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

"Smack!"

Keng Huo felt that he might not be fully awake yet, otherwise he couldn't explain how the two-foot-tall witch who fell flat on her face and the incredibly strong older sister he saw in his dream could be the same person.

Yae struggled to her feet, muttering, "Top-heavy and unsteady, it's so hard to keep my balance..."

Then they ran away in a flash.

Keng Huo stared at the open door with a dark expression. A gust of cold wind blew in from the window that Yae Sakura had just opened, rushing out of the door and making Keng Huo shiver.

"Didn't I just say not to go out so as not to be discovered..." Keng Huo collapsed onto the bed speechlessly. Now, every part of his body ached, and he had no way to catch up with Yae Sakura.

But before he could finish speaking, a group of nurses suddenly started chattering noisily in the corridor.

"Wow, what's that?"

"So cute! Grab her, grab her!"

"She's running so fast! Yuuka, stop her from that side!"

Then a dark figure flashed in from the doorway. She seemed to be in a panic and rushed towards her hospital bed, disappearing into the covers with a whoosh.

Keng Huo subtly tucked the blanket in, covering Yae Sakura's feet that were sticking out of the blanket.

"She ran in... Ah!" The nurses who rushed in slammed on the brakes, and the other nurses behind them bumped into her back, almost knocking her over.

"Keng...Teacher Keng is awake!" The lead nurse exclaimed in surprise.

"Such a loud noise, anyone would wake up..." Keng Huo complained weakly, pretending to have just been woken up, "This is a ward... What are you doing? A revolution?"

"No...no..." the nurse stammered, "I'm sorry...we didn't know you were awake..."

"So you can make noise while I'm still asleep, huh..." Keng Huo shrank deeper into the covers with a helpless look. "Who opened the window for me? I'm freezing..."

"She must have escaped through the window! It must have been that little creature that opened the window!" The nurses outside the door were discussing among themselves.

"Anyway, can you help me close the window... I'm freezing to death..." Keng Huo tucked the blanket around him tightly, afraid that Yae Sakura would be found by these energetic little nurses.

"Okay, okay, no problem!" The nurse rushed to the window...

Then he climbed out the window and closed it from the outside.

"Wow, Yuuka is so cunning! She actually took a shortcut!" The remaining nurses rushed into Keng Huo's ward, ignoring Keng Huo's dark expression, opened the window and jumped out.

These nurses are all D-rank Valkyries who failed the exam, so this little bit of exercise is nothing to them.

In their hearts, Keng Huo was less like a teacher and more like a close friend. After all, Keng Huo, who was always causing trouble out of his own head, left an impression that was hard to associate with authority. Therefore, they didn't pay much attention to Keng Huo's feelings. As long as the last person remembered to close the window, they could just apologize to Teacher Keng together at the end...

The most important thing right now is to catch that super cute unidentified creature!

With a final, heavy thud, Keng Huo let out a long sigh of relief, and Yae Sakura's long fox ears peeked out from under the covers.

"Are they all gone?" Yae Sakura asked, still shaken. "How terrifying..."

Keng Huo silently pondered Yae Sakura's perspective for a moment, and the scene of a group of enormous humans, three or four times his height, running towards him with eyes gleaming with hunger... did indeed seem quite terrifying...

"Didn't I already tell you..."

"I'm sorry..." Yae Sakura didn't seem to realize how inappropriate it was for her to crawl into Keng Huo's bed; it was as if it was a natural reaction.

Perhaps it was because of a past connection between their souls, but she always felt exceptionally at ease when she was with Keng Huo.

It felt like I was back in my mother's womb.

————————————————————————————————————

"...In short, this is the current situation. Don't appear in front of everyone yet. Theresa and I will discuss it and then decide how to get everyone to accept your presence."

"But...does that mean I have to stay here forever?" Yae Sakura blinked her big, pitiful eyes, gazing longingly out the window. "I really want to...go out and see this place..."

Keng Huo fell silent.

"How about this, if you're bored, I'll sing you a song," Keng Huo sighed.

"Huh?" Yae Sakura clearly hadn't caught up with this sudden turn of events; she wasn't quite used to Keng Huo's rapid thought process.

But Keng Huo didn't care about Yae Sakura's reaction. He opened his mouth and sang the song that he had been wanting to sing ever since Yae Sakura became a chibi character.

"Big-Headed Daughter ~ Small-Headed Dad ~ Best Friends ~ Happy Father and Daughter ~ The Two ~"

"..."

"The daughter has a big head and small hands, while the father has a small head and big hands."

"Stop! Stop! Stop! It sounds awful!"

"Big hand holding little hand! Walking without slipping! Walking and walking and walking, in the blink of an eye, our daughter has grown up~~~"

"Stop singing!!"

Chapter 104 Composite Reconnaissance Array Type III

Although Yae Sakura obediently listened to Keng Huo's words and stopped running around, she was still very anxious, running around the ward as if she would not be satisfied until she asked about everything she had never seen before.

What is this?

"Just plug the kettle into the socket, turn it on, and then press the switch to boil water."

"What is a socket? Does electricity refer to lightning? You use lightning to boil water? Won't it catch fire?" Yae Sakura imagined a bolt of lightning striking a kettle, followed by the water bubbling inside.

"...The socket is the small white board next to that cabinet, near the ground, with several tiny holes. We use a different method to produce controllable electricity...the kind that's much gentler than lightning, and then use the heat generated when the current passes through an iron coil to heat the water in the kettle..."

"Oh...you don't need firewood? That's amazing!" A glint of inspiration flashed in Yae Sakura's eyes, and she took out her sword and started digging into the wall.

