This chapter is 2-in-1 (Chapter 276 and Chapter 276.2) so I don't lose track of the numbering
Chapter 276: What Does It Mean That Theresa Is Bringing One Hundred Billion To Marry Su Yu?
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Two in the afternoon.
After that heart-stopping, sanity-melting "punishment" in the underground parking garage, Su Yu finally walked through the front doors of miHoYo Studio.
The moment he stepped inside, though, he picked up on something strange hanging in the air - an atmosphere he couldn't quite name.
The employees who should have been furiously hammering out code or blocking in concept art were all sitting at their machines, yes, but every single pair of eyes was darting frantically around the edges of their monitors.
The instant they saw Su Yu walk in, all those glances converged on him at once.
Shock. Admiration. A distinctly suggestive gleam. A few of them even snuck him a thumbs-up from under their desks.
The back of Su Yu's neck prickled.
He grabbed Nuwa, who was cradling a mug with "front-row seat for the drama" written all over her face, and hauled her into a corner of the hallway.
"Did everyone here take the wrong medication this morning? Why are they looking at me like that?" Su Yu asked, keeping his voice down.
Nuwa pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Light flashed across the lenses with the glint of profound wisdom.
She reached out, clapped him hard on the shoulder, and let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
"Haaah - Su Yu, Su Yu. All these years I've known you, and I never once realized that behind those thick brows and big honest eyes, you were secretly this capable."
"What in the world are you babbling about?"
"Play dumb! Keep playing dumb!" Nuwa jabbed an elbow into his ribs and dropped her voice, waggling her eyebrows. "Last night you dropped a knife on everyone and turned Elysia - beloved of twenty million followers across the entire net - into one big sobbing mess. And then at noon today, you summon our dear Magical Girl Teriri straight into your office... Big-shot producer, that's quite a broad scope of business you're running."
It clicked. Nuwa was talking about Theresa coming by to grovel and apologize.
He didn't see anything about that worth the whole Company rubbernecking over.
"What kind of riddle are you trying to make me solve?" Su Yu laughed weakly and spread his hands. "Theresa is a contracted special guest of this studio, and she's a major shareholder from the Schicksal Foundation. She came to my office to discuss a bit of business cooperation. Isn't that completely normal?"
Nuwa looked at him the way one looks at an idiot, sighed again, and patted his shoulder while shaking her head.
"Su Yu, do you think I'm a moron? Did you see what that young lady was wearing today? Does that look like someone here to talk legitimate business? And the expression on her face when she came in-"
Nuwa clicked her tongue twice and pointed at the closed door of the president's office at the far end of the corridor.
"No spoilers from me. Go in and see for yourself. All I'll say is... it really is just like you."
Su Yu scratched the back of his head, completely lost.
Full of misgivings, he walked to his own office door, reached out, and closed his hand around the cold metal handle.
Click.
Su Yu pushed the door open.
And then, within one-tenth of a second, his pupils shrank to pinpoints.
There, in the middle of his spacious, brightly lit office, on the open stretch of floor covered by the Persian rug.
Was that woman well past the age of - ahem. In any case, thanks to a Kaslana family genetic mutation, she was permanently locked into a perfectly legal l0li frame. Theresa Apocalypse.
And at this moment she was wearing a black-and-white maid outfit that had come from god knows where, immaculately tailored and absolutely maxed out on lace trim.
The hem fell at exactly the right length. White garter stockings gripped tight around her slender thighs.
That signature long white hair had been carefully brushed into twin tails, and on top of her head sat a textbook-perfect maid's headband.
Hearing the door, this "maid" - whose cuteness had frankly punched clean through the dimensional wall - immediately turned her head.
Those big, beautiful eyes were brimming with guilt and eagerness to please.
Hands folded neatly in front of her, kneeling on the carpet in flawless form, she gave the thunderstruck Su Yu a smile sweet enough to rot teeth, her voice trembling with embarrassment.
"W-welcome home... Master."
"Would you... like to eat first, or have tea first, or would you rather... eat, eat m-"
SLAM.
A tremendous crash.
With a Reaction Speed that exceeded the limits of the human body, and with absolutely no expression on his face, Su Yu hurled the office door shut.
He put his back flat against the door panel, gulping down air in enormous breaths, cold sweat sliding down his forehead.
