"What kind of look?" Su Yu asked.
"It was like… she'd just seen a stray cat crawl out of a garbage heap."
"Cough—cough—cough—!" This time Su Yu really did choke on his own spit. He hacked and laughed at the same time.
"What are you laughing at?! What's so funny?!" Kiana's face turned bright red, like an overripe tomato.
"Sorry, sorry… it's just the imagery is way too vivid." Su Yu wiped the tears from laughing. He waved a hand. "Then what? How did our Miss Kaslana deal with that awkward situation? Did you jump down coolly and go, 'Yo, beautiful'?"
Kiana's expression became… complicated. Like she'd swallowed a bitter gourd.
"I… I froze."
Her voice instantly dropped an octave.
"Then my foot slipped, and I just… tumbled off the wall."
"Right in front of Mei?"
"…More or less."
Kiana buried her face in her hands, her voice muffled with despair.
"The bread went flying, and the skirt—anyway, it was humiliating beyond salvation."
"Mei just stood there. Didn't say a word. She only watched me lying on the ground, cold as ice. That look… I'll never forget it."
"What kind of look?" Su Yu pressed again.
"It was…" Kiana jerked her head up and did her best to mimic a distant, disdainful, keep-your-distance expression.
"Something like—'Is this person mentally ill?'"
Su Yu slapped his thigh and doubled over laughing.
"Stop laughing!" Kiana, mortified, grabbed a nearby cushion and hurled it at him. "It was really awkward, okay?! My first appearance was completely ruined! She didn't say a single word—she closed her book and just walked away!"
"Not a single word?" Su Yu caught the cushion and finally restrained his laughter a bit.
"Yeah." Kiana's tone dimmed. "I found out later that around that time, Mei had just been through some things… her father's company collapsed, and she was isolated at school."
"The ME Corp heiress became—overnight—someone everyone avoided like a plague. They excluded her, bullied her… back then she was… really lonely."
Su Yu's fingers returned to the keyboard, recording those heavy background notes. He already knew the rough plot and flow, but these branch details weren't in the original Honkai story.
"So you two were… the 'we fought, then we bonded' type?" he asked.
"Kind of." Kiana nodded. "I crawled up from the ground in absolute disgrace, and she walked off in cold silence."
Then she smiled—this time with a sly, proud little glint, like a child who'd discovered a secret treasure.
"But later I realized… the book she was holding that day was upside down."
"…Upside down?" Su Yu blinked.
"Yeah." The smile in Kiana's eyes deepened.
For a moment, she didn't seem like a Herrscher vessel carrying sins and doom—just a sharp, slightly foolish girl.
"That book was just a prop. Her mind was already somewhere else. She was just using it to hide her face while she spaced out."
Her voice softened, almost feather-light.
"So I thought… maybe when she saw me that day, she wasn't completely unmoved either."
"A dumb idiot falling from the sky with toast in her mouth—no matter what, that's more interesting than people pretending she didn't exist… or pointing and whispering behind her back, right?"
Su Yu stopped typing.
He turned his head and looked at the girl beside him.
Sunlight rimmed her white hair with warmth, and those mismatched eyes were filled with a tenderness called nostalgia.
In that moment, all the pain—Herrschers, destruction, atonement—seemed to fade away.
Leaving only an ordinary girl remembering someone important.
"What happened after that?" he asked softly. "How did you become friends?"
Kiana went quiet for a while.
"That's… another story."
The sweet lightness drained from her voice, leaving only bitter sediment.
She turned to him, her eyes carrying a pleading look.
"Um… can we save that for later?"
Su Yu glanced at the system panel in the corner of his vision.
[Main Quest Progress: 2% → 3%]
[Materials Logged: Chiba Academy Terrain; First Encounter Event with Raiden Mei (The Unreachable Flower and the Dumb Stray Cat)]
The progress bar moved like a snail, but at least it was moving.
Pushing too hard would backfire—especially when what you were asking for was basically ripping open scabbed-over wounds.
"Okay." Su Yu nodded.
"Then let's talk about something else. Like… what was daily life at Chiba Academy like?"
…
That afternoon, after she finished the story of meeting Mei and added a few more details about Chiba Academy's everyday routines, the two of them ate lunch and rested for a bit.
Kiana sat on the sofa holding Chongchong, her gaze fixed on the sky outside the window—
As if looking through that blue toward another faraway world.
Su Yu didn't rush her. He just sat quietly within the 1.2-meter radius and kept tapping out code.
Kiana didn't ask how to write code, and she didn't ask how to turn these stories into parts of a game.
Because even if she asked, it would be pointless.
She did try to find something on Su Yu's screen, but after staring at the complicated software and the dense walls of code…
Miss Kaslana chose surrender.
She watched him in focused concentration—how his brows sometimes knitted, then slowly eased.
For some reason… it made her feel quietly sweet inside.
This was a peaceful world. No Honkai. No Valkyries.
And likewise, none of the people Kiana knew—none of the important partners she'd shared life and death with.
But—
There was still a "dumb idiot" here, willing to work for her sake.
Looking at Su Yu's profile, Kiana was suddenly reminded of Mei's early afternoons learning to cook.
Clumsy, but sincere.
She stroked Chongchong's fur, feeling that little bundle of warmth.
"Su Yu," she suddenly called his name softly.
"Hm?" Su Yu stopped typing and looked at her.
Kiana had wanted to ask if there was anything else she could help with. But when the words reached her lips, she remembered what Su Yu had said before they started.
"Actually… there was another story at Chiba Academy. One I never told anyone."
"Oh?" Su Yu prompted.
"If I had to give it a name…"
Kiana paused. For her, it wasn't even that distant a memory.
And even when she'd lived through it, aside from feeling regret for that girl, it hadn't struck her that deeply.
But later—on some night when she was wandering in Sky City—she woke from a dream and finally understood:
For Kiana Kaslana, that might have been the beginning of a life defined by a word called regret.
"Then… let's call it—'Three Years of Sakura.'"
....
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