Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 31

Chapter 31: Home is Important

Inside the Bamboo House, Ruan Mei stepped effortlessly into the folded space Kagashi had left behind.

The puppet operated using his memories as a power source, meaning there had to be relevant records stored somewhere within. Unless her student had violated regulations and risked his own cognitive stability, a backup of the memory data transmission had to exist. The puppet’s internal database lacked these specific files, leaving her no choice but to extract them herself.

‘Was it formatted…’

It hardly mattered. Such trivial obstacles could not stop her.

Ruan Mei forcefully suppressed the chaotic thoughts swirling in her chest. She focused her mind, pressing her slender fingers against the cold surface of the central console. Time ticked by in heavy silence as a relentless flood of data cascaded across the screen, illuminating her impassive face in pale blue light.

After an indeterminate wait, her fingertip lightly tapped the final key. The system chimed, successfully recovering all the deleted data.

Among the salvaged files lay Kagashi’s digitized memory backup.

For a genius of her caliber, this was merely a matter of time. There was zero technical difficulty involved. Ultimately, almost every scrap of knowledge inside Kagashi’s head had originated from her own teachings.

Selecting the period exactly one year prior to his death, she immediately initiated the review process.

Then, she encountered an unavoidable flaw.

Digitized memories in this raw state could only be viewed visually. Aside from the visual feed of the events, everything was dead silent. There was no sound of his voice, no echo of his inner thoughts. It was like watching a lengthy, silent film of a person’s life, stripped of all dubbing and subtitles.

To grant these fragmented scenes sound and thought, one had to access the original owner or secure a compatible carrier medium.

Although Ruan Mei could use these silent clips to observe the mechanical process of Kagashi creating the puppet before his death, she still could not read the underlying reason why he had done so.

He owed her nothing. All emotional ties should have been cleanly severed the moment his heart stopped beating. Why go to such lengths to leave behind a puppet, desperately maintaining the frayed rope connecting their relationship?

Was it simply because she was his teacher, the singular figure who had pulled him back from the icy brink of death?

Ruan Mei could not understand it.

Was it mere respect and love for a mentor?

She could not even recall the names, let alone the blurred faces, of the scholars who had imparted knowledge to her during her own childhood. All respect and affection became completely frozen in the past the moment their interactions ceased. The love a student harbored for a teacher was fundamentally incomparable to the deep, binding ties between family members.

Ruan Mei believed she had long since mastered the concept of love.

Her entire existence, from childhood to adulthood, was inseparable from the pursuit and observation of love. She could detect its subtle differences, isolate its variables, and even identify its different scents.

She was not Kagashi’s family. Kagashi’s affection for her should have mirrored her own clinical appreciation for her past instructors.

Gradually, a thick fog of confusion settled over her mind.

Kagashi’s behavior was, once again, entirely unexpected and difficult to dissect.

It was exactly the same as that incident when he was eighteen, when he had suddenly reached out and touched her foot.

She possessed no similar life experience to draw upon. At the time, she could only attribute the action to a living organism’s instinctive biological desire for the opposite sex, even though such behavior was highly inappropriate given their established dynamic. Such base desires had no place between a student and a teacher.

So, after a brief, logical consideration, she corrected the anomaly.

After spending a few days locked in solitary confinement, Kagashi never committed the offense again. He morphed back into a satisfactory, highly disciplined student.

That discipline lasted until the day Kagashi took it upon himself to delete her research data, earnestly advising her to abandon her forbidden experiments.

But ultimately, she had categorized that act as the instinctive, cautious behavior of a fragile living being confronting the terrifying unknown. It was concern. It was a type of love a student held for a teacher.

Since that did not count as a malicious mistake, she refrained from punishing him.

Their philosophies were simply incompatible. His comprehension and natural aptitude made it difficult for him to master the more complex, dangerous knowledge she pursued. Forcing Kagashi to stay by her side would have been detrimental to both parties.

With the knowledge he currently possessed, he could easily carve out a colorful, comfortable life in the vast majority of world civilizations across the cosmos.

In order to fully dedicate herself to her research without distraction, she allowed him to complete his apprenticeship and leave.

Filled with lingering confusion, Ruan Mei stared at the glowing screen, then shifted her gaze back to the central console.

Since the original owner was dead, the only remaining option was to find a carrier medium.

Her first thought drifted to the puppet.