A hallucination.
That was definitely a hallucination.
Su Yu squeezed his eyes shut in agony.
It had to be the mental strain. All this time spent scrambling to deal with the doomsday countdown had worn his nerves to threads.
On top of that, down in the parking garage, that wealthy older sister Eden had extracted an excessive quantity of "emotional value" and physical stamina from him, resulting in a severe carbohydrate deficiency and full audiovisual hallucinations.
Clearly, it was extremely necessary for him to go seek out some deeper, more physical psychological comfort from his wealthy older sister.
Su Yu drew in a long breath and swept every last scrap of nonsense out of his head.
He turned back around, gripped the handle, and shoved the door open.
"Master, what's wrong with y-"
SLAM.
The door was hammered shut again.
Whatever expression Su Yu had left collapsed entirely.
Not a hallucination.
That legal l0li inside, kneeling on the carpet in a white-stocking garter maid outfit, really was Theresa Apocalypse.
With shaking hands, Su Yu fished out his phone and dialed, from long practice, the number saved as "Gold-Medal Undercover Paramecium."
It rang for a long while before it connected. The receiver immediately delivered a wall of shouting and the dull thuds of heavy objects hitting a floor.
"Hello?! Su Yu?! What do you want with this young lady?!"
Kiana's voice came through slightly distorted against the deafening background noise.
"Kiana! What exactly is going on here?!" Su Yu roared into the phone while keeping his volume down, an impressive feat. "Why is your Auntie in my office wearing a maid outfit?! Where the hell did you run off to?! Explain, right now!"
"Huh? What did you say? I can't hear you! What about my Auntie?"
Kiana was shouting at the top of her lungs on the other end.
"After I sent Elysia home I came straight to the Inch Heart Dojo! Didn't you say Bronya's going to be fighting those quantum-attribute monsters in the next game version?"
"The Squad Monitor's capturing motion data on the monsters for me right now! I'm supervising - whoa! Squad Monitor, that Inch Force: Open Heaven was so cool! Gotta go, Su Yu, hanging up now!"
Beep. Beep. Beep...
The call was cut off without mercy.
Su Yu stood there holding his phone, thoroughly windswept and shattered.
So Kiana, that single-celled organism, knew absolutely nothing about Theresa's earth-shaking penitence performance today.
Just as Su Yu was seriously weighing whether to flee down the emergency stairwell, Nuwa drifted over from the work floor like a ghost, having appeared at some unknown point.
She planted herself behind him, considered the closed door of the game Director's Office, and let out a loud, thoroughly disreputable whistle.
"A maaaid~ A maaaster~ So impressive~ Boss Su~"
Nuwa jabbed her elbow repeatedly into the small of his back, her voice dripping with envy, jealousy and spite. "Congratulations, Su Yu! You miserable shut-in, your dream has finally come true! By the way, what are you standing frozen in the doorway for? Why aren't you hurrying inside to properly enjoy some close personal service from Magical Girl Teriri?"
Nuwa wiped at a line of drool that wasn't there and pushed her glasses back up.
"If you really don't want it, at least let me go in and experience it! Ahh... I never imagined that in my lifetime I'd get to see a white-haired maid this authentic, this off-the-charts adorable, anywhere outside an actual maid cafe... Truly, this is supreme bliss!"
"That's enough. It's not like this is the first maid you've seen at the Company," Su Yu groaned, covering his face.
Rita rarely clocked in at miHoYo Studio, on account of the Starfire Furnace training base.
But every now and then, when documents needed handing over, she would show up in that signature Dark Rose maid uniform.
As for Rita's identity, Su Yu had long since papered over it with the seamless explanation that "she's Eden's personal maid, currently assigned to assist with my work."
When Nuwa first heard that, she nearly fell off her chair in shock, then jabbed a finger at Su Yu's nose and denounced him with heartbroken fury for "betraying years of friendship" and "secretly securing a top-tier personal attendant maid behind a fellow enthusiast's back."
The thought sent a bolt of lightning flashing through Su Yu's mind.
Wait. A maid?
His head whipped around and he fixed Nuwa with a hard stare. "Answer me. Besides Theresa, who else came to my office today?"
"Rita came by."
Startled by his intensity, Nuwa recalled it obediently.
