Side Story: The Story After That

Front-row reminder: BGM: Theme of Love

"I'm back, Mei." The white-haired young man looked at the bespectacled leader before him. "We... failed."

"I know... Kevin, our assumptions about Finality were wrong from the very beginning..." Mei rested one hand on the command console and looked at the desolate moon displayed on the screen. "And we paid the price for that mistake..."

"Feng... he seized a sliver of hope for the future for us. Humanity hasn't lost yet. We still have a chance," Kevin said.

"Elysia returned herself to Honkai, and Feng sealed Finality for three days... We... still have time to prepare... cough, cough, cough..." As Mei spoke, she suddenly covered her mouth. When she lowered her hand, her palm was already covered in blood.

"Mei?!" Kevin's expression changed. "Your body..."

Mei waved her hand and said wearily, "It's nothing to make such a fuss about... My body actually gave out long ago. If Feng hadn't given up the time Mobius was using to develop medicine that could treat him, I wouldn't even have been able to wait for you to return from the moon..."

"Mei, you always insist on pushing yourself like this... Why didn't you tell me?" Kevin's voice carried a rare note of reproach.

Mei gave a bitter smile and shook her head. "Because I didn't want you to worry about me. I didn't want my departure to consume the rest of your life... But Feng told me I was wrong. He said that if I left just like that, you would truly never be able to let go. So... he gave up the time Mobius could have spent developing medicine to treat him, forcibly giving me a way to wait until you returned from the moon."

"...But he didn't come back. I can't thank him anymore."

"Yes. Perhaps by then, he had already prepared himself to meet his end. You can't stop someone who wishes to die, can you? Lilith, who had accompanied him all this way, left during The Tragedy of Binding. Elysia, the conviction that had first led him to join Fire Moth, also left. What could the rest of us possibly do to keep him?"

"...We're very much like him and Lilith."

"Yes. That was what convinced me. You and I are like him and Lilith. The change Lilith's departure brought about in him always makes me think of you... Kevin, I hope you can walk a path of your own instead of following in my shadow. But... if I weren't here to tell you this myself, I'm afraid you would still choose the Stigmata Project in the end."

"..."

"Whether it was Feng or Elysia, they both believed it was the worst possible plan. So do I."

Kevin wanted to say something, but fell silent again. He too looked at the barren lunar surface on the screen. Only after a long while did he say, "He and Elysia... walked side by side all the way here. We didn't learn what they had been carrying until the very end... Even in the end, we couldn't do anything for them. We could only watch as they walked ahead of us, carving out a path to the future for us."

"Feng..." Mei lowered her eyes. After a long time, she looked up at the screen again. "Kevin, what do you think he saw at the end?"

Kevin remained silent.

"I'm a scientist. I shouldn't be saying things like this, but if possible, I also hope there truly is a place people go after death—a shared destination for them all. That way..." Mei looked at Kevin. "On that distant shore we will one day reach as well, do you think he can see Lilith again?"

"He will," Kevin said.

"He can finally rest properly too..." Mei spoke as she began walking outside again. Every step seemed difficult for her. Kevin reached out, wanting to support Mei, but hesitated, afraid that his side effects would only make her already frail body worse.

"Don't worry about me. I know my own condition well enough. I'm not at the point where I need someone to hold me up yet... cough, cough..." Mei coughed again. "Come with me, Kevin. I originally planned to have Su tell you, but since I'm still standing here now, then... let me tell you myself."

"What is it?"

"It's our child."

"?"

Outside the Fire Moth base.

After returning to Earth, Pardo had hurriedly left the base. She came to the place where she had buried her treasure chest and, heedless of the dirt, reached in and dug out the box she had buried not long ago.

Her hands trembled slightly. She tried to open the box but failed, only then remembering that it needed a key.

"The key... the key... I didn't leave it on the moon, did I..." Pardo searched herself from head to toe before hurriedly pulling out the key and opening the box.

For a moment, she had even considered smashing the box open if she couldn't find the key.

"Let's see... This is Sister Elysia's hairpin, this is Sister Vill-V's little machine, this is Sister Mobius's pendant..." She took out the items one by one to check them.

