And then the two of them ran into a big problem.
[System Prompt: Current task "Sharing a Room, Sharing a Pillow" difficulty rating: S-Class]
[Warning: Host must mind sleeping posture. If turning over causes distance to exceed 100cm, the Valkyrie may suffer phase loss and fall into the Imaginary Space.]
[Suggestion: For the Valkyrie's personal safety, "hold-tight handling" is recommended.]
Staring at the suggestion—so full of malicious humor—Su Yu felt his temples throb.
Hold tight my ass!
This system wasn't just playing matchmaker—it was a lawless criminal, wasn't it?
After they'd eaten and drunk their fill, the instinct known as sleepiness finally crawled, sluggishly, up Kiana's nerves.
She'd wandered Sky City for far too long. Those nights sleeping in her clothes among ruins or under overpasses—every second was spent on guard, afraid of Honkai beasts and Schicksal mechs sweeping the area.
But now, in this room filled with warmth—faintly scented with body wash and accompanied by a cat's purring—her eyelids grew heavier, as if they weighed a thousand pounds.
And with that came an even harsher problem—one that felt suffocatingly worse than the bathroom issue.
Sleeping.
Su Yu's rental only had one bedroom.
One bed.
It was a standard double bed, but for two people who'd known each other for less than three hours, it might as well have been an execution ground.
"Um…"
Su Yu glanced at the bed, then at Kiana—still sitting on the rug with her knees hugged to her chest, nodding off like a pecking bird—and opened his mouth, voice dry.
"You sleep on the bed."
Kiana instinctively looked around. "Then what about you?"
If she wasn't within one meter of Su Yu, she would disappear.
Which meant Su Yu couldn't sleep on the living-room sofa.
He couldn't even get too far from the bed.
Su Yu sighed, went to the closet, and pulled out a spare quilt and pillow.
"I'll sleep on the floor next to the bed."
He pointed at the narrow strip of space between the bed and the wardrobe.
"I'll sleep here—less than half a meter away. As long as I don't sleepwalk and roll all the way into the living room, you should be safe."
Kiana parted her lips, as if she wanted to protest—I can sleep on the floor, or I'm not tired, I can sit all night.
But the exhaustion in her body, and the sight of that impossibly soft bed, made her swallow the words.
As Su Yu briskly laid out the floor bedding, he spoke without turning his head:
"You're injured, and you're a girl. If I make you sleep on the floor, and A-Hua finds out tomorrow, she'll think I've been abusing you. And besides…"
He patted the pillow he'd set down, then turned back with a helpless smile.
"If you sleep on the floor and I get up at night and step on you by accident… with that freak strength of yours, I'm afraid I'll lose half my life."
Kiana pressed her lips together, looking at the makeshift floor bed he'd arranged beside hers.
In the end, she didn't insist.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the entire room in an instant, leaving only the rain outside and the weak pools of streetlight seeping through the curtain gap.
Kiana lay stiffly on the bed.
The mattress was so soft it felt like clouds. The blanket carried the dry scent of something that had been sun-warmed.
For the first time in months, she was lying on a real bed.
Comfortable enough to make her want to cry.
But she couldn't sleep.
Because less than half a meter below her, there lay a man she'd only just met.
In the quiet, rainy night, she could clearly hear Su Yu's steady breathing.
In. Out.
In. Out.
At this distance, the faint, unmistakably male scent—hormones, warmth, life—drifted into her nose. Every muscle in her body stayed taut.
Awkward.
Humiliating.
And also…
Strangely reassuring.
"…Su Yu?"
In the dark, Kiana suddenly called softly.
She didn't say "hey," and she didn't say "pervert."
For the first time, she said his name.
"Hm? What is it?" Su Yu's slightly sleepy voice came from the floor. Clearly he wasn't asleep yet. "Does your wound hurt?"
"No…"
Kiana turned to her side and tugged the blanket up to cover half her face, leaving only a pair of eyes faintly glinting in the darkness.
She stared at the vague shadow beneath the bed's edge.
"If we accidentally… go past one meter, what happens to me?"
"I guess you'll disappear like Cinderella's glass slipper the moment midnight hits?" Su Yu made a joke that wasn't very funny as he rolled over to face the bed.
"Relax. I sleep pretty still. And… with this screen warning me nonstop, it'd be hard for me to roll away even if I wanted to."
That cursed red warning box hovered in the air like night-vision goggles, displaying their distance in real time:
[Current distance: 65cm. Status: Extremely stable.]
"Oh…"
Kiana answered quietly and fell silent again.
Darkness settled back down, with only the faint streetlight leaking through the curtain gap.
The rain continued, tapping softly against the glass.
"…"
Kiana stared at the ceiling, fingers clenched tight around the blanket corner.
After a while, she spoke again.
"You won't… disappear in the middle of the night, right?"
Her voice was very light, carrying an anxiety even she hadn't noticed.
In the dark, Su Yu's voice came back.
"No."
Short. Calm. Like a statement of fact.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Kiana didn't reply.
But her hand, gripping the blanket corner, slowly loosened.
At some point, Chongchong jumped onto the bed, found a spot by her feet, curled into a ball, and began to purr softly.
Outside the window, the rain gradually grew quieter.
Kiana closed her eyes. Her awareness drifted farther and farther away.
That night, she didn't dream of flames.
-------
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