"When I first wanted to become a hero, I was young and reckless."
Xu Yanwu spoke with a nostalgic air. "I once thought I could change the world, change every future, reverse every tragedy, and turn the world into what I wanted it to be... Back then, I thought that was what a hero was."
"A ridiculous idea, isn't it? In today's terms... that would probably be called chuunibyou?"
Xu Yanwu smiled self-deprecatingly. "Looking back now, it feels a little unbelievable that I actually had thoughts like that."
"Then I failed."
"Only then did I realize that I wasn't actually a hero. When faced with danger, the first person I thought of was myself... I believed a hero should change the world and change everything, but those failures told me that I couldn't do it."
"Later, I found companions—people I could call family. At that point, I suddenly realized that perhaps the world wasn't all that important to me."
"A hero to the entire world? Back then, all I thought about was whether I could protect the people around me."
Xu Yanwu sat before Mei, counting on his fingers, his expression as composed as ever.
"From then on, I began wondering what exactly I wanted to do."
"I no longer wanted to be a hero to the whole world. I wanted to be a hero to some people... But later, I realized that even that wasn't enough."
"This world isn't something a single person... or just a handful of people can survive in."
"There are things I can do."
"For example, I could take the people I care about and move completely away from the Honkai, finding a place that would absolutely... absolutely never be corrupted by the Honkai, freeing them entirely from the influence of Honkai Energy."
"I could