The walkway lay quiet, a pale ribbon of plastic stretched like a held breath.

Yekase stood in the middle of the path, eyes on the strip that ran ahead like a river of frost. Early autumn, just past two; the wind wasn’t cool yet, and it combed her hair like warm fingers.

Not the same time, yet the same stage.

“Alright—let’s start the experiment.”

She felt lost first, a little hollow laugh inside. She’d whispered her favorite Kamen Rider catchphrase at a volume nobody would notice, but she didn’t know how to “start,” or where to “start.” She turned in place like a headless fly, drifting on the empty path.

Right—find the cracks, anything that clashes with the memory from two days ago. Use that as a breach.

Once she chose a method, her mind cleared like fog burning off a lake.

The answer was shrubs.

The walkway was swept clean, everything in plain sight. So, of course, you look into the green belts on both sides, into those leafy curtains where secrets like to hide.

Yekase spotted the wrongness at once, a thorn snagging the picture.

These shrubs…

…grew weird.

Very weird, warped in a way nature didn’t do on its own. Toward the path, they looked fine—gloss on the face, rot in the core. Push deeper into the greenbelt, and you saw it: dead twigs and tired leaves never trimmed, clutched together like someone had combed and pinched them, forcing them to grow twisted, like fingers cramped mid-spasm.

Who has a taste that nasty? Yekase’s brows pinched. Disgust first. She glanced back at the little gap she’d squeezed through, like checking footprints in dust.

“…Ah.”

If we’re talking distortion—hadn’t she shoved the branches crooked when she came in?

The twigs she’d bent were slowly righting themselves, rebounding like memory-foam. But those odd branches were frozen at the exact instant of their contortion, like wax poured over a hand in mid-twist.

How could that be? It felt like—

“Like… time… paused.”

No, no. Don’t get carried away. It couldn’t be that uncanny.

Magic did have a few effects that caused Time Distortion. But those were the kind everybody knew to be ultra-high level, the kind baked into legend.

Modern magic didn’t offer “scaled-down range and effect to lower the threshold.” You learn it and it works. You don’t, and it doesn’t.

As for the teaching—masters who clung to “what you see is what you get” (take Sandryon, for instance) wouldn’t lay their secrets out on a public table.

Ancient or modern, East or West, they were the same in this: the patent sat in someone else’s hand. You had no say.

Unless the gardener here was deranged enough to wield time magic against shrubs, Yekase felt she’d found her goal for the trip.

She snapped a few photos, leaves brushing her sleeves like fish scales, then backed out of the bushes.

And bumped butt-first into a passerby.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, didn’t see—”

She looked up—and it was a familiar face.

“Yekase, right?”

Shen Shanshan hauled her off the ground and gave her a once-over, taking in the school uniform scratched ragged by branches.

“What’s this—skipping class in broad daylight to play wildwoman in Greenbelt Park?”

“And you? Skipping work in broad daylight to hunt wildwomen in Greenbelt Park?”

Yekase had met Shen Shanshan while drifting a flea market in Tianxin District. Both had a weakness for beat-up techwear thrift, and they’d hit it off like sparks on dry tinder.

“Ah, business’s been bad. Boss canned me,” Shen said, voice easy, like the news landed on water without a splash.

“He dares fire you? You should fire him.”

The joke came quick, then a pinch of worry followed like a shadow. Unemployment hits an adult like a brick. Shen might be smiling through it, hurting under it. Maybe teasing wasn’t ideal.

“If it gets rough, I’ll dig up some stock at home. You can flip it for cash, ride this out.”

“Thanks. I can hold for a while.”

Shen wasn’t the type to play polite with friends. If she said she could hold, it likely meant she’d muscle through.

“So why are you here? Our genius inventor didn’t get expelled, right?”

“The school dares expel me? I’d expel the school.”

This time Yekase had iron in her tone, light flashing like a blade.

“Ah, right, right…”

“Listen. I came to investigate a shift in space-time.”

Shen’s face said: what the hell are you talking about.

“You wouldn’t believe me anyway. Still, I’ve got something. Want to kill the afternoon?”

“That’s it? You wrap a space-time anomaly like it’s a snack break?”

“Yeah. I need to be back by four. How about the Tianxin District civic range? Teach me to shoot.”

“Free lessons? You wish.”

Two drifters with nothing to do and enough shadiness to get stopped for loitering—they slid back into the city, then into the range.

They took a small booth. Yekase paid. The room was a narrow lane; two long tables and a cabinet where you stand, targets of different sizes hanging in the distance like moons.

“Specifically… start with maintenance?”

Shen pulled two pistols from the cabinet and handed Yekase one, metal cold as river stones.

“Maintenance I’ll skim. Give me a schematic and I’ll strip and reassemble faster than you.”

“Big talk.”

