In the Chinese language, the word for "husband" has three common meanings.
The spouse of a married woman.
A man.
An adult male.
Of these three interpretations, the first is by far the most common. The spouse of a married woman, also known as laogong, or in ancient times, xianggong or fujun.
F-future husband?
The words struck her like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The girl's two thin eyebrows shot up in surprise, her wide eyes bulged into perfect circles, and her small mouth fell agape. She stood there, frozen as if petrified.
This guy… was her future husband?
Although there was an unwritten rule in the industry—"when you can't explain it, blame it on time travel"—the shock of experiencing it firsthand was on an entirely different level.
Miss Sirin stared with her golden eyes at the boy who had inexplicably appeared in her room, her expression completely dazed.
"Want some candy?"
The boy, who claimed to be her future husband, reached into his pocket and pulled out a bar of chocolate.
The wrapper was pale yellow, adorned with a dark brown grid. Pictured on the front was a chubby-faced little girl with deep blue eyes and a headscarf.
It was Alyonka chocolate, created in 1964 by the workers of Moscow's "Red October" factory. At the time, the Soviet Union had adopted a new food program, requiring confectioners to produce a milk chocolate that everyone could afford.
Alongside Druzhba cheese and the Baikal drink, Alyonka chocolate was a favorite among the children of the Soviet member states.
It looked delicious.
Sirin, born in Belarus, naturally recognized it. The sweet aroma brought back a flood of memories.
Memories of the past, when her mother was still alive, feeding her chocolate.
At that thought, her expression couldn't help but darken with sorrow.
Her mother had long since died of illness.
Otherwise, she would never have been sent to an orphanage, let alone adopted by Schicksal and brought here to be a test subject.
However, she quickly snapped back to reality.
"Test subjects don't live long enough to get married."
The girl looked at the impossibly strange boy, stating the cruel, unvarnished truth.
This guy is probably one of the researchers from a social practice experiment.
He had come to find her in the middle of the night, most likely for some new test.
The girl, who was actually quite intelligent when her ego wasn't inflated, watched the handsome boy with a grave expression.
What fresh hell awaited her now?
And then—
Her expression froze solid.
"The day before yesterday, the other you was holding a pregnancy test, and it clearly showed two lines."
The statement, overloaded with an absurd amount of information, landed squarely in Miss Sirin's ears.
"If you want to eat it, go ahead. I'm not about to harm the girl who shares a body with the mother of my future child."
The boy, who just the day before had been sharing a room with Kiana and Sirin, spoke again. Then, he pressed the chocolate into Miss Sirin's hand.
"Wh-who are you?"
Perhaps because she was still weak, Miss Sirin seemed far less arrogant than the one Li Zihan remembered. Her voice trembled.
What in the world was this guy talking about?!
Though she didn't know what a "pregnancy test" was, the context made its function easy enough to guess.
Was this guy saying that, in the future, she would be pregnant with his child?
The claim was so utterly preposterous that, for a moment, Miss Sirin even forgot about the chocolate in her hand.
"I'm the lover of the other you, from the future."
"For various reasons, I came to this era, hoping to see if I could save you."
The boy, whose every word was a bombshell, casually reached out and placed his hand on the bars of her cell—a barrier that should have been absolutely indestructible to any normal human.
The lover of the other me from the future?
What kind of ridiculous identity was that?
Completely bewildered, Sirin's confusion only deepened.
But a moment later, her expression twisted into one of horror.
As easily as tearing a sheet of scrap paper, the cage forged from alloy was ripped clean from its moorings right before her disbelieving eyes.
And then—
CLANG—!
The deafening crash of metal against the floor echoed through the room.
That a human could so effortlessly tear apart steel bars was a strange and deeply unsettling fact. But Sirin had no time to ponder the secret behind such immense strength.
The sound of the bars hitting the ground was simply too loud.
In the dead silence of the laboratory, a noise like that was enough to trigger the entire defense system of the Tower of Babel.
Before long, the room would be swarmed by mecha units.
If it was those mechas…
The girl recalled seeing a few petty thieves while burying her friends. Lured by money and ignorant of the true danger, the poor fools had easily dispatched the guards, laughing at how pathetic Babel's security was.
And then—
They all died.
Suppressed by overwhelming firepower, they burst into blossoms of blood.
Remembering those ferocious war machines, Sirin's small face turned pale. She could already imagine the fate that awaited this bizarre boy who had appeared at her side.
"You need to run! Now!"
Without a second's hesitation, Miss Sirin yelled at the boy who sounded like a complete lunatic.
She didn't know who he was, but she could sense he meant her no harm. In fact, he seemed to hold an incredibly high degree of goodwill towards her.
She didn't believe a word he said.
Time travel, a future husband, "another you"… it all sounded like the ravings of a madman.
But even if he was crazy, he was one of the very few people who had ever shown her kindness. She didn't want to watch him die.
However, her warning came too late.
Alarm lights flared to life throughout the Tower of Babel, accompanied by the whirring of heavy machinery. The tower's defense protocols had been activated.
Soon, the mecha units, controlled by the electronic system, came rushing from the distance.
The dark, gaping muzzles of their guns radiated a bone-deep chill.
Miss Sirin's heart sank.
"You're probably going to die," she said, her voice filled with despair. She looked up at the boy, wanting to get one last look at his face.
To her astonishment, she found that, even when faced with a legion of steel monstrosities, the expression on the boy's face was one of complete and utter ease.
"I'm probably going to die?"
As if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world, the boy began to laugh.
"Don't underestimate me."
Before Sirin's very eyes, he casually extended a hand.
And then—
Black and red feathers began to dance in the air.
Simultaneously, a faint black mist rose from the ranks of the mecha legion.