The delivery still hadn't arrived, so Su Yu decided to use the waiting time to push the project forward a bit.
"Besides the story," he said, as if pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
With a whrrrk, he yanked several freshly printed, full-color design sheets out of a document pouch and spread them across the coffee table—right on top of Kiana's phone.
"Since we're making a holographic game, the character designs are the first impression. Especially your Valkyrie armor. It has to be cool, it has to be stylish, and it has to make people want to swipe their card the moment they see it."
Kiana's attention snapped over immediately. Like a curious cat, she leaned in until her forehead almost collided with Su Yu's.
When her eyes landed on the familiar drafts, her expression wavered—like she'd been yanked back through time.
"This is…"
"This is my… ahem, inspired reconstruction of a few sets," Su Yu said quickly, pointing at the first sheet.
It showed a tight white combat suit with orange energy lines, complete with star-shaped hair clips.
"Valkyrie Battle Suit: White Comet."
"White… Comet?" Kiana blurted out, and the word came out with a strange kind of nostalgia.
The suit on the paper was the one she knew best.
White base. Orange-red lines. Tight, practical combat fit.
Su Yu had even annotated the shoulder armor, bracers, boots—everything—with dense notes.
"B-rank Valkyrie Suit: White Comet." Su Yu tapped the title. "This was the first armor they issued you after you became a Valkyrie—your 'starter skin,' right?"
Kiana nodded slowly, her gaze sliding over every line.
"I cross-referenced what I could, and I filled in what you described before," Su Yu said, spreading out a few more sheets. "But I haven't seen the real thing, so a lot of details are still… imagination."
He slid the stack closer. "You're the original owner. Audit it. Tell me what's wrong."
It wasn't entirely a lie. Seeing something in a game and seeing it as actual combat equipment were two different things.
A mobile game had to simplify. Real armor didn't.
Kiana picked up the White Comet sheet and studied it with increasing focus.
"Here." She pointed at the shoulder armor. Her tone turned oddly professional. "The angle's wrong. If you build it like that, it'll jam the shoulder joint. It limits how high you can lift your arms when firing the twin pistols."
"And this energy line—" she traced the chest pattern, "it's not straight like that. It should look more organic, like vessels. Like this."
She sketched the motion in the air.
Su Yu immediately drew a quick correction on the blank margin.
"Yeah—exactly that." He nodded fast. "Damn, you actually understand ergonomics."
Kiana didn't even notice her own mood had lifted. The heavy self-analysis from earlier was gone; she'd snapped fully into "technical consultant mode."
She flipped through the sheets, pointing out issues as if she'd done this a thousand times.
"Leg armor seam is here, not here—this part is soft-linked.""The visor tint is too dark. It should be bluer. Like the sky.""And the rear thrusters—your drawing's too timid. They're bigger. The blast needs to feel powerful."
Sunlight crept across the table. Shadows stretched.
Kiana rested her elbow on the table, chin in her hand, staring at the heavily edited drafts.
"You draw pretty decently," she muttered. "Did you study art?"
"Self-taught." Su Yu flexed his sore wrist and cracked his neck with a wince. "If you're an indie dev, a programmer who can't draw isn't a good planner."
He wasn't going to say I have a cheat system, okay?
"Oh. All-rounder." She paused. "Then why didn't you draw Three Years of Sakura yourself?"
"Uh…" Su Yu's eyes drifted away. "You know. I'm lazy."
"Tell the truth."
After a few days together, Kiana had already mapped out his personality pretty well.
"…I wanted you to meet Griseo," Su Yu admitted. "I thought you needed to meet different people in this world. Make new friends."
Kiana fell quiet.
"Idiot," she whispered.
Then, as if to shove away the sweet warmth rising in her chest, she dropped her gaze back to the White Comet sheet—covered in corrections.
That armor had been her starting point.
The first time she wore it, she'd been nervous.The first time she engaged the boosters in real combat, she'd nearly panicked.Then she got used to it.And later… it became her most reliable partner.
"Structurally, it's basically fixed now." Su Yu set the corrected draft aside. "So let's talk about the suit itself. Any special features or story hooks? Hidden skills?"
Kiana thought, chin still propped.
"White Comet is a third-gen Valkyrie suit. Design concept is… uh…" She scratched her head. "I think it was called 'general-purpose, all-domain combat armor' or something."
"So: works in most situations."
"Yeah. It's practical." Kiana nodded. "Only B-rank Valkyries and above can use it. It has a booster pack, military-grade visor, reinforced modules…"
"It's not like those crazy god-killing black-tech suits," she added, "but for third-gen gear, it's already pretty advanced."
Then she tapped the back section on the diagram.
"There's a core reactor here. White Comet has a special system called… the Burst System."
"Burst System?" Su Yu's eyes lit up.
He knew exactly what it was—he could recite it backward—but his "system" required him and Kiana to play this little Q&A duet.
And honestly, Su Yu's knowledge came from game abstraction. Kiana's came from lived reality.
"Yeah. Burst Mode." Kiana demonstrated with her hands.
"It overloads the reactor and forces Honkai energy output to release at multiple times the normal rate. For a short time, all performance stats spike."
"When it activates, the thrusters keep firing, and the connecting seams glow gold. You look like you're burning. It's really cool."
Su Yu wrote at speed.
"How do you trigger it?"
"The trigger is here." Kiana pointed to her neck. "There's a V-shaped crystal. Press it. Or unlock it with a voice command."
"Voice command? Like yelling a spell? Magical girl?"
"Yep."
Su Yu raised an eyebrow. "What did you set as the phrase?"
Kiana's movement stopped.
She looked away. The tips of her ears began turning pink.
