Without a Scene Change, What Are the Readers Supposed to Read?

The evening breeze carried the faint scent of rainforest greenery. Full and satisfied, Xingsu gently pushed open his room's wooden window, shed his exhaustion, and flopped straight onto his bed.

Xingsu rolled onto his side and looked up at the night sky through the window. Sumeru City had shed its daytime bustle. The heavens were clear and clean, scattered with glittering specks of starlight that hung gently in the pitch-black sky.

"Lin, are you there?"

"What do you want?"

"Would you believe me if I said I missed you?"

"...Fuck off. Have you got nothing better to do now that you've eaten?"

"More or less. I've just been busy for so long, and now that I finally have a rare chance to relax, I wanted to lie in bed and find someone to chat with."

"Is that what you told the Matra?"

It took Xingsu three seconds to realize what Lin meant.

"...Fuck off. I keep my nose clean."

"All right, all right. What do you want to talk about with your big sister?"

"Lin, did you give me off-the-charts combat stats when you created me?"

"No. Why? Want to become a wandering hero and uphold justice? Or punch little monsters and kick Ultraman?"

"What kind of nonsense is that? A squad of mercenaries tried to capture me today, but I beat them all by myself. It was like... I'd been in that kind of fight before and knew what to do next."

"Your past-life memories weren't deleted thoroughly enough."

"...I'm asking seriously."

"And I'm answering seriously."

"?"

"No sending lone punctuation marks when you're chatting with your big sister~"

"You old fossil, calling yourself my big sister."

"You galactic profanity."

"...So this has something to do with my past life too?"

"That's right. Your brain's memories might have been inexplicably deleted, but the instincts etched into your bones and flesh won't disappear. It's like how people instinctively dodge danger."

"Heh. What, was I some world-saving hero in my past life?"

"If only I knew your past-life memories. If you want to recover them, your only option is the backup in the necklace.

"So when exactly are you going to set out to find that necklace? I've watched you stay in this place for months now. I have no idea what this dump has that could keep you here. A monthly salary of eighty thousand Mora?"

"At the very least, I want to cure that child before I leave."

"Oh~ Our little Xingsu really does have a healer's compassionate heart."

"Heh. I'll take that as a compliment."

"Do you like that little girl that much?"

"While treating her, I sometimes see memories of her past, whether I mean to or not. Her past..."

She had suffered from the difficult-to-treat Eleazar since childhood and had been injected with Archon Residue for human experimentation. Later, she had escaped amid the chaos and wandered the wilderness alone, even being abandoned by the companions who had fled alongside her. Then, in Mondstadt, swept along by hatred and the out-of-control power within her, she had been forced to cause the black fire incident, before eventually making her way back to her homeland of Sumeru to seek treatment.

"...Her past was too painful." Xingsu came back to himself from those fragments of memory, a layer of melancholy settling over his voice.

"There are plenty of people suffering in this world. If you try to save every one you meet, you'll only wear yourself to death."

"Maybe you're right, but that child... maybe I'm the only one who can save her. Besides..."

Collei sat on the bed after Xingsu had just treated her, her fingers anxiously twisting the hem of her clothes. Long-standing fear and feelings of inferiority lurked in her eyes, but she still gathered her courage, lifted her head to meet Xingsu's eyes, and asked quietly:

"Mr. Xingsu... is there really a chance my Eleazar can be cured completely?"

Xingsu leaned down, gently stroked the top of her head, and said with earnest certainty:

"Don't worry. It can."

Seeing the girl's hopes for life filled Xingsu with determination.

Xingsu paused, then repeated:

"It definitely can."

"...Besides, I don't want to break that promise."

"Sigh. Fine, fine. Have it your way, Saint Xingsu."

"By the way, Lin, you Memokeepers don't have the concepts of illness or aging, so does that mean you can live forever, never growing old and never dying?"

"Hey! Stop, stop, stop. Don't say any more. Keep going and I'll start feeling like some lunatic is about to shoot an arrow into my head."

"?"

"No sending lone punctuation marks when you're chatting with your big..."

"I said stop! Just explain."

"Ahem. Over our lifetimes, we Memokeepers experience the lifetimes of billions of civilizations. To witness reunions is inevitably to witness partings, and to witness hope is inevitably to see it shattered. Joy and sorrow, obsessions, love and hatred play out again and again across countless lives.

"After seeing all kinds of memories, it becomes easy to grow weary.

"All joy will eventually fade, all suffering will eventually end, and an individual's struggles seem weightless before the end of the universe.

"Your sense of self is diluted by the lives of countless strangers, and you slowly grow numb and indifferent to the joys and sorrows of the outside world.

"Foreign memories collide and blur together. You can't tell which are other people's pasts and which are your own life. In the end, you completely forget 'who I am,' and your consciousness disperses into scattered memoria.

"You may even ultimately return to 'Nihility.'"

"I see..." Xingsu more or less understood what Lin meant.

"But! Your big sister is very clever. I rarely collect memories myself. Instead, I create Memetic Entities like you, have you live out your lives like ordinary people on different planets, then come back with your precious memories and seal them away directly. Everything in one go!"

"Oh... so that's how it works."

"Well? Isn't your big sister so clev..."

"You old fossil, you really are a lazy bum."

"You (intense expressions of greeting)."

"What's wrong with you?!"

"Could you stop singing outside my door for no reason while I'm working?!"

Sandrone stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Columbina as she sang outside the door, her temper flaring. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Arlecchino quietly leaning against the wall and watching.

"Oh, no-"

"What's wrong with both of you?!"

Fuming, San grabbed a twisted, bent little mechanical toy mouse. Even its metal frame had been forcibly bent out of shape. She held it up in front of Arlecchino and raised her voice in complaint:

"What do you mean, the toy I made for the child broke again?! Is she some born beast of destruction descended upon the world?! I'm already making the toys out of steel! Refined steel, at that! Do you have any idea how hard refined steel is?! How can something that hard still get mangled until it's completely deformed?!"

Columbina stopped her ethereal song and tilted her head, her eyes innocent and bewildered.

Arlecchino pressed a hand to her forehead, a faint hint of apology at the corners of her mouth, and quietly explained to the bristling Sandrone:

"I'm truly sorry, Sandrone. That child simply... well, has a somewhat unusual constitution. She didn't damage your hard work on purpose. If it's too much trouble, I'll look for other alternatives."

"...Forget it. Bring her to my workshop yourself sometime. I refuse to believe I can't make a toy for a child!"

At that moment, Sandrone had yet to realize that this would become one of the decisions she regretted most in her life.