The wine-red supercar glided along the empty mountain highway, the roar of its engine having dropped from its earlier snarl into a low, murmuring whisper.
The air inside the cabin carried a scent that was hard to pin down.
It was sweat, engine exhaust, the cool breath of the mountain grass and trees, and the lingering residue left behind by everything that had just happened—all mingled together.
The window was cracked open a sliver, and the night wind poured in through the gap, but it couldn't blow away much of that smell.
Su Yu leaned back against the leather seat, his gaze falling on the streetlights that kept receding beyond the windshield, his mind still replaying the scene that had taken place on the hood just moments ago.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at the driver's seat.
At some point Eden had peeled off those black stockings, and casually balled them up and tossed them beside the cupholder on the center console.
She was driving with her bare feet on the throttle pedal, her toes curling slightly from the effort, the wine-red polish on her nails flickering faintly in the dim glow of the dashboard.
Freed from the stockings, her feet were pale and slender, the faint bluish tracery of veins just visible across their arches.
Her bare sole pressed against the cold metal pedal, all five toes alternately stretching and curling with each shift in the throttle's depth, the spaces between them still faintly reddened from the friction of the stockings.
Eden drove on, humming a tune under her breath.
Su Yu couldn't tell what tune it was.
The melody was light, broken up here and there, a few notes swallowed by the sound of the wind.
But the way she carried herself while humming—leaning back against the seat, one hand resting on the top of the steering wheel, her bare toes tilting up slightly on the throttle pedal—was obviously completely different from how she'd been on the way out.
On the way out, she'd been like a leopard sprung from its cage.
Now, she was like a cat that had eaten its fill.
Su Yu leaned back against the passenger seat, watching the mountain-road guardrails and streetlights race backward beyond the window.
The die was cast.
That phrase circled through his mind three times.
Back on the hood, his brain had been in a complete state of shutdown—reason, principles, promises, all of it churned into a single pot of mush by Eden's legs.
And now, as the temperature in the cabin slowly cooled in the night wind, those crashed programs were rebooting one by one.
His reason came back.
His sense of shame came back.
His fear of the consequences came back too.
But he realized that no matter how these programs restarted, one thing had already changed—he no longer had any reason to keep Eden on the outside.
She knew his secret.
He knew hers as well.
On the hood of that supercar they had exchanged secrets, exchanged first kisses, exchanged… some other things too.
Su Yu turned his head and looked at Eden in the driver's seat.
She was still humming.
Her bare foot moved from the throttle to the brake—into the curve, slow down, out of the curve, accelerate.
Every motion was smooth as flowing water, her toes nimbly adjusting force and angle on the pedals.
Su Yu covered his face for a moment.
"So, does this make me Sister Eden's secret lover now?"
Eden didn't turn her head, but the curve of her lips ticked upward.
"If you want, I can announce our relationship tonight."
Su Yu opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He really was exhausted.
From the moment Eden had locked his neck with her legs, to the showdown with Sakura on the mountain highway, to that ambush of a kiss on the hood—the sheer volume of information from this one night had already far exceeded what any game producer ought to have to bear.
"All right then." Eden's voice was full of laughter.
Her bare foot shifted back from the brake to the throttle, and the car's speed climbed steadily.
"What happened tonight is a secret between us. I won't tell Ellie, and you'll keep it from Kiana. How about that?"
Su Yu took his hand from his face and stared at the sunroof above.
"What's with this sense of déjà vu, like I've snuck out behind my house cat's back to go play with another cat?"
Eden let out a soft laugh, not taking the bait on that line.
"You're pretty good at metaphors."
"That's not a metaphor, that's a factual description." Su Yu's voice came out muffled from behind his palm. "Kiana is exactly the cat at my place—no wait, Chongchong can't throw Meow Meow Punches, but she can."
The car came down off the mountain highway and merged into the city's main thoroughfare. The streetlights went from sparse to dense, the orange light sweeping across the interior in segment after segment, flickering in alternation across both their faces.
"Like I said, I don't need your answer."
Eden's gaze settled on the straight road ahead, her words slowing a little.
"Just think of it as my reward for getting to witness something interesting."
Su Yu took his hand down from his face.
He looked at the side of Eden's face.
The streetlights along both sides of the mountain road swept past beyond the window, one beam after another, leaving bands of alternating light and shadow across her face.
One bright, one dark, one bright, one dark.
