Chapter Thirty-One: Candor, Sharp Critique, and Music

Kira was miserable.

She could not understand why friends who had once been inseparable would end up hurting one another. Nor could she understand why words that ought to have been easy to say always had to be concealed before the people who mattered most.

That was the rule of this city. A voice rose in her heart, and it was her own.

You know this, Kira. We are people with special powers. We must always hide our secrets. We must veil the strangeness of our hearts.

Otherwise, secrecy and truth will wound each other, and those who matter most will be dragged into the whirlpool of calamity...

It sounded like her own thoughts. Had she once thought this way before? Before she lost her memory? She faintly heard her own name, yet it came to her in a blur...

Kira patted her head and retorted with conviction, "That's absurd!"

It was far too strange. Who did not have things they did not want to tell others? Who did not have parts of themselves that differed from everyone else? Everyone was a person with special powers; in that respect, were they not all the same? To support one another and overcome hardship together—that was what real friends did!

"Kira?" "What is it?"

The little group of four had rules of their own. They were like a miniature reflection of the countless people in this city, instinctively hiding themselves in daily life and keeping their distance from others.

She truly thought this was ridiculous.

The common sense she could only vaguely remember reminded her not to meddle, but Kira decisively threw those "rules" aside. She had lost her memory! She would do whatever she pleased!

She sprang to her feet and seized Karldesia by the shoulders.

"Listen to me, Karldesia. Shigure Reiin wasn't trying to play a prank on you! What he wanted to say was something else... but today there were too many accidents, and it wasn't all his fault!!"

The anger in the blonde girl's eyes was largely replaced by confusion.

"What are you talking about..."

Kira then turned to Qin Qianbai. She had just sent a message, then put away her phone and refused to look at it again.

"And Gongsun Ce didn't mean it either! He wasn't angry at you, he just couldn't see the teddy bear I made!"

Miss Qin stared at her blankly.

"Teddy bear...?"

Kira stamped her feet in frustration. Those two clever girls seemed unable even to turn their minds now; they were almost dumber than she was! She could not help Shigure Reiin confess, nor could she defend Gongsun Ce, but Kira felt she had to do something—anything was better than sitting here doing nothing!

The television in the shop was airing an advertisement for a popular idol. "Bringing you a wonderful mood for the day!" At those words, Kira had an idea.

Without another word, she dragged the two of them to their feet.

"Come on! Let's listen to some music and clear our heads. Hear my explanation, and once you've calmed down, talk to them properly! Everything will be all right!"

Karldesia fumbled to fasten her hat.

"Wait, Kira! I haven't paid yet!!"

To: Qin Qianbai

To: Gongsun Ce

To: Qin Qianbai

"Ah..."

After that message, there was no reply from the girl. The gray-haired young man stared at the phone screen and let out a dull, unhappy sigh.

He stayed with his friends a while longer, until Shigure said he wanted some time alone. Then he drove the sports car back to his elder brother's home, carrying with him the smell of something singed and a shattered state of mind.

"Open up. Open up."

The door opened automatically. Mo Yuankai was not home.

He went into the informant's house and sat on the sofa, turning on the television.

The afternoon news was still going back and forth over stale old troubles, merely as filler to pass the time. He watched ten seconds of an added report on the fire in the Dragon Wing District, decided to change the channel, and instead found a postmortem investigation program about the Disaster of the Crystal that had occurred two weeks earlier.

Gongsun Ce turned off the television.

"Looks like that was an explosive ending."

He heard the voice of the home's owner as Mo Yuankai squeezed his round body through the doorway.

The informant was dressed today in solemn black, his hair carefully slicked back with gel, as though he had just returned from some serious occasion.

"Did you go to a meeting?"

"What meeting would I have? I went to tidy Tirlos's grave at noon. Even if someone is a villain, once he's dead, I should still pay a visit."

The superpowered young man was briefly speechless. His brother's words drew him back from ordinary life, reminding him that this world was not only about the ailments of boys and girls in love, but also death, disaster, and dragons.

