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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Liar!
The time passed steadily, slipping through their fingers like fine sand.
[Remaining Lifespan: 3 Days 23 Hours 46 Minutes 27 Seconds]
The plum blossoms they had pickled two days prior had finally completed their astringency removal process. Now, they only needed to be steeped in clear white liquor and sealed tight in earthenware jars, left to rest in the dark until they were ready to be opened and savored after more than a year of aging.
The older the vintage, the richer and more deep the flavor would become.
“The process for making this Plum Blossom Wine seems so incredibly simple, and it doesn’t use any rare ingredients that I can recognize. Why does it always turn out so delicious?”
Clarice blinked her large, expressive eyes, her youthful face painted with genuine confusion as she watched him work.
The most grueling step of the entire endeavor was arguably the physical toll of climbing the freezing mountain to harvest the plum blossoms by hand. The subsequent steps of draining the excess water, coating the petals in sugar, and finally sealing them away with the liquor were so straightforward that even a small child could memorize the recipe after a single glance.
“Perhaps Plum Blossom Wine is simply meant to be like that. Effortless to craft, yet exceptionally beautiful on the tongue.”
“Mmm…”
Despite his gentle reassurance, Clarice could not shake the feeling that there was some deep, hidden secret woven into his cooking.
When her mother had tasted the plum-soaked soybean cake Clarice brought home two days ago, the older woman had broken down into uncontrollable tears, holding Clarice tight and weeping through half the night. It seemed that the richer a person’s life experiences were, and the older they grew, the more devastatingly deep the emotions evoked by that specific taste became.
If the true function of the plum-soaked soybean cake was to force people to confront their long-settled regrets and buried sorrows, then the Plum Blossom Wine crafted by Mr. Kagashi served the exact opposite purpose. It was a temporary reprieve, a sweet elixir that allowed one to cast their worldly worries aside.
Could it be… Clarice suddenly recalled a peculiar detail from the Academy Headmaster’s office.
He kept a rather strange water dispenser in the corner of his study. Any ordinary water poured from that dispenser would instantly turn sweet and refreshing. A curious student had once asked the Headmaster about the complex mechanics behind it, and the Headmaster had simply laughed, explaining that the dispenser was actually a Curio.
Along with that revelation, he had elaborated on the vast and unpredictable nature of Curios. They were myriad and endlessly varied, encompassing absolutely everything under the stars. A simple puddle of water could be a Curio, a suspended ball of fire could be one, or any mundane object with a solid, physical form. Even a plate of food could technically manifest as a Curio.
Something possessing a special, anomalous effect was not necessarily a Curio, but an object completely devoid of any special properties definitely was not one, regardless of whether its effect was actually useful to humanity.
Clarice shook her head slightly, deciding not to dwell on such complex academic theories for now.
“When exactly are you leaving, Mr. Kagashi?” she asked softly, her tone laced with a hint of reluctance. “I want to come and see you off.”
“…The day after tomorrow, around this exact time.” Kagashi’s expression remained perfectly placid, his voice steady and calm.
“Eh?” Clarice blinked, caught off guard by the timeline.
“What is wrong?”
“Three days from now is the solar term of Great Cold, which is your birthday. I honestly thought you would wait to leave until after you finished celebrating your birthday.”
She paused, her mind racing as she subconsciously assumed that Mr. Kagashi might be planning to celebrate the occasion with someone deeply important to him. But that assumption quickly dissolved. He had always celebrated his birthdays entirely alone in the past. Every time that specific winter day arrived, Mr. Kagashi would simply drink his own wine until he was comfortably intoxicated, celebrating his existence in quiet solitude.
“Mr. Kagashi, are you planning to celebrate with your teacher this year?” she could not stop herself from asking.
“No. My teacher will never see me again.” His gaze drifted toward the jars. “The specific reasons for that are rather inconvenient to elaborate on.”
“I am so sorry. I asked something I really should not have…”
“It is alright.”
Kagashi sealed the heavy lid onto the final wine jar and carefully moved the batch down into the cool shadows of the cellar. The task was complete.
However, just as he planted his feet to stand back up, a violent, overwhelming wave of dizziness crashed through his brain. The world spun out of control, and his failing body weakly collapsed against the cold stone floor.
“Mr. Kagashi! Mr. Kagashi?!”
Before his fading consciousness completely sank into the suffocating depths of darkness, the young girl’s panicked, desperate cries vaguely echoed in his ears.
After an unknown expanse of time drifting in the void, Kagashi slowly forced his heavy eyelids open.
Clarice’s familiar face swam into his blurry vision, though her normally bright and pretty features were now deeply etched with raw worry and sheer exhaustion. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, the damp tear stains still clearly visible on her cheeks, betraying the fact that she had been crying bitterly for quite a while.
