“Elder Brother, I am grateful for your honesty. I am also grateful for your appearance in my life, and for accompanying me to complete this performance.”
“But why do you think this performance is something you can just walk away from?”
Hiso was at a loss.
He had never seen such an expression on his sister’s face, nor had he ever heard her speak in such a respectful yet distant tone.
“I hear it quite often now,” Demon Sophie chimed in. “Now, whenever Little Dino is being sarcastic and snide, she sounds exactly like that.”
Main Sophie and Angel Sophie ignored her.
On the screen, the battle had already begun.
It was a battle far more intense than the previous cooperative fight against the Puppet King.
A shattered sky, toppling towers, and threads that once relied on each other now sought to kill...
“We should have gone all out from the start!” Demon Sophie continued indifferently. “Without the main quest to guide her, her side-string couldn’t exert most of its power. We should have suppressed her like a boss. With our stats, it was doable.”
“How could we go all out? A girl you raised yourself, who always trusted you unconditionally, is fighting you with bloodshot eyes while crying. In that situation, could you really deal a killing blow? Could you crush her with a punch without hesitation?” Angel Sophie countered. “Forget whether Main Sophie would allow it—would Primal Sophie even agree?”
“And even if we suppressed her, what then? Use a blood servant contract to turn her into our slave?”
“That kind of thing... was simply impossible to do.”
Demon Sophie snorted. “Then you should have just accepted her conditions! Agreed to stay in that broken city forever, to be her brother for the rest of your life.”
Hearing this, Main Sophie also let out a deep sigh.
Naturally, Chengzhong Dino wanted Hiso to stay forever.
To play that ordinary game of ‘playing house’ that would never see a final curtain.
To be family for a lifetime.
But Hiso refused.
What did ‘ordinary’ and ‘natural’ even mean?
Having been tempered by the Chenzhong family, Hiso could certainly come up with endless reasons and excuses.
But.
Red Moon was ultimately just a Galgame. Even if Hiso had put his heart and soul into experiencing it, the lifespan of the experience was only a month or two.
A promise of a lifetime was simply too heavy.
Logic and emotion.
Reality and illusion.
Chengzhong Dino hated being directly rejected.
The battle that day lasted for a long time.
Until finally, at Hiso’s suggestion, they both met halfway.
“Elder Brother can continue his performance. You can go and pull whatever messy strings you want. But in the end, you must come home.”
The young girl stood upon the ruins, her blue gown covered in dust and blood, but the smile on her face was firmer than ever before.
“Elder Brother is not allowed to exit the stage without my knowledge.”
“Elder Brother is not allowed to give himself to someone who would truly take you away.”
“Elder Brother is not allowed to forget where home is.”
“Whether it is ten years, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand, Dino will wait. I will wait until the moment you come home. Elder Brother, do you understand?”
The trauma from the Trait had indeed been eliminated.
She no longer asked, “Why did Elder Brother leave me?”
She only said, “It’s okay, Elder Brother is just still on his way.”
He had soothed a Dino who would cry, make a scene, and get hurt into a Dino who was eternally gentle, eternally rational, and eternally waiting for the finale.
She would wait forever, until the end of time, until the edge of the world.
As the only Destined Crown whose trauma he had eliminated and who knew the truth, Sophie had always felt guilty about this, and she had been unable to resolve the issue.
The only thing she could do was compensate Chengzhong Dino in certain ways.
For example, letting her be the first to know his identity, while the other Destined Crowns—including Miaoyue—remained in the dark, allowing her to feel superior because of it.
Or dragging her along to get scolded by the innkeeper, interacting with her in the capacity of an elder brother, and so on.
Regardless, they were all things that made Chengzhong Dino unable to resist letting out a soft, satisfied hum.
“Miaoyue’s trauma might also worsen because of this kind of situation,” Angel Sophie spoke up.
Rate on N.U.
