griseo instinctively tried to step back.
Shk—
The sound of a heavy blade cutting through flesh.
Griseo crashed into a cold, iron-clad embrace.
She looked up and saw a fully enclosed metal helmet; because of the angle, all she could make out was a sliver of Su Yu's gaze through the visor's gap.
The "Prince" Su Yu had become made no flashy moves at all.
His left hand pressed against Griseo's shoulder, his right hand swept his broadsword in a single horizontal arc.
The arc of light, wreathed in Tai Xu Sword Qi, blazed blindingly bright in the darkness.
The poison vines that had come surging forward so fiercely didn't even get the chance to resist — that one strike shredded them instantly into a rain of splinters.
Su Yu didn't even break stride, carrying Griseo downward through the collapsing shadow of the tower.
Everywhere he passed, the cursed thorns said to trap a hero for a hundred years turned as fragile as sun-dried kindling under that man's blade.
"Big Brother Su Yu."
Griseo couldn't help but whisper his name softly.
But Su Yu only let out a low grunt from behind the helmet, his pace never faltering.
That absolute aesthetic of violence carved a blood-red road called safety through this dream full of danger.
The scene shifted once more.
The third dream: the Black Forest.
In the Black Forest, the wind howled like screaming.
The wicked queen's eyes and ears filled every hollow of every tree.
Griseo, in her pristine white princess dress, ran through layer upon layer of tree shadows, chased by a dense swarm of glowing red eyes.
"Catch her... tear out her heart..."
The voices lingered, circling.
Ahead, a tall dark figure blocked her path.
Su Yu held a black double-barreled shotgun in his hands, the hem of his coat snapping in the cold wind.
He was the queen's huntsman.
He raised the gun.
The monsters lurking in the shadows had already braced themselves to share the spoils.
But the instant his finger tightened on the trigger, he spun around without warning.
The barrel swung to face the jungle shadows that had been watching from hiding.
Boom—!!
Boom—!!
Two dull, thunderous blasts.
Great tongues of fire erupted, blasting the pursuers hiding behind the trees, along with an entire row of ancient trunks, into charred wreckage.
Su Yu ejected the spent shells with no expression at all, then casually draped his powder-scented, oversized coat over Griseo's trembling shoulders.
"Stay close. Don't get lost."
Griseo huddled inside the coat, breathing in the smell of tobacco and sweat that belonged to Su Yu, and the pupils that had contracted from fear slowly began to relax.
As one broken fairy tale after another was violently kicked apart, the color of despair that had lingered at the bottom of Griseo's eyes finally vanished completely.
She stopped trembling.
When the mist of the next scenario rose, she simply stood there obediently, small hands gripping the hem of her dress, eyes bright as she stared at the illusory door.
Even as the wails of countless malicious spirits drifted in from beyond it, all she could think was: what form would Big Brother Su Yu take to come through this time?
The instant the door leading to the nightmare opened, she would look toward that familiar figure with eyes full of anticipation.
Because she knew that as long as Big Brother Su Yu was there, even monsters bristling with fangs were nothing more than slightly uglier stuffed toys.
On the other side, meanwhile—
In the real-world hospital room, the waveforms on the various monitoring devices had settled into an eerily stable pattern.
Su watched the contamination index plummet wildly on the tablet screen and let out a long breath.
Meanwhile, on the far side of the Spiritual Link—
Su Yu felt his cerebral cortex flare with sharp, stabbing pain from the overload.
"Kids sure have colorful dreams, huh."
In his mind, with a weary, world-worn tone, he sent a voice message to Fenghuang.
At that moment, his consciousness floated in some chaotic transitional space, watching as the color blocks in Griseo's dream steadily repaired themselves and came back to life.
"Come to think of it, ever since I crossed over and took charge of this mess, I've spent every single day scheming over the moods of that bunch of older sisters, and fighting Honkai, that miserable thing, for my life."
"Squad Monitor, tell me — just how long has it been since I've had a proper good dream? Even a wet dream would do."
Fenghuang was silent for a long moment.
This man had saved Griseo over and over in her dreams, yet his own world was like a black hole that could never be filled.
"Let's wrap this up."
Su Yu rubbed his brow, his voice cold as ice.
"Clear this last dream, and the girl can be discharged."
He opened his eyes.
One step forward.
But this time, what greeted him was neither forest nor castle.
The air around him plunged instantly into cold — absolute zero.
