Su Yu's fingers hovered over the Enter key without pressing down.
Sometime during the afternoon, the sunlight slipped behind a bank of clouds, dimming the room by a shade or two.
Kiana kept her head lowered, her white bangs hiding most of her face.
Chongchong seemed to sense the shift in her mood. The cat kneaded anxiously on her knees, letting out a faint, uneasy whine.
"That story…" Kiana's voice was very soft, her fingers unconsciously tightening along the cat's spine. "It might make the peace we have right now feel… painfully glaring."
She swallowed.
"Are you sure you want to put it into the game?"
"Yes." Su Yu answered cleanly, without hesitation.
He closed the document labeled Campus Light Comedy and created a new file.
"If you're willing to tell it, I'll record it," he said. "Good or bad—it's still part of your life."
Kiana lifted her head. Her gaze drifted past Su Yu's shoulder, as if looking straight into that day.
"'Three Years of Sakura' is a legend from the Far East," she began.
"They say that if a girl, from fourteen to sixteen—three years—collects petals from the same cherry tree and makes them into a sachet… then the sacred princess of Mount Fuji, Konohanasakuya-hime, will bless her love."
"It's romantic, isn't it?"
Su Yu didn't reply.
Three Years of Sakura.
As a long-time Honkai player, he wasn't unfamiliar with this tale.
And as Kiana spoke in broken fragments, that early story—ancient in its cruelty, archaic in its bleak beauty—slowly unfolded inside this cramped rental apartment.
On the screen, line after line of text appeared like black gravestones, erecting a suffocating past.
"That year, something strange happened at school," Kiana said, her voice dropping lower.
"Some girls went missing."
"At first it was one. Then two. Three…" She paused. "All of them vanished from the dorms in inexplicable ways."
"The police investigated for a long time, but they found nothing. Even the dorm security footage didn't show a single trace."
Her fingers combed through Chongchong's fur over and over.
"During that period, the whole school was on edge."
"No one dared walk alone at night. After classes, everyone went home in groups."
"And you?" Su Yu asked.
"Me?" Kiana blinked, caught off guard. Then she gave a small, self-mocking laugh. "I still did whatever I wanted. I mean—back then I thought, 'I've never lost a fight in my life.'"
She paused, as if choosing her words, then continued anyway.
"Then I met Asakura Miyuki."
"Asakura Miyuki…" Su Yu repeated.
Kiana spoke the name softly, almost like it might shatter if she said it too loudly.
"I didn't know her before. I only learned later that she was a transfer student too—and her reputation at school… wasn't great."
"The first time I saw her was in an alley."
"That night, I was passing through a secluded alley and I heard voices."
She tried to keep her tone even, but even now, remembering that scene still weighed on her.
"It was a group of boys."
"They had a girl surrounded and were… hurting her."
She didn't go into detail.
But Su Yu could read what she didn't say from her expression alone.
It wasn't something you could summarize with a simple word like bullying.
"I charged in and beat them up," Kiana said, her voice turning cold.
"One of the boys pulled out a gun and aimed it at me."
A gun.
Su Yu's brow tightened. Yes—there was a scene like this in the Three Years of Sakura story.
"Where did the gun come from?" he asked.
"I don't know." Kiana shook her head. "When I entered Nagazora City, that place was already… unstable."
Su Yu knew what she meant: the ominous signs leading up to the Third Eruption.
And also—
Cocolia's shadow behind it all.
"Anyway," Kiana said, easing her tone a little, like she didn't want the air to get any heavier, "I'm a trained Kaslana. I know my way around firearms."
"I disarmed him with my bare hands, pointed the gun back at him, and pulled the trigger—"
She gave a short exhale.
"Of course I didn't hit him. But I scared him so badly he passed out."
"I told the girl to run. Then I threw the gun away and left."
She breezed past it as if it were nothing—because for someone who lived in the Honkai world, taking a gun from an ordinary person really was child's play.
Su Yu asked, "What about the girl? Did she say anything to you?"
"She…" Kiana fell silent for a moment.
"I didn't know how to comfort her."
Her fingers tangled together, restless.
"The look in her eyes was… so helpless, so terrified. Like…" She searched for the right word, then gave up.
"And after that?" Su Yu asked gently. His mechanical keyboard continued to clack, even though the sound felt cruel. "How did she find you?"
He didn't want to push—but this conversation couldn't stop.
Not for fame. Not for fortune.
But so Kiana could live in this world as a normal person.
"Uh…" Kiana's expression suddenly turned… awkward.
"Do I really have to say it?"
Su Yu thought for a second.
"If you don't want to, that's fine."
He already knew what happened: she tried to look cool during her heroic rescue and ended up leaving her student ID behind.
"But didn't you say the more detailed, the better?" Kiana blinked at him, genuinely puzzled.
Su Yu had no answer for that.
Then Kiana suddenly chuckled—like a little fox that had just gotten away with something.
"Heh. Fine, I get it. You just don't want me to feel embarrassed."
"What, you're allowed to tease me every day, but I'm not allowed to tease you once?"
Su Yu pressed a hand to his forehead. Was this really something Chongchong's owner would say?
But more than anything else, he felt… relieved.
This was the first time Kiana had joked with him.
Everything was moving in a better direction.
Kiana continued, "Anyway, I didn't realize I'd dropped my student ID during the fight. Then the next day, I showed up at school as a transfer student."
Su Yu tilted his head. "But didn't you already meet Raiden Mei?"
"Actually, on the first day, because I was late, the dean chewed me out," Kiana said, scratching her cheek. "I was way too late. He said he couldn't process the transfer paperwork, so he told me to come early the next day."
"And that night you met Miyuki," Su Yu said.
"Yeah."
"Meeting two female leads in a single day—Miss Kaslana's charm is truly unstoppable."
"...Cut it out," Kiana shot back, then kept going.
"After that, Miyuki started showing up around me a lot."
Her tone grew complicated.
"After class, she'd wait at the classroom door. After school, she'd follow behind me. Sometimes when I turned around, I'd see her standing a short distance away, smiling at me."
"Didn't you think it was strange?" Su Yu asked.
"At first, no." Kiana shook her head. "I thought she was just scared of being alone and wanted someone to rely on. After all… she'd been through that."
Her voice sank.
"But later, I realized something was wrong."
"What was wrong?"
"Her eyes."
That look.
A look that crossed the boundary of friendship—and even went far beyond gratitude—turning thick and feverish.
It was a twisted kind of affection, the kind that wanted to tear you apart and swallow you whole, to fuse you into one.
Kiana drew a breath and looked up at Su Yu.
"Do you know that feeling? Being stared at like that… it makes your back go cold."
Su Yu didn't speak.
Kiana went on. "So I started investigating the disappearances."
"You?" Su Yu asked.
"Yeah." She nodded. "My original mission was to investigate abnormal data. The timing of the disappearances lined up with fluctuations in Honkai energy. I suspected someone had been corrupted."
"I asked around at school, trying to piece things together… and I ended up hearing about Miyuki's past."
"All the missing girls had one thing in common."
"What was it?" Su Yu asked.
Kiana's voice was quiet when she answered.
"They'd all been confessed to by Miyuki."
....
My Patreon : patreon/RuneA
If you want to read the novel in advance, you can subscribe for early access. I also have many more novels in my collection that you might be interested in
I upload ten novels a day, with 3 to 4 chapters per title depending on the length. If you're following a particular series, please wait your turn a little
If there's a particular novel you're enjoying on Patron, please give it a 'like' so I know to focus on it