Mobius Laboratory was locked in a permanent twenty-two degrees, the air carrying a crisp blend of ozone, culture medium, and some obscenely expensive women's perfume.
The moment Su Yu stepped through the automatic door, a familiar voice reached him.
"Well, well. A rare guest."
Deep inside the lab, a figure sat with her back to him in an extravagantly designed ergonomic chair.
She tilted her head slightly, and those serpentine eyes — green as jade — drifted over with practiced indifference from beneath the rim of her goggles.
Beneath the white lab coat, her long legs were crossed, black stockings gleaming with a subtle sheen under the cold, shadowless lights. One foot swayed idly back and forth.
"Haven't seen you in days. Looks like Elysia and her big mouth weren't wrong after all..."
Mobius pulled off her goggles and tossed them carelessly onto the workbench. A playful curve pulled at the corner of her lips.
"You really did fall headfirst into a honey trap and can't climb back out?"
Su Yu let out a dry laugh and set the heavy case he was carrying down on the floor with a dull thud.
"Doctor, stop pulling my leg. I've been run off my feet with actual work."
"Actual work?"
Mobius swiveled her chair around and poured herself out of it like liquid, advancing on Su Yu one step at a time.
She got close — close enough that Su Yu could see the rings of her pupils contracting and expanding, and could feel the cold, spine-chilling scent that clung to her.
"I know — making a game." She extended one finger and tapped it lightly against his chest, utterly flippant.
"At this point, everyone in the entire Golden Courtyard knows — even the lobby security guard. That Su Yu who does nothing but freeload finally decided to do something nice for his little girlfriend and make her a game."
Mobius let out a derisive snort, her eyes brimming with undisguised mockery.
"Thank your dear Elysia for that. Yesterday she sent a full sixty-second voice message to the courtyard group chat, giving a vivid, heartfelt account of how you 'flew into a rage for the sake of your beloved.'"
"Eden's already asking in the group whether she should prepare a welcoming gift for your little girlfriend, and invite her to the Golden Hall for a casual dinner."
Su Yu felt the corner of his eye twitch violently.
Elysia... you're not Miss Pink Elf, you're a pink megaphone! The Megaphone of the Past: Loud Voice — that's you!!
And Eden — that's not "a casual dinner." You just want to see what kind of deity managed to reel in a "lifelong bachelor" like me, don't you?
"Doctor, she's just a... normal junior sister."
Su Yu made one last-ditch attempt at damage control.
"Junior sister?"
Mobius raised an eyebrow, her gaze crawling over Su Yu even more blatantly, like she was looking for the best place to make an incision.
"Elysia specifically said you two should be left alone to get cozy for a while longer — wouldn't want us old-timers spooking her."
She paused. Her tongue flicked lightly over her somewhat pale lips, and her eyes suddenly ignited with a feverish gleam.
"Honestly, I'm quite curious. A cross-section of a romance-addled brain versus normal brain tissue — what would the difference look like under a microscope? Are your brainwaves already registering as... pink?"
Su Yu instinctively took half a step back.
He knew that look all too well. It was the look she got when she'd spotted a rare specimen.
As a reborn soul who had lived two lifetimes, Su Yu's mental fortitude far exceeded that of ordinary people. With his cooperation, Mobius had once recorded certain brainwave anomalies that defied all existing scientific explanation.
Ever since, the woman had harbored a pathological obsession with his brain.
And that was the truth behind what Kiana had called being "kept" — or rather, serving as a research assistant.
"Ahem... about the brain thing, let's table that for now."
Su Yu hurriedly changed the subject, terrified he'd be strapped to a dissection table within the next ten seconds.
"I came today because I need a favor."
"Oh?" Mobius settled back into her chair with languid disinterest, crossing her legs again. "Talk. Money, or equipment? Seeing as you're still a halfway decent lab rat, I might consider a ten-percent discount."
Su Yu shook his head. His gaze drifted toward the figure hunched behind a monitor in the corner of the lab, fingers flying across a keyboard.
Danzhu.
"I don't want money, and I don't want equipment."
Su Yu pointed in that direction and flashed a perfectly harmless smile.
"I want her — I'd like to borrow Danzhu for a few days."