The once vibrant, fairy-tale-tinted filter was torn away in an instant, as if by some invisible giant hand.
Su Yu found himself standing amid ruins.
Arc City.
Broken skyscrapers jutted up like rows of rotting giant bones, pointing toward a lead-gray sky.
Shattered neon signs hung limply from exposed rebar, still flickering, while dark red stains floated in the pooled water on the ground.
This was the color of the apocalypse — the fleeting glimpse Griseo had once caught of it, in that peaceful world.
This was the deepest source of fear buried in her subconscious.
Griseo stood alone in the middle of that ruin.
She wore a thin school uniform.
And beside her stood a girl who looked almost identical to Griseo, but who radiated an unsettling, alien presence.
That was the side of herself Griseo refused to acknowledge.
"Big Brother Su Yu..."
Griseo let out a faint murmur, wanting to run toward him.
The girl grabbed her arm.
"Do you really think that in the dream, he'll always be that invincible knight who'll always come to save you?"
The girl's voice carried a cruel, lucid clarity.
She flung her hand outward, and the sky of the ruins peeled away in great burning sheets, like a curtain set alight, revealing deeper shadows beneath.
"Griseo, you've felt it too, haven't you?"
The girl advanced step by step, her tone turning bitterly forlorn.
"This whole time, there's been a color clinging to Big Brother Su Yu."
"That color — murky, dim, like ash no one can control."
"You lied to yourself and said it was because he was too tired. You lied to yourself and said it was because he'd been staying up too late working overtime..."
"Don't... please, don't say it..."
Griseo suddenly crouched down, clamping her hands over her ears.
Her body shook violently with overwhelming terror.
"You know exactly what that is!"
The girl screamed shrilly, pointing at Su Yu, who was slowly walking closer in the distance.
"Look at this ruin! Look at this dead, silent earth! Can't you see that the tone of color on Big Brother Su Yu is exactly the same as the base color of this hell?"
"That is a lifeless gray, radiating from the inside out — that is the Ash of Death!!"
Griseo lifted her head, trembling.
The image in the sky froze.
Su Yu stood at the edge of the ruins; his footsteps stopped.
In this pure realm of consciousness and dream, that gray on him could no longer be hidden.
It clung to him like a haze that would never lift, more desolate even than the ruins around him.
"Open your eyes and look clearly!"
The girl shrieked at Griseo, breaking down in tears.
"He's saved us so many times! He's painted our dreams with color! But in the end, are we supposed to selfishly enjoy his protection here, then just watch him go back to reality and walk into that fated death?!"
The forest was gone.
The fairy tale had shattered.
All that remained was this ruin, cruel enough to choke the breath from one's lungs.
And Su Yu, who had just forced his way through the rules and finally set foot in the very center of this wasteland, hadn't even had the chance to open his mouth for his usual quip of "huh, this stage's art style sure changed."
He simply froze in place.
In that little girl's eyes.
He saw the fate he had hidden for so long — the death that must inevitably close a hero's story — a truth he had never fully revealed even to Kevin.
The wind blew again.
It swept up a sky full of dead ash.
The other version of herself dissolved on the wind, but Griseo could sense that she hadn't truly disappeared.
Griseo lowered her head, hands gripping the hem of her dress tightly.
The whole world seemed to have turned into black-and-white film, leaving nothing but the howling, smoke-scented wind in her ears.
When she raised her head again, those pale lavender eyes no longer held the fear and confusion from before.
She stared at Su Yu, and on that still-childish face rose an expression close to accusation.
"Those monsters... and the gray on you — all of it is real, isn't it?"
Her body trembled slightly, but her eyes held his without wavering.
"Are you... really going to die?"
The corners of her mouth pressed downward, straining to hold back the sob rising from deep in her throat.
Su Yu didn't do what adults do — weave hasty lies in front of a child.
He simply looked steadily into Griseo's eyes, his gaze holding no surprise, no evasion, only quiet acceptance.
He looked at that young soul who had already seen through everything, and slowly, he nodded.
"So... there's no hiding it from you anymore, huh."
The world of adults was already full of enough hypocrisy — sometimes that kindness meant to smooth things over hurts worse than malice itself.
But in front of Griseo, he didn't want to lie, and he couldn't.
The moment that confirmation landed, all the strength drained from Griseo's body, as if every bone had been pulled out at once, and she collapsed limply onto a pile of rubble.
