The taste of wisteria was a genuinely wonderful sensation to Li Ke.
It was especially true when it was thoroughly mingled with Shinobu's own unique sweetness.
Because of this, Li Ke's demeanor became incredibly gentle. Yet, even though Shinobu had assumed a completely submissive posture, yielding herself entirely to his wishes, his base instincts held him back from pushing things any further. After breaking the long kiss, he simply kept her securely nestled within his arms, letting her drift off to rest.
However—
"That scoundrel really is..."
Perched on the wall with her elbow propped on her knee, Mai Shiranui rested her chin in her palm and let out a heavy sigh as she watched the scene unfold below. Wrapped in the soft glow of the starlight, Li Ke and Shinobu looked the picture of serene, pure romance.
"The guy genuinely knows exactly how to manipulate a girl's feelings."
Mai stared up at the vast sky and the pristine moon. She had volunteered to take the night watch on the perimeter wall simply because the estate lacked an active sentry duty after dark.
But watching Li Ke and Shinobu cuddle down there left her with a deeply tangled mess of emotions.
Strictly speaking, Li Ke was the only man who had ever crossed into her absolute personal boundaries. Even if it had been limited to an unconventional compromise in the wasteland, the undeniable truth remained: he had seen and touched intimate parts of her that even Andy had never been permitted to approach—places she had strictly intended to save for her wedding night.
And as a direct consequence of that cosmic mix-up, Andy had gone ahead and married someone else.
Both she and Andy were deeply principled people. Now that Andy was legally wed, he would absolutely never orchestrate a divorce for her sake; he simply wasn't that kind of man. If he had been a reckless, impulsive person, she would have ended up pregnant and sidelined from the global fighting circuit years ago, completely eliminating the need for her to constantly run herself ragged to secure the future of the Shiranui Dojo.
While she profoundly loved and respected her family's legacy, it didn't mean she actively enjoyed marketing herself in such a scandalous, revealing uniform. In her day-to-day life, her wardrobe choices were exceptionally conservative.
Her gaze drifted back to Li Ke. He was sitting completely still, holding the fast-asleep Shinobu securely without a single wandering hand, using his phone to review English vocabulary flashcards in the dim light. Staring at his surprisingly disciplined behavior for a quiet moment, she couldn't resist breaking the silence.
"Hey, Li Ke... What do you think about me teaching the Shiranui style to the people of this world?"
Li Ke blinked in surprise, then gave a slow shake of his head.
"I wouldn't recommend it. While the actual combat techniques of the Shiranui style are genuinely fascinating, your clan's uniform is far too indecent. Even a thoroughly shameless pervert like me wouldn't consider parading around in that outfit a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love looking at it, but if it were up to me, I'd only ever let my own wife wear something like that inside a private bedroom with no one else around."
The moment the brutally honest admission left his lips, Li Ke caught the shifting, unreadable look flashing across Mai's face. Realizing his phrasing might have pushed a boundary, he quickly opened his mouth to add context.
"I mean, if you could guarantee there wouldn't be any accidental exposure, it wouldn't be completely out of the question. But fighting in something like that is just asking for trouble. Besides, don't you find those shoes incredibly uncomfortable?"
When it came to the tabi socks in Mai Shiranui's traditional loadout, Li Ke could understand why ancient scouts used them to muffle their footsteps for intelligence gathering. But in the modern era, was there really any point in rigidly clinging to that tradition?
Those things weren't even remotely suited for walking long distances.
To put it bluntly, it was basically just wrapping a single layer of fabric around the sole of your foot. Leaving aside the hazard of stepping on sharp rocks or shattered glass, it didn't even pass basic standards for cleanliness and hygiene!
"You're just overly sentimental. If I were the Grandmaster of the Shiranui style, the first thing I'd overhaul is your clan's uniform. Then, I'd completely redefine what a ninja is, and explicitly instruct all female disciples that the traditional combat attire is strictly reserved for private, one-on-one 'training sessions' with their romantic partners."
Li Ke spread his open palm, keeping his physical movements smooth and micro-managed so he wouldn't awaken the sleeping Shinobu in his lap.
"What exactly do you take our sacred combat uniform for..."
Mai facepalmed in sheer exhaustion. This utter scoundrel was fundamentally treating the legendary martial arts uniform of the Shiranui clan as a piece of spicy bedroom lingerie!