The air froze for exactly one second.
In the corner, the dark-haired figure went completely rigid.
Mobius blinked — then burst into a fit of laughter that made the hairs on your neck stand up.
"HA! Ha ha ha ha!"
Her white lab coat slipped off her shoulder as her body shook, revealing the black fitted underlayer beneath and a blinding stretch of snow-white skin.
"Danzhu! Did you hear that?" Mobius spun her chair toward the corner and hollered, her voice dripping with vicious delight.
"This man has abandoned you after having his fun! He says he wants to marry you! Go ahead and shake him down for a million or two in severance pay for the studio, then go home and have his babies! You've been complaining about the overtime here forever anyway, haven't you?"
"PFFT——!!!"
A sound like someone spitting out a mouthful of liquid erupted from the corner.
Followed immediately by a bout of violent coughing.
A dark-haired girl in blue-light-blocking glasses scrambled out from behind her monitor in a panic, face beet red, glasses askew.
"D-Doctor! What are you even saying?! Babies! Abandoning me after having his fun!"
Danzhu snatched up a tissue and frantically dabbed at the water spots on her screen, staring at Su Yu in undisguised horror as though he were some terrifying creature.
"S-Su Yu bro! Don't listen to the Doctor's nonsense! I... I'm still saving up for a limited-edition figure! I'm not having any babies!"
Su Yu pinched the bridge of his nose and felt his reputation plummeting at the speed of light.
He and Danzhu did know each other — they had what you might call a bond forged by shared suffering.
After all, in the Golden Courtyard packed wall-to-wall with people who actually had lives, finding someone else just as passionate about anime — someone you could chat with about the latest seasonal releases and even sneak off to conventions with — was genuinely rare.
But.
Ahem.
Recently, because of Kiana, he'd skipped the last convention she'd invited him to.
And then?
Then came that message from this little ancestor of his, absolutely soaked in grievance: "You shallow, love-struck traitor! You and I are done! Mortal enemies from this day forth!"
Followed by an addendum: "You heartless scoundrel — whatever happened to us being a community of fate?"
The bitterness and resentment were palpable even through the screen. Anyone who didn't know better would have thought Su Yu was some irredeemable scumbag who'd led her on.
As it happened, Fenghuang had also sent a message afterward — that elder sister of his was famously economical with words. Just two characters.
[Affair?]
He'd replied with a single meme: subway, old man, phone. jpg
"Don't listen to her rambling." Su Yu shot Mobius a flat look. "I want to ask Danzhu to help make a PV. You know better than anyone — she's a professional when it comes to 3D motion debugging."
"Borrow one of my people?"
Mobius stopped laughing. The expression on her face went cold in an instant.
She leaned back into her chair, her gaze going lazy and dangerous, like a dragon coiled atop its hoard.
"Su Yu. You're feeling awfully bold today."
"Danzhu is my chief assistant. Sure, she's clumsy, she loves to slack off, and she can't stop staring at those flat paper people of hers..."
From the distant corner, Danzhu shrank into her shoulders and let out a feeble protest.
Doctor, could you at least leave me a shred of dignity?
"But she is still mine." Mobius narrowed her eyes, her gaze hooking onto Su Yu like a barb. "You want to poach someone from me? On what grounds? That silver tongue of yours that's so good at sweet-talking little girls?"
"Of course not."
Su Yu let the smile drop from his face.
He knew that with someone like Mobius, charm alone was worthless.
She recognized one thing and one thing only —
Value.
The kind of unknown, uncharted value that could make a mad scientist like her genuinely excited.
"I know — coming empty-handed isn't your style. It's not mine either."
Su Yu crouched down, his long fingers coming to rest on the heavy metal clasps of the case.
Click.
A crisp, clean unlocking sound echoed through the silent laboratory.
"So I brought you a gift. A proper one."
Su Yu slowly lifted the lid.
Cold white light poured in immediately, illuminating what lay quietly at the bottom of the case.
It was not ordinary metal. Nor was it any known composite material on the market.
It gleamed a white so pure it bordered on sacred, its surface rippling with a faint, breathing shimmer of deep blue luminescence.