The wind of the ruins swept up dust from the ground, as if raising a mournful veil for this judgment of fate.
The apocalypse really would come.
And the Big Brother Su Yu standing before her now — the one who had always protected her, who had worked so hard to fill her world with the most brilliant colors — really would meet death.
"No! I won't accept it!"
She forced herself up with all her strength, kneeling on the ground, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
"As long as we stay in this dream forever... never wake up... you won't have to face it! You can stay here forever! You can stay with Griseo forever! You won't have to face those damned monsters! You won't have to face... your fated death!"
Tears streaming, she tried to flee deeper into the dream, toward the unknown region shrouded in gray mist.
Her will grew abnormally strong in that moment, because that obsession — the desire to "keep him here" — was powerful enough to warp the very rules of the dream itself.
BOOM—!
The entire deep dream went completely out of control.
The ground of the ruins began to shake violently, the collapsed rubble of buildings drawn as if by some invisible force, rapidly retreating toward the edges all around.
The Mad Hatter, the Huntsman, the Grandmother, the Wicked Queen — all previously defeated by Su Yu's own hands — along with a sky-blackening swarm of poison thorns, came surging back once more.
Under Griseo's will, they merged into thick walls of flesh, sweeping in from every direction of the ruins.
That was pure obsession, given form.
No longer taking monster shapes, they became a flood of gray mud, shattered bone, and rotting cloth, trying to seal Su Yu completely within the dream, to make him Griseo's eternal prisoner, hers alone.
Su Yu looked at the walls of flesh surging toward him from every side.
His eyes were deep and heavy, without a trace of fear.
Then, he moved.
He charged violently forward, straight into the army of monsters formed from obsession.
Bang!
He took one step forward, and the ground cracked beneath him, inch by inch.
When a wall of flesh made of mud and bone, carrying the remnant will of the Huntsman, lunged at him, Su Yu punched straight through it, blasting a massive gap clean through the middle.
Mud and shattered bone scattered in every direction with a shrill scream.
He didn't stop, his body shooting forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, striding on.
"I know you're worried about the prophecy. I know you don't want me to die."
Boom!
A wall of flesh made from poison thorns and rotting cloth tried to coil around his body.
Su Yu's body shuddered slightly, and the poison thorns instantly shattered into flying ash.
He drove an elbow backward, smashing apart the remnants of the Mad Hatter attacking from the flank.
His voice cut through the entire dream, carrying an undeniable force.
"But Griseo! If keeping me alive means stripping away your right to see tomorrow's sun, then my existence would mean nothing at all!"
He trampled over the monster remains and kept advancing.
The walls of flesh formed from obsession seemed endless, but Su Yu's steps never slowed.
Bang!
A wall of flesh and shattered bone opened a gaping maw — the twisted face of the Grandmother.
Su Yu didn't hesitate for an instant, driving his fist straight through her chest, trampling the remains as he pressed on.
His shirt had long since been torn to rags. The wounds torn open by bone spurs were healing rapidly under the effect of his Tier-3 Spiritual Power, only to be ripped open again by the next impact.
Blood dripped from his knuckles, falling onto the muddy ruins like blooming crimson roses.
BOOM!
Su Yu gathered all his Tier-3 Spiritual Power, the muscles of his right arm bulging, and unleashed a punch carrying the force of thunder, smashing straight through the illusion of the Wicked Queen and half the ruins with it.
His roar echoed across the sky, exploding by Griseo's ear.
"Griseo! An adult's fate isn't something a child should have to shoulder the guilt of deciding for us!"
His unbreakable will destroyed everything in its path.
Covered in smoke and scars, Su Yu looked like some demon king who had clawed his way out of hell.
He appeared behind Griseo in a few great strides.
Griseo, terrified, tried to keep fleeing deeper into the dream.
She didn't want to wake up. She didn't want to face that cold, cruel reality.
But the moment she moved, Su Yu grabbed her firmly from behind and pulled her into his arms.
That embrace was warm and solid, carrying a stubbornness that would brook no resistance.
He didn't scold her, didn't even say another word — he simply, gently turned Griseo around and pressed her small head firmly against his broad chest.
Thump — thump — thump—
The sound of a warm heartbeat.
That sound pierced through the emptiness of the dream, through the fabric of his clothes, through the despair woven from fear.
It reached Griseo's ears with perfect clarity, beat after beat.
It said: I'm still alive.