"About an hour ago, I think. Rita came in carrying a stack of documents she said were for you. She seemed pretty surprised you weren't here. Then Lady Theresa came storming in, and Rita showed her into your office, and the two of them talked in there alone for a while."
"For how long?" Su Yu asked through his teeth.
"Ten, fifteen minutes? Then Rita left with a big smile on her face. And after that, Lady Theresa turned into whatever it is you just saw..."
Right. Case closed.
Now the whole truth stood exposed.
Su Yu pressed a hand to his forehead and very nearly wailed at the heavens.
Rita Rossweisse! That refined, gracious, flawless-on-the-surface maid who, once you cut her open, was pure black filling all the way through!
As a transmigrator, Su Yu knew Rita's hidden stats far too well.
This S-rank Valkyrie of Schicksal wasn't just a schemer under all that politeness - she was also a hopeless, terminal-stage l0li enthusiast.
On the original Honkai world timeline, the way she treated Theresa and the child Durandal had been indulgent to a genuinely appalling degree.
That classic line especially - "Lady Theresa is very adora- forgive me, I forgot myself" - laid a certain attribute of hers completely bare.
No question about it. Rita had been in that office just now, and with her masterfully honed way with words, it had taken her all of two or three sentences to hook straight into Theresa's guilt-drenched conscience.
Under the banner of "atoning to the producer," she had coaxed and bamboozled this Auntie - who had no idea how such tricks worked - into changing into an outfit with off-the-charts humiliation value.
All of it, every last detail, was a "charming little touch" meticulously engineered by that black-hearted maid to satisfy her own private appetites.
Using me as the excuse to con your own young lady into a maid uniform - Rita, you win this round.
Just as Su Yu was grinding his teeth, filing this away in Rita's ledger and racing through possible countermeasures.
Footsteps came from the other end of the corridor, faintly hesitant.
Lin Zhaoyu walked over clutching an urgent financial report she hadn't had time to bind, wearing a very peculiar look.
This eldest disciple, normally so composed and dignified that Mount Tai could collapse in front of her without her changing color, currently looked like she'd bitten into a lemon.
"Eldest Senior Brother."
Lin Zhaoyu stopped in front of Su Yu, looked at him as if she wanted to speak and thought better of it, glanced sideways at Nuwa's undisguised delight, and finally just held out the tablet in her hand.
"You... should probably look at this."
Su Yu already had one head and two headaches, and the dense grid of numbers on the tablet made his vision swim.
"What is it, Zhaoyu? Has miHoYo gone bankrupt? Or did Anti-Entropy's funding chain snap?"
"No. Precisely the opposite."
Lin Zhaoyu drew a deep breath and did her best to keep her voice level, but the faint tremor at the end of her words betrayed the magnitude of her inner shock.
"About ten minutes ago, our studio's corporate account received a sudden capital injection of an enormous sum, from a clearly identified source."
"How much?" Su Yu asked absently.
"One hundred billion." The corner of Lin Zhaoyu's mouth twitched beyond her control. "In Shenzhou yuan. With no attached conditions of any kind... paid in full, in cash, in a single transfer."
"Pfft- cough, cough, cough!"
Su Yu nearly choked to death on his own saliva then and there, eyes bulging out of his skull.
"O-one hundred billion?!"
"Yes." Lin Zhaoyu was now looking at her own Eldest Senior Brother the way one looks at a monster. "And according to the System, the remitter's personal account name is... Theresa Apocalypse."
A dead silence fell over the corridor.
Even Nuwa, primed and ready to enjoy the maid comedy, sucked in a sharp breath and quietly clapped both hands over her mouth.
Su Yu felt his heart stop.
One hundred billion?!
Of course he knew Theresa was rich.
But not in his wildest dreams had he imagined that this Auntie, in order to compensate him for the indignities he'd suffered under that ridiculous "psychological treatment plan," in order to repay the kindness of him "curing" Kiana, would liquidate her personal assets and slam a hundred billion down on the table as a "medical fee."
She must have mortgaged every damn property and plot of land in her name!
But while Su Yu's own shock was still running its course, the storm inside Lin Zhaoyu had already reached its peak.
Lin Zhaoyu quietly studied the sweat-drenched Su Yu in front of her, then turned to look at that firmly shut president's office door.
