Why?
Sato Haruko couldn't understand.
He was so hollow. It was as if he lacked the emotional spectrum of a normal human being, merely speaking and walking according to ingrained habits.
The moment he encountered the slightest unexpected situation, his brain just crashed. He would freeze in place, utterly clueless on how to react.
Once she pulled the plastic bag off his head, Li Wu's vision cleared.
He quietly observed his surroundings. He looked at every person and object that entered his line of sight without a hint of joy or sorrow.
Even this familiar campus failed to spark the slightest bit of interest in him.
Though, he thought, the old me probably would have agreed to help, right?
"Thank you," Li Wu replied mechanically. "I heard everything you said."
He paused, his voice completely flat. "Regarding Raiden Mei, I won't just take your one-sided account as absolute truth. I will use my own judgment to verify the situation. Then, I will take the appropriate action."
"Mhm! That's more than enough! Thank you, Li Wu! Thank you!"
Sato Haruko bowed deeply, thanking him several times over.
But by the time she lifted her head, Li Wu had already vanished from her sight.
He walked away so fast? she thought, dazed. But his pace was so steady when he arrived...
---||---
Li Wu was moving quickly, hurrying up the stairs of the teaching building.
At the end of every corridor, the voices of teachers lecturing drifted from the classrooms.
Some were earnestly teaching dense, complex curriculum. Some were boasting about their resumes—bragging about their Ivy League doctorates and how many big shots they knew in the industry.
And some were discussing romance.
Compared to the first two, the third type of voice commanded the most attention from the students.
It was a male teacher, discussing his first love.
His voice was deep and resonant, giving off a reliable, approachable vibe. Unlike the confident bragging of the other teachers, his tone was incredibly faint.
It was like a layer of soft down gently draped over his dead youth, unable to withstand the fanfare of any grand celebration.
The students, however, were highly invested. They fired off questions one after another.
Li Wu glanced at the sign on the stairwell landing: 3F.
The third floor.
According to manga tropes, the majority of the classes on the third floor were filled with ordinary students who had tested into the school based on merit. If not for plot contrivances, a protagonist usually ended up in one of these classes, rather than the fourth floor where Kiana and Raiden Mei resided.
Like a master thief, Li Wu silently crept over to the window.
Leaning against the cold wall without exposing himself, he stealthily eavesdropped on the classroom.
Perhaps because the students were mostly commoners, the teacher had let his guard down. He was freely exposing his softer side, recounting the entire process of how he pursued a girl during high school—the beginning, the middle, and the tragic end.
"That's such a shame!" a student exclaimed. "You chased her for three years before she finally agreed, only for you guys to break up because of long-distance in college? What if you had held on a little longer? Like, if you flew to her city every month, would it have ended differently?"
The teacher smiled, shaking his head.
"Some things can't be sustained just by 'trying hard'. If two people aren't compatible and neither is willing to change for the other, a forced relationship will eventually fall apart anyway."
He paused, his eyes distant.
"I actually noticed the signs early on. Once, we hadn't seen each other in two months. I secretly flew to her city, called her, and told her I was waiting at her campus gate with a surprise gift..."
"I thought I'd get to see her happy smile, but..."
"You saw her with another guy?" someone blurted out.
"Haha, it wasn't quite that dramatic," the teacher chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I just got scolded."
"She said she had made plans with her best friend to get their nails done. Because we had known each other for so long... we had both seen each other at our worst. So, I didn't bother dressing up much for the trip. I didn't look terrible, just, you know... exceedingly average."
"So I just had to hide out of sight. I watched her and her friend walk out of the school laughing. She pretended she didn't see me and got into a car."
"Huh?!" A student gasped. "Sir, you were practically a simp! You have a PhD! There are so many girls out there, how was she even worthy of you? That's so messed up. I get not wanting to ditch a friend, but you can't just ignore your boyfriend, right?"
"Yeah," the teacher sighed. "After I went back, I drank myself into a stupor and asked for a breakup. Unsurprisingly, she agreed immediately."
"Later on, I kept an eye on her social media. I even saw her publicly complaining that her father was nothing more than a 'biological sperm donor' who couldn't elevate her social status and was utterly incompetent as a parent."
A collective gasp echoed through the classroom.
