[You suffered life changes in junior high school, and your academic performance plummeted, so you failed to join the League, let alone go any further.]
[You didn’t understand the ideology therein very well; besides, the European Middle Ages, where Honkai Energy hadn’t even been thoroughly researched, wasn’t compatible with this ideology.]
[But this didn’t prevent you from using it to help Kallen perfect the ideology that uniquely belonged to her.]
[After all, the baptism of advanced ideology is always very helpful whenever it is.]
[The phrase ‘backwardness invites a beating’ is never wrong.]
[Just as you were thinking about the ‘Crimson Saint’ matter, Otto asked an unexpected question.]
“My…
dream?” Lucien pointed at himself.
Otto cupped his cheek and looked at him, nodding slightly.
Lucien fell into contemplation, yet didn’t know what to think.
My dream?
The warm sunlight penetrated the window, enveloping the two of them and reflecting a bright glow.
“Probably hoping the world becomes better and maintaining eternal peace…”
As the last character fell and the dreamlike murmur ended, Lucien’s eyes became clear once again.
He looked at Otto, the corners of his mouth slightly hooking up into a faint smile, his gaze as brilliant as sparks and unwavering:
“But compared to this, I hope even more that you and Kallen find happiness, and then we’ll find a nice place to build two big houses.”
Hearing this, Otto was stunned.
For a long, long time.
He snapped out of it, his expression unconsciously turning tender, “Why build ‘two’ big houses?”
“Heh, neither you nor Kallen are going to start families in the future?
‘Forever’ only applies in one circumstance—that is, if a lifetime is too short, and I’ll eventually become a nuisance.”
No, it won’t.
Otto looked at the man by his side, who was never sensitive to such things, and merely replied with a slightly smug smile.
At this moment, Kallen walked through the shop door carrying two large bags of fruit with a silly smile, and walked over to the two of them.
Then, she effortlessly handed out the fruit bags, which reached up to her waist, to them.
After finishing all this, Kallen didn’t return to her seat.
Instead, she gently swung Lucien’s arm and asked coquettishly,
“Hee-hee~, how did I do?”
“Pretty good,” Lucien felt the soft touch coming through his clothes, leaving only helplessness on his face, “but didn’t I say that it’s best not to do this kind of action with members of the opposite sex who aren’t close enough?”
You have to say Kallen wasn’t completely foolish.
As soon as these words came out, all the helplessness on Lucien’s face dissipated.
The moment he thought about how such a wonderful, beautiful young woman was raised single-handedly by him, he inexplicably felt the joy of a harvest.
Naturally, he no longer had the bandwidth to feel helpless.
Otto:???
Otto looked at the incomparably harmonious scene before him, and his previous trace of smugness had long since vanished without a trace.
Right now, he wished he could travel through time and strangle his younger self who had decided to crossdress as a boy…
[The wheels of the era rolled on as usual, and the tiny speck of dust they kicked up was a cataclysm beyond human imagination.]
[Also in 1470, the Pandora’s box urged by Honkai quietly opened across European regions, sweeping through Europe in the extremely special form of the “Black Death” and claiming the lives of a vast number of people.]
[Natural disasters ran rampant, and the people could not make a living.]
[Kallen could not bear to see such things happen, yet she was powerless to change anything.]
[There was no longer her past smile on her face; replaced by it was an unshakeable sorrow lingering between her brows.]
[You were not naturally a gloomy person, but whenever you saw her like this, you always grew sad along with her.]
[Perhaps people are always contradictory.]
[In the past, you always hoped Kallen could grow and have more of her own thoughts.]
[Yet right now, you inexplicably found yourself missing her smile…]
The night was deep, just like an abyss swallowing up all the visible sorrow and misery until not a trace remained.
The autumn wind blew desolate and bleak, unable to blow away the grief and sorrow.
By the window, the blond youth leaned over the desk with a troubled expression, absentmindedly toying with the model airplane on the table.
The black-haired youth sat beside him, looking just as young as him, yet always faintly radiating a mature composure forged by the passage of time.
At this moment, he was looking up at the starry sky outside the window with a wistful expression.
“…I…
don’t want to watch Kallen be this sad anymore…” Otto glanced sideways at Lucien, who was looking at the stars, and said thus.
As for whether he didn’t want to see Kallen sad or couldn’t bear to watch Lucien grieve along with Kallen, even he himself wasn’t sure.
Lucien stopped looking at the starry sky, hid his bad mood, and turned to look at Otto, signaling him to continue.
At this moment, Otto, who was long no longer a powerless child, seemed to turn back into his former self, cowardly and hesitant.
“If I can solve the Black Death…
I have privately taken in a batch of patients infected with the Black Death; they will die sooner or later anyway, if I can…”
“If I can use them to develop a miraculous cure against the Black Death, then all problems will be readily solved.”
As his voice fell, Otto’s eyes darted away, not daring to look at Lucien again, yet he couldn’t help turning his head back to quietly observe the latter’s expression.
But he saw Lucien narrow his eyes, revealing a gentle smile as usual.
The lamplight swayed gently, making it hard to distinguish between the lamplight and the moonlight.
——He slowly raised his hand.
Seeing this, Otto subconsciously held his breath.
Over the span of more than ten years, it was this large hand that had pulled him up to grow, put its arms around him, hugged him, held his hand, and gently stroked him.
Looking at it now, this “large hand” in his memory was not nearly as broad and thick as he imagined.
No, it was because he had grown up…
Was he going to get hit?
Otto guessed so, yet he still didn’t hide or dodge, having evidently prepared himself to face everything.
However, he had guessed wrong after all.
The next second, the hand fell upon the top of his head, gently rubbing it.
“…” Feeling the long-lost warmth and gentle caress, Otto’s emerald eyes shifted, a galaxy seeming to twinkle faintly in the depths of his eyes, leaving him speechless for a moment.
He pursed his lips, wanting to say something, but only let out a few vague, neither genuine nor fake breathy sounds.
Years later, the child had grown into a youth, and that youth back then had also shouldered an inescapable warm “responsibility”, thus becoming a true man.
The changes in between should be earth-shattering.
Yet looking at it now, it seemed nothing had changed at all.
[Hearing Otto’s idea, you smiled.]
[He had his own ideas, but before implementing them, he would still consider your opinion.]
[Could there be anything more comforting and joyful to you than this?]
[While stroking Otto’s head, you were still smiling.]
[Yet this smile was once again filled with powerlessness and helplessness.]
[The Black Death and human experimentation could be considered a major turning point in the life of that “The Fool” in your memory, as well as an indelible sin of his.]
[The medicine developed through human experimentation could greatly curb the Black Death ravaging Europe.]
[Sacrificing a small portion of people in exchange for the survival of the vast majority.]
[This might be the most correct choice imaginable, but it was by no means just.]
[You had done many things precisely to completely separate the Otto by your side from “The Fool” in your memory, and naturally you could not accept such a thing.]
[Then, what other methods were there?]
[Fates are woven like a net, how should one break the deadlock?]