"The world is going to be destroyed." Anna spooned food into her mouth, her eyes vacant.
"..."
"The world is going to be destroyed."
"..."
"The world is going to be destroyed, ahhh!" Anna clutched her head and rolled on the floor. "What should I do! What should I do!"
Lin stared at her, utterly indifferent.
She scrambled up, slammed her hands on the table, and fixed her eyes on Lin. "Uncle! Do you really not have a girlfriend!"
…Was there any connection between these statements?
Seeing Lin remain silent, the chestnut-haired girl clenched her fists and assumed a serious expression: "Fine! Uncle, will you marry me!"
"..." The sentence contained too many elements, leaving Lin momentarily unsure how to respond.
"Damn it, I'm an eighteen-year-old girl in the prime of youth who hasn't even been in a relationship, and the world is about to be destroyed. How can I let that happen!"
So those few "What should I do?"s were about this?
Anna's unusual train of thought always managed to surprise Lin in some way. After hearing Lin's general explanation of the Honkai, the first thing she thought of was that she had never been in love.
However, this also made her similar to the ordinary person she described, who would calmly carry on even in the face of the apocalypse.
"First, the Honkai is not the end of the world. The Honkai is defined as an irregular natural disaster, but from all angles, it's not that simple," Lin corrected her. "Second, the Honkai is not invincible. I always believe that humanity will achieve final victory."
"Third, I refuse. If you want to be in a relationship, wait until this Honkai incident is over, then go find a member of the opposite sex who has the same intention."
After some time passed, and the sky had completely darkened, a calmed-down Anna sat in front of the dining table. After thinking for a full half hour, she picked up her bowl and devoured the cold food on the table, gulping down everything as if she were a hungry ghost reincarnated.
A moment later, she sat down in front of Lin, her pretty face still dotted with rice grains.
"Uncle, what do you need me to do?"
"You don't need to do anything. Just be yourself."
"No, I can't accept that."
"...Didn't you say you would live peacefully even in the face of the end of the world?"
"But that was only if there was nothing I could do!"
"Why?"
Anna stated very solemnly: "Because I love this world. Is that reason enough?"
"..."
Lin was suddenly struck, seeing something both extremely familiar and foreign on her face.
"I just love this world, this imperfect world that hurts people. Even if it leaves me all alone, is there a problem with that?" As Anna spoke, tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.
"...No."
…
A long time later, Anna, who had adjusted her emotions, sat on the bed with her knees hugged, wearing only white tights and a shirt. She had apparently forgotten about the electricity bill, or perhaps she simply no longer cared.
Furthermore, what happened next suggested that Lin had underestimated both her emotional resilience and her peculiar thought process.
"Uncle, can you consider what I just said?"
"...What?"
"The thing about marrying me."
[What is she thinking?]
Even Prometheus couldn't help but ask. She had thought Vil-V's thinking was odd enough, but compared to Anna, it was truly a case of "the lesser of two evils."
"Do you think I'm joking? Or just looking for anyone to fulfill a wish?" Anna sat perfectly upright on the bed, constantly glancing at Lin from the corner of her eye. "I'm not a casual girl."
Lin thought she was certainly not casual, but her brain might very well have been fried by a high fever.
"Uncle, from the first moment I saw you, I felt it was destiny. We just happened to encounter the hailstorm, just happened to meet under the same roof, and just happened to bump into each other."
"And you are so handsome. Your every move is handsome: your posture when saving people, your cool, silent demeanor, and your occasional tsundere side. You can even cook excellent food. All of it makes me think you are simply amazing!"
Judging from the golden-eyed look on Anna's face, she didn't seem to be lying. But this only further convinced Lin that the structure of her brain was different from others.
Because within Fire Moth, Lin's various actions were called "freakish."
"Look at me: intelligent and lovable. Aren't I the embodiment of wisdom and beauty? A perfect match for you, Uncle!"
"...If you had met my friends, you wouldn't say that."
Kevin was superior to Lin in every aspect. Among the men Lin knew, Kevin was a considerably perfect person. The unfortunate thing was that Kevin's entire focus was on Mei.
And Lin had no such intentions, or rather, his intentions had never changed from the start.
"Uncle, you really are immovable~" Anna shrugged helplessly. "But that's one of Uncle's charms, too~ Speaking of which, didn't any other girls in your organization like you?"
"No."
"You're lying... Wouldn't that make me seem very peculiar!"
The only thing to congratulate her on was that she had finally discovered this fact.
…
"Captain."
Upon seeing Lin walk in from outside, Immanuel respectfully handed him a towel, so Lin could wipe the rain off his body.
Although it was just the rainwater on his helmet that could be wiped off, Immanuel likely felt the helmet represented Lin's state as a person.
After learning Lin's true physical condition, Immanuel and Hua, after their initial shock, did not show much further emotion. However, compared to before, when the three of them each did their own thing, they would occasionally engage in some simple communication.
"Any gains today?" Immanuel asked.
"No."
"I found some anomalies today through city-wide Honkai energy detection."
Immanuel's report made Lin pause for a second in wiping his helmet. He then asked, "What anomaly."
"Please follow me."
Lin followed Immanuel into the conference room, where Hua was waiting for his return. She nodded to him when she saw Lin.
"The reason why your precise detection throughout the city yielded no results is because there was a problem with the frequency of Honkai energy appearance," Immanuel projected the overall Honkai energy monitoring map of Trance for the day onto the screen. "At 4:15 PM, the overall Honkai energy in Trance had an abnormal increase for thirty seconds. The duration was too short to find the exact anomaly location."
"Thirty seconds later, the Honkai energy plummeted, returning to normal levels. Other than that, there were no anomalies for the entire day."
"..." Lin stared silently at the abruptly raised graph.
Hua also frowned in thought: "An instantaneous spike... Could it be a detection error?"
"Possible, but there's another issue afterward."
"In the thirty seconds after that..."
Immanuel moved his hand, and another graph appeared.
"The temperature in Trance rose."