…Yet nothing happened. Silence settled like dust on a dead switch.
Yekase had hoped to snag a free plug‑in and fire a magic cannon on the spot. No such luck; the wish wilted like a cut flower. With no other way, she called her last ally—the Transfer Box—and had it beam in the tablet, a lifeline drifting in like a buoy.
Flat on her back, the phone could drop and smash her face like a falling brick.
But Yekase had a little trick, a crane-fold of cunning tucked in her sleeve.
“Oz Floating Disc.”
She conjured a slope beneath her head, like a dune lifting her pillow.
“Levitation Spell.”
She raised herself and nudged her angle, like a tide easing a boat.
Good—her upper half reclined against a makeshift backrest, sturdy as a chair carved from air.
She propped the tablet on the disc and pressed where her memory said the power key lived, fingers tapping like rain on a tin roof.
In her mad world smeared with color blocks, a small screen bloomed like a lantern in fog.
She could see—she could see the screen clearly, sharp as a lighthouse in mist.
Relief surged warm as tea; she almost cried.
Earlier, curiosity had pricked like a thorn: what truly differed between flower‑screen vision and myopia? Even nearsighted eyes can bare‑eye read a display, a window lit in the dark. On that slim hope, bored as a boat in dead water, she labored herself into tablet posture.
If she still couldn’t see—then she couldn’t see. She’d open the music app by memory and listen, letting melodies fall like spring rain. Songs aren’t illegal, right?
Luckily, when Flash Energy shut the door, it left a window ajar, a slit of light on the wall.
Back then she’d installed legit voice control so she could paint while watching anime—one word to steer the whole tablet, a straw to cling to in floodwaters. Now it was her lifesaver.
“Open [Spell Index].”
The magic textbook on her desktop spun up, pages fluttering like wings, and flipped to [Sorcery Relay]. Yekase summoned the search box and spoke the name aloud:
“—Telekinesis!”
[No entries found containing “Telekinesis.”]
“Psychokinesis?”
[No entries found containing “Psychokinesis.”]
“Mage Hand?”
[No entries found containing “Mage Hand.”]
…
Dead in the water.
What kind of magic system is this? It harms more than it helps. How does it not have the most classic telekinesis skills? For a mage, snapping a finger to command nearby brooms and books should be standard kit, like a broom in a janitor’s closet.
Trash—zero UX. She ignored that she’d used magic just to fix her posture and reach the tablet, and, bored as autumn waiting on frost, voice‑flipped the textbook page by page, leaves drifting across a stream.
Idle tide washed in; maybe there was a spell you could learn while lying perfectly still…
[Delayed Chant]
[Effect: Within 30 seconds, temporarily store the next spell.]
[Learning condition: Rotate your body counterclockwise 10 times.]
…Moving a little wasn’t impossible; a millwheel could still turn.
She was intrigued by its hazy promise, fog hiding a trail through pines.
The looser the ability, the stronger it plays—like water filling any vessel. What spell types can it store? What parameters on release? Can it fire any time? Is thirty seconds a buff window or the max storage? Those grains of sand would determine whether it became her third go‑to spell.
Oh, counting the currently unusable [Nightlight Torch], it gets bumped. Just the name is slick, like lacquer; it screams big‑ultimate—her next major project, a storm waiting beyond the ridge.
As for a new shape for the Flashblade System?
Once her body moves, she can refit it in a day, quick as a smith hammering a blade. Naming might take longer; calligraphy outlives the ink. Hardly a “project.”
She slid the tablet aside with the Levitation Spell, an autumn leaf pushed by wind, then tried spinning on the bed.
The plan to learn telekinesis and ditch disability failed; the kite string snapped. So she kept burning Sorcery, letting the workhorse Levitation pull overtime, stir‑frying herself by hand like a chef tossing a wok.
She spun till her mind wobbled like a top; finally, she hit ten turns.
“[Delayed Chant]!”
A black clock rose in her mind, a moonless face.
Short hand up, long hand down… While she wondered if this was mental interference, the second hand ticked past three, a woodpecker on bark.
Let’s ping the effect, toss a pebble in the pond.
“Levitation Spell.”
Target: the blanket draped over her, a cloud across hills.
Yet nothing happened. No visuals; the hush was mist behind glass.
Only the mind‑clock reset to thirty seconds, whispering the spell had been delayed, a bell muffled in snow.
Storage time is thirty seconds too? Barely enough, a sparrow’s breath in winter.
Release it now, imagine stronger lift, change target to her left hand, a reed turning with wind.
The blanket rose a few centimeters, a tide nibbling at shore.
Looks like stored spells fire with a thought—more like a checking account than a locked chest. The target and parameters lock at storage; stone once carved holds its mark. She’d never expected edits—otherwise why not recast? At best, she could pre‑buff sixty seconds, a minute bottled like rainwater—already beyond expectations.
Satisfied, Yekase decided: if Ling Yi brought dinner tonight, she’d tease her with this, a cat flicking a string in moonlight.
Knock, knock!
No sooner thought than wood tapped like a sparrow’s beak on a bamboo gate.
