#and that's only through YWY's hope and tbh through her plotting too. having a companion rather than being alone in a world of paper.

[muninnhuginn]

The instinctive reaction for both Xiahou Dan and Yu Wanyin when they take their first lives is to just lean into the unreality of the situation. It's so much easier if their victims are just all paper people, 2D characters, and nothing else. But they still keep count of their kills, at least at first. The 2D person rationale is just to try and convince themselves when deep down they know better.

And the fact that Shanyi (number 27) is the one that finally makes Xiahou Dan stop counting. He hadn't given up after he killed the maid, despite the low point in his life that represented, but still trundled on as his bodycount piled up. Still tried to survive long enough to meet his companion. That *Shanyi* is the turning point that makes him embrace his role as puppet/tyrant emperor and stop trying to escape the narrative. And it was a death he didn't even directly *intend*; wasn't even conscious at the time. The death of someone who was killing to protect their closest person.

After he embraces his role, he still remembers what it was like in those early days, so even as he continues to hide from Yu Wanyin, he still offers to take any potential murders from her hands. He knows he's already too blood-soaked for it to make a difference for him, but Yu Wanyin still has hope. It still affects her when she has to dirty her hands. She's still a stranger in this land, compared to him who is now in many ways indisguishable from the tyrant role he plays.

And Yu Wanyin offered him hope when he had long given up, so of course, he wants to protect that. Even if it means killing others.

In the end, he's not so different from Shanyi.