Humans are in chaos, despicable outsiders.

"I think this can only be considered an accident...who knew that there was a hollow drainage system underneath that spot..." Snow and Jiuxiao replied somewhat guiltily.

"Hmm... Is it possible, I mean possible—that one of you two is a little too strong...?" The mature blue-haired woman asked the exact same question as Himeko Murata.

"Only this point... is absolutely impossible!" The two girls reached a consensus on this point.

"Pfft... I'm just kidding. I do have a lot of good wine hidden here, but the price..."

“Price is not a problem!” The blonde girl pulled out the plain black card again.

"...It seems your identity isn't simple, little Snow. But that has nothing to do with a retired Valkyrie like me." Taking the card from the girl, swiping it, Aria looked down and pulled two bottles of fine whiskey from under the cabinet, pushing them towards the two girls.

The delicate amber liquid flowed through the bottle, gleaming beautifully under the light—this was a fine wine, Snow judged by the clear liquid within.

"Alright, alright, it's getting late, I need to close up shop. You guys are going to find Himeko, aren't you? Let's get going," Aria waved her hand, preparing to shoo them away.

"Thank you, Sister Aria!" The two of them grabbed a bottle each and headed towards the door.

"Okay, remember to come again next time!"

--

Chapter Nineteen: The Eternal Being's View on Emotions

She regained consciousness at 9 a.m. the next day. Of course, St. Freya Academy had given the students a holiday after yesterday's assessment, so there was nothing for the girl to handle today.

"Hiss... Why did I agree to drink with Himeko..." He pulled his left hand out from under the red-haired woman, leaned back on the sofa, and rubbed his temples, trying to sober up after a night of heavy drinking.

To her right, the purple-haired girl was holding her other arm, her smooth thighs intertwined with her own, practically straddling her as she slept soundly.

The three of them were wrapped in a cotton blanket that someone had put on them.

"...It's a holiday now, so Mei will be waking up a little later than usual. She should be washing up around this time. Bronya...Bronya probably played games all night yesterday, so she should be catching up on sleep now. Kiana can be ignored...she can sleep until the building collapses."

"Only Theresa and Fu Hua remain. Theresa was forced to work overtime in the office last night by that deputy, and she shouldn't be back yet. Fu Hua has a habit of getting up early for morning exercise, which means the blanket on her must have been put on her."

"Then... get up now, Jiuxiao, and get off me right now, do you want to be stared at by the whole building?" Snow pushed away the purple-haired man who was clinging to him like an octopus with some effort.

Jiuxiao's embrace of the blonde girl was incredibly awkward, and Snow's hangover headache left him without the strength to throw Jiuxiao away.

Footsteps came from upstairs; her companion on the second floor seemed to have woken up, but instead of coming down, she knocked on another door, as if calling someone to get up.

[Hiss, Mei's awake. She's probably calling for Kiana. If she finds she can't wake that fluffy little thing up in a while, she'll come down and prepare breakfast.]

[When she came down and saw this scene....]

The knocking and calling from upstairs stopped, and footsteps began to approach the stairwell. Jiuxiao, seemingly dreaming of something strange, hugged him even tighter.

"Icy and soft...hehehe," the purple-haired girl's unconscious murmurs echoed in Snow's ear.

—A certain string in the blonde girl's brain snapped.

A chill quickly crept up the freed left hand, black ice crystals forming a glove on the palm, before it was plunged directly into the back of Penglai Temple Nine Heavens' neck.

"Agh—Ugh...!" The scream was cut short before Jiu Xiao could even utter it.

In a moment of desperation, the blonde girl kissed her lips without hesitation, silencing her scream.

"..." Their eyes met. Purple pupils were filled with confusion and astonishment, while azure pupils held shame, anger, and exasperation.

——lip separation

"Idiot Jiuxiao! Get off me right now, Mei wants to get down!" Snow hissed at the still somewhat dazed purple-haired girl.

"Huh?! Ohhhhh!" Finally realizing what was happening, Jiu Xiao quickly released his grip on Snow.

The two straightened each other's slightly disheveled clothes and hair, then sat on the sofa as if nothing had happened.

.......

"Good morning, Snow, and Jiuxiao," the black-haired married woman greeted the two sitting upright as she descended the stairs.

"Good morning, Mei-kun," Snow greeted Mei politely.

"Good morning..." Jiuxiao seemed to still be recovering from the shock, and only gave a casual reply.

The purple-haired girl sat on the sofa, still savoring the kiss from their earlier passionate encounter, unconsciously licking her lips.

"Sweet..." an unconscious murmur.

"Huh? Jiuxiao, what are you talking about?" Mei looked over curiously.

“Jiuxiao said she wanted something sweet for lunch…right, Jiuxiao?” Snow replied to Mei with a smile, while out of Mei’s sight, his right hand, surrounded by cold air and ice crystals, was pinching the purple-haired girl’s waist.

"Ah, yes, yes, yes...! Sweet, Mei-neechan, I want something sweet!" What could Jiuxiao say? Jiuxiao could only nod his head faster than he was pounding garlic, otherwise the guy next to him would twist his waist in half!

"I see... Hmm... Let me think about it." Mei fell into deep thought.

Taking the opportunity, Jiuxiao turned his face away, his expression becoming incredibly varied... or rather, utterly distorted.

"I've got it! The class monitor taught me a dish from China, Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple... Let me see!" Mei clenched her right fist and tapped it against her left palm, making up her mind, and started rummaging through the refrigerator.

"Eh...no...um. Snow and Jiuxiao, could you please go buy some pineapples...um, or...how about I leave today's grocery shopping to you two?" Mei's gaze turned to the two people in front of her again.