"This is Jie Ge's mask..." She took out the mask she definitely could never have obtained on her own and looked at it, her lips pursing.

Brother Yu Feng had given it to her. After she told him about her goal, before the battle against Finality began, he had brought Jie Ge's mask to her.

"Huh? Brother Yu Feng... You, you fought Jie Ge?"

"Yeah, it was nothing. It was good to stretch our muscles before the final battle anyway. He'd always wanted to have a serious fight with me. Afterward, I asked if I could have a mask, and he gave me one."

"Um... Brother Yu Feng, you..."

"Didn't you say you wanted one before? I happened to be able to get it for you, so I did."

"..."

Pardo put down the mask and rummaged through the box again, finding a Fire Moth badge that had been very well preserved.

"Brother Yu Feng... this is..."

"The badge Elysia personally pinned on me when I first joined Fire Moth."

"Sister Elysia gave it to you? Th-this... I can't accept this, can I?"

"Then... keep it for me. Once The War of Finality is over, I'll come back to get it."

"Oh, okay..."

Pardo looked at the tiny badge in her hand. Long ago, a girl had personally pinned it onto a young man. It was the reason the young man had first begun to fight, and the beginning of the tumultuous life that followed.

If you can't find it by searching the book title, try searching for the author instead! Maybe it was just renamed!

Even if they never met again, he had never discarded this badge. On the contrary, he had always cherished this small badge. Even after so many years, its luster remained just as it had been at the start, as though it had never gathered dust or suffered damage.

When the side effects tormented him into sleepless nights, would he take out this badge and reminisce about the past?

Pardo didn't know.

She only felt that it was unfair. She wanted to know what he had truly gained in the end, and just why... he had been able to keep fighting like this all along?

The word "hero" had always been far removed from her. When she was little and listened to old women tell stories of heroes, she had never thought much of them. There would always be someone to become a hero; even if the sky fell, someone would always hold it up. Though that was what she thought, back then, like everyone else, she had admired the heroes in those stories.

"But if... this is how a hero ends, if this is a hero's story..." Pardo murmured, "then what's the point of being such a hero?"

She carefully placed the badge into a small box, put it back inside the chest, then took out a uniform.

It was the uniform of the Fallen Angel Squad, which had already become a thing of the past. It had been tailored specifically for her, because this had been the birthday wish she once made. But not long after it was completed, the tragedy of Binding descended. Sister Xila, Sister Mostima... even little Astaroth had died in it...

Yet she, who was older than Astaroth, had not taken part in the campaign against the Herrscher of Binding from the very beginning, all because of a ridiculous cold.

In the end, Brother Yu Feng had been the one to bring her this outfit. Though she knew it fit perfectly, she had never worn it.

Her vision suddenly blurred. Pardo hastily wiped her face and muttered to herself, "Since I survived, since Brother Yu Feng gave these things to me... then I need to do what I'm supposed to do too..."

She folded the uniform and placed it at the bottom of the chest. Then she picked up the chest and walked back the way she had come.

Before leaving, she turned back once more to look at the spot where she had dug up the chest. When they buried it, she and Brother Yu Feng had done so together. At first, she had thought that, with the strength of the weakest Flame-Chaser, joining The War of Finality would surely mean there was no return. If she buried the chest with Brother Yu Feng, then he would know where to dig it up afterward.

But in the end, she was the only one who returned here...

Fire Moth Base, concert hall.

The War of Finality had failed. The hibernation of all things would begin before Finality awakened again. Civilization had already perished, and the surviving people were restless and lost within the remaining base. The audience seats, once packed to capacity, were now completely empty. Yet upon the stage, the golden songstress still earnestly played an ancient harp, performing a melody the world had never heard before.

"So you really were here, Eden." Aponia came before the stage and looked at Eden. "Is this piece for Elysia? I remember that when Elysia left, this piece of yours was still unfinished."

"Yes. I never got to play it for Elysia in the end. That is quite a regret." Eden stopped playing. Looking at the empty audience seats, she said, "Aponia, tell me—if Elysia had agreed to Feng back then, and Feng had not chosen to leave afterward, would the ending now have been different?"

