In the kitchen, the water came to a boil.
Su Yu glanced at the message, typed out a reply, then immediately dropped two handfuls of dried noodles into the pot. He turned and pulled yesterday's leftover braised topping from the fridge, pouring it into a small pot to warm.
The topping had been made the day before yesterday—a base of minced meat with daylily and wood ear mushrooms added. Heat it up, ladle it on, and it was ready to eat.
Stirring the noodles, he called out toward the living room.
"Kiana, after we finish eating, let's swing by the studio. Eden said she's coming over."
He gave "Kiana" the short version of the deal he'd struck with Eden the night before.
Of course, he left out the part on the hood of the car.
In the living room.
The blanket on the sofa stirred.
Sirin lay with her eyes open, staring at the pattern of the blanket. She'd been staring at it for nearly twenty minutes.
She'd actually woken before dawn.
To be precise, she had barely slept at all.
After that blackout-drunk red-haired woman had left last night, Su Yu had showered and gone into the bedroom, and his breathing had quickly grown long and heavy.
Sirin had lain on the sofa the whole night, her mind turning over and over a single problem—how to hold out until Kiana woke up.
And now this man wanted to take her out.
And to go see Eden, no less.
Eden.
Sirin dug up the information corresponding to that name from Kiana's memory fragments.
A world-class superstar, Su Yu's angel investor, obscenely rich—and that woman was no easy mark.
The more people she met, the higher the odds of being exposed.
And there was an even deadlier problem.
Sirin slowly raised a hand and touched the corner of her eye with the pad of her finger.
Both eyes.
Both of them were golden.
Kiana's left eye was supposed to be blue.
How was she going to explain that?
Her brain raced.
If Su Yu discovered she had taken over Kiana's body—and that she was so weak she couldn't even stand steadily—last time, in the consciousness space, this lunatic had been killed by her countless times and still managed to climb back up and keep charging at her.
If he found out...
She didn't dare let her thoughts go any further.
A thin layer of sweat broke out across Sirin's back.
No.
She absolutely could not be discovered.
That left only one road.
Act.
Act until that damned Paramecium came back.
Sirin began to think. Fighting to survive, she felt her brain heating up like an overclocked CPU.
If Kiana were the one who woke up to find both her eyes had changed color, how would she react?
Sirin closed her eyes and searched her mind for Kiana's behavioral patterns.
The answer was practically begging to be said.
And that was—
Stupid.
Yes. Just be stupid.
That Paramecium's first reaction to anything was to make a huge fuss, then act like an idiot, and then wait for someone else to clean up the mess.
As long as she acted stupid enough, no one would suspect a thing.
Sirin abruptly threw off the blanket and sat up.
First she grabbed the phone off the coffee table and looked at her reflection in the dark screen.
Two golden pupils blazed, glaringly bright against the dark surface.
Then she took a deep breath.
"Ah! Human—"
The instant those two words left her mouth, her tongue snapped back as if it had been scalded.
"—I mean, Su Yu! Come quick and look at my eyes!!"
From the kitchen came the clatter of a spatula knocking against the stovetop.
Su Yu rushed into the living room in two great strides.
He saw "Kiana" sitting on the sofa, her white hair a tangled mess, both hands holding the phone up to her own face—and those eyes—
Both of them were golden.
Su Yu's footsteps faltered, then he crouched down in front of the sofa. What two golden eyes meant—he understood all too well.
"What's wrong? Is something hurting? Is it that Herrscher again—"
"No, no."
Sirin shrank back half an inch.
Su Yu's face was too close.
She could see clearly the faint shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes that had yet to fade, could smell the laundry detergent on his clothes.
This man's gaze made her uneasy all over.
That concern was utterly unreserved, without any calculation or probing, just like...
Sirin cut the thought off.
Worry or concern, call it what you will.
What he was looking at was Kiana Kaslana.
Not her.
"I think I'm okay." She set the phone down and shifted her gaze elsewhere. "Just a little tired, nothing else really."
The line came out steady.
The weakness was real, which meant she wouldn't have to strain to play that grinning-all-day Paramecium.
It was perfectly normal for a sick person to talk less.
Even she couldn't help but admire her own excuse.
Su Yu stared into those golden eyes for several seconds.
"Why don't we just not go today. If you're not feeling well, I'll stay home—"
"No need."
