First came about a minute where her eyes refused to open, sight drowned in ink-black dusk.

If the window opened, it meant Ending Three; so just wake the Doctor, like raising a lantern against a storm. Kagari’s armor could eat a few lasers like a cliff takes waves; she’d body‑block.

“Doctor, wake up!”

“Mmm… ugh…”

This one could sleep like a stone at the riverbed, heavy and unbothered.

Ling Yi scooped Yekase up, mechanical claws flaring like bronze petals, shielding the head and legs that slipped past her arms, then charged toward the door her memory painted in chalk.

Thud! The wooden door popped like a dry branch, and they burst into the hallway like wind from a broken gourd.

So far, smooth as still water—no reset, no “Doctor detected,” a silence like fog. Maybe there was logic in the robot’s steps, a clockwork hidden in its chest, but that puzzle felt like thorns; she’d let Yekase think when she woke.

…Hoo.

Warm breath rose from the bundle in her arms like steam off rice, and motion trickled back like sunlight through bamboo.

“Doctor, you awake?”

“…Do I have to wake like this every loop, like being called on in class mid-dream, a chalk snap to the ear?”

“I can’t help it; please hang in there, like a reed against rain.”

“Mm.”

Yekase squinted at the dim around them, eyes narrow as crescent moons, and asked, “A hallway? New phase?”

“Yes! The robot should’ve been outside the window hunting you like a hawk, but I covered you, and it didn’t show!”

“Is that so… looks like it doesn’t care about you, like a cat ignores a stone.”

“It killed me with you the first two times, like mowing two stalks with one swing…”

“Convenience, probably, like swatting flies in passing.”

Ling Yi’s sight bled back like dawn thinning fog; she scanned both ends of the corridor, a river split, and found no trace of the robot’s shadow.

“Doctor, ‘Dew’ was your design; you should know how this mirage runs, like the gears inside a clock, right?”

“I knew the original, like the seed before rain. But this… this bloom has been modded by Jia—by the one who churns out mass machines, warped like vines on a ruined wall. Before, it only spun a few phantom decoys, never a whole scene stitched like theater cloth…”

Let’s check the living room and take the lay of the land, like mapping currents in dusk.

The living room, lamps dead as moths, stood empty, no robot—a quiet pond. Through the street‑facing window, familiar blocks still gleamed with neon flicker, a city river glinting as usual.

Both breathed out together, twin reeds bending with the wind.

“Ling Yi, which loop is this? Tell me what happened before I woke, like laying stones on a path.”

“The fourth! The first two, I came to wake you, and the robot outside the window killed us both, clean as frost. But breaking the window forced a reset, so we lucked into a third run. In the third, I opened the window myself; the robot popped into the room like a ghost through silk! I nearly died of fright, like a sparrow under thunder!”

Yekase caught the thread at once, fingers quick as needles: “In the third, you did something different, and it didn’t kill you too. What changed?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it baited me to self‑destruct, like luring a moth to flame?”

“We’re inside a mirage; nothing we do lands in the real; in principle, it doesn’t matter who ‘kills’ you—chalk vanishes in rain. As for ‘Dew,’ the one thing I’m sure of is this: illusions need a medium, and the medium can’t be the target. It can be a forest, a street, a house—”

“—A house?”

“A house!”

Their eyes lit like lanterns taken down from eaves.

“That explains it! Shattering the window triggers reset because the mirage, woven through your house as medium, tears like paper! But if we don’t break the window, it can’t touch me, like a wolf barred by a fence!”

“Ha, simple enough—”

Ling Yi’s eyes flared wide, pupils tight as pinheads.

“What is it?”

She lifted her right hand, pointing past Yekase… toward the shadow behind her like a blade drawn.

“Doctor detected.”

Uh‑oh—like thunder rolling low.

“Break the window, quick—”

“Current time: Beijing Time 23:59. Extermination authorized.”

—bzzt.

The robot’s gaze swung to Ling Yi, a blade of cold moonlight.

It didn’t vanish—so it had grown another thorn of hatred? What decided its hate list, like names inked on a ledger—

“Damn it!”

Ling Yi caught Yekase as she tipped like a felled sapling, ignored her order to reset like a bell cut short, and slashed forward, a streak of river silver!

“You’re pushing it! To hell with mirage and reset—if I drive you back, the tide breaks!”

“Idiot… it’s still… a mirage…” Yekase spat blood, a poppy stain blooming, “Don’t waste… reset quick, it hurts like winter knives…”

“Won’t know till we try!”

Ling Yi’s blade bit toward the robot, but it didn’t dodge; it raised a forearm like iron bark and took the blow, no mark, no dent, a mirror lake.

“Okay. Now we know.”

The robot spat another laser, a lance of white sun; Kagari’s armor didn’t pierce, but the burn gouged deep as canyon soot, a warning that a few more would fell the tree.

Reset might be the only rope left across this ravine…

“What… time is it?”

Ling Yi didn’t know why Yekase asked— the robot had said it like a temple bell— but she glanced at the wall clock, its hands like thin reeds, and answered, obedient as rain, “Eleven fifty‑nine!”

Yekase’s eyes were dimming, frost creeping at the edges, her murmur cracked like ice: “So cold… if this keeps up… my body will think it’s a real… mortal wound… then…”

“I’ll reset now! Next time—”

“Open the window, and don’t mind me… don’t touch me either! Go find… where it came in… see you on loop six!”

She licked the blood from her lip like tasting bitter tea and gave Ling Yi a shaky thumbs‑up, a candle against wind.

“Use those… seven minutes well!”

“I got it!”

Ling Yi grit her teeth, heel stamping like a drum, then hurled Sky Striker at the living room window, arm arcing like a comet.

