Zenless Zone Zero
Lazy afternoon light drifted through the gallery. The air carried that distinctive blend of turpentine and expensive incense. Vivian stood on tiptoe, trying to see an abstract painting hung a little too high; the elaborate folds of her gothic skirt swayed softly with the motion.
She was about to turn back and ask Hugo what he thought—
but she found him slipping into that familiar, hard-to-grasp trance again.
Hugo leaned against the window, a costly suit jacket draped carelessly over his forearm. His heterochromatic eyes looked out at the flowing traffic of New Eridu's streets, yet their focus seemed pinned to some distant, invisible point.
Sunlight outlined his handsome—slightly pale—profile. The tear mole beneath his eye was sharply defined in the shifting light and shadow. He radiated elegance, but also a quiet distance that kept people at arm's length.
"Hugo! Hugo!" Vivian walked over, stopping at a practiced distance—close enough for concern, far enough to respect his space.
Her voice was crisp, carrying a hint of annoyance at being ignored. Those beautiful ruby slit-pupiled eyes fixed on his vacant gaze. "You drifted off again!" The complaint was small, familiar—little-sister frustration at an older brother who never quite stays present.
"Ah—sorry, Vivian." Hugo's mind returned. He turned slightly, lips lifting into that habitual curve—mild, polite, and just a little detached. His eyes refocused on her with the faintly apologetic gentleness he used to soothe.
"I was just… thinking about someone from the past."
"Someone from the past?" Vivian's curiosity popped up like a cat with pricked ears. She didn't step closer; she only tilted her head slightly. Violet hair slipped over her shoulder, red eyes glittering with plain curiosity. "Who? Do I know them?"
Hugo lowered his gaze to her face, so openly inquisitive. That shallow, distant smile came back. His fingers on the window ledge tapped once against the smooth wood, as if weighing his words.
"Mmm…" He drew it out. A small glint of remembrance crossed his mismatched eyes, then sank again into their usual depth. "Maybe you do."
He chose the vaguest phrasing on purpose, the ending lifted just slightly—teasing in a gentle, restrained way. It wasn't really concealment, more like a mutual boundary: don't pry too deep.
"Hu-go—!" Vivian predictably choked on the non-answer. Her pale cheeks puffed with childlike irritation.
She huffed and made a tiny show of stomping one heeled foot—light, symbolic. Her elaborate skirt fluttered. In those gemstone-red eyes was annoyance, and also the helplessness of someone used to his "mysterious act"—a younger sister scolding an infuriating brother who refuses to be straightforward.
Seeing her so lively—so full of small temper and real color—Hugo's smile deepened by a fraction. A genuine, brotherly indulgence surfaced in his eyes, and for a moment it softened the distance he usually wore like perfume.
And yet—
in that same sliver of ease, his gaze drifted back out the window again, beyond the bright urban outline, as if piercing a barrier of time toward somewhere unreachable.
The gallery noise and Vivian's complaints seemed sealed behind an invisible membrane.
The faint smile stayed on his lips, but in the depths of his eyes a thin mist of wordless longing settled—searching, aching, quietly relentless.
A whisper—so light it almost dissolved into sunlight and air—carried weight only he could fully hear.
"Where are you now?"
By the window, Vivian watched his profile as he fell back into that faraway place. Her small irritation slowly drained away.
She didn't ask again.
She simply stood beside him, one step away, and let her gaze follow his—toward the same sky outside—sharing, through silence alone, the burden he wouldn't name.
Sunlight spilled over both of them, sketching an unspoken, restrained warmth—family tenderness without the need for words.
The gale at the Great Rift roared, dragging with it the industrial dust unique to New Eridu's edge, and the endless bleak sorrow left behind by the fall of the Old City. It screamed past jagged cliff walls.
The air smelled of rust, sand, and a faint trace of flower fragrance that had long since died.
Qianye and Pokona stood together along the mid-level edge on New Eridu's side.
Before them, a weather-beaten, rust-eaten wire fence stretched across the abyss like a massive scar—silent, dividing life from memory.
"Teacher… no matter where you went," Qianye said, voice so light the wind nearly tore it away, yet the stubbornness in it weighed down the air. "Me, Wise, and Belle—we all believe you're still alive. And we believe that one day, we'll meet again."
"Wise and Belle have been busy lately. But I'm sure they'll come soon. I wanted to come by myself, but the car got borrowed. Luckily, I had a reliable companion willing to bring me."
Pokona didn't speak. She stood there with her golden low ponytail whipping in the wind, cat ears pricked and alert, instinctively tracking danger signals in the gusts.
But today, those emerald cat eyes held none of her usual calculation or guardedness.
Only a quiet, near-solemn focus—resting on the silver-haired boy's slender back.
This fence had stopped being a boundary a long time ago.
It had become a monument.
Cold wire was layered with countless memorials: blackened dead bouquets beside fresh daisies still beaded with morning dew; sun-stained strips of cloth pressed against snow-white scarves tied just recently; old photographs yellowed and curled, the smiles on them blurred, pinned beside new photos still bright with ink-smell… toys, letters, faded badges…
Each object was a frozen tear, a silent shout, a memory swallowed by the abyss but refusing to vanish.
Survivors of the Old City returned here after the catastrophe and hung these anchors—anchoring the past, anchoring longing, anchoring the souls who never crossed the chasm.