A hundred billion in cash slapped straight across his face, plus the sole heiress of the Schicksal Foundation personally changing into a maid outfit and kneeling in obsequious welcome inside his office...
The look on Lin Zhaoyu's cool, clear face grew stranger and stranger, until it hardened into something close to grieving, protective vigilance.
What was this supposed to be?
This wasn't any kind of business cooperation!
Could this be the Apocalypse family delivering a betrothal offering to Eldest Senior Brother?!
That white-haired legal l0li was actually attempting to use this deranged financial offensive and the seduction of a maid uniform to forcibly buy out the finest Eldest Senior Brother of the Tai Xu Sword Sect?!
Eldest Senior Brother, Eldest Senior Brother, you must hold the line! You absolutely cannot let capital's sugar-coated bullets blind you and go off to Schicksal as a live-in son-in-law!
Just as Lin Zhaoyu's gaze on Su Yu was turning genuinely alarming, and she was preparing to invoke the sect's disciplinary code to dissuade him from "selling his body and looks"-
Ding-dong.
The phone in his pocket chimed with the crisp alert tone reserved for special contacts.
Su Yu seized on it like a pardon from the executioner, using the excuse of checking his phone to escape Lin Zhaoyu's deeply unsettling stare.
He pulled out the phone and woke the screen.
One unread message from Rita.
Su Yu took a deep breath and opened it.
There on the screen sat a block of text, elegantly worded and thick with warning.
"Good day, Lord Su Yu."
"Lady Theresa in a maid outfit truly is exceptionally adorable. It is a lovely picture that even I could not bear to spoil."
"However, please do be mindful of the duration - and the degree - of your time alone in a closed room with an adorable maid."
"After all..."
"Surely you have not forgotten that your true and proper personal attendant maid is, at this very moment, standing in the training grounds of the Starfire Furnace base with a scythe in hand, waiting in bitter patience for your return?"
"smile.jpg"
Looking at that passive-aggressive little yellow smiley at the end of the message, Su Yu felt the chill crawl right up his spine.
Ahead of him, the golden Diva and her lethal kiss in the parking garage. Behind him, the head maid and her scythe-flavored warning at the base.
Beside him stood a junior sister who had constructed an entire "live-in son-in-law crisis" in her head, and behind that closed door knelt an Auntie so consumed with guilt she might, at any moment, do something dangerous out of sheer compensatory instinct.
Su Yu gripped his phone, stared at the door of the president's office, and shed a single tear of bitter regret.
My dear Kiana. My dear Chongchong. In this world, only at your side can I still feel any warmth.
"Hello, Kiana? Are you still short-handed over there? I'll come over right no-"
Su Yu raised the phone and made as if to head for the exit, but the office door swung open and a small, soft white hand caught his wrist with astonishing strength.
"Get in here!"
Under Nuwa's whistling, drama-hungry grin and Lin Zhaoyu's deeply worried gaze.
Su Yu, wearing the face of a man with nothing left to live for, was dragged into the office. The door slammed shut hard enough to rattle the frame.
"Hope he makes it out alive."
Nuwa pressed her palms together and silently offered up a fellow enthusiast's final blessing on someone's behalf.
Chapter 276: Kiana: Being subjected to an NTR scenario has become as simple as breathing
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"Bang!"
The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him, followed by the soft click of the lock turning.
Before Su Yu could even steady himself, a faint scent of neroli mingled with the rich aroma of fine black tea washed over him.
The legal l0li who had been kneeling on the carpet a moment ago now stood right in front of him.
The expression on this "maid's" face, however, didn't match that off-the-charts embarrassing outfit at all.
That round little face of hers, the one that would never grow up, had flushed crimson, and even her pale neck had taken on a tinge of pink.
She bit her lower lip, her big beautiful eyes brimming with moisture, as though the tears would spill over any second.
"I'm sorry! Su Yu!"
Theresa bent deep at the waist, bowing to Su Yu at nearly ninety degrees.
Her white twintails swung down through the air, tracing two apologetic arcs.
"I... I know everything now!"
She lifted her head, eyes red-rimmed as she looked at him, her voice thick with guilt and self-reproach.
"I blamed you unfairly! It turns out you and Grandpa Otto... you're both good people!"
Su Yu stood rooted where he was. "You... know what, exactly?"
