"We're just too strong, the two of us!"
That was Silver Wolf's conclusion after the victory screen popped up—despite the fact that, throughout the match, she had fed the enemy in every flashy, bizarre, utterly incomprehensible way imaginable.
Caelus: "..."
He had nothing to say.
Silver Wolf's hand speed was obviously absurdly fast, and all kinds of extreme maneuvers came to her as naturally as breathing, but once it came to actual combat...
Caelus said, "As long as you're happy."
"What kind of tone is that?" Silver Wolf crossed her legs and stubbornly replied, "...Why are you so obsessed with that scoring system, anyway?"
"That's not what I said... Besides, without you as my teammate, I couldn't have pulled off those kinds of plays."
"Are you saying I was pressuring you?" Silver Wolf snapped.
"I'm praising you." Caelus shook his head and said with complete sincerity, "Without a voice as sweet as yours cheering me on in my ear, I wouldn't have had the motivation to make such unprecedented plays..."
"..."
Through the headset came the faint sound of someone sucking in a breath and holding it.
It was as if a girl with a flushed face were trying to suppress her quickened breathing...
"Wolf Auntie?"
"Shut up."
"..."
...
Half a system hour later.
Another victory screen.
Silver Wolf stretched her body, peeled off the fishnet socks that had gotten bunched together, and once again set her soft white feet atop the desk.
"Whew..."
She lightly bit down on a piece of bubble gum, blew out a perfectly round bubble, and then let it burst with a pop, leaving a sweet, sticky taste on her lips.
It was a snack specialty from Punklorde: Twisty Bubble Gum. Made with rocket-tree resin, its crisp little explosions inside the mouth produced a uniquely addictive texture, one Silver Wolf could never get enough of.
"..."
"It's been ages since I had this much fun..."
Alone in her gaming room, Silver Wolf tilted her face back slightly, pressed her lips together, and used her toes to adjust the monitor before speaking into the microphone on her headset:
"Mmm... come to think of it, why are you still staying on the space station? The Astral Express already left, didn't it...?"
"Because I want to live a peaceful life," Caelus said flatly.
"Hah..."
Silver Wolf let out a tiny sigh, so faint it nearly disappeared between her lips.
Her gaze drifted blankly. The cool-toned light from the monitor slowly cast itself through the room while the game sat idle, making her eyelashes glimmer.
She fell silent for a long moment.
Then she heard the question through the headset:
"Wolf Auntie, am I not allowed to stay on the space station?"
"Mmm... hard to say. If I say too much, Kafka will start nagging me again."
"Then, Wolf Auntie..."
"Hold it right there. Can you stop calling me 'Wolf Auntie'?" Silver Wolf squeezed her legs together, her toes curling nervously as she shifted her hips against the cushion beneath her, changing her center of gravity, yet still unable to shake the prickly sense of discomfort. "It feels... ahem, like you're making me sound old."
"Doesn't it make you sound mature, Wolf Auntie?"
"Hmph. You think I'm a kid you can just sweet-talk? ...Or are you trying to treat me like a child?"
"Wolf Auntie..." Caelus said as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Most people don't actually want to grow up. They just don't have any way to keep being children."
"..."
Silver Wolf blinked slowly once, but did not reply at once.
She folded both hands behind her head, shifted her soft feet resting on the desk a little to the side, and used the tip of her right big toe to tap a button at the edge of the screen...
"Wolf Auntie?"
"It's nothing. I'm sleepy."
"Oh. Then good night, Wolf Auntie. I'm logging off first..."
"Good night... wait. If you're not getting on the train, can you really manage alone on the space station?"
"You care about me that much?"
"Who cares about you! ...Hmph. I'm worried Herta's going to slice you up for research! That awful woman's head is full of nothing but data and experiments, and she's got a million schemes up her sleeve! Did she trick you?"
"Hahahaha..."
"You're still laughing!"
Silver Wolf arched her brows and irritably snapped that she was done with him, then cut the connection outright.
And yet—
despite what she said, her body moved with perfect honesty. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, completely locking onto Caelus's coordinates and network signal, and with practiced ease she seized partial permissions within Herta Space Station...
"Mmm..."
"In the end, I'd better just project a hologram over there and take a look."
"Caelus's room signal is weird... right, I remember leaving a backdoor on the station last time..."
Silver Wolf pulled down the goggles decorating her head, bit her lip, and her eyes flickered.
At that very moment, Prometheus popped up a warning.
[Unknown frequency-band signal detected—]
[Record 0114514: Warning! Firewall of external code Zone 11 has suffered an unidentified attack. Automatic code repair has been completed. Priority updated to:]
[Visitor authentication requested...]
[Blocked. Initiating automatic counterattack program: Information vault connection timeout... Information vault connection timeout...]
