Yekase let herself go to seed.

Not sad, not bitter; she just didn’t want to think, so she dropped the reins and let the cart roll downhill.

Specifically, she slept through two more long half-days, sinking like a stone through still water.

She even admired herself for still being able to drift off, like a cat finding sun on a windowsill.

By the second day of the new term, the dismissal bell rang, and the clubs sprang up like night markets lit by paper lanterns.

“Sis Yezi, you didn’t sign up for any clubs, did you?” Ling Ya asked, stuffing books into her bag like folding sails before rain.

“You’re sharp,” Yekase said, face flat on the desk, voice as listless as a windless flag. She’d just crawled out of a four-hour nap.

“Clubs give credits. I still think you should pick one. Even the Lit Club or Anime Club, where you just drift and paddle.”

Shouldn’t need it, right? Small headaches, let Liu RuoYuan smooth them. Big ones, let them rot. In this school, what could possibly force her hand?

“By the way, I’m in the girls’ swim team,” Ling Ya said, eyes bright as droplets on tile.

“Called it.”

“Wanna come watch our open practice? Plenty of girls in swimsuits.”

“That’s your bait for me?”

…Okay, she did kinda want to look… but it felt like touching a no-go sign. Taking an interest in actual high schoolers sounded like a siren and handcuffs. She didn’t plan to turn this new identity into an outlaw badge.

Wait, she was also a high school girl now. If she kept her mouth shut, no one would think it was off.

“Yekase, interested in the swim team?”

Liu RuoYuan slid out from the back door like a shadow stepping into sun, timing too perfect.

You’ve been eavesdropping for a while, haven’t you?

She strode in like a storm front, hugged her lesson plan like a shield, and scolded, “As your homeroom teacher, I can’t allow this kind of indecent behavior!”

“What’s indecent about it?”

“Uh… it just isn’t happening!”

Huh? Weren’t you the one saying I could live as a seventeen-year-old if I liked? How does that not count when it’s something fun?

Yekase’s stubborn streak flared like a match. Today, she would claim the sacred right to spectate at the girls’ pool.

“Ms. Liu, I won’t just watch. I might even join.”

“Join?”

Liu RuoYuan’s eyes widened like cymbals. “And you say you’re not thinking about women! Have some shame!”

“Really? As homeroom teacher, you plan to stop me from exercising?”

Ling Ya didn’t understand a word of this moon-language. Her gaze ping-ponged between them like a shuttlecock.

“What’s wrong with observing and learning…”

“Yeah! What’s wrong with observing and learning?” Yekase echoed, voice innocent as a white lotus, grin sharp as a hook.

No doubt—this was her home-court win. A current high school girl joining a swim team was textbook proper. Liu RuoYuan’s only weapon was calling her morals into question. Yekase had precious few morals to begin with, so she was untouchable from every angle.

“Mm…”

Yekase boldly took Ling Ya by the hand and headed for the door like a kite tugging its handler.

Then she realized she didn’t know the way to the pool. The kite string swapped hands, and Ling Ya led.

They walked awhile. Ling Ya looked back, puzzled cloud in her eyes. “Sis Yezi, our new homeroom teacher seems kinda… targeted at you.”

“Yeah. Maybe because I’m a delinquent,” Yekase said, tossing it out like a pebble into a pond.

As if.

She wasn’t about to explain the real reason. She cut the topic cleanly, shifting to the Beast King Squadron’s latest drama like turning a weather vane.

They reached the gym and slipped in through the side door to the multi-use area.

Ping-pong room, badminton courts, a weight room, and the swimming hall spread out like a bright map. Students swarmed like shoals, every lane a stream.

“So this is modern ‘well-rounded education’? Our clubs back then were all window dressing,” Yekase said, half-laughing, as if touching old dust.

“Sis Yezi, you make it sound like you haven’t been to school in years.”

Yekase averted her gaze. “Uh… maybe I’ve been idle at home too long. High school didn’t stick the way middle school did…”

Kids had it so easy now. Early dismissals. Daily club time. An actual pool in the gym. In her own school days, that was a mirage shimmering over hot asphalt.

Word was, a D-level outfit now ruling Twin Towers City—the very one that delivered Gauntlets to Heavenly Heart High School—started as a mountain bandit crew from nearby townships. Ambition like wildfire. They’d pushed hard on infrastructure, education, high-tech. They netted hearts to cement rule.

Credit where due: the education piece felt real.

Yekase didn’t need to think to see their aim. Concentrate resources on star students so they’d go further and feed the Sinister Organization fresh talent. Let the rest roam free—clubs, puppy love, whatever—so they’d grow into a pliable crowd, brains light as dandelion fluff.

They probably didn’t expect some students to moonlight as heroes after class.

“Here we are. Sis Yezi, no need to change. You can just watch from the deck,” Ling Ya said, pointing like a tour guide with a gleam.

“Oh, perfect.”

Her fingers were already brushing the school swimsuit Ling Yi had stashed in her transport case. Hearing this, she let out a small breath and didn’t pull it out.

Through the girls’ locker room, out to the pool.

