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—Bang, bang.
Was there someone at the door? She felt so sleepy, listless…
But she’d go get it.
In case it was important.
This world did feel a little like it was ending.
“Dage promoted me!” Su Mucheng complained to Chu Yunxiu once she’d made it in.
Chu Yunxiu’s brow furrowed, far more awake for her beloved Mucheng’s presence, half her heart and soul right there. “You mean when he made you captain?”
“Not the captaincy, I mean—oh, yeah, probably the captaincy, actually.” Su Mucheng frowned. She couldn’t see storylines the way Ye Xiu and Chu Yunxiu could so naturally she wasn’t sure precisely when Ye Xiu had foisted some of his protagonist aura onto her to even things out, but if Chu Yunxiu thought it was the captaincy that cemented it then it should be that. There hadn’t been anything else.
“He didn’t make you the love interest, did he?” Chu Yunxiu asked sourly, dragging Su Mucheng over to sit next to her on the couch.
Su Mucheng snickered as she laid her head on Chu Yunxiu’s shoulder. “Drinking vinegar? He said he kept it ambiguous, I’m not too sure, but it shouldn’t carry over into next world.”
Chu Yunxiu sighed, settling her arm around Su Mucheng’s waist. “Probably for the best, then. He was so flagrant in this world, there’s no way the authorities won’t be onto us even faster this time.”
“Yeah, he’s still mad at gege for dying before the story started. He had to promote himself to protagonist just to get enough energy for a tragic backstory for him!” It’d been scary at the time, but as usual Ye Xiu pulled it off when he needed to—despite accidentally offing himself a full decade before their exit point for this world, Su Muqiu had enough narrative energy to be a significant named character.
Done way too ostentatiously, though, Ye Xiu’d had to steal the protagonist’s halo for a bit to get his personal aura out enough, and used way too much of that in tying all the threads together to drag Su Muqiu up, besides. Forget shounen gaming novel, this story had probably been promoted to a national classic. This was why Ye Xiu always aimed for mentor characters, it was at least a little more likely for him to blend in that way, ultimate cosmic entity or not. He’d tried to bleed it even this time, bring all the passersby to life as balance, but it was hardly perfect.
“It’s okay, meimei,” Chu Yunxiu comforted. “I’ll get you demoted again next time, shake that aura off on a little role. Maybe we should snag a harem protagonist…”
Su Mucheng giggled. “Dage said he’ll kill you off halfway through if you make him sit through an overbearing CEO romance as a secretary again.”
Chu Yunxiu smirked. “So he has to work twice as hard to resurrect me again? No way he wants to run every world straight, he needs me.”
“Dage says he’ll kill himself off halfway through.”
Chu Yunxiu coughed around a bad draw on her cigarette, face going ghost-pale through the haze. “That’s not funny.” Chu Yunxiu could run worlds, but they were all mostly piggybacking off of the old god of victory to keep them sliding through the universes, away from scrutiny. Ye Xiu was good enough to live forever, but the rest of them would just die when they died, on their own.
“He wants to dive in Glory next.” Recursive worlds, recursive dives, so long as they kept changing the story enough to make it new and kept a low profile the chain would break again and the authorities would be stymied for a little longer.
“No way, there’s no coherent storyline and he knows it!” Not that Glory didn’t have a good story, but they couldn’t use it, it was a whole massive spiderweb waiting to entangle. Anyway, it wasn’t her fault Ye Xiu hated every single story she’d researched here—she hadn’t slacked off, okay! There were many!
All romances, and maybe with some close female characters who could believably cousin their way out of being noticed in their relationship if need be, but still. It wasn’t like he didn’t keep slipping them into shounens with a billion close friends—mostly men—he inevitably got attached to even when he swore he wouldn’t.
That was Ye Xiu for you, though. The way he cared was bizarre and reasonless, but nice enough. Certainly they were profiting, their merry little band of life thieves.
“Oh, and he said you can have your heart of a champion back now.”
“Oh?” Chu Yunxiu perked up. “He’s willing to be a bit soulless next time? I hope he knows how hard it was for me to get through this round without it. Left like this in a fighting game’s world, what torture.”
Su Mucheng pulled her hand up, and in it where there wasn’t before was a heart, beating eerily without blood or body. Chu Yunxiu didn’t reach for it immediately, entranced by the way her ruby core sat in Su Mucheng’s pretty, pretty fingers. Mm, if she could leave it there, she might even…
“It was a good rhythm for this round, but if he carries it the next they’ll catch up too fast,” Su Mucheng said, but her voice had gone a little soft, for holding Chu Yunxiu’s heart in her hands. “I said he could use mine next time, but dage said gege owes him anyway. Next round, we can have our hearts together for once.”
