If the Lunar Rite was a marathon through hell, Vivian was packing for a glamping trip.

  "What is this?"

  Leo held his breath, pinching a bottle of pink, rose-scented liquid between two fingers as if handling a live biochemical grenade.

  "Moonlight Dew." Vivian sat kneeling on the floor, meticulously organizing her exquisitely embroidered backpack. She looked up, eyes clear as a mountain stream. "To cleanse the sins from my hair."

  "Shampoo," Leo translated flatly, dropping it onto the electronic scale. "Do you know what these 200 grams represent? They represent half a high-capacity battery. Or a shot of adrenaline that could restart your heart."

  With a flick of his wrist, the "Moonlight Dew" traced a perfect parabola through the air and sailed out the window.

  "No!" Vivian screamed, scrambling like a rabbit to retrieve it. "Without it, sin will tangle in my hair!"

  Leo felt the nerves in his temples undergoing mitosis.

  This was a microcosm of the last twelve hours.

  The Battle Royale was imminent. While Leo tried to jam more anti-radiation injectors and high-calorie rations into the survival pack—which already housed a "Personal Field Generator" and an "Emergency Dialysis Machine"—Vivian acted like a hamster, frantically stuffing her personal treasures into every crevice.

  Moisturizer labeled "Immortal Holy Balm." Face towels dubbed "Cloud Saint Cloth." Even a rubber duck of unknown origin named "The Heart of St. Paul."

  "Listen." Leo stared into Vivian's eyes, suppressing the urge to trepan her skull just to see what was rattling around inside. "Twelve hours. We have to hike 300 kilometers. In a vacuum. In radiation. In minus 150 degrees. The field generator might fail. Your oxygen might leak. Accidents will happen. Whether your hair is smooth or your skin is moist is irrelevant. What matters is whether your cerebrospinal fluid freezes solid. Throw. This. Trash. Out."

  "They are not useless." Vivian’s eyes reddened. She stuffed her items back into the bag one by one, blocking Leo’s hand with her body. "If I die on the road covered in filth, that is blasphemy against God. It is disrespect to you, Master... please."

  She was using the word "Master" now. Combined with those damned, teary-eyed "Puppy Dog Tactics," it was a lethal weapon. Leo gasped for air.

  He was forced to run the cost-benefit analysis again: Confiscating the skincare raises her cortisol levels. Stress triggers rejection reactions. That consumes two extra sedatives. The math doesn't work.

  But... He looked at those wet eyes. Fine. Let her be.

  Leo gritted his teeth. "You carry it. But if something goes wrong, I'm melting that rubber duck into sealant. Now, emergency protocol."

  Leo pointed to the miniature dialysis machine.

  "This is your life. It goes in the dead center of the pack. Use these..." Leo picked up the blocks of high-polymer shock-absorbing foam. "Wrap it in these flexible plastics. Lock it in. Not a single vibration. Understood?"

  Vivian looked at the ugly white foam with utter disdain.

  "It's too ugly," she complained. "It will hurt the 'Heart of Fire Transmission.'"

  "Ugly? How can 'ugly' hurt a machine?" Leo was bewildered, his voice rising to a growl. "The dialysis machine has a titanium alloy shell! It doesn't fear pain; it fears resonance! It fears impact! It fears moon dust! Do as I say! No bargaining."

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  Ten minutes later.

  Leo stared at Vivian's backpack, lost in a long, existential silence.

  Vivian had thrown the shock-absorbing foam into the corner.

  Ignoring his instructions completely, she had wrapped the dialysis machine in her fluffy, thick bath towel, stuffing the surrounding voids with her underwear, shampoo, facial cleanser, and that rubber duck.

  He suddenly felt so tired.

  Logic and reason were useless against this woman. No matter what he said, her head was filled with Justice and Evil, Purity and Filth, Redemption and Destruction. Her mental world had only two poles: Black and White. The gray area in between didn't exist.

  With her temper, if she clashed with other competitors, this survival competition wouldn't be a race; it would be a slaughter.

  Leo slumped into a chair, clutching his head.

  This damned déjà vu.

  This paranoia of placing "Beauty" above "Survival," this pathological insistence on ritual... it made his stomach cramp with a familiar, buried terror.