Sirin's answer came as fast as a reflex.
Stay home? Spend an entire day cooped up face-to-face with this man in this palm-sized rental?
Just the thought of it made her scalp prickle.
The studio was at least bigger. She could find a corner to hole up in, let Su Yu go busy himself with his work, and keep the two of them as far apart as possible.
"Since that wom— since Eden wants to see me, then let's go see her."
When Sirin stood up, her legs went weak for a moment, and she had to grab the armrest of the sofa to steady herself.
Su Yu reached out to support her, but she turned aside and avoided him.
"I said I'm fine."
Su Yu withdrew his hand, glanced at her, and didn't insist further.
"Then let's eat breakfast first." He turned and headed for the kitchen. "You must be hungry, right?"
Sirin opened her mouth to say, "This Queen most certainly is not—"
Growl.
Her stomach let out a full-throated protest.
The entire living room went silent for a second.
Sirin's face began to burn, starting at the base of her neck and climbing upward.
She glared fiercely at the floor, her jaw clenched so hard her teeth creaked.
The aroma of the braised topping drifted over from the kitchen.
The minced meat bubbled away in the small pot, the scent of daylily and wood ear blending into the steam, drilling into her nostrils.
Sirin's throat bobbed.
Her feet had already started moving toward the kitchen before her mind caught up.
Her bare ankle peeked out from beneath the cuff of her pajama pants. The few steps from the sofa to the kitchen, she walked very slowly, every step reluctant—but the direction of her toes pointed honestly toward the stove.
Su Yu had already dished up two bowls of noodles.
Dark brown topping was ladled over the white noodles, minced meat and daylily heaped on top, steam rising.
He pushed one of the bowls across to the other side of the dining table.
Sirin sat down on the chair and looked at the bowl of noodles in front of her.
The chopsticks were stuck in the holder beside the bowl.
She drew out a pair, lifted a clump of noodles, and brought it to her mouth.
The salty fragrance of the topping wrapped around the chewy texture of the noodles, bursting across her tongue.
It was completely unlike those snacks from last night.
Those had been sweet, crunchy, ice-cold.
This bowl of noodles was hot, savory, rich with the mellowness of fat.
Heat steamed up from her stomach, the warmth spreading down her esophagus and out to her limbs.
Sirin's chewing involuntarily quickened.
Su Yu sat across from her, head down, eating his own bowl.
Half his attention was on the noodles, the other half on the phone in his pocket. Eden had just sent another message, and he hadn't had a chance to look yet.
The two of them sat across a small dining table, each preoccupied with their own thoughts, neither speaking.
The kitchen window was open a crack, and the morning breeze blew in from outside, scattering the residual steam lingering over the stove.
Sirin ate with her head down, her white hair falling forward to cover half her face.
She used the noodles to wipe the bottom of the bowl clean of every last bit of topping.
Before long.
Su Yu stacked the two empty bowls together and carried them into the kitchen, twisting the faucet open to rinse the leftover gravy from the bottoms.
He glanced back at the white-haired girl beside the table.
"Hold on a second."
Sirin was just about to rise from her chair when she heard those words, and her movement froze halfway.
What? Why is he suddenly stopping me? Could it be I've been found out?!
She didn't dare move a muscle.
Su Yu walked over, circled around behind her, his gaze falling on that head of white hair.
After a night's sleep plus all of last night's tossing about, the hair was badly knotted, tangled into several clumps at the back of her head, the ends sticking up like a cat that had been frightened into puffing out its fur.
"If you don't tidy up that hair, Eden's going to laugh at you when we go out."
Su Yu fished the wooden comb out of the drawer of the TV cabinet and jerked his chin toward the low stool in front of the mirror.
"Sit there."
Sirin didn't move.
Her back went taut, her ten fingers clenched into fists on her knees.
Touch her hair.
This man wanted to touch her hair?
In Sirin's understanding, touching one's hair was an extremely intimate act.
A Herrscher needed no one's care, and certainly didn't need anyone drawing close to the back of her head.
That was the most vulnerable spot, the blind angle of her defenses.
But if she refused—Kiana wouldn't refuse.
From that Paramecium's memory fragments, Sirin had dug up this very scene.