"Hm?"
"The firewall got upgraded? Someone actually dares to dox me in return? ...Hmph. They're nowhere near Screwllum's level!"
[Permissions changed...]
[Information vault connected. Identity verification complete. Retrieving frequency-band signal—'Thousand Stars ██ Group']
"?"
"..."
"Did I just barge into the imperial household?"
Her smile froze.
Silver Wolf nearly kicked the computer over. That all-too-familiar coding style, the black domain hidden in the interstellar network, the way key fields had been masked using what looked like methods reserved for IPC upper management...
Maybe not the literal imperial household, but at the very least someone of P45 or higher—perhaps even a shareholder.
"No, wait, Kafka! ...Did the IPC come after us!?"
[What's wrong, babe?]
Kafka sent back a message. Her pixel-style avatar floated beside Silver Wolf, looking puzzled.
...
Herta Space Station.
Asta's hidden room.
Caelus found a concealed button in the corner of the desk. With a soft beep, a bookshelf, a bathtub, and a folding bed appeared one after another.
...So this is what hidden design looks like?
The bookshelf was packed with Asta's collection: from stellar spectroscopy to Aeon theory, from the Feiyangu Function to the Ratio Unified Field Theory, everything under the sun. Caelus could not understand a word of it.
On the workbench beside it lay a disassembled, unfinished bass guitar, with a small metal-engraving machine nearby. Not far away stood a private photo of Asta together with Robin. There was also an exquisitely decorated little box, something like a music box...
Caelus picked up the photo of Asta and Robin, wondering what kind of relationship the two had. Or perhaps it was simply the work of the young lady's overwhelming purchasing power.
Shaking his head, he set it aside.
He tried sitting on the bed labeled "Asta's Own," "99% New," "Minor Cosmetic Damage," only to discover that pale green fragrant vines began to coil and spiral up around him. A rich scent spread through the air, orchid-like and musk-like, dreamlike and unreal, as though the mere act of breathing it had brought him into another world.
"...Hm?"
What kind of black tech was this supposed to be?
It felt exactly like one of those cozy wilderness cabins from a sleep-aid relaxation video...
No—more precisely, it was a kind of evocation of nature.
Though Caelus was clearly inside a room built by human hands, it felt as if he were living in a cave, longing for the open wilds, breathing in the scent of wind after a great rain. Through the window he saw not the narrow strip of sky cut apart by tall buildings, but the boundless universe.
"...It really is the universe."
"Ah..."
Caelus let out a light sigh.
Lying on Asta's bed, he scrolled idly through the interstellar internet. Guinaifen's stream was still not unbanned. Aether Wars had turned out to be unexpectedly boring. Interastral Peace broadcasts were bland as water...
There were too many choices, too much dazzling information, and that only made it harder to know where to begin.
Just like at this very moment... after suddenly transmigrating, countless emotions surged in his chest. Even an ordinary office worker could not help but spin off all sorts of wild thoughts...
And yet they all seemed very far away.
So in the end—
Caelus gave up thinking.
At times like this, the only answer was to sleep first.
He tucked the blanket around himself, turned slightly onto his side, and let his gaze drift toward the porthole. Beyond it was half the universe, clearly reflected there—dark, silent space. Not far away floated a blue planet, and that planet had a single silver satellite like a moon.
Distracted, Caelus gently reached a hand toward that bright white full moon deep in space, as if trying to estimate the distance between them.
Without warning, he suddenly thought of Firefly.
"..."
Firefly, if you're looking at the moon right now, is it the same one I'm seeing?
...
At this very moment—
inside Herta Space Station, within Asta's private suite, an alert sounded.
"Eh...?"
Fresh from her bath, Asta was holding Peppy in her arms, her chin resting against his soft fur as she looked up in puzzlement toward the air.
A pale blue screen projected itself overhead from the integrated smart system, displaying a giant exclamation mark. But the household assistant's follow-up note told her there was no need for concern.
"Are those people up to another round of plain and unadorned corporate warfare again?"
Asta lay on her back across the bed, her pale pink hair spilling out like a waterfall. Lifting Peppy up in both hands, she complained to him, "...This time there isn't another critical illness notice for Great-Grandma, or some stock transfer agreement, is there?"
"Woof... woof woof~?"
Apparently, Peppy had no idea.
Asta poked his belly with one finger, then rolled over to check her phone.
Within moments, her mailbox was crammed full of letters addressed to Herta. She first ignored the unimportant small companies and minor researchers, glanced over the space station management logs and staff files, and finally checked her private account.
"Eh?"
And at last, she found the problem.
[You have a new password-free payment]
"What is this? It's only this tiny amount of credits—did I forget to cancel some website membership...? Hm? Luofu Miscellany? Diting Storm?"
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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