Anti-Entropy Entertainment headquarters, internal parking garage, level negative six.
Su Yu sat alone inside the black jeep.
The engine was off. No lights on in the cabin.
His hands rested on the leather steering wheel, his body tilted slightly back, the whole of him all but dissolved into the shadow of the driver's seat.
"…and that's more or less how it went."
Bronie was speaking slowly.
Last night, in the basement of that bar, she had laid out every card in her hand - the "Valkyries from another world," the "doomsday countdown," the "Starfire Furnace" - and now she recounted all of it, exactly as it had happened.
How she had traded those secrets for Cioara's trust. How she had walked away with Schicksal's classified polymer composite material and a super-electromagnetic sniper rifle into the bargain.
When the report ended, the comm channel went quiet for a moment.
All he could hear was the soft sound of Bronie chewing her bubblegum on the other end.
"BOSS." Bronie broke the silence. "Was I maybe a little reckless? I didn't consult you first, I just went ahead and dragged that old hag into the water on my own authority, and I leaked more than half of our core hand to her while I was at it…"
As technical director, Bronie understood exactly what intelligence was worth.
Showing her cards like that had been a gamble of the highest order.
Win, and the whole board came alive.
Lose, and all of Anti-Entropy and the Starfire Crucible Project would be staring down Schicksal's gun barrels in an instant.
Su Yu closed his eyes in the darkness.
Two seconds later he opened them again and let out a long breath, expelling the stale air trapped in his chest.
"No, Bronie. You did well."
A faint intake of breath came through the earpiece, as though a certain grey-furred rabbit who had been dangling in midair had finally set both feet on solid ground.
"Under that kind of pressure, with nobody to back you up, you made the call and you made it cleanly."
"Not only did we win the trust of one of Schicksal's elite agents without spilling a drop of blood, we took over the covert intelligence network she's spent years building in Arc City. And more important than any of that - once Dr. Tesla finds out about the polymer composite material you brought back, she's going to lose her mind with joy."
Su Yu's gaze went through the windshield toward the heavy shadows at the far end of the garage.
"Your mother was right. With the end of the world coming, walling ourselves off is just a slower way to die. Uniting every force that can be united - that's our only road out. You solved a fatal problem for me today."
"Heh heh, just raise my salary. My demands are modest."
Bronie's relief was obvious, and her voice slid straight back into its usual slouching insolence.
"Actually," Su Yu shifted against the seat back into a more comfortable position, "I'd been running a plan through my head over and over for a while now - whether to use the Theresa connection and make direct contact with the man who really holds power in Schicksal. Otto Apocalypse."
At that name, the chewing on the other end of the channel stopped.
"But I shelved the idea indefinitely." Su Yu laughed, and there was no humor in it. "Siegfried warned me in the strongest possible terms. Otto will use any means to reach his ends. You could say he has no human floor at all."
"And I won't lie to you - Old Yang and I all have a certain amount of PTSD where that name is concerned."
"Reasons? Nothing you'd call reasons. Welt and I just have some, mm, personal history with that name."
Su Yu paused, and his tone turned grateful.
"But now, with your mother in the picture, the situation is completely different. Bronie, the credit for this one goes to you."
"Generous of you, Boss!" Bronie whistled sharply into the earpiece, then pivoted. "Oh, right, BOSS. About that young lady of Schicksal's… we're probably going to have to keep the act running. Keep her completely in the dark."
"Let's hear your reasoning," Su Yu said, his fingers going still on the wheel.
"These past few days Theresa's been drinking herself blind in my mom's bar, and she poured out everything she'd been bottling up." Bronie's voice grew more serious. "Because of the Honkai Impact 3rd storyline, she went and had a screaming fight with Otto. Demanded to know whether he was running some kind of inhuman human experimentation."
Su Yu's brow creased slightly. That was a real hazard.
"But!" Bronie leaned on the word. "My mom is Schicksal's eyes on the ground, and the encrypted internal directive she got from Otto was this - classic Kaslana family Game-Brain Syndrome. Ignore her tantrum, continue surveillance, just keep her safe."
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched. Apparently even Otto had to bow before Auntie's capacity for filling in the blanks.
"My mom's also been probing Theresa with leading questions for days now."
Bronie sighed, sounding resigned to that particular auntie's single-celled nature.
"The young lady talks a big game about conspiracies. She's even announced she's going to investigate you within an inch of your life."
"But in reality she can't produce a single shred of substantive evidence. Every suspicion she has is built on the subjective feelings of someone who got emotionally gutted by a game plot."
"Which is exactly why I could overturn all her theorizing today with an excuse that absurd," Bronie analyzed from the other end of the line. "Theresa's heart is too soft, and she's too naive. Down at the bottom of herself, she doesn't want to believe her own grandfather could be the kind of Devil who treats human lives as garbage."