Su Yu lowered his head, resting his chin against the crown of Griseo's soft hair.
A gentle smile spread across his face.
"Do you hear it? Your Highness..."
His chest vibrated, carrying his voice clearly into Griseo's ear.
"At least, right now, this heart is still beating. Even if it will stop one day, that day is not today."
"If I don't wake up from this dream, one foolish girl will lose everything precious to her, forever."
"If I don't wake up from this dream, this world will meet its apocalypse, and everything beautiful we treasure will turn to nothing."
He wiped the tears from the corners of Griseo's eyes with his rough hand.
The motion was clumsy, but full of boundless tenderness.
"Death isn't the ending. It's just a ticket."
He took that cruel fate and, in the most romantic way possible, resolved it into colors a child could understand.
"It's the price we have to pay, so we can buy a little girl a clean canvas called 'tomorrow.'"
Griseo, in his arms, trembled.
The deathly despair in her eyes finally stirred, moved by this tragic tenderness.
Su Yu gently pressed his forehead to hers, feeling the heat of her skin against his.
In that gray ruin, he made his final pact.
"Don't lock my sacrifice away shamefully in this false dream. A knight's destiny is the battlefield, not a crystal coffin in a fairy tale."
"I have to wake up from this dream, because I have to go carve open that death that's coming for me."
"And you have to wake up too..."
His voice grew utterly resolute.
"Because while I'm fighting in the dark, I need the best little painter in the world to keep watch over the future I might not live to see."
"And if that day really comes—"
"Promise me — paint it all down, including the colors I never got to see. Will you?"
Griseo's tears could no longer be held back.
She threw her arms around Su Yu with all her strength, her small hands gripping tightly at the tattered remains of his shirt on his back.
She buried her face in the curve of his neck, then nodded, hard, again and again.
With that complete awakening of resolve, the entire gray ruin instantly transformed into a sky full of dazzling starlight.
Points of light shimmered in the air, like a galaxy being lit ablaze.
But an instant before the dream shattered completely, her subconscious self-protection mechanism kicked in with full force.
All of those harrowing truths, as the dream dissolved, were sealed away deep at the bottom of her mind.
They hadn't vanished — only fallen temporarily asleep.
In reality—
The first rays of morning sunlight slipped through the gap in the hospital curtains, falling slantwise across the white wall by the windowsill, warm and full of hope.
Su Yu's eyes snapped open.
His gaze locked instantly onto the little girl on the hospital bed.
Absolute exhaustion crashed over him like a tide.
He felt as though his brain were being pierced by countless silver needles all at once, from his forehead to the back of his neck, the pain so sharp he nearly groaned aloud.
His clothes were completely soaked through with cold sweat, clinging to his body in an unpleasantly sticky way.
But none of that mattered.
Because at that same moment, Griseo on the hospital bed opened her eyes too.
She blinked in confusion, tear tracks still drying at the corners of her eyes, but the fear that had once lived in them was completely gone.
"Did I... have a scary dream?"
Her small mouth opened and closed softly, her voice tiny as a mosquito's hum.
"Why... can't I remember any of it?"
Griseo couldn't recall the harrowing sacrifices and farewells from the dream, couldn't remember the ruins or the gruesome monsters.
But deep in her soul, one instinct had been carved permanently — she had to stay by Big Brother Su Yu's side.
She had to paint.
Looking at Su Yu, who sat by her bedside soaked through and clearly exhausted to the bone, Griseo felt an uncontrollable ache pull at her heart.
Sitting up properly, she reached out a small hand and gently wiped the cold sweat from Su Yu's forehead with her sleeve.
"Big Brother Su Yu..."
"Hm? What's wrong? Still scared?"
Su Yu forced down the pounding headache and worked his mouth into a gentle smile.
Griseo shook her head seriously.
Her gaze was no longer lost or confused — it turned firmly toward the easel beside her.
"Griseo isn't scared anymore."
She shook her head gently.
"I don't remember what I dreamed... but I feel like I promised Big Brother Su Yu something important."
She turned back, those pale lavender eyes now filled with a certain kind of strength.
"I think... I promised Big Brother Su Yu that I'd paint him a picture."
Hearing this, Su Yu paused for a brief moment, looking into Griseo's clear, unclouded eyes.
"What's the painting called?" Griseo asked.
Su Yu thought for a moment, then reached out and gently ruffled Griseo's hair.
"That painting... will be called 'Tomorrow.'"
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