Rewind one hour.
While the fans in Elysia's stream were still spamming the danmaku with "Believe in miracles" and "A happy ending is right around the corner," hypnotizing themselves one last time.
In another stream, the mood could not have been more different.
"Pffthahaha - you little things are still dreaming?"
In front of the camera, Sparks, white hair tied into twin tails, spun a bright red lollipop between her fingers, her eyes glinting with the delight of someone who lives for other people's disasters.
[Lady Sparks! Teacher Himeko is about to walk to her death and you can still laugh?!]
[Do you even have a heart?! Elysia next door is practically crying already!]
"Oh my, oh my~ look at you poor little fans~"
Sparks leaned in close to the microphone, drawing out the sugary tail of every syllable.
"Weren't you all just posting danmaku about trusting Su Yu? So why is every single one of you panicking like ants on a hot pan now?"
"Stop dreaming, you little idiots! That guy Su Yu is an even purer, nastier bastard than Sparksy! He spent nine whole chapters building this red-haired woman into everyone's emotional support pillar, and it was all so that today - he could rip her to shreds right in front of you!"
"Sparksy saw through all of it ages ago~"
"Come on, come on, let's set the mood properly for this hero's stupid yet gorgeous march to her death~ Cry! Rage! Hand over every last scrap of your pathetic feelings!"
Sparks waved her arms in excitement, like a mad conductor leading a symphony of tragedy.
The thrill of holding the emotional swings of an entire audience in her hands felt absolutely fantastic.
And then.
On screen, Himeko was mercilessly torn apart by the Herrscher of the Void inside Imaginary Space - and then dragged her broken body upright again out of the crater, Greatsword in hand.
When the climax of Nightglow detonated, when Himeko sprouted wings of fire and hurtled toward a god like a meteor, and cried out that line:
["Go and turn this imperfect story into the one you wish it to be!!!"]
The laughter in Sparks' stream cut off mid-breath.
In front of the camera, the Masked Fool who had just been chanting "Sparksy sees through everything" and stoking chaos for the fun of it -
sat frozen in her gaming chair like a statue.
The lollipop she'd been twirling nonstop slipped from her mouth, hit the desk with a sharp clack, and shattered.
On screen, Himeko's body fell soundlessly into the endless Abyss along with the collapsing space.
Sparks said nothing.
She had witnessed countless absurdities and countless tragedies, but this - a mortal's hymn so pure it burned away every trace of selfishness and instinct, all to light the road ahead for those who came after...
and that voice, that devastatingly infectious song.
Drip.
A single clear droplet slid from the corner of Sparks' eye without warning and landed on the pale back of her hand. Then a second. Then a third.
"...?"
Sparks blinked, thoroughly bewildered by the warm liquid that had appeared on her own face.
She reached up and touched her cheek with a fingertip.
The instant she saw the wetness on her finger, this mesugaki's pupils quaked, and she shot out of her chair.
"S-Sparksy is NOT crying!!!"
Sparks snatched the tissues off her desk as if she'd been electrocuted and scrubbed wildly at her eyes. Her pale little face flushed scarlet, and her voice cracked, thick with sniffles.
"It's - it's the glare off this screen, it's way too bright! Yeah! Plus I was up all night gaming, my eyes are just dry! Sparksy is only putting in eye drops! Don't get the wrong idea, you trash mobs!"
Unfortunately, the several million fans in that stream, all sobbing their hearts out, had at that exact moment turned into Leeuwenhoeks watching the broadcast under a microscope.
[...Waaah, Teacher Himeko... wait, am I seeing things? Did Lady Sparks just shed a tear?!]
[Screenshotted, boys! I've got it on video! She was absolutely crying just now!]
[Waaahhh, so even a heartless little mesugaki can be moved to tears! Teacher Himeko's damage output is insane!]
[Streamer, stop pretending! You keep going on about Sparksy this, Sparksy that, and your eyes are as red as a rabbit's! Waaah...]
[Everybody's crying, Sparks, what's wrong with you crying too?! Stop wiping, your tears are falling on the keyboard!]
Watching the danmaku frantically spam "waaah Teacher Himeko" while simultaneously, in perfect unison, mercilessly stripping away her disguise -
Sparks was close to dying of humiliation.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up! I said I'm not crying! Sparksy is a Masked Fool! How could Sparksy possibly shed tears over some cliche damsel-in-distress hero routine?!"
Sparks pounded the desk with both hands, trying to summon her usual lofty superiority, but the obvious sob in her furious shout robbed it of every scrap of credibility.
"If any of you dare post those screenshots again, I'll crawl through the network cable and string every last one of you up on a lamppost, waaah..."
By the end she couldn't hold it together at all. She gave up entirely and curled into the depths of her wide gaming chair.
She dragged over a HOMU cushion and clamped it over her face, leaving only a pair of scarlet ears visible, and let out a string of muffled sobs she couldn't suppress.
