Sirin was troubled.
And not just a little troubled.
The reason was simple: a new text message had appeared on her phone.
"Sirin, can you come with me to pick out a wedding dress?"
"Also, just wondering, do you have any requests for a bridesmaid's dress?"
The message was concise, written in the default font, yet for some reason, the short sentences radiated an air of triumph.
It inexplicably brought to mind those undefeated masters from old martial arts comics, the kind who lamented that loneliness was as vast and cold as snow.
Mei... is inviting me to be her bridesmaid?
As if she had encountered something utterly unbelievable, Sirin felt like she was dreaming.
Asking her to help pick out a wedding dress and inquiring about her preferences for a bridesmaid's outfit...
No matter how you looked at it, this was an invitation to be her bridesmaid.
What is going on?
Completely bewildered, Miss Sirin stood there in a daze.
She dazedly got to her feet and walked out of her room.
There, she saw a similarly confused Seele, and an expressionless Bronya whose footsteps seemed a little heavier than usual.
"Did you guys... also get a text from Mei?"
Miss Sirin tentatively asked the two girls, who both seemed a little uncomfortable.
"It seems you received it too, Paramecium-chan," Bronya, who was so short she wasn't even as tall as Seele when not floating, nodded.
"I don't know the full situation, but it seems Pervert Big Brother has no intention of fulfilling the promise he made to my Little Fool back in Yae Village five hundred years ago."
The girl whose eyes were two different colors—one blue, one red, a clear sign that both personalities were controlling the body at once—let out a small, mirthless laugh.
"He really is a bastard, isn't he?"
Her anger wasn't hard to understand.
After all, according to their original agreement, a certain someone was supposed to be settling down in Siberia, acquiring a residence permit, and then preparing for a wedding while maintaining his stateless status.
He was not supposed to be inexplicably asking her and her Little Fool to be bridesmaids.
She really felt like picking up the scythe a certain someone had given her—the one forged from the Underworld Goddess Athena—and giving that bastard a good slice.
"I don't really care about being a bridesmaid or whatever. What do you guys plan to do next?" Sirin, who always claimed she would never do laundry or cook for a certain someone but had secretly been looking up simple home-style recipes, asked the two clearly unhappy girls.
No matter what, she had to go and ask him about this.
It wasn't just for herself...
An image of a girl who looked identical to her, save for her eye color, flashed through her mind. Sirin clenched her fists.
Kiana, who practically viewed Ah Li as her spiritual pillar, would surely be devastated to learn that the person she loved was about to marry another girl and build a family with her.
"Um, I don't think it really matters," Seele's voice suddenly softened, shifting from a strong-willed, bewitching tone to that of a gentle young girl. She nodded in agreement with her own words. "After all, Big Sister Mei and Big Brother were already engaged. It's only normal for them to get married."
However, the dejection in her expression was plain to see.
Clearly, she wasn't as nonchalant as she pretended to be.
That dejection caused a flicker of heartache to cross Bronya's perpetually stoic face.
She really couldn't bear to see Seele looking sad.
So, I guess I really do have to have a serious talk with the boss, don't I?
A very strange atmosphere began to rise among the girls.
And then—
An abrupt ringtone shattered the bizarre tension.
The sound came from the phone in Sirin's pocket.
Under everyone's gaze, Miss Sirin quickly fished out her phone and gave the girls beside her an apologetic smile.
"Um, I have to take this call."
"It's fine. I actually have something to consult my guardian deity about," the red-eyed girl, who was under the protection of the goddess Athena, said with a sweet smile. She then took Bronya's hand and started pulling her toward her room.
"See you later, Big Sister Sirin."
"See you, Seele, and you too, Bronya."
Sirin, who had a clear sense that the relationship between them was about to become delicate, smiled as she always did and said her goodbyes, then picked up her phone.
She answered the call.
Then, the voice of the girl who was likely Sirin's last living relative came through, tinged with sorrow.
"Can you help me, Big Sister Sirin?"
The girl, who had a pretty good idea of what Kiana was going to ask of her, remained silent for a moment before speaking.
"...No problem."
It was obvious that a shuraba targeting a certain someone was gradually taking shape.
And while the girls around him were scheming and preparing for a dose of reality, what was the man at the center of the storm doing?
The answer: preparing to launch Siegfried.
During his time with Kiana in the Moon World, he had come to realize that the pitiful excuse for a man named Siegfried was an eternal source of pain for both Kiana and Sirin.