Li Ke merely chuckled softly.
"What exactly do you think ninjas were? I'm no expert on Japanese history, but your clan roots strictly trace back to shinobi lines, don't they? Mai... ancient kunoichi didn't dress provocatively just for fashion. As the primary successor of a ninja clan, don't tell me you're completely blind to the historical purpose of that design?"
The actual historical reality of the ninja profession lacked even a shred of the glamorous, idealized flair depicted in modern cinematic movies and comic books. To successfully orchestrate a targeted assassination, a historical shinobi spending three days and three nights submerged inside a literal cesspit wasn't an exaggeration at all. The modern romanticization of ninjas stemmed entirely from the upper class's historical fondness for fanatical tools who would gladly slaughter themselves and their entire families just to check off a mission milestone.
Of course, the massive global popularity of Naruto and Japan's aggressive cultural public relations played a major role too.
Mai remained tight-lipped. She was acutely aware of what the ancestors of the Shiranui line had been forced to do to survive. While their lineage boasted legends who hunted genuine demons and purged evil, for the vast majority of their history, they functioned as deniable assets serving various feudal daimyos—and those warlords would gladly weaponize the absolute dirtiest tactics available to secure a political edge.
Designing a combat uniform to be this revealing... carried a very high mathematical probability of streamlining seduction operations during a deep-infiltration mission. It distracted targets during high-intensity close-quarters combat, and could even serve as a psychological leverage point to preserve a kunoichi's life if she faced an inevitable defeat.
After all, as long as a captured operative managed to stay alive through whatever dark captivity awaited them in a warlord's dungeon, they lived to fight another day. And given the legendary physical beauty and lethal capabilities of Shiranui kunoichi, rarely would a captor choose to simply discard such a high-value asset.
"In the dark past, Shiranui ninjas wore revealing clothing to execute seduction operations and complete life-or-death missions for the survival of their dojo. In the modern era, having female disciples wear provocative clothing inside a private home to charm their husbands and boyfriends sounds like a perfectly healthy evolution to me. If you ask me, the absolute best strategic path to revitalize the Shiranui style is to lean heavily into marketing toward women. As a multi-generational ninja family, your archives must be packed with psychological blueprints on how to manipulate and enchant high-society targets. Just teach young modern women those charm principles, slightly modify your physical katas to focus on body sculpting, curves, and cosmetic longevity, and watch how many girls across your world go absolutely feral to sign up! Once your baseline student pool reaches a massive scale, a true martial genius is statistically guaranteed to emerge anyway. Why worry about your dojo fading into obscurity?"
Li Ke propped his chin in his hand, casually laying out his sociological critique of the fighting circuit.
"True martial prominence for the Shiranui clan will be achieved when your school is globally recognized for producing women who are universally celebrated as stunning, reliable, powerful, yet profoundly tender martial artists—women who are brilliant in a competitive brawl, matchless at domestic homemaking, fiercely protective of justice, and absolutely magnificent behind closed bedroom doors... At the end of the day, high-intensity tournament fighting is always going to be a luxury pursued by a microscopic fraction of the population."
Don't be fooled by how fanatical the people in the King of Fighters universe are about martial arts; as long as that world still has ordinary citizens, peaceful development will always remain the mainstream focus.
By the time Li Ke finished laying out his theory, Mai was completely dumbfounded, because she realized she could actually pull it off!
As a multi-generational lineage of Shiranui ninjas, her family possessed every single one of the required items Li Ke had just listed. The specialized Qigong methods that rapidly sculpted body curves, the secret ancestral manuals on charming men, and even the closely guarded texts detailing private bedroom arts—her estate housed them all. In fact, she had diligently mastered every single one of those disciplines specifically to prepare herself for Andy!
Except, except—
"That literally just sounds like running a high-class brothel! The version of the Shiranui style I want to revitalize is absolutely nothing like that!" she blurted out in horror.
"Don't frame it so coarsely. You should pitch it as an elite girls' finishing school, a prestigious dance academy, an opera house, a ballet conservatory, a cultural institute, or simply labeled as preserving traditional Japanese arts..."
Li Ke unleashed a completely unhinged stream of absolute hyper-rationalization.
"You are actively insulting art and real artists everywhere!!"
Mai couldn't help but facepalm in sheer disbelief. Li Ke's twisted corporate logic was a direct assault on artistic integrity! This man deserved to be tightly bound to a historical pillar of public shame, and then subjected to a thousands-cuts execution!
