This was a turn of events Li Ke genuinely couldn't wrap his head around.
He remembered the King of Fighters lore vividly; Andy and Mai Shiranui undeniably harbored feelings for one another. When he had sent Mai back to her own world, he honestly thought they would find a way to patch things up.
After all, when two people are genuinely in love, physical missteps under extreme circumstances usually don't carry that much weight. If Andy truly cared about preserving her traditional modesty above all else, he would never have allowed her to fight in public wearing that iconic, revealing outfit in the first place.
But where did this sudden marriage come from? He didn't even need to ask to know that the bride definitely wasn't Mai.
"That bastard! Bastard! Bastard!!"
The more Mai cried, the angrier she became, and the angrier she became, the harder she wept. She continuously slammed her fists onto the desk, leaving visible hairline fractures across the wood.
Li Ke watched the destruction, his heart aching—not for her, but for his wallet. Local currency was still functional, but the price of basic goods had skyrocketed due to wartime inflation. An unhinged guest cracking furniture would undoubtedly give the innkeeper a perfect excuse to rip him off.
Plus... it really was a nice-looking desk.
Li Ke cleared his throat. A raging curiosity flared up inside him, making him desperate to pry for details, but his deeply awkward role in her relationship drama made him hesitate. He just wasn't the right guy to ask.
As Mai lifted her tear-streaked face, she caught sight of his conflicted expression. Her gaze instantly filled with a profound, simmering resentment. She stared at him, her eyes brimming with a sense of immense grievance.
Intellectually, she knew she couldn't blame Li Ke. The choices she made in the wasteland were her own. But under emotional distress, humans rarely rely on logic.
"It's all your fault!"
Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, Mai cried out like a heartbroken toddler who had just lost her favorite toy.
"If it wasn't for you, Andy and I would never have broken up!"
Li Ke opened his mouth, desperately fighting the urge to fire back with: 'I didn't do anything wrong! You're completely twisting the facts—if I hadn't stepped in, you would've been zombie food days ago!'
But right at that exact second—
His survival instinct slapped his central nervous system at a speed of 0.36 milliseconds. It grabbed his initial urge to argue, threw it aside, and handed a completely different script to his brain's control room. The new script read: 'I'm sorry. I should have been more careful back then. I'm sorry, but I really didn't have a better choice at the time.'
The internal command was clear: Deliver this line with a look that is equal parts tenderness, helplessness, regret, and slight grievance—mixed with an absolute flood of sympathy.
Li Ke took a deep breath, letting his gaze soften instantly.
"I'm sorry," he said, his tone incredibly sincere. "I should have been more careful back then. I'm truly sorry... but I didn't have a better choice at the time."
His delivery carried that exact blend of helpless regret and genuine sympathy.
Mai Shiranui froze. Deep down, she knew she couldn't blame Li Ke, and that internal realization was exactly why she was suffering so much. But seeing him willingly shoulder the blame made her emotional walls crumble even faster.
If Li Ke had acted smug, or if he had treated the situation with gloating indifference, she could have beaten him to a pulp and convinced herself that this was all his evil scheme.
If he had bluntly reminded her that their past arrangement was a mutual transaction, she could have resigned herself to her fate.
But because Li Ke admitted fault...
It gave her a subconscious green light to project all her anger onto him. Since he was the one who set the terms and handled her return, his apology felt like a confession of guilt. She could finally let herself hate him guilt-free, because it was officially "his fault."
She knew that Li Ke was fully aware of what this apology would do to her psychology, yet he had chosen to back down anyway.
Like a furious tigress, she pounced across the room, pinning him down onto the second bed. She wrapped her hands tightly around his neck, staring down at him with bloodshot eyes.
"Then can I assume you did it on purpose?!" Mai demanded, her voice cracking. "You lied to me about how to get back! You just wanted my body, and you wanted Andy to see us on purpose!"
Li Ke looked up into her tear-filled eyes. He chose to trust his baseline survival instincts; he didn't struggle or fight back. He simply raised his hand, gently cupping her face and catching the warm tears as they spilled over.
"Yes," he said softly.
He didn't mind playing the villain. While he wasn't actually responsible for the cosmic mix-up, if taking the blame gave Mai a concrete target for her rage and a reason to keep moving forward, he would gladly carry it. He genuinely liked her character. Furthermore, knowing how rock-solid her bond with Andy usually was in the games, he heavily suspected that this "marriage" wasn't what it seemed.
Either way, giving her a reason to direct her anger at him was the safest bet. It wasn't like she actually had the power to cause him real trouble.
Mai went dead silent. Her tears flowed faster, splashing down onto Li Ke's face. She was completely broken. Her life had turned into a nightmare: yanked into a wasteland filled with the walking dead, forced into a physical arrangement with a total stranger, and caught in the act by Andy before she could even utter an explanation. To top it off, Andy had gone ahead and married someone else.
Her life, her future plans, her romance—everything was completely ruined.
