Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 27

Chapter 27: The End of the Trek

“Please rest assured, I have only one simple request: please do not tell Teacher of my death. Not ever.”

The holographic projection flickered slightly, illuminating the dim room with a pale blue glow. Within the light, Kagashi offered a faint, peaceful smile.

“Teacher once said that if a hundred years passed without her contacting me, I should forget her.” He paused, his gaze lowering for a fraction of a second before returning to the lens. “I am about to die, which can be considered a way of following Teacher’s instructions to forget her.”

“As for the birthday gift Senior bestowed upon me, I am afraid I do not have the fortune to enjoy it.”

“I have lived a fulfilling life and have no desire for eternal youth. My only regret… is that I ultimately failed to persuade Teacher to stop that Forbidden Research.”

A quiet sigh escaped the young man’s lips, carrying the weight of a lifetime of quiet devotion. “Teacher let me complete my apprenticeship probably not out of anger, but because I am truly dull-witted and could no longer grasp any more of the knowledge she imparted.”

“The years of the Long-Life Species stretch on for a very long time. Perhaps in not many years, Teacher will have completely forgotten me.”

He offered a deep, respectful bow. “It has been an honor to know Senior during my short life.”

“Thank you for your constant favor.”

Kagashi straightened up, his gentle eyes seeming to look right through the projection and into the present. “I will stop here. Sen… Sister Qingtu, goodbye.”

The video message ended there, the blue light collapsing into a single dot before vanishing entirely.

Yu Qingtu stood frozen. Her lips parted slightly as she stared blankly at the empty air where the image had just been, unable to move for a long while. The silence in the room was suffocating.

“When… did he pass away?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically hollow.

“Based on the Remembrance, the conclusion is: Kagashi passed away nine days after receiving your birthday gift,” the mechanical puppet beside her replied in a flat, synthetic drone.

Yu Qingtu felt a complex mix of emotions churning violently in her chest. Stripping away the towering intellect and the inherent pride that belonged to a member of the Genius Society, she forced herself to deeply examine her inner heart. There, she confirmed a bitter truth.

Perhaps she really did like the little fellow. It was just the implicit arrogance of a genius that had caused her to brush the feeling off, attributing it to mere appreciation rather than genuine affection.

Realizing it now was already far too late.

Looking at the small, perfectly preserved item resting in the puppet’s metallic hand, Yu Qingtu carefully pinched a piece of the pastry Kagashi had left behind and placed it into her mouth.

The faint sweetness bloomed on her tongue.

In an instant, the regrets accumulated over countless years converged into a surging river, crashing violently against her heart. The dam broke. The image of his gentle smile froze in her mind on this very day, the day she learned of his death and heard his final goodbye, violently prying open the raw emotion called sorrow.

‘You only changed your address to call me Sister when you were dying…’she thought, her throat tightening.’Had I known, I should have made you bake pastries for me for a lifetime…’

“You little brat…” she whispered into the empty room.

Yu Qingtu solemnly took the remaining pastries, treating them like fragile artifacts. As for the birthday gift that she had sent out, only for it to be returned untouched… she gave a low, trembling sigh.

“Did the little fellow leave a grave for himself?”

“Please follow me,” the puppet stated, turning on its joints to lead the way out the door and toward the back mountain.

The winter air was biting. Arriving before an old, gnarled plum tree, Yu Qingtu looked down at the lonely stone tablet resting in the snow. Her heart suddenly seized.

Tomb of Kagashi.

There were only those four words carved into the stone. No life story, no origins, no list of achievements. There was not even a signature of the person who had erected the monument.

The plum blossoms were in full bloom above, crimson petals filling the branches like drops of blood against the white winter sky, a faint, elegant fragrance floating in the freezing air. But no matter how beautiful the scenery was, none of it could enter Yu Qingtu’s eyes.

She reached out, her bare fingers brushing over the rough, uneven surface of the tablet.

The touch was bone-chillingly cold, far colder than the winter wind biting at her skin.

She could almost see it. She could imagine Kagashi facing his final moments completely alone in this desolate snowscape. Given his stubborn, gentle personality, until his very last breath, the person he kept in his heart was likely still Ruan Mei. After his death, there was no one to bury him. No friends, no relatives, no mourners present to weep for his passing.

That was exactly why he had built a mechanical puppet to handle his remains.

He had left behind only this solitary stone tablet to remember a name that no longer lingered in the mortal world.

Only the lonely whistling of the cold wind remained in the plum grove.

Yu Qingtu stood before the tombstone. Though she had ten thousand things she wanted to say, ten thousand apologies and regrets, they were all stuck in her throat, choked by the freezing air.

It turned out a person could disappear from the universe so quietly.

