Thursday at noon, the sun beat like a brass gong over the campus.

Ling Yi burst into Class 11 of Grade Two like a gust through paper doors, asking if Yekase wanted to grab lunch together.

“I’ve got a secret base,” she whispered, a fox with a hidden den. “It’s big. After we eat, we can nap right there.”

A twinge of dread pricked like a pin; could it be the place Yekase found yesterday?

They trailed Ling Yi down the corridor like fish in a school, then climbed the stairs like ants up a willow trunk.

“Knew it—here!” Her voice popped like a firecracker.

The tiny hideaway behind the Tech Reading Nook—so you were the culprit! The thought clicked like a trap, and for a second Yekase wondered if she’d split into two souls—then sighed; with this mass amnesia, it sort of counted as split anyway.

“How do you even know this place?” Ling Yi reached for the shelf like a stagehand tugging a curtain…

…and it didn’t budge, heavy as a nailed coffin.

“Huh?” The sound fell flat, like a pebble in a dry well.

Same place, same move, different result; her mind went blank as fresh snow for a heartbeat.

Could it be—

The worldline shifted?

Since last night’s glimpse of that organizational squabble, had they drifted, like a boat in fog, into a parallel world sharper and more dangerous than before?

On this worldline, the little observatory got dismantled to the bones, and the shelf was pinned to the wall like a butterfly.

Or was this some illusion spun by a spider with human hands?

“Secret pass sentence,” Yekase said, voice like a knuckle on a hidden panel.

The partition clicked open, smooth as a sigh.

Ling Yi stared at Yekase, wide-eyed, like watching a cat she’d raised since a kitten purr for someone else.

“I think I… at some point… helped you retrofit this,” Yekase said, each word a stone skipped on water. “Turned it into a sensor door.”

It sounded absurd, a kite without string, yet it was all she knew. Half-believing, Ling Yi crawled into the stair gap like a mouse into a wall and slipped into the little observatory.

“Why’s there a new whiteboard?” Her finger pointed like a reed in wind.

Ling Ya and Yekase came in behind her, and with the three recliners, there were exactly three seats; they took them without ceremony, like birds on a wire.

“A whiteboard? Feels like a secret society’s war table,” Ling Ya said, grin bright as a match.

“Shame there’s nothing on it,” Yekase said, eyes snagged on the metal-edged frame like a hook on thread.

Behind her, Ling Yi and Ling Ya had already cracked open their lunch boxes, steam curling up like morning mist.

“What’re you studying, a sky-script with no words? Eat first,” Ling Yi mumbled through half a slab of chicken breast, “books don’t sprout legs.”

“This whiteboard… has never had writing,” Yekase said, the words dry as chalk.

“There’s definitely no writing on it…” Ling Yi blinked, owl-blank.

“I mean it’s brand new. No one’s ever written on it. The proof—any metal-edged board, once you write and wipe, you never get the edge perfectly clean. There’s always a shadow of ink.”

Yekase lifted the branded eraser from the rack, finger testing it; then she uncapped a water-based marker and squeezed the tip like testing fruit.

Silence pooled like ink.

Both were wet.

Would someone be that bored? Anonymous donor drops off a whiteboard, nicks the eraser and marker for themselves, then returns them like tides returning shells?

Me? …Could it be me?

Right, even Ling Yi didn’t know the sensor door; the only one who could smuggle new gear in was Yekase herself.

Yet that strand of memory was gone, like a thread snipped clean.

But like Sandryon, proud of crystal magic, who’d sooner doubt her memory than the crystal record, Yekase had her own stubborn spine.

“I wouldn’t do something that pointlessly dumb,” she said, a stake in the ground.

She believed that to the bone. She knew what sort of person she was. She had no interest in running around with eraser and marker, doodling on other boards, then putting them back all tidy.

So this neat little contradiction—two facts grinding like gears—deserved a look.

Did this board have writing on it or not?

It did.

If it did, why was it clean as a mirror?

Because the writing wasn’t wiped with an eraser; it was cleared by something else, a tide that left no trace.

Did Yekase know that “something else”?

She did.

“Erasure… huh…” The word fell like frost.

“Sis Yekase, what’re you muttering? If you don’t eat, it’s going cold,” Ling Yi called, voice like a spoon on a bowl.

“Oh, oh.” She shoveled two bites, each bite a truce.

“Right, the Alchemy scroll I bought yesterday—wanna see?” Her tone lifted like a lantern.

“I do!” Ling Yi lit up, eyes like twin sparks. “What’s Alchemy to magic? Can you learn it without magic aptitude?”

“Seems like a different road entirely,” Yekase said, hand sliding into her pocket like a diver into water—then pausing, empty-handed.

Weird. The scroll was big, about A3, a rolled moon you couldn’t pocket; why did she think she could fish it from a pocket?

“Forgot it. We’ll check at home…”

“I’m done,” Ling Ya said, setting her chopsticks down like closing a fan.

“Two more bites and I’m done,” Ling Yi showed her box, rice like a snowy field.

“Uh?” Yekase glanced at her own lunch.

Ms. Liu had packed black-pepper beef cubes, green-pepper scrambled eggs, and braised chicken giblets; what remained was eggs and rice barely dented.

“Actually, I’m full,” she said, voice a shrinking flame.

“Yekase…?” Ling Yi leaned in with a mother’s cloud-shadowed gaze, pressure like summer heat.

“…I’ll eat. I’ll eat, okay.” The concession dropped like a coin.