Usually, Su Muqiu’s heart was too strong to leave in Ye Xiu’s empty chest. Ye Xiu was made for hearts, but didn’t have one, never had. The god of victory was just victory, a single note without his love. He was drawn to their hearts, the heart of a champion, the heart of innovation, the heart of a young girl—maybe next time their hearts got too strong she’d weave him into the storyline itself, save him from acting a part without the means to feel it. It was dangerous to leave Ye Xiu so far from their actions, if she mistimed the story and the exit they’d fail to leave the world entirely and she’d have to spin him back out of the fabric of existence just to fix everything, but she might at least try. He’d really given it his all this time.
And woven in or not, stories without Ye Xiu to guide them would leave them all a little weaker, a little easier to pass over, the time after. Even he’d be diminished for having to drag himself out after them. Next time, maybe.
Su Mucheng reached a hand into Chu Yunxiu’s chest, gently cradling her heart as she nestled it back in her vacant body, and bang bang Chu Yunxiu felt it kick up again for being home, in Su Mucheng’s hands and in her body both.
“Mm, that is better,” Su Mucheng murmured against her lips, leaned in and pressed close as she was, and Chu Yunxiu thought it was such a shame that they needed to exit now, before they could do something fun about it.
It was a murder mystery this time, see how Ye Xiu liked that, Chu Yunxiu thought smugly.
Actually, he’d probably like it just fine, but she was feeling a bit competitive with her heart back to beating in her instead of the world or a god. Innovation, this time, right? The world thrummed around her, aimless melody, and she reached her hands out to the threads.
Oh, they’d tell a good story.
A horror, maybe. Su Mucheng did love those, if told just right, and she wanted to give her lovely meimei a gift.
Nobody wanted to look downstairs, but it didn’t stop the sound, reverberating up, deafening. Bang bang, she climbed the railings when they wouldn’t let her climb the stairs, and her lips were red with blood, like all lips, lush red, dripping smiles that didn’t falter even in the deepest of dark.
Her eyelashes stitched a seam across her face, perfect black curves for eyes that could never open, like a doll she smiled in the lightning flash.
The mistake they made was in thinking her closed eyes kept her asleep, rooted firmly in the ground.
Hand reaching up, nails curved around the next bar, she ascended, crash, clang, Bang she climbed the stairs all wrong, limbs distorted and dragged like a puppet, as if silver lines guided her.
“Throw the camera down!” one of the men hissed. “The one you used to take a picture of her, maybe she’s following it!”
“That’s insane!” another whispered back hysterically. “It’d only make her angrier! Besides, you don’t understand—
“Her picture is just so beautiful…” Enchanting.
Behind the glass, in sleep, she looked like she was waiting for a kiss.
She wasn’t though. The thunder rumbled, the storm raged in violent torrents, and she climbed sure-footed in sharp heels up railing and railing, rusted though they were ding dong like a bell they echoed up the stairwell, crash bang as a corroded bar cracked and crumbled and fell but she didn’t stop, still smiling.
“Meimei, spare us, please,” an older woman sobbed, an entreaty, supplication.
Su Mucheng turned her head a little, like she was listening, and smiled the sharpest, sharpest smile, all bone-white teeth to points.
“My heart,” she mouthed, couldn’t even rasp. “Where’d you take my heart?”
But none of them had the answer to her gaping chest.
Innovation was such a dangerous rhythm.
Ye Xiu couldn’t be the protagonist, not without drawing even more attention, and so he was the villain. Su Muqiu’s role strength was too depleted, he could only be the master’s automaton, his loyal knight puppet. Devoted enough to earn a name, it should be, look at his sweet piety even as Ye Xiu raised his demons.
And Chu Yunxiu?
Let them think they’d taken Su Mucheng’s heart in a picture, search desperately for a chance to return it. In the back of the group she wiped the blood off her own grin, the heart she’d eaten to save close to her own.
Mm, yes. Who didn’t love a little mystery?
Jiejie’s waiting, she thought fondly, even as their protagonist—originally for a mystery adventure, but surely he’d rally to survival horror, wasn’t this story better?—stalled Su Mucheng again and Chu Yunxiu was swayed along the rush out, taking a role as a fighter, a common hammer as her weapon, a leader in the team—she had the heart of a champion, after all.
And cradled gently in her mouth, her throat, her heaving chest as she ran, the heart of a young girl;
Come and eat it back, right out of her teeth and tongue.
Unzip my heart, undo my body and—
Bang, bang.