"…Cat charm."
"…What?"
"Neko Charm!" she blurted louder, instantly defensive. "Cat magic!"
Su Yu stared for two seconds… and then failed completely.
He laughed.
"What are you laughing at?!" Kiana snapped, cheeks flushing harder. "I was a kid! Chuunibyou phase, okay?! It sounded cute and powerful. What's wrong with that?!"
"I didn't say anything." Su Yu coughed, trying to stop. "It's… distinctive. And it's adorable."
Kiana huffed and turned her face away, refusing to look at him.
Su Yu wrote:
Burst System Activation Phrase: "Neko Charm."Then, after thinking for half a second, he added a parenthetical note that absolutely betrayed his taste:
(…I'm not translating that one.)
"By the way," Su Yu continued, pretending he'd done nothing. "Your suit has cats and stars all over it. Did you add those? Or did the suit come like that?"
Kiana's face turned… complicated, like she'd just remembered something deeply embarrassing.
"…More like I was forced into it."
"How?"
"Before you get a suit at the Far East Branch, you have to fill out a form. Something like 'Personalization Customization Guidelines.'"
Her voice carried pure exhaustion.
"I blanked and wrote two symbols just to get it done. Then Himeko-sensei said it wasn't acceptable—too lazy—and forced me to fill the whole thing out."
She sighed dramatically.
"Do you know how long that form was? A whole page!"
"So you filled it with cats and stars for three pages?" Su Yu couldn't help imagining the scene.
"What else was I supposed to do?!" Kiana spread her hands, righteous. "It's not like I wanted to! Himeko-sensei demanded it!"
She kept going, and the corners of her mouth lifted without her noticing.
"She stood next to me with her arms folded and watched. I write one line, she checks one line. If I wrote 'none,' she made me redo it. If I drew a circle to cheat, she made me redo it."
"In the end, I had no choice. I just started stamping cat paw prints and little stars everywhere until the page was completely full."
"Sounds like Himeko-sensei was strict."
"Strict?" Kiana grumbled. "She was a demon instructor. But… if she hadn't pushed me, I wouldn't have gotten a suit that was truly mine."
The sunlight softened, turning the room warm and orange.
Su Yu typed a few more lines, then looked up.
"So you don't actually like cats and stars that much?"
"It's not that I dislike them…" Kiana rested her chin in her hand. "I just don't care that much. But now, when I see those symbols, I always remember that afternoon."
She paused.
"I remember Himeko-sensei frowning, calling me an idiot… while teaching me how to fill it out properly."
The room fell quiet for a moment—only the paper edges stirred gently in the breeze.
The White Comet draft fluttered into view, full of cat paws and stars.
Symbols that used to drive her crazy—now treated like treasures.
"Next set." Su Yu broke the silence and pulled out another sheet. "Valkyrie Ranger."
Kiana glanced at it and leaned back into the sofa.
"That one… technically doesn't count as armor." She swung her leg. "It's just the Far East Branch uniform. Ranger is my custom style."
"You can customize uniforms too?"
"Yeah. Theresa said something about 'encouraging individual expression.' So mine, Mei's, and Bronya's were all different." Kiana gestured. "Mei's is more like modified military wear. Bronya's too. Mine is… that."
She pointed at the short jacket and cape silhouette. A prominent Schicksal emblem sat on the cape.
This "daily wear" style needed fewer changes. Under Kiana's guidance, Su Yu quickly corrected the basics.
He studied the design details—ammo stacked at the waist, the flowing cape, a completely different vibe from White Comet's tight battle suit.
It had a clean, brisk, heroic swagger.
"Why so much ammo on the belt?"
"The uniform's defensive capability is weak." Kiana explained. "If you fight in it, you stay long-range. More ammo means longer uptime. It's not pretty, though."
"Who said it's not pretty?" Su Yu added a few notes. "It looks… sharp. Capable. Cool."
Kiana huffed, but her expression clearly liked it.
"And this cape," Su Yu tapped the cloth. "Why a cape?"
Kiana's motion paused.
"…No special reason."
"Really?"
"Really." She looked away, voice muffled. "Just… capes are cool. They move with the wind."
Su Yu didn't chase it. He simply waited.
He knew there was a story behind that.
"…I originally wanted a long coat."
Her voice dropped lower.
"Like that stupid old man."
Su Yu looked up, understanding flickering in his eyes.
"Like Siegfried."
Kiana tugged at a strand of hair.
"But a coat is too heavy. Not good for mobility. So it became a cape."
She said it like it was nothing.
But Su Yu caught the way her lashes lowered—and how her shoulders tightened when she said his name.
"Does he wear a coat?"
"Always." Kiana's tone carried irritation… and something else underneath it. "That gray, torn coat. Like a vagrant."
"It's full of holes, but he refuses to replace it. Keeps saying it's his 'old partner' and all that."
She clicked her tongue.
"And whenever he comes back, he reeks of alcohol, never shaves, looks like a mess."
"Sounds like you really dislike him."
"Obviously!" Kiana raised her voice too quickly—as if trying to bury something. "He's an irresponsible, stupid dad! When I was little, he'd leave me at home alone all the time, dump a pile of problems on me—"
Her words cut off mid-sentence.
The orange light pooled in the room, warm and quiet.
Su Yu didn't interrupt.
He just kept his eyes on the drafts, pen poised—like he was giving her the option to keep talking, or to stop, without forcing either.
Kiana stared at the cape on the page for a long time.
Then, very softly—so softly it almost didn't count as speaking—she added:
"…But when he showed up, no matter how late… I always felt like… things would be okay."
The phone on the table buzzed.
The delivery had arrived.
....
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