His brother sat down beside him.

"...Did he have a grave?"

"I made one a few days ago. I couldn't find a single bit of his body, so there was no choice but to bury a little soil in his place."

The laughter of the dragon worshipper at the moment of death echoed in his ears, along with the mad curse that followed. Everything had happened so abruptly. He had assumed the man was trying to flee, and had used his power to seal the window, only for the sphere itself to hurl itself into the arrow...

"If I could just—"

"Don't blame yourself, Ace. He did many awful things; he got what he deserved. Even if you had saved him, he would probably already be dead now."

He understood the logic. Yet the young man still felt dispirited, because of his moment's hesitation, because he had not been thorough enough, not decisive enough...

"I'm always like this, big brother. I always look so clever, but when it really matters, my true nature shows itself."

Mo Yuankai sighed with exaggerated dramatic flair.

"Ah, come on, that's going too far. At most you've got a few flaws in your personality—you want to be ruthless, yet you're kindhearted, so sometimes you end up satisfying neither side and only making yourself look foolish."

"But everyone has weaknesses of their own. By all means, reflect on your shortcomings, but never elevate it to the level of 'I, as a person, simply can't do it.' That is self-abandonment."

He stood and drew back the curtains, letting bright sunlight pour into the room and making Gongsun Ce narrow his eyes.

"Haven't seen you this dejected in a long time. Was today's date especially disastrous?"

The gray-haired youth picked out the key points and told him the whole story as he knew it, including Shigure Reiin's final prank-like "surprise." He thought the conversation by the river could not be told to a third person, so he only said that he had spoken with him a little longer before driving back.

Mo Yuankai listened to the whole thing, his expressions shifting through a whole range of colors. Yet when he heard the ending, he did not seem surprised at all.

"It isn't your fault. The four of you just meant well but did something wrong, helped in the wrong way a little, and then those outsiders came along and stirred the pot until the whole thing became a mess. But this ending isn't something you can be blamed for."

He took two cheap milk teas from the refrigerator and opened one for himself first.

Gongsun Ce looked miserable. "The time I helped you before went perfectly smoothly."

"Cough cough cough!"

His brother nearly sprayed the milk tea out. After recovering for quite a while, he said, "You really have the nerve to bring up your glorious past! If it weren't for my iron-clad nerves, that time would have gone south no matter who it was!"

"If it succeeds, it has nothing to do with me. If it fails, it has nothing to do with me. So I'm just dead weight after all."

"That's not it..." Mo Yuankai set the bottle aside. "We always say that character determines fate. Why do we say that? Because differences in character determine differences in behavior and in the way people think. The moment two people meet, the conflicts that will arise in the future are already decided by their personalities. Conflict is a seed planted long ago; whether it erupts is only a matter of time. Seeds do not disappear as time passes. They only grow stronger little by little, until at last they become a great tree, blow open the heart, and burst through."

Gongsun Ce retorted indignantly, "You're making it sound like everyone has to have an argument."

"That's exactly how it is." The informant clenched both fists and knocked them together. "Think about it: communication is a collision of heart against heart. The parts that are similar, the parts that complement each other, will merge together. But the parts that differ too much, the parts that cannot coexist, will shatter all the more violently the harder they collide. People are different in the end. Even the best friends and the most loving couples will someday wound each other."

Why are you talking like Kira now?

Are you planning to enter the preschool anime industry too, big brother?

"What does this have to do with dating?"

"A great deal. How do you think I go about dating? I go after girls, right?"

Mo Yuankai leaned back cheerfully against the sofa.

"She's beautiful and dazzling, polished and brilliant, with background and career alike, beyond my reach. And me? Just a broke student with no stable job, no accumulated experience, not even able to recite a single poem. Wow, worlds apart! I feel awfully inadequate."

Gongsun Ce said with raised brows, "I didn't see you feeling inadequate at the time."