“You are finally awake…”
Clarice’s voice was terribly hoarse, completely stripped of its usual youthful vitality and cheerful bounce.
Kagashi braced his hands against the bed, trying to push himself into a sitting position, only to find his limbs trembling. He was far too weak to exert even a fraction of his normal strength.
“I am fine…”
He froze the very second the words left his throat.
His voice lacked every ounce of the smooth clarity of youth. It was nothing but the dry, rattling hoarseness of an ancient, dying man.
“You suddenly collapsed without warning, and in less than ten seconds, your entire body aged right in front of my eyes! And you have the nerve to tell me you are fine?!”
Clarice absolutely did not believe a single word Kagashi said, her trembling voice carrying the heavy, broken weight of her sobs.
“…What exactly happened to you, Mr. Kagashi? Please, I am begging you, do not hide this from me, okay?”
Kagashi let out a long, ragged sigh, though he did not immediately launch into an explanation.
Unforeseen accidents always found a way to permeate the fabric of life. The special, potent medication he had carefully concocted earlier had finally developed a complete drug resistance within his system during these final, fleeting days of his life. Or perhaps, his rapidly decaying body had simply deteriorated to the point where it could no longer absorb the medicine’s sustaining effects.
In the end, the exact biological reason no longer mattered. He had fully intended to pass away quietly, utterly alone in the dark, but it seemed fate had decided that was no longer possible.
“Clarice,” he began, his ancient voice steady despite its frailty. “I am about to die of old age. It will happen on the day of the Great Cold.”
“What?!”
Seeing the girl’s face twist into a mask of utter, horrified disbelief, Kagashi calmly confirmed his grim reality once more.
“I am dying.”
Clarice’s expression instantly shattered, freezing in a portrait of pure devastation. A few agonizing seconds later, she vehemently shook her head, her hair flying wildly. “Impossible! You are just playing a cruel trick on me, right? How can a perfectly healthy person just suddenly…”
“There is no trick.”
Kagashi gently interrupted her frantic denial. His voice was incredibly weak, yet it carried a quiet absolute truth that mercilessly severed all of her lingering, desperate hopes.
“All these years, I have been taking a specialized medication to artificially maintain my youthful appearance. What you are looking at right now is my original, true form.”
The atmosphere inside the room suddenly plunged into a terrifying, suffocating silence.
Clarice opened her trembling mouth, but her vocal cords completely failed to produce a single sound. Looking at his calm, accepting face, and then lowering her gaze to his withered, heavily wrinkled hands, a horrifying realization suddenly crashed down upon her.
All that grand talk about traveling far away… about leaving for a few months, or perhaps even decades… it was all a lie! A beautiful, tragic lie meant to spare her.
“Why… why didn’t you just tell me the truth…” Her voice violently trembled, and her restrained tears finally burst forth, cascading down her cheeks uncontrollably.
“Because it would only cause you unnecessary sorrow.”
Kagashi smiled softly at her, his expression entirely open, peaceful, and fully accepting of his impending end.
“Being able to die naturally of old age is a deep blessing for a human being, but people are far too accustomed to defining all farewells as inherently sorrowful events.”
He slowly turned his weary head to look out the nearby window. The sky outside was rapidly darkening, the fading light mirroring his own slipping life.
“So, please do not be sad, silly girl. Not everyone has the immense fortune to die naturally at the end of their long road. You should be happy for this nearly one-hundred-and-seventy-five-year-old man.”
Clarice bit down on her lower lip so tightly she nearly drew blood.
Mr. Kagashi was actually going to die of old age. The ominous divination she had cast three months ago had not been entirely wrong, but it had not been entirely right, either.
How could she possibly say what she had desperately intended to say now? The precious gift and the heartfelt romantic confession she had painstakingly prepared for so long were now turning to ash in her throat.
Ever since the very first day she met Mr. Kagashi, this agonizing regret had been entirely inevitable. He could never accept her affections. Instead, a confession would only make him feel a terrible, crushing guilt, because… she understood Mr. Kagashi far too well.
Even if she poured her heart out and confessed absolutely everything, Mr. Kagashi would gently refuse her under the kind pretense of not wanting to hold her back in life. He would not even claim that he had no romantic feelings for her; he would deliberately use a blunt ‘I simply do not like you’ as his reason for refusal, just to make it easier for her to move on.
Mr. Kagashi was just such a tragically gentle person. He was a man who always wanted to take all the heavy responsibility, all the pain, and all the blame entirely upon his own shoulders.
But where was his fault in any of this?
Clarice felt utterly, devastatingly powerless. Fate was being exceptionally cruel to her. The person she loved with all her heart was sitting right before her, slipping away into the dark, yet she could not speak a single word of her love. To add the heavy burden of her romantic feelings to Mr. Kagashi’s weary soul in these final, fleeting moments of his life would be far too selfish.