"What merch?!"
Shu's exclamation startled all three of them. They looked over to see a rare blush creeping onto his face.
"That kind of merch... I'm not some die-hard otaku, why would I buy that stuff?" Shu argued, his ears turning red. The already mangled egg in his hand was now in an even more pathetic state.
He tried to deny it, as if speaking louder would somehow make it more convincing.
In reality, however, the looks the three girls gave him grew increasingly amused and knowing. Under their direct stares, Shu's raised voice began to lose its conviction.
"So you have bought some, then?" Kiana asked, looking as if she'd discovered a new continent. And wasn't she the one who brought it up in the first place?
"Was it Mei's?" Bronya chimed in, a teasing smirk on her face. "Like a body pillow, a mug, or even..."
"Bronya!" Mei yelped. Bronya closed her mouth, but the playful expression on her face didn't change. If anything, it intensified as she watched Shu's face turn an even deeper shade of red.
"Shu would never buy those things. At most, he'd just get..." Mei tried to think of what a normal otaku might buy.
Body pillows, mugs, or even...
Wait, no, that had to be her own stereotype of otaku... And calling Shu an otaku was a stereotype in itself! Shu definitely wasn't that kind of person!
Kiana's surprise hadn't fazed Shu, and Bronya's teasing hadn't embarrassed him, but the sight of Mei closing her eyes and shaking her head... that's what sent a true chill down his spine.
Because the other two might have been joking, but Mei seemed to have genuinely believed it and was now trying to convince herself otherwise.
Convince herself of what? Shu didn't know, and he didn't dare to find out.
What if she was trying to convince herself that he was, in fact, that kind of person?
"Mei, I really haven't..." Shu's attempt to defend himself was as quiet as a mosquito's buzz. Even though Mei wasn't pressuring him, he felt a heavy weight on his chest.
"Mm, I know, Shu," Mei said, but the look of defeat that crossed her face almost made Shu's heart stop.
She definitely failed to convince herself! Or maybe she's accepted some horrible truth! Don't say it with that tone of resigned acceptance!
The way she said it was so convincing, even Kiana was starting to believe it!
"Shu, you should probably stop trying to explain," Bronya finally said, speaking up as the only one present who likely understood "otaku culture."
While it was fun to see Shu so flustered that his face turned red, watching him dig himself into a deeper hole was getting concerning. Bronya felt that if this continued, Shu's reputation would truly be in tatters.
"Shu probably just bought a few figurines, some small trinkets, or posters, right?" Bronya offered. Shu immediately nodded at Mei and Kiana like a bobblehead.
"Is that all?" Seeing his reaction, Kiana's face actually showed a hint of disappointment.
"Oh, so that's it..." The look of relief on Mei's face nearly made Shu choke.
Mei, what on earth did you misunderstand?!
At that moment, Shu cursed the fact that he didn't have Mei's eloquence and thanked his lucky stars that Bronya was there to be his mouthpiece.
"I've never been a serious collector or anything. It's just, sometimes I see something I like, so I buy it..." With Bronya breaking the ice, Shu was finally able to offer a proper explanation.
But Kiana's next blurted-out question nearly stole the breath he had just regained.
"Like what?"
Shu froze. He wanted to say figurines or posters, but Kiana's follow-up completely derailed that train of thought.
"So, whose merch did you buy?"
Shu: "?"
An ominous feeling began to fill the air again. Three pairs of eyes locked onto him, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.
"Is that question really important?" Shu tried to struggle.
"Very important," Kiana affirmed with a firm nod.
"Well, it's not that important... Shu, you don't have to answer if you don't want to," Mei said, though her eyes never left his face.
Bronya didn't say a word. She simply placed her phone on the table, plain as day. The brightly lit recording interface on the screen made Shu fall silent.
His sluggish mind finally broke free from the shock, the morning grogginess, and all the other lingering negative effects, and began to desperately calculate a path to survival.
This felt like a battlefield of affections, but Shu didn't sense any rivalry among the three. All he felt was their intense, shared curiosity.
It seemed they were just genuinely interested in whose merch he bought... No, it couldn't be that simple.
"Maybe we should eat first?" Shu finally remembered the mangled egg in his hand. It was breakfast time, after all. Perhaps he could use this as a diversion...
"Sure," Kiana said with a grin, pushing a plate towards him.
On it were two perfectly peeled eggs that rolled around before bumping into each other and stopping. "Take your time. Eat, think. If you really can't remember, we still have the Akashic Chronicle, don't we?"
Compared to the mangled wreck in Shu's hand, the two eggs Kiana had peeled were works of art. The Schariac genes in her bloodline were on full display.
But alarm bells were screaming in Shu's mind.
If Mei had peeled the eggs, or if Bronya had pushed them over, he wouldn't have had such a strong reaction. But this was Kiana, the girl who would practically fight him for the food in his own mouth.
Not only had she peeled eggs for him, but she was now resting her chin on her hands and smiling at him like this?
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
"Who are you?" Shu stared at Kiana, his expression so grave it looked like he was about to attack.
This was serious. Kiana would never do something like this for a simple joke. Was she possessed? Some kind of psychic interference, or even a memetic virus?
Shu's mind instinctively jumped to the possibility of a new Herrscher appearing, right up until Kiana shattered his train of thought again.
"It was mine, wasn't it?"
Kiana's eyes curved into thin crescents, like a new moon hiding most of itself in the night.
"How did you kn—" Shu immediately regretted his words. Why did he have to ask that reflexively?
"Wow," Bronya let out a deadpan gasp. "Who~ would~ have~ thought~ it~ was~ Kiana's~"
The three of them understood Shu to a degree that even he wasn't aware of.