Implanting the raw memories into the puppet’s artificial core was equivalent to finding a carrier medium in a roundabout way. Modifying a few internal programs would then allow the memories to be viewed in full sensory detail.

However, the drawbacks were severe. It was highly inefficient.

The Memokeepers of the Garden of Recollection likely possessed highly efficient methods for this exact scenario, or perhaps she could use specific curios. Yet, the option of using the puppet remained unsatisfactory, leaving only one viable alternative.

Becoming the carrier herself.

Ruan Mei acted the very second the thought crystallized in her mind.

If one did not walk the Path of Remembrance, carrying another person’s memories was no child’s play. The difficulty was astronomical, and the risk factor was even higher.

If handled improperly, the best-case scenario involved severe mental confusion, rendering the host unable to distinguish their own identity from the memories.

The Cremators of the Remembrance possessed the terrifying ability to forge memories and implant them directly into a target’s brain, effectively transforming them into an entirely different person based on those fabricated pasts. The underlying concepts between that process and her current plan were quite similar.

At worst, the resulting memory disorder could lead to irreversible brain nerve damage.

Fortunately, her current research direction already heavily involved the domain of memory. Mastering this was an indispensable link if she ever wished to achieve her ultimate goal of resurrecting her parents.

Her fingers danced rapidly across the central console keys. Ruan Mei quickly completed the compilation of the memory transplant program.

She retrieved the necessary equipment, carefully attaching the cold metal electrodes to her temples.

Without a single second of hesitation, she pressed the start button.

She did not induce sleep. She chose to operate the system while remaining in a fully conscious state.

An unbearable, agonizing stinging pain instantly pierced through her brain.

‘Is the transmission speed too fast…’

Ruan Mei realized she had been far too impatient. It was biologically impossible for a human brain to receive a lifetime of Kagashi’s memories within a mere five minutes.

Gasping softly, she temporarily adjusted the program, extending the transmission time to twenty minutes.

It still hurt. The sharp agony threatened to tear her consciousness apart.

She adjusted it again. One hour.

The symptoms of severe discomfort finally lightened, settling into a dull, bearable ache.

Next, she just had to wait.

Ruan Mei began to flip through Kagashi’s memories, starting from the exact year he officially became her student.

After all, even after the entire data package was received, she still could not bypass this linear process. It was exactly like reading a new book. One could not grasp the content of the next page without first turning the current one. Skipping pages would mean missing critical context from before. She had to proceed step by step.

That year, Kagashi was only eleven years old. The terminal illness ravaging his small body had been mostly suppressed.

At such a tender age, his family had been ruined. His home was destroyed, and his hometown had been reduced to floating cosmic dust. He had absolutely nowhere to go.

“I can take you as my student. Are you willing?”

Hearing his own memory replay, Ruan Mei watched herself nod slightly and take the young Kagashi’s hand.

“Then come with me.”

“Where are we going, Big Sister?”

“To a world with only the two of us. This place isn’t suitable for conducting research. Also, call me Teacher from now on.”

“Oh. Then what about Teacher’s home? If no one looks after it, it will be covered in dust.”

“The migration curio isn’t on hand right now, so I can’t move it for the time being. I’ll just get it back and migrate it after a while.”

“I understand… Then when the time comes, let me help Teacher bring our home to that world where it’s just us.”

The young boy looked up at her, revealing a clean, incredibly pure smile.

“Home is very important. I don’t have a home anymore, so Teacher can’t be like me.”

Ruan Mei sat slightly dazed in the present. Her chest tightened, her heart feeling as if it were being violently scratched by invisible claws.

She had long since forgotten this specific memory.

She could not even… remember clearly where her own home was located anymore.

Combined with Kagashi’s vivid memories, those discarded, forgotten scenes of the past suddenly became piercingly clear once again.

Later on, Kagashi never actually came back to migrate her home.

It was not that he did not want to fulfill his promise, but rather that she herself had casually dismissed it. She had told him: There is no need.

The IPC possessed all kinds of convenient goods, including portable mobile manors designed for people to live anywhere. As long as one had enough Credits, any scale of luxury was possible. Why make a student take several exhausting trips back and forth across the stars for a physical building?

At that time, the young boy had looked at her and said this:

“When I graduate in the future, I’ll go back and help Teacher look after the house.”

And she, entirely focused on her endless research, had simply replied:

“As you wish.”