Su Yu's eyes snapped open.
In the dim night, the bedroom ceiling was nothing but a blurred outline. The air conditioner hummed low and steady, and city light seeped through the gap in the half-drawn curtains, casting a faintly shifting band of light across the floor.
As consciousness returned to his body, Su Yu drew in a breath.
He was alive.
In the real world.
Then he heard it.
Right there beside his pillow, very close.
Broken, stifled sobs — the kind someone makes when they're desperate not to wake you, but simply can't hold it in any longer.
Su Yu turned his head.
Kiana was slumped against the side of his bed, face buried in the crook of her own arms, nothing visible but the top of her disheveled white hair.
Her shoulders shook with each quiet sob, and even in the low light, the redness rimming her eyes and the tip of her nose was unmistakable.
Those mismatched eyes — always carrying a trace of silliness or stubborn defiance — were fixed on him now, unblinking, shimmering with unshed tears.
They were full of things she hadn't managed to pull back yet: fear, lingering dread, and… a fragile, shattered kind of vulnerability.
Su Yu felt something press against his heart — not hard, not soft, just enough. A faint ache. A dull weight.
He pushed himself upright. The movement pulled at the dull throbbing left behind by his overextended mental energy, but he paid it no mind.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his voice roughened from sleep. "Bad dream?"
Kiana's lips trembled. Before Su Yu had woken up, she'd been able to hold herself together — barely.
But the moment she saw him open his eyes and heard those two simple words, the tears came harder.
"I… I had a dream…"
Her voice was even hoarser than his.
"I dreamed that you… that Sirin… killed you. Over and over."
"I was right there watching… and I couldn't do anything…"
The words came faster, tumbling over each other, tears rolling down her face in fat drops.
"I could only watch… watch you die… again and again…"
Su Yu looked at her swollen, tear-reddened eyes. He looked at the expression on her face — the kind that said the sky had caved in.
He reached out, curled his index finger, and gave the tip of her nose a light, precise flick.
Tap.
A soft little sound.
Kiana's crying stopped dead.
She stared at him with wide eyes, completely blank, tears still clinging to her cheeks.
"Are you an idiot?" Su Yu looked at her, that insufferably smug grin spreading across his face.
"You — what are you even saying?!" Kiana snapped back into herself, equal parts embarrassed and furious, forgetting entirely that she'd been crying. "I was worried about you! Do you have any idea how—"
"I know," Su Yu cut her off, his grin widening. "But did you forget? Dreams are always the opposite of reality."
Kiana blinked.
"In your dream, the Herrscher of the Void killed me a whole bunch of times, right?"
Su Yu sat up cross-legged, started ticking things off on his fingers, and proceeded to talk absolute nonsense with total conviction.
"So in reality, it's probably the other way around — I grabbed that high-and-mighty Queen who goes around screaming 'you insects, you insects' all day long, yanked her right down from her throne, pinned her flat on the ground, and spanked her so hard she was crying for her mom and questioning her whole existence. After that, she never dared act cocky in front of me again."
As he spoke, he flexed his arm and struck a pose, showing off his bicep.
Not that anything was visible through his pajamas.
"How about that?" Su Yu raised an eyebrow. "Way better story than your dream, right? What — you don't believe in your Senior Brother's abilities? A run-of-the-mill chuunibyou Queen? I could deal with her in my sleep."
Kiana stared at him.
Stared at that unbearably self-satisfied "I'm the greatest thing alive" expression on his face. At those dark eyes, laughing.
"Pfft…"
She couldn't hold it. She laughed.
It started with just the corners of her mouth pulling upward against her will. Then her shoulders began to shake. Then she buried her face back into the crook of her arm and let out a laugh that was still thick with the remnants of crying.
"What is wrong with you… are you actually stupid…"
Her voice came muffled from her arm, still a little choked, but so much lighter than before.
"Who even… who has dreams like that…"
"Plenty of people," Su Yu said, perfectly matter-of-fact. "I had exactly that dream last night. I also dreamed she snuck in and drank all your bitter melon juice, and you were rolling around on the floor from the taste."
"You're the one who'd be rolling around!"
Kiana lifted her head. Her eyes were still red, but the despair from moments ago had completely vanished from her face.
She shot Su Yu a glare — ferocious-looking, but utterly toothless.
Su Yu watched her come back to life, and the faint ache that had surfaced in his chest when he'd seen her crying finally began to ease.
"Alright, alright," he said, reaching out and ruffling her hair carelessly — making her already-messy white hair an even more spectacular disaster.
"Tomorrow — well, today — we still have to go to the Inch Heart Dojo and guide Ma Feima and the others through recording the Honkai Beast motion data. If you don't get some sleep, you'll show up with raccoon eyes and blow your cover as the Little Grandmaster."
Kiana sniffled and nodded.
But a second later, something seemed to come back to her. Her face flushed crimson in an instant, and her eyes started drifting evasively.
"You… you…" She fumbled for words. "Aren't you going to ask… why I'm in your room?"
Su Yu watched her go shy, and felt something funny stir in him — fond, warm, and entirely impossible to put into words.
