Night settled heavily over Arc City. The streets that had buzzed all day with the chaos of the AR lottery — enough to make half the city boil over — had finally gone quiet.
In a rented apartment three alleys south of Experimental Middle School—
Rin had just finished her shower and changed into pajamas printed with a slime pattern. She sat curled in the corner of the couch, knees tucked up, looking like a hamster mid-charge.
The cushions still held a trace of the afternoon sun's warmth. Her bare toes curled gently against the edge of the fabric.
On the coffee table in front of her pale, slender legs lay a silver-gray Skyward Eye.
The breathing light along the frame's edge pulsed on and off, steady as a slacker clocking in and out.
The door lock clicked open.
Rin sprang up off the couch.
A gust of cool corridor air slipped in with the opening door. Sakura came in one-handed, a convenience store bag dangling from her fingers, the other hand already hanging her keys on the hook by the door.
The smell of fried tofu drifted out of the plastic bag, mingling with the salty-sweet scent of bonito broth, and filled the little living room in an instant.
"Sis!"
Rin's bare feet slapped across the floor as she launched herself into a textbook koala hug.
Sakura laughed softly, shifted the bag to her other hand, and patted the back of her sister's head with the free one.
"The fried tofu's getting cold."
Rin scampered happily toward the kitchen with the food container.
Sakura shrugged off her coat and draped it over a chair, and was about to wash her hands when her gaze suddenly caught on something.
Past the corner of the couch where Rin had just been curled up, the silver-gray AR glasses sat on the coffee table, their standby light blinking blue.
Sakura's pupils shrank.
Su Yu.
A few days ago he'd come by the apartment specifically to hand over a recruitment proposal for an AR game.
He wanted Sakura to play a top-tier player in it — to stoke the players' competitive instincts as much as possible and stir up their Emotion Points.
At the time, Su Yu's expression had looked exactly like some game planner scheming to bilk elementary schoolers out of their allowance.
And now this thing was sitting on her sister's coffee table.
Was Su Yu trying to use Rin to force her hand?
Didn't he know that anyone who tried to scheme against a sister-complex sibling in this world usually met a grim end?
"Sis? Why are you still standing by the door?"
Rin poked her head out of the kitchen, holding two bowls with two pairs of chopsticks balanced on the rims.
Sakura pulled her gaze away from the AR glasses and went to sit down at the coffee table.
She took the bowl and chopsticks her sister handed her. A shimmering film of oil floated on the surface of the tofu soup, and the rising steam brushed her face with a soft, relaxing warmth.
She picked up a piece of tofu, chewed twice, swallowed, and only then spoke, her tone deliberately offhand.
"That thing on the table... you got it today?"
At that, Rin's eyes lit right up.
She set her bowl down on the table, ran over, and cupped the Skyward Eye in both hands, carrying it carefully over to show Sakura.
"Oh, this! Sis, let me tell you! Today Koyuki and I went shopping, and there was that miHoYo lottery machine — I figured 'I'm not gonna win anyway' and just scanned it for fun, and then—!"
She took a deep breath and thrust the glasses right up to her sister's nose.
"Single pull, jackpot! Koyuki's bubble tea literally fell out of her hand! Don't you think I might be some kind of chosen one?"
Sakura looked at her sister's beaming little face, radiant with pride, and froze for a moment.
The bloodthirsty suspicion drained out of her instantly.
Fine. So it wasn't that scoundrel Su Yu setting a trap after all.
Just her sister's absurd luck.
"Really?"
"Really, really! Look, the text message!"
Rin fished her phone out of her pocket and swiped open the notification. On the screen, her verified real-name information sat next to the line: "Congratulations, you've earned a spot in the first closed beta."
Sakura took the phone, glanced at it, turned off the screen, and handed it back.
Rin set the glasses back on the table and settled onto the couch next to her sister.
Her chopsticks poked idly at the tofu in her bowl, her voice noticeably softer than before.
"Sis, I looked into it. In this game, you earn gold coins for beating monsters, and you can cash the coins out."
She hid her face behind her bowl, only her bright eyes showing above the rim.
"You work so hard overtime every day, and I don't really have much going on after school... I could go beat some monsters, get some exercise out of it, earn a little spending money, and you could cut back on overtime a bit..."
Sakura said nothing.
A night breeze slipped in through the window, stirring the curtain, carrying with it the faint hiss of tires rolling over pavement somewhere down the street.
Sakura had never told Rin that the reason she'd been coming to the apartment so often lately wasn't that work had gotten easier.
It was because of the countdown hanging over the heads of everyone who knew.
Every time she boarded the subway toward this apartment, she counted the remaining days in her reflection in the train window.
Once she finished counting, she'd turn off her phone screen and turn her face to the window.
Rin knew none of it.
All she knew was that her sister had been visiting more often lately, and that on weekends they'd even gone to that dessert shop she'd been talking about for ages.
She figured her sister was finally less busy — and that felt like a good thing.
"Rin, you really are a good kid."