The second laser punched the armor with a furnace hiss,

and the glass shattered with river‑ice crack, both sounds twinned like thunderclaps.

In her blurring sight, the robot still stood rooted like a pylon. Her body didn’t go cold—Kagari held her in a cocoon like warm ash, protecting its pilot. Wrapped in that warmth, the last strand of fear and panic melted like frost in sun.

“Let’s start over—together—until we clear the stage!”

…

……

“—Huaa!”

It felt like surfacing after three minutes underwater, lungs filled with new air like spring rain, the iron taste gone like rust washed clean—reset succeeded.

“Flashblade Activation!”

“Sky Striker Ace! Code-01!”

“KAGARI!”

From last time, she knew: even if she didn’t find Yekase in a heartbeat, the robot would crash into the Ling house at 23:59, the eve of August 16, hunting like a hawk.

So, per Yekase’s plan, she’d use Yekase as bait and replay the third loop, thread by thread.

If it went smooth, Ling Yi would harvest seven minutes of free time, a pocket of dusk to roam.

“I’m heading out, Doctor.”

She wanted one more look at Yekase before leaving, a glance like touching a lantern, but her vision was still milk‑thin; she stepped straight into the hallway, feet light as smoke.

Last time the robot appeared directly in the living room like a ghost, so the two deeper bedrooms could wait; with her home’s layout mapped like a garden in mind, the likeliest entry was the kitchen or the front entry window, two mouths of a cave.

Find it, and next time she could leave the bedroom safe, then sprint to shut it like clapping a book. Then she could face off with ‘Dew,’ two storms meeting on the plain—

After the standoff, what then?

She’d wing it, like a swallow under cloud.

Truth be told, Ling Yi didn’t want to think too much; thoughts were ivy, and today she wanted clean stone.

The evening fight had been crisp like bamboo strikes— as a first formal battle, it felt like an apprenticeship, merciful compared to ‘Dew,’ which specialized in spooks like a haunted well.

Speaking of that counterfeit Zec, police said the man driving the mass‑produced unit that attacked the street wasn’t from Unrecognized Consortium X; he was an outsourced fighter, a mercenary, a hired blade with mud on his boots.

After arrest, he confessed clean as a ledger, but refused to name the client; Ling Yi only knew he was looking for someone. Now it seemed he was hunting the Doctor… so that’s why she left the field (not the reason), and Consortium X still found this place, vines creeping to the door.

She had to beat ‘Dew’ here, cut the thread before it carried news back to Consortium X, if she wanted to keep the Doctor safe, like guarding a brazier in wind.

—Even if she used the Doctor as bait.

“Contradictions front and back, huh…” Ling Yi couldn’t help but laugh, a ripple loosening her chest.

Kitchen window… confirmed closed, panes like sealed lake ice.

Entry window… open by a hair, a slit like a cat’s eye.

There it was.

Ling Yi slid the window shut and locked it, a click like a pebble, then returned to the room like a shadow folding.

Living room, hallway, bedroom, courtyard— nowhere showed the robot’s shape; night settled back into quiet like silk.

The Doctor slept on, uncalled by Ling Yi, chest rising steady as tides.

Ling Yi picked up the desk alarm clock, a little moon on metal feet.

11:57.

Three minutes to August 16, hanging like a ripe plum.

She breathed deep, set her hands like stones, and waited.

She had never hungered for tomorrow like this— not before high school began, not before summer break— she’d always kept normal hours like a well-tuned drum.

As a hero, would she have to pull all-nighters, lamps burned low? Would she need extra hours honing combat skill and piloting armor, sweat like rain? Would she worry about her identity leaking and danger curling toward her family, like smoke under doors? Should she find other heroes and weave ropes together?

While her mind wandered like leaves in current, the second hand slid another lap across the face, silent as moonlight.

11:58!

The robot, in forced extermination mode, circled the Ling house like a hawk, skimmed past Ling Yi’s window like a shadow, but found no crack to invade; then it began spinning loops like a glitched moth around a lantern, round and round.

“If this keeps up—”

11:59!

The robot halted outside Ling Yi’s window, looming like a cliff.

Just like the first and second times.

Just like the first and second times?

…Wait.

Those first two times it shot through the glass and killed the Doctor, clean as a spear through paper— even if it forced a reset, it didn’t care, a torment designed to grind them to madness like millstones. But why, after they “figured out” the entry and reset trick, did it now pause, obedient as a guard at a gate?

“—Flashblade Activation.”

A voice as cold and mechanical as frost called from beyond the window.

“Sky Striker Ace! Code-04!”

“SHIZUKU!”

And she answered with the same bloodline call, two rivers meeting.

Azure gear latched onto the robot’s frame like water armor, and it stood facing the risen Ling Yi, two blades under moon.

“So you’ve been pushed into fighting yourself…”

In that instant, Ling Yi understood, the thought striking like lightning:

Wearing armor didn’t mean it had grown stronger; it meant one thing—

It believed armor was necessary.

If it were still that empty‑handed, blade‑catching, no‑mark monster of earlier, it’d have no reason to change; it would just fire a single laser like noon sun and see us next loop.

An enemy that looked stronger brought a spark of hope, like dawn in mist.

Ling Yi raised Sky Striker, blade steady as a crane, waiting for the robot’s next move— and for tomorrow to arrive like a drumbeat.

59:36.

It stepped, one foot like iron on earth.

59:40.

It reached the window, close as frost to glass.

59:45.

“—Wh—”

It walked through the wall like a ghost through paper.

Just like that, it entered the room, a chill spilling like night water.

“Doctor detected. Current time: Beijing Time 23:59. Extermination authorized.”