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

And... I know I didn't do well, but what did you mean by mocking me for saying "the taste of home"...?

Kiana felt a little aggrieved. Through her gloves, she touched the blisters on her hands from the scalding pot and the small cuts she had made while distracted by the recipe when cutting potatoes. Two band-aids were stuck on them.

Why touch this place of all?

Kiana felt as if the grievances in her heart were about to overflow.

A girl as clumsy as me, who can make food taste awful even following a recipe, and who even cuts her hand while chopping vegetables... I don't think anyone would like me...

Yes, yes, a girl like Mei, who is gentle and considerate, has such a beautiful smile, and is a great cook, is the kind of girl everyone likes!

Besides, he himself had never seen a girl as gentle as a spring breeze, and he couldn't help but want to get closer to her, as if only in this way could he get closer to the kind of beauty that he had never experienced before.

……

But I...

No matter how hard I try to pursue those beautiful things...

All I have are these things that others look down on...

Kiana lowered her head, a wronged expression spreading across her face. She raised a hand to cover her mouth and quickened her pace back to the dormitory, even jogging.

Chapter 91 Bronya will definitely help you!

Kiana jogged back to her dorm, locked herself in her room, hugged her Houmu body pillow, and curled up on her bed.

She was a little sad.

This wasn't the first time she had tried to do something to gain approval from others, but this time it left her feeling more disappointed than ever before.

She had tried helping out in the cafeteria before, but was asked to leave because she broke too many plates; she had tried helping out in the research department, but almost caused a major research accident because she got the data wrong...

But none of those feelings of disappointment were as intense as this one.

Kiana buried her face in the cushion, as if trying to hide herself away.

She didn't know how much time had passed when a gentle knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

Kiana looked up blankly, hesitated for a moment, walked to the dormitory door, and looked out through the peephole. What she saw was Keng Huo sitting in a wheelchair, holding a thermos.

Kiana pursed her lips, unsure whether she should open the door. The two remained silent behind the door for what seemed like an eternity.

Keng Huo sighed, pushed his wheelchair, and slowly turned to leave.

Kiana felt a pang in her heart. She wanted to open the door and call out to Keng Huo, but she didn't know what to do after she did.

I was too willful, wasn't I? I left him behind and ran back in a huff... Besides, he wasn't wrong, was he? The food I made was probably really... hard to swallow. He only said it tasted like home to please me...

Kiana leaned weakly against the door, lost in thought.

It's clearly my fault...

But suddenly, she seemed to hear a strange sound, a sound that sounded somewhat familiar. Startled and uncertain, she walked back to her bedroom, went to the balcony, and stared speechlessly at the hook hanging on her balcony railing.

……

"I thought you weren't home. I was going to climb up and put the thermos back for you..." Keng Huo pushed the wheelchair into the room with a smile and placed the thermos on the coffee table.

"Alright, alright, now that you've brought it back, you can get lost." Kiana turned her face away, giving Keng Huo no kind look whatsoever. Just now, she saw Keng Huo trying to use his grappling hook to go upstairs again. Considering the other party's strange thought process, Kiana ultimately decided that it would be better to let him come in through the door.

Keng Huo opened his mouth, hesitated for a moment, and decided to pretend he hadn't heard: "...By the way, where did you find this recipe? I tried for a long time but couldn't make it taste like this. It's my sister's secret recipe, and I haven't seen her in ages..."

Kiana hesitated for a moment, then whispered, "...Found it in Schicksal's database."

"Hmm... in terms of how well the recipe was reproduced, I'd give you a perfect score." Keng Huo seemed to have expected this and didn't show much surprise.

"...That's how it tastes, it's not that I didn't get the ingredient amounts right..." Kiana muttered to herself, unsure if she was speaking to Keng Huo or to herself. "I thought that if I followed the recipe's ingredient amounts, some kind of chemical reaction would happen that I didn't know about, and that would make the dish taste better..."

"...For the effort put in, I'd give you a hundred points." Keng Huo opened the thermos and smelled the strange odor emanating from it. "The heat was just right, and the beef was perfectly tender. If I could eat something right now... I wouldn't have just finished the soup..."

"Of course, I quite... wait, you drank the soup?" Kiana heard Keng Huo's words and hurriedly turned around, ran to the coffee table, and looked into the thermos. "Why did you drink all the soup?"

"I hope this won't cause any problems..." Kiana murmured unconsciously, "There's way too much seasoning in it..."

