"..."
Silence.
After a long time, Su Jue finally spoke. "Sorry, you had to see that."
A hint of pain lingered in the boy's grey eyes, and Kiana suddenly understood why he had turned back to pick up loose change even though he knew it was dangerous. Her mind felt somewhat dazed, not knowing how to comfort Su Jue, but the boy adjusted quickly. After quietly wiping his reddened eyes, he returned to his previous state.
He took a key out from the inner lining of his clothes. That lining pocket was completely sewn with thread, and it seemed purposely prepared for hiding things.
He pushed open the door. Accompanied by a creaking sound, the dim room also entered Kiana's field of vision. The living room lights were not on; only the bedroom had light leaking out from the doorway. A woman was sitting at the head of the bed, earnestly knitting a sweater.
She hadn't even noticed such a loud commotion outside the door earlier? Confusion appeared in Kiana's eyes.
"That's my mother, she's... deaf and mute." Su Jue's voice was somewhat hoarse as he snapped on the living room light. The woman only raised her head upon noticing the change in light, showing a surprised expression when she saw Su Jue.
"Ah, ah." The woman put down her work, opening her mouth as if wanting to say something, but all that came out were meaningless babbling sounds.
"Mom, I'm back. This is my friend." Although knowing his mother couldn't hear, Su Jue still introduced her in a loud voice.
Seeing her son bring back a pretty girl, the woman's excitement and joy overflowed, and she hurried off to the kitchen to boil water and make tea.
Looking at the smiling Su Jue with a twinge of heartache, Kiana pointed at his shoulder. "It hurts a lot, right?"
"No, it doesn't hurt." Su Jue shook his head, a bitter smile touching his lips. "I'm already used to it."
Chapter 4: The Evening Banquet
Tick-tock.
As the minute hand reached 12 once again, it was already nine o'clock at night, and the night finally fell into deep sleep. Even though the urban area was still suffering attacks from Honkai Beasts, the suburbs were utterly dead silent. For the people living here, no matter how close they were, it was very hard for them to go to the center district; what stopped them was not just consumption, but the human heart.
This world was never fair.
"Let's eat." Su Jue pushed the chopsticks and rice bowl in front of Kiana. The meal was very simple, yet featured two meat dishes, one vegetable dish, and a soup. Generally speaking, this kind of setup only appeared when there were guests.
The fragrant aroma of rice drifted into Kiana's nasal cavity, making her, who had been wandering for a long time, continuously secrete saliva.
Back at St. Freya Academy, she had always liked to sponge meals off Mei, and Mei would always show a helpless expression while quietly preparing her share anyway.
Yet she had gone and done that kind of thing...
How long had it passed since she last ate a meal cooked by Mei?
She didn't dare recall, because whenever she reminisced, that shade of crimson would mercilessly barge into her mind.
Kiana was somewhat dazed, caught in her memories. When she snapped back to her senses, she realized neither Su Jue nor his mother had moved their chopsticks, quietly waiting for her instead.
"My mother is just worried that the food she cooked won't suit the guest's taste. She won't eat until the guest picks up their chopsticks first," Su Jue explained. However, he quickly reacted and added, "Almost forgot, you're a girl coming to a stranger's house, how could you feel safe eating food made by someone else?"
Placing a little bit of every dish from the table onto his own plate and eating first, Su Jue then flashed Kiana a reassuring smile. "Can you rest easy now?"
"I didn't mean that." Seeming to realize that her daydreaming just now had caused Su Jue to misunderstand, Kiana shook her head repeatedly, picked up her rice bowl, and dug in without hesitation.
Although Su Jue's mother had made it with great care, to be honest, the food wasn't very delicious.
The rice was a bit hard, and the stir-fried vegetables were a bit burnt. Kiana ate in large mouthfuls; the rice mixed with her own tears tasted somewhat salty, but she didn't care at all.
How long had it been since she had eaten a full meal?
Monsters, demons, damned Herrschers...
Their curses had never stopped.
Running, hiding, pain...
Like a stray dog, not daring to expose her location.
"Even if it's not tasty, there's no need to cry, right?" A washed-out handkerchief was handed over to Kiana's side, and Su Jue said somewhat jokingly.
With a flush on her face, Kiana took the towel to wipe her face. The rice mixed with tears didn't taste good, but it seemed she had already eaten an entire pot of rice.
"Not enough?"
"No, no, no, completely enough. It's just that my appetite is, a little bit big..."