Su Yu combing Kiana's hair, Kiana yelling "You're pulling it, idiot" while sitting obediently still.
And then the two of them would bicker while discussing what to have for lunch that day, Su Yu teasing that she'd just finished breakfast and was already thinking about lunch, Kiana blushing and saying "Being able to eat is a blessing, you wouldn't understand"—
Sirin bit down on her back molars, walked to the low stool, and sat down.
The mirror reflected her own face.
Twin golden pupils, a pallid complexion, lips somewhat cracked from not drinking much water last night.
Su Yu stood behind her.
The moment the wooden comb came down from the crown of her head, Sirin's shoulders hitched up a notch.
"Relax. I'm not going to yank your hair out."
Su Yu's tone was easy, the kind of thing he'd said countless times.
When the comb's teeth met a knot, he didn't force it. Instead, he first used his fingers to separate the tangled strands, then combed them through one small lock at a time.
Sirin stared at the man standing behind her in the mirror.
His attention was entirely on his hands, his brow slightly furrowed, probably wrestling with a particularly stubborn knot.
The wooden comb slid from the crown of her head down to the ends, once, and then again.
The pressure was light, the rhythm slow.
When it met a knot he'd stop, switch to his fingers to work it loose, and once it was smooth, continue combing downward.
Sirin's breathing grew shallow without her noticing.
A long time ago.
So long ago that even she had nearly forgotten that "before."
There had been a woman who did this too.
That woman's fingers were thinner than Su Yu's, her nails trimmed very short, the pads of her fingers bearing the thin calluses left from years of needlework.
She would hold the little Sirin on her knees, combing from her forehead to the back of her head with an old wooden comb, humming a lullaby with words Sirin couldn't understand as she combed.
The melody of that song—Sirin could no longer recall it.
But the tingling, drowsy sensation of the comb's teeth grazing across her scalp—her body still remembered.
That woman called "Mother."
Yet it seemed she could barely even remember her face anymore.
The fists Sirin clenched on her knees loosened.
She didn't even notice the change herself.
Her stiff spine sank down inch by inch, her shoulders slowly settling back to where they belonged from their hitched-up position.
Su Yu noticed that "Kiana's" body had relaxed quite a bit, and assumed she had finally stopped being so tense.
"Are you really not feeling well today? Otherwise you'd have started ragging on my lousy skills by now."
Sirin didn't answer.
Her gaze shifted away from Su Yu's face in the mirror, falling onto the back of her own hand.
This hand was Kiana's.
This white hair being combed was Kiana's.
This man standing behind her, carefully working loose every tangled strand, was doing it because of Kiana too.
The wooden comb slid one last time from the crown to the ends, meeting no further resistance.
Su Yu stepped back half a pace and tilted his head to inspect the result.
"There. How's my craftsmanship today?"
In the mirror, Sirin's hair had been combed perfectly smooth, the long white locks hanging neatly down both sides of her shoulders.
"It's whatever."
Four muffled syllables, as though squeezed out from deep in her throat.
Su Yu didn't mind the answer.
When Kiana wasn't feeling well, she talked in exactly this tone—lazy, unwilling to waste her breath.
Though idiots don't get sick—well, that's not quite right either. During the first couple of weeks after she'd first arrived here, her way of talking had been about the same as it was now.
She rarely volunteered anything, and only when he deliberately said a few flirty lines to tease her would she answer with a blush.
But the further along they went, the more the suppressed liveliness of the girl revealed itself beyond all doubt. Su Yu still remembered yesterday at the banquet hall, Kiana with her cheeks stuffed full while shoving anything delicious into her arms—
"You've been so tired lately, eat more, otherwise when we walk out together people will think this lady's been mistreating you!"
The cat-master had turned the natural order on its head, leaving the cat-keeper Su Yu caught between laughter and tears.
"I'll go change clothes then." He put the wooden comb back in the drawer. "You change too—just wear that white T from yesterday, don't dress too formally."
The sound of his footsteps receded toward the bedroom.
Sirin sat on the low stool, facing the mirror, motionless.
She raised a hand, pinched a lock of the just-combed hair at its end, and rubbed it back and forth a couple of times with her fingertip.
The hair was smooth—no knots, no frizz.
She let the lock go.
Then she stood, walked to the storage box in the corner of the living room that held Kiana's changes of clothes, and crouched down to rummage through it.