"No, I think it tastes great!" Keng Huo patted his belly as if he were clapping a hand drum. "It's very spicy and has a strong alcohol flavor. Although I've been abstaining from alcohol for a long time, being able to taste alcohol in the food is really a delightful thing..."

"..." Qi Ya realized she was staring directly at Keng Huo, and for a moment she was at a loss for words. As if she had been electrocuted, she pulled her hand back from the thermos, guiltily turning her face away, unable to meet Keng Huo's gaze. "But... but didn't you mock me before..."

“There’s no sarcasm involved, it really does taste like home.” Keng Huo stroked the thermos, which still held a faint warmth, his eyes filled with wistful emotion. “Before, when I went out to work, my sister would cook for me at home… her stewed beef with potatoes tasted just like this…”

At this point, Keng Huo couldn't help but chuckle: "So I'm often out before I even get home..."

Noticing Kiana's murderous gaze, Keng Huo swallowed the rest of his sentence and changed it to something else: "...buy the ingredients and take them back to her so she can cook."

Feeling the murderous aura slowly fading, Keng Huo guiltily raised his hand to wipe his forehead, which wasn't sweaty at all: "She's working at Schicksal now, but not at St. Freya Academy... Getting to eat her cooking is practically impossible... The fact that you found her recipes in Schicksal's database means she might have uploaded them herself; it's probably fate..."

It's probably like God sent you two to torment me.

A hint of confusion flashed in Kiana's eyes, and she asked hesitantly, "Why is it your sister who's cooking? Where are your... parents?"

"Well... I don't know either." Keng Huo scratched his head awkwardly. "I don't remember much. They died when I was very young, and I didn't have any relatives. My sister and I lived in an orphanage for a long time until I could live independently, and then I secretly brought my sister out to live with me..."

"I'm sorry... I didn't know..." Kiana thought she had touched on Keng Huo's sad memories, and an apologetic look appeared in her eyes.

"Haha, it's okay. Actually, I don't really feel anything about this. I've always been like this," Keng Huo said nonchalantly. "On the contrary, I can't understand how people with parents feel..."

"By the way, you said you were secretly bringing your sister to live with you? Why?" Kiana decided to change the subject. "Secretly?"

“Yeah,” Keng Huo’s face suddenly turned from matter-of-fact to furious, “That orphanage actually wanted to give my sister to a middle-aged fat man to be their adopted daughter! They even said that the family had a particularly good reputation, high income, and that the couple were middle-aged and didn’t have any children or anything like that…”

"That's utter nonsense! How could my lovely sister be adopted by a beer-bellied old man?! It's just not right!" Keng Huo shouted, waving his fists in frustration.

Kiana suddenly realized that changing the subject might have been a mistake.

"...Then how did you come to be a teacher at St. Freya Academy? You care so much about your sister, why don't you go to the same branch as her?" Kiana noticed the loophole in Keng Huo's words and asked in confusion.

Keng Huo chuckled awkwardly, "I came here because the job posting said the pay was good and they even offered to assign jobs to family members. I never expected that they'd assign my sister to headquarters..."

"...Is the treatment at Destiny really that good? How come I never knew?"

"...That's because I have a high level of education!" Keng Huo boasted extravagantly, "Have you ever heard of Wudaokou University of Technology in China? I graduated from there! I passed the entrance exam for that university four times!"

"...Sorry, I've never heard of it."

"...Anyway, you know he's incredibly powerful..." Keng Huo slid off the wheelchair like a deflated balloon.

"But... you passed the exam four times? Why?"

"I didn't register because I couldn't afford the tuition... and then I took the exam again the following year..."

"...Back then..."

“Yeah, I was very poor. The tuition for university wasn’t particularly high, but it was still unaffordable for me at the time… But if you want a good life, you have to study.” Keng Huo shrugged. “China’s college entrance examination system is actually a very fair system. It has greatly reduced the gap between the upper and lower classes in society.”

"Having a good education is the best and simplest way for people from the bottom to transform themselves and achieve a better life. You will be able to enter a big company more easily and get a high-paying job, instead of getting up early and working late every day to set up a breakfast stall... Many students don't understand this. They say that rich people spend money to buy a degree and buy a place in college. They say that the college entrance examination is actually a privileged channel built for the privileged class..." Keng Huo's face showed disdain.