"I mean, by modern societal standards, sure, it looks that way. But throughout a large chunk of history, those glamorous artistic hubs were rarely completely clean anyway... Oh, and don't even get me started on web novel authors. Those writers are easily the filthiest degenerates on the planet. They spend every single day churning out vulgar smut or unhinged geopolitical rants. Tell you what, out of every ten fiction authors, slapping eight of them with a life sentence for distributing obscenity wouldn't be an overcharge at all. They should probably just face a firing squad."
Li Ke delivered the ruthless critique without a single ounce of psychological guilt. He genuinely believed it, based entirely on the transactional nature of the modern entertainment industries he had observed. Rarely did any average modern parent genuinely pray for their children to pursue a career in experimental theater or dance, unless the family already operated within that specific network and possessed the elite connections to protect their own.
However, intellectually recognizing that his logic was pushing it slightly—especially since the current era still harbored pure, idealistic visionaries who bled for their craft—he smoothly decided to pivot the conversation.
"Just how massive is your deep-seated bias against creative professionals?" Mai shot back, letting out an exhausted sigh.
"It's not a blind bias; it's a cold observation regarding how corrupt the pipeline gets when massive capital takes over. Look at it logically: suppose a remarkably talented, beautiful female dancer has a humble family and a devoted husband. Now, a billionaire who happens to be worth dozens of times more than her husband goes absolutely feral for her body, aggressively pursuing her while completely disregarding her marriage. In most scenarios, the tycoon will quietly use an endless mountain of cash to grease the wheels behind the scenes, rigging the industry metrics so she believes her sudden rise to stardom is purely the result of her own independent hard work. Only much later does she discover the billionaire bankrolled her entire career. Subjected to a prolonged dynamic like that, do you honestly believe the dancer's husband can avoid feeling intensely stressed, paranoid, or defensive? Do you think it wouldn't spark a massive domestic fracture? And do you honestly believe people wouldn't actively study dance solely to attract that exact tier of ultra-wealthy patronage?"
Mai went quiet, carefully processing his hypothetical scenario. Instead of projecting herself onto the shoes of the female dancer, her mind instinctively tracked the perspective of the slighted husband. She realized with absolute clarity that she would be furious—deeply, systemically enraged, and crippled by a profound sense of insecurity...
The exact flavor of that silent, defensive anxiety was something she had frequently perceived radiating from Andy whenever he froze up and refused to deliver a definitive answer regarding their future.
"I... suppose I would be?"
She murmured, her voice laced with uncertainty. Seizing the opening, Li Ke kept chipping away at her perspective.
"Exactly. And that domestic friction inevitably drives the woman away. The harder the husband tries to prove his love—and the harder the wife tries to prove hers—the more the contrast grinds against her. It turns her home life into a pressure cooker, leading straight to a divorce. And the most tragic part? In the eyes of society, it will always be blamed on the native husband's 'irrational jealousy' and 'lack of trust.'"
Li Ke shrugged his shoulders. Mai Shiranui was a highly intelligent woman; she had simply been blinded by her infatuation in the past.
"That's precisely why I call those industries dirty. When you have something dazzling, sweet, and beautiful, bees and flies are always going to swarm around it together. Art is exactly that kind of medium—magnificent, yet naturally prone to attracting the absolute filthiest element."
He stretched his limbs lazily, a playful grin finally breaking across his lips.
"So what about you?"
"Hmm?"
Mai looked down at him, her gaze narrowing slightly.
"Are you a bee or a fly?"
She was genuinely curious about how Li Ke classified his own predatory nature.
"I'm the bull."
"Huh?"
It was Mai's turn to look completely bewildered. Li Ke cleared his throat awkwardly, realizing his baseline survival instincts had fired that response out before his brain could filter it. But since his inner voice had demanded the line, he owned it.
"I'm the bull that cuckolded Andy..."
Mai froze. She wasn't familiar with modern internet subculture slang, but staring at the deeply awkward, shameless grin plastered on Li Ke's face, the context clicked in her mind with absolute clarity.
"You absolute bastard!!"
The sudden recollection made her entire body bristle with rage. Along with the realization, a flood of vivid sensory memories rushed back all at once—the weight of his hands gripping her hips, the heavy, intimate sensation of his physical presence invading her boundaries, and the overwhelming cocktail of embarrassment, panic, fury, and—
Pleasure.
