So the break-in’s set for seven in the evening, after every teacher and staffer has drifted home like leaves blown off the quad.

Wang Ping never likes to close his windows, so lateness won’t bite. Night comes like ink either way.

For now, the three of them hide in the tiny observatory, burning time with a game console like a campfire in a quiet cave. Ling Yi, ever the bringer of trouble, even lugged in a PS4, but there’s no screen. Yekase had to sprint to the film club and beg a projector like borrowing moonlight from a neighbor.

“Hey, you should’ve dodged there. Roll! Ow, that hurts! Eat two charged hits and you’re dead!”

“It’s staggered! Go for it