The mirror reflected her back, her white hair hanging down from her shoulders, swaying lightly at her waist.
Sirin finished changing.
A white short-sleeved T-shirt, and below it the black athletic shorts Kiana often wore.
She had rummaged through the storage box for ages, and in the end chose this outfit—because it was the combination that appeared most frequently in Kiana's memory fragments, the one least likely to give her away by being wrong.
When Su Yu came out of the bedroom, he glanced at her.
"Let's go."
The two of them went downstairs.
The July sun had already begun to turn vicious, the concrete ground baked pale, heat steaming up off the surface.
Su Yu walked over to the row of bike sheds beneath the apartment block and pulled open the lock on a gray-blue little electric scooter.
Sirin stood a couple of steps away, looking at the scooter.
The classic Su Yu electric scooter. The first time that man had ridden it out, he'd even declared with great solemnity in front of Kiana, "This is the romance of a man," and after Kiana roasted him for it, he'd added, "You wouldn't get it—during rush hour, only this thing can carve you a way out of the gridlock."
So stupid.
How could there be such a stupid person, such a stupid conversation?
Sirin felt a wave of irritation.
"Get on." Su Yu straddled the front seat and twisted the key; the dashboard lit up.
Sirin didn't move.
Her gaze swept back and forth twice between the rear seat cushion and Su Yu's back.
Riding a thing like this, how was the person in back supposed to sit?
Kiana's memory fragments gave her the answer.
Hold his waist.
She, the dignified Herrscher of the Void, a deity exalted above all, was actually expected to press herself tightly against this man's back in such a shameful posture—this was simply the ultimate humiliation.
"What are you spacing out for? Get on." Su Yu glanced back at her. "There's a whole pile of stuff waiting at the studio."
Sirin clenched her back molars tight.
She straddled the rear seat, and the moment her backside touched the cushion, her whole body slid back a stretch.
The cushion on this junk scooter was hard and slippery, with no point of purchase at all.
"Hold on tight, don't fall off."
Su Yu said this without even turning his head.
Sirin's hands hovered in midair.
Her ten fingers spread open and curled in, curled in and spread open.
Hold on.
Hold on to this man's waist.
She took a deep breath, reached both hands around from the sides of Su Yu's waist, and clasped them together in front of his abdomen.
The instant her fingertips touched the fabric of the T-shirt, she felt the contour of the muscle beneath.
Not the exaggerated kind manufactured in a gym, but firm—when it tightened, she could feel the clear lines of definition.
The effect of the enhancer.
Sirin knew about this from Kiana's memories.
This man, in order to be able to grab hold of Kiana the next time danger came, had voluntarily injected himself with that substance that made a person hurt to the point of madness.
Her fingers stiffened against Su Yu's abdomen.
The scooter started up.
"Off we go."
The wheels rolled over the speed bump at the entrance of the complex, and the whole scooter gave a jolt.
Sirin's body lurched forward half an inch, her forehead nearly knocking into Su Yu's back.
She instinctively tightened her arms.
Su Yu's body heat transferred through the thin T-shirt.
The July sun had already baked the fabric scorching hot, but the warmth underneath had nothing to do with the sun—it was the heat of a living person, continuous, radiating from the inside out.
Sirin's palms pressed against Su Yu's abdomen, able to feel the rise and fall of his abs with each breath.
Inhale, tighten.
Exhale, relax.
The rhythm was steady, like a well-running machine.
Wind poured in from both sides, blowing Sirin's white hair back.
Su Yu slowed at an intersection, waiting for the red light.
He glanced back at the rear seat.
"You okay? Feeling dizzy?"
Sirin looked away.
"Not dizzy."
"Once we get to the studio, just find somewhere to lie down—don't worry about anything else." Su Yu turned back, staring at the red light ahead. "I'll handle Eden's end."
The light turned green.
The scooter started up again and merged into the morning rush-hour traffic.
Su Yu threaded between a bus and a van, the body of the scooter tilting slightly.
His left hand left the handlebar, reached back, and held a loose guard against the outer side of Sirin's knee.
It wasn't deliberate.
It was just the instinctive reaction of someone carrying a passenger, afraid the person in back might get thrown off during a lane change.
The hand withdrew, gripping the handlebar again.
