Honkai Impact 3rd: My Days as a Captain in Schicksal

His face was etched with worry that even a three-year-old could see.

Kiana was speechless for a moment, then sat on the bed hugging a pillow in a huff: "That's none of your business!"

Keng Huo scratched his head: "Originally, it really didn't need me to care... because I thought if you wanted us to know, you would tell us about your troubles on your own initiative... but since you haven't mentioned it to us and have just kept it to yourself, I don't want to force you to talk about it."

"But Mei is very worried about your recent condition. She told me about your recent state and said she was at a loss, which is why she came to me hoping I could talk to you or something." Keng Huo secretly glanced at Kiana, who was curled up on the bed without moving, and deliberately sighed loudly, "I only agreed to stop my work to come and see someone because I saw that Mei looked quite haggard. But since that person doesn't appreciate it and doesn't understand Mei's silent worry and support behind someone's back, I'd better go back to sleep."

Kiana's expression clearly showed a moment of struggle.

Seeing that his efforts weren't enough, Keng Huo simply stood up and walked towards the balcony: "If you have nothing else to say, I'll go back."

Keng Huo took a few steps toward the balcony, but didn't hear Kiana say anything to stop him, so he coughed twice and said, "I said, I'm leaving now."

Keng Huo had already reached the edge of the balcony, holding onto the railing with both hands. He turned around again and said loudly, "Then I'm leaving. Oh, don't try to stop me. Anyway, you won't tell me what happened, so there's no point in me staying."

Seeing that Kiana still didn't say anything, Keng Huo trembled as he placed his legs on the outside of the railing and grabbed the rope of the grappling hook with both hands: "Um... I said, I'm really leaving? Hey! I... I'm really leaving!"

"Are you crazy?!" came the reply, which was a pillow that flew over and hit him in the face.

"Since you're so earnestly begging me to stay and help you solve your problem, then I'll reluctantly help you out a little." Keng Huo grabbed the cushion, casually climbed back into the bedroom, dragged a chair over and placed it in front of Kiana, hugged the cushion Kiana had just thrown to him, and sat down with his legs crossed. "Let me make it clear first, I mainly want to help Mei. After all, she treated us to Mapo Tofu last time, and I still owe her a favor."

Kiana curled up her legs, put her arms on her knees, and buried her face in her arms. Although Keng Huo couldn't see her expression, he could tell from her trembling shoulders and the sound she couldn't help but make that she had clearly burst out laughing.

"Then get lost, get lost! I don't need your help, you good-for-nothing!" Kiana said defiantly, raising her head.

"Alright, since you're so sincere, why don't you tell me what happened?"

"Are you even listening to me?!" Kiana angrily threw the last pillow on the bed at him, but Keng Huo caught it nimbly.

The atmosphere lightened considerably thanks to Keng Huo's almost shameless teasing.

"Actually... it's nothing..." Kiana replied somewhat vaguely, "It's not as serious as Mei said. I just feel that if I don't pass the exam this time, I won't be able to become a Valkyrie..."

"If I can't become a Valkyrie, how am I supposed to find my damn dad?" Kiana's voice lowered. "It's just that the pressure is a bit too much."

"I'm sorry to have worried you, but it's really nothing serious," Kiana looked up and smiled at Keng Huo. "I haven't been feeling well these past few days, but I'll apologize to Mei after the exams."

Keng Huo knew almost without thinking that Kiana was lying, because she was such an easy person to understand when facing her friends. Subconsciously, she never hid anything from her trusted friends, so she couldn't hide her expressions when facing them.

Keng Huo stared intently at Kiana's face.

This expression reminded Keng Huo of a kitten he once saw stuck in the middle of the road by a busy stream of cars.

It was raining that day. The kitten was probably less than two months old, and its puppy fur hadn't completely fallen off. There was no adult cat with it, so it must have gotten separated from the adult cat while it was leading the kitten across the road. It was curled up under the barrier in the middle of the road, where the space was limited, and its round eyes were warily scanning the rolling traffic.

That day, Keng Huo stood by the roadside with an umbrella, watching the kitten for a long, long time. He could almost see the fear, anxiety, and loneliness in its eyes at a glance—the kind of loneliness that comes from being abandoned.

Keng Huo sighed and slowly said, "Is it because of what happened in the data space?"

Kiana was so shocked she almost jumped out of bed: "How could you..."

Kiana realized she had misspoke halfway through her sentence, stopped talking, curled up her legs, and silently pressed her face against her knees.