For instance, right now, he looked like he'd sensed something was amiss and was about to go on a rampage.
But in reality, they were all very familiar with what he looked like when he was truly on guard. Shu wasn't the type to directly question a suspect. Even if the suspects were the three of them, he would take precautions first before interrogating them.
His current stiff, upright posture screamed "all bluff."
The red had already spread from the base of Shu's ears to his cheeks.
Seeing the three of them looking like they knew all along, Shu wracked his brain but couldn't figure out how they could possibly know something like that.
Kiana proudly lifted her chin, hands on her hips, and puffed out her chest. Getting carried away, she blurted out, "Of course I know! I'm a genius who looked at the Akash—"
"Ahem—"
"Oh dear, the eggs are getting cold. Shu wouldn't mind if Bronya ate one of the eggs Kiana peeled for him, would he?"
Two voices spoke up one after the other, drowning out what Kiana almost said. Kiana herself reacted quickly, swallowing the words that were about to tumble out.
"It was my intuition, of course! Hahaha, you guys know how good my intuition is..." Kiana's eyes darted everywhere except for Shu's face.
The tables had turned. Now it was Shu's turn to stare down Kiana.
He wasn't going to be distracted by Mei and Bronya's interference, even though what Bronya had just said was somehow even more audacious than what Kiana had revealed.
"You looked at the Akashic Chronicle just to find out whose figurines I buy?!" Shu stared at Kiana in disbelief. He felt as if his clothes were completely transparent. He looked nervously at the other two. "Did you guys look, too?"
Mei and Bronya shook their heads. "No."
They weren't lying. Shu let out a long sigh of relief, then buried his face in his arms on the table.
"Shu! I really didn't mean to!" Kiana panicked when she saw him slump over. "I just couldn't resist taking a peek when I first got the Chronicles, and I swear I never looked again after that!"
Shu didn't answer, keeping his face hidden.
"Oh, come on~" Kiana scrambled out of her chair in a fluster and moved to sit beside Shu. She bent down, trying to see his expression from below, all while babbling apologies.
"I'm really sorry, okay? Can I treat you to a meal? How about I cook you a feast myself? Or buy you something?" Kiana practically bent herself under the table, but Shu kept his face well-hidden, and she couldn't see a thing.
Is he actually angry?
Come to think of it, Kiana had never really seen Shu sulk before, so she genuinely couldn't tell if he was mad or not.
After some deep, painful thought, Kiana's expression turned solemn. She put a hand on Shu's shoulder.
"How about I take a couple of photos for you? You can use them as posters," she declared with a great sense of self-sacrifice.
Instantly, all eyes in the room focused on her. Even Shu lifted his head in disbelief, looking at her with a completely bewildered expression.
"Kiana..." Mei didn't even know what to say.
"Do you have any idea what you're saying?" Bronya couldn't take it anymore. She got off her chair and gave Kiana a light bonk on the head.
---||---
Five minutes later...
"So your whole goal was to ask me what I like?" Shu looked at the three girls sitting in a row before him, his expression one of weary resignation. "And then you wanted to take me shopping?"
He sighed in frustration. "Couldn't you have just asked me directly? Did you think I wouldn't tell you?"
"Shu would probably say he doesn't want to buy anything," Bronya retorted coolly. The other two nodded in emphatic agreement.
Shu opened his mouth, then closed it, realizing that Bronya had perfectly predicted what he was going to say.
With that, his indignation deflated a little, but it didn't mean the frustration in his heart had vanished.
"So what about now?" Shu asked irritably. "What did you find out? Doesn't Kiana already know what I like?"
His gaze drifted to Kiana, who still looked guilty.
Seeing her like this, Shu really wondered just what she had seen... She couldn't have watched his entire life from beginning to end, could she?
But her reaction didn't seem to suggest that...
It wasn't that he cared about privacy issues. Before he transmigrated to this world, hadn't he seen their entire lives play out in Honkai Impact 3rd? Not to mention all the fan works... What was the big deal if Kiana took a peek into his past?
It was just that Kiana's current behavior was confusing. It seemed like she had seen parts of his life but was completely oblivious to other things.
After all, if she knew certain things, there was no way she would be reacting like this...
Wait...
Shu lowered his head slightly. How could he be so sure of Kiana's personality? Maybe she did know and had made changes he wasn't aware of.
"We learned why Shu doesn't like HOMU," Mei said, stating her conclusion.
"A lot of the anime culture in our world revolves around HOMU. But the things Shu likes don't have as many HOMU elements, so maybe that's why Shu doesn't seem to have any hobbies here?"
Shu was stunned. He stared blankly at Mei, her idea sparking a train of thought in his mind that led to a sudden moment of epiphany.
That's right... This world is all about HOMU. But to appreciate HOMU, you have to follow the series, and I don't have the time or energy for that right now. My only exposure to it is an incomplete version of 'HOMU Brave Fights the Dragon.'
No wonder he always felt a lack of interest... Was that the reason?
Shu felt like he had grasped a key point, but inexplicably, a part of him still felt empty.
"That's not really important, is it...?" Shu said, looking troubled. "Shouldn't I just read more books? I still don't have a thorough understanding of this world's history... What if I need that knowledge later on...?"
Maybe I should read more philosophy?
The powers of the Herrschers were just too complex. In the original story, they were based on the laws of physics, but the ones he had encountered so far were all philosophical extremes.
Aside from Evolution, they all seemed to be based on abstract concepts.
Even Evolution could be categorized under the concept of "Humanity."
If he studied more philosophy, maybe he would be perfectly equipped to counter the next Herrscher that appeared.
But he never expected the three of them to react so strongly to his suggestion.
"No! Shu, you're already exhausted! If you keep this up, you're going to burn out!"