"If one day in the future—"
Eden tapped lightly on the throttle with her bare foot, and the speed climbed two more notches.
"—you truly figure out the feelings in your own heart, then you don't need to hold back on my account. Just bravely say it out loud to that person."
This was already well past the point of mere indulgence.
The cabin fell silent for a few seconds.
Su Yu didn't answer right away. His gaze moved from the sunroof to the roadside trees rushing backward beyond the window, those trees lit half-bright and half-dark by the streetlights, their shadows stretched out long.
Who was the "that person" Eden spoke of?
Kiana?
He didn't know.
You could even say he wasn't clear on it at all.
Su Yu looked back over his two lifetimes.
In his previous life, he'd lived thirty years, single since the womb.
He'd never had a girlfriend, never confessed to anyone, had never even properly pulled off so much as a secret crush.
All day he'd holed up in front of the computer playing games and watching anime, occasionally shouting "my wife" a few times at the two-dimensional wives on his screen, then going back to work the next day.
This life—
After crossing over, things got even more absurd.
Surrounded by a pack of Fusion Warriors from a previous civilization, eating and sleeping every day alongside Valkyries from the Honkai world, with a world-class superstar throwing herself into his arms.
And after that it was all being pushed along by the System, by missions, by all kinds of chaotic accidents.
He still couldn't figure out what "liking" someone actually meant.
What were his feelings toward Kiana? Responsibility? A protective urge? Habit?
Or that indescribable, impossible-to-name feeling where every time he saw her eyes light up while eating he'd think, "this is pretty nice"?
What were his feelings toward Eden? Gratitude? Admiration? Excitement?
Or that thing that had shot up his spine just now when her legs clamped around him on the hood, that thing that had every cell in his body screaming?
Just what kind of feelings did you have to hold for someone before it counted as liking them?
Just how was one supposed to know they'd truly fallen in love with someone?
He couldn't find the answer.
Maybe feelings were the kind of thing that had no standard answer to begin with.
But there was one thing he was certain of.
Su Yu turned his head and looked at Eden in the driver's seat.
Eden, with her bare foot on the throttle.
Eden, with her tousled hair.
Eden, with her smudged makeup.
Eden, who had just pinned him down on the hood.
The streetlight glow slid across the side of her face, outlining a clean, crisp jawline.
"Eden."
No "Sister."
Eden's bare foot paused slightly on the throttle.
"Mm?"
"The me right now still isn't worthy of standing at your side."
Eden's fingers paused a beat on the steering wheel.
"But one day in the future, I will most certainly stand before you with my head held high, and declare our relationship to everyone."
The air inside the car froze for about two seconds.
Then Eden tilted her head and glanced at him.
That expression was hard to describe.
It looked like surprise, and yet also like she'd been waiting for those words all along.
The smile in her eyes welled up, softening the whole contour of her face by a few degrees.
"All right."
She looked back toward the road ahead.
"I'll be waiting for that day—though let me remind you, I haven't got much patience. Maybe the moment my patience hits zero will be exactly when headlines about a failed game producer being kept as a pampered toy by Eden are flying all over the place?"
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched.
"Eden, I'm at least an independent producer with some dignity—"
"Independent producer? Who put up the money for your studio?"
"..."
"Whose building is your office in?"
"..."
"Who paid for the equipment?"
Su Yu shut his mouth.
He could go maneuver among dozens of gun-toting big men on the Tiger Claw Gang's turf, but against the woman in front of him he had absolutely no recourse.
Truly not a shred of recourse.
Eden started humming her tune again, this time seemingly even happier.
Twenty minutes later.
The supercar came to a stop at the main gate of the Golden Courtyard.
Once the engine cut off, the surroundings suddenly went very quiet, leaving only the occasional bark of a dog drifting from somewhere far off.
Eden unfastened her seatbelt, took out her wallet from the passenger-side glove compartment, flipped through it, and pulled out a gold card to hand over.
"Take it."
Su Yu lowered his head for a glance.
A supplementary gold card, printed with Eden's name and the logo of some Swiss private bank whose name he couldn't even pronounce smoothly.
"Take it."
"And don't go putting on that small-man act, telling me you won't take it, that you won't be a kept man."
Eden tucked the card directly into the breast pocket of Su Yu's shirt, her fingers patting his chest twice, lightly.
"Just treat this money as the secret startup fund for the three of us—you, me, and Kiana. After all, we're comrades on the same boat now, aren't we?"