"A little bit?"
"..." Kiana felt somewhat awkward. No matter what, eating four bowls in a row probably didn't fall into the dietary range of a girl her age.
Su Jue's mother wore a smile, watching the interaction between the two, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes lifting upward. Noticing this, Kiana grew even more embarrassed.
Fortunately, the awkward time passed quickly. After finishing the meal, Su Jue and his mother returned to the kitchen to clean up. Although Kiana wanted to help, she was refused by Su Jue on the grounds that she was a guest.
Feeling utterly bored, she subconsciously looked around her surroundings and found a few sheets of paper stuck in the gap of the stool by some point. Carefully pulling the paper out from the jammed corner, Kiana discovered that these seemed to be the exact same sheets that had scattered along with the loose change earlier.
"What is this?"
It was a medical record.
It was Su Jue's medical record.
Kiana's educational level wasn't high, and she couldn't quite understand the unique handwriting written by the doctor on the medical record, but judging from the information printed elsewhere, this medical record had been printed just this afternoon.
No wonder Su Jue, who lived in the suburbs, had appeared in the East District. So he had gone to the hospital for a checkup.
"The doctor's handwriting is so scribbled. I feel like my own handwriting looks better than these words."
After repeatedly examining the medical record, Kiana, who had always been a poor student, even felt a sense of superiority. But when she understood the content of the text, the smile on her face gradually faded.
Only one year left, initial treatment cost 500,000.
"..."
"Huh? What are you looking at?" Su Jue's voice suddenly arrived, startling Kiana and almost causing the medical record in her hand to drop to the ground. Still, she caught it steadily and put on a puzzled expression. "These words are written so scribbled, I can't read them at all. Is this your medical record?"
"Yeah, I felt a bit unwell today and went to the hospital for a checkup. Luckily, there are no major issues." Putting down a large medicine box, Su Jue took the medical record from Kiana's hand, placed it inside the medicine box, and pressed it to the very bottom. "I'll help you bandage up. Your wound couldn't stop bleeding earlier..."
"Eh? How did it stop?"
Pulling her cuffs upward, Kiana presented her fair forearm to Su Jue, but the gauze wrapped around it at this moment was not stained red.
Unwinding the gauze circle by circle, Su Jue discovered that the cracks on Kiana's forearm had actually stopped bleeding.
After Sirin appeared that once, for some reason, the Honkai energy overflowing inside her body had decreased a lot, and the wounds eroded by Honkai energy on Kiana's body were also slowly healing with the help of the powerful Kaslana family constitution.
Only, what on earth had happened during this time?
"Su Jue, do you know about Valkyries?"
"Of course I do. The strongest warriors in the world who protect human civilization. Legend says they can easily kill dead walkers and drive Honkai Beasts out of our homeland... Wait, you don't mean that you're a Valkyrie?" A look of astonishment appeared in Su Jue's eyes, and he wore an incredulous expression.
Facing Su Jue's burning gaze, Kiana playfully blinked her eyes, defaulting to his conjecture.
"Oh my god, no wonder you could kill such a big Honkai Beast, no wonder a wound that had been bleeding the whole time healed so quickly." Overjoyed to the point of being incoherent, Su Jue instinctively grabbed Kiana's hand, seeming to want to study the principle of wound healing, though he obviously couldn't figure it out—he was just an ordinary person.
Looking at the somewhat excited Su Jue, Kiana hesitated for a moment, but still asked the doubt she had been hiding in her heart before. "Earlier, when I lost control... you weren't injured?"
"No..." Facing Kiana's scrutinizing gaze, Su Jue suddenly began to stammer, but under her persistent questioning, he slowly pulled his collar down.
Dark blue handprints spread along his neck, revealing purplish bruises on the blood vessels that had been fiercely choked.
"J-Just a minor injury." Su Jue still wanted to put up a front and say something, but was pulled into a tight embrace by Kiana instead.
"I'm sorry..."
"I'm sorry..."
Chapter 5: Conflict of Consciousness
Drip, drop. Water droplets slid down the showerhead onto the floor, blooming into splashes.
"Mom, you go rest first."
"Don't worry, I'll take care of her."
"Eh, she's just my ordinary friend, don't overthink it."
Su Jue's voice in the living room passed through the wooden door and into the bathroom, sending a trace of ripples across the surface of the bathtub water.
Kiana submerged her entire body into the water, leaving only half her face exposed.
