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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 40
Chapter 40: He Waited a Lifetime, He Will Wait No Longer
The morning sky broke clear and cold the next day.
Two figures arrived at the edges of the Plum Grove from opposite directions, their footsteps crunching softly against the snow. Before a single greeting could pass between them, their eyes locked onto a familiar silhouette resting beside Kagashi’s tombstone.
She sat utterly still in the snow, her back pressed against the cold stone tablet, her eyes half-closed.
“A-Ruan?” Yu Qingtu breathed.
“It’s her…” Black Swan murmured.
Surprise washed over their faces, but it quickly melted into a heavy, complicated knot of emotions. There was a grim relief in their gazes at seeing the main culprit finally arrive, though neither had expected this bitter reunion to take over a century.
They approached slowly. A delicate layer of white frost clung to Ruan Mei’s long eyelashes and the cascading lengths of her dark hair. She had clearly sat there through the freezing night. It hadn’t snowed; otherwise, she would have been buried beneath a thick white shroud. Right now, she was a statue. Her eyes were dull, entirely devoid of light, and the rise and fall of her chest was so shallow it seemed to have stopped altogether.
Had they not been able to sense the faint, lingering aura of life clinging to her, Yu Qingtu and Black Swan might have believed she had already followed Kagashi into death. A suffocating aura of isolation surrounded her, walling her off into a desolate world of her own making. Ruan Mei didn’t even twitch at the sound of their approaching footsteps.
“How much do you know about the rest of Kagashi’s life?” Yu Qingtu asked abruptly, her voice cutting through the freezing air.
She knew Ruan Mei would hear her.
The reaction was instantaneous. The moment that name hung in the air, a hidden switch flipped within Ruan Mei’s frozen shell. The frost on her eyelashes trembled, shedding tiny ice crystals, and her deadened gaze turned with agonizing slowness toward Yu Qingtu.
“He excised his own Remembrance…” Ruan Mei whispered, her voice so hoarse and broken it barely carried over the wind.
Yu Qingtu and Black Swan exchanged a heavy look.
The Memokeeper did not hesitate. With a flick of her wrist, Black Swan tossed the memory bubble she had safeguarded for centuries directly toward the kneeling woman.
“The final moments of Mr. Kagashi’s life are all in there.”
Black Swan had been so eager to hand over this Remembrance, driven by her own selfish desires. She had wanted, more than anything, to witness Ruan Mei’s utter devastation and regret with her own two eyes.
But she had already seen the ending. The cruel words—’if only you had known then what you know now’—rose to the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them back. Looking at the pathetic, shattered state of the genius before her, Black Swan felt none of the vindictive satisfaction she had anticipated. Instead, a quiet, suffocating sorrow swelled in her chest.
Perhaps it was because she knew the truth: Mr. Kagashi had never once hated his teacher. His gentle nature had remained entirely unbroken, right up until his dying breath.
Ruan Mei lifted a trembling hand, catching the floating memory bubble and pressing it against her forehead.
Instantly, a flood of Remembrance washed over her consciousness. Scene after scene flickered behind her closed eyelids, and the sound of that familiar, gentle voice brought an agonizing spark of warmth to her frozen heart.
She saw Kagashi sitting with a young girl, telling her a quiet story about a couple destined to be separated forever. Listening to his interpretation of the tale, the truth crashed down upon her. She finally understood why he had chosen to walk away alone.
It was her. She had personally taken his fragile attachment to the mortal world and crushed it between her fingers, shoving him into the suffocating shadows of nothingness.
Fate possessed a cruel sense of irony. That exact day in the memory was the very same day Yu Qingtu had come to visit her. She remembered the arrogant words that had left her own mouth: ‘I have done nothing wrong, so why should I regret it?’
Looking back now, every single syllable was a jagged blade, and she could never take them back. Just like the cold, dismissive words she had hurled at Kagashi all those years ago, delivering his final sentence. Every bitter cause and tragic effect was entirely of her own making. Now, she was left to choke down this heart-burning, bone-searing agony alone.
Yet, she knew this pain was not even a fraction of the despair she had forced Kagashi to endure.
The memories shifted. She saw Kagashi smiling softly at Clarice, telling the girl that he had never once resented the unfairness of his fate. She heard him say that meeting his teacher, finding that brief salvation, was the sole compensation the universe had granted him.
But did Kagashi actually live the life he wanted?
She didn’t know.
Ruan Mei’s mind spiraled into a dizzying haze. Her A’Mu had spent his entire life being pushed along by the currents of others. The single time he had ever taken the initiative was to declare the end of his apprenticeship and bid her a final farewell. He had excised that unforgettable period of emotion, the burning devotion from age sixteen to eighteen.