"Bronie already told me all about your psychological treatment plan!"
Theresa sniffled, her small hands twisting nervously at the white apron hem of the maid outfit.
"Grandpa confessed to me too! He said... he said the two of you actually met a long time ago, and that you'd been planning all of this in secret!"
The more she talked, the more worked up she got, and something close to worship crept into the way she looked at him.
"I really never imagined it — you and Grandpa... the two of you have already become sworn brothers across the generations, the kind who tell each other everything and understand each other without a word!"
"..."
In that instant, Su Yu's expression froze solid.
What was that?
Tell each other everything... sworn brothers across the generations? Brothers?!
Su Yu drew one sharp breath after another, seized by an urge to drag that old fox all the way back from Schicksal headquarters and beat him senseless on the spot.
Otto Apocalypse! You shameless old bastard! Bronie handed you a ladder and you climbed it — what absurd role did you write for yourself on the way up?!
Who the hell is your brother from another mother?! What's that supposed to mean, Lord Bishop?!
Before Su Yu could swallow that down, Theresa dropped a second bombshell.
"Oh, and!" Theresa pointed at the tablet on Su Yu's desk. "Grandpa said that hundred billion Shenzhou yuan was really operating funds he allocated to the studio in secret, to support our 'Heal Kiana Project'! But to keep it hidden, to stay out of sight of those old sticks-in-the-mud inside Schicksal, he had me send it from my personal account to your corporate account!"
Su Yu shut his eyes in pain as a fierce headache came rolling in.
Good grief. It all lined up.
The source of the hundred billion, Otto's shameless pole-climbing, plus Theresa's brain and its extraordinary talent for self-persuasion.
This ridiculous chain of logic had closed into a flawless loop!
But he couldn't feel the slightest bit happy about it.
The Golden Courtyard, represented by Eden. Anti-Entropy, represented by Welt. And now Schicksal, represented by Otto...
His little studio, originally meant for nothing more than making games and harvesting Emotion Points, had genuinely become a dragon's pool and tiger's den where every faction's heavyweight gathered.
If that old fox Otto ever showed up in Arc City under the banner of "inspecting my sworn brother's studio," handling him would probably cost Su Yu half his life.
"Oh, right, Su Yu." Theresa blinked, her blue eyes glittering with curiosity. "Grandpa says he actually misses you a lot, and he'd love to find time to have afternoon tea with you. But he's got a big project under negotiation right now, so he can't get away to Arc City this year."
Su Yu let out a long, quiet breath of relief. Thank heaven. Not once this whole year.
"So..." Theresa leaned a step closer, her tone probing. "When exactly did you meet Grandpa? He may look gentle and refined with everyone, but hardly anyone ever earns a real second look from him."
This was a fatal question.
Su Yu's brain began spinning faster than it ever had in his life.
He couldn't make the lie too specific. He needed a reason that fit Otto's character and that Theresa would swallow without a blink.
Three seconds later, inspiration flashed through his mind.
He sighed with feigned gravity, turned his gaze to the sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling window, and spoke slowly, in the tone of a man recalling days long past:
"Actually... it all began with an unreleased game project called Kallen Fantasy."
"Kallen Fantasy?!"
Theresa's eyes went perfectly round. Then she clapped her hands together, realization dawning across her face.
"So it was about Lady Kallen! Well, that's not strange at all then. Not strange at all..."
Theresa muttered to herself with enormous solemnity, even nodding along in agreement.
"After all, the fact that Grandpa is a hopeless Kallen fanatic... that hasn't been a secret anywhere in Schicksal for ages!"
"If Lady Kallen is involved, there's no absurdity he won't commit! You can make games for him, so of course he'd treat you as a kindred spirit!"
Watching Theresa wear that look of total enlightenment, Su Yu silently gave himself a round of applause.
The logic had closed into a perfect loop once again.
Now that she had the reasonable answer she'd been after, the boulder weighing on Theresa's chest finally hit the ground. The gloom swept clean off her face, replaced by a relaxed, thoroughly contented, sweetly guileless smile.
"Since the misunderstanding's all cleared up, then..."
Theresa gathered up the hem of her maid skirt and trotted across in her little round-toed shoes to the tea table in the reception area.
"I asked Rita to teach me specially, you know! My tea-brewing still isn't very practiced... but as compensation — Master, please have some tea."