"Those idiots don't even consider that the truly privileged class doesn't need the college entrance exam as a pathway, okay? Without this college entrance exam system, how can we poor people compete with those high-ranking officials? Without a system like the college entrance exam that judges solely by scores, in a market-regulated environment, the better schools would naturally charge higher fees, because they have a reason to charge high fees: they have better teaching resources, stronger teachers, and their students come from affluent families, which is very beneficial for expanding their social circles..."

"By then, children from wealthy families will spend money to attend good schools, becoming even more outstanding. Upon graduation, their intelligence will increase by 1000, and they'll associate with children from high-class families. The benefits are countless. The simplest example is that if a family member gets sick, they can simply call a classmate to arrange the best hospital room and care. Children from poor families can only attend cheap, run-down schools, graduating with an intelligence increase of 10. Their friends will include the son of a grocery store owner and the brother of a breakfast delivery worker..."

"In this era, knowledge is power!" Keng Huo raised his fist and shouted in a voice as infectious as that of a cult leader, "I studied hard every day after working part-time and finally got into a really prestigious university, then reached the pinnacle of life and came to work at Tianming. Doesn't that sound incredibly inspiring?"

"Hmm..." Kiana's eyes were somewhat complicated. Although she didn't feel anything from what Keng Huo had just said, she could understand the bitterness behind his words.

Although she is now all alone, she at least has Mei and Bronya, as well as Theresa by her side, and she also has an inexhaustible bank card left by her father... She has never experienced what it feels like to be broke.

Thinking about it this way, Keng Huo is quite pitiful... Kiana's maternal instincts stirred slightly.

Kiana thought to herself, feeling rather sullen. She realized she didn't really know anything about Keng Huo... She didn't even know he had a sister before.

Just then, the sound of a card being swiped to open the door interrupted their conversation. They both looked in the direction of the sound and saw Mei and Bronya standing at the door with surprised expressions.

"Teacher Keng?" Mei's eyes flashed with confusion followed by understanding. "The medical center has been looking for you like crazy. What are you doing here?"

"Keng Huo? You ran away secretly?" Kiana looked at Keng Huo with surprise and doubt.

"Ahem... My stealth skills are unparalleled. The legendary guy who camped out until the very last opponent couldn't find me and quit the game was none other than me..." Keng Huo changed the subject, "How could those little nurses possibly discover my whereabouts..."

Kiana glanced at the wheelchair where Keng Huo was sitting.

"But what is Teacher Keng doing here..." Mei tilted her head, her eyes seemingly flashing with a dangerous light.

“Come and complain!” Keng Huo answered confidently.

"Huh?" The bewildered answer stunned Mei and Bronya, and even Kiana was taken aback.

"Since you were discharged from the hospital today, Kiana planned to cook a meal to treat you. She was going to test the food on me first, but luckily I'm immune to all poisons and indestructible, otherwise you'd be..."

"What a rip-off!!" Kiana, utterly embarrassed, frantically shook Keng Huo's shoulders to hide her unease.

Mei sniffed the strange fragrance that filled the room with suspicion, followed the scent to the thermos, and gently sniffed the rim of the thermos.

"Kiana..." Mei stopped Kiana's torment of Keng Huo with a mixture of amusement and exasperation, "Alright, alright, stop it..."

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Keng Huo pushed his wheelchair out of the room, trying to escape, but Bronya grabbed the back of the wheelchair and made him unable to move.

Before Keng Huo could react, Bronya's expressionless little face appeared in front of him.

Bronya watched Keng Huo quietly. Just as Keng Huo felt a chill run down his spine, she raised a hand and silently gave him a thumbs up: "Teacher Keng, good job!"

"???"

"Don't worry! Bronya will definitely help you with this favor!"

After saying that, Bronya released her wheelchair, walked into the dormitory, closed the door, and returned to her bedroom.

Hearing Mei's voice still criticizing Kiana in the living room, Bronya's heavily armored bunny slowly appeared behind her.

Bronya gently stroked the heavy-duty bunny's metal head and said in a barely audible voice, "Help Teacher Keng get Kiana, then Mei-neechan will be Bronya's..."

The heavy-duty bunny's electronic eyes displayed a very human-like expression of confusion.

Bronya, seemingly lost in her own imagination, paid no attention to Heavy Bunny's confusion: "Hmm, a perfect plan!"

……

Outside the door, Keng Huo muttered to himself, pushing his wheelchair out of the dormitory building and heading towards the medical center: "A favor? Does that mean I tested the poison for them?? Did Kiana cook for them before??"

Chapter Ninety-Two: The Devouring of the Holy Mark

"Hate them!"

"Hold your hatred and seek revenge..."