"If you're actually doing it, you can't be inadequate, can you? What then? If you like someone, you have to be bold and pursue her. If you're rejected, that's embarrassing, but it's still better than never saying it and keeping it bottled up inside. If I failed, my heart would surely shatter in the collision—and what would be so frightening about that? Worst comes to worst, I would start over and chase her again, until in the end she told me, 'I hate you. Don't come again. I've found the one I truly love.' Then I'd have no choice but to give up and wish her happiness."

"Ace, think about it: why did I succeed? Of course your help played a part, but the bigger reason was that I wasn't afraid of a broken heart. Even if it breaks, at worst you patch it with glue, brace yourself, and stand back up to keep going."

His brother took a sip of milk tea and clicked his tongue.

"But Shigure and Spencer can't do that. Shigure came out of that cursed research institute; his heart has already shattered long ago, and not just once. He can't afford to fail again. If he does, there'll really be no way to stick the pieces back together—that's just my personal opinion, of course, and I could be wrong. You're closer to him, so you can add to it."

The gray-haired young man shook his head, indicating no disagreement.

"And Spencer, we're very familiar with her too! There are only mistaken names, never mistaken nicknames. Why does everyone call her the Red Lion? Fierce, violent, proud, carrying herself like a lion and showing off her fangs; nobody dares to provoke her. You see she has many friends, but how many are truly close? Before Shigure Reiin came along, it was only you, plus the doctor, and me as a half-count. After that, there was nobody else."

Only the fragile-hearted wrap themselves in a shell of violence.

Because they know their own nature too well, they cannot tolerate the words of others. The sharpest, the most wounding thing, is always the truth.

"She's so lonely. A lion has a lioness when it goes home, but when she goes home, there's nothing. So she goes outside and picks up all sorts of strange people. She wants to escape this dull life, wants to encounter something interesting, wants a friend who can stay by her side forever and understand her. Every time she picks someone up, she is disappointed. In the end, at last, she picks up Shigure. It was so hard for her to let go!"

The informant struck his fists together, then spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture.

"Two fragile people collide, and of course they shatter."

Gongsun Ce rubbed his head in distress. His brother was perfectly eloquent on this matter, but he could not evaluate his friend from such an objective angle.

"She may have picked up another one recently..."

"I know. Relax, her new tenant is still out on assignment."

He began to wonder who exactly had assigned the task to Shigure Zero.

A task given by the informant, who maintained close ties with official channels, to a newly hired employee did seem reasonable on reflection.

The two friends who had fallen apart today, the once-unhinged Shigure Zero, Miss Qin who would not reply to his messages...

"Everyone is so awkward."

His brother shot him a sidelong glance, clicked his tongue twice, and said nothing.

What's with that reaction?

Compared with them, I, Gongsun, am much more straightforward, healthier, and sturdier, aren't I?

"You planning to give me a brutal critique?"

"You can't say things like a brutal critique in front of the person himself. What kind of person has the nerve to point at someone and talk down to them right in front of their face?"

The first person Gongsun Ce thought of was the one who fit that description.

"Yan Qi."

"Hahaha. Ah, yes, exactly."

The informant lost his composure at once.

"All right, all right, enough about that. How are you feeling now?"

"I've always been positive, lively, and cheerful."

"As long as you still have the energy to talk nonsense, you're fine. Come on, let's listen to a song first."

The informant turned on the television, and a clear, lovely female voice flowed from the living room speakers. It was the piece he had heard many times in the past few days, the quiet winter night Kira often hummed.

He listened patiently to the entire song. The original singer's voice was far more pleasant than Kira's, so pleasant that after hearing it once, he would have added it to his playlist without hesitation.

"That sounds great. Where did you find it? I searched for ages before and still couldn't find it."

His brother shook the remote.

"It took me some effort. I checked records and did voiceprint recognition, and the results were all rather unexpected. After that, I hacked a few archives before finally finding a lead."

"This song comes from a new album due out next month. The album's title is..."

Gongsun Ce heard a name he knew all too well.

" "