Ever since she was a little girl, she had dreamed of reviving the Shiranui-ryu clan, making her style famous across the globe, and becoming a devoted, loving wife.
Now, every single dream had evaporated.
Her martial arts weren't strong enough to restore her clan on her own. Her years of bridal training, strictly meant for Andy, had culminated in him walking down the aisle with another woman.
And it all traced back to the moment she was pulled into that sickening, apocalyptic wasteland, forcing her into a compromise with this bastard right in front of the man she loved.
An overwhelming wave of grievance and fury crashed over her. She raised her fists, slamming them down repeatedly in a blind rage.
"Liar! Liar!! LIAR!!!"
Li Ke remained perfectly still. He watched her fists repeatedly hammer the wooden frame right beside his head, listening to the bed boards splinter and snap under her martial arts strength. He didn't offer any more hollow words. He simply wiped the streaming tears from her cheeks, letting her vent every ounce of her bottled-up misery into the ruined furniture.
Watching Li Ke accept the blame without defending himself only made Mai spiral further into despair. His submissive posture proved he was lying; he hadn't tricked her at all. Her entire situation was just a cruel, meaningless twist of fate.
Yet, he insisted on lying to her face, claiming the fault was entirely his.
To her, that made Li Ke the worst kind of liar.
Finally, Mai's fists stopped falling. Her tears kept flowing, splashing heavily against Li Ke's cheeks.
"Anyway... just focus on surviving for now," Li Ke said softly.
He was preparing to activate the system's return protocol to send her back to her own timeline. The option was still fully available.
But Mai caught his wrist, violently slapping his hand away from her face.
"Get your hands off me."
She stared down at him with ice-cold, lifeless eyes.
"You're trying to send me back, aren't you? Li Ke, I don't need you playing the good guy anymore! Never again!!"
Before he could respond, Mai turned and bolted straight out the door. With a few fluid, acrobatic bounds, she vanished into the streets below.
She had no idea how to face him anymore. Her entire life plan had been utterly shattered.
She couldn't bring herself to genuinely hate Li Ke. He had put himself at risk to protect her in the wasteland. Even though the perverted bastard had definitely enjoyed the physical perks, and even though his presence had indirectly ruined her life, his underlying motive had been to save her.
It was impossible for her to despise someone who acted out of genuine concern for her survival. At its core, the truth was far more bitter—it was her own lack of trust in Li Ke that had triggered her downfall.
If she had simply listened to his instructions from the beginning, she would have avoided that humiliating scenario entirely, and her relationship with Andy would never have reached this breaking point.
Li Ke hadn't lied to her either. If he had truly intended to take advantage of her back then, he wouldn't have settled for a hasty compromise. All signs pointed to the fact that he really had no other options; he did what he had to do to ensure her survival.
Maybe that's the real reason I ended up leaving my own world again, Mai thought bitterly as she stared at the bustling streets. Her mind felt hollow, weighed down by a crushing sense of despair.
She had desperately wanted to cry, to run away, to escape Andy and the world that had shattered her heart.
Instead, in a daze of grief, she had ended up right back in another crossover nightmare, triggering all the dark memories of the apocalypse that had ruined her life.
When Li Ke first found her, she hadn't cared about anything anymore because she had nothing left to lose. Whether Li Ke saved her or slaughtered the local monsters, it hadn't registered with her at all. She had just wanted to die. If Li Ke had taken advantage of her catatonic state right then and there, she wouldn't even have fought back.
To her, nothing mattered anymore.
If he hadn't brought up Andy's name, she might have just sat by that roadside until the monsters claimed her life.
"What do I do now?"
Pulling her knees tightly to her chest on the curb, Mai watched the heavy rain clouds gather in the Taisho sky. As she sank back into her depression, her mind drifted to how she had arrived here, naturally leading back to the roar Li Ke had bellowed during her rescue.
'Get the hell away from my woman!'
Remembering those words sparked an immediate flare of anger through her chest.
"Who the hell is your woman?! You're the one who ruined a perfectly good marriage!"
Mai couldn't quite identify the mess of emotions swirling inside her, but she knew one thing for certain: she hated Li Ke. She absolutely loathed him. He was a complete bastard, a liar, and an irresponsible scoundrel!
Why couldn't he have been just a little more capable back then? It would have been so much better if he could have sent her back without resorting to that physical compromise! Or better yet, why couldn't he have been even more of a perverted scoundrel? If he had stubbornly insisted on an alternative path from the start, Andy would never have walked in on them!
It was all this bastard's fault. Now she was completely stranded, with absolutely no idea how to piece her life back together.
Would it kill you to just be completely shameless?! Mai thought furiously.
In her mind, she began viciously cursing Li Ke with every form of physical dysfunction she could think of. To her, targeting his masculinity was the ultimate, most venomous curse she could inflict upon a shameless degenerate like him.
Yet, right in the middle of her silent, furious tirade, Li Ke's voice suddenly materializes directly behind her.
"So, since you don't have anywhere else to go for now... how about tag along and help me save the world?"