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"It's nothing, I just think you're very cute, Astolfo. Like a little rabbit."
[NaggingAlert]: What a nagging Streamer!
[Disgusted]: Chen Ge you are so gross right now~
[SummonTheSlicer]: Where is the slicer man? I need ten billion copies of this face mailed to every person on the planet.
[System]: User 'You_Are_Cute_Like_A_Rabbit' has gifted 10 rockets.
[Justice]: That donor is righteous. That donor gets it.
[Chaos]: Boss has lost his mind!
You couldn't really blame the chat for laying into him.
The problem was the face Chen Ge was making while he said it — which was, thanks to the unforgiving clarity of Kenneth's yellow-haired character model, fully visible in the background mirror. Blushing. Dopey. The expression of someone who had completely lost the plot and was absolutely fine with that.
It was, objectively, a disgusting face.
Astolfo, however, did not find it disgusting.
The apple-pink flush spread across her cheeks in real time, both hands flying up to press against her face.
"Cute like a little rabbit~ oh my, being told that makes me so shy~"
"Just telling the truth."
"Hehehe~!" A beat. "Oh! By the way, Master — have you ever experienced flying? Like real flying?"
"Does a plane count?"
The level of disappointment on Astolfo's face suggested that no, a plane did not count even a little.
Chen Ge didn't have time to clarify before a sharp whistle cut through the air.
Spirit particles surged through the window in a rush of wind, and Wuai descended with the energy of a creature that had long since made peace with the fact that it had no say in its own schedule. Wings out, talons down, the hippogriff landed on the borrowed house's balcony with considerably more grace than the balcony was probably rated for.
"Hehe, scared, Master?"
"A little. But is this your mount?"
"Yes! This is Wuai! He goes 'Wuai! Wuai!'"
"Wuai.(That is not my name. That has never been my name.)"
"Oh, sorry, I don't understand what you're saying! But I super like you, so you must super like me too, right~!"
"Wuai?(I — what — how is this my life.)"
[RIPWuai]: This creature deserves better.
[AgreementFromWuai]: He really does.
[NightMeeting]: Is tonight just a convention of extremely cute Servants? Lily over on Maverick's stream is adorable, and now this. What is happening.
[NotListening]: The not-listening-to-anyone thing is honestly the cutest part. I feel so bad for this hippogriff.
[LifeGoals]: If I had someone this energetic waking me up every morning, I'd have gotten into any college I wanted.
[Reality]: Buddy. You are dreaming. Please return.
[EveryoneEnvious]: Not only does Chen Ge sail on a ship with Drake, but now he gets to fly with a cute girl on a hippogriff. I formally hate him.
[EveryoneEnvious2]: Envious of the Streamer!
[EveryoneEnvious3]: Envious of Astolfo!
[EveryoneEnvious4]: Envious of the Streamer!
Astolfo, operating at her default speed of faster-than-consent, grabbed Chen Ge by the collar and dropped him onto Wuai's back before he'd finished forming an opinion about it.
Wings beat. The ground fell away.
The wind came at Chen Ge's face like a wall, cold and immediate and real in a way that no game simulation had ever quite captured. The city of Fuyuki spread out below him and kept spreading — buildings shrinking to blocks, blocks to neighborhoods, neighborhoods to the miniature geometry of a map. The clouds were close. Close enough that the edges of them drifted past, cold and soft.
He forgot to be embarrassed.
He forgot to be anything except exactly here, in this exact moment, at this exact altitude.
This is what it actually feels like.
He'd flown in games. He knew the mechanics. He'd never known the feeling — the specific, bone-deep weightlessness, the scale of the sky when you're actually inside it, the strange quiet at altitude where the noise of the world below stops reaching you.
His face broke into a grin with no self-consciousness in it. No performance for the camera, no chat to acknowledge, no character to maintain. Just Chen Ge, genuinely delighted, thirty meters above Fuyuki with the wind in his face.
After a while, once the wonder had settled into something he could speak through, he thought to ask the obvious question.
"Astolfo — what exactly is Wuai? Is he a griffin?"
"No! But not a horse either. Wuai is a phantom horse that doesn't exist in this world. He's a griffin — well, actually he's not a griffin. He just is."
The chat took a moment to process this.
[Processing]: A griffin that is not a griffin. A horse that is not a horse.
[Biology]: For context: griffins eat horses. These two species should not be producing offspring. The existence of a hippogriff requires an act of the universe deciding the normal rules are optional.
[RelatingToWuai]: I too have been enthusiastically recruited into a situation I did not fully understand. I feel you, Wuai.
[ThePoint]: Astolfo genuinely doesn't know her own mount's origin story. She just liked him and that was enough. He had no say. This is the most Astolfo thing possible.
[WuaiTherapy]: This hippogriff needs a support group.
The flying continued.
The view stayed extraordinary.
And the warmth pressed against Chen Ge's back — the soft, close, fragrant presence of Astolfo's arms wrapped around his waist for balance — was something he was absolutely, definitely not thinking about.
The chat, watching through the stream, was cataloguing his expression in real time.
They were so envious they were practically dissolving.
Chen Ge smiled privately at the horizon and said nothing, because for once there was no mirror, and the camera had his back, and he could just have this.
Then something poked him.
Chen Ge went completely still.
He assessed the situation. He ran through all the possible explanations. He arrived at a conclusion he found acceptable and a conclusion he found significantly less acceptable.
"Astolfo."
"Yes, Master~?"
"...Is that your sword?"
A beat of warm, cheerful silence.
"Of course not~!" Astolfo laughed, bright and completely unbothered. "That's my — well — I am a genuine boy, you know!"
"..."
The chat, watching the color drain from Chen Ge's face in real time, entered a state of collective hysteria that would take several minutes to fully resolve.
[Screaming]: HE SAID IT. HE SAID IT OUT LOUD.
[ChenGeExpression]: His FACE—
[Legal]: Chen Ge, I am warning you — being naive is not a legal defense. Please be mindful of your responsibilities as a public figure.
[PhilosophyFinal]: "I'd rather have a gun behind my back." — Chen Ge, probably, right now, in this moment.
[WuaiWeighs_In]:Wuai.(I did not ask to be part of this either.)
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