The Puppet / The Perfect World

"A very simple relationship."

"Then why do you say it's not quite appropriate?"

I wasn't talking about a person.

"Family factors? Environmental factors? Occupational factors?"

"..."

Lin didn't want to answer, nor did he know how to answer; he was thinking of another question.

"If someone keeps urging another person to get married, why do you think that is?"

"That depends on the relationship between the two people. Are they lovers?"

"No, they are of the same sex, and they are in a senior-junior relationship."

Elysia twirled a strand of her hair with one finger, pondering, "Senior and junior, it's the senior who's urging marriage, right? Let me guess, is this senior already married?"

"Um."

"That's simple." Elysia blew on her fingernails. "Because juniors are seen as people who need to be taken care of by their seniors. You may not know this, but it's very common for parents to urge their children to get married. In their eyes, their children are always accompanied by loneliness and are as fragile as ears of wheat that can be blown down by the wind."

"And family is a person's haven. No matter how badly you are hurt outside, you can be healed when you return home. Oh no, I might be making it a bit complicated... Basically, they want their children to have someone waiting for them to come home, so that they have something to look forward to and will want to go home."

Elysia paused here, glancing subtly at Lin, who was listening to her.

"Lin, are you thinking about your good friend?"

"..."

"You may not have noticed it yourself, but the way you look at me sometimes gives the feeling that you are looking at someone else."

Lin snapped out of his daze at the inappropriate remark and instinctively looked at Elysia, saying, "No, I..."

"Haha, it's okay." Elysia laughed nonchalantly. "It doesn't matter how things turn out. Even if you see me as a substitute for someone else, we're still friends, aren't we?"

"I didn't treat you as a replacement..."

"Then why did you help me in the first place? For the past two months, besides giving me advice, you've also taken care of my food and lodging, without asking for any salary, and you've also fulfilled all my capricious requests." The girl's smile was filled with a hazy sense of brokenness. "Does it seem so? I'm increasingly wanting to meet her."

"..."

Lin was speechless.

"Oh, by the way, I want to eat steak tomorrow morning~"

After saying this with a grin, Elysia went back to her bedroom.

Lin was left alone sitting in the moonlight. He gently placed his hand on his chest, feeling the vibrations within.

After a long, long time, he sat down in front of the arcade machine, plugged it in, and started the game.

A flash of light streaked across his eyes as he silently manipulated the crosshair, shooting down all the targets.

Thinking too much while playing games can easily lead to defeat, so instead of overthinking, just play games.

"GAME OVER".

The text on the screen and the mocking voice from the loudspeaker brought Lin's dilated pupils back to normal.

It was an extremely poor score; he could never have gotten such a low score even if he had his eyes closed.

Lin Guan went to the arcade and, after a long time, decided to take a nap.

Chapter Ten: The Puppet

"Don't we look like we're wearing matching outfits now?"

"... I think he's more like an accomplice."

"So you knew? I thought you always dressed like this when you went out because you thought it looked cool."

Two people, all wearing hoodies, masks, and sunglasses—a complete look of furtively suspicious behavior—walked side by side in the mall. One of them, shorter than the other, complained to the person next to him:

"I haven't been able to go out openly in a long time, um, now I have to dress up like this..."

"You're already a big streamer, it's very troublesome to be recognized on the street."

These two are naturally Lin and Elysia. A year and a half has passed since their first meeting in Changkong City. In this year and a half, some minor and major events have occurred, but overall it has been relatively peaceful. Lin is still investigating the signs of the world's Honkai, while Elysia is passionate about her live streaming career. Lin's investigation has made no progress, but Elysia is now a top-tier streamer.

Although the murky nature of the livestreaming industry caused Elysia some unpleasant incidents, she and Lin still managed to deal with all the scheming individuals clearly. It's true that the industry is murky; others, no matter how knowledgeable they are, are at most throwing firecrackers into a pond, but the two of them are like throwing TNT into the pond...

In short, after experiencing a lot of things, big and small, their lives were relatively peaceful. They made a lot of money from live streaming, and moved from renting a place to a two-bedroom apartment. Most of the remaining money was donated to orphanages or schools, leaving them with only enough basic assets for their ordinary lives.

In Elysia's own words, she didn't have much need for material things; she just liked the feeling of everyone paying attention to her. The most perfect thing was for her, a girl who was like a gift from heaven, to appear in front of the screen and heal the people who had been watching the live stream all day. Lin had no objection to this.

However, what troubles Elysia is that she can no longer go out in the clothes she likes as before. It's not that she doesn't want to show them off to others or finds it troublesome, but rather that the commotion she causes can easily lead to big trouble and attract paparazzi and the like.

If word gets out and some unscrupulous people who will stop at nothing for attention and traffic find out where she lives, there will inevitably be another mess.

Today was a rare day off, so Elysia dragged Lin out shopping. She loved Lin's cold expression, which made him look extremely unwilling, but he would agree with a dark face as soon as Alicia coaxed her a little.

"Staying home all the time isn't good for your health~"

"First, read aloud the list of breakfasts you want to eat every morning, and then we can talk about health."

"Hmph, you're starting to dislike me."

"You've misunderstood." Lin pushed up his sunglasses. He had no color vision, so wearing sunglasses made it even harder for him to see clearly. But fortunately, even without sight, it didn't affect his normal life. "You'll think it's my fault that I started to dislike you. Otherwise, you would have removed the word 'started' from your mind."

President Lin could use unexpected words to deeply criticize everything she said, leaving even Elysia powerless to refute him.

But...

Elysia smiled sweetly.

Compared to his lifeless appearance a year and a half ago, Lin no longer seems to have that deathly look in his eyes.