Tiny bubbles escaped from her lips, popping on the water surface and making her nose tip itch.
Tap, tap.
Footsteps drew closer and closer. Kiana suddenly felt somewhat nervous; what was she thinking, actually running to a stranger's house to take a bath.
"Miss Sirin, I've left clean clothes outside the bathroom door. Although the clothes are mine, I've washed them many times. I couldn't find women's underwear for the time being, so you'll just have to bear with it for now. I'll go buy some at the store as soon as dawn breaks tomorrow."
Su Jue's voice was very close, separated from the bathroom by merely a single wooden door.
Kiana, who was soaking in the bath, curled up her body, feeling as if she were stark naked and exposed right in front of someone else.
She didn't dare to reply. Fortunately, Su Jue left immediately after putting the things down. It wasn't until his footsteps faded away that she let out a long sigh of relief.
Sirin...
Sirin...
In the end, she hadn't dared to tell him her real name.
Confirming there was no movement around, Kiana's tense spirit gradually relaxed. During these two months of wandering life, her mind felt like a continuously twisted clock spring, tightening more and more, ready to snap completely at any moment.
The warm water soaked into all her limbs, making her whole body feel much more cozy. Kiana narrowed her eyes comfortably, enjoying this rare leisure.
Ever since the Herrscher of the Void awakened, both Schicksal and Anti-Entropy had put bounties on Kiana's whereabouts. She didn't dare stay anywhere, nor did she dare expose her real name. In fact, it wasn't until today that she truly ate a full meal in the real sense and took a hot bath.
Long snow-white hair scattered in the water, and water droplets rolled down the strands. Kiana leaned against the edge of the bathtub, her eyes slightly narrowed, as Su Jue's voice echoed continuously in her mind.
"I don't hate my father, because when I was little, it really was him who brought me and mom here." The boy teased Tread Snow's little paws. Even though the swelling and redness on his face hadn't faded yet, his pupils remained clear and bright. "Sky City wasn't a city of technology back then; everyone lived very hard lives."
"My mother couldn't hear sound, nor could she speak. After my maternal grandparents passed away, she could only live alone. Fortunately, our hometown still had two mu of land. Although life was hard, she was still very young back then and could barely support herself. Later on, someone targeted the fact that she couldn't speak and tricked her into coming to Sky City at that time."
"If my father hadn't saved her, the consequences would have been unimaginable."
"After that, the two of them got married and gave birth to me the next year. Everyone ostracized mom, mocking her behind her back for not being able to speak and unable to find a job. Father worked desperately, made money, and cut off contact with our relatives back home."
"That was mom's happiest time. Dad's career gradually stabilized, and he saved up enough money to buy this apartment we have now. I was still babbling in toddler talk, and mom's deafness wasn't inherited by me. She smiled every day."
"Until later... Schicksal? Anti-Entropy? I don't know who they are, I only know that after that, Sky City turned into a city of technology, and a massive influx of new residents poured in. Those who didn't understand tech were driven out of the city, and my father lost his job at that time."
"He also desperately studied so-called electronic technology, but every time he applied for a job, he couldn't produce a diploma that caught their eye."
"A single piece of paper choked off the upward mobility channels for everyone."
"Later on, he took to heavy drinking, and studying electronic technology turned into online gambling. Everything changed."
"But I don't hate him, because I know this isn't his fault."
Kiana: "Then whose fault do you think this is?"
"I don't know." A trace of bewilderment flashed through Su Jue's gaze, which he quickly concealed. "What about you? A Valkyrie protecting the world, why would you appear here?"
Why?
Why was she clearly an experiment subject, yet they acted so alike?
Why was she supposed to be killed and hunted down when she clearly hadn't done anything?
Surging thoughts echoed in Kiana's mind. What did Su Jue do wrong? He had to endure his father's beatings and scoldings, and suffer the torture of a terminal illness.
"Don't you see it clearly?"
"Schicksal, that man named Otto destroyed all of this."
A wave of dizziness washed over her. Kiana's vision turned pure white, and a black-and-white labyrinth stood upside down in the sky.
Confusion, anger, fear, guilt.
Interweaving countless chaotic riddles, completely engulfing Kiana.
"Herrscher of Void!"
A scorching sensation radiated from her golden right pupil, and consciousness belonging to Sirin began to erode Kiana's thinking once again.
"You are lost."
"You are in pain."
"You are tired."
"Just hand this body over to me."
Before you continue