Thinking about it carefully, Kiana Kaslana's life was far more tragic than both Ana's and Raiden Mei's.
Despite being a student, she had worked multiple jobs since childhood to support herself.
Most countries had explicit laws prohibiting minors from signing labor contracts.
In the entire Far East, without relying on the influence of her family, only an old man completely ignored by the legal system—like the owner of Nene Books—would dare hire Kiana. Even if someone reported him, what could the authorities actually do to a lonely old man?
Kiana had no idea what Li Wu was thinking. She continued speaking on her own.
"Under normal circumstances, fewer than ten people would visit this bookstore on a Friday evening. Your judgment was correct. You should have won. But unfortunately, there aren't many shops along this stretch of road, and the rain outside is heavy. Even if you stand under an awning, you're bound to get wet."
"Because of that, a lot of people naturally come into the bookstore to escape the rain while waiting for a taxi or a friend to pick them up."
The bookshelves had been tidied to perfection. Kiana had even meticulously wiped away the dust, leaving the shelves spotless.
She seemed exceptionally skilled at chores. Her movements were almost unreasonably proficient.
"Actually, I did consider running some promotional events to attract customers," she mused. "Although I'd be very reluctant, if I personally stood at the storefront, I could probably make this bookstore famous. As long as my name gets out, I wouldn't even need to advertise. People would flock here and do the advertising for me."
"But you saw what I did. The moment we opened, I put on my mask and pulled my hat down low. I did it because I was terrified this store would attract too many people who shouldn't be here."
"I don't want to cause trouble for the kind manager who took me in, just because of my face. Nor do I want the pure nature of reading here to be tainted."
A playful evening breeze drifted in, gently rustling Kiana's silvery-white hair. The warm light spilled over it, making it look like a layer of snow kissed by gold.
Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle and patient. It almost felt deliberate.
It was true. Li Wu could easily imagine that if Kiana didn't hide her face, this bookstore would be packed to the brim in no time, from morning until night.
The vast majority wouldn't be there to read. They'd be there to pursue Kiana, or simply to feast their eyes on her beauty.
And if someone happened to recognize her as the heiress of the Kaslana family, the Far East nobles would swarm the place like sharks smelling blood. If that happened, this bookstore would be doomed.
Thinking of this, Li Wu finally spoke.
"But you didn't do that. You chose to uphold the purity of the bookstore, even if it meant making things harder for yourself... The opportunity to earn a lot of money was right in front of you, but you chose to 'repay' the money you earned back to him in a way he couldn't refuse—by buying new books for the store."
"Do you think that was wrong?" Kiana asked, turning the question back on him.
"I cannot evaluate whether that approach is right or wrong," Li Wu replied. "Perhaps the old man would have preferred 'Nene Books' to be known by more people, so that more people could come here and learn his story. Or perhaps he preferred the exact opposite. I can't guess what he wants, so I can't make a judgment."
"You're right. No one knows what the future holds," Kiana said softly. "The thoughts you have in the moment might just be an illusion, and you might end up regretting your choices and feeling agonized later... Compared to that, 'right' and 'wrong' are just reflections of your state of mind."
"If you think it's worth it, it's right. If you think it's not worth it, it's wrong. Don't you agree, Li Wu?"
Kiana spoke leisurely as she turned off the lights inside the store. She led Li Wu outside, closed the glass doors, and locked them.
The bright moonlight spilled across the ground, laying a hazy, silver path guiding them home.
"There are no absolutely correct choices in life. Many times, you might think you made the wrong choice, but in reality, it was already the best possible path."
"There's no need to demand perfection before you take a step. Psychology says that mental friction comes from thinking too much and doing too little—when your mind and your body are out of sync."
"So, let's go home. I'll give you a ride."
Kiana's words carried profound underlying meaning, but she abruptly changed the subject before finishing her thought. She led Li Wu to a bicycle parked nearby.
It was a standard bicycle with a rear rack, capable of carrying two people.
