Shu felt like he was a little bit dead inside.
He remembered that after his "cringe episode," the KTV private room had fallen completely silent for quite a while.
Kiana hadn't responded immediately; she had probably been scared by him.
Shu could clearly recall every single juncture where Kiana's expression gradually crumbled as he spoke more and more.
Then, after that bout of silence, Kiana had asked a question.
"Then, what if one day, you got isekaied to a world where there were people you knew, but the environment was completely unfamiliar, and you gained the power to save the entire world. What would you do?"
He remembered being silent for a long time back then, because he felt this question was truly very strange.
But how had he interpreted it at the time?
He had just been fiercely criticizing those exact tropes where someone isekaied into another world, gained OP powers, and naturally used those abilities to build a massive harem and make beauties fall for them, right?
So wasn't Kiana asking this just to make him put himself in their shoes and practice some empathy?
His "illness" had definitely acted up, hadn't it?
So how did he—suffering simultaneously from Artsy Angst, Chuunibyou, and Psychopathy—answer?
"Then I would definitely go save the world, I guess."
It was the Chuunibyou!!
The Kiana in his memory had immediately pressed further:
"Didn't you ever think about using this power to do something else?"
Do what? Use these abilities to save girls, pique their curiosity, and win their favor?
"The thing I want to do most is probably to save the world."
There was absolutely no yearning for girls, only the pure, unadulterated desire to save the world!
He remembered saying very seriously, "You said it yourself, that power is meant to save the world. How could I use it for anything else?"
The Kiana in his memory seemed to have a headache. Obviously, she wasn't very satisfied with Shu's answer.
"Then..." She deliberated for quite a while before speaking again.
"What if that power wasn't explicitly labeled for saving the world? Just... what if you suddenly gained incredibly strong power! The strongest power in the world! What would you do then?"
It truly was a bizarre question—as bizarre as Kiana suddenly appearing by his side.
"Then I'd probably still try to save the world." Shu had tilted his head back, putting on a melancholic expression... The current Shu felt his past self was just acting like a pretentious edgelord.
Hmm... or maybe he was actually being sincere.
"If that world didn't need saving, then I'd use that power to go on an adventure." Finally, given a sufficiently specific prerequisite, Shu's answer had changed.
"I'd want to experience an adventure where I have absolutely no idea where the finish line is, and where I completely cannot predict what I'll encounter."
"Don't you hate things that are completely out of your control?" Kiana had asked.
Shu was a little surprised. In that moment, he felt Kiana truly understood him so well.
"I actually do hate that..." he had said.
"But what I hate is when entirely new variables appear in things I thought were already set in stone. That feeling of having victory in your grasp only for a sudden mutation to occur—no one would enjoy that."
Shu had paused.
"But I said I yearn for a completely unpredictable adventure... If I never expect to get anything from the start, then anything I receive is a gift.
"That kind of adventure, I'd enjoy it a lot, and look forward to it.
"In the end, it just boils down to me wanting too much right now..."
In the end, it just boiled down to him feeling like he was tired of his current stagnant life...
Why hadn't he realized yesterday that Kiana's questions were asked for a specific reason?
At the time, he thought Kiana just wanted him to shift his perspective. Looking back at it now, how could he have forgotten the story Kiana told him when she first arrived?
Suddenly isekai-ing into a world with familiar people but completely unfamiliar environments... suddenly gaining a power strong enough to save the world, a power unmatched by anyone...
This setting was so familiar. It couldn't possibly be referring to him in Kiana's story, right?
So why did Kiana suddenly ask him a question like that?
Could it be that he had done something in that world that completely contradicted his previous declarations, making Kiana think he was a hypocritical, two-faced beast in human clothing...
Shu clutched his head, feeling his headache worsen.
Fortunately, he quickly recalled exactly what kind of image he had in the story Kiana told.
Hmm... at the very least, in Kiana's eyes, he truly was a person who shouldered a heavy burden and worked hard to save the world.
Shu finally breathed a sigh of relief.
This was the first piece of good news he had received today.
...What else had he done yesterday?
So much... truly so much...
With every memory he recalled, Shu would curl up a little more in bed. Until reaching a critical point, Shu simply flopped back down, yanked the blanket up, and wrapped his entire body in it, attempting to escape from reality.
BANG—!
The door was violently shoved open. Shu flung off the blanket he had just wrapped himself in, bolting upright in bed like a dying man shocked back to life, and looked toward the bedroom door in sheer panic.
Kiana stood there holding Rice Cake in her arms, looking at Shu on the bed with an equally nervous expression.
"What's wrong? I heard..." Kiana had indeed heard a commotion from the bedroom. Although it wasn't loud—just the muffled creak of the bedframe from Shu jumping on it.
But whenever Kiana thought of how Shu looked at the very end of yesterday, she couldn't help but worry.
Alcohol was truly terrifying! Her normally quiet Shu had suddenly become incredibly talkative and overly proactive just because he touched some liquor.
Kiana figured she had known Shu for half a year now. They met almost every day for this half-year, and she even had the cheat-like empathy artifact known as the Annals of Time.
And she had never seen that kind of Shu before... Wait...
Had she seen it before?
Although Kiana couldn't remember clearly, and she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she could still piece together the general gist of things from what Raiden Mei, Bronya, and the others had told her afterward.
Plus, she had the Annals of Time.
It was roughly back at the Babylon Tower in Siberia, within Sirin's dreamscape. After Shu sacrificed his childhood self in exchange for power, the state he entered was very similar to his post-drinking state...
For instance, the use of emotive particles that only slipped out when someone was highly agitated, or the non-stop talking...
Yesterday was truly very similar to that time.
It was as if emotions that had been suppressed for a very long time exploded all at once in that moment... Yet what exploded wasn't resentment or sorrow; Shu just pulled her along to chat and sing, doing nothing more.
Kiana felt Shu was a bit too ascetic.
She was dead serious.