Ling Yi was the same age as Yekase, yet in things like this she exuded a mother’s authority, a crane among ducks, inexplicable and firm.

Yekase didn’t want to bend, but the thought of Ms. Liu’s temper tonight was a thunderhead on the horizon; she sighed at being ringed by aunties on all sides, and forced herself to finish, bite by stubborn bite.

“Let’s go. Back to the scroll,” she said, voice clearing like sky after rain.

“Heck yeah!” Ling Yi flipped moods like a hand fan.

They packed up and returned to class. It was still lunch break, the room dotted with a few students like stones in a stream. Yekase boldly unfurled the scroll on her desk, and Ling Yi and Ling Ya leaned in left and right, twin leaves to a stem.

“Whoa…!”

“It looks super complex… Can you read it, Sis Yekase?” Ling Yi’s whisper rustled like paper.

“Barely a bit. Mostly it’s rote—too much to cram,” Yekase said, shoulders a little heavy.

“Rote? That’s my field,” Ling Yi said, eyes bright as dew. “I memorize fast.”

“Really?”

“Don’t underestimate number three in the key History-Politics class,” she said, pride a small drum.

“Oh?!” A thought flicked—so Grade Three, Class Ten was a humanities track… Do the science classes number up from one, while the liberal arts count backward?

Ling Yi started murmuring the rune meanings, breath steady like a pendulum, slipping into a focus Yekase had never seen on her before; surprise bloomed like a sudden flower. She’d always thought Ling Yi a dummy—seems there was another face. And Yekase, by temperament, had always looked down on humanities—

Wait. Since when was “always”?

She blinked, then tossed that snag into the bin labeled deleted memory.

Having near-amnesia, in a way, was convenient, like a drawer you could shut.

“Yekase, there’s a strange woman looking for you at the stairs!” a boy shouted from the back door, voice bouncing like a ball.

“Eh? Me?” The word fell from her mouth like a bead.

A strange woman? Ms. Liu wasn’t strange. Who else would come for her? Not her mom from out of town; last night’s people—no woman among them.

A dozen guesses flashed like fish scales, none holding water.

Go look first.

At the stairwell, a woman in her twenties waited, still as a crow on a rail.

She wore an asymmetrical black dress, then threw a grimy white lab coat over it; the mismatch grated like sand, and Yekase worried the coat would stain the nice dress. The woman didn’t care; sleeves shoved to the elbows, hands buried in the coat pockets like stones in mud.

“Excuse me, you are?” Yekase asked, heartbeat a slow drum.

“Student Yekase, right?” the woman said, like checking a recipe.

“…Mm.” A prickle of danger ran like ants. Sinister Organization?

“My name’s Jiang Bailu. Researcher, Unrecognized Consortium X,” she said, as casual as rain.

“Eh—eh?” The exhale fluttered like a moth.

A member of a Sinister Organization, for real?!

What was Unrecognized Consortium X? The boss behind last night’s crew? No way—run—

“I got a message this morning,” Jiang Bailu said, lifting her phone before Yekase’s legs could bolt, the screen a cold lake.

On it, a text thread.

From: 189xxxx0093

Time: 2012/09/04/10:30

At exactly noon, go to Heavenly Heart High School and find Yekase in Grade Two, Class 1. Tell her:

Still a day and a half.

This message was scheduled.

doctor

“…What’s this?” The words slipped out like smoke.

“In my memory, I don’t have anyone I address as ‘doctor,’” Jiang Bailu said, voice flat as a ruler. “But since they had my contact, and the ask was simple, I came.”

“You don’t even know who sent it?”

“That’s right,” she said, a nod crisp as a snap.

A big bead of sweat slid down Yekase’s temple like a raindrop.

Could this Sinister Organization member—brainy by the look—actually be kind of… naive?

Jiang Bailu coughed twice, then declared, tones neat as calligraphy:

“Still a day and a half.”

I already saw it!

“Uh… then… thanks,” Yekase said, the thanks a leaf in wind.

This one’s a bit of a ditz, she judged, a stamp on soft clay.

Jiang Bailu nodded and headed downstairs, coat flapping like a tired flag.

She just left?

She really was only the messenger!

“Hey!” The call leapt like a spark.

“Anything else?” Jiang turned, eyes calm as glass.

“Didn’t you… try replying? See if you could reach them, or trace who and where?”

She shook her head, a metronome’s no.

“Isn’t that how you get trojan texts? You reply and catch a virus,” she said, practical as a broom.

“You did what they asked, and that’s your worry?!”

“Hearing one sentence is my limit,” she said, boundary drawn like a chalk line.

She left.

Nerves, nerves everywhere; Yekase went numb, limbs cottony as fog.

But on second thought, if she was only here to pass the wind through bamboo, believing or not was the receiver’s choice; Jiang Bailu, a stranger, had no need to hunt the first mover—that was also Yekase’s knot to untie.

“Uh…” The syllable hung like a bead of dew.

That “doctor” had said, still a day and a half.

So… today was the second day’s second riddle?

Some secret test she’d wandered into, or a game straight out of a Japanese paperback, set to run three days; today was day two.

Day one, the riddle was her own work, and it choked at her own front door like smoke.

So, day two?

Yekase pulled out her phone, a talisman of glass.

She opened the message screen, breath hitching like a hiccup.

“…Ha.” The laugh was hollow as a reed.

Sent: 1.

Recipient: 133xxxx0079.

Time — 10:28.