The whole motion took less than two seconds.
Sirin's hands encircled his waist, her ten fingers interlaced at the very center of his abdomen.
Beneath her palms was the cotton T-shirt soaked through by the sun, the fabric billowing faintly in the breeze of their riding, intermittently pressing against and then peeling away from the backs of her hands.
Sirin stared at Su Yu's back.
The wind lifted the wisps of hair at the back of his neck and pressed them back down, exposing a small strip of skin tanned a light wheat color.
That motion just now.
Reaching out to guard her knee.
There was this scene in Kiana's memory fragments too.
Every time he changed lanes on the scooter, Su Yu would do this.
Not every time did he actually make contact—sometimes it was just a feint through the air before withdrawing—but his hand would reach in that direction.
It was habit.
A conditioned reflex formed between him and Kiana after who-knew-how-many repetitions, one that no longer needed to pass through the brain.
Sirin's fingers tightened a little against Su Yu's abdomen.
She couldn't say clearly what she was feeling right now.
It wasn't anger.
It wasn't disgust.
It was something that welled up from her stomach—sour, astringent, lodged at the base of her throat and impossible to swallow down.
Every one of this man's gestures, every offhand word, every unconscious little habit, all told her the same thing—
This seat you're sitting in isn't yours.
This waist you're holding wasn't prepared for you.
This warmth you feel never belonged to you.
The scooter turned onto a tree-lined avenue, the canopies of two rows of London plane trees interweaving overhead into a green vault, the sunlight sliced into fragments, falling piece by piece onto the road.
The wind drilled down through the gaps in the leaves, carrying the July-specific scent of grass baked by the sun.
Sirin closed her eyes.
Beneath her palms, Su Yu's heartbeat carried up through his abdominal wall—one beat, then another, steady and strong.
"What's wrong?" Su Yu didn't turn his head, his voice mixing with the engine roar of the surrounding cars. "Are you carsick? Or did you just not sleep well last night?"
Sirin stared at the small tuft of short hair sticking up at the back of his head.
"It's nothing."
"We're almost there. Right turn at the intersection up ahead, grab a drink, and then we're off."
The light turned green, and the scooter merged back into the traffic.
Five minutes later, the scooter pulled to a stop in the shade at a crossroads.
Beside it was a small-fronted milk tea shop, the machines on the prep counter humming, two or three people lined up at the door.
"Don't get off—just sit here and wait for me."
Su Yu pulled out the key and hung his helmet on the handlebar.
That was the edge of a two-meter safety distance. Although at the studio and at home the restriction no longer applied, and outside there was free-activity time too, he still subconsciously kept a safe distance between himself and "himself."
He knew "he" was working as a Vigilante, so he wanted to help "himself" save time wherever possible—it added up, leaving more for "him" to go out and fight crime.
Sirin sat on the scooter, watching Su Yu walk up to the order counter.
He didn't turn back to ask her what she wanted to drink.
He didn't pull out his phone to check the menu.
"Boss, two cups—one iced Americano. The other, full sugar, add pearls, add two portions of coconut jelly, light ice."
He took out his phone and scanned the code, his movements as practiced as if he repeated this process every single day.
The clerk behind the counter didn't even ask a single extra question, just printed out the order.
"Brother Su, the usual again today?"
"Yep, the usual. Make it quick, I'm in a hurry."
Sirin watched that figure standing in front of the counter.
Full sugar.
Pearls.
Two portions of coconut jelly.
This was Kiana's taste.
That idiot always loved to pile all the sweet things together and eat until her whole mouth was a mess.
And this man—without even needing to ask—could order exactly what that idiot liked best, without a single mistake.
Even the shop's staff knew it was "the usual."
In these ordinary, uneventful days without Honkai, without battle, this man had already carved every one of Kiana's habits, every one of her preferences, into his very bones.
Just like twisting open the faucet to wash his face every morning—natural, habitual, requiring no thought at all.
Su Yu came walking back carrying a plastic bag.
Condensation on the cup walls dripped down the plastic bag, splattering a dark circle onto the dry asphalt road.
He pressed the fully-loaded milk tea into Sirin's hand and stuck the straw in for her in the same motion.
"Drink up, full sugar. You're looking out of it today, so this is a special exemption."
The icy sensation transferred from her palm.
Sirin lowered her head.
