"Beep."
The instant the speakerphone button went down, the dead air inside the car caught fire.
"Hello? Eden!"
Elysia's voice burst out of the other end, thick and nasal, the words tumbling over each other - she had clearly only just stopped crying.
"Did you catch that heartless jerk Su Yu?! Where is he? Did you beat him up good for me?!"
At that same moment, in the Golden Courtyard, in Elysia's room.
The room, all decked out in pink Crystals, held the faint sweetness of jasmine.
Elysia sat barefoot with most of herself folded into a soft couch, arms clamped around an enormous HOMU cushion.
The rims of her eyes were still red from crying, but they were shining now with the giddy light of a debt about to be repaid.
She pricked up her ears and stared at the phone on the coffee table, waiting for her best friend's report of victory.
Su Yu's back went rigid. His breathing stopped altogether.
Eyes wide, he threw look after desperate look at Eden, silent pleas written all over his face.
Eden ignored every one of them.
Something wicked and delighted danced in those golden eyes.
She leaned forward slightly, bringing her red lips close to the phone's microphone - and at the same time her other hand slid, quite casually, toward the hem of Su Yu's shirt.
"I caught him," Eden said, her voice lazy and soft, carrying a laugh that turned a man's bones to jelly. "Right now I've got him pinned against the car seat. I'm about to give him a very thorough... working over, on your behalf."
The last word had barely left her mouth when Eden pinched - hard, without an ounce of mercy - the tender flesh at Su Yu's waist, through the thin cotton of his shirt.
"Ssss - !"
Caught completely off guard, Su Yu sucked in a sharp breath, his body jolting as though he'd touched a live wire, a strangled groan escaping from deep in his throat.
That groan traveled down the line straight into Elysia's ear.
Miss Pink Elf, who had been weeping over a game's story a minute ago, snapped to attention, ears up, bouncing with excitement like some small eager animal.
"I heard it! He screamed, didn't he?!" Elysia shook a tiny fist at the phone, her voice pure vindicated glee. "Nice hit, Eden! Harder! Bad Su Yu, you big jerk, that's what you get for stealing my tears - you totally deserve it!!"
Listening to Elysia's bright little cheers coming out of the speaker, Su Yu felt his brain start to spin.
The sheer absurdity of it, and the guilt riding right behind it, burned through the last of his self-control like a struck match.
His good friend was on the other end of the line, cheering her best friend on.
And her best friend was using "avenging her" as an excuse to trap him in a cramped driver's seat and administer a punishment that was making his heart hammer out of his chest.
"Hear that? Ellie says you deserve it."
Eden tossed the phone onto the dashboard, freeing both hands.
The amusement in her eyes deepened. Her red lips brushed the shell of his ear, and she murmured in a breath only he could hear.
"So as your punishment - big sister isn't letting you off easy today."
With that, Eden parted those crimson lips and bit down on Su Yu's shoulder, right through his shirt collar.
She put real force into it. He could feel the sharp points of her canines pressing into skin, a small bright pain that dissolved a heartbeat later into a numbing tingle that ran up his scalp.
"Ngh - !"
Su Yu clenched his teeth, veins standing out at his temple, both hands grabbing uselessly at the edges of the leather seat.
Pain tangled with a pleasure he couldn't name, and his breathing went completely out of his control.
"Listen to that. Doesn't he sound pitiful?" Eden eased her mouth off him and reported to the phone with laughter in her eyes. "Don't worry, Ellie. I've worn him out so badly he doesn't even have the strength left to fight back."
"Nailed it, Eden! You're the best best friend in the whole world!"
Elysia clapped her hands in delight on the other end - but before long, something snagged at her sharp instincts.
"Eden... are you getting tired? You sound like you're breathing really hard. Maybe... you should take a break first?"
Inside the car.
Eden's once-immaculate wine-red trench coat had indeed gone somewhat askew.
Her chest rose and fell. A fine sheen of sweat beaded at her temple, and her breathing had turned quick and shallow from all that vigorous "activity."
She looked at Su Yu, who had been reduced to slumping against the seat, panting hard, the corners of his eyes flushed red - and the fire in her own eyes only burned hotter.
"No need for a break."
Eden's voice had gone hoarse, saturated with a sweetness thick enough to drown in.
"If it helps our darling Ellie get her revenge... what's a little exhaustion on my part?"
Ten minutes later.