A gentle, Eden-like smile rose on Sakura's face.
"Though — your gym grades have never been that great, have they? I hear this AR game demands a lot of physical stamina. Are you sure you won't just get chased around by monsters the whole time?"
Rin puffed her chest out, and though there wasn't much height to work with, she gave it everything she had.
"Ahem! I just never trained seriously before! Your swordsmanship is so strong, Sis — that proves our family genes have talent! Maybe this is my chance to become some legendary swordmaster!"
The moment the word "sword" left her mouth, the smile on Sakura's face stiffened, just slightly.
It lasted barely an instant — the kind of moment you'd miss if you blinked.
But Rin didn't blink.
She saw the sorrow surface in her sister's eyes.
Sakura lowered her lashes.
She, more than anyone, knew exactly why Rin was bad at sports.
It wasn't laziness. It wasn't lack of stamina. It wasn't some inherited clumsiness.
It went back to that underground family in the Far East.
The elders had needed a puppet to sit on the throne and issue commands, and a convenient tool to carry out the purges that could never see the light of day.
Rin had been so small when they forced her into heavy, formal robes and sat her on a throne taller than she was, with a row of people kneeling before her who didn't dare even lift their faces.
Her small hands had gripped the armrests, her voice — not yet even changed with age — trembling as she handed down verdicts.
Those verdicts meant someone would never go home again.
And Sakura had knelt at Rin's feet, gripping a blade, waiting to play the part of that cold instrument.
For many nights after that, Rin would wake up crying from nightmares, throwing herself tear-streaked into Sakura's arms, saying she'd seen those eyes again — the ones that never closed even in death.
Sakura had never once asked whose faces they were.
She was afraid that if she asked, those names would become hers to remember too.
Rin shifted closer, reached out with both hands, and cupped Sakura's right hand between her palms.
Her hand, spread open, was a full size smaller than Sakura's, but it burned with warmth.
"Sis, I think... I think it's about time I kept moving forward too."
Rin looked at her sister as if she were finally saying something she'd thought about for a long time and had only now worked up the courage to voice.
"Back then, it was you who took my hand and pulled me out of that place."
"All these years, you've kept me sheltered behind you, protected so, so well..."
"My classmates all say your sister is so gentle, so pretty — but they don't know just how incredible you really are."
She smiled and squeezed Sakura's hand a little harder.
"This time, I want to try walking on my own. I want to see if I can... help you, even just a little."
"I'll do my best."
Sakura stared, stunned, at the girl in front of her.
The same Rin who used to wake up crying in the middle of the night, curling trembling into her arms and whimpering "Sis, I'm so scared," the same Rin who used to make excuses to hide in the shade during gym class — was now gripping her hand tightly.
Sakura took a deep breath and forced back the heat rising behind her eyes.
"If that's what you want, Rin, I'll support you."
Night deepened.
Rin had fallen asleep early, the AR glasses hugged tight to her chest, chin resting against the frame, curled up small in the blankets.
Sakura gently pushed the door open to check on her, then quietly closed it again.
She threw on a coat and stepped out onto the balcony.
The night wind lifted a few strands of her cherry-blossom-pink hair from her shoulders to her chest. She pulled her collar closed and dialed an encrypted number.
"Su Yu."
On the other end, the sound of typing on a keyboard came through.
Sakura switched the phone to her other ear. Down in the alley below the balcony, a stray cat knocked over a trash can, sending a series of dull clangs echoing up.
"You already know Rin won a spot, don't you?"
"If I told you that was a miracle of probability theory, would you believe me?"
Su Yu's voice carried an infuriatingly casual ease.
Sakura shook her head. "I'm not here to interrogate you. I'm asking you — within whatever authority you have — to look out for Rin a little."
A soft laugh came from Su Yu's end. "Oh? The former top assassin herself, asking the producer to run interference for her?"
Sakura didn't respond.
Su Yu stopped laughing and changed the subject.
"Sakura, you know that ID in today's official livestream — the one called 'Jiahao'? The showoff who ran his mouth about taking on the whole server and made every player in the room want to explode?"
Sakura's brow furrowed slightly.
"No. What about him?"
Su Yu's laughter came through the receiver.
"Guess... who that insufferably arrogant player was — the one who spent the entire stream hogging everyone's aggro and being the most obnoxious try-hard imaginable."
The call cut off.
Sakura stood on the balcony holding her phone for a long while.
The glow of the screen lit her face, showing an expression of pure confusion.
Then, realization.
She slipped the phone into her pocket and tilted her head up to look at the starless sky.
The city's light pollution stained the heavens a hazy, warm orange.
"These players are in for it."
She murmured to herself.
"The game's producer personally rolling out an alt account to farm hatred... don't tell me there's a stage coming where he personally shows up as the final boss? What kind of top-tier homage is this supposed to be?"
Meanwhile, at Anti-Entropy headquarters.
Su Yu stood in a faint pool of dim blue light.
As the Tarot Bond The Hanged Man's skill, Perfect Maid's Magic Mirror, activated—
His build, his frame, even the line of his shoulders and neck reshaped visibly in the mirror.