In that moment.
Sparks' stream produced an atmosphere that existed nowhere else on the internet.
Several million fans bawled their eyes out over Himeko's ending while simultaneously watching their own streamer get emotionally gutted, refuse to admit it, and hide to cry - and through their tears, they hammered out line after line of laughter on their keyboards.
Back to the present.
By now the internet had turned into one vast ocean.
All of it made of tears shed by tens of millions of shattered players.
If grievance could generate electricity, tonight the Honkai Impact 3rd playerbase could have lit up the entire planet.
Every major forum, every message board, even miHoYo's official accounts had been carpet-bombed into oblivion by an unbroken wall of "Su Yu you heartless old crook," "mailing you razor blades," and "give us back Teacher Himeko."
Elysia sobbed in her stream like a foolish child who had lost her most beloved toy, and tens of millions of people cried right along with her in front of their screens. This day would go down in history as the Honkai Playerbase Day of Suffering.
And yet, while the floodwaters raged outside and the entire internet cursed "Su Yu the old crook, subhuman" -
on the top floor of Arc City Tower, inside the miHoYo Director's Office.
"Ding-!"
A crisp electronic chime that only Su Yu could hear rang out like heavenly music, and the pale blue System panel in front of him started flashing like it had been shot full of adrenaline.
[System Notice: Extremely high concentration of player emotional fluctuation detected!]
["Unresolved Regret" index has broken through the threshold! "Despair and Longing" index is climbing exponentially!]
[Collecting willpower... converting willpower...]
[Hidden Ultimate Quest: "Saving Private Himeko" - progress beginning a massive surge!]
Su Yu stared at the panel, his breathing turning ragged.
The progress bar that had been as stagnant as dead water now rode a rocket, blasting straight past its floor with a whoosh.
[New anchor target added: Murata Himeko!]
[Target cognitive stability being reassessed... 1%... 8%... 12%...]
[Final reading: 20%!]
Twenty percent!
Su Yu's eyes blazed.
And this was only day one of the Chapter Nine update!
Final Lesson, that nuclear warhead, had only just detonated inside the playerbase. The long tail that followed - the fan edits, the plot analyses - would keep churning out terrifying quantities of emotional willpower, the strongest possible fuel for Teacher Himeko's life stability!
Using the "knives" and the "tears" of tens of millions of players, he would smash a road to survival straight through an ending where she was supposed to die!
This meant more than Su Yu being able to undo Kiana's greatest regret. It meant a new possibility could be born between Sirin and Kiana, two people for whom reconciliation had never been possible at all!
All these days of scheming, all the guilt of waking up in the middle of the night to slap himself and point at the mirror and snarl "Su Yu, you absolute animal" - it had finally flowered and borne fruit!
It was only 20% for now, but Rome wasn't built in a day!
This was, without question, a good beginning.
"It worked! It actually worked!"
Su Yu whipped his head around toward Kiana, who was still kneeling on the carpet, crying hard enough to pass out.
"Waaah... Auntie Himeko... Su Yu, you giant jerk..."
The Paramecium was still sitting there wiping her eyes and muttering.
"Interrupting your cast!"
Su Yu lunged over in one stride, cupped Kiana's tear-streaked little face in both hands, and squeezed inward, mashing her grief-stricken expression into a ridiculous bun face.
"Mmph?!"
Kiana's swollen red eyes went wide, her head full of bold-print question marks.
"Stop crying! Stop crying, Kiana!"
Su Yu was as giddy as a fool who'd just won a world championship, his voice shaking.
"We did it! We actually did it!"
"Did... did what?"
Kiana sniffled, batted his paws away, and choked out the words through a thick nasal clog.
"Auntie Himeko fell into Imaginary Space, there isn't even a body left to find... and you're standing there laughing? Do you even have a heart?"
"No, you don't get it! We just pried open a crack in Himeko's death sentence!"
Su Yu took a deep breath and poured the whole thing into Kiana in the simplest terms he could manage - the notifications the System had just spammed across his vision, and the underlying logic of "using player willpower to save a character."
Seeing that Kiana still wore the dazed look of someone who understood nothing but was deeply impressed anyway, Su Yu simply reached out and pressed a finger to her forehead.
"Words alone probably won't convince you. Close your eyes. Now, through my link - go feel it for yourself."
Kiana closed her eyes, half doubting.
The next second, a sensation of weightless falling swept over her.
Her consciousness seemed to pierce straight through the physical laws of reality and plunge into a chaotic, orderless gap saturated with unknown laws - the boundary where Imaginary Space met the Sea of Quanta.
In this silent Abyss where even time seemed frozen solid.
Kiana's consciousness searched frantically - and then she saw it.
There, in that pitch-black turbulence, a red silhouette drifted quietly, looking as though it might scatter on the wind at any moment.