Even in its damaged state, the fractured connector points still revealed energy circuitry of extraordinary precision — circuitry that surpassed the comprehension of this era entirely.
[Domain Unit: White Comet]
A personal combat armor born from another dimension, forged for the sole purpose of combating Honkai.
Mobius's previously languid gaze — the moment it landed on that white — froze solid.
The mockery, the arrogance, the indolence — all of it vanished from her face in under a second.
"This is..."
Mobius lurched out of her chair so fast she sent the tray beside her flying.
Scalpels and forceps scattered across the floor. She didn't spare them a glance.
She walked to the case and slowly crouched down, extending those hands — hands that had gripped a scalpel for years — and pressed them, trembling, against the cold surface of the armor.
"This material... this energy transmission structure..."
Her fingertip traced along a fracture. The green of her pupils blazed with terrifying intensity.
"Impossible... this defies all existing materials science logic..."
"Perfect... this is simply... perfect construction..."
If there was one word to describe Mobius's current state, it was this: utterly besotted.
That elegant face of hers had nearly pressed itself flat against the White Comet armor's cold metal shell. Her green pupils had contracted to pinpoints, trembling wildly in sync with the faint blue glow drifting across the armor's surface.
Su Yu stood to one side and could actually hear her rapid, shallow breathing.
"This is nothing like a rigid mechanical structure — this is practically organic tissue!"
Mobius snapped her head up and grabbed a micro-scanning device from the nearby tray, running it frantically over one of the fracture points.
"Look at this! These energy circuits... they're self-repairing! Slowly — slower than a tortoise crawling — but they're alive. They're actually alive!"
She whipped her head around and fixed her eyes on Su Yu, the desire to dissect him and see what other treasures were hiding inside his skull burning stronger than ever.
Mobius licked her somewhat chapped lips and broke into a smile that sent chills down the spine.
"Leave it with me. Give me enough time... and I'm confident I can awaken it. I can even repair it."
Su Yu's heart skipped a full beat.
Repair it?
That was more than he'd bargained for.
His original plan had been to use this thing as a bargaining chip — nothing more than a key to unlock Danzhu as his temporary grunt worker.
He hadn't expected Mobius to be this generous, casually tossing in armor repairs on top of the deal.
If she actually fixed it, and Kiana put it back on — her combat power would go through the roof.
At that point, never mind some wanted criminals. If a real Honkai Beast showed up, she'd be able to go toe-to-toe with it.
"Ahem." Su Yu suppressed the surge of elation rising in his chest and stroked his chin with a carefully cultivated air of gravity. "Well... that's not entirely out of the question. But Doctor, about that other condition we just discussed—"
"Danzhu?"
Mobius waved her hand with all the patience of someone shooing a fly buzzing around her ear.
"Take her. Take her right now."
She buried her face back into the armor and spoke without turning her head. "She's useless here anyway. All she does is sit there grinning at her screen and sneaking online orders for those worthless plastic dolls."
"In terms of work efficiency, she doesn't even come close to one-tenth of Klein."
"You know, Klein has been working continuously for one hundred and sixty-eight hours straight this week. Hasn't eaten a single bite of food. Surviving entirely on nutrient solution."
Mobius's voice was saturated with admiration for Klein, the "perfect tool," and undisguised contempt for Danzhu, the "useless assistant."
"And Danzhu? Yesterday she actually had the audacity to bring up labor law at me. Said she wanted weekends off."
"Ha! Laughable. In the pursuit of truth, rest is the gravest of sins!"
Mobius gave a cold laugh and delivered her verdict.
"Since you want her, take her. Consider it a long vacation for her. During that time, you pay her salary. Don't let her come back here and bother me. Unless..."
She paused, her tone going icily sinister.
"Unless she can evolve — like Klein — into something that doesn't need to sleep."
Su Yu silently gave a mental thumbs-up to whoever had zero days off — poor Klein, confirmed ultimate sacrificial tool.
In the corner.
Danzhu had completely petrified.
Her black-framed glasses sat lopsided on her nose, hiding a pair of eyes that had lost all their light.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What did I just hear?
That doctor — the one who was sharp-tongued and yes, worked her staff to the bone, and yes, casually threatened to turn people into lab mice, but who had never once shorted her on her monthly bonus —
Had just sold her out?!
