The dinner rolled on, smooth as a pond at dusk.

Yekase kept sneaking glances at her phone, nerves tight like a drawn bowstring, waiting for news from the other meeting—and got nothing. By now, if things went well, it should be a family hug scene. That made a chill crawl up her spine.

“Yekase, do you like Gundam?”

“I… don’t. Never really looked into it.”

Great. Now she couldn’t even commit to like or dislike. You came to interrogate your brother, didn’t you? Break him down, then tame him with motherly patience… terrifying.

“But your lock screen looks like Gundam.”

“…Huh?”

Her lock screen was—she tapped it on and checked. Jill and the Boss, same old photo.

“Nope, it’s this.”

To kill suspicion, she lifted the phone for her to see.

“Oh, my bad. I saw wrong.”

Her eyes watched Yekase’s lock screen, but her fingers typed on her own phone—like a moth’s wing flicker—then sent.

—!

Yekase realized what she was doing, drew her phone back slow-then-quick, and laid it face-down on the table.

A moment ago, the screen had gone dark with table-sense. With Liu RuoYuan’s send, it lit like a firefly again.

[New message from Little Sis:]

[1]

That was close.

The corner of Yekase’s mouth and eye twitched, a ripple across still water. This woman… though calling her own sister “this woman” felt off, but—

This was a battle.

A battle fought over porcelain and steam.

A battle without gunpowder, only knives of words.

They wanted to confirm her identity. She had to dodge any hard proof.

A shard of winter light flashed in Yekase’s eyes; she went on alert like a cat arching its back.

Liu RuoYuan smiled. “Looks like someone messaged you, Yekase.”

“Yeah. Friends want me online for a raid.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

Silence fell, soft as snow.

First volley over.

The server brought the last dish: four golden-crisp shrimp balls, threads shining like sunlight on straw.

Yekase picked one up, set it in her bowl to cool, steam curling like breath in winter.

“My brother likes seafood too.”

“Oh? Does he.”

“Especially grilled squid.”

“The ones with the feelers? I can’t do those.”

Subtle echoes, soft divergences—make every detail different and it feels staged. The trick was balance, like walking a narrow ridge.

After two failed probes, Liu RuoYuan let it go for now, quiet as dusk, and finished the last shrimp ball.

Then they headed home.

On the way, Yekase pretended to scroll, eyes calm but heart like a drum. Something was off… none of the four involved had reported back.

She had to text Ling Yi herself:

[Did you see your brother?]

Less than a minute, Ling Yi replied: [Saw him. A lot came back.]

Uh?

Wrong vibe, cold where it should be sunny. Normally Ling Yi would be breezy, maybe tossing a weird joke like a paper airplane.

[But Mom and Dad refused to believe it. Said they’d call the police, and threw them out.]

“Tch.”

So that could happen—she’d blanked on it. For memory to return, the premise seemed to be “linked to the observed party in the One-Year War.” Ordinary contact didn’t count; the shock wasn’t enough. You needed the right bond-line. Ling’s parents, at the end of the day, were low-level organization members. The One-Year War had nothing to do with them.

To them, it was only a faint wrongness, a breeze that didn’t match the season. A young man brings a little girl and says “I’m your son who vanished nine years ago,” and they’ll never buy it.

[Okay. I’ll arrange a place for them. Your parents, we’ll handle slowly.]

Ask Professor F to help, rent them another room. It’d have to do for now.

“You head home,” Liu RuoYuan said. “I’ll grab my luggage from the hotel and come right back.”

“So it’s already ‘back’…”

“Yeah. Back to our home.”

Yekase couldn’t read her smile; it was a paper lantern with shadows inside.

She seemed to know Yekase was her brother. Yekase knew she seemed to know Yekase was her brother. One couldn’t be sure, one didn’t want to admit. The gear jammed right there.

Liu RuoYuan boarded a bus and drifted away like a white gull.

Yekase sighed, bounced twice to warm up, then jogged the alleys home, breath clouding like smoke.

Starting tonight, she couldn’t openly sketch designs anymore. Before Liu RuoYuan came back with luggage, she had to finish the mech’s main chassis.

Given that ordinary exogenous entities had appeared after school, tonight—tomorrow at the latest—the elite exogenous entities would revive.

Why?

Was there someone else besides Yekase who knew, observing the entities and accelerating them? How could there be—

“Even if the story’s at its end,”

…?

Her body moved before her brain. She kicked the wall and flipped back, a move she could never have done before, air rushing like a swallowed tide.

“We won’t back down.”

“You’re—”

A fresh, steaming crack ran across the alley floor, hot as a brand. That said enough. Yekase drew her knife in an instant and looked up toward the voice.