And that broken body still carried a faint breath of life!
The golden "willpower" gathered from the tears of tens of millions of players across the entire internet had formed a thin cocoon of light, wrapped tight around her heart, holding it shut against death!
As though sensing something, the sleeping red-haired figure knitted her brows, and her pale lips moved with visible effort.
From the deep sea of consciousness came a frail murmur that only Kiana could hear: "Ki... Kiana..."
"Vmmm-!"
The link broke, and her consciousness snapped back into her body.
In the office, Kiana's eyes flew open.
She clamped both hands over her mouth, and tears burst from her eyes again like a levee giving way.
But this time, it wasn't suffocating despair.
It was joy.
The wild, absolute joy of someone snatched back from death.
"Su Yu!!!"
Kiana bounced straight off the carpet, seized both his hands, and vibrated with enough excitement to blow the roof off the building.
"That's wonderful! She's alive! Auntie Himeko is still breathing!! That's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!"
"Right?! I told you my pig-butchering scam - ah, no, my rescue plan - was absolutely solid!"
"Waaah, Su Yu, you're a good person! Even if you were laughing like an animal a second ago, you really are a good person!"
"Is that praise or an insult?"
And so the two of them carried on in that luxurious office like a pair of committed psychiatric patients, crying and laughing, jumping and flailing.
One moment Kiana was sobbing her thanks to heaven and earth, the next Su Yu was howling at the ceiling that his fate was his own and not heaven's.
If some unsuspecting employee had pushed the door open just then, they would have dialed the psychiatric hospital on the spot and had this pair of lunatics physically escorted to the afterlife.
After several minutes of that madness, the two of them finally burned through the last of their energy and collapsed side by side onto the wide leather couch, utterly drained.
Kiana, like a kitten that had found somewhere safe, rested her head naturally on Su Yu's shoulder, stared at the ceiling, and let out one long, heavy breath.
After a while.
"Thank you, Su Yu."
The girl's voice was soft and sincere, carrying the relief of someone who had survived a catastrophe.
"Mm-hm."
Su Yu leaned back against the couch, thoroughly enjoying it, and pressed his advantage.
"Naturally. To keep your Teacher Himeko alive, I've taken on the eternal infamy of being the internet's number one old crook. You really should thank me properly, esteemed Miss Kiana."
"No problem! For Auntie Himeko's sake, this lady is splurging today!" Kiana thumped her chest heroically. "I'm treating you to a good dinner tonight!"
Su Yu gave her a sideways look. "Where? Don't tell me it's the barbecue stall around the corner downstairs."
"Huh? How did you know?!"
"Because you're the one craving skewers again, obviously!"
"Don't worry about those little details! Boss, extra spicy, please!"
The two of them lay there trading lazy jabs on the couch.
Let the internet flood, let the whole web wail - for now, none of it had anything to do with either of them.
As long as Himeko was still alive, even if the sky fell, there was someone taller to hold it up.
And then, right as the pink bubbles were frothing over and a warm, ordinary moment was about to unfold.
["Ahem... sorry about this, BOSS."]
An electronic female voice, laced with a distinct note of schadenfreude, came out of the computer on Su Yu's desk.
It was Bronie the hacker.
["I really, truly hate to shatter the little world of just the two of you right now, but as a working professional with a sense of duty, I feel obligated to give you a heads-up."]
There was an unmistakable "go write your will, quickly" urgency in Bronie's voice.
["Miss Elysia forcibly cut her stream one minute ago. According to the building's internal surveillance, her eyes are bloodshot, she's radiating killing intent, and she is heading straight for the Game Director's Office."]
["Judging by her posture, there's a strong probability she intends to carry out a brutal offline solo kill on you."]
["For the sake of your personal safety, and so miHoYo doesn't have to replace its game director tomorrow, Boss, my recommendation is that you leave right now, this instant - RUN!"]
The smile on Su Yu's face froze solid.
Damn it, he'd gotten careless!
He'd been so busy celebrating with Kiana that he'd completely forgotten how badly Elysia - that hopelessly sentimental Miss Pink Elf - would want to carve him into eight pieces after finishing Final Lesson.
Su Yu could already picture the gruesome scene: Elysia crying "Su Yu, give me back Teacher Himeko" while pulling out a bow, or a frying pan, and splitting his skull open with it.
"Ahem!"
Su Yu shot off the couch as though electrified, cleared his throat, and turned toward Kiana with flawless smoothness.
"So, uh, see you at the barbecue stall. I just remembered I have a meeting about saving the universe. I'll be heading off first."
With that, Su Yu didn't even bother with the door. He sprinted straight to the enormous floor-to-ceiling window and shoved it open.
I'm going downstairs for a pack of cigarettes. I don't take the stairs, and I don't take the elevator either. Ha!