"I can just take a taxi back myself," Li Wu said.
"You lost the bet to me. Listen to me."
"Kiana. You've changed."
"Isn't that exactly what I said to you today? I'm just learning from you. Everyone changes. I am not an exception. Compared to others, my changes are relatively mild."
It was the exact same dialogue, completely identical aside from the names of the speakers.
Yet, the roles were entirely reversed. It had gone from Kiana questioning Li Wu, to Li Wu questioning Kiana.
If it were the past, Kiana would have been too lazy to bother with Li Wu, offering him a few warnings at most.
But when the tragic scenes from her dreams began to violently overlap with reality, Cecilia had tracked Kiana down and demanded she transfer schools immediately and return to Northern Europe.
After repeated, intense arguments, Kiana had finally dragged the truth about Li Wu and Ana out of her mother. The revelation only cemented her judgment.
She had seen a continuously looping path in her dreams.
She had seen a house completely swallowed by fire, where Li Wu's bullet-riddled corpse was burned to ash.
In another loop, mercenaries had shattered Li Wu's limbs and thrown him from a hundred meters in the air, his brains splattering across the pavement.
Autopsy reports were suppressed by Ryoma Raiden and the Far East nobles, officially ruling his death an "accident." To ensure there was no evidence left behind, his body had been secretly transported to the wilderness and fed to wild wolves and stray dogs until nothing remained.
Only then did those people leave satisfied.
Conversely, when Raiden Mei died, she received a grand funeral. Her father was there, her classmates were there, and countless people mourned her passing.
In yet another loop, Li Wu managed to avoid countless death traps, but he gradually became warped. His personality blurred. When faced with an unexpected crisis, his first thought wasn't to fight back or run—it was to pull out a gun and shoot himself.
His mental state had become grotesquely twisted. He was nothing more than a walking corpse.
Kiana wasn't stupid. She quickly realized that Li Wu possessed some sort of ability to 'return to the past through death'.
That was the only logical explanation for why, in his dissociative state, his very first instinct upon encountering a problem was to kill himself, subsequently neutralizing the danger in the next loop.
And then there was the infinitely looping path in Siberia...
To ensure his regression triggered properly, upon hearing the news of Ana's death, Li Wu had walked right up to a horde of Honkai Beasts and shot himself in the head. Just as he had anticipated, the bullet trajectory shifted slightly, failing to kill him instantly. Like ravenous dogs, the swarm of Honkai Beasts tore him apart, devouring his body down to the bone.
In the next loop, to save Ana, he was devoured by the Star Devourer over and over again.
When he finally managed to save Ana, he was forced by some unavoidable reason to enter the highly dangerous zone in Siberia.
After saying goodbye to Ana, he fought the terrifying Emperor-class Honkai Beast alone in the high-danger zone. The battle was so gruesome their flesh melted together, their scorching blood melting the eternal snow beneath them.
But he still failed. He died many times.
His body was torn apart, crushed, and pulverized by the Emperor-class beast. Only severed limbs and scattered, bloody chunks of meat were left strewn across the Siberian tundra.
Two days later, realizing Li Wu hadn't returned, Ana equipped the Snow Lotus battlesuit. Burning away almost all of her Holy Blood, she forcibly broke out of Schicksal's headquarters and charged into the Siberian danger zone.
She found the familiar scraps of his clothing and his flesh scattered everywhere. And on a piece of barren permafrost, she found a single eyeball, within which a faint golden light still lingered.
Ana went completely mad. She frantically scoured the snowfield for more traces of him, eventually arriving at the agonizing truth that Li Wu was dead.
Her heart turned to ash. She stood motionless in the center of the danger zone, staring blankly as countless Honkai Beasts swarmed toward her.
She didn't fight back. She didn't run. She just stood there, letting her blood and flesh mingle with Li Wu's across the frozen wasteland.
...
There were many, many more loops. From small things like sniper attacks, to massive events like evading city-wide manhunts. She knew. She had seen it all.