Blushing with pure rage, she aggressively whipped out her folding fan, preparing to drive a martial strike right down onto his skull.
Yet, mid-motion, all the wind left her sails, and her hand fell limp. Andy was already married to another woman. What was the point of harboring such fierce, obsessive anxiety anymore?
It was entirely useless.
"That's why I'm telling you it's time to snap out of it and move forward, Mai. I know Andy is fundamentally a good person, and because of that, I genuinely feel bad about how things played out. But since reality has already reached this breaking point, you need to forge a brand new path for yourself..."
"I know."
Mai sharply cut him off. Staring down at Li Ke—who hadn't even bothered to flinch or dodge, completely prepared to serve as her emotional punching bag—she understood that he was genuinely looking out for her welfare behind his crude words.
"That's the exact reason I asked for your advice on how to revitalize the Shiranui dojo in the first place. Too bad your layout consists entirely of terrible, unhinged schemes."
She let out a weary sigh. She couldn't fathom exactly when or how her dynamic with Li Ke had evolved to the point where they could casually discuss her deepest vulnerabilities, but looking at his unmoving form and reviewing his actions, she had to admit the scoundrel possessed a genuinely good heart.
"How are they terrible schemes? Let's look at the numbers: given the current biological limits of your family's traditional katas, even if you successfully train a successor who completely outclasses you, do you honestly believe they stand a mathematical chance against a monster from the Kusanagi clan?"
Mai went dead silent for a long moment, before slowly shaking her head.
"No, they can't."
"Then, if someone is entirely obsessed with breaking their physical limits, will they choose your school, or will they head to the Kyokugenryu Karate dojo?"
Mai pulled her legs even closer to her chest, her posture shrinking.
"Kyokugenryu."
"And what about ordinary people with tight budgets who just want to stay fit? Will they choose globally recognized brands like standard Karate, Taekwondo, or Judo? Or will they choose the Shiranui style, which has already been heavily watered down just to fit into modern society? Your school utilizes physical gunpowder in its katas, right?"
Mai felt completely backed into a corner, her eyes welling with tears as she offered a thoroughly defeated, self-deprecating response.
"Of course they'll choose the big global brands!"
The reality was brutal. The Japanese populace already knew exactly what historical ninjas were, and she couldn't exactly train her disciples to be the Hollywood-style assassins that Westerners fantasized about. Caught in that double bind, her potential student pool had naturally shrunk to near zero.
Even Andy hadn't sought out the Shiranui dojo for its modernized, non-lethal tournament variants. He had arrived specifically to master the forbidden arts of assassination, fully intending to murder his nemesis from the shadows if a direct martial clash failed.
But actual assassination techniques...
She couldn't exactly broadcast those to the general public!
That was an even darker, more forbidden path than using seduction!
"So look at the facts," Li Ke pressed, his tone firm yet analytical. "The Shiranui style currently lacks top-tier competitive dominance, it lacks a modern marketing gimmick, and it lacks raw historical lethality. The only definitive selling point it has left is sensual appeal. If you refuse to lean into marketing toward women, what other viable card do you have left to play? Besides, who dictates what actually gets taught in the curriculum? You do! You can easily filter through the massive student body and handpick the few girls who aren't just training for lifestyle goals, making them your true, core successors!"
Li Ke shifted his footing slightly, ensuring he didn't disturb the sleeping Shinobu.
"Once your baseline enrollment reaches a massive scale and your dojo is flush with capital, you won't ever have to run yourself ragged just to cover daily living expenses. You can dedicate your entire existence to refining those elite students. You can easily divide the school into inner and outer disciples. The sacred, core techniques will be strictly walled off, accessible only to inner disciples who pass your rigorous personal trials. To the average public, the outer classes will just feel like a high-end yoga conservatory or a physical wellness center; they won't even associate it with ninja warfare. And let's be real—even if these women don't sign up for your classes, they're just going to spend their money on other fitness trends anyway. Don't tell me you don't know why a massive chunk of modern society studies yoga? Since when has a woman refining her body to appeal to her partner been classified as a shameful or degrading act? Using disciplined effort to elevate one's physical appearance and pursue a romantic partner is a completely valid human desire. Who has the right to look down on that?"