Qianye's gaze lingered on one spot for a long time.
A scarf he had just tied there himself.
Pure green, like the tenderest spring leaves—symbol of life and hope—strikingly bright against the ruined gray background, and heartbreakingly fragile.
He bowed deeply again toward the wordless altar. Slow. Formal. His silver hair fell forward, hiding his eyes.
He didn't turn around when he spoke. His voice drifted with the wind, carrying a cautious hope he barely dared to touch.
"Do you think… she—they—can see it?"
He was asking the dead. The faces taken by the abyss.
Pokona's body stiffened.
Out of habit, she tried to pull on the careless grin of an information broker, a mercenary who only worships profit—but her mouth twitched once, and the smile refused to form.
She drew in a breath that tasted like cold rift wind and rust.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer than even she expected—roughened by years and experience, but heavy with something complicated, almost kindred in its pain.
As if she, too, had stood at an abyss like this for a long time, staring at losses that could never be reclaimed.
"…I'm not educated, kid," she said, pausing as her eyes caught the bright green scarf, as if seeing something else through it. "But…"
Her voice stayed quiet—yet firm.
"I believe what you're doing isn't meaningless. Every act of remembering is a weapon against forgetting."
Hearing such words from her mouth gave them a strange, trembling force.
"Is that so…" Qianye sounded a little relieved, like a sigh. "Thank you, Pokona."
He paused, took one last long look at the scarf fluttering in the wind, as if engraving it into his heart.
Then he turned—quietly decisive.
"Let's go."
Pokona watched his back—thin, yet straight. A complicated flicker crossed her green cat eyes.
She shook her head like she could throw off the heaviness and return to her usual sharpness.
"Not staying a bit longer? I can keep you company all day."
She said it casually, but that "all day" promise—from someone like her—was rare warmth.
Qianye shook his head. Silver strands flashed in the sun.
"Thank you, but…" He lifted his eyes toward New Eridu. In those jade-green eyes, grief gave way to something brighter and harder. "I can't stop moving forward just because I'm mourning."
"To save more people, I have to keep going."
That was his belief. The meaning he lived by.
Because the ride had been borrowed by Uncle Enzo for tinkering and upgrades, Qianye walked over to Pokona's bike—weathered but reliable.
He swung onto the back seat and naturally wrapped his arms around her lean, strong waist.
Pokona's body tensed for a split second—
then eased.
She didn't start the engine right away.
She stayed silent for a few seconds, chewing on the weight of those words: save more people.
Then she twisted the throttle.
The old machine answered with a low, powerful roar, tearing open the rift's heavy silence.
The bike carried them toward New Eridu, engine and wind singing together, tires kicking up dust that lingered behind like a bitter aftertaste.
And with the engine's start, something else in Pokona started too—
a curiosity she could no longer hide.
Wind howled at her ears. She turned her head slightly. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the noise cleanly.
"Qianye…"
"Hm? What is it?" His voice came gently from just behind her ear.
Pokona tightened her grip on the handlebars. Her cat ears angled back to catch every syllable.
She hesitated—measuring her words, or gathering courage for a question she'd normally call ridiculous, but that mattered more than she wanted to admit.
"Someone like me…" Her voice held a trace of self-mockery—and a hidden hope. "Am I included among the people you want to save?"
She was asking about herself: the one covered in mud, who'd betrayed and been betrayed, who lived in the gray.
Qianye's arms stayed around her waist. His answer didn't hesitate.
Clear. Steady.
"Always."
Those two words hit Pokona like warm water straight into the heart. Her fingers on the handlebars went faintly numb.
The wind seemed to quiet—just a little.
She spoke again, and this time her voice carried a cautious test, softer than she realized.
"Qianye…"
"Mm?"
A bolder question—one that didn't sound like Pokona at all—burst out before she could swallow it.
"Will you hire me for life?"
After asking, she even held her breath. Her golden tail flicked restlessly behind her.
This didn't sound like a deal.
It sounded like a request.
A very small laugh came from behind her—like her bluntness amused him—and then a reply just as crisp and direct:
"Sure."
"…"
Something clogged Pokona's throat.
The bike kept running steady. New Eridu's outline grew clearer ahead.
Only after a long while did she call his name a third time, quietly.
"Qianye…"
"Yeah?" He answered patiently.
"No," Pokona's voice dropped, carrying a fragility she rarely let surface—an old wound buried under a mercenary shell, left behind eight years ago when she'd been abandoned completely.
"I just… wanted to say it."
She paused, then lowered her voice further—stubborn, pleading.
"When I call your name… just answer me like this."
"Don't… don't be like that person—no echo at all. Okay?"
That person.
That name—Milena—was the wound in her heart that never closed.
The arms around her waist tightened a little, wordless comfort.
Qianye's voice sounded beside her ear—warm, stable, like an anchor sunk deep.
"Mm. I'm here."
The wind kept blowing. The bike kept moving.
Pokona didn't speak again. She straightened her back slightly and carried that hard-won, answered sense of safety—along with the rift's dust and grit—toward the brighter lights of New Eridu.
"Qianye…" she repeated in her mind this time.
And this time, she didn't need to say it aloud to be sure.
She knew that voice would answer.
I'm here…
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 31
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 27
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 26
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