Clumsy in hand and foot, yet straining with everything she had to maintain an elegant posture, she lifted an exquisite bone china cup and held it out to Su Yu.
That "Master" — part mortified, part unusually earnest — made Su Yu's heart skip half a beat before he could stop it.
He sat down on the sofa and accepted the cup with both hands.
The tea was exactly the right temperature, carrying a faint, elusive sweetness.
Under Theresa's expectant, unblinking stare, he braced himself and took a sip.
"Well? Well?" Theresa clenched her small hands nervously.
"...It's good," Su Yu said, setting the cup down. It was a genuinely fair assessment.
It fell a little short of Rita's skill, true, but considering it had been brewed by the young mistress of Schicksal herself, the added value of this cup surpassed any top-grade Da Hong Pao on the market.
At the praise, Theresa let out a long breath, delight she couldn't hide spilling across her brows and eyes.
Before long, though, her expression turned serious again.
She walked over and sat down in the armchair beside him, hands folded on her knees, like someone about to make a momentous decision.
"Su Yu, after I went home last night, I sat by myself and thought for a long time."
Theresa watched the ripples circling in her teacup, her voice turning soft and steady.
"Whether it's the innocent, adorable Kiana, or that thorn-covered Sirin — they're both nieces I love dearly."
She raised her head, blue eyes shining with an elder's sense of duty.
"As their Auntie, it isn't enough for me to protect the happiness Kiana fought so hard to win. I also... want to answer that child Sirin's wish."
An ominous premonition rose in Su Yu.
"Wish? What wish?"
Theresa's cheeks flushed scarlet in a heartbeat, like an apple ripened past its prime. She lifted one finger and lightly touched her own soft lips.
"I-it's, well..."
Theresa's voice thinned to a mosquito's whine, the words stumbling out.
"Last time, Sirin... didn't she force the two of us to... to do that, so she could show her filial piety to me?"
Su Yu's face stiffened.
Of course he remembered. That first kiss with the taste of blood in it, forced on them by Sirin shoving their heads together.
"That... that was my first kiss..."
Theresa's voice shrank smaller and smaller, her head nearly burrowing into her own chest.
Then, all at once, she jerked her head up and raised her voice, as if psyching herself up.
"I-I'm not saying you have to take responsibility for me or anything! We were both forced into it, and it was all for the sake of Kiana and Sirin's condition!"
Her face burning, her gaze skittering everywhere, Theresa forced herself not to retreat.
"Anyway! I've thought it through! If that Sirin personality shows up again, you contact me immediately!"
She drew a deep breath and dropped the bombshell that nearly knocked Su Yu's soul clean out of his body:
"To support your treatment, and so Sirin's good intentions don't go to waste... we — at the very least, in front of Sirin — have to pretend to be a couple who are dating!"
"..."
Su Yu's mouth worked, but not a sound came out of his throat.
Inside his skull, the line Bronie had said earlier began playing on infinite loop.
[Sirin made Theresa kiss you because Sirin sees Theresa as her beloved Auntie. As a daughter, she was showing filial piety to an elder!]
No... Bronie! You damned grey-furred rabbit!
Look at the monumental pit you've dug for your Boss!
To keep your ridiculous "filial piety theory" lie standing, Auntie here has now voluntarily invented a script as outrageous as "fake dating"!
If this ever came unraveled, wouldn't Otto pick up the Judgment of Shamash and hack his way from Europe all the way to Arc City to mince him into paste?!
"And Kiana absolutely cannot find out about this."
Theresa hadn't noticed a shred of Su Yu's internal collapse. She was still immersed in her own grand, tragically heroic script of self-sacrifice.
She fixed him with a burning gaze, her tone brimming with fearless resolve.
"Kiana's mental state must still be very unstable, right? I want to smooth things over between her and Sirin as much as I possibly can. Isn't the ultimate goal for you and Grandpa to get the two personalities to fully reconcile?"
Theresa's eyes softened, touched with an ache that was almost moving to see.
"That child Sirin has never received an ounce of love, which is why her personality turned out so extreme. I want... I want her to feel the warmth of family for herself, too."
"..."
Su Yu abandoned the struggle entirely.