The girls’ swim team was gathered at the lane lines. Seeing someone walk in fully clothed, they surged like a little wave, taking her for a new recruit.

“Here to join?” “Great figure—do you work out?” “Know anyone on the team?”

“Uh, I’m just here to… watch…”

To look at your school swimsuits.

She absolutely couldn’t say that out loud. Even with a girl’s body, that would get her reported for harassment.

“Observing as a visitor? That’s fine too!”

Thankfully, they misread her cleanly. They parked her on a plastic lounge chair, then flowed back into warmups, muscles flexing like dolphins breaking the surface.

Credit where due, they were in great shape…

Yekase’s thoughts drifted. If her Flash Energy maid-doll project hadn’t been axed by the Heavenly Prison King for “no combat capability,” she might’ve pivoted into the gynoid market. Sell outfit DLC and print money… She’d spend her days surrounded by maid-bots, and her slide into darkness would slow like tar in winter.

She wasn’t the ice-queen her old coworkers painted. Her kinks were perfectly healthy. She just prioritized robots over humans, that’s all.

Ling Ya returned in her swimsuit, didn’t dive right in. She sat beside Yekase, water beading on her shoulders like pearls on bamboo leaves.

“Sis Yezi, I tried to recall last night. Carefully.”

“Oh?”

Hope flared like a match-head. Was she pushing through the Reverse Meme? Yekase looked over, interest bright as a fox’s eye.

Ling Ya’s face went solemn, moon behind clouds.

“The contradiction is faint. But I finally noticed it. It isn’t what’s there. It’s what isn’t. Like ants can’t grasp the human-scale world, something’s been erased from my world completely.”

“But you can still perceive the hole its absence leaves. You can use elimination. Push that not-quite-anything anomaly out of the normal ten thousand things,” Yekase said, voice low, like tracing a shoreline at night.

Ling Ya shook her head. “That’s as far as I get. I don’t know how many times I’ve looped this thought. To stop myself from forgetting again, I’m telling you now.”

“That’s enough. He’d be relieved,” Yekase said, and ruffled her hair like smoothing down summer grass.

“Then I’ll go practice.”

“Go.”

Yekase pulled out her phone. Her eyes stayed on laughter and races stringing silver across the pool. Her thumbs hammered the nine-key like rain on a tin roof.

After ten-some minutes, she stopped and opened chat.

She sent Shen Shanshan: “You there?”

“?” came back, a single fish-eye blink.

Good enough. She typed: “Interested in robbing an E-level outfit together?”

………

“Girl, are you out of your mind?”

As expected. She kept typing, calm as a pond. “Serious. I’m short on cash lately.”

“Sell some of your precious loot.”

Even the always money-eyed Shen Shanshan wasn’t biting? Yekase upped the lure. “So Legendary Merc 3333’s got this tiny courage now? Won’t even hit a small-time outfit?”

“Legendary Merc 3333 broke contract to help some baby punk. Now nobody wants her.”

Oh, so not retired—just unwanted.

It was, admittedly, her fault. The culprit was Yekase, full stop. She couldn’t bring herself to quip back. She was about to drop it when another message arrived:

“So which E-level? Is there real money in it?”

There it was—the glint of gold in her eyes.

Yekase began laying out industry whispers, slow as a dealer sliding cards.

“Recently a batch of Gauntlets got pushed down from D-level. But my contacts in various dev departments haven’t gotten new orders. What, the fighters suddenly all awakened Mind Energy and don’t need Gauntlets? Even if this batch did, they’d keep stock for rookies.”

“Bottom line. I don’t speak your jargon.”

“I think one or more covert E-level outsourcing shops exist. They’re using out-of-province supply lines to cover the entire new-version Gauntlet demand gap.”

Silence. The chat hung like a held breath.

“These private workshops hide well, but their defense is bad. Especially this D-level with bandit roots—good at hitting, terrible at guarding. Big opening. I want you in. We hit the shops. We lift raw materials and the new schematics.”

Still silence, the dots like fireflies that wouldn’t land.

After a while, she replied, like surf finally rolling in: “You brat. First move and you’re aiming at a city-level org. Quiet for ages and then thunder.”

“You in or not?”

“If you bring a plan, I’m in.”

Done.

Catching Shen Shanshan right after she got canned felt a bit cruel. But Yekase wasn’t sending her to die. This target was chosen with care, like picking a ripe fruit at dusk.

Once the One-Year War’s aftermath got wrapped, it’d be time to prep a little black-on-black.

Yekase lifted her head and met Ling Yi’s eyes, bright as stars over deep water.

“Doctor, that smile is so villain,” Ling Yi said, teasing like a breeze flicking a chime.

“…What are you doing here?”

“Seniors don’t do clubs. I’m free, so I came to watch Ya-ya. Doctor, be honest—are you secretly filming their swimsuits?”

“How dare you slander me out of thin air!”

Yekase palmed Ling Yi’s face away like pushing a curious cat. She tucked her phone and looked back at the pool. The team was already climbing out, water streaming like glass. She clicked her tongue, a little regret hanging like mist.

“So you did want to shoot,” Ling Yi said, eyes crescented.

“No.”