"Throw back the covers of memory, and carry away the ripples of the past," Chen Li murmured.
The next moment, everything began rewinding like a phantom bubble.
Time seemed to reverse. Sparkle's tongue slipped back into her mouth, the fading ripples on Aha's shoulder flowed backward, and their vanishing forms condensed into solid bodies once more.
Chen Li's hand on Sparkle's head returned to its previous position. The motion of Sparkle rushing out was stripped away layer by layer until she was kneeling where she had been before.
Everything returned to that frozen-photo-like scene—Sparkle and Aha knelt on the ground while Chen Li pressed a hand on each of their heads.
The smile on Aha's mask remained as dazzling as ever, but now it carried an air of carefree resignation.
Sparkle blinked blankly, seemingly still unable to process the erased stretch of memory.
"I told you, don't drag me into your bullshit when you're bragging. Look what happened now," Aha sighed, speaking with heartfelt anguish.
"Huh? Wait... what happened? Didn't we already teleport away?!" Sparkle's CPU was still overloaded, utterly unable to comprehend the bizarre situation of having escaped only to be instantly caught again.
"Nothing much. I just borrowed the power of the Aeon of [Remembrance] and loaded a save. Anyway, that's not important... Do you have anything else to say now?"
As Chen Li spoke, he adjusted the hand gripping Sparkle's head, twisting her around from where she had been facing away from him until she was directly facing him.
Sparkle tugged at the corners of her mouth, trying to force her facial muscles into a sincere, repentant smile, but the expression she produced looked even worse than crying.
For the first time today, Sparkle got a clear look at the front of the Golden Honkai-Moe King outfit—especially