On the other end of the line, Elysia hugged her enormous HOMU cushion, the excitement on her face slowly giving way to hesitation and unease.
Through the earpiece came an endless rustle of fabric on fabric, and Su Yu's heavy, brutally suppressed breathing, as though he were enduring some tremendous "agony."
"Um... Eden?"
Elysia couldn't hold it in any longer, and there was a softness in her tone that she herself hadn't noticed.
"It's been almost fifteen minutes. I mean, I really did want you to smack him around, but... he sounds like he's in a lot of pain. Maybe go a little gentler? Don't actually break him..."
"How could I possibly do that?"
Eden's voice came through in fragments, as though she were in the middle of something physically demanding.
"For a villain like this... who made you cry... obviously I have to punish him... thoroughly, to the very end! Don't worry, I know my limits. I absolutely won't do anything that'd affect his keyboard hands tomorrow."
"Then... then okay..."
Elysia bit her lower lip. Something about this was not right, and she could feel it.
But exactly what was wrong, her pure little head could not work out.
Until two minutes later.
A sound came out of the phone - Su Yu's voice, choked down as far as a voice could be choked down, like a bowstring pulled taut and finally snapping.
And then, a long silence, the kind that scorched the ears.
No more sounds of any "beating" came through the earpiece.
Only Su Yu's ragged gasping, like a man just hauled out of a river - and Eden's deep, slow breathing, lazy and sated and trailing a hint of afterglow.
The two of them, breathing in tandem in that cramped car, came through the connection into Elysia's ear with perfect clarity.
"..."
Elysia sat frozen on the couch.
Somehow, listening to those two intertwined breaths, her cheeks went scalding hot, and her heart started slamming away entirely without her permission.
What was this weird feeling?!
That was obviously just people out of breath from a fight! So why did it sound... why did it sound exactly like the late-night romance movies she secretly watched under her blanket last night?!
Elysia shook her head violently and slapped both hands against her burning cheeks.
Elysia! What on earth are you thinking?!
Eden is working herself to the bone to avenge you, and here you are filling your head with filthy pictures!
Eden is your very best friend - how could you suspect her of anything like that! Repent, right now!
"Ellie? Are you still there?"
Just as Elysia was deep in her frenzy of self-reproach, Eden's voice came through the line again.
Only this time there was none of that breathlessness in it. Instead it was light, and bright, and thoroughly refreshed.
"I've finished giving him the working over he deserved."
"Ah! Y-yes, I'm here!" Elysia stammered into the phone with all the guilt of a caught thief. "Th-thank you for the hard work, Eden!"
To cover her own embarrassment, she quickly raised her voice and delivered her ultimatum to the man on the other end.
"Bad Su Yu! Eden's already beaten you black and blue, so stop hiding out there! Get back to the studio and keep Kiana company, right now! Do you have any idea how red her eyes were today - she looked like a rabbit! And if you can't cheer her up, next time I'll be the one coming to punish you!"
The moment she finished, Elysia jabbed the hang-up button as if the phone had shocked her.
"Hahh..."
She threw the overheated phone onto the coffee table, flopped backward, and buried her burning face deep in the HOMU cushion.
The call was over, but those two breaths, twined together, kept echoing through her head like a curse she couldn't shake off.
And the hot little flame inside her refused to go out.
Eden and Su Yu's voices just now... were they really fighting? Waaah! Elysia, stop thinking about it! That's so indecent!
Meanwhile.
In Anti-Entropy's underground parking garage.
The flat dial tone droned from the phone on the dashboard.
The air in the car was thick enough to cut.
Su Yu lay slumped in the driver's seat, boneless, every ounce of strength gone.
His shirt collar hung wide open, and the collarbone and shoulder it exposed were covered in bite marks and welts of varying depth.
He was gulping down air, eyes unfocused, clearly still not recovered from the extreme sensations that had melted his reason down to slag.
Beside him, Eden was elegantly setting the hem of her slightly disheveled trench coat back in order.
Unhurried, she peeled off the black velvet gloves that had picked up a certain dampness.
That impossibly beautiful face wore the calm, satisfied composure of a victor.
Su Yu turned his head and looked at the golden Diva touching up her lipstick, his expression thirty percent resignation and seventy percent lingering shock.
"Eden... if we keep playing games like this, sooner or later Elysia is going to catch us in the act."
"And if she does?"
Eden capped the lipstick and turned toward him.