At the top of Arc City Tower, where the wind screamed at the edge of the clouds.
The "prime culprit" who had just shredded the hearts of tens of millions of players leapt out without a moment's hesitation.
Midair, he deftly deployed the spatial Authority that belonged to a Herrscher, turned into an afterimage, and vanished with practiced, stylish ease.
Leaving Kiana on the couch staring, her mouth twitching violently.
That level of escape proficiency - had he been practicing in advance, the bastard?
Just as Kiana was about to voice that complaint.
"BANG-!!!"
Less than thirty seconds after Su Yu jumped out the window.
The office's main door was slammed open with brute force.
"Su Yu! You heartless, rotten villain! Get out here!!!"
Elysia charged in with murder in her stride, eyes as red as a rabbit's, tear tracks still undried on her face.
Her entire body radiated a terrifying black aura that said: today, either you die or I do.
But the vast office was completely empty.
There was only Kiana, sitting on the couch, her own eyes just as swollen and red, wearing an utterly innocent expression as she turned her head in a daze.
Their eyes met.
The air, in that instant, turned delicate.
"Kiana?"
Elysia blinked. Looking at Kiana's puffy red eyes, the grief surged back up in her, and she strode to the couch and pulled Kiana into a hug.
"Waaah, Kiana, you finished it too, didn't you? Teacher Himeko, she... it was too cruel! Where's that cold-blooded animal Su Yu? Where did he run off to?!"
Clamped in Elysia's embrace, Kiana went rigid.
Listening to Elysia's genuine, heartfelt sobbing accusations - and thinking about the fact that Auntie Himeko wasn't actually dead at all, that her stability rating was in fact climbing steadily...
An overwhelming wave of guilt flooded the Paramecium's brain.
"Uh... that is..."
Kiana swallowed hard, didn't dare say a word, and simply lifted a finger to point at the gaping floor-to-ceiling window, through which cold wind was still howling into the room.
Elysia followed Kiana's finger.
Outside was a hundred-meter drop.
Elysia's pupils quaked, and her pink eyes went enormous.
"What?!"
She sucked in a sharp breath, her voice shrill enough to punch through the ceiling.
"Are you saying Bad Su Yu killed himself out of guilt?!"
Elysia rushed to the window and stuck her head out to look down.
No sign of him. Her grief was instantly replaced by a far more violent fury.
"No! Absolutely not!"
Elysia stamped her feet on the spot, so angry her pink hair was practically standing on end.
"He doesn't get off that easily! He hands out knives like that and then thinks he can just die and be done with it? Even if he threw himself off and splattered into paste, I'm going down there to stab him one more time!"
"No, ten more times!! I made so many promises in front of all those viewers, I believed in him so much, and he went and did something this unforgivable!!"
Watching Elysia rage at the window, genuinely weighing whether to jump down and desecrate the corpse, Kiana sat on the couch curling her toes hard enough to carve a three-bedroom apartment into her shoe soles.
She stuck out her tongue in shame and guiltily looked away.
Kiana understood the situation perfectly.
With this move, Su Yu had swindled Elysia - and the tens of millions of players across the internet - out of everything down to their underwear.
But... the reason Su Yu had laid such an enormous trap, written such a cruel script, and willingly shouldered the eternal infamy of being "the internet's number one old crook," was to gather willpower. To haul Auntie Himeko back out of an Abyss she was fated to die in.
All of it was for her.
So if you rounded up... the person who had truly wronged Elysia, who had cheated all those tears out of her, was actually herself!
Just as Kiana was squirming under the weight of her guilt.
The phone in her pocket buzzed.
Kiana fished it out like a thief and snuck a glance at the screen.
It was a text from the prime culprit who had just "committed suicide out of guilt."
The content was brief. A single punctuation mark:
[Su Yu: ?]
She looked at that question mark, then lifted her head to look at Elysia by the window, still wiping her eyes while hunting around for a weapon to take downstairs for the corpse-flogging.
Kiana took a deep breath, fingers flying across the keyboard, and sent Su Yu a coded transmission brimming with the will to live:
[Yangtze, Yangtze, this is Yellow River.]
[Target's emotional state is currently extremely agitated, with a very strong tendency toward violence.]
[Recommend you pull an all-nighter preparing a flawless apology speech and a washboard, and get her calmed down.]
[Otherwise I don't think your life makes it to tomorrow. Good luck, warrior.]
Tap. Sent.
Kiana put the phone away.
She saw that Elysia had already taken out her own phone and dialed a number, opening with: "Eden, Bad Su Yu is bullying me!"
Kiana forced out a smile uglier than crying and braced herself for the post-disaster reconstruction and consolation work.
Clearly, even an idiot like the Paramecium knew exactly what kind of hellish torment was waiting for Su Yu.
Kids, do you think Su Yu will live to see tomorrow's sunrise?
____
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