She glanced at the tablet’s top right—dinnertime already, the sun sliding behind roofs. The three nodes below were likely out of juice; no motion at all—not that she wanted any. She still felt stuffed, like cotton under skin, but with Yekase’s adaptability…
“…Adapting to this might be terrifying.” She breathed out, a reed sigh. “Come in!”
[Doctor, time to eat.]
It was Zhang Wendao’s speech app. But that celebrity‑styled robotic voice, glossy as lacquer, paired with those lines, felt like a drugging setup—honey over steel.
“Thanks. What’s for dinner?”
[Soup dumplings.]
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll choke?”
[I’ll drain the soup for you.]
“What’s the point of soup dumplings then…”
In the end, Zhang Wendao pinched a dumpling with chopsticks, split it, blew the deflated skin and meat like a breeze over embers, and fed Yekase.
Being fed felt oddly nice, warm wind over rice fields.
[Doctor, Azhous took you to the Horizon, right?]
—Cough, cough!
Shock hit her like a cold wave; Yekase choked and nearly lost her breath, a fish snagged on air.
“Wh— you know that robot?”
[During the One-Year War, it embodied our human will and wisdom, the Earth’s final weapon against the exogenous.] [Sending foes to the end of the cosmos was its most powerful ability.]
“Uh… that sci‑fi?”
[After the war, Azhous also vanished. Didn’t expect it hid in a seafloor like that, a whale’s grave.]
“Vanished? You didn’t lose memory—didn’t you see where it went?”
[It disappeared in public. It broke into red light specks and dispersed, the exact same effect as when enemies were sent to the cosmos’ edge.] [When you vanished on the plane, it was that same effect.]
Thinking of that place still left her with aftershocks, frost on a window. It was more shadow than beauty, more trauma than starshine.
“Yeah, I went. Was that truly human tech—and nine‑years‑ago human tech?”
[With Flash Energy, it’s possible.]
So it was Flash Energy—lightning bottled in a gourd.
In 2012, Yekase hadn’t started researching it; even with lost history, you don’t jump dimensions like a carp leaping the dragon gate. If someone had, her years of work would be a joke. That lead designer—who was it…
“Who led the engine design?”
[Shadow Curtain International’s chief engineer, Liu Qizhou.]
Yekase’s face shifted like a passing cloud. Then the gap felt mountain‑high; chasing it was pointless, a man running after thunder. She sighed, loose as falling leaves:
“No surprise—Shadow Curtain International stands there because it has the matching power.”
[Doctor, how much have you remembered?]
…
Yekase fell silent; the room cooled like dusk sliding over tiles.
Zhang Wendao read the air, stopped asking, and fed her dry dumplings in quiet, chopsticks moving like cranes by a reedbed. They didn’t speak again.
When done, she wiped Yekase’s mouth, gentler than a cloth over porcelain, and turned toward the door.
She pushed the door open but didn’t leave, a breeze hesitating at the threshold.
[Doctor, at the fair, that really was my first time seeing you.] [I don’t know what role you played in the One-Year War.] [Maybe you, like Professor F, were still in training, hence unknown.] [I just think: a chance to let everything see daylight shouldn’t be watched vanish again, sun swallowed by cloud.]
“I don’t get what you mean.”
[I mean, sharing a secret, grand memory with you is my honor.]
“It’s not that dramatic…”
[You already know who ZEROS is, right?]
…
“…Mm.”
Yekase hesitated a beat, then answered yes, a pebble dropped into still water. That soft “mm” was enough for Zhang Wendao; a nod could be a bridge.
She left, footsteps fading like ink.
Yekase sighed, a ripple on a still pond. Oz Floating Disc and Levitation Spell tag‑teamed, easing her back to a flat lay, a sail settled on calm.
—Magical Girl ZEROS is Dragon God Shark’s older brother.
On August 16, Yekase kept Ling Yi off the field and secretly asked Ling Ya—then only suspected of moonlighting as a hero—for help. The Beast King Squadron showed up, honest as iron bells.
Right then, Yekase guessed Dragon God Shark was Ling Ya. String the clues, and the logic became clear, lanterns lining a path.
ZEROS belongs to Ling Ya—and is also Ling Yi’s blood brother, the true eldest of the Ling family.
The Ling household’s rooms: Ling Ya and the parents face each other at the corridor’s deepest end, like two stars at a cul‑de‑sac. Ling Yi’s is outside; opposite, an empty guest room, a nest without a bird. Beyond those four, there’s one more—the door everyone passes, nobody enters, a gate sealed with silence.
The outermost, most convenient room is sealed, like a well with a stone pressed on its mouth.
If an elder brother older than Ling Yi once lived there, everything makes sense—rice and water, plain and true.
“As for the real name… who taught you to use your legal name online, Magical Girl Ivaris Ivaris?”
Yekase smiled, a nostalgic curl, incense smoke in old memory.
“Anyway, welcome home.”
Outside, lights blazed like lantern fruit on a city tree.
The night sky, packed with projected ads and flying craft, flashed a faint, almost unseen red, a firefly crossing a river.
“I’ve observed you, Ling Nuo Si.”