Seeing that Kiana was still unwilling to speak, Keng Huo was at a loss, and the atmosphere fell silent.

for a long time.

Kiana finally broke the silence. Her voice was soft and gentle, and Keng Huo had never heard Kiana speak in such a tone before.

"You jerk, is it wrong for you to like someone else?"

Keng Huo's mind immediately conjured up an eight-hundred-episode TV series. He didn't actually know what had happened in that data space; he only saw a few scattered fragments. In those fragments, Kiana was holding the corpse of a woman who looked very similar to her and crying uncontrollably.

"Is there anything wrong with that?" Keng Huo retorted.

"Is that right?" Kiana looked up, her eyes filled with confusion.

"Where did we go wrong?" Keng Huo continued to ask.

"...I don't know..." Kiana seemed unable to find the answer to the question, her tone slowly turning dejected. "But why is there a punishment for loving someone else?"

"Who loved whom?" Keng Huo continued to ask, feeling as if he had vaguely grasped the key to the problem.

“I know someone… a Valkyrie of Schicksal… she fell in love with a pseudo-Herrscher…” Kiana’s voice sounded somewhat distressed, “but… she was convicted because of it.”

A Valkyrie and a pseudo-Herrscher in love? Are you talking about yourself and Mei? Keng Huo almost blurted out the thought in his mind.

"Is love wrong? Or is it wrong because the people we love are different?" Kiana raised her head, staring intently at Keng Huo, as if hoping he could give her an answer. "But why is love wrong? It's such a beautiful thing... Why are some people punished for love..."

"I really... can't understand..."

Keng Huo hesitated for a moment. The problem before him was beyond his expectations. He tried to extract useful information from this fog-like statement.

Keng Huo paused for a moment, then slowly spoke, carefully considering each word: "Love is not wrong; it is an emotion that almost all life in the world is born with."

"It will give its owner a beautiful hope for the future and a firm confidence in the unknown journey."

"It finds the other half that everyone is missing at birth, making them whole again."

"Love is not wrong, but of course, it is not right either."

"Love is just love; it makes life better and gives us hope for the future."

"Love has no right or wrong, but..."

"There are people who love me."

Hearing Keng Huo's words, Kiana was both surprised and saddened, her large blue eyes filled with sorrow: "So... are there some people who can't be loved?"

"Why should I?" Keng Huo's words seemed to completely contradict what he had said before. "There's someone right here, why can't I love him?"

"But..." Kiana's voice betrayed undisguised surprise, "You just said..."

"Neither the person who loves nor the person who is loved is wrong. If they are judged or punished because of this, then it is only the party that makes the judgment and the punishment that is at fault..."

"They're mentally ill. They can't stand seeing others doing well. Whenever they see couples, they whine and threaten to burn them alive. In reality, they're just envious and jealous. Every night when they come home, all they hear is the echo of the door opening. There's never a sweet girl standing at the door, greeting them with a voice that's sweeter than sugar. That's why they get so jealous when they see people who can love and be loved by others. They wish all the couples in the world would die. In reality, they're just poor, ugly, lazy, and have high standards but are self-righteous..." Keng Huo's words almost turned into muttering, his indignant expression making him seem like a victim.

Keng Huo's words almost made Kiana laugh. She struggled to suppress her laughter and asked, puffing out her cheeks, "But... my friend..."

“But that’s history, isn’t it?” Keng Huo scratched his head and replied. Seeing Kiana’s expression at that moment, he became even more certain of the accuracy of his prediction. “People always have to look forward.”

"We cannot change history, but we can change the future."

"There is an old saying in my hometown: 'The lessons of the past serve as a warning to the future.' It means that the experiences and lessons left by our predecessors can serve as a reminder to those who come after us."

"We cannot change what has already happened, no matter how cruel or sad the story may be, we cannot change it."

"So... what we should do is remember it, and then forget it."

"For a better tomorrow."

Kiana's expression clearly brightened for a fleeting moment, but only for a moment, before her face suddenly darkened again: "But... I'm really worried..."

“Those two people in love… are just like Mei and me…” Kiana hesitated before finally saying those words.

Keng Huo finally breathed a sigh of relief: "I've finally waited for you to say that."

"So I said, are you stupid?" Keng Huo put on an exhausted look, turned his head away and stopped looking at Kiana. "Those two belong to the Destiny and Honkai factions respectively. They are enemies, so their love will be disapproved of by others."

"But you and Mei are both Valkyries! Although Mei is indeed a pseudo-Herrscher, she is still a Valkyrie!"

"We're all family, what's the point of a trial!"