Aponia fell silent. She did not know how to answer Eden, because in her eyes, neither Feng nor Elysia had corresponding threads of fate. Their destinies had always been in their own hands. But... they had both chosen to walk down that road where death was certain, toward that future fated to vanish.

"Actually, I had already finished writing the piece for Elysia," Eden said softly. "But after Elysia left, Feng corrected some of my mistakes. He said Elysia's life had been without shadows, that her soul had been pure and flawless, and that her curtain call, her final piece, should not have been so somber... At first, I agreed with him—until after The War of Finality..."

Aponia listened quietly.

Eden lowered her eyes and continued, "Perhaps, as he said, Elysia's life truly was like that. But... perhaps he never considered that Elysia would be saddened because of him, that even at the very end, she would still worry about him... Yes, perhaps he truly never knew that in Elysia's story, his presence had always been there. Yet fate was so fickle that, in the end, they who had once cared so deeply for each other could not even meet again."

Aponia looked at the harp Eden had been playing. After a long while, she sighed softly. She would bestow Discipline upon every warrior, so that they could at least have a beautiful dream in their final moments. But Feng was different. Kevin had rendered her Discipline ineffective at the price of never dreaming again, while Feng had been protected by Beifengge from the very beginning. Along with the effects of the Chimera Project, he was completely immune to Discipline.

Even at the end, he had waited for Kevin to promise him that humanity would surely defeat Honkai before he disappeared. Perhaps, even at the end, he had never had a single dream.

In Aponia's eyes, he had always been alone. She had watched him desperately try to sever and reconnect the threads of others, trying countless times and failing countless times. He faced all of it alone, never speaking of it.

Perhaps he had long known everyone's fate. But unlike herself, who had already chosen to give up, he still chose to fight. He had saved the other Fallen Angels, yet in the end, he still could not change Binding's final outcome.

How she wished she could at least give him a dream at the end—a dream in which his wish had come true. But she could not. Even at the end, all she could do was watch him leave alone.

How she wished she could give this weary traveler a hug, even if that hug could change nothing.

"Aponia, sometimes I wonder what everything would have been like if there had been no Honkai," Eden asked.

Aponia thought for a moment before answering, "Perhaps we would never have met."

"Yes... Feng and Elysia were unable to meet again in the end because of Honkai, but without Honkai, their story would never have begun either." Eden let out a soft sigh.

Aponia lowered her gaze. In truth, she had a feeling that if there had been no Honkai, Feng might not even have existed in this world...

"Though endless suffering was heaped upon him, he still walked forward alone, leaving behind a tomorrow called hope," Aponia said softly.

Mobius's laboratory.

"Klein, if the Mobius in Elysian Realm ever walks down an obsessive path in the future, give her this recording," Mobius said to Doll Klein.

"I understand, Doctor." Doll Klein nodded. "Um... Doctor, if you really miss Feng so much, why not make an Armed Doll, like you made me?"

Mobius looked at Klein but did not answer. She merely stared blankly at the empty laboratory.

Back then, the Cang Xuan Dan Zhu sisters had still played and bickered here. Klein always wore a helpless expression when dealing with that pair of living treasures. And if Yu Feng had been there, he would have stood quietly to one side, or tried to ask whether there was anything he could help with.

But now...

They were all gone.

For the first time, she wanted to stop moving forward.

An Armed Doll... in the end, it was merely her deceiving herself. She had placed the cognitive modules of the Klein in her memories into Doll Klein, but if she had truly understood Klein, then why had she never considered why Klein would become a Herrscher of a Thousand? If she had truly understood Yu Feng, then how could she have...

Once someone was gone, they were gone. There was no way for her to keep them.

A day later, Kosma's room.

Kosma finished packing his things. Looking at the photograph on his desk of his younger self and Disaster, he finally picked it up and said as if talking to himself, "Disaster... I'm leaving. You... will be watching over me too, right?"

The girl in the photograph smiled brightly, as though she were still by his side at that very moment, saying, "Amo, don't always look so dejected. Heroes won't be beaten down by setbacks, you know~"

He placed the photograph into his pack and walked out of his room.

Before boarding the Ark, the young man took out the harmonica the girl had given him. Playing it, he stepped aboard the Ark and headed toward that lonely sea of stars.