But how could something carved so deeply into a soul be easily erased?
Even without his memories, he had composed that song, weaving lyrics and melody into a desperate plea. Her A’Mu had waited in the suffocating dark, praying for her to just look back.
Across those one hundred and eleven years, she had been given countless opportunities to turn her head.
But she didn’t.
His deep affection, sealed away in silence for three years, had never been spoken aloud. She had a hundred and eleven years to reach out, to shatter his despair, to prove that his endless waiting was not in vain.
But she didn’t.
A’Mu’s heart had shattered long ago. He could only numb the bleeding with wine, entrusting his lingering obsession to the cold, bright moon, asking the distant stars if she knew how much he hurt. But she had known absolutely nothing. She had traveled far away, walking her own solitary path, never once casting a glance over her shoulder.
He sighed over his deep love while she remained blissfully ignorant, leaving him to watch as his entire world crumbled into dust.
Through countless freezing autumns, A’Mu had held onto the fragile hope that she would look back. He never raised his voice, trapped in a silent abyss, until he finally let go of his grip on the mortal world and chose a quiet death. The past had twisted into a curse. They became strangers, and even after a lifetime of waiting, he couldn’t earn a single glance.
Even if a thousand cups of burning wine scorched his throat, it changed nothing.
“In this life, looking back suddenly, waiting through life and death, are you willing to stay together…”
“Sighing that the deep love is known, love finally results in holding hands…”
Ruan Mei mouthed the lyrics Kagashi had once sung, her dull eyes welling with fresh, scalding tears.
How could she not understand? This was the singular vision her A’Mu could not erase, the one dream that survived even the destruction of his Remembrance. He had hoped for a single glance back. He had hoped to spend a lifetime together, for both of them to realize their deep love and walk hand in hand.
But he never got it.
Not even as the light faded from his eyes.
It was all her fault… it was all her fault!
Why? She hadn’t even been angry back then. Why did she insist on driving him away with such freezing, merciless words? When A’Mu had pleaded with her, his voice breaking, why hadn’t her heart softened even a fraction?
Ruan Mei let out a miserable, broken laugh.
It was only because she couldn’t face her own failures. She couldn’t accept her inability to save her parents, couldn’t stomach her own incompetence, and had delusionally tried to mend a shattered past that was already gone.
That was all.
To chase the ghosts of the past, she had permanently slaughtered her own future. She deserved this. She had brought every ounce of this suffering upon herself.
The memory bubble continued its cruel playback. She watched Kagashi’s physical condition deteriorate day by day. She watched his frail hands pick plum blossoms from the snow, brewing Plum Blossom Wine for her one last time. She watched him painstakingly recall the recipe for plum-soaked soybean cake, making it one final time, leaving it behind for her future self to find.
She watched him bid a silent farewell to Clarice, and offer a regret-free, eternal goodbye to Obsidian.
He told them he had no regrets, claiming that was why he no longer clung to the mortal world. But that was a lie. He let go because he knew, deep in his weary soul, that his regrets could never be mended.
Short-Life Species were fundamentally different from Long-Life Species. To a Long-Life Species, a century was nothing but a fleeting breath. But to a Short-Life Species, it was an entire lifetime.
A’Mu had waited for one hundred and eleven years.
He had waited a lifetime, and he would wait no longer.
He had chosen the day of his own death. He arranged his affairs carefully, wanting nothing more than to leave quietly, refusing to let anyone shed tears over his departure.
Yet, on the final journey of his life, there was someone who loved him deeply enough to see him off.
Only, that person wasn’t her.
Finally, Ruan Mei witnessed the absolute final moment before Kagashi closed his eyes forever.
“Only pitying that you do not see the joy and sorrow, only sighing that our fate lies on separate sides.”
“The north wind swirls the snow and blows down the blossoms; the past flutters by, disturbing the heartstrings.”
“Endless words cannot be fully spoken; only Remembrance remains in empty, lingering affection.”
“In the end, a lone plum tree braves the cold years, unable to find the youth of that time…”
The memory bubble shattered, dissipating into a shower of glowing, ethereal light. Ruan Mei instinctively reached out, her trembling fingers clawing at the empty air to grab the fading sparks, but it was entirely in vain.
Her A’Mu had never hated her.
Ruan Mei slumped weakly against the cold stone tablet, her knees giving out completely. She bowed her head, her tears finally falling as a broken murmur escaped her lips.
“Why… why be so gentle to a teacher who hurt you like this…”