She reached out two long, pale fingers and tipped up Su Yu's chin with a flick of pure insolence, forcing him to meet her gaze.
Light rolled and shimmered in those eyes.
"Admit it, my little producer..."
Eden brought her red lips a fraction closer, her breath warm as orchids.
"Just now, on the phone, with Ellie cheering you on..."
"Don't tell me you didn't enjoy it. That shiver down your spine."
At the very same moment that Su Yu, that old crook, was enduring this humiliation at the hands of his number-one patron -
Europe.
Inside the private office of the Supreme Bishop and President of the Schicksal Foundation.
The enormous holographic projection on the wall had only just gone dark, but the tragic final notes of that song, "Nightglow," still seemed to hang in the vast, luxurious room.
Otto Apocalypse sat in that broad high-backed chair, a cup of long-cold black tea in his hand.
Those emerald eyes of his, forever holding a glint of calculation, were fixed on the darkened screen, and the appreciation in them was entirely undisguised.
"Su Yu..."
Otto murmured the name, a complicated smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
"To manipulate human emotional resonance to such a consummate degree, with nothing but a virtual film a dozen minutes long. What a terrifyingly gifted young man."
As a business prodigy and, in the shadows, the master of an intelligence network, Otto understood far too well how frightening it was to be able to move the emotions of tens of millions so effortlessly.
But the moment the name crossed his mind, his temple started throbbing.
Only a few days ago, that granddaughter of his - Theresa, always so obedient, always so well-behaved - had made a textbook Kaslana-style leap of imagination and come storming into his office by hologram.
Then she had pointed a finger at his nose and screamed at him.
She had even demanded to know whether he was secretly conducting some inhuman human experimentation.
And the sole culprit behind all of it was that game Su Yu made - Honkai Impact 3rd!
"You really are a bastard I love and hate in equal measure," Otto muttered, rubbing the space between his brows, and quietly added another line to Su Yu's account.
If his own reflexes hadn't been quick, a few of Schicksal's core secrets would have been talked right out of him by a granddaughter who had gotten a little too immersed in a video game.
And just as Otto was weighing whether to send someone to Arc City to make a bit of trouble for Su Yu -
"Bang!"
The office doors, carved from two-hundred-year-old agarwood, were shoved open from the outside without the slightest courtesy.
There was exactly one person in the entire world who would kick down a door at Schicksal Headquarters like that.
White hair, blue eyes, dressed in sharp, practical everyday clothes - Kallen Kaslana strode in at the front.
That face, always so gentle and righteous, was covered now in a rare frost of fury.
And behind her followed a shrine maiden with long pink hair.
Yae Sakura had her arms folded across her chest, her expression as cool and distant as ever.
But get a little closer, and you could catch in her eyes a flicker of amusement and anticipation at the doom about to descend on a certain blond man.
When rivals in love meet, the sparks fly.
And the only thing that could keep Yae Sakura's temper cool was the prospect of a good show.
Otto's heart skipped a beat.
A premonition of disaster swept through him, but that face, weathered by decades of storms, kept its warm, flawless smile firmly in place.
"Kallen, what's happened? Who has made you this angry?"
Otto rose and came forward, all concern.
"Otto, you're still playing dumb with me!"
Kallen did not take the olive branch. Instead she slammed a thick stack of glossy, laminated printed material down on his mahogany desk with a crack.
It was what Theresa had mailed them a few days earlier - the Honkai Impact 3rd Setting Art Collection.
"You tell me the truth!" Fire burned in Kallen's azure eyes. "Did you leak all of Schicksal's classified intelligence operations to Theresa?! Have you been in league with that game producer, this Su Yu, all along?!"
The smile on Otto's face froze for exactly a tenth of a second. "Kallen, what are you talking about? How could I possibly - "
"You still want to argue!"
Kallen took a step closer, jabbing a finger at the art book on the desk, her voice carrying a disappointment she could hardly believe she felt.
"If little Theresa hadn't mailed me this thing, if I hadn't spent all last night digging into that game's story, I would never have known you were doing something this insane behind my back!"
"Not only have you been covering for that scumbag Siegfried, letting a child of the Kaslana bloodline drift around out there abandoned! You've even..." Kallen's eyes reddened. "You've even taken that innocent girl, Kiana, and turned her into a vessel for cultivating a Herrscher - a bioweapon?!"
Cold sweat broke out across Otto's back.