Inside the cup, black pearls and white coconut jelly crowded together in the milk tea.
She bit down on the straw and took a big sip.
The icy liquid, wrapped in an extremely rich sweetness, rushed into her throat, the chewiness of the pearls bouncing between her teeth.
That was sugar enough to smooth away any agitation—the flavor Kiana loved most.
Full sugar.
Very sweet.
Sirin chewed the pearls, her gaze falling on the chubby cartoon bear printed on the cup lid.
But the liquid sliding down her esophagus spread an indescribable sourness and a faint bitterness through her stomach.
That firmly-remembered taste, that wordless tacit understanding, that natural, effortless tenderness.
None of it was for her.
She was nothing but a borrowed shell, sitting in this seat, enjoying in place of that slumbering idiot a privilege that had never belonged to her.
"Feeling any better?"
Su Yu straddled the scooter and put his helmet back on.
Sirin swallowed the pearls in her mouth.
"Let's go."
The scooter started up again.
This time, Sirin no longer resisted that inertia.
Her hands still gripped the fabric at the sides of Su Yu's waist, her cheek, through a thin layer of cloth, pressed against that broad, sturdy back.
The sunlight grew more glaring.
Fifteen minutes later, the little scooter turned into the underground parking garage of the Arc City Tower.
The air in the garage was cool, mixed with the smell of car exhaust and tire rubber.
The sensor lights flickered on one by one as they moved.
Su Yu parked the scooter in a corner spot marked with white lines.
He pulled out the key and hung the helmet on the handlebar.
"Maybe I really should just buy a car."
Su Yu turned around, looking at the white-haired girl who had just climbed off the rear seat.
He patted the leather seat cushion of the scooter, producing a slapping sound.
"I usually don't care what I drive or what I wear, but we're working out of a top-tier office building in the city center now, after all. I'm just a director, it doesn't matter for me, but you're the studio's Chief Technology Officer and motion capture lead—going out to discuss collaborations and the like in the future, you can't always be squeezing onto this junk scooter with me."
He took a step forward and lowered his voice a little.
"After all, our activity range has now stretched out to two meters, and home and the studio are absolute territories. Once the PV drops and the funding starts flowing, I'll get a four-wheeler—you'll be more comfortable going wherever."
The exhaust fans of the underground garage emitted a low-frequency hum.
Sirin stood where she was, still clutching the emptied plastic cup in her hand.
The leftover pearls at the bottom of the cup crowded together, the straw drawing a faint slurping sound.
She didn't pick up the thread.
Buy a car? Status? These boring human games.
But she didn't want to argue back—she didn't even have the strength to open her mouth.
Baking under the sun the whole way, then suddenly plunging into the heavily air-conditioned garage, she only felt a throbbing pain at her temples, the sour water in her stomach surging back up.
That cup of full-sugar milk tea was too sweet—cloyingly, sickeningly sweet.
Seeing her head bowed and silent, Su Yu's brow furrowed.
He took half a step forward and laid his hand directly against her forehead.
His palm was dry, its temperature much higher than the air in the garage.
Sirin's shoulders instantly sagged, her back pressing against the door panel of a Grand Cherokee parked beside her.
She instinctively wanted to slap that hand away.
She held back.
"Your face looks so awful." Su Yu's fingers lingered on her forehead for two seconds. "You're really fine? No fever, but you're all cold sweat."
Sirin turned her head aside, lifting her forehead away from that palm.
Her gaze went past Su Yu's shoulder, fixing dead on a fire hydrant on the garage wall.
"It's nothing, I just didn't sleep well yesterday—you don't need to worry about me."
Her voice was muffled, as if something were lodged in her throat.
Su Yu withdrew his hand and didn't press the questioning any further.
He fished a tissue out of his pocket and handed it over, then turned and headed toward the elevator bank.
"Come on, let's go up and rest a while. You don't have to do motion capture today—just stay in the break room."
Sirin took the tissue, clutching it tightly in her palm, and followed behind that figure.
Why did this man have to fuss even over her not sleeping well? Afraid she'd fall? Afraid she'd get sick?
That careful tenderness was written all over his eyes.
Sirin clenched her teeth and tossed the empty plastic cup into the trash can by the elevator door.
The two of them boarded the elevator, one ahead of the other.