The cabin was very quiet. Only Bronie's cool voice echoed in it.
"So when I was backed into a corner and threw out that ridiculous script - Kiana suffers from dissociative identity disorder, an evil personality named Sirin has taken control of her, and Su Yu is making a game purely as a custom-built course of psychotherapy…"
There was undisguised smugness in her words.
"Theresa grabbed that excuse the way a drowning woman grabs a rope. And she has not let go."
Su Yu listened in silence.
He could picture the scene perfectly.
"Because if she accepts my version, she gets to shove all the guilt onto 'mental illness' with a clear conscience, and then go back to her safe little everyday world." Bronie delivered her final verdict. "Theresa is lying to herself."
Su Yu nodded slowly. "In that case, all the more reason not to tell her the truth."
"So you're happy to ride the horse she brought you?" Bronie asked.
"No. I'm doing it to keep everyone alive." Su Yu worked through the whole situation calmly. "Right now, in Otto's eyes, Theresa is just a little girl throwing a fit because she got too invested in a video game. Otto understands how sentimental the Kaslana family is, so he thinks the whole thing is within tolerances. A harmless farce."
Su Yu straightened up and folded his hands in front of him.
"But picture it, Bronie. Suppose Theresa actually learned the brutal truth we're sitting on - that the world ends in six months, and that her niece is carrying a world-ending Herrscher inside her who could wake up at any moment."
Theresa's face surfaced in his mind, the one that always wore that innocent smile.
"Theresa is an idiot who can't hide anything she's feeling, and on top of that she's got that overdeveloped Kaslana sense of responsibility and justice. The second she knows what the world really looks like, do you think she can keep up her current state - a woman whose biggest worry is family drama? Do you think 'Silly-resa' survives that?"
"A person's eyes and bearing can't lie. The moment Theresa changes, an old fox like Otto will smell it immediately. He'll follow the vine to the melon and turn our entire studio inside out."
On the other end of the line, Bronie sucked in a cold breath.
She clearly saw it too - a fuse that, once lit, would take every one of them down together.
"So," Su Yu said, closing the matter, "we let her stay by our side eaten up with guilt, still playing the sweet, dim-witted Auntie who worries about her niece and occasionally shrieks at a video game. That's the perfect arrangement."
"Tsk tsk tsk… you've got Auntie's soft spots and Otto's arrogance both calculated down to the decimal. When it comes to being black-hearted, nobody beats you, Great Producer! Fine, then we'll enjoy Auntie's performance with a clear conscience."
Bronie paused, and her voice took on a distinctly gleeful edge.
"By my math, Auntie has probably already charged up to the Company's front entrance, all ready to bend ninety degrees and beg your forgiveness. So when exactly are you planning to go up and accept her apology?"
"…" Su Yu's expression collapsed on the spot.
The thought of Theresa waiting outside his office with red-rimmed eyes, possibly holding a get-well gift, tearfully thanking him for the "sacrifice" he'd made for Kiana, sent his mouth into an uncontrollable spasm.
The picture was a little too beautiful. He had no idea how he was supposed to keep a straight face through it.
"You know, I'm suddenly feeling a bit dizzy today. I might need to take some sick leave…"
Su Yu rubbed his temples guiltily, hunting for a pretext to hide in the underground garage a while longer.
And yet.
Fate apparently felt that one Theresa was insufficient punishment for a Great Producer who ran up debts everywhere he went.
The words were barely out of his mouth when it happened.
Click.
The sound of a car door handle being pulled.
The passenger door.
Su Yu's body went rigid against the leather seat.
The next second, the door swung open.
Into the cramped, stuffy cabin with its smell of engine oil poured an aggressive wave of perfume that brooked no argument.
It was the mellow bouquet of some staggeringly old vintage of top-shelf red wine.
Luxurious, languid, and carrying an undertone of danger no one could refuse.
A long, slender calf sheathed in gossamer black stockings, ending in an expensive high heel, swung into the cabin first.
And then the golden Diva herself, in a wine-red hand-tailored couture trench coat that traced every line of her flawless figure, settled elegantly into the passenger seat.
Thump.
A pale hand pulled the door gently shut.
To Su Yu, the sound of the lock engaging was Death tolling the funeral bell.
Eden turned toward him, and that waterfall of soft long hair slid down over her shoulder.
She said nothing.
She simply propped her chin in one hand, elbow resting on the center console.
And looked at him, the corners of her lips curved in something that was not quite a smile.
It was the look reserved by an apex hunter for the death throes of its prey.
The air in the cabin seemed to have been evacuated in a single instant. Su Yu found even breathing difficult.
On the other end of the tactical earpiece, Haxxor Bunny had clearly caught that unmistakable sound of a door closing.