He finally understood where the problem lay.
Theresa was a sweet, clueless girl who knew nothing.
Kallen was core leadership. Kallen knew the truth about Schicksal.
In Kallen's eyes, the story in that game was not fiction at all - it was the appalling bioweapon human experimentation Otto was secretly running in Arc City right now!
"Kallen, let me explain, this is absolutely a misunderstanding - "
Otto spread both hands, his mind racing at full speed, trying to assemble a seamless lie.
"My, my. President Otto."
Yae Sakura, who had been leaning against the doorframe, chose exactly that moment to speak, her cool voice carrying an entirely undisguised delight in kicking a man while he was down.
"I've always known you're the sort of man who considers any cruelty acceptable in service of your so-called greater good."
"But to cover up your drinking buddy's illegitimate-daughter scandal, you'd go so far as to use a little girl's life for a vile experiment like this? That does seem rather far off the righteous path you're always talking about, doesn't it?"
With every word out of Yae Sakura's mouth, the corner of Otto's eye twitched.
At that moment he would have paid good money to curse this pink fox's entire ancestry, one generation at a time.
"I know you've always said you're working to realize the dream we had back then. To save the world."
Kallen looked at Otto, and her eyes held a deep, weary disappointment.
"But if the price of peace is an innocent girl having her body taken over by a monster, being turned into a sacrifice - then what meaning is there left in that ideal?!"
Watching the light in Kallen's eyes on the verge of going out entirely, Otto panicked.
In all his life he had feared neither heaven nor earth. The one thing he feared was Kallen looking at him like that - like a man who had failed her completely.
In the privacy of his skull he was cursing Su Yu's ancestors back eighteen generations.
That damned game producer twisted the knife, harvested everyone's tears - and then hung the blackest, most un-scrubbable pot in history around the neck of him, the Bishop of Schicksal!
And just as the situation looked utterly lost, just as Otto was preparing to kneel on the washboard and confess everything in hopes of leniency -
"Beep - beep - "
The top-level encrypted communicator on the desk suddenly let out a piercing ring.
On the display, Theresa's personal icon was flashing.
Otto seized it like a drowning man grabbing the last piece of driftwood and, under the stares of Kallen and Yae Sakura, steeled himself and hit the button to accept the holographic call.
A pale blue column of light rose, and Theresa's round little face appeared in midair.
Otto had just opened his mouth to probe his granddaughter's mood when the Theresa in the light column suddenly bent into a ninety-degree bow and shouted, eyes red:
"I'm sorry! Grandfather! I was wrong about you!!!"
Inside the office, the silence was absolute.
Kallen stood stunned.
Yae Sakura's brows drew together.
And that brain of Otto's, reputed to be the most brilliant in all of humanity, crashed completely for a full three seconds.
"...I-it turns out you and Su Yu are both wonderful, wonderful people!"
Theresa lifted her head and wiped away a tear, her voice full of emotion and self-recrimination.
"I know everything now!"
Otto blinked mechanically and forced a thin sound out of his parched throat. "You... know what, exactly?"
"I know you were never that bastard Siegfried's accomplice! Just the opposite - you've been on my side as an ally this whole time!"
Theresa clenched her small fists in excitement.
"You, me, and Su Yu! All three of us want the same thing! We all want little Kiana to be free of her split-personality mental illness, to live in the sunlight without a care, like a normal girl!"
Theresa sniffled, and her gaze turned utterly resolute.
"Grandfather, you don't have to carry all of this alone in silence anymore, and you don't have to keep it from me. Bronie already told me all about your psychological treatment plan!"
At this, forget Otto - even Kallen and Yae Sakura beside him were completely lost.
"Wait. Little Theresa." Kallen stepped forward, her face blank with astonishment. "What on earth are you talking about? What mental illness? What psychological treatment plan?"
The Theresa in the hologram was briefly surprised to see Kallen.
Then she poured it all out like beans from a sack - Bronie's airtight "DID, dissociative identity disorder" explanation, plus the theory that Honkai Impact 3rd was a custom-tailored social therapy script - repeating every last detail to Kallen and Yae Sakura.
And finally, gazing at her grandfather with something very close to worship, she delivered her earth-shaking conclusion:
"Grandfather Otto and Su Yu have joined forces to conduct an unprecedented, large-scale socio-psychological therapy program for Kiana!"
