Felutina was woken by singing.
A screen bloomed out of nowhere in the darkness behind her eyes, and right after it came a pair of slender hands sheathed in purple-red gloves.
A fan of gorgeous cards flipped through those hands in an extravagant flourish, and then the shot pulled back to reveal a face of breathtaking beauty.
[Star Rail]
It took Felutina a while to shake off her daze.
The one-minute, forty-three-second animation had already finished playing.
[Please select the timing of your appearance]
The girl thought it over for a moment and made up her mind fast.
The animation had clearly been prepared well in advance; the level of polish was already quite high.
Apart from the opening and closing, both of which belonged to Kafka, the middle was basically an ensemble showcase of the cast.
Felutina had a certain confidence in her own looks, but competing for a slot among a whole crowd of gorgeous men and women was asking a bit much.
So in the end, Felutina chose to steal Kafka’s closing scene.
Interstellar Journey ended with Kafka kissing a card, smiling coquettishly, flinging the card out, then turning and walking away through a rain of falling cards.
Do the math, and that came to almost exactly five seconds.
All right then.
Time to begin.
[Countdown to curtain rise…
3…
2…
1…]
[Interstellar Journey.
Curtain up.]
[Take every planet as a platform along the way, and blaze a trail through an era]
[This journey holds more peril than surprise, yet the stars are ours for the plucking]
At the same moment, a small screen surfaced inside Felutina’s consciousness, and scrolling comments came streaming across it.
[First!]
[Ribbit, ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit~]
[This has such an anime feel to it, have you considered making an actual anime (anticipation)]
There were comments to read too?
Felutina skimmed the scroll with real interest, and before she noticed, the progress bar had reached the ending.
Kafka kissed the card.
The card was cast down, and another hand, pale and fine-boned, caught it.
The camera traveled from above downward, sliding along a slim arm, gradually revealing the girl in full.
A girl with white hair and crimson eyes.
The rain of cards falling around her caught fire from a single spark, and the shot held on Felutina’s meaningful smile.
Then the girl dropped the burning card, turned, and walked away.
The camera followed the flame downward, bringing the long legs wrapped in white stockings and the round-toed little boots into frame as well.
When the last speck of ash drifted to the ground, the picture went black, and only one line of bold text surfaced in the middle of the screen.
[Honkai: Star Rail enters open beta in two days]
Two days?
Felutina’s brow creased slightly.
She wasn’t sure whether those two days were real time as far as she was concerned, but at the moment she had something more worth caring about.
Popularity Points, Popularity Points…
there!
Felutina pulled up the system display, watched the Popularity Points tick upward at a brisk clip, and her eyes lit up.
To her disappointment, though the number climbed fast at first, it finally settled at 20,000 and stopped.
Well, she had only shown her face for a moment.
Felutina didn’t mind.
It counted as a decent start.
And right now, the comment section under Interstellar Journey was in absolute uproar.
[Craving Something Sweet: Two more days until launch?
I’m not going to survive this!]
[Tofu Never Smiles: Nnngaaaahhh!]
[Nowhere for a Soul to Rest: Nothing to be done.
I hear they added a ton of new content for launch, and some of the story was changed too, so the schedule got pushed back two days at the last minute.]
[Little Blue Bird Means No Harm: You mean that girl who shows up at the very end, right?
I never even saw a leak about her.
Their secrecy game is airtight!]
[Little You: Aaaah baby you are a sweet, fragrant, soft, squishy little cream cake!]
The growth of her Popularity Points had slowed, but the volume of discussion had risen considerably.
At this rate, it wouldn’t take long before she could pay back the 100,000 Popularity Points she’d borrowed.
She wondered how things were going on Jingliu’s end.
The thought came to Felutina out of nowhere.
…
Jingliu sat at the edge of the bed, peeling an apple with a small knife, staring blankly at Felutina.
Counting it up, she had known Felutina for three years now.
Yet she had never once known that this older sister of hers had such power in her.
The scene from that day came back to her, and her eyes darkened.
An unstoppable catastrophe falling out of the sky, twisting life itself with no reason and no mercy.
And she had watched it all happen.
She had been able to do nothing.
Even Felutina had nearly given up her life to save her.
Jingliu looked at that calm, peaceful face, and the words slipped out of her under her breath.
“…Why?”
Why come and save her, why was she the one left behind, why…
She was so weak.
“Mm…”
A faint murmur came from the bed.
Jingliu’s head snapped up, and she saw the girl slowly open her eyes.
“…An unfamiliar ceiling.”
Felutina gazed at the spotless white ceiling and narrowed her eyes, trying to make them adjust faster to the sting of the sunlight.
She patted herself around the waist.
“Good.
Kidneys still there.”
“…?”
Jingliu plainly could not follow whatever path Felutina’s mind had taken.
All she could do was stare at her, without the faintest idea how to start.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Felutina’s eyes had finally adjusted to the light.
She pushed herself upright and looked around the room.
“Where is this?”
“…The Luofu.”
“And Cangcheng?”
“Gone.”
“Oh.”
The conversation died there.
The girl watched Felutina, looking faintly puzzled.
She didn’t understand how Felutina could still be this calm, after everything.
But she was afraid of saying the wrong thing.
She hesitated a long while, and in the end chose silence.
“If you want to ask, ask.”
It was Felutina who broke the quiet in the end.
She raised a hand and ruffled Jingliu’s small head.
“You’re far too young to be bottling everything up.
It’ll rot you from the inside.”
“All right…”
Jingliu answered, but her lips stayed pressed together and she said nothing more.
Felutina sighed.
She threw off the covers, got to her feet, stretched a little to loosen her body, and then held out a hand to Jingliu.
“If you don’t want to talk, then don’t, for now.
But shutting yourself in a room won’t do.
Let’s go out and walk a bit.
Call it getting used to a new place.”
“…”
Jingliu was worried.
Felutina had only just woken from unconsciousness, after all.
Even so, she reached out and took the offered hand.
“How’s your body holding up?”
“Fine…”
“So she isn’t mute after all.”
The voice came from the other side of the room.
Felutina turned her head toward it without thinking, and found herself looking at a tall woman in military dress.
The woman looked back at her.
“You seem to have recovered well.
Is that the power the Path of Abundance granted you?
How did you come to walk that Path?”
“I jumped off a building, regretted it halfway down, and thought, well, I don’t want to die, so that was that.”
Felutina spread her hands and answered honestly.
“The will to live, answered in kind…
I suppose that makes sense.”
The woman in military dress mused aloud, nodded, and turned away.
“Follow me.”
Jingliu tilted her head back to look up at Felutina.
She held onto her the way a drowning girl holds the one reed within reach, gripping tight, refusing to let go.
Felutina said nothing.
She simply led Jingliu forward, step by step.
Out into the sunlight.
____
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