Days of nonstop work, eyes bloodshot from wrestling with the game's schedule, and then, just now in the underground garage, that emotional tug-of-war with Eden and the sheer pressure of her, enough to melt a man's reason to slag.
Even a body of iron would buckle. So much had happened in so little time that even if his body could keep pace, his mind had long since worn through.
Like a rag doll wrung dry of every last drop of strength, he went limp and sprawled across the wide leather sofa, utterly beyond caring whether he lived.
He stared at the expensive crystal chandelier on the ceiling with vacant eyes, saying nothing, as though his soul had already ascended.
Seeing Su Yu look as if he'd taken some devastating blow, Theresa blinked, at a loss.
Then an inexplicable flush of indignation surged up in her.
"Hey! What's that face supposed to mean!"
Theresa shot to her feet, cheeks puffed out, hands planted on her hips, even her white twintails swinging with the motion.
"W-what is it! Do you think I'm not good enough? Are you... are you turning your nose up because I'm older than you?!"
Legal l0li exterior or not, a woman's age is forever the one scale you never touch.
Theresa bit her lip, aggrieved and unwilling to let it go.
"I... I know I really am a lot older than you. But... but I'm very good at taking care of people! I used to be an Academy Director, teaching and raising students! You absolutely won't lose out by playing a couple with me!"
And as if to prove her "taking care of people" credentials, Theresa suddenly strode over and squeezed herself, with a certain forcefulness, onto the long sofa where Su Yu lay.
Before he could react —
Theresa reached out with those small hands in white lace gloves, took hold of his head without the slightest ceremony, and pressed down hard.
"Thump."
A soft sound.
The back of Su Yu's head came to rest squarely on something springy, warm, and soft.
It was Theresa's thigh, sheathed in a white thigh-high stocking and barely covered by the hem of the maid skirt. A lap pillow.
Su Yu's eyes flew wide, his nose flooding in an instant with that clean neroli scent.
On reflex, he moved to push himself up.
"Th-Theresa, what are you—"
"Don't move."
Theresa's voice dropped very light, very gentle.
The indignation of a moment ago was gone. So was every trace of the Supreme Bishop's granddaughter and her station.
All that remained was a stillness that seemed capable of smoothing away every hurt in the world.
She laid her hands lightly against both sides of his face, holding him down.
"Be good~"
Theresa bowed her head, those blue eyes like clear lake water gazing quietly down at the man pillowed on her knees.
She reached out one hand and, with slow, careful movements, combed the bangs that exhaustion had left in disarray back from his forehead, strand by strand.
Su Yu felt that small, cool hand wandering over his scalp.
The comfort of it, the safety of it, traveled down through his nerve endings and dismantled, piece by piece, the tension he'd carried for a solid week.
"You've worked so hard, Su Yu."
Theresa's voice was like some ancient, sacred lullaby.
"I'm sorry, Little Su Yu."
She looked at the pronounced dark circles under his eyes, and the tenderness and guilt in her gaze deepened.
"I kept going off my own assumptions and causing you so much trouble. Charging around your office like a brainless idiot, taking all the rage I felt at Grandpa Otto in the game and dumping it on you."
"Being wronged like that by me — you must have felt so hurt inside."
Su Yu started to say something, but Theresa pressed a fingertip lightly to his lips.
"I really am a failure of an Auntie."
Theresa smiled at herself, and the smile carried the forgiveness of someone who had seen a great deal of the world.
"I'm supposed to be your elder, and instead I keep dragging trouble down onto you, my junior. But you never once blamed me. Even when I was accusing you out of nowhere, you never spoke a single word in your own defense."
Theresa's fingers brushed gently across the knot between his brows, trying to smooth the crease flat.
"Thank you, Su Yu."
"Thank you for treating Kiana so gently."
"Thank you for giving her a harbor where she can shelter from the storm, a place where she can laugh her way through every single day. And thank you for everything you've sacrificed and everything you've done for her, to heal those wounds."
Theresa was, after all, a product of the Schicksal church, bathed since childhood in the glory of the Saint Kallen.
Her true calling had always been that of a nun who grieved for the suffering of the world.
And now, even dressed in a maid outfit, even with those tempting white thigh-highs on her legs —
the pure maternal radiance pouring off her was too dazzling to look at directly.
The sheer force of that contrast gave Su Yu the absurd sensation that he was looking at an "idiot l0li mother."