The elevator finally stopped on the thirty-eighth floor.
The doors slid open to either side.
What met the eye was a sweeping expanse of open-plan office space.
Beyond the enormous floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, Arc City's well-arranged skyline stretched out beneath the sunlight.
Sunlight cut large patches of light across the carpet through the glass.
The aroma of roasted coffee beans drifted in the air.
This was Eden's handiwork.
Luxurious, yet not vulgar.
"Morning."
Su Yu walked in, rapping on the counter as he passed the bar.
Behind the bar, a white-haired man was holding a cup of black coffee, a copy of the day's financial morning paper in his hand.
He wore a crease-free white dress shirt, his expression as if it had been frozen.
Kevin set down the paper and gave a nod.
"Morning."
Sirin followed behind Su Yu, her gaze sweeping over this man who was supposedly the company's CEO.
She had seen this person in Kiana's memories. But right now she was in no mood at all to deal with any of this. She only wanted to find an empty sofa to lie down on.
She forcibly pulled out a smile, mimicking that Paramecium's usual cadence, and waved a hand.
"Morning, Kevin."
Kevin nodded, his expression unchanged.
Sirin let out a breath.
First checkpoint cleared.
She turned to head toward the break area in the corner, when a figure in a loose hoodie suddenly darted out from behind the server-room partition on the other side.
"Su Yu! Come look at this Homu model I made—huh? Kiana?"
Nuwa, holding an unpainted 3D-printed resin piece, came rushing up in front of the two of them like a gust of wind.
Her footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
Nuwa's face came nearly right up under Sirin's nose.
From years of color-grading in front of a screen, her sensitivity to color far surpassed that of an ordinary person.
"Kiana, today you—"
Nuwa narrowed her eyes, her gaze sweeping back and forth across Sirin's face.
Sirin's heartbeat skipped half a beat.
She clenched the hem of her shirt, ready at any moment to deploy that extremely clumsy excuse.
"You're wearing colored contacts?" Nuwa suddenly raised her volume. "Wow! What shade is this? Pure gold? This is way too gorgeous! And you actually put them in both eyes—wasn't it only your right eye before? You finally gave up on the heterochromia setting?"
Nuwa excitedly reached out to poke Sirin's face.
Sirin abruptly took a step back.
She forcefully pressed down that surging killing intent.
She split her lips into a grin, baring two rows of white teeth, and let out a couple of dry laughs.
"Ah, yeah, looks good, right? Just bought them yesterday!"
As she said this, Sirin felt as if her tongue was about to tie itself into knots.
A deity, the Herrscher of the Void, discussing colored contacts for the sake of a few humans—although she had no idea at all what colored contacts even were—the humiliation of it.
"Gorgeous, gorgeous!" Nuwa nodded vigorously. "Send me the link later! This gold is just absolute—it has this kind of... cold, looking-down-on-all-creation vibe! It suits your current aura perfectly!"
Su Yu turned his head and stared into those golden eyes for two seconds.
"Alright, Nuwa, stop pestering her—she's not feeling well today." Su Yu pushed aside the resin model Nuwa was holding up. "Leave the model on my desk, I'll look at it later."
He pointed toward the huge break room on the south side, partitioned off by glass.
"Go in and sleep for a bit," he said to Sirin.
As if granted amnesty, Sirin walked briskly into the break room without a word and pulled the glass door shut behind her.
Inside the break room sat a wide leather sofa.
Sirin walked over and flopped heavily onto it. She buried her face in the soft cushion and drew a deep breath. The smell of leather covered up the roasted coffee aroma from outside.
These were just a few ordinary people.
This afternoon.
That woman who held enormous sway in the human world, along with that pink-haired woman known as a social terrorist, would be arriving soon.
Sirin rolled over and stared at the snow-white ceiling of the break room.
Her golden pupils glittered in the quiet space.
The central air conditioning in the break room quietly pumped out cold air, and the slats of the blinds sliced the sunlight from outside, casting an alternating grid of light and shadow onto the carpet.
Sirin lay on her side on the leather sofa, her gaze fixed without focus on those grids.
The phone in her coat pocket suddenly buzzed.
Sirin's brow furrowed, and she didn't immediately reach for it.
She assumed it was Su Yu again with some bothersome message asking whether she wanted hot water or the like.
