Several quiet days drift by, like leaves skimming a still stream.

After she sent her design segment to Professor F, the praise came bright as sunlight through glass for Flash Energy’s straightforward mechanics. She promised a one‑week draft—until Yekase’s words dropped like a judge’s gavel, and the schedule widened to two weeks for balance.

Her wallet wasn’t parched, the black market alley slept like a cat in shade. Professor F was buried in the Dragon-God Eden’s schematics, a furnace of focus you don’t poke. Ling Yi was on holiday at home, the sparring partner slot a vacant ring. After two, three days of relentless gears grinding, Yekase suddenly found the wind gone still on her deck.

“Ah…”

She sprawled on the rental’s floor, gazing up at a summer sky smooth as porcelain.

So bored, like a cricket in a jar.

It’s not that idleness is a curse, but even her usual games sat there with weeds in the pixels, controllers gathering dust like fallen leaves. Should she… read and study?

Fine. Study then. Bitter tea first, sweetness later.

Last night’s chat with Professor F lit a paper lantern in her chest. The world’s power systems are a constellation; no need to lock horns with Flash Energy alone. Truth is, her little gadgets already sip Mind Energy and Soul Power, shallow streams but still running.

Sorcery looked decent—if it’s the West’s common framework, there’s a reason etched like tide lines on stone. Today she’ll borrow a few magic textbooks, let the pages speak.

Resolved, Yekase throws on her jacket, then rides her stealth rig—currently in e‑scooter form—like a swift swallow toward Twin Towers City Library.

Twin Towers City ranks among East China’s giants, a skyline of steel thickets; its public library stands broad as a river barge, shelves like forests and air cool as ponds. Yekase only moved here after graduation, then got swallowed by 9‑9‑6 like a relentless tide, so she’d never crossed this threshold till now.

Ivy drapes the library’s back wall like a jade pelt. The entrance curves inward like a crescent bay, and the roof is a glass half‑sphere, a crystal moon propped by beams. Every time she’d passed, she used to mutter it was there just to “top a ball for show,” a joke tossed like a pebble across water.

She tries the kiosk by the door to make a card.

“Smile, smile…”

She squeezes out a retail smile, cheeks stiff as clay, but the card spits out a photo with hair draped and a crooked grin, a Sadako‑from‑The‑Ring look risen from a well.

“Damn, forgot to comb my hair again.”

Again? She almost never combs, a wind‑tossed reed by habit.

It costs twenty yuan to redo; that’s a sandbag on her budget. She lets it be, shoulders loosening like a slack bowstring, and examines the card top to bottom, a last glance like checking a raft before launch.

Twin Towers Library Card.

Photo: full-on Sadako.

Name: Yekase.

Sex: Female.

ID: 114514.

On the back, four calligraphic characters read “Voracious Reader,” brushstrokes like dragon whiskers.

“...Yekase, female. Heh.”

She slips the card into her wallet like a leaf pressed in a book and starts hunting the popular science section, shelves rising like terraces.

Calling “magic” popular science feels odd, like rain falling up, but modern folk filed the supernatural under science, materialists embracing the ideal with both arms like a long‑lost friend.

Textbooks and explainer columns now cover energies that bend metal like taffy, pop your soul out on the spot like a dandelion seed, grow stronger with shouting like a drumbeat rally, and let you float naked in your mind like a jellyfish in clear water. Those are exactly the pages she seeks, fish scales glinting in the stream.

She finds them in the second‑floor reading room, a quiet lake under glass.

You Can Learn Magic Too! Ten Daily Spells for Study Abroad.

How Sorcery Is Tempered.

50 Super‑Useful Little Spells.

Gulp.

Hugging the books, she settles into a seat, but the air in her chest tightens like a kite string.

Sorcery… magic… the vibe feels different, colors running like wet ink.

Flash Energy and Omega Ray are plenty fantastical, stars burning in their own right. But in her mind, magic users stay as robe‑wearing, staff‑wielding glass cannons from games, flicking fireballs like firecrackers.

No—breathe. She’s not learning to fight, just learning to understand. Just a map, not the battlefield.

She draws a long breath, cool as springwater, and opens the first book.

Sorcery, it says, is a non‑material particle abundant on Earth, a fine dust drifting even in space, thin as frost.

Earliest records date to before Christ, some legend claiming God’s mom woke up pregnant one morning like spring bursting, and the dad went to a witch to trace the father with magic like a divining rod.

In the West, magic and science ran side by side like twin rails, the framework maturing like oak. In the East, the counterpart Mind Energy wasn’t so lucky—monopolized by wandering adepts like river guilds in antiquity, and only after state amnesty did formal research rise like cranes.

Every spell needs Sorcery, and Sorcery flows from the environment like wind through reeds. It passes through the body as a channel, a stream with a daily cap per person, which quietly limits how many times you cast. Casting itself is like riding a bike; once learned, it sticks like muscle memory, and a cue word brings it out like a hawk to the glove.

That part’s convenient, like a pocket knife you always carry.

How to learn, then?

