The morning after he had kidnapped—no, confirmed his collaborative relationship with Griseo.
Su Yu stared at his phone screen, his expression as dramatic as if he were watching Kiana fight a Honkai Beast.
On the screen was a progress update Griseo had just sent.
Dense, intricate lines filled the entire frame. The character outlines were so clear it felt like they could start moving at any second. In the background, the cherry blossom trees of Senba Academy were rendered with such detail that even the texture of the bark was sketched out.
Even the rhythmic flow of the storyboards was terrifyingly masterful, leaving no room for him, the client, to say a single word of critique.
It was about seventy percent complete.
Su Yu reviewed the draft carefully and found that Griseo's version of The Three-Year Sakura was slightly different from the depressing short comic he remembered.
The girl seemed to have added a filter to the story, making it more aesthetically beautiful, which in turn intensified its sense of brokenness.
Furthermore, the art style was more refined and dynamic.
Asakura Miyuki's sickly, shattered state was depicted with profound depth, while Kiana's entrance was like a domineering, unreasonable ray of light, brutally tearing apart the darkness surrounding Miyuki.
The most brilliant part was the change to the ending.
Griseo had moved the scene of Miyuki's confession to under the cherry blossom tree on the back hill.
It was right when the sakura were in full bloom.
Amidst a sky filled with falling petals, Miyuki presented the sachet filled with a young girl's affection, was then rejected, and went berserk.
Finally, the cold muzzle of a gun was pressed against her forehead.
The frame froze on the moment Miyuki fell.
She lay in a sea of cherry blossoms, a smile on her lips.
There was no resentment in that smile, only the relief of a final release.
The dialogue box contained only a single, simple line: ["Happy birthday, Kiana."]
What in the world was this.
This was drawn way too well!
Su Yu felt his scalp tingle, and goosebumps crawled up his arms.
This was too brilliant! This was like grinding glass shards into a powder, mixing it with sugar, and feeding it to someone!
It wasn't that he didn't know Griseo was a skilled artist, but it was only in the moment he saw the script he'd written brought to life as a manga that he truly, deeply understood.
This kid... she was a true genius.
"What time did she go to sleep last night?" Su Yu muttered to himself, even suspecting he might have time-traveled a month into the future.
He remembered sending the storyboard script over just yesterday evening, and it was now only ten in the morning the next day.
Factoring in time for eating, sleeping, and school, the actual time the girl spent drawing couldn't have been more than six hours.
Six hours?
Twenty pages of line art?
Was this a drawing speed a human could possess? Could Griseo's true form be some kind of tentacle monster?
"What's wrong?"
Kiana's voice came from his side.
She was holding a glass of hot milk, tilting her head to look at Su Yu's phone screen.
Although she still had to sit close to Su Yu due to the 1.2-meter restriction, her demeanor was much more natural than when she had first arrived.
Su Yu passed the phone to her.
Kiana glanced at it, her pupils contracting slightly.
"This is..."
"Griseo drew this all by herself last night." Su Yu's tone was laced with helplessness. "The line art is basically done."
Kiana stared at the images, her expression growing complex.
At St. Freya, she had seen classmates who loved to draw pull all-nighters for a week just to perfect a single illustration.
But this...
The composition was precise, the lines were fluid, and even the glimmer of light shining through despair was captured perfectly.
Especially the drawing of Miyuki collapsing in the cherry blossoms—it was both tragic and sorrowfully beautiful, like a grand funeral.
Could a child under ten really draw something like this?
"...Talent." Kiana handed the phone back to Su Yu, her voice a little dry. "This is probably what they call talent, huh."
"Yeah." Su Yu put his phone away and smiled. "Some people are just born to make mortals despair."
The smile on his face slowly faded. He tapped the keyboard a few times and created a new document.
"With Griseo on the manga, we don't have to worry about the progress, but we can't slack off on our main mission, either."
Kiana's movements paused for a moment.
She knew what Su Yu was talking about.
Over the past two days, she had intermittently told him many trivial details about Senba Academy—the cafeteria menus, the wind on the rooftop, the oden at the convenience store...
These ordinary fragments were collected by Su Yu and added to the game's asset library.
They were her proof that that world had once existed.
"Next up," Su Yu's voice pulled her back from her thoughts, "is the Third Eruption."
Kiana's grip on her cup tightened.
The Third Eruption. That was the beginning of everything, and the point where her and Mei's fates intertwined.
"...Mhm."
Her voice was very soft, its emotional fluctuations almost imperceptible.
Kiana placed the cup on the coffee table, leaned her back against the sofa, and fixed her gaze outside the window.
The morning sun was warm, casting bright spots of light on the floor.
The sunlight in this world was always so good, so good it was almost blinding, a stark contrast to the gray, gloomy world from her memories, a world filled with the roars of Honkai Beasts.
Kiana took a deep breath. With her previous storytelling experiences as a foundation, she didn't need long to mentally prepare this time.
"I only learned about it later myself."
"Mei's father, Raiden Ryoma, was the former president of ME Corp."
"The reason he was imprisoned was that he was framed by Cocolia, who was also an Anti-Entropy executive."
Su Yu didn't interrupt.
The only sound in the room was the tapping of the keyboard as he recorded every keyword.
Raiden Ryoma, ME Corp, Anti-Entropy, Cocolia... he knew these names by heart, but hearing them from Kiana's lips felt completely different.
"Cocolia used Nagazora as her personal laboratory."
Kiana's voice grew a little deeper, her pace slowing.
"Inside Mei's body... she implanted the Gem of Conquest."
Kiana fell silent for a few seconds. The sound of birds chirping came from outside the window, crisp and distant.
"And then, the Third Eruption... broke out."
Her gaze was still fixed outside, but Su Yu noticed that her fingers were unconsciously clenching the fabric of her pants.
"What was that day like?" Su Yu asked softly, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Kiana didn't answer right away.
The scene from that day surfaced in her mind.
The sky was torn into a purple-black vortex, like a giant wound.
Honkai Beasts poured out from the rift, tearing apart everything on the streets, drowning out the sounds of people screaming and crying.
The sounds of explosions, alarms, and the roars of monsters all mixed together.
It was a scene straight out of the apocalypse.
And her—
She stood amidst the ruins, gripping a blood-stained baseball bat, watching as the purple-haired girl was surrounded by lightning, her eyes gazing vacantly at the sky.
"It was chaotic."
She finally spoke, her voice a little hoarse.
"There were Zombies everywhere, Honkai Beasts everywhere. I didn't know what was happening at the time. I only knew I had to survive."
She paused.
"Then I saw Mei."
Su Yu's fingers stopped on the keyboard.
"She was enveloped in lightning, floating in mid-air." Kiana's voice became very quiet. "That was the first time... I saw a Herrscher."
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