"Okay! I'm off right now!" Feeling the soft flesh on his waist slowly loosen, Jiu Xiao shouted in agreement, stood up, and rushed towards the door as if his life depended on it.

"Tsk... taking advantage and then acting innocent," Snow muttered under his breath, pursing his lips.

"Himeko is in your care now—Mei, I'm going to the supermarket with Jiuxiao." The blonde girl pointed to Himeko Murata, who was lying on the sofa, completely drunk, with a bottle of whiskey still clutched in her hand.

"Eh, Himeko-sensei!?"

"Anyway, it's all up to you, Mei!" The blonde girl darted out of the house and disappeared from Raiden Mei's sight.

--

"What are you thinking about?" The two, who had left their dormitory early in the morning, strolled along the academy's streets. The blonde girl noticed her companion's shifty gaze that kept drifting towards her.

"I...were you serious this morning?"

"What?" The girl looked confused.

"You just kissed me...kissed me this morning, you idiot! Are you serious?!" Jiu Xiao's face turned bright red as he carefully recalled what happened that morning.

.......

"...How long can we live?" After a brief silence, the blonde girl posed her first question.

"...Eternal and immortal. Even if this leaf eventually withers and falls, turning into sea foam, we will still exist. Our essence is already a transcendent existence," Jiuxiao answered without hesitation.

"If we entrust our feelings to an ordinary person, how long can they accompany us?" the girl asked her second question.

"At most a few decades... then they will grow old and leave us forever..." Jiuxiao seemed to understand something.

"How many separations can we accept? How long can our hearts endure without becoming numb...? How many times can humanity withstand the erosion of time?" Snow posed a series of sharp questions.

"So...you chose me? Because we are eternal?"

"Yes, because you and I are both eternal," the girl nodded frankly, acknowledging her thoughts.

Because of eternity, there's no need for a sudden parting at some point in life; we can simply live on in each other's memories—because we are eternal and immortal.

"I can't find any reason to refute it... But aren't we progressing a bit too fast? Even in normal relationships, things don't develop this quickly, do they?"

"Because we are immortal, we can skip the tedious and complicated process of mortal relationships and directly establish our relationship—that way, no one else can take you away from me," the blonde girl openly declared, displaying her possessiveness and domineering nature.

"And the missing process can be gradually filled in over the endless years."

“We have plenty of time, time is the last thing we lack… What ordinary people cherish most, time that is like gold, is nothing more than sand to us.” The blonde girl pressed her face against Jiu Xiao's again, pinning her against the lamppost.

"Or... Jiuxiao, do you want to have two women on each side?" Snow's eyes held a hint of confusion.

"What if I said yes..." The purple-haired girl, for some inexplicable reason, replied with this incoherent statement.

"I'll kill you—oh—" The voice, like something from the abyss, instantly snapped Penglai Temple Nine Heavens back to reality.

"Ahem... What about little Sirin?"

"This book contains a complete set of legally binding criminal laws. My dear Jiuxiao, please don't have any terrible thoughts about the child your daughter has chosen..."

"...Looks like I didn't lose out, no, did I make a killing this morning...?" Jiu Xiao stared blankly at the blonde girl in front of her, lost in thought.

Chapter 20 really underestimates people.

"Kiana, what are you doing?!" As the two, each with their own agendas, returned to the villa with the ingredients Mei needed, theresa's furious roar echoed from the second floor as soon as they opened the door.

"Mei, these are today's ingredients." The two put down the ingredients they were carrying, and Jiuxiao curiously peered towards the second floor from the stairwell.

"What happened to Kiana again?" the purple-haired girl asked curiously.

"What else could have happened? She was sleeping during the academic exam yesterday morning... If it weren't for the college's rules, Mr. Yang and I probably would have thrown her out of the exam room... It's just that the dean was forced to work overtime by his deputy yesterday, otherwise she would have been finished."

"Sleeping... What about Kiana's test paper...? Did she hand in a blank paper?" Mei asked worriedly.

"It's not a blank paper...she did write something, but I don't know how many points she'll get..."

"After all... less than a week into the semester, she'd already become infamous at St. Freya for skipping classes, or sleeping in class when she couldn't skip them, but well..."

"However?" Mei and Jiuxiao looked at Snow with some confusion.

"But there's still good news..."

"What good news?" Mei asked with some concern.

"At least our Miss Kiana hasn't gotten any strange nicknames again..." Snow thought about the rumors circulating among the students these past few days and nodded.

"What kind of good news is this?!" Jiuxiao and Mei shouted in unison, pointing at the blonde girl.

"Huh? For that clown, not getting any new weird nicknames isn't good news, is it?!"

"...Although I really want to refute you, Snow, it does seem to make a valid point."

Just as the group was ranting and raving downstairs, a brown-haired man, accompanied by a white-haired girl in a nun's habit, dragged a humanoid creature covered in bumps down the stairs.

"Mr. Yang? What brings you here today..." Snow looked at the brown-haired middle-aged man with some curiosity.

"Oh, it's Miss Snow... I'm here about Kiana... Remember yesterday's academic exam?" Yang nodded to Snow and explained to the others.

"Oh, I was going to talk to Theresa about this, but she was made to work overtime last night and hasn't come back yet... Mr. Yang, you go ahead, we were just discussing it downstairs." Snow nodded.

"Actually, it's not just this one thing. If it were just about sleeping in the exam room, Miss Snow, you could have relayed the message. I actually came here specifically to make a home visit."

Yang straightened his slightly wrinkled clothes. He was dressed very formally today, unlike his usual casual attire, making it clear that he had come with a formal purpose.

"A home visit? Let me guess... Kiana's grades are out already?" Snow showed an interested expression, and the others around him also turned their curious gazes over.