Su Yu lowered his head and looked at the corner of the gold card poking out of his pocket, silent for three seconds.
For no reason, Stephen Chow's films floated into his mind—how had Uncle Tat done that whole "eat the soft rice but with a hard backbone" thing in a situation like this? He only remembered the line that officer had said while pulling out the gold card—"This is my supplementary gold card, go have a fun night with it."
Never imagined that Uncle Tat would turn out to be me myself.
And a rich madam really is a rich madam—even slipping someone cash, she makes it sound so fresh and refined.
For no reason, Su Yu felt like he was nothing but a pitiful single father raising a kid (meaning Kiana) on his own, who could only sell his looks to earn the "meager" wages that would let his daughter survive in this world.
"I'll take it."
"Good boy."
Eden's tone was just like a mother coaxing a child.
Su Yu bit down on his back molars, feeling his morals and his dignity waging a frantic war inside his head—
In the end, he lost.
"Tomorrow I'll go sit in at the company for a bit."
Eden leaned back against her seat, drawing her bare foot back from the throttle pedal and casually resting it on the edge of the brake pedal.
"While you're at it, have a good talk with Kiana too."
Su Yu pushed open the car door, and the night wind poured in, carrying away the last trace of the ambiguous warmth inside the car.
He looked up for a glance—the light in Elysia's room was already off; that Miss Pink Elf had probably already gone to sleep.
And right now he had to hurry back on his little electric scooter, otherwise if anything got discovered, he'd never have a moment's peace again.
"Goodnight, Sister Eden."
"Goodnight, my little producer."
After saying goodbye to Eden, Su Yu rode his little electric scooter back to the Happiness Community.
Once he'd parked the scooter.
Su Yu stood at the entrance of the apartment building, drew in a deep breath, then slowly let it out.
The pre-dawn air was just cold enough, and combined with that stretch of riding, it cooled his overheated brain down a little.
Su Yu looked down at himself.
His shirt was wrinkled.
His pants—he didn't want to look at the pants.
His hair had been blown into a bird's nest by the wind.
Beside the collar of his shirt was a slightly darker mark, sucked there by a pair of lips.
Eden's scent still lingered on him.
The perfume had mostly dissipated; what remained was something deeper, the body scent that belonged to Eden herself, mingled with sweat, the metallic smell of the hood, and the leftover fragrance of nylon stocking fabric baked by body heat.
He had to shower first.
That was his only thought right now.
Dragging his exhausted body, Su Yu walked into the apartment building and climbed the stairs.
When he reached his own door, his footsteps came to a halt.
The door was open.
Warm yellow light spilled out through the gap in the doorway, accompanied by a slurred female voice heavy with the smell of alcohol.
"…You tell me, has my dad lost his mind or what? You know what he said to me in the car today? 'Himeko, this young man Su Yu has a boundless future—if you could marry him, Daddy will transfer the seaside house to your name as your dowry'… A seaside house!"
"He actually tried to bribe me with a seaside house! Do I look like the kind of woman who'd sell herself off for a single house?!"
Su Yu stood at the doorway, petrified all over.
He poked his head in for a look.
The living room light had been turned on. Himeko was slumped crookedly against the sofa, her long red hair fanned out everywhere, her cheeks flushed so red they looked about to drip blood.
One hand was holding an already-emptied can of beer, while the other was clamped tightly around the arm of the white-haired girl beside her.
That white-haired girl sat stiffly at the other end of the sofa, her spine ramrod straight, her entire posture like that of a cat being forcibly held down onto a chair.
Su Yu's gaze rested on that white-haired girl's face for a second.
The light was dim, and he only saw the outline of a profile, and that familiar head of long white hair.
"…What on earth is going on here?"
Hearing the voice, Himeko whipped her head around, squinting before she could make out who it was.
"Oh! Su Yu, you're back!" She let go of the arm she'd been clutching—"Kiana's"—and stood up unsteadily, pointing right at Su Yu's nose. "Where did you run off to?! Dumping Kiana home all alone in the middle of the night—do you have any idea she was in here smashing things in a pitch-black room all by herself? Did the two of you have another fight?"
At the other end of the sofa, "Kiana" slowly turned her head.
Beneath the dim yellow light, those golden eyes stared straight at the man in the doorway.
In that instant, the emotion that spilled out of those eyes was probably something even she didn't want to admit to—elation, relief, and the anticipation of "you've finally come back."
That expression was unmistakably saying—"Save me, save me!"
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