He thought for a moment, then deliberately put on a grave face and spoke in his most solemn tone:
"Could it be… the aftereffects of that horror movie you watched last night? Scared that Sadako was going to crawl out of the living room TV, drag herself all the way to the bedroom, and reach up from under the bed to snatch away a certain white-haired beauty who was up at midnight thinking too hard?"
"Get lost!" Kiana's face went even redder — with indignation this time. "I am not scared of fictional things!!"
"Really?" Su Yu drew it out, openly skeptical. "So who was it that got so scared watching Ju-On that they threw a throw pillow directly into my face?"
"Th-that was an accident! And the pillow flew on its own!"
"Suuure—"
"Don't you 'sure' me!"
Watching Kiana go back to being fang-and-claw, bursting with energy, Su Yu finally couldn't hold it in anymore and let out a low, quiet laugh.
He lay back down, pulled the blanket up to his chest, then rolled onto his side to face Kiana — who was still sitting at the edge of the bed — and closed his eyes.
"Alright, alright," he said, his voice carrying both a smile and bone-deep exhaustion. "I'm going back to wander with Duke Zhou. Let's see if I can pick up that dream where I was spanking the Queen—care to join me, Miss Kiana?"
"Who — who said anything about joining you!" Kiana shot back immediately, but there was no conviction behind it.
"Are you going to leave?" Su Yu asked, eyes still closed.
"I… I didn't say… I was leaving…" Kiana's voice got smaller and smaller.
She hesitated, fidgeted, and finally turned around. Back to Su Yu, she lay down carefully at the far edge of the bed, doing her best to leave as much space as possible between them.
Quiet settled back over the bedroom.
Only the hum of the air conditioner, and the gradually steadying rhythm of two people breathing.
From the next room came what might have been the faint sound of Himeko watching a soap opera — that woman had almost certainly gotten drunk, forgotten to turn off the TV, and passed out right there on the sofa. She'd probably be complaining about a headache again in the morning.
Two or three minutes passed.
Su Yu felt it — a slightly cool hand, reaching tentatively across from the other side of the bed, fingertips searching lightly across the sheets.
He didn't move. Didn't speak.
He simply reached out his own hand and closed it, unerringly, around those searching fingers.
Their fingers interlaced.
Kiana's hand stiffened for just a moment — then gripped back, hard enough that Su Yu's fingers actually ached.
But then she relaxed, just a little. Still held on tight.
Her breathing finally evened out completely, long and steady.
She was asleep.
Su Yu couldn't see her face, but he could feel it — the hand holding his, palm warm now, no longer trembling.
He thought: right now, in this moment, this stupid little junior sister of his almost certainly had a small, quiet smile on her lips.
For that smile…
Su Yu drew a silent breath in the dark. The exhaustion from the depths of his spirit rose like a tide and swallowed him whole.
"For this stupid little junior sister… looks like I'm going to have to work a lot harder."
The thought surfaced, blurred, and then his consciousness sank into a dreamless dark, bottomless and still.
In a corner of the pure white space, Fenghuang's consciousness watched it all in silence.
Through the mental link just forged — still fragile, but stable enough — she could perceive the depths of Su Yu's spirit with perfect clarity.
The fragments of cold, sharp negative emotion that had accumulated there from countless 'deaths' — fear, pain, despair, madness…
They were like tiny splinters of ice, settled at the bottom of his consciousness. Ordinarily, his powerful will kept them suppressed — but in deep sleep, they would silently rise to the surface, gnawing at his peace.
Fenghuang did not hesitate.
She drew upon the remnants of Yu Ducheng's power.
Not much — but pure enough, and gentle enough.
The power flowed quietly along the link, seeping into the depths of Su Yu's consciousness.
No forced dispersal. No brutal erasure.
Only like afternoon sunlight on a spring day — gently enveloping those splinters of ice, coaxing them to melt, little by little, to dissolve, to become harmless water, slowly absorbed and soothed by Su Yu's own spiritual energy.
The process was slow, and required patience.
Fenghuang was in no hurry.
She watched the two sleeping figures on the bed, hands still clasped.
She watched Kiana's hand — the one that refused to let go even in sleep.
She watched Su Yu's brow — still faintly furrowed even in deep slumber, as though he were quietly worrying over something even now.
What would the future look like?
Fenghuang didn't know.
She had lived through too many unknowns, witnessed too many partings.
Fifty thousand years of existence had taught her: no promise is absolute, and no future is certain.
But at least…
At least in this moment, in this world so peaceful it almost felt like an indulgence, these two children — each carrying such heavy pasts — could hold hands and sleep soundly.
At least tomorrow, the sun would rise as it always did.
And then, a strange thought crept unbidden into Fenghuang's mind.
Strange.
And yet — somehow, entirely plausible.
Because it concerned someone else she knew — someone bound deeply to Kiana, someone who had made Kiana very nearly her entire world.
If she were to see this scene… what would she say?
Fenghuang withdrew her gaze, and turned the whole of her attention back to the quiet, painstaking work of soothing Su Yu's spiritual wounds.
In the pure white space of consciousness, silence reigned.
Only warmth — flowing, soundless, and steady.
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