That's not a 'White Moonlight' first love!
That's a straight-up sociopathic leech!
Many students expressed pity for the teacher, while others criticized his poor judgment for chasing such a girl for three years.
The teacher just smiled, listening to their outrage before slowly continuing.
"People change. I don't regret meeting her. In the beginning, she really did fulfill every fantasy I had about a girl: innocent, cute, kind-hearted..."
"She would blush and refuse my expensive gifts, then secretly bake me cookies instead. When I ran track, she would stand silently at the finish line, waiting with a clean towel and my favorite sports drink. If we bumped into each other in the hallway, she would give me this beautiful smile."
"Even now, I still think that version of her—wearing a white dress and little leather shoes, smiling at me—was prettier than any celebrity in the world."
He let out a soft breath.
"I chased her for three years, but really, we spent three years mutually drawing closer to each other. Because she was introverted, lacked a strong sense of self, and didn't want people gossiping, we agreed to start dating after high school graduation."
"And she kept her promise. The summer after graduation was the best time of my life. I got into my dream university and started dating the girl I loved. At the time, I truly felt like life couldn't get any better."
"So much so... that I simply couldn't reconcile the college version of her with the high school version of her."
"People inevitably change," the teacher said softly. "Especially those who lack a strong sense of self-agency and crave validation."
"They don't realize they already possess the most precious things in the world. They're never satisfied. They always want more. And in their pursuit of seeking validation from the masses, they end up losing the very people who truly validated them in the first place."
"It's like how Lord Cao Cao let the Martial Saint Guan Yu pass through five passes and slay six generals. If Guan Yu had actually surrendered and served Cao Cao, Cao Cao would have instantly lost all his respect for him."
The students in the Far East were highly interested in Shenzhou history; they immediately grasped the analogy.
"So what happened next? Sir, what happened to her?"
"What happened next..."
The teacher looked up, walking over to the window. The bleak, pale sunlight illuminated his slightly weathered face. Yet, for a moment, it carried the pure, unadulterated wistfulness of a young boy.
Outside, a fine, misty rain began to fall.
Living under the same sky always made him reminisce about the past. Even if everything had changed, the person he missed was likely lying in another man's arms, wearing heavy makeup, whispering seductive, ambiguous things.
"She got tattoos. Had abortions. Never lacked men around her."
"She updated her photos every week, and without fail, she was always in a club or some luxurious, high-end hotel... As for the rest, I couldn't bear to look anymore. I don't care anymore."
It was a lie riddled with holes.
Li Wu saw through it instantly.
If he truly didn't care, how could he know the details so intimately? How could he recount her entire descent into depravity flawlessly, without missing a single beat?
He kept saying he didn't care, yet every single event, every minuscule detail, was etched into his memory with agonizing clarity.
If he truly didn't care, it all should have faded away long ago, leaving behind nothing but a blurry silhouette.
"Love is something where it's better to have nothing than to settle for garbage," the teacher advised earnestly. "I hope that when you meet the right person, you hold onto them tightly and don't repeat my mistakes."
"You'll meet many people and experience many things. But remember: beneath the grand, overarching narrative of the world, we must always return to the small, intimate narratives of our own individual lives."
"There's so much fleeting beauty in reality. Adjust your mindset, strive to hold onto your original intentions, and remember that those small narratives are equally important. Only then can you shape your life into what you want it to be."
"After all, the world will always be the world. No one can change it. All we can do is strive to be our best selves."
As the teacher imparted his wisdom, he stepped back up to the podium.
Yet, he looked so small, his gaze level with the floor.
---||---
Li Wu stopped listening.
He silently stepped into the stairwell. Step by step, with every footfall, the memories in his mind grew sharper.
Up to this point, he had experienced far too many grandiose, world-shaking crises and events.
Massacring an Emperor-class Honkai Beast.
Obtaining the unprecedented Divine Blood.
Preparing to time-travel 500 years into the past.
Possessing an omnipotent cheat ability.
Entangling himself with Schicksal, the most powerful organization on the planet.
With a story this bloated and absurd, it was nearly impossible for normal, everyday events to stir any emotional fluctuation in him.
Grand narratives and small narratives.
Li Wu stood frozen in the stairwell for a long time.
The motion-sensor lights timed out, plunging his body into thick, viscous shadows.
His mind immediately drifted to the system prompt regarding Kallen's quest.
[I saw all the misfortunes of the world violently stitched together, stuffed into a fresh, supreme vessel to be sealed away. It is the tragedy of an individual, but the tragedy of an individual is equally the tragedy of an era. She emerges from the flames, cutting through thorns, boiling the seas and burning away the world's cancer—but in doing so, she destroys its most precious treasure.]
The system prompt was brutally blunt.
To save a world riddled with holes, Kallen became the Savior, bearing all misfortune and suffering, reducing herself to the ultimate tragedy.
She was in so much pain. She was so devastated.
Yet practically no one knew.
If Otto had died, and if Li Wu hadn't gone to Schicksal... to the rest of the world, the collapse of their strongest warrior would have seemed profoundly helpless and entirely solitary.
No one asked.
No one cared.
No one noticed.
Saving the world was a grand narrative.
Saving a single person was a small narrative.
But sometimes, let alone saving the world, we couldn't even save a single person.
If Kallen truly wanted to press that apocalyptic button, she would have scoffed coldly and spouted some misanthropic, anti-social rhetoric.
But she didn't.
She hesitated.
She seemed to remember something. For some unknown reason, she would rather let herself go completely mad, turning into a hideous, mindless abomination, just to force herself to complete the grand ideal of saving the world.
Under the crushing weight of the grand narrative, far too many individuals were ignored.
But being ignored didn't mean they ceased to exist.
An individual's sorrow was still sorrow. It didn't vanish just because no one paid attention to it.
Tears falling right in front of you were still tears. They didn't stop falling just because you refused to look.
This world is truly too cruel.
Li Wu felt his mood grow ever so slightly heavier.
He possessed [Return by Death]. And he hadn't yet fallen into a Lovecraftian stupor, meaning his mental capacity was far from its limit. In his current dissociative state, how many times would he have to die for the accumulated information to completely fry his brain?
If I use it rationally—die a few hundred times, take a break, avoid rapid, high-frequency deaths—I could probably map out countless timelines and save many 'small narratives' from falling into despair due to the Honkai.
If a hundred times isn't enough, I'll do a thousand. If a thousand isn't enough, I'll do ten thousand.
Eventually, I'll find the true perfect timeline where everyone escapes the Honkai's corruption.
Yeah.
It's definitely possible.
If I draft a comprehensive, logical plan in advance, I can mitigate the worst side effects and maximize the benefits.
...But is that what I really want?
Li Wu didn't know. He didn't understand.
If it were the old him, what choice would he have made?
What exactly did he have to do to be considered 'correct'?
If it were the old me, I could definitely do this better, right?
Li Wu stood paralyzed on the landing between the third and fourth floors, utterly incapable of taking the next step.
It wasn't until the school bell echoed lazily across the campus, triggering the motion-sensor lights and casting a harsh, pale glare over his face, that he finally snapped out of his daze.
He lifted his foot and continued toward his classroom.
One step.
Two steps.
A large number of students were pouring out of the classrooms...
No.
The word 'fleeing' was more accurate.
Every student leaving the classrooms was entirely on edge, their eyes filled with thinly veiled terror. Only after stepping into the hallway did they let out long sighs of relief, looking as if they had just survived a disaster.
And they were all coming from the direction of Raiden Mei's classroom.
Li Wu's face remained completely devoid of expression.
Calmly, he advanced. Forward. Forward.
The commotion inside the classroom grew louder. Clearer.
Compared to Sato Haruko's one-sided account, Li Wu trusted his own eyes more. But when he finally reached the classroom door, the scene that unfolded before him was enough to make even his current detached self catch his breath.
"Your hair is so pretty! Let me touch it. Wow, and your face is really nice too! How exactly do you take care of your skin?"
"There's a noble gathering tonight, you should come with us! I know some girls from high society who would be very interested in you~"
Several noble students, both boys and girls, had cornered a commoner girl at the back of the classroom.
They were throwing out humiliating, backhanded compliments, trapping her in a situation she couldn't accept, yet couldn't afford to refuse.
The rest of the class turned a blind eye.
They either hurriedly packed their bags and scrambled out of the room, or buried their heads in their desks, pretending they couldn't see a thing.