Chapter 46: Familiar Stranger (Patreon)

Gusttave looked down at the tiny girl in front of him.

Her fox ears were pressed flat with nerves, her big green eyes brimmed with a thin sheen of tears, and her voice trembled as she spoke. Her two small hands clutched tightly at the hem of her clothes.

She was a completely different person from the fierce little fox spirit who had once driven a claw straight through his chest inside that Daoist temple's iron cage.

Gusttave gently stroked her green hair. "All right, all right, I won't eat foxes. If you keep shrinking like that, you'll curl yourself into a ball."

Then he carefully set her down.

His movements were extremely gentle, as if he were afraid of startling this little fox who trembled all over the moment she got nervous.

The timid, self-conscious Huohuo before him was, ironically, exactly the Huohuo Gusttave had known from the game.

Watching the little fox curled into a quivering ball, Gusttave felt a flavor rise in his chest that he couldn't quite put into words.

The Huohuo of the past had been the Head of Tushan, a powerhouse of Yao Emperor level, standing beneath the Bitter Love Tree in a dark green fox-fur cloak, silent as an iceberg.

Later, she had traded all her memories and her yao power for his reincarnation and the mending of their bond.

She didn't remember him.

She didn't remember anything at all.

"W-why are you looking at me like that..." Under his stare, Huohuo's hair stood on end. Her two small hands twisted the hem of her clothes as she backed away half a step, her green fox ears pressed low, her voice growing fainter. "I-I really didn't mean to hit you... Please don't be angry, okay?"

Gusttave snapped back to himself, crouched down, and brought his eyes level with hers.

He reached out and lightly brushed the bits of grass from her head, his touch so soft it was as if he feared breaking something fragile.

"I'm not angry." His voice was far gentler than usual. "You're Huohuo, right? Tushan's little red-string matchmaker?"

Huohuo froze, then blinked her watery green eyes.

This stranger knew her name?

"H-how do you know I'm a red-string matchmaker..." She tilted her head, wary and curious all at once. Her voice was soft and sticky-sweet, like a freshly steamed glutinous rice dumpling, nothing like the taciturn Head of Tushan from before.

"Of course I do. I know you," Gusttave said as if it were obvious.

"You know me?" His words left Huohuo confused. She had no memory of ever meeting him, yet a strange sense of familiarity told her he wasn't lying.

Gusttave had no intention of explaining in detail. "We met a long time ago. You've just forgotten, that's all. But it's fine. Since you've forgotten our relationship, we'll just get to know each other again from the start."

Huohuo tilted her head, her green fox ears twitching, her watery eyes full of bewilderment.

She stared at him for a good while, as if trying to dig something out of the corners of her memory, but in the end she found nothing.

"S-sorry..." She lowered her head, her voice shrinking. "I don't remember anything at all. My memory's never been good. Sister Feixiao always says I'm forgetful and scatterbrained..."

"It's fine." Gusttave smiled, his tone breezy. "I'm not anyone especially important anyway. Forgetting me is no big deal."

He said it with a perfectly natural expression, even a faintly careless smile. But the audience in the chat group instantly exploded.

[March 7th: ???]

[March 7th: What do you mean "not anyone especially important"?! Do you have any idea who she became like this for?!!]

[Kiana Kaslana: How can he say it so casually?! I'm going to die of anxiety! Huohuo sacrificed all her memories and yao power to save him!]

[Jingliu: ...Precisely because he knows, he isn't rushing her to remember.]

[Elysia: Not wanting to hold the present her hostage with the feelings of the past, so he chooses to get to know her anew? This gentleman is surprisingly tender about certain things~]

Huohuo blinked, her fox ears perking up slightly. She was timid, but not slow. This person's tone was casual, yet in the way he looked at her there was something complicated hidden away—she couldn't read it, but she could sense that it was kind.

"T-then, if we're getting to know each other again..." Huohuo clutched her hem and gathered her courage to lift her head. "Where should we start?"

Gusttave raised an eyebrow. This little fox used to not even dare look him in the eye, and now she was taking the initiative to ask "where should we start."

Huohuo, having lost her memories, was somehow a little braver than before—or perhaps, without that heavy past, she had simply grown lighter...

"Easy." He pointed to the dirt road leading toward the town not far off. "You wanted to go down the mountain and look around, didn't you? How about I go with you?"

Huohuo hesitated for a moment, then agreed to his invitation.

The two of them strolled slowly along the road.

After the founding of Communist Interastral, the original administrative divisions had been thoroughly reorganized. The old city borders had become historical relics, replaced by a vast net spanning the entire Loop, linking the living spaces of humans and yao together as never before.

Huohuo's eyes darted everywhere along the way, unable to take it all in.

In the fields beside the road, several silver-white automated tillers were turning the soil in orderly rows.

Unlike the farm machines of the old era, they didn't rumble and belch black smoke. They were quiet as a few egrets foraging in the paddies.

A few old farmers sat on the ridges between the fields, each cradling a pot of tea and chatting leisurely.

"D-don't they have to work?" Huohuo asked softly.

"The machines do it for them," Gusttave said as he walked. "Agriculture today is fully automated: sowing, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, all one production line. Humans only have to do one thing: decide what to plant in this field."

Huohuo nodded as if she understood, but not quite.

[Furina: Not having to work just to survive, with work becoming the pursuit of one's interests... what an extravagant way to live.]

[Otto: But this is how society ought to be in the first place.]

[Otto: Efficient technology replaces inefficient humans and expands production in a faster, more convenient way. Such high productivity is more than enough to supply the living needs of everyone in the world.]

[Otto: And humans need only do work that interests them.]

[Otto: As this transmigrator put it, a society whose technology is extremely advanced yet still mainly exploits and oppresses intelligent beings is, without a doubt, a thoroughly deformed one.]

As the leader of Honkai Impact 3rd's Earth, Otto might be a scoundrel, but he had both vision and means, and he held his own scathing views on the inefficient social system of the Interastral Peace Corporation.

Though Honkai Impact 3rd's Earth differed greatly from Gusttave's homeworld, in certain respects there was no doubt they were alike.