Ryoma Raiden... how dare he?!
What gave him the right?!
The true culprits lived perfectly comfortable lives, even better than before. Yet the hero who had suffered endlessly, the one who had actually saved Nagazora, was forced to bear all the agonizing loneliness, the terror, and the cold, hateful stares of everyone around him?
It's not fair.
Kiana couldn't understand it. She desperately wanted to tell the truth. She wanted to tell her mother, Cecilia, that it wasn't like that. Li Wu was not the source of misfortune.
Li Wu was someone who wanted to protect happiness more than anyone else. The true source of misfortune was someone else entirely.
But what happens if I say it?
Would they believe me? Or would they just report it to Schicksal, causing even more people to target him?
Even Li Wu himself hadn't told anyone. Was it really just because he didn't want to?
Kiana could not accept this reality.
She couldn't just stand by and watch Li Wu suffer. So, in her free time, she started reading voraciously.
Psychology. Pedagogy. Sociology. Linguistics.
How to communicate with sensitive people.
How to guide someone out of grief.
How to make people feel comfortable around you.
Every morning, Kiana woke up half an hour early. She would stand in front of the mirror, pretending her reflection was Li Wu, and stiffly practice speaking and initiating conversations.
In the beginning, it was incredibly difficult. She was a fast learner when it came to anything else, but she was an absolute idiot when it came to interpersonal communication. Sometimes she'd spend half an hour practicing without being able to string together a single sentence in a normal tone.
She sounded either apathetic or gloomy, completely devoid of any warmth.
But effort pays off!
Through sheer persistence, she finally managed to engage in normal, everyday conversations like a regular person.
That was the only reason she had managed to hold such a seemingly mundane conversation with Li Wu when he returned to Chiba Academy. In reality, she had worked incredibly hard behind the scenes just to achieve that!
In her spare time, Kiana even scoured the internet for tutorials and articles on what to do to make boys happy and relaxed. There were many things she couldn't do, so she focused on the basics—like providing companionship, chatting, and engaging in simple interactions like she was doing right now.
"Get on. Or are you planning to back out of our bet?"
Kiana hopped onto the bicycle first. With one hand on the handlebars, she pointed to the rear seat behind her with the other, her implication painfully obvious.
After pondering for a moment, Li Wu sat on the back seat.
Before his seat was even warm, Kiana shoved her phone back into his hands. "The streetlights on this road are too dim. You hold the light, I'll steer."
"The ground is very slippery. It's easy to crash."
"My riding skills are excellent."
"What if we fall?"
"Then we stand back up."
Li Wu suddenly felt something burgeoning in his chest.
It was chaotic, but not unpleasant. It wasn't the suffocating, heavy sensation he felt when facing Raiden Mei.
Watching Kiana spout nonsense with a completely straight face, Li Wu sat frozen for a long moment. Finally, he compromised, giving up on overthinking it.
As she had said: 'There's no need to demand perfection before you take a step.' Since he had agreed to this arrangement, he should just obediently follow along.
What if we fall?
We just stand back up.
The streetlights above were incredibly faint. In the dim environment, it was hard to tell if the road ahead was smooth or riddled with potholes.
Suddenly, Kiana spoke again, her tone completely flat. "Li Wu. Are you afraid of pain?"
"Not really."
Li Wu answered truthfully. He was already used to it.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Kiana let out a frustrated huff. "Oh. No wonder you're holding the phone so low. I guess it won't be long before we both eat dirt."
"Er, sorry."
Hearing this, Li Wu instantly realized she was calling him out. He immediately raised the phone, angling the flashlight forward to illuminate the road ahead.
The bicycle tires rolled over puddle after puddle, splashing water into the air.
Under the cover of night, Kiana pedaled Li Wu along the edge of the road. The streetlights and neon signs of businesses illuminated both sides of the street.