Along with the low, languid laugh that followed it, thick with the pressure of a mature woman.
"Ahem…"
A theatrical cough came through the earpiece.
"Looks like… you've got new trouble. Considerably more lethal trouble." The grey-furred rabbit who commanded storms across the digital world and lied through her teeth as a hobby, upon identifying exactly who had just taken the passenger seat, displayed an astonishing survival instinct.
No hesitation. No collegial loyalty whatsoever.
Bronie very politely tossed out one final line:
"An elite match at this tier is above my pay grade, BOSS. May heaven look after you."
Beep.
A crisp, decisive dial tone.
The channel had been severed unilaterally at the speed of light.
Listening to the dead air in his earpiece, Su Yu registered that the shirt across his back was already soaked through with a fine layer of cold sweat.
He didn't dare turn his head to look at the woman beside him.
In the narrow space, that scent of red wine and roses kept climbing in temperature until it seemed to have become an invisible net, binding him fast to the driver's seat.
He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple rolling once in his parched throat.
There was no escaping this.
He took one deep breath and turned his head, stiffly.
Their eyes met.
The amusement in Eden's gaze seemed to deepen, but at the center of her pupils there was not a trace of warmth.
Su Yu's facial muscles felt as though rigor mortis had set in.
Even so, he forced every nerve in his face into service and produced a small, deeply guilty smile.
"S-Sister Eden…"
His voice came out dry and tight. He raised one finger and pointed shakily at the steering wheel in front of him, smiling in a way that was a hundred times uglier than crying.
"Are… are you headed to the Company too?"
His brain had gone completely offline, and out came a piece of small talk so stupid that even he winced at it.
"Wh-what a coincidence. How about… how about I give you a ride?"
Eden did not answer right away.
She only sat there quietly, as lazy in her posture as a Persian cat that had just finished patrolling its territory.
The wine-red coat sculpted her impeccable curves; her long legs were crossed with elegance.
Tick.
Tick.
The second hand of the dashboard clock was magnified beyond all reason in the dead silence.
"My Great Producer."
At last, Eden spoke.
"The way you're bracing for battle, anyone would think your big sister was a man-eating Honkai Beast."
Su Yu swallowed dryly and turned to face her.
"Sister Eden, you're joking. Where in the world would you find a Honkai Beast this beautiful?"
A clumsy compliment.
Eden laughed softly. There was no discernible emotion in the sound, and it brought out another film of cold sweat down his back.
She turned slightly toward him, her gaze settling on his face and its attempted composure.
"Last night. The Final Lesson broadcast. I watched it."
"Beautiful visuals, outstanding music. As your largest investor, I have to admit that your talent for harvesting tears and despair really does justify all the hard cash I've thrown at you."
Su Yu's breathing steadied a little. "Thank you for the praise, Sister Eden…"
"However."
Eden cut him off.
"Last night, Ellie was on the phone with me for two solid hours. As for what she said - care to guess?"
A death-sentence question.
An absolute death-sentence question!
The temperature in the cabin seemed to plummet.
Eden's languid aura shifted, quietly, into the weight of someone who held the higher position.
It was the pressure radiating off a genuine plutocrat superstar - the kind of number-one big spender who could overturn the world with money and influence alone.
"Su Yu." She said his name, her voice gentle and every syllable weighing a ton. "Ellie is a very guileless girl. She thinks of you as a good friend. She may even be hoping for something more than that."
"And you used the cruelest method available to make her cry in front of tens of millions of people."
"As the woman funding you, and as Ellie's closest friend, if I were to do nothing about that -"
Eden's wrist tightened, and she hauled him toward her without asking permission.
There was a click as the seatbelt latch was stretched to its limit.
Caught completely off guard, Su Yu found his entire upper body dragged across the center console, over the boundary between driver's seat and passenger seat.
The distance between them shrank in an instant to something well past zero.
Close.
Far too close.
He could count the individual lashes of her thick, curled eyelashes, could see the seductive gloss layered over her red lips.
Their noses were nearly touching.
That heavy blend of red wine and roses hit his brain like some kind of high-grade catalyst.
"S-Sister Eden?" His mind blanked out. Both hands braced against the console, he could neither advance nor retreat.
Eden did not let go. If anything, she gripped his collar tighter.
She tilted her chin up, looking at him from inches away, red lips parting slightly.
"You know that Ellie is my dearest friend."
"Even if we're all doing this to save the world, you made her cry. That is not in dispute."
"And as her dearest friend, naturally I have to… collect that debt on her behalf."
Su Yu's head spun trying to follow the sleight of hand in that logic.
This was supposed to be a grand plan to save the world. How had it turned, in this superstar's mouth, into an emotional dispute between girlfriends?
"So… how exactly do you intend to collect?"
The question came out flat and dry.