Theresa's gentle voice wrapped around his exhausted soul like warm spring water.
Su Yu understood perfectly well.
Theresa still had no idea of the cruel truth behind any of it.
She was still sealed inside that kind lie about "psychological illness."
But her gratitude, her encouragement in this moment, landed with perfect precision on the softest place inside him — the place he'd forced shut and sealed away, all this time, in order to fight the apocalypse.
What his rich benefactress Eden gave him was danger, thrill, the hormonal tug-of-war between a grown man and a grown woman that burns reason straight through.
Theresa was the exact opposite.
What she gave him was pure safety.
A harbor where he could shed every disguise and lean on someone as trustingly as a child.
Though if one wrong step were taken, this harbor might well turn into Su Yu's execution ground.
"There. Rest a little while."
Theresa patted his shoulder lightly, her voice growing softer and softer, like someone coaxing a worn-out child to sleep.
"Your dark circles are really terrible. You haven't slept properly in days, have you? Don't be afraid. I'll be right here, keeping watch over you."
Without noticing, Su Yu's breathing evened out and deepened.
His eyelids were heavy as lead.
Wrapped in that neroli scent and those gentle hands, his awareness blurred, his rigid body let go completely, and he sank down into the dark of sleep.
The office was so quiet that the only sound was the second hand ticking around the wall clock.
Theresa lowered her head, quietly studying the young man pillowed on her knees.
Looking at how, even in sleep, his brows stayed faintly furrowed and his lips stayed pressed tight.
She had never once thought carefully about how crushing a weight Su Yu carried — caring for Kiana and Sirin, holding this enormous plan together.
She had simply wallowed in the conspiracy theories her own head produced, and branded him, all on her own, as an irredeemable villain.
But how could she have forgotten?
Su Yu had been her nephew Kevin's best friend from the very beginning.
To have stayed close friends for so many years with Kevin — that iceberg-faced man with justice carved into his bones —
how could a person like that possibly be a bad man?
After all, the Kaslana family's nose for justice was branded into their blood.
"That's right."
Theresa brushed the pad of her thumb lightly over Su Yu's somewhat pallid cheek, a deep ache surfacing in her eyes.
"It isn't only Kiana and Sirin who are children in need of looking after."
"Su Yu... you're a child who needs to be cared for, too."
Her fingers slid slowly downward and came to rest at last on his lips, dry from exhaustion.
Looking at those two thin lips, she found herself remembering, for no reason at all, that ridiculous kiss from a few days ago — the one with the salt-and-iron taste of blood.
Theresa's thoughts began to drift.
This boy was always inseparable from Kiana.
But thinking about it properly, there didn't seem to be anything like ordinary romantic feeling between the two of them. It looked more like an older brother looking after his little sister.
And that extreme, sharp-edged Sirin treated Su Yu as a "trophy" and a "servant" to order around however she pleased.
In this warped environment, he had given quietly all along, and had never received anything equal in return.
Maybe he... had no way of knowing at all what a real, tender relationship between lovers even looked like.
At that thought, Theresa's heart began to hammer, violently and without any warning.
"Thump-thump! Thump-thump!"
For an "old auntie" who had lived several decades single, who had never once been intimate with any man of a suitable age —
after coming to understand everything Su Yu shouldered, after feeling that heartbreaking fragility of his —
that first kiss, which at the start had seemed nothing but absurd and mortifying, had somehow, faintly... changed flavor.
A feeling called yearning, like a seed breaking through soil, took root and sprouted wildly in the maiden's heart Theresa had kept sealed for so long.
Her breathing turned shallow and quick.
She gazed at his defenseless sleeping face, and a flustered longing she hadn't even registered in herself flickered at the back of her eyes.
As if some spirit moved her, slowly, she lowered her head.
Her twintails fell to either side of Su Yu's cheeks, walling off a small space where nothing could intrude. Closer.
Closer still.
Theresa shut her eyes, her long lashes trembling faintly.
Gently, she laid her own soft lips over his.
It was a kiss as light as a feather.
None of last time's coercion and panic. None of that sharp, bloody smell.
This time, all she could taste was the mellow fragrance of fine black tea, and the reassuring warmth rising from Su Yu's lips.
In that moment, time seemed to stop.
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