Kiana thought for a moment, then suddenly flew into a rage: "Why didn't you say so sooner! You made me rack my brains for so many days! I was even thinking of eloping with Mei!"

"I never expected you to be so inflexible!" Keng Huo stared at Kiana defiantly.

"Hmph, I'm not going to stoop to your level, you single dog." Kiana looked sullen, but her legs, which were swinging uncontrollably over the edge of the bed, honestly revealed her happiness.

"Well, actually, I already thought of that, I was just giving you some room to maneuver," Kiana said, raising her chin as if she were the smartest person in the world. "But I have another question for you, and if you answer it correctly, I'll be very happy, you know?"

"Why should I try to make you happy!" Keng Huo said with a sullen face. "You talk like you're my boss."

"What? You're not happy about it?" Kiana's eyebrows shot up.

"I would be happy, I would be honored." Considering Kiana's Earth Throw and Mortal Kombat 18-hit combo, Keng Huo decided that a true man can bend and stretch.

Kiana narrowed her eyes and asked with a hint of expectation, "You rascal... good people get good rewards, right?"

"Dream on, how could that be?"

"Huh?!" Kiana immediately stood up, pointing an incredulously at Keng Huo's nose, "You you you..."

"Good people get good rewards" is just a comforting saying. There is no logic to conclude that being a good person and receiving good rewards are necessarily linked. Keng Huo spread his hands with a normal expression, as if he were talking about something very normal. "It's just that some people with ulterior motives want others to be good so that they can benefit a lot by being bad. That's why they spread such a saying."

"If everyone in the world acts as a good person and he is the only bad person, then he can reap benefits without restraint, because no one can harm him, only he can harm others."

Kiana stared at Keng Huo's eyes in disbelief. She had thought Keng Huo would comfort her and tell her that good people are rewarded, but Keng Huo's words left her speechless for a moment.

“I know what you want to say, and I know what you want to hear, Kiana.” Keng Huo’s expression suddenly turned serious. He stood up, looked Kiana in the eye, and said to her in an unprecedentedly serious tone, “But good people don’t deserve good rewards.”

"Only those who strive for happiness will attain it."

"Huh?" Faced with the bewildering reversal, Kiana suddenly felt that her brain capacity was insufficient.

“That’s right, I think it’s perfectly reasonable.” Keng Huo said in a very calm tone, “When a good person is kind to others, it is a simple process of giving. Whether or not you receive something in return has nothing to do with your own behavior, but only with the conscience of the person who receives your kindness.”

“If that person is willing to repay you, then you will be rewarded, but I don’t think that counts as a ‘good reward’.”

"Because I think that when people talk about 'good fortune,' they usually mean 'happiness.'"

"Happiness cannot be given by others, Kiana. We can only control ourselves, not others."

"We can use morality to demand of ourselves, but we cannot use morality to bind others."

Kiana desperately wanted to refute Keng Huo, but Keng Huo's words were like a heavy hammer, striking her heart with each word, leaving her flustered and helpless.

"If you want 'good fortune,' a good ending, and a happy life, it's not enough to just be a good person. That would be far too easy. To think that being a good person could bring happiness is the most unfair deal in the world."

"Do you know? I wandered around China and saw many people living at the bottom of society."

"Those people were poor and stupid, without any skills, and some even had physical disabilities. Just surviving was a huge problem for them." A hint of reminiscence lingered in Keng Huo's voice.

“Some of them choose to be bad people because that’s how they can survive. Many of them succeed in becoming bad people, but they either end up in prison or just keep going through a cycle of harming others to satisfy their own desires.”

"Such a person cannot be said to be happy at all; he can only be said to be living, or to be dying."

“And some other people…” Keng Huo paused, as if organizing his thoughts, “they live earnestly.”

Even if they make mistakes due to their own limitations and find it difficult to get what they want, they live every day on the road to their dreams and take every step on the road to pursuing happiness.

"I once saw a poor family of three. The mother was seriously ill, the father was laid off and unemployed, and the child was still in junior high school. The three of them lived in a small room of less than ten square meters. The toilet was next to the stove, and the bed was next to the toilet. The three of them squeezed onto one bed and slept together. In the summer, it was as hot as a steamer, and in the winter, it was so cold that the three of them huddled together for warmth but still shivered."

"But it's precisely because of them..."

"My son studies hard and is among the top students in school. When he comes home from school, he feeds his mother her medicine and prepares dinner for his father. His father works hard at the construction site during the day and washes his hands and face before returning home at night to hide his fatigue and greet his family with a smile."