A girl in a white sailor uniform hovered like moonlight on water.

White sailor uniform?

Yekase focused—and froze.

Flowing black hair, white ankle boots, sheer black stockings hugging long legs. The outfit wasn’t special, but it hit a bell—the face behind a veil.

“Speak of the devil… an inverted Ivaris? An Alter? That’s not a thing, right?”

Was she in the Magical Girl lineup? The nameless third generation—or someone else?

And the activation words she’d just spoken were—

“The World Isn’t Over Yet.”

Same root, my ass.

Yekase didn’t get a chance to ask a second question. The girl lifted her right hand. The thing that carved the crack showed itself—flat, long floating cannons. Four of them, circling like hawks.

…This would be rough.

A lone ground melee unit versus multiple airborne, high-mobility, long-range units. Any ops manual would boil the tactic down to two words.

Run fast.

“Celestial Speech,”

But Yekase still had questions to ask.

“Levitation Spell, Oz Floating Disc, delayed chant, Oz Floating Disc, delayed chant, Oz Floating Disc.”

She whispered a string of spells. Her body shifted like a sprinter in the blocks. She raised a foot—and stepped on an invisible starting plate.

Two lasers crossed under her feet like crossed scythes.

She catapulted up. The preloaded second disc formed mid-arc, laid on a straight line, and gave her a second burst. In a blink, she shot into open air. The mystery Magical Girl had to look up—

“Dancing Light.”

A bolt of white burst in her eyes, a sun breaking through fog.

“—?!”

If she hadn’t set up those delayed chants for follow-up footing, Yekase wouldn’t have had the time to pop that flash.

“Flame Burst Spell!”

“—!”

A barrier sprang up between them, fast as ice forming on a night river.

That was it.

The moment her ability kicked in, Yekase drove the knife into the half-formed, translucent shield. Thin as a cicada’s wing, it shattered with a dry crack.

Riding her fall, the blade slid, natural as rain down eaves, to the girl’s throat—and held.

“I’ve got a question for you.”

Hmph.

A small, contemptuous snort.

She had a backhand even with a blade at her neck? Yekase’s free left hand went to the phase shifter on instinct—

Right there in her arm’s crook,

the mystery girl’s figure warped like heat haze—then unraveled into black smoke and vanished.

“What…”

An illusion? No. When she pressed in, she’d felt contact. Cold as a fish belly, not like a human, but solid.

Teleportation, then.

Floating cannons, teleporting, and unprompted hostility… a silent assassin in white. Extremely dangerous. She needed to alert everyone—

“The long night draws near,”

—!

Still here.

She continued the chant, voice like frost on glass. “The stars’ wishes will become a blade that cuts the dark,”

She couldn’t see where the girl was, but something big was coming. Yekase slammed her phase shift and slipped into the wall’s stone like a fish into murk.

“and open a radiant road!”

—

—VMM!

A shrieking hum and a searing light arrived together, sweeping down the humble alley like a lightning river, carving a deep trench that made your scalp crawl.

The trench held one breath of quiet. Then the air itself bent, and a curtain of light flared up.

It split the earth and reached for the sky.

Yekase’s invulnerability frames burned out. She popped from the wall, its surface mottled and scorched like bark after a fire.

“This is… Luminous Infinity?! But the chant is…”

If she wasn’t seeing things, the finisher’s form and effect were exactly those of the Sky Striker’s new form, ZERO—the Luminous Infinity that Ling Yi had never fired even once.

Stronger, even.

“Who… what are you?”

This was getting absurd. She couldn’t recall the activation words. She had no mech. Could she win with just flesh and bone?

She simmered; the girl stayed a still pond. The face only resembled Ivaris, pale as the moon. Her lips parted, and she finally said something other than an activation line:

“Enemy intrusion into a differential closed universe detected. Commencing annihilation.”

“I don’t get it. Can we not talk in riddles? Like—what’s your name?”

“Codename, Alidaus.”

With that name,

this time, her figure vanished for good, snuffed like a candle.

…

Never heard of her. Not a spark of memory.

Ivaris’s look-alike face. Ivaris’s laser weapons. The finisher Yekase designed. And an activation phrase she was sure she’d never given anyone.

Is this the classic trope? A mysterious evil Magical Girl shows up out of nowhere. But Yekase helped create the Magical Girl system. That changed the meaning entirely.

Was she even a Magical Girl? Was she even human?

Which veteran of the One-Year War had been infected in the Void by an exogenous entity—or gone mad in nine years of solitude? Yekase had no clue. Not even a thread.

“Tch…”

Go home.

Liu RuoYuan might already be waiting at the door.