"And the game Honkai Impact 3rd is the deepest expression of love the two of them could pour out, all to heal Kiana's childhood trauma!"
"Grandfather, you deliberately kept the truth from me. You'd rather I misunderstood you, because you wanted me to play my part flawlessly and protect that innocent little Kiana even better. Isn't that right?!"
"Grandfather, you and Su Yu... the two of you are just too magnificent!!!"
"..."
In the Schicksal Bishop's science-fiction office, the only sound left was the faint hum of the central air conditioning.
Otto stood behind the broad desk, still frozen in the posture of a man taking a call.
On the surface, his face was still water. Neither joy nor sorrow.
But deep inside his mind, the fortress of logic he had spent decades maintaining with such precision had collapsed into a field of rubble.
Right. Right? Right. Right...?
Is this seriously right?!
Would somebody please step forward and explain this to me!
Three days ago I was the depraved mastermind planning to use a Herrscher to destroy the world.
And I wake up today to find I've become an "angel of a doctor," radiating saintly light, willing to bear the world's misunderstanding just so I can cure my sworn brother's illegitimate daughter?!
Good heavens above, what kind of surreal plot development is going on over in Arc City?!
What exactly did that Bronie girl and Su Yu feed Theresa?!
"Anyway, I know everything now! Grandfather, I want to apologize to you one more time!"
The Theresa in the light column was clearly in a hurry to go radiate her maternal glow somewhere.
"No time to talk! I have to go fulfill my duties as her Auntie properly! I'm going to find Kiana! Bye, Grandfather!"
"Beep."
The holographic call ended, crisp and final.
Quiet settled over the office again.
Kallen slowly turned her head to look at Otto, standing behind his desk.
Theresa's heartfelt, tightly reasoned "psychotherapy theory" had clearly landed on her like a hammer.
It had shattered every last piece of her suspicion and anger.
"Otto..."
In Kallen's eyes, a light named hope had rekindled.
She looked steadily at this man who had walked beside her for so many years.
"So you're saying... you and that producer, Su Yu, the two of you..."
Looking into that desperate, pleading hope in Kallen's eyes - that need to believe he was a good man -
Otto Apocalypse, Supreme Bishop of Schicksal, displayed in that instant the full terrifying extent of his composure and his talent for improvisation.
He drew a deep breath and lowered his eyelids.
Every trace of panic and bewilderment was wiped from his face in the space of a second.
In their place came the grave, forgiving sorrow of a man who has carried far too many secrets and found the weight sweet.
"That's right."
Otto met Kallen's gaze and spoke each word in a low voice, thick with feeling, his throat catching just slightly:
"All of this was, in fact, a countermeasure Su Yu and I arranged together, in secret, well in advance."
He let out a sigh and turned his eyes to the blue sky beyond the window.
"At this point, I won't keep it from you any longer. The truth is... Su Yu and I are old friends of many years, kindred spirits who share the same ideals."
The words had barely left his lips.
"So that's what it was! I knew it!"
Kallen's tears turned instantly to a smile.
The stone weight in her chest finally dropped away. She crossed the space in two strides and threw her arms tightly around Otto's shoulders.
"I knew it, Otto - I knew you would never do something so monstrous! And I owe you an apology too. I shouldn't have suspected you without knowing the facts!"
Otto returned the embrace, savoring this trust restored to him after nearly losing it.
And over Kallen's shoulder, he looked at Yae Sakura, standing a short distance away.
The pink-haired shrine maiden who had come to enjoy his humiliation now wore an expression like someone who had just swallowed a rotten persimmon furred over with green mold, her features nearly twisting off her face.
Watching Yae Sakura choke on that, a wave of indescribable, secret glee surged through Otto.
To hell with conspiracy theories! To hell with taking the blame!
In the depths of his mind, at maximum volume and with the most devout sincerity, he sent up the most heartfelt praise of his entire life to a certain game producer far away in Arc City:
Su Yu! You magnificent, once-in-an-age genius!
You know how it is - Su Yu and I are old friends of many years!
Our behind-the-scenes coordination is absolutely seamless, a meeting of souls!
From this day on, forget being good friends.
I say we go ahead and swear an oath of brotherhood - brothers by every measure except blood!!!
My phone, where's my phone? Amber, use my personal account to inject fifty billion into miHoYo Studio - no, make it a hundred billion!
Whatever happens, I will not let my dear brother Su Yu want for anything!!
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