But the phone relentlessly buzzed twice more.
Irritated, Sirin rolled over, and fished out from her pocket the phone plastered with a Homu sticker.
The screen lit up, its light shining into those golden pupils.
It wasn't Su Yu.
The screen showed three unread messages, the sender being "Bronie."
[Why didn't you reply last night? Did you sleep like the dead?]
[That top-spec graphics card you asked me to buy arrived. It's in that locked cabinet in your office—go in and check it yourself.]
[When are you planning to give this thing to Su Yu? Want this Hack Bunny to give you some pointers? For a thing like gifting, you've gotta pick a more romantic occasion, right?]
Sirin's gaze froze on those few lines of text.
Give a gift?
The owner of this body, that hopelessly stupid Paramecium, wanted to give Su Yu a gift?
Sirin's brain began to rummage through the memories left behind in this body.
Like sifting through a messy wastepaper basket, she finally, in some corner, yanked out the relevant scene.
In the scene, Kiana, dressed in that worn-out coat, weaved through back alleys in the dead of night with that female hacker called Bronie, hunting down those bounty fugitives.
After coming back, Kiana looked at the balance in her phone, stroked the white cat Chongchong beside her, then stared with a goofy grin at a picture of an expensive electronic component on a shopping website.
["Once I save up enough money, I'll buy this for Su Yu! He'll definitely be moved to tears, hehehehe!!"]
The voice in the memory overlapped with the words on the screen before her eyes.
The knuckles of Sirin's fingers pinching the edge of the phone began to tighten.
Su Yu wasn't giving in only one direction.
That man tolerated this idiot's bad temper, cooked her meals, combed her hair, didn't even need to ask her flavor when buying milk tea.
And this idiot, too, would go work in dangerous districts, hunt down those vicious fugitives, all just to replace a single part in that man's beat-up computer.
It was a mutual, equal, taken-for-granted bond.
Sirin's lips parted, then pressed tightly shut again.
She suddenly felt that sour water in her stomach, which had not yet fully settled, now surging all the way up, lodging at the base of her throat.
This sourness, mixed with the cloying sweetness left behind by the milk tea, turned into a nauseating bitterness.
By what right?
Sirin sat up from the sofa.
She turned the phone face-down and slammed it onto the coffee table beside her, producing a muffled thud.
By what right did Kiana get to have all this?
In the Babylon Laboratory, it was she who had endured the endless torment of that lab.
Those needles piercing into her skin, those reason-stripping drugs, that perpetual-night-like dark and frozen isolation pod.
Her friends had died one by one before her very eyes, the little girl able only to dig holes in the cold snow with fingers swollen and frozen like carrots, burying those familiar faces one after another beneath the frozen earth of Siberia.
All the pain, all the blood and tears, she had swallowed it all down.
And that clone who had robbed her of everything, that good-for-nothing idiot, was now in this peaceful world, brazenly enjoying the happiness that belonged to ordinary people?
Someone left the door open for her.
Someone made her steaming-hot noodles.
Someone, when she hadn't slept well, looked at her with that gaze afraid of shattering something fragile.
And even—this idiot had learned to cherish others, had even wanted to repay him, had even—
She felt her stomach as if it had caught fire.
Sirin lowered her head and looked at her own two hands.
The strength that had once belonged to these hands had been spent dry in the Sea of Quanta. Now, even gripping just slightly hard, her fingertips would tremble uncontrollably.
She bit down hard with her teeth on the soft flesh inside her cheek.
She doesn't deserve it, by what right—
Kiana doesn't deserve this kind of salvation at all.
That blood-soaked creature should be trapped forever in that rainy night in Arc City, forever sinking into madness within the self-blame of having gotten her teacher killed!
Sirin suddenly rose to her feet and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window of the break room.
The glass shut out the high-altitude air currents, and shut out every sound as well.
The city outside shone bright under the sun, but that light couldn't reach into her eyes at all.
She lifted a hand and pressed her palm against the cold glass surface.
That bastard Su Yu.
If he were to find out that the Paramecium he had poured all his tenderness and patience into had long since fallen asleep, and that the one standing before him now, usurping all this goodwill, was the Herrscher of the Void he hated most...
Sirin's fingers slowly curled tight against the glass, her nails scraping out a faint sound.
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