When the light faded, a completely different person stood in the reflection.
He pulled the black hood of his hoodie down until it nearly covered his eyebrows, then picked up a black smiley-face mask from the table and fitted it over his face.
He picked up the AR glasses already active on the table and put them on, facing the camera whose recording light blinked steadily, and tugged the hood down another half inch.
He lifted his chin and switched his voice.
The camera's light turned red.
"All you broke players of Ordinal Scale, your luck really isn't good enough."
"Looks like the throne of Sequence One already belongs to me."
"If you don't want to get farmed into quitting on the very first day of the beta — better fight tooth and nail for second place!"
"Hahahahaha!!"
The recording light went dark.
Su Yu tapped twice on the holographic panel and dragged the freshly recorded clip into the scheduled-release queue.
Expressionless, he hit confirm. The progress bar flashed and vanished.
[Ding!]
[Chained Personal Quest: 'Have You Howled Enough, Little Sister?' triggered!]
[Quest description: Congratulations, Host — the first test phase of Ordinal Scale launches tomorrow!]
[System commentary: Over these past five days, using the persona 'Jiahao,' you've successfully farmed the resentment of the entire official livestream audience — forum callout threads have broken 100,000 floors, and players have even spontaneously formed an 'Anti-Jiahao Alliance'!]
[Please continue playing this insufferably arrogant character, and use every means necessary to ignite the fury of everyone watching the test, until they're wild with rage for you!]
[Friendly reminder: I hear Alan Walker pairs better with spinning tracks in the rain~ though I can't help but ask — we don't usually call talented people 'Jiahao,' do we?]
[Note: This is a long-term chained quest, settled in stages according to the Host's performance at each phase. Phase one will be settled after the test concludes — Host, please be prepared.]
[Since Ordinal Scale also belongs to the Honkai IP, Emotion Points generated by players during this test will be settled normally. Also, to encourage the Host not to slack off, this test's Emotion Points will be produced at triple speed!]
[Limited-time event! Surprised?!]
Su Yu turned his hovering hand toward the System panel, fingertip pausing for two seconds over the line "I hear Alan Walker pairs better with spinning tracks in the rain," the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.
This damn System's meme database really stayed current.
"Alan Walker?"
[What about Alan Walker? He's a world-famous DJ! Spinning tracks in the rain, surrounded by a screaming crowd and wild dancing arms!]
[Isn't that basically what you're about to do? Treat the players as your audience, the danmaku as your beat, and their rage as the hottest track of the night!]
"Are you sure you're not just using this as an excuse to mock the irony of the 'Jiahao' username?"
Su Yu's phone screen was still lit, showing the provocative video he'd personally posted minutes ago, the comment section already boiling over.
[Bro, five thousand people entered and THIS Jiahao guy got picked? Come on!]
[What does that even mean? Official favoritism?]
[You guys think this 'Jiahao' might actually be Su Yu the old scoundrel himself playing dress-up?]
[Wake up. Would Su Yu the old scoundrel really stoop to fighting over scraps with players like this? He's got Eden backing him — what RV could he not afford? You're saying he cosplays as a clown out of pure bad taste?]
[Well, that WOULD be pretty tasteless, kiddo.]
He flipped the phone over, screen down on the table.
"Talented people aren't called 'Jiahao' — so are you complimenting my talent, or calling me an obnoxious show-off?"
The System paused for a full three seconds.
Then a new line popped up:
[Foster Father never makes any negative judgment about the Host's moral character.]
"Then what was that line just now supposed to be?"
[A friendly reminder.]
The System panel's cursor blinked rapidly twice, then finally produced one last line in tiny font:
[Stay safe. Don't let the Anti-Jiahao Alliance track your IP and come beat you up.]
Su Yu waved the System's commentary away and looked back at the comment section, still fermenting furiously, and decided to add one more log to the fire.
[Sigh, kids, everyone keeps saying Jiahao refreshes on rainy days — I ran three laps around the track in the rain and still didn't see him!]
[My peers: 16:9 native-language ID]
[Me: 4:3 anonymous player, English voiceover]
[Just... (face palm, crying)]
[What's this new 'Jiahao' meme even about? I've been busy following international affairs, the A-share market, oil and gold prices lately — spending my time at home on chess, calligraphy, and stock funds. Haven't kept up with your internet slang, I guess.]
[Just got back to the country recently — could you switch the video subtitles to bilingual? Still adjusting.]
Watching Su Yu fire off responses at lightning speed, Bronie sighed.
"Kiana, the boss is playing with fire."
Beside her, Kiana, mid-bite on a bag of chips, choked slightly.
She licked the seasoning off her fingers, staring at Su Yu — his face lit by the phone screen, wearing an unmistakably sinister grin.
"Bronie."
"Yeah?"
"So... Bronie, if someone bursts in later, remember to tell them you don't know him. I'm just a beautiful bystander who happened to be passing through."
"Sure."
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