Raiden Ei's curiosity about the Aeons made Su Ran rub at his temples.
The existence of Aeons wasn't difficult to explain, but he felt that telling Ei about them now wasn't wise.
Teyvat's worldview was too narrow.
Even if he explained clearly, they would only treat Aeons as another kind of Archon.
"You can think of them as extremely powerful beings. To us, they are no different from gods."
If he could one day research Aeons thoroughly, Su Ran might even be able to create one.
His confidence in himself far exceeded even Ruan Mei's "I think it might work" level of creativity.
Calling him a genius was too small a word.
If a genius could shatter common sense, then Su Ran's wisdom could shatter the understanding of geniuses themselves.
He believed this without a doubt.
"How about this? After we settle things in Liyue, I'll take you beyond the skies. What do you say?"
Only by seeing the universe might Raiden Ei truly grasp her own smallness.
"No."
The moment he mentioned leaving Teyvat, she reacted as if struck, rejecting him without hesitation.
What lay beyond the stars, she didn't care.
First she had left Inazuma for Liyue.
Now he was talking about leaving Teyvat altogether.
And after that—who knew where?
She dared not imagine it.
She had to smother Su Ran's dangerous thought of departing.
"I'm not curious about Aeons anymore. You don't need to explain."
Her own curiosity about the unknown might spark his desire to leave.
She made a silent note to herself:
From now on, she'd rather be someone who wanted to know nothing.
"…Really not curious?"
Her shift was so fast, so firm, that Su Ran understood what worried her.
"In the universe, there may really be a way to bring back the dead."
At the words bring back the dead, Ei's eyes flashed with a fleeting hope— but she quickly forced it down.
"The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. I won't pin my heart on such a hopeless revival."
She had lost too many.
If they could at least return to her in dreams, that was already a blessing beyond measure.
Even if it was only a dream, for her it was the greatest comfort.
Constant loss had left her not daring to ask whether the "Makoto" in her dreams was real or not.
"But I really do know of one case. Someone came back after five hundred years."
Su Ran let slip the fact without much thought.
"Don't you dare try to tempt me!"
Ei rejected it outright.
She had said it herself: the greater the hope, the greater the fall.
She had already meditated five hundred years in the Plane of Euthymia.
Even a shred of comfort was enough.
Why ask for more?
"You've truly given up?"
But the seed had been planted.
Su Ran wasn't worried—Ei would take the bait eventually.
She refused him so firmly now only because the warmth still lingered.
The day her dream shattered, the day "Makoto" could never again appear, she would absolutely clutch at that one straw of salvation.
These words of hers were nothing but stubbornness.
"I never expected it in the first place. How can you call it giving up?"
"Fine. I'll wait for the day you regret it. When you cry and beg me, I won't help you."
Her stubbornness had lit his own competitiveness, and he responded with hard words of his own.
But the moment they left his mouth, he realized they were dangerous.
"I was wrong!"
Ei repented at once.
All stubborn pride collapsed instantly.
Su Ran had never seen her back down so quickly.
"You regret it already? That's not the Ei I know. You've always been impossibly stubborn—how could you yield so fast?"
"I just realized arguing with you for the sake of it is incredibly foolish."
In every way, she was no match for Su Ran.
And right now, he seemed like a wish-granting machine—capable of anything.
If he said one day she would regret it and beg, then out of trust, Ei believed it might really happen.
So she yielded immediately.
There was no shame in it.
Since the birth of the little general, Ei no longer had any "dignity" left before him.
No matter how much face she lost here, she felt nothing of it.
"You said one day I'd regret it and beg. So I think… maybe you're right. Maybe that day will come."
Losing face was nothing.
Losing the one hand she could reach for in her darkest moment—that would be the true loss.
Her swift surrender, and the reasoning behind it,
made Su Ran uneasy.
He had planned to win her heart.
But that was love, not dependence.
Now, though he had her already, aside from her one inviolable bottom line of not being abandoned, she obeyed his every word.
"So I'm the only thing you can hold onto now?"
This bond might not seem deep, but he knew—perhaps to Ei, he was already more important than even the Makoto in her dreams.
"Yes. That's why I'll hold onto you forever. I'll never allow you to leave my sight for too long."
…Was this not a yandere line straight out of some story?
She didn't look like a yandere.
Yet her actions matched the image in his mind too well.
"Ei, you're being too extreme."
He really would have to correct her way of thinking.
At this rate, she had serious yandere potential— and yanderes only grew worse over time.
"That's because you've given me too much!"
She didn't deny her issue.
But wasn't the root cause Su Ran himself?
He had shown her true eternity.
He had even brought "Makoto" back to her side.
If she wanted to keep all this, she could only cling to him with all her strength.
Because everything she now had, everything she now held, was given by Su Ran.
He might not take it all away if he left— but if one day it all shattered, what then?
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