"Is there an event going on here?" As they passed a plush toy store, they noticed that the store was almost packed with people. It was unusual for a plush toy store to have so many customers. Elysia's curiosity made her stand on tiptoe to look inside.

When Lin saw her action, he knew he was in trouble again.

Every time she showed curiosity about something, he was the one who would step in. This was an experience that both Elysia had given him.

"Limited edition plush toys..." Elysia squinted at the plush toys on the shelf at the far end of the crowd. Her eyes lit up when she saw the cute, delicate, and pink design. "Lin!"

"..."

Lin stood in line expressionlessly, as expected.

As the number of people in front of Lin decreased, the number of plush toys on the shelves also decreased rapidly. Elysia was in another queue, but she was much further back than Lin, so it seemed that only she could buy one.

Finally, it was Lin's turn. There was only one left on the shelf. He slowly began to speak:

"Give me one..."

"Please give me one!"

Lin and the person next to him turned to look at each other at the same time, and then they were both taken aback.

The man was stunned because Lin's appearance resembled that of a murderer who had just wiped out an entire family and was now wanted by the authorities, while Lin was stunned because... he recognized the man.

Even though Lin has no color vision, he could clearly see that head of white hair.

After a brief moment of surprise, the white-haired boy in his school uniform earnestly said to Lin, "Could you give me the doll? I want to give it to a girl!"

"..." Lin also came back to his senses. He glanced at Elysia, Elysia did not show any emotion at the moment. She just tilted her head and looked at him with interest.

"A girl?" Lin asked.

"Yes!" Kevin blurted out those two words with youthful enthusiasm, then coughed, his face flushed. "Ahem... to be precise, it's my girlfriend..."

Is she there?

"I told her to wait for me outside."

Lin glanced outside the store, pushed his sunglasses back up from the bridge of his nose, and calmly said to Kevin, "I want to give this to a girl too."

"Huh?"

"..."

He couldn't believe that a man would buy a plush toy that was clearly only for girls.

"Fine, you said it first." Kevin looked extremely frustrated.

Lin didn't say anything. He asked the waiter to put the last plush toy in a bag. After paying, he whispered to Kevin as he passed by, "Your girlfriend might prefer the one on your right."

Kevin instinctively looked to his right.

It was a doll that could hardly be called cute. Among so many dolls that were full of girlish charm, it was an anomaly. Not to mention compared to the limited edition doll that Lin bought, a pair of glasses covered half of its face. The face that was supposed to be cute was just an ugly square-framed pair of glasses and a mouth that never smiled.

It makes one wonder if the wrong item was purchased during the ordering process.

After leaving the doll shop, Lin handed the doll to Elysia, but Elysia wasn't as excited as he'd expected. She looked at Lin with a playful chuckle and said, "Hmph..."

"..."

Lin Danran pulled up his hood. He caught a glimpse of the boy walking out of the store with a rather unappealing plush toy, and hesitantly walked toward the girl who belonged to him.

"..."

Which world is truly "as it should be"?

Lin turned his head away and stopped paying attention.

Chapter Eleven: A Perfect World

"I've always wanted to say this..."

"Don't say it." Yan Luo stopped the person from speaking. Based on her experience, nine out of ten things that person said were just being sarcastic, and the last one was an excuse for the first nine.

Unfortunately, it's not like she can just say no and expect the other person to listen.

"If you hate someone, would you let them live a happy life living with a beautiful girl?" the person said seriously, stroking their chin. "Can you hate me too?"

"..."

"You searched through so many worlds, and only found the one where he wasn't there and the world hadn't yet Honkai. He just moved in with his bags. I'm so envious," the person laughed. "That world is simply the perfect world."

A perfect world...

Yan Luo's Prismatic Eyes flickered incessantly.

Precisely because it is a perfect world...

"Lin, don't you think we have too few friends?"

Lin put down the morning paper, glanced at Elysia was pretending to be deep in thought, and said coldly, "You have many friends online."

"That's me, but Lin, I've never seen you talk to anyone for more than a minute, and I'm the only one in your phone's contact list. Although that makes it much easier to check your phone... isn't that a healthy lifestyle?"

"What is a healthy lifestyle?" Lin asked calmly as he brought his coffee to his lips. "A healthy lifestyle is when you treat other people's 'correct' labels as necessities that you have to wear on your own face."

"... Lin, you're actually quite punk, aren't you?"

Elysia wasn't surprised by this outcome. After all, that's just the kind of person Lin is. In the past two years, he seemed to have changed a bit, yet he also seemed to have remained the same, only hiding some of his past traits even more deeply.

Two people who know nothing about each other's past can live together for two years as if nothing happened; this would probably be a fantasy in other places.

But Elysia felt that Lin might be doing this for her sake. Two years ago, he said that he must never let anyone know that Elysia was living with a man, and two years later, the audience still knew nothing about his existence.

During Elysia's live streams, Lin would occasionally read in a blind spot of the camera in the room. While she streamed with sweet laughter, he would silently read, and the viewers were completely unaware of this, giving Elysia a... thrilling sense of transgression.

Is this what's commonly referred to as... having an affair?

"The streaming service crashed today, I can take a break now." Elysia's phone rang, she picked it up, glanced at it, and then put it down again.

"Didn't you just rest yesterday?"

"It's due to force majeure."

"..."

Just as Lin was about to say something, his phone rang. He then shut his mouth, put down his coffee, put on his coat, and stood up.

"Hmm? Are you going out?" Elysia asked after a moment of surprise when she saw him put on a mask and sunglasses.

"Um."

"I'll go with you..."

"Need not."

Elysia's eyelids drooped, and she squinted. "Do you not need it? Or do you not want it?"