"Hm…"
A low chuckle rose in Eden's throat.
It carried the ease of someone who saw straight through everything.
Her free hand rose slowly, and one slender index finger, sheathed in velvet, came to rest suggestively against his Adam's apple.
The fingertip carried a cool touch that raised the hair on his scalp, and it slid down from his throat, bit by bit, past the first undone button of his shirt, coming to rest at the edge of his collarbone.
"My little producer."
Eden's eyes narrowed slightly, her gaze rippling with a charm that pressed in on him step by step.
"Have you gotten so absorbed in this grand game of saving the world… that you've forgotten something very important?"
His throat bobbed without his consent, and a numb tingle spread from where her finger touched through the fabric.
"F-forgotten what?"
Eden leaned forward, bringing those tempting red lips close to his ear.
And in a voice only the two of them could hear, she slowly breathed out the words capable of snapping a man's reason clean in half:
"Have you forgotten… that you are still your big sister's secret lover?"
Something detonated inside Su Yu's skull, and his blood surged hard enough to pound against his eardrums.
It finally clicked.
All that talk about collecting a debt for a friend, all that heartbreak over Elysia's tears.
Every word of it was a flawless pretext, deployed by a plutocrat superstar who understood the push and pull of the human heart, to run a surprise inspection and demand compensation.
She was exercising the private possessiveness of a lover under the most respectable banner imaginable.
Eden gave him no room at all to think or object.
Her fingertip traced slow circles on his collarbone, and the aggrieved note in her voice multiplied.
"Let's count it up…"
She tilted her head, red lips brushing his earlobe so lightly it might have been imagined, leaving a shiver in their wake.
"It has been a full half month since you last sent me a personal message on your own initiative."
"Not one phone call either. And when I had afternoon tea delivered to your office, you let that little girl Bronie sign for it."
"Practically everything between us has been business. That, or meetings in an Anti-Entropy conference room."
She drew back a fraction, eyes locked hard onto his, the jealousy and possessiveness in them laid bare in the dim cabin.
"Well? My Great Producer…"
Her hand tightened on his collar and pulled him in again.
The air between them had thoroughly caught fire.
"Could it be that on all these so-called 'save the world' missions of yours out there, you've found some new confidante?"
A dangerous, cold smile curved her lips.
"Is it that head maid who chases you around trying to assassinate you every day? Or that young lady of Schicksal you've been leading around by the nose?"
She stared into his eyes and delivered the final interrogation. "So tell me… are you planning to dump your big sister with this cold-shoulder treatment? Hm?"
That last "hm" lifted at the end, laced with a magic that could drag a soul out of a body.
Su Yu had gone completely numb.
His hands had nowhere to go; all he could do was brace them stiffly on either side of the center console.
But it wasn't time to give up yet.
From what he knew of Eden, as long as his attitude was sincere enough, as long as he supplied this big sister with sufficient emotional value and promises of companionship, this dangerous in-car interrogation could still be brought to a full stop.
And just as his brain shifted into overdrive, preparing to display his true strength as a galgame veteran -
"Bzz - bzz - ring-a-ling!"
A crisp, aggressively cheerful custom ringtone exploded through the cabin without warning.
It was coming from the limited-edition handbag Eden had set on the center console.
The glow of the phone screen leaked through the seam in the leather, flashing wildly in the dim interior.
Su Yu and Eden lowered their heads at the same moment.
There on the lit screen, pulsing away, was a name: [Elysia].
The air froze solid.
Su Yu stared blankly at the caller ID as a chill shot from his tailbone straight up through the crown of his skull and swept over his entire body.
Eden froze for half a second too.
And then the flame at the bottom of this mature woman's eyes caught fully alight.
She did not reach for the call. She returned her gaze to Su Yu's bloodless face.
Those golden eyes were brimming now with a suffocating delight and malice.
"It seems… our pink little elf with the swollen eyes has come to inspect the premises. She must be desperate to know whether I, as her dearest friend, have caught the villain who broke her heart."
With her free hand, Eden elegantly unzipped the handbag and drew out the still-vibrating phone.
Her finger hovered over the green answer key.
"I know what you want to say. But haven't you heard the saying, my little producer? Distant water won't quench a present thirst."
She watched the terror written across his eyes, and the smile on her lips bloomed like a poppy opening in the dark.
"Since Ellie has called in person to supervise, then as her very best friend, if I don't punish you right here in this car, where she can hear every second of it - punish you in a way you'll remember for the rest of your life -"
Eden's fingertip came down hard on the answer key, and she flicked on the speakerphone for good measure.
"- well, then what kind of friendship would that be?"
Click.
The second the call connected, Su Yu closed his eyes in despair.
"Hello, Eden? Did you catch that big meanie Su Yu?"
It was over. All of it, over.
There was no surviving today.
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