  She is so like Mother.

  In the shelter on Ceres, that madwoman who would rather throw away two compressed biscuits to carry her painting tools. The artist who, under the red warning light of life support, didn't check the oxygen valve but pointed at the deadly radiation clouds outside the porthole, screaming in excitement.

  "Look, Leo. That is the violet spilled by God."

  "If one lives like a gray stone, what is the point of breathing?"

  "Humans all die; the process is everything."

  That was the curse his mother left him. The curse that killed her in the mining ship explosion.

  To fight this curse, for twenty years, he had honed himself into a cold scalpel, a precise calculator. He believed in Science, in ROI, in "Survival" as the ultimate truth. He thought he had successfully excised those lethal genes named "Romance" and "Brilliance."

  But now, watching Vivian stuff that stupid rubber duck into the towel, careful as if enshrining a holy icon, Leo realized with horror that he hadn't decisively thrown that trash out.

  Amidst the suffocating familiarity, there was a trace of desperate infatuation.

  Is this Fate?

  He was a moth that had evolved fireproof scales, spending half a lifetime fleeing the last inferno, only to inexplicably, willingly, land beside another fire—hotter, and even more unreasonable.

  She and Mother are the same.

  Creatures dancing on the cliff's edge. Innocent, cruel, and beautiful enough to blind you.

  This is simply... too damned.

  "But it's very warm. Right?" Vivian was still arguing righteously, completely unaware her Guardian had just undergone a mental collapse.

  "Crow!" Leo didn't want to waste more words. You aren't my mother. I couldn't save her, but you are my employer, and I must be responsible for the paycheck.

  "Simulate 'Freefall Impact.' Let her see how she dies."

  Crow, watching coldly from the side, pressed the test button.

  The simulation table activated.

  The mechanical arm grabbed the backpack loaded with the dialysis machine, field generator, and a pile of lifestyle items, simulating a tumble down a lunar cliff.

  Rolling. Impact. Bouncing.

  Leo crossed his arms, pre-judging the disaster. "See? You crazy woman, you just won't listen!"

  Bang! The backpack hit the ground hard. A muffled thud.

  The zipper burst open. The scent of roses filled the air. Indeed, things broke. Shampoo exploded, cleanser leaked.

  But Leo's hand froze.

  The scan results flashed on the screen: Dialysis machine integrity: 100%.

  [ SYSTEM ASSESSMENT: CORE COMPONENT INTACT ]

  [ BUFFER MEDIUM: UNKNOWN HIGH-VISCOSITY POLYMER ]

  Leo immediately realized: The bath towel and underwear, soaked with these viscous liquids, had become a non-Newtonian fluid buffer. The duck, and the spilled fluids filling every void... together they formed a dynamic shock-absorbing layer.

  "Seems shampoo is more effective than high-tech," Crow sneered from the side, twisting the knife.

  Vivian sighed. "Ah! My Holy Dew! All spilled!"

  Leo took a deep breath.

  The sense of powerlessness, of logic collapsing, struck again.

  He was a doctor, an engineer. He trusted Titanium, Kevlar, and Aerogel.

  But now? Stuffed lingerie and exploded shampoo were the superior solution.

  "Master?" Vivian looked at him with teary eyes. "Did I mess up again?"

  Leo looked at her, then at the slippery, rose-scented dialysis machine in his hand.

  "No." He looked up, his gaze turning resolute. "Go get your facial cleanser, hand cream, toner... all the sticky stuff."

  Since she insists on bringing them, turn them into armor.

  Since she wants to die exquisitely, let her die smelling fragrant.

  "And the ducks. Add a few more." Leo pointed at the yellow thing.

  Vivian broke into a smile through her tears, brightening the lab filled with rose scent and despair.

  "Praise you! I knew you understood my heart best!"

  Watching her cheerful back, Leo sighed and entered a new line of code into the terminal.

  [ PROJECT CODE: FORTRESS CHANEL ]

  [ CORE DEFENSE MECHANISM: HYDRAULIC BUFFERING ]

  [ PRIMARY MATERIAL: HIGH-POLYMER MOISTURIZING LOTION, DUCKS ]

  It's absurd. But it works.

  Just like this woman.