"Wait! What are you doing! Are you a mouse?!"

"I want to try breaking down an electrical outlet myself..."

"Wait! You can't pry the socket out! There are wires behind that panel, that's why it's live! Prying at the wall like that won't work! Are you a mouse?!"

Yae Sakura touched her fox ears: "I already said I'm a fox!!"

"And why can't the hole I make be used, but only the one on this board can?" Yae Sakura pouted, her gaze lingering on the socket. She eagerly pointed the tip of her knife at the socket, wanting to pry a hole in it as well.

"Wait! Don't pick at it! You'll get an electric shock!"

"Ugh... this is so troublesome..." Yae Sakura reluctantly sheathed her sword. "This won't work, that won't work..."

"...You have a lot of modern common sense to learn..."

"I...I already know a lot! I just learned how to open a window by myself! And that glass barrier you mentioned didn't stop me either!"

"..." Keng Huo felt incredibly overwhelmed. He had finally found a job even more difficult than tutoring Kiana: instructing a priestess from five hundred years ago on how to live in the modern world.

"If you want to boil water, you have to fill the kettle with water first..." Keng Huo complained weakly.

"Oh... I thought this thing called a kettle was so magical, that it would automatically produce water after being plugged into that socket... I didn't expect it to not work..." Yae Sakura's little face showed some regret.

"...I'm really sorry that our technology hasn't reached that level of science fiction!"

"Then where is the well?" Yae Sakura struggled to hold the kettle, which was almost as big as her, in her arms as if she were holding a cannonball.

“There are no wells here…we obtain water through other means…”

"Oh, you collect rainwater? You have a water shortage here?"

"...No...we have running water."

What kind of water is tap water?

"It's a device we invented... that can automatically deliver water to our room..."

"Wow..." Yae Sakura's eyes lit up with longing. "That's amazing! But why don't you just put the water directly into the kettle and keep it full?"

"...I'm sorry, I actually think what you said makes a lot of sense..." Keng Huo rubbed his forehead, slowly propped himself up from the bed, and put his feet on the floor. "Do you see this wheeled chair next to my bed? Push it over for me...I want to sit on it..."

Yae Sakura hopped and skipped over, pushing the wheelchair that was even taller than her. Keng Huo struggled to sit down, sweating profusely from the effort.

“Okay…” Keng Huo tapped the button on the armrest with a finger as weak as Hawking’s, and the electric wheelchair started moving automatically, heading towards the bathroom.

"What is this thing?" Yae Sakura was clearly shocked. She thought Keng Huo was asking her to push this wheeled chair somewhere, but she didn't expect it to move on its own.

"The wheelchair... is also electric, using electricity as its power source to move the chair..." Keng Huo felt that he was thirsty after explaining to Yae Sakura for so long, and he really needed to drink some water.

"So amazing! If Saburo could have this too... maybe..." Yae Sakura's eyes dimmed slightly.

"..." Keng Huo noticed Yae Sakura's expression and guessed that the Saburo she mentioned must be Ren from her village. He couldn't help but rub her big head. "Saburo is a good boy... The people in your village are all good people by nature... It's just that in this world... they are innocent, so they will definitely become Buddhas. In heaven, no one will be troubled by pain. They will be happy, really."

"Hmm..." Yae Sakura hugged the water bottle listlessly, seemingly oblivious to Keng Huo's words.

Keng Huo picked up the kettle from her hand, hugged it to his chest, and drove towards the bathroom.

"See this? This thing is called a faucet. You just need to turn this handle like this, and water will flow out. Then turn it back like this, and the water will stop..." Keng Huo turned on the bathroom light and demonstrated how to use the faucet to Yae Sakura.

"It looks like a deer..." Yae Sakura's eyes widened, but her attention was drawn to the light overhead. "What's that? A lamp?"

"Hmm...it's a light bulb..."

"Does it also emit light using electricity?"

"That's right. When an electric current passes through a metal wire, it heats the wire, and then the heated wire glows... just like when firewood is lit."

"But wouldn't it take a very high temperature to heat metal to the point where it can glow?" Yae Sakura thought of the blacksmith in the village forging blacksmiths. "It seems so wasteful... It must use a lot of electricity, how much water could that electricity boil... And how did it light up just now? I didn't see you touch it. Does it have that socket thing on the back? Why did it light up by itself? Was someone operating it from behind?"

"Are you some very high-ranking official?" Yae Sakura suddenly asked nervously. "Even when you're given a special light, someone has to wait behind you to shine it when you come in... It seems like only a great general gets that kind of treatment..."

"..." Keng Huo didn't know where to begin explaining to her, "I'm not a high-ranking official... The light turned on because I just cast a spell, I'm an Onmyoji..."

"I do not believe."

"hehe."

……

Yae Sakura excitedly lay on the ground, watching the indicator light on the kettle after it was turned on and the steam coming out of the vent. She listened to the bubbling sound of the water inside and occasionally let out a "whoosh" of admiration.

Keng Huo watched her retreating figure, feeling as if he were watching a child squatting on the ground watching ants...

"Is it...is it broken?" Suddenly, the kettle made a popping sound and the indicator light went out. Yae Sakura turned around and asked nervously.

"...It automatically stops working once the water is boiled."

"Wow, that's amazing!!" Yae Sakura stared at the kettle with shining eyes. "Hello, my name is Yae Sakura..."

"...What are you doing? It's not even alive!"

"But didn't it know the water was boiled and stop heating itself? Isn't it alive?"