Sitting behind her, he could occasionally catch a whiff of a unique, unprecedented fragrance. It wasn't perfume. It was very faint, similar to the breeze blowing off the river, but a few degrees sweeter.
Kiana's riding skills were indeed excellent. She maintained perfect balance despite the slick roads. Before long, they left the alleyway and entered the bustling cityscape. Looking ahead, the night was surprisingly colorful. The city lights sparkled like a sea of stars. Even with the thick fog hanging in the air, the lights reliably guided their way forward.
On the adjacent road, there was a steady stream of cars. Tomorrow was the weekend. Overworked employees were eagerly driving home, ready to enjoy their two days off.
For some inexplicable reason, Li Wu constantly felt baffling gazes directed at them from the road. There was no hostility in them, but he didn't understand the reason behind it. Perhaps Kiana was just so beautiful that people couldn't help but look to see who was sitting behind her.
As they rode across the river bridge, these gazes became even more frequent.
Pedestrians walking along the bridge also kept turning their heads to look at them. Intensely curious, Li Wu turned his head, shifting his attention away from the night view of Nagazora.
For a fleeting instant, Li Wu felt as if his heart had been seized, completely skipping a beat.
Under the combined illumination of the bright moonlight and the distant, colorful neon signs, Kiana's pale, pristine face glowed faintly. It looked like warm water melting the first snow of spring—soft, gentle, and profoundly elegant.
The beautiful lights painted a masterpiece across her cheek, capturing a thousand different shades before vanishing at the next intersection. What ultimately remained etched deep in his memory was a freeze-frame image of her perfect side profile, and her silvery-white hair dancing wildly in the wind.
Kiana casually began to sing. The melody was beautiful. Like a wandering bard, she hummed softly, providing her own accompaniment.
Sometimes things may be so tough;
Feels like everything is enough;
It was the song she had recommended to him a long time ago. Li Wu jolted, instantly recalling the time he had been trapped in a state of violent paranoia.
A wave of lingering fear washed over him, but it was quickly replaced by another emotion: pleasant surprise.
The cover of that song I listened to back then... it sounded exactly like Kiana herself. The voice was identical...
"Your riding skills are very good," Li Wu said.
"...If that's a pick-up line, I don't think any girl would appreciate it."
Facing Li Wu's abrupt, seemingly random comment, Kiana stopped singing and offered a sharp critique.
Li Wu gave a noncommittal "Mhm," then asked, "Singing, and riding a bike. How long did it take you to learn them?"
Silence.
Kiana sighed.
They say you learn from your mistakes.
Why is it that with Li Wu, he just keeps making the exact same mistake over, and over, and over again?
"If you just mean 'learning how to do it', a few minutes, I guess. I didn't really practice singing. I was decent at it from the start, and as I kept singing, I just got better at it."
"A few minutes?"
"Yes. A few minutes."
Kiana's face was completely devoid of expression. She stared straight ahead, continuing to pedal steadily along the wet road.
Her tone was perfectly calm. There wasn't a single trace of bragging in her voice; she was merely stating a fact.
A fact called 'Perfection'.
"I know what you're thinking. How could a normal person learn to ride a bike perfectly in just a few minutes? Actually, I think it's weird too. No matter what it is, as long as I want to, I can learn and master it in an incredibly short amount of time."
The scenery along the river continuously receded behind them. Kiana's tranquil voice seemed to pull them both back into the distant past.
"Sports. Academics. Memorization. Skills. Combat. Cooking... When all the Kaslanas and Schariacs are still children, Schicksal tests us. They test our potential in various fields."
"Most children show outstanding learning efficiency in one specific area. A small handful excel in several."
"I was the exception. No matter what they tested, I performed better than any other child. I learned to ride a bike back then, too."
"I remember Ana was there at the time. To learn how to ride a bike, she fell over and over again for an entire afternoon. I got it on the very first try. I never even fell once."
A long-sealed memory was softly recounted by Kiana.
