VOLUME IV: The Year of Anti-Entropy (Part 3)
"Willow catkins dance in the wind, salt scattered by the hand; Heaven and earth, vast and boundless, no path leads us home."
Mikael, wearing only a light jacket, abruptly stopped amidst the biting wind and snow, reciting a poem as if it were second nature, sinking deeper and deeper with each step into the snow-covered plains.
Hua, struggling to pull her legs from the knee-deep snow, finally managed to stand behind Mikael, clutching his back for support and a brief rest.
Catching her breath, she tightened her scarf, watching the white plumes of her breath mix with Mikael's, swirling into the air. The hazy cloud seemed to distort the slowly falling snowflakes, making them look like scattered salt grains, but more like willow catkins dancing in the wind.
It was then that she belatedly realized Mikael wasn't speaking the common tongue; it was a dialect from the Shenzhou region. The intonation and the abstract, yet profound, imagery of the words were akin to the old poems her father used to recite to her.
Sensing Hua's exhaustion, Mikael reached out, pulling her up a small hill in a few swift steps. From the hilltop, the snowfields met the sky in a hazy black line. Hua took the makeshift telescope Mikael conjured and saw:
The hazy line was, in fact, an endless birch forest. Beyond the forest stood a lone village, with tendrils of smoke rising from its chimneys, converging into a thick pillar of gray smoke that slanted towards the sky—like a solitary pillar standing between heaven and earth.
The village was small, with only twenty or thirty houses, arranged in a circle, as if surrounding something—perhaps a square?
There was something standing in the square, but the small hill's low vantage point was blocked by a house, obscuring the view.
"Is that our destination... Ah!"
A sudden gust of north wind ripped the dog-fur hat off Hua's head, carrying her surprised cry away with it.
Mikael chuckled, reaching into the air; the dog-fur hat, now a distant speck, suddenly reappeared in his hand through a spatial rift. He gently placed it back on Hua's head.
"I told you, don't use words like 'destination' that sound like we're on a military op! This is a vacation spot! A vacation!"
"Uh...Mikael, that excuse is really..."
She wanted to say "terrible," but was afraid of sounding too blunt, so she stammered for a while, only managing,
"Anyway, if my memory serves me correctly, this should be the place."
"Yeah." Mikael nodded. "I've been here before, with... Elysia. That was five years ago? Or was it four? I can't remember exactly."
Hua suddenly recalled, Mikael and Elysia had gone on a trip long ago, and it just so happened they passed by her home.
"So, what exactly is our mission this time?"
Hua looked at Mikael's profile, puzzled.
It couldn't really be just a pointless vacation, right?
Given Mikael's recent behavior, it was certainly possible... but Hua knew it was just a facade.
Lately, Mikael had seemed increasingly unreliable, increasingly similar to Ellie. But Hua could sense the difference between the two.
Elysia's liveliness was born from optimism, while Mikael's was rooted in pessimism and bewilderment.
The more pessimistic and lost he was, the more he needed to put on a lively act to hide it—Hua didn't know why she understood it so well, but she could see right through him.
"Alright...don't think too much about it. Just treat it as a vacation..."
Mikael ruffled Hua's thick dog-fur hat, a sudden wave of guilt washing over him.
He felt Hua should have stayed put with Fire Moth.
That night half a year ago, when they left, no one expected the two groups to cross paths.
But even if they did meet, it wouldn't have mattered; it was just a hyperbola and an asymptote, getting infinitely close only to diverge again.
But it all went wrong when Mikael inexplicably looked up and met Hua's gaze.
He still didn't understand why Hua ran after him in the dark alleyway.
He could only guess that this girl needed somewhere to go.
Her home was gone, the United Government didn't even plan to rebuild it. Of course, even if they did, it wouldn't matter; the empty martial arts hall would never again have her father's presence.
Fire Moth... yes, Carol, Himeko, even the newly met Mei and Kevin were there, but the person who initially gave her a sense of security was no longer there.
"I shouldn't have looked up in the first place."
"Hua...I'm not lying. If this trip goes smoothly, you can really treat it as a vacation. Uh, although it's a bit cold here, the scenery is still great... Achoo!"
"Then why don't you wear more?"
"I'm not cold... Ah, ah, ACHOO!"
The sneeze was scattered by the north wind the moment it left his lips.
The village was already in sight, but walking through the snowfields was tough. It took them the entire afternoon, until the wind died down, the clouds parted and revealed the setting sun, before they finally reached the village entrance.
To appear normal to the villagers, Mikael reluctantly put on a heavy coat.
The village was surrounded by a thick wooden wall, but it didn't seem very effective. There were many gaps where it had been violently damaged, and the villagers didn't seem to care about repairing them.
Mikael stood before a large opening, his gaze filled with recollection.
"I think, when I came here with Elysia a few years ago, we entered the village through this same gap."
"?" Hua didn't understand. A gap that's been there for N years, and nobody fixes it?
Forget Honkai beasts, even a wild animal like a grizzly bear from the birch forest would be too much for the villagers, right?
Her breathing quickened, and she instinctively clung to Mikael.
"A gap ...normal animals..."
Mikael knew what she was going to say and nodded.
"But it's impossible. If there were Honkai beasts here a few years ago, why wouldn't the people move away? Or how did they even survive until now?"
Hua fired off the questions, but Mikael didn't respond directly.
He simply looked up at the direction from which the thickest plume of smoke was rising from the village—in his memories, at this time, everyone should be busy preparing dinner.
Though it wasn't anything delicious, Mikael could still remember the frozen, rock-hard black bread, filled with wood chips and dirt...
It was literally hell food!
That's why he ate all the black bread himself back then, not leaving a single bite for Ellie, just to make sure she wouldn't get hungry.
"Let's go, we should head to the village elder's house first."
The path leading into the village wasn't as snow-covered, allowing them to pick up the pace. Of course, it wasn't because someone had cleared the snow; it was simply because of the people passing by; enough traffic created a sort of...
Well, there wasn't really a path; it was just where the newly fallen snow was looser and shallower.