“Don’t underestimate an engineer.”

“Engineer…”

You’re seventeen, right? A high-school engineer? Shen wanted to say it, but before she could, Yekase racked the slide and the pistol came apart with a clack-clack cascade, parts spilling across the table like a pocketful of screws.

“Not complicated.”

“…Okay.”

Yekase reassembled it, then weighed it in her hand like fruit ready to bite.

Shen showed her the standard grip and sighting. She talked through what to do when you couldn’t hold a clean aim, how to push your odds up when adrenaline made your wrists hum. That was the blind spot in Yekase’s sandbox.

Yekase copied her, raised the muzzle, drew a bead on the five-meter target.

Snap.

She fired.

A thread of pale azure launched from the barrel with barely a whisper, slicing air, and struck the target at about the three-quarter mark, a nick on a clock face.

It hit. Not centered, but fine for a beginner.

The rapid rise of Infinite Power had swept a clutch of industries along for the ride, guns and ammunition included. Nowadays, a powder-packed physical round counted as the “surprise” option—a secret weapon against energy barriers—while the everyday workhorse had iterated into suppressed energy ammo fueled by Mind Energy.

“First shot on the paper. Not bad.”

“It’s me, after all. Don’t be shy—pile it on. Maybe I’ll sell gear and keep you.”

“Kept by you? How do I hold my face on the street?”

“So it’s other people’s eyes, not your own pride?”

“Pay me enough and I can ignore eyes. Key phrase: enough.”

Yekase realized then that the only person who bickered with her like this was Shen.

Her bond with the Ling sisters was good too, but they often stood in that mentor spot—seasoned social wolves guiding a young pup. Yekase was seventeen herself, yet somehow the distance felt real.

Beyond that, she had no friends in the flesh.

For a moment, it was like catching herself in a mirror and diagnosing social autism, the word falling flat as chalk dust.

A student, and only two friends at school. Add one half-legit outsider. The rest? All online.

Could it be that the real Yekase was a social butterfly, friends stretching past the horizon—until some thief framed her, scrambled her memory, and left her like this?

Who would scheme over something like that?

For the few hours before four, Yekase kept tinkering with different models under Shen’s eye, metal and motion like a metronome ticking steady.

“Your hands are rock-steady. That’s rare. If the muzzle shakes, long aiming is pointless. The longer you aim, the heavier your arm, the worse the shake. Pure vicious cycle. Most folks strap sandbags and grind this out.”

Yekase didn’t skimp on self-praise. “I mess with precise machines all the time. Without steady hands, you can’t build high-precision anything.”

“Fair. Guns suit you.”

Professional habit kicked in. Shen started mapping a combat style for Yekase, as if fitting a blade to a scabbard. If she went merc, what would work?

Answer: gun-and-gadget, ranged mixed methods. Yekase had an engineer’s base. She could supply her own toys. Guns would be smooth after a little practice.

“That’s my build—ranged gadget flow!” Shen laughed.

“I’m obviously better. I can craft my own toys.”

“Make one right here and now!”

“Idiot. You prep ahead. On-site crafting? You think I’m an alche…mist…”

…Alchemy.

It might actually work.

“Then I’ll become an Alchemist.”

“So sudden! And that’s a declaration, not a request. How confident are you?”

Yekase ignored her. She stared at the standard-issue sniper rifle in her hands, mind drifting like smoke.

Bullets and a sniper.

Mind Energy was a thing with personal talent baked in—hers was weak. But these Mind Energy rounds, once you chambered them and flipped the safety, anyone could fire. Pull, and the blue thread flew.

That was why Mind Energy was cheap.

That was why Mind Energy was great.

So—was there a way to process high-threshold Alchemy into something like a Mind Energy round? Ready-to-use, pull-and-go, no need to dig into the essence. A tool on the table.

…It runs counter to Ancient Alchemy, slides into tool-worship, and loses the pursuit of the essence.

The line unrolled in her head from an alchemy scroll, spoken in Sandryon’s voice.

But the Witch of Crystals herself used Alchemy to earn money in daylight—she wasn’t exactly chasing that so-called “essence,” was she?

Magic, Mind Energy, Alchemy—if they stayed locked in a couple of small workshops, taught for fun to three or four elites, they’d remain buried like the last few hundred years of history, shut away from the sun.

Yekase smiled, the curve warm, then sharp.

“Shen, I’ve got a good hustle.”

“What?”

“Treat tools as tools. In that, you—Shen Shanshan—are the best person I know.”

“Uh… that’s just normal, isn’t it?”

Shen didn’t quite catch her rising thrill. Yekase licked her lips; her grin widened, then took on the bite of a young wolf.

“Let’s take all that smoke-and-mirrors junk, and turn it into tools lined on a table for anyone to use. Tools have no rank, no noble or base—pure equality at its finest.”