"Let go! You'll fall!!"
Kiana screamed in collapse, tears blurring her vision.
She could feel Su Yu's arm shaking violently. She could see how his hand—normally pale—had turned red and swollen from exertion.
She could even picture the sharp concrete edge biting deeper and deeper into his flesh.
He was just an ordinary man.
No resistance to Honkai energy. No damned Kaslana brute strength. No Valkyrie armor.
Dragging along a suicidal burden like her, the laws of physics would show no mercy—both of them would be yanked straight into hell.
"Shut up!"
Su Yu ground the words out through clenched teeth.
His face was flushed crimson from strain, the veins at his temple hammering.
But that hand—that hand that would yelp for half a day if it cramped during a game—
now locked like a welded steel clamp.
Not only did it not loosen, it tightened, harder, fingernails nearly cutting into Kiana's skin.
"Can't understand human speech, idiot? Fine—then we'll fall together and turn into meat paste!"
He roared, vicious and hoarse, like a bellows with a hole in it—yet packed with reckless, feral resolve.
"Because even if we drop, I'm the one who hits first!"
Kiana's struggling froze.
She stared at the man above her—face twisted, saving her without caring whether he lived—and the last barricade of self-loathing inside her finally collapsed in a thunderous crash.
Why?
Why would he go this far for a monster like her?
"I don't have the right to be happy…"
She sobbed, her voice shredded by the howling wind.
"I'm a walking disaster! A Herrscher who could explode any second! I'm the murderer who killed Himeko-sensei!"
"If I'm gone, you won't have to stare at that stupid countdown every day! You won't have to make up those so-called scripts because of someone like me!"
"You can go back to that safe, stable life—coasting along, getting by!"
"You won't have to worry about whether an idiot like me will vanish! You won't have to consider my trouble every second—"
"Why can't you understand?!"
"Because…"
Su Yu sucked in a mouthful of dirty air. Pain knifed through his lungs, and he forced his voice over hers—cutting her off.
He stared dead into Kiana's eyes—those heterochromatic pupils drowning in tears, filled with despair.
"Because you said the pizza was really good."
Kiana went still.
In this moment—life hanging by a thread—both of them half a step from the gates of death—
he was talking about… pizza?
"W-What…?"
"Because you said the pizza here has a ton of cheese… because last time we got that family bucket, you absolutely refused to waste the leftover Orleans chicken wing…"
Su Yu's voice shook. Every word came with ragged gasps.
"Because you said peaceful daily life in this world is pretty great… because you said that when you saw Mei happy here… you were glad."
"Because in the fitting room, even when you were about to disappear, you still stupidly remembered to tell me to close my eyes…"
Su Yu lifted his head with effort, glanced at the fireworks exploding across the sky, and his eyes were frighteningly red.
"Because… I used to watch you all bleed from behind a screen. Watch you burn yourselves to ash for this broken world. Watch you wander alone through ruins…"
"And I couldn't do anything—nothing—except type a few 'my heart hurts' on a keyboard, and mail razors to the devs…"
All that helplessness from back when he was just a player—
the sleepless nights, the pain of getting "knifed" by the story, the regrets of watching girls walk toward doomed endings—
in this instant, it all became adrenaline.
It ignited every last scrap of potential inside a mortal body.
"But this time…"
Su Yu's stare sharpened into something savage—something that bit back at fate itself.
"This time you're right in front of me."
"You're right here—in my hand."
"And if I still let you fall…"
"Then I'll never clear another game for the rest of my life!"
"To hell with fate! To hell with sacrifice! I'm not eating that shit!"
"I won't let go… I will never let go!!"
A roar tore out of him—something that barely sounded human.
He burned the last of his strength. His waist and core muscles contracted, violently, like a beast cornered with nowhere left to run.
"GET—UP—HERE!!!"
With that scream, Su Yu threw himself backward.
The massive shift in momentum yanked Kiana's body up into the air, carving an arc between life and death—
THUD!
They slammed onto the rough concrete of the rooftop.
Kiana landed on top of him, their chests pressed tight together, and in that moment there was only the furious, near-explosive pounding of two hearts.
The dizziness of surviving surged up—nausea rolling through her gut as if her organs were turning over.
Su Yu gulped air in huge, desperate swallows, his throat rasping like a broken bellows.
He was pretty sure his right arm had dislocated. His lungs felt blown apart. His knees had gone numb with pain.
But he was still laughing.
Lying there like a dying fish, wheezing, staring at the spinning night sky—laughing until tears and snot ran down his face, pathetic beyond belief.
Between ragged breaths, he lifted that trembling hand—
and planted it, unwaveringly, on the back of Kiana's head, shoving her overheated skull hard into his chest.
"Gotcha. SSR pull—pity guarantee, no loss."
"WHY?! Why won't you let me die?! Why?!"
The person in his arms didn't break down in grateful sobs.
Instead, she thrashed like she'd gone mad—hoarse, hysterical, like a feral cat trying to bite even while bleeding out.
She didn't understand.
If she died, the bug would be fixed. Everyone would be safe.
So why did this idiot insist on picking up a ticking bomb and dragging it back with both hands?
Kiana's screams spun into the open night wind, like an injured bird beating its wings against emptiness.
Her fists hammered his chest—but the blows were soft, weightless, drained of strength.
Su Yu didn't move.
He just lay there, lungs still burning, his right arm from shoulder to fingertips feeling like it had been filled with lead—numb and heavy.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something—anything—but his throat was too dry to form a real sound.
Then—
the body on top of him stiffened.
It was subtle.
The sobbing stopped.
The fists against his chest loosened.
Five fingers slowly curled, fingertips pressing into his shirt.
Su Yu lowered his gaze.
Kiana was still on him, her face buried against his neck, white hair spilled in a messy halo.
But her shoulders weren't shaking anymore.
Her breathing had changed—slower. Steadier.
Then the hand that had been braced on his chest lifted.
It paused in the air, as if adjusting to control of the body.
And then—without hesitation—
it closed around Su Yu's throat.
At first the grip wasn't tight, just a loose ring.
But the temperature of her fingers was cold—cold enough to raise goosebumps across his skin.
Su Yu's eyes met a gaze—
molten gold, split into vertical slits.
....
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