He had given Sirin the name "Kiana," forcing her to live as a substitute, while causing the real Kiana to lose her name and suffer a social death.
It was easy to imagine the psychological scars both girls carried.
Moreover, because these scars were inflicted by their father, no one else could possibly heal them.
So, it was time to paint the briquette white.
Li Zihan sat in his office in Chaldeas, holding a temporary video conference with Welt.
"To summarize, I need you, Mr. Welt, to admit that you've been masquerading as Siegfried all this time and to add an old 'Moon Landing Project' file to Anti-Entropy's database."
Simply put, the plan was to launch Siegfried into space and fabricate a heroic backstory for him, telling Sirin and Kiana that their father was a hero.
In essence, he would launch Siegfried to the moon now, but tell them he'd been there for a long time.
"I believe that every star in the sky is an enemy."
Those were Dr. MEI's words from the Previous Era.
In the vast universe, humanity was by no means the only race capable of building a civilization.
In the Post-Honkai era, a civilization known as the Heavenly People (aliens) had come to Earth, preparing to exterminate humanity and harvest the planet's Honkai energy.
Therefore, he would weave a story using this as a starting point.
The Anti-Entropy faction had detected the crisis posed by the Heavenly People and urgently needed someone to act as a watchman on the moon, guarding against enemies from space.
It was a dangerous and vital mission that demanded a watchman of extremely high combat power. Within all of Anti-Entropy, there was no one suitable other than Welt himself.
However, Welt needed to keep an eye on Otto and remain as the anchor of Anti-Entropy; he couldn't easily leave Earth.
It was at that moment that a man stepped forward to take Welt's place: Siegfried, fresh from his raid on Schicksal where he had mistakenly rescued the wrong child.
Before departing, Siegfried entrusted Welt with finding his own daughter and, while he was at it, raising K423—Sirin.
Welt agreed, but was subsequently ambushed by Otto, suffering a great loss of power. Unable to contend with Schicksal and fulfill his promise to his friend, he had no choice but to leave Kiana in Schicksal's hands.
Later, due to the rise of Anti-Entropy's radical faction, Welt, who had been raising K423 in Northern Europe, could no longer manage both her upbringing and the task of leading the conservative faction's counterattack.
Left with no other choice, and with a more important mission at hand, he had to leave a letter behind, abandoning K423 in Northern Europe to return to Anti-Entropy's front lines.
This was the story Li Zihan planned to tell Kiana and Sirin.
The story of a man who, upon witnessing a crisis threatening humanity, entrusted his children to a friend and rushed to the battlefield without hesitation.
Let this fictional man replace the real Siegfried.
The young man, who knew that no amount of comfort could ever erase the deep-seated wounds in Sirin's and Kiana's hearts, thought to himself.
There might be some inconsistencies in the details, but that didn't matter.
Once Siegfried was launched to the moon and completed a call with Sirin and Kiana, he could easily arrange another mission, a search for the 'Ark Project Proxy', and send Siegfried even farther away.
At that point, it would be a case of dead men tell no tales.
Sirin and Kiana couldn't possibly chase Siegfried into outer space just because something felt a little off, could they?
Perhaps because he had once felt the pathological dependence in Kiana's embrace, a certain someone's attitude toward Siegfried had grown increasingly vile. He looked at Welt on the screen and spoke.
"In exchange, I will reactivate the sealed Chaldeas and dispatch a special agent—the Dull Goose—to New York in 1955 to retrieve the soul of the dying Welt Joyce."
The young man spoke slowly, posing the question to the man who would play a crucial role in this lie.
"Can you do it?"
The man, who had always had a good relationship with Siegfried, fell silent.
If he could, he would rather not tell this lie.
But then, he thought of the man who had entrusted him not only with the name 'Welt' but also with the Herrscher Core and the responsibility of protecting the world. Welt silently nodded.
That man was his uncle, his idol, his savior, his mentor...
If playing a disgraceful role was what it took to save him, then so be it.
"No problem."
"Thank you very much."
The young man, knowing he would probably have to coordinate this story with Otto next, nodded and ended the call.
Then, a wave of trouble washed over him.
He had just proposed to Mei. The girls around him were probably all on the verge of exploding.
The young man sighed, well aware of the shuraba that awaited him.
I just hope there aren't too many complications.
Otherwise, this is going to be really exhausting.
With that thought, the young man pushed open the door.
And then—
A girl with pink eyes and long chestnut hair came into view.
It was Ana.