The next page introduces the first stepping‑stone spell, a pebble thrown to raise rings on water.

Connect to the environment, draw Sorcery into the body for use—the step every mage must take before any spell, the truest first spell:

Celestial Speech.

Method: sit cross‑legged, close your eyes, then silently repeat three times, “I’m a mage.”

That… idealistic, like praying to a seed and hoping for a tree.

Yekase glances around like a wary sparrow; no eyes fixed on her reed‑thin seat. She sneaks her legs up onto the chair, forcing a cross‑legged pose that feels like tying a knot in rope.

Eyes closed, she begins the mantra, words like pebbles sinking:

I’m a mage… I’m a mage… I’m a mage…

Something stirs in her mind, a white paste pressed and stretched by the mantra like dough, becoming a bright line that spans her inner darkness like a bridge.

Suddenly, a flame blossoms, a red flower in night. Lightning flickers from all sides, ghostlike forks of light, and five thunderclaps boom like drums across a valley. When the thunder fades, a fiercer blaze erupts, flames spearing skyward like sun‑gazing spears.

…Is that the end?

As if answering, tongues of fire fold back in an instant, replaced by azure ice crystals like winter leaves. Finally, a violet vortex swallows everything, a whirlpool pulling night back into night.

She exhales, a soft wind through reeds.

The memory rises like mist: years ago, the first time she extracted Flash Energy from the collider. After filling a plastic bottle to the brim like crimson wine, she didn’t run the next step. A ghost impulse twisted the cap back open; when no one watched, she tipped a few drops onto the back of her hand like dew.

The shimmering red liquid glowed faintly, warmth spreading like sunlight through skin. Embarrassing in hindsight, yes, but she was moved, like a door in the world opening to a dazzling garden, everything brighter, edges lit.

Yes—just like now…

Hmm?

Are the reading room bulbs this bright, like noon spears?

With a bad premonition curling like smoke, she opens her eyes.

In front of her, the three books she had only read one page of

are burning—flames licking like hungry wolves.

…

…

“Oh crap?”

Book damage fees. Three volumes. A bonfire of cash like leaves blazing.

No time to think. She lunges and smothers the fire with her body, heat biting her like ants, and yowls without dignity.

Her scream rings through the reading room like a struck bell, heads lifting like sunflowers tilting to light. They see a little girl sprawled across a table, smoke curling like thin snakes from both sides of her torso.

“What happened?” “Are you okay?” “You alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine… sorry… sorry to bother you…”

She wants optical camo right now, to vanish like fog over water. She forces a mortified smile and peels herself off the table, skin stinging like nettles.

A wide patch of her shirt front is scorched and torn, a black moth‑hole.

“Uh…”

Good thing she wore an old T‑shirt—thin fabric, a paper window for heat, pain pricking like thorns. Yet, past the sting, a realization drops like a coin: flames don’t spawn in a reading room out of thin air. Those sparks had to be hers.

While attempting Celestial Speech, her mental picture of mages must’ve slipped in, and her hands pulled an immature fire spell like an accidental trigger.

Because of a crash course in a new system, the books she just borrowed are wrecked like fallen kites.

Bowing her head with quick apologies like scattered rice, Yekase hugs the wounded books and flees the reading room, dashing into the restroom like a startled deer. She hunches over the sink and flips each book to its back with trembling hands.

“Thirty‑five yuan… twenty‑eight yuan… forty‑eight yuan!!”

Total: one hundred eleven. Two days of living money, a pond drained. And compensation will be more than sticker price, a wave higher than the last.

Why did it come to this? Paper and printing have marched forward like iron birds, yet physical books get pricier like tides climbing the shore. What are you all even doing?

She sighs, a reed bending in wind, tosses the doomed books onto the counter, and faces the mirror over the sink, a silver lake.

The shirt’s a lost cause; thank heaven for the jacket, a cloud to cover. She lifts the hem and sees skin reddened in a wide patch, a sunrise blotch. Good thing she moved fast—the fire went out in an instant, no lingering damage like embers.

No towel nearby, so she cups water in her hands like shells and cools the burn on her belly, ripples calming.

“So this is the mature, simple, easy‑to‑use magic framework—safe as a cradle, huh.”

She remembers history pages: in the quiet days before the Sinister Organization rose like a black tide, Westerners were per‑capita armed, pistols common as umbrellas. Tossing fire might be everyday for them, a campfire trick.

“Fine. One more try… Celestial Speech.”

There’s water here and no kindling to feed a blaze. This time, nothing happens but a smooth success, calm as a pond.

She can feel Sorcery streaming into her body, a cool current tugging reeds. But she doesn’t plan to turn herself into a hero unit, a banner on the field.

Magic is popular in the West, yet the Sinister Organization isn’t gone; that says enough. If she starts halfway like this, a year or two won’t crown her a storm. She knows her limits like a fence line.

Self‑defense? If her black‑tech gadgets can’t cover emergencies, Sorcery won’t be her shield either, not yet.

She came to research the competitor, a market comparison under clear light.

…Go ask the front desk about compensation.