A faint sound of something treading on the snow came from behind her.

Yu Qingtu turned her head to look.

It was a somewhat thin orange cat, its fur dull and matted with age. It looked vaguely familiar to her.

The elderly feline dragged its frail body step by step, its paws trembling as it slowly arrived beside Kagashi’s stone tablet.

The orange cat ignored the towering genius standing nearby. It used its front paws to slowly, methodically dig away the thick snow and the fallen petals, scraping until the frozen black earth beneath was finally revealed.

Its movements were agonizingly slow, its breathing ragged, but there was not the slightest pause in its labor.

The shallow hole was dug. It was neither too big nor too small, just enough to fit its own frail body.

The orange cat lowered its head to sniff the patch of frozen earth it had just cleared, then turned around and curled up inside the depression. It gently rested its chin on its crossed front paws, wrapped its tail tightly around its side to ward off the cold, and quietly looked up at the name carved into the stone tablet.

Yu Qingtu watched in absolute silence. She could see the cat’s thin abdomen rising and falling weakly with its breath, very lightly, very slowly.

After about half a minute, those clouded, aged eyes gradually lost their focus and closed completely.

The wind rose again, sweeping through the grove, and a few crimson plum blossoms fell, landing softly on the orange cat’s back and head.

It did not shake them off. It just lay there quietly, prostrate beside its master.

Yu Qingtu understood. The orange cat had finally reached the end of its long trek.

For twenty years, it had never left, stubbornly staying in the quiet place where its master once lived. It had waited until its natural lifespan reached its absolute limit, and then it had dragged itself to its master’s burial ground to wait for death from old age.

Yu Qingtu could not say a single word. Her vision blurred, her eyes turning completely red.

How many years had it been?

She could no longer remember how many centuries had passed since her eyes had welled up with tears for someone like this.

An irrepressible wave of regret rushed into her mind with an unstoppable momentum, tearing down her logical defenses.

If only she had delayed her departure by just ten days, twenty years ago. As long as she wanted to, a member of the Genius Society had countless ways to extend a mortal’s life. She could have saved him. She could have kept him here.

Thinking of everything in the past, Yu Qingtu tilted her head back, looking up at the gray sky, and took a deep, shuddering breath to force her turbulent thoughts down.

She opened the seal of the emerald green potion she held in her hand. Without hesitation, she poured the Longevity Liquid, a miraculous elixir that countless powerful figures across the cosmos would scramble and kill for, directly into the snow in front of Kagashi’s tablet.

“You little brat, there is no such thing as taking back a gift that has been given. You have to accept it even if you do not want to…”

Her voice cracked. She had not even accompanied Kagashi for as long as a simple cat had.

Her weight in Kagashi’s heart was far from reaching the level where the gentle young man would be willing to stay in the mortal world just for her.

‘He is of a Short-Life Species, unlike you. If you bury your head in research for another few dozen or a hundred years, he will have died of old age.”Aruan, the thinking of the Short-Life Species is different from that of the Long-Life Species.’

The harsh words she had once spoken to Ruan Mei suddenly echoed in her ears, word for word. A bitter hint of self-mockery appeared at the corners of Yu Qingtu’s lips.

All the boomerangs she had thrown had finally struck her own body.

Had she not also left for decades to pursue her own affairs, only to find out that Kagashi had died of old age without her knowing?

Had she not also habitually used the arrogant thinking of the Long-Life Species to presumptuously make choices for Kagashi, blindly believing he would simply linger in the world waiting for her return?

The only lesson humans learn from history is that they never learn from history.

Even Member 56 of the Genius Society chose not to extend his life, willingly entering eternal sleep after a natural death. Let alone Kagashi, who had always considered himself nothing more than an ordinary mortal.

Deep down, Yu Qingtu understood the logic. She knew that one should not force someone who no longer lingers in the mortal world to stay.

But where in this vast universe were there ever any ifs?

It was just that, for this brief moment in time, the great genius could not accept the cold facts. She desperately wanted to find an excuse, anything that could explain, vent, and cover up the suffocating regret filling her heart.

That was all.

After an unknown amount of time, the biting cold wind gradually died down.

The warm sun finally peeked out from behind the heavy winter clouds. The golden sunlight fell gently on Yu Qingtu’s snow-dusted shoulders, and illuminated the four words carved into Kagashi’s tombstone.

Yu Qingtu still stood quietly in place, her silhouette completely still. She did not move for a long time, waiting until nightfall descended over the mountain before she finally turned and walked down the snowy path.

The Bamboo House remained exactly the same. The quiet furnishings were exactly as they were before, as if nothing in the world had changed.

Except, there were no longer any traces of that gentle person living there.