And for... a slab of broken scrap metal?!
"D-Doctor..."
Danzhu extended one trembling hand like a drowning person making one last desperate grab for a lifeline.
"I have been nothing but loyal to you! All those years of grunt work and scut work in this lab — when was there ever a time that I didn't—"
"Shut up."
Mobius didn't even look up. She simply kicked a cardboard box over to Danzhu's feet — a box containing Danzhu's personal effects, which was to say, several figures and a pile of snacks.
"Stop bothering me. Take your junk and disappear. Immediately."
"..."
Danzhu felt her heart shatter into a QR code. Scan it and all you'd get was the word "TRAGIC" on repeat.
Junk? That Encore in there was a limited-edition Homu figure! And that was a rare out-of-print Magical Girl Teriri Blu-ray!
"Let's go, Miss Danzhu."
Su Yu strolled over with a genial smile and effortlessly picked up the cardboard box for her, wearing the exact beatific expression of a kidnapper who had just successfully nabbed a child.
"Don't be so down about it. Look — the Doctor is doing this for your own good, really."
"Think about it. In the lab, you not only have to endure Mobius's cutting remarks, you have to get steamrolled in every possible direction by Klein, that one-woman overtime machine. How stressful is that?"
"Come with me and it'll be completely different."
Su Yu leaned in a little and lowered his voice to a demonic murmur:
"My place is paradise. The work is all the anime stuff you love most. And on top of that..."
He pointed at the figure Danzhu was clutching.
"If this PV turns out well, limited-edition figures like that — I can get you as many as you want."
"In fact... I can even make you something like a god of creation inside that game."
The dullness in Danzhu's eyes flickered — almost imperceptibly — at the words "unlimited figures."
But she still felt wronged.
So, so wronged.
She turned her head and looked at Mobius — fully absorbed in the White Comet armor now, even starting to hum some eerie little tune — and felt hot tears circling in her eyes.
You absolute monster!
Mobius, you heartless woman!
Sure, I slack off. Sure, I love my anime. Sure, my efficiency isn't up to Klein's standards... but I have my dignity!
You just tossed me out like a buy-one-get-one freebie?!
"Nngh..."
Danzhu sniffled, letting out a small, wounded sound like an injured animal.
She took one last look at this lab — antiseptic-soaked and cold, yet somehow home for the past several years — and then grabbed the hem of Su Yu's sleeve and wiped her eyes on it with furious despair.
"Let's go!"
Danzhu declared through gritted teeth, her voice carrying the absolute resolve of someone who had nothing left to lose.
"Su Yu bro, I'm going with you! I'm going to make that woman regret this! I'll show her that losing me, Danzhu... is the greatest loss of her entire life!"
"I'm going to make the most incredible PV ever made! I'm going to shake the entire world! And then I'll make her beg for me to come back!"
Su Yu bit back a laugh and nodded. "Now that's the spirit. I love an employee with ambition."
He glanced back at Mobius, still in the throes of her fevered research, and gave a quiet internal fist-pump.
Plan: executed to perfection.
Scored a free equipment repair, and walked off with a top-tier tech wizard in the bargain.
Couldn't have gone better.
"Well then, Doctor — we'll be heading out. Don't let us interrupt your pursuit of truth."
Su Yu gave a casual wave and steered the still-glancing-back Danzhu briskly out of the laboratory.
The automatic door slid slowly shut behind them, sealing that world of glorious madness away.
Danzhu trailed a few steps behind Su Yu, still muttering something about "thirty years the river flows east, thirty years the river flows west — don't look down on anyone when they're young and broke."
Su Yu's lips curved upward. He reached inward and connected with Fenghuang in his mind.
"Squad Monitor."
"I'm here."
"Don't you have something to say?"
"About what?"
"Like — should I forge a spatial ring for Danzhu as a gift, so you can go be her golden-finger grandpa and pass down a set of Xuan-rank advanced combat techniques, the 'Eight Extremes Collapse'?"
Fenghuang said nothing. But Su Yu knew — somewhere inside, that old Squad Monitor's mouth was probably already twitching.
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