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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 39
Chapter 39: So, She Was Not Without Tears
The Back Mountain was draped in a suffocating quiet.
The puppet carried a woven bamboo basket over one arm, its other hand gripping a small bamboo knife. Every time it passed a blooming plum tree, its wooden joints would pause. It carefully scanned the branches, selecting only the plumpest, most vibrantly colored blossoms. With a delicate, almost reverent motion, it plucked the petals and placed them into the basket.
This scene was agonizingly familiar to Ruan Mei.
Driven by Kagashi’s extracted memories, the automaton performed every single action with flawless precision, perfectly replicating the routine Kagashi had maintained year after year during his mortal life. Following a few paces behind, watching the sequence unfold, she stood frozen in the snow.
Kagashi’s memory backup from his lifetime was fundamentally incomplete.
After he had successfully cured Durand of her amnesia, he no longer required the grueling clinical trials or the invasive connection to the healing apparatus. Naturally, that meant there were no subsequent memory backups recorded in the system. The memories currently driving the puppet did not include the long, quiet years that followed.
To know what he was truly thinking in his final moments before his departure—was it ultimately just a vain, desperate hope? The puppet’s silhouette almost perfectly overlapped with the gentle figure residing in her memories, yet looking at it now, Ruan Mei felt only a chilling unfamiliarity. A sharp, stinging pain radiated through her chest.
She finally understood why Yu Qingtu had spoken those harsh words back then.
No matter how perfectly the exterior matched, it lacked Kagashi’s soul.
But still… this soulless creation had flawlessly executed its primary directive for hundreds of years. It had never once failed its creator.
And what about her?
Ruan Mei’s gaze darkened with an overwhelming sorrow. That solemn promise she had made to take full responsibility for A’Mu had long been tossed into the abyss of her neglect. Not only had it been completely forgotten, but she had actively shifted all the blame onto his shoulders.
The greatest sorrow a person could experience was the death of the heart.
Kagashi had willingly stripped away his most deep, cherished memories twice. Was that agonizing process any different from enduring the cruelest punishment in the universe?
The root cause of all this bitter fruit, from the very beginning to the bitter end, was herself. She had personally orchestrated the beginning of their bond, yet she had also personally buried everything, drawing a cold, definitive line through the time they had spent together.
Her gaze drifted back to the puppet harvesting plum blossoms ahead, and Ruan Mei felt the last vestiges of her strength drain into the frozen earth. A terrifying thought uncontrollably burrowed into her mind.
If Kagashi hadn’t created this automaton before he died, would she have discovered all of this sooner?
No… even if she had known, what could she have possibly changed?
From the exact moment the puppet was activated, nothing could be salvaged. The tragedy was already set in stone.
Ruan Mei forced herself up the stone steps, her pace heavy and dragging. In a hazy trance, the boundary between past and present blurred. She seemed to see phantom scenes materialize in the freezing mist before her. A young boy, his height barely reaching her shoulder, followed closely beside her, walking step by step toward the mountaintop with quiet devotion.
Ruan Mei blinked instinctively. The space beside her was empty. Only the biting wind remained.
A hollow disappointment silently spread through her chest. Unknowingly, she reached the summit, and a stunning panorama she had never witnessed unfolded before her eyes.
Pale sunlight poured down from the distant horizon, filtering through the intertwining red and white branches of the plum grove. It cast mottled, dancing shadows onto the unmelted snow beneath. There was no wind, no rain, and the snowfall had temporarily ceased. Just a few more steps forward, and she could merge entirely into this tranquil, isolated paradise.
Many years ago, there had only been a handful of plum trees here.
It was during the long century after Kagashi returned to his homeland that he had painstakingly transformed this barren winter mountaintop into an endless sea of blossoms. Flowers have a day to bloom again, but a person can never reclaim their youth.
Ruan Mei’s gaze wandered aimlessly through the grove until it suddenly locked onto a specific spot. Memories that had been sealed away for hundreds of years surged violently to the surface, allowing her to instantly recognize that particular plum tree.
It was the one she had planted with her own hands. And it was still alive.
Both Kagashi and the puppet he left behind had cared for that single tree with exceptional devotion. Seeing the object brought back a flood of fragmented moments; flashes of their daily life together played uncontrollably through her mind, and a dull, throbbing ache quietly drilled into her chest.
