Cold. Shaking.
In endless darkness, Kevin's consciousness felt like it had been dragged into the depths of the ocean. Crushing pressure and bone-piercing cold surged in waves, suffocating him.
Then, at some indeterminate moment, a voice rang out beside his ear. It sounded both real and unreal.
"You're awake. Congratulations, you're a Valkyrie now."
The instant those words reached him, a violent chill swept through Kevin's entire body. His consciousness was yanked out of the darkness, and he snapped his eyes open.
He found himself lying on a soft sofa.
Looking around, the surroundings felt familiar.
As Mu's closest friend, Kevin had been here countless times.
"This is Mu's place… huh?"
Only then did Kevin realize something was off. His voice did not sound right.
Frowning, he tried to sit up to check himself. The moment he moved, something slipped off his body and hit the floor.
He followed the sound and saw a delicate little mirror lying quietly on the ground.
It must have been on him earlier. He just hadn't noticed it slipping off when he sat up.
Kevin instinctively looked into the mirror.
And froze.
Reflected in the glass was a white-haired, blue-eyed girl.
Her eyes shone like finely polished sapphires, glowing with a clear, brilliant blue. Long white hair spilled down to her waist, neat rather than messy, giving off an aloof, cool elegance.
Yet on that beautifully contoured face was a hint of confusion, lending her an untouched, almost innocent air.
The two opposing impressions did not clash. Instead, they felt strangely harmonious, as if this was exactly how it was meant to be.
What unsettled Kevin the most was her appearance.
He was certain he had never seen this girl before, and yet she felt deeply familiar.
Su had once mentioned that deep within every man and woman existed a perfect ideal of the opposite sex, shaped in their own image. They were called the anima or animus.
Kevin had to admit that if such a thing existed within him, then the girl in the mirror was exactly that.
Under normal circumstances, encountering a girl like this would have been a blessing.
But right now, Kevin felt as if the worldview he had spent his entire life building had been smashed to pieces by reality. A wave of absurdity surged up from deep within him.
Because the person in the mirror was him.
Kevin reflexively reached downward.
Then his entire body seemed to lose all strength as he collapsed back onto the sofa, like a lump of mochi-flavored soul drifting out of the corner of his mouth.
"It's gone. It's really gone…"
Today, he, or rather she, had officially said goodbye to the little brother who had accompanied her for more than a decade.
She had become a girl.
"Calm down. Calm down. This is probably just a dream." Even with reality slapping her in the face, Kevin stubbornly clung to denial. "Once I open my eyes again, everything will be back to normal. Everything will be fine…"
Eyes closed.
Eyes open.
The same familiar room greeted her.
And just like that, the last thread of hope snapped.
"Heh… heh…"
Collapsed on the sofa, she let out a string of meaningless sounds.
Only now did she have the mental space to think back on what had happened. Memories from before she lost consciousness surfaced one by one.
The brightest star singer of this era, Eden, had changed her schedule, moving a concert originally planned for Mu Continent to the Far East. As a fan of Miss Eden, Kevin had been planning to grab tickets together with Su.
She never even made it out the door before Mu called her out.
Then came the conversation at the cold drink shop.
And finally, that needle Mu had plunged into her neck.
Thinking of that, Kevin instinctively reached up to touch her neck and sucked in a sharp breath. The lingering sting from the injection was still there.
But that hardly mattered anymore.
Putting all the pieces together, the conclusion was painfully obvious.
Her transformation into a girl was absolutely connected to whatever Mu had injected into her.
"Mu! You bastard… what the hell did you do to me?!"
Grief and anger surged together. Kevin forced herself up, ready to find Mu and demand answers.
But she had barely stood, still unfamiliar with this brand-new body, when the sound of a door opening reached her ears.
She turned toward the doorway.
Li Mu walked in.
He was carrying a stack of unopened clothes, with what looked like a document folder placed on top. When their eyes met, he looked mildly surprised.
"Oh? You're awake already, bro?"
That single sentence detonated the anger in Kevin's chest.
She lunged at him.
Unfortunately, she was nowhere near used to this body. She stumbled almost immediately, crashed face-first into the floor, then slid across the smooth surface right up to Mu's feet.
Li Mu instinctively reached out to help her up.
Kevin sprang up instead and grabbed his shoulders, glaring at him.
"Mu. Did you do this to me?!"
Li Mu showed no surprise at all. In fact, he looked almost unnervingly calm.
He nodded. "Yeah. I did."
Kevin exploded, shaking him violently.
"Give my brother back to me!"
"I am right here."
"I mean the other brother!"
"Sorry. That's not happening."
"Gene restructuring serum. Created by the most famous biologist of this century, Doctor Mobius. It shattered and rebuilt the Y chromosome in your body."
"So, my dear friend, you're officially a real Valkyrie now."
"Who understands any of that nonsense?!" Kevin's now-delicate face twisted in anguish as she shook him like a cocktail shaker. "Change me back! Right now!"
"…I can't."
She had no idea who Mobius was, but Mu's words made one thing clear.
She probably was not going back.
A crushing sense of desolation washed over her, something even harder to bear than anger. Betrayal.
"Mu. I thought we were best friends. I never imagined you'd do something like this to me!"
Li Mu looked genuinely shocked, even wronged.
"But Kevin, I asked you beforehand."
"When did you ever ask me?!"
Without another word, Li Mu pulled out a voice recorder.
Kevin's own voice played back, straight from their earlier conversation at the drink shop.
"Go for it."
"Even if it makes you hated."
"As long as you believe what you're doing is right."
Kevin fell silent.
She released her grip on Mu, regret fermenting violently in her chest.
Then she slapped herself hard across the face.
After that, she pointed at her own cheek and glared at him through gritted teeth.
"So that 'friend' you were talking about was me?!"
"Yep," Li Mu said, as if it were obvious.
Kevin raised her hand again, preparing to slap herself one more time.
This time, she failed.
Li Mu caught her wrist.
"Easy there, my friend. Easy. How about you hear me out first?"
Being stopped cooled her anger slightly.
Then Li Mu added, "You can slap yourself after I'm done talking. No rush."
Kevin actually laughed in disbelief and swung a punch at his face.
Li Mu dodged it effortlessly.
He grabbed her arm mid-swing and, using a deft twist of force, tossed her back onto the sofa.
"Ow!"
Kevin winced, but after that brief scuffle, much of the fire in her chest had burned off.
Li Mu knew this was the best moment to talk.
He sat down on the sofa opposite her, leaned forward over the table, fingers crossed beneath his chin, his expression more serious than she had ever seen.
"Listen, my friend. I know what I did wasn't right. So as compensation, I'm going to tell you my deepest secret."
Kevin had never seen Mu look like this before. She asked instinctively, "What secret?"
Li Mu fell silent for a moment. His eyes grew distant, heavy with an unerasable sorrow.
"I went to the far future. A very, very distant one."
"I experienced countless things there."
"And in the end, after paying an enormous price, I finally got the chance to come back. Back to now. Back to the beginning of this story."
"To change an era that is destined to be erased by Finality."
"And in doing so… save all of you."
He looked straight at her.
"Put in terms you can understand, Kevin. I'm someone who came back after dying once."
…
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