He looked up at her, his gaze steady under the starlight.
"At the end of the day, for a martial arts school to truly explode in popularity, it must be accessible and perfectly aligned with public demand. In the hyper-competitive circle of hardcore tournament fighters, you are never going to out-enroll giants like Kyokugenryu. Accept the structural ceiling of your style. Your iconic image, your flawless figure, and your striking beauty are the absolute greatest marketing assets the Shiranui clan possesses. The moment you utilize basic Qigong principles to train beautiful women, your financial bottleneck vanishes. Trying to revitalize the Shiranui lineage purely by punching people in tournaments is nothing short of an absolute pipe dream."
Li Ke delivered the comprehensive business critique with absolute sincerity.
In his eyes, the global notoriety of the Shiranui name rested entirely on the shoulders of Mai Shiranui herself. While modern women might claim to dislike her revealing tournament uniform, if they were told that practicing a modified version of the Shiranui style could grant them a figure identical to hers, preserve their youth, prevent sagging, and even reliably alleviate menstrual cramps—all without a grueling, decades-long training regimen—the results would be astronomical.
Taking the Shiranui style to a global, elite stage wouldn't take generations. It would take ten years, maybe even just five. It would rapidly transform into a prestigious, high-society lifestyle trend, instantly elevating the legacy into something universally celebrated as elegant and refined.
And that was even factoring in the time it would take for word to spread.
"Your brain doesn't function like a martial artist's at all! And besides, weren't you just complaining a second ago about how indecent our combat uniforms are?!"
Mai felt like she was genuinely losing her mind. Every single traditional clan treated their secret ancestral techniques like sacred, irreplaceable treasures. Yet here was Li Ke, casually advising her to open the floodgates and mass-market them to the public! On top of that, he was basically telling her to act as a walking advertisement to prove the Shiranui style could charm men!
"If it's another guy's wife wearing it, of course I'm going to be thrilled to look at it. But if you were my wife, you can bet your life I'd never let you step outside wearing that revealing outfit, let alone those traditional socks... They're terrible for your feet, you know?"
Li Ke delivered the unvarnished truth without a single shred of hesitation. He absolutely harbored desires for Mai, but since she had made her lack of interest explicitly clear, he had zero intention of acting like a desperate, pathetic simp.
Of course, maintaining a completely normal, blunt friendship with her was totally fine.
However, his completely instinctive, unfiltered response caused Mai to freeze on the spot.
"..."
Staring down at him, her mind raced. She couldn't tell if Li Ke was being genuinely sincere or if he was just weaving a clever web of words to trick her into his bed. But a singular, crushing realization pierced through her thoughts anyway.
"Andy... never said anything like that to me."
She murmured the words out loud, the unexpected confession instantly striking Li Ke completely silent, killing his urge to keep teasing her.
With that dam broken, a cascade of realizations flooded Mai's consciousness. There were so many structural flaws in her past relationship that she had simply chosen to ignore before, but analyzing them now revealed a complete disaster.
Andy didn't have a stable profession. He constantly claimed he was fully willing to help her revitalize the Shiranui Dojo, yet his actual actions never backed it up...
He always pushed her away with the same mantra: 'Wait until my vendetta is settled. Wait until I have my revenge.' But what about the day after his revenge?
She didn't know. He had never specified, and they had never once sat down to map out a concrete future together.
Throughout the entire history of their romance, she had been the only one constantly driving the relationship forward.
She had always forced herself to empathize with Andy, convincing her heart that he simply wanted to secure a completely stable life before proposing so he wouldn't risk leaving her a grieving widow.
But what benchmark actually defined "stable"?
If she chose to stay with Andy, at what point would she finally be permitted to hang up her scandalous tournament uniform, stop running herself ragged for the survival of the Shiranui name, and simply enjoy a peaceful, quiet life as a traditional homemaker?
When would she finally be allowed to just breathe and feel safe?
Mai pulled her legs even tighter against her chest, sinking into a profound, suffocating silence.
An uncomfortable, deeply fundamental question forced its way into her mind.
Between her and Andy...
Had they ever actually been formally dating?
Meanwhile, Li Ke's internal monologue remained characteristically simple.
Staring up at Mai as her expression cycled through a chaotic spectrum of processing emotions, a singular, pressing concern crossed his mind.
'She isn't about to snap out of this daze and leap down here to hack me to pieces, is she?'