“…That is…”
Ruan Mei’s somber expression tightened. Her breath hitched in her throat as her gaze remained locked onto the base of that old plum tree.
A solitary stone tablet stood beneath its sprawling branches. Snow covered the base, but the deep inscriptions carved into the face of the stone were clearly legible.
[Tomb of Kagashi]
She shuffled closer, the snow beneath her boots emitting a faint, agonizingly slow cracking sound.
Besides those few characters, there was absolutely nothing else on the tablet. No birth or death dates, no brief account of his life, no grand eulogy. It was so clean and barren that it was heartbreakingly sad.
The puppet approached the tablet. It reached out with a wooden hand to gently brush away the thin layer of snow that had accumulated on the upper edge.
Ruan Mei looked at the mechanical servant, then back at the cold stone, and a desperate question burst from her lips.
“…Did he ask you to erect it?”
“No. The stone tablet was erected by Miss Black Swan,” the puppet replied, its voice devoid of inflection.
“Black Swan… is that Clarice?”
“Yes. Before Kagashi passed away, he entrusted Miss Black Swan with the request to bury him beneath this plum tree.”
Ruan Mei froze on the spot.
She found herself speculating, silently praying to whatever Aeon might listen.
Did choosing the spot beneath the very plum tree she had planted as his final resting place mean that A’Mu still harbored love for her? That he couldn’t forget her, even at the very edge of death?
A’Mu never hated her, even when he drew his final breath… was that it?
The mountain was deathly silent.
Ruan Mei slowly bent down, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the freezing surface of the tablet. The chill pierced straight through her fingertips, yet it was absolutely nothing compared to the vast, consuming void spreading within her soul.
For six hundred years, she had genuinely thought she had merely lost a student on a temporary basis. She had arrogantly believed that once she reached the end of her academic pursuit, she could simply turn around, find him, and bring him back.
Only now, standing before this lonely monument, did she truly understand.
What she had lost was an irreplaceable person who took everything about her—even her most casually spoken words—and solemnly integrated them into the very trajectory of his life.
A’Mu had only left her a plate of plum-soaked soybean cake that had once been forgotten, a loyal puppet executing its endless orders, and… this stone tablet.
The mountain wind had risen quietly at some point, sweeping through the plum grove and shaking a few delicate petals from the branches. They drifted down like crimson snow.
The puppet picked up its bamboo basket again and turned toward the next tree, continuing its eternal plucking work.
Ruan Mei stood before the grave for a long time, whispering softly into the cold air.
“A’Mu…”
The wind rustled the branches, but no one answered.
Only that puppet, not too far away, continued to execute the mission assigned to it as always. Plucking blossoms, guarding the forest.
Year after year.
With trembling hands, Ruan Mei took out the plate of plum-soaked soybean cake. She picked up a piece and placed it in her mouth, not caring in the slightest if the passage of time had spoiled it, and slowly chewed.
The familiar taste, spanning hundreds of years of separation, spread across her tongue, instantly awakening the warmest, most protected memories deep within her. It was exactly the same as the one A’Mu had made for her when he was eighteen.
But why… why did eating it feel completely different from back then?
Emotions that had been suppressed for centuries without her knowledge, violently colliding with the irreversible fact of Kagashi’s death, completely shattered her mental defenses.
That emotion she had never truly felt before—regret—scorched her heart, burning away every excuse she could possibly use for self-deception.
Ruan Mei had never shed a single tear when her parents passed away, nor when her grandmother went missing. She had always coldly rationalized to herself that crying could not change reality.
But now, clear tears slid down her pale face, which was shrouded in the deep shadows of the plum branches. One after another, the drops splashed onto the accumulated snow before the tablet, melting small, deep marks into the white surface.
She finally could no longer escape the truth.
It turned out, she was not without tears. It was just that her tears required a sufficiently long time, and a sufficiently heavy loss, to accumulate for one specific person.
Ruan Mei stared at the cold stone tablet, her vision blurring, feeling as if she could see straight through the rock to the gentle young man who had always quietly accompanied her.
It was far more than just regret.
Should she hate herself for being so slow-witted? Hate herself for being so blindingly arrogant? Or hate herself for failing to recognize his silent, unwavering companionship until it was far too late?
She had missed the entire latter half of A’Mu’s life.
A’Mu had departed carrying a deep, unspoken love, yet he had left an agonizing, eternal mark on the rest of hers.