Possessing such an extraordinary talent was something one ought to be proud of. Yet, Li Wu noticed that in Kiana's eyes, there wasn't a single shred of attachment to her perfect talent. There was only profound exhaustion.
"From that point on, no one ever approached me just to talk again. Even if they did, they were either pushed by their parents, or approaching me with ulterior motives..."
"Just like your situation right now," Kiana added softly.
They returned to the city center, and the streetlights grew brighter.
Li Wu turned off the flashlight on the phone and handed it back to Kiana.
Because of a certain reason, being ostracized by the masses. Feared. Avoided.
The details were different, but the core essence was the same.
That was Li Wu's judgment.
The bicycle maintained a steady pace. After the rain, the cool evening breeze brushed against their faces, incredibly refreshing.
Cars rumbled along the adjacent road, and pedestrians chatted on the sidewalks. Despite all the noise, Li Wu felt as though the world had become very quiet.
All the unsuitable noise had been dialed down. The only clear words flowed into his ears, carried by the night breeze.
"Back then, I used to think: 'How wonderful would it be to have a friend I could fight alongside?' We could explore new things together, support each other, keep each other company, and never abandon one another..."
"I dreamt about it every single day. I fantasized about having a huge group of friends, moving forward together, defeating strong enemies, and welcoming victory."
"But as I got older, I gradually realized it was impossible. Because I was too special. I was so special that there was no one I could rely on, and no one who could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me."
"Any pain or troubles, I could only chew on them alone. Chew on them endlessly, until they were completely tasteless and could no longer hurt me."
"To protect myself, that was the only thing I could do."
"If I had just been a normal person... would I be living a better, happier life right now?"
The melancholic, poetic girl seemed to have suddenly entered her chuunibyou phase, spouting narcissistic lines like, "I am too special."
But Li Wu didn't think so.
Because he had experienced the exact same thing.
In the beginning, he had also thought he could find companions to fight alongside. To support each other, keep each other company, and never abandon one another...
But just as Kiana said, it was impossible.
The extreme uniqueness granted by [Return by Death], combined with his identity as a transmigrator and his inescapable entanglement with Schicksal, destined him to never enjoy a normal school life like an ordinary person.
"And then?" Li Wu couldn't help but ask.
"And then?"
Kiana tilted her head up. The bright moonlight cascaded into her clear blue eyes. "What else could there be? I moved out and started living alone. After all, staying there wasn't going to make me happy anyway, right? It even made me doubt if I was actually 'alive'. I had this bizarre sense of detachment."
"After living alone, even though I had a lot more trivial things to worry about, my life felt much more tangible. My troubles actually became an indispensable part of my life. I hate them, but I accept them."
"Only when I fully accepted them as a part of my life did I realize... I can live a lonely life all by myself. But I can also do this—"
Kiana suddenly slammed on the brakes. The tires skidded, splashing a wave of water into the air.
"I can tell you the secrets that no one else knows."
Her voice was incredibly soft, brushing against his ears like a feather.
Kiana turned sideways. Her expression was solemn. Her face was very close to his, and Li Wu could clearly feel her rapid, slightly suppressed breathing.
"I am the prime vessel for the Herrscher of the Void. Regardless of what happens in between... two years from now, I will die. I have already prepared myself for this. Even if death arrives early, I won't be afraid."
"If you are ever truly driven into a corner... if the pain becomes so unbearable that you want to give up... come find me."
"Once, twice, a thousand times, ten thousand times, millions of times..."
"I will help you."
The night wind suddenly picked up, blowing fiercely against Li Wu's face.
I will help you.
Four simple, unadorned words.
Like a child desperately wanting their friend to know they were on their side. Completely unfiltered, intensely direct.
A thousand times, ten thousand times, millions of times...
It sounded like an exaggeration. Even if she helped him every single day, she couldn't possibly help him that many times in two years.
So why did she use such massive numbers?
Secrets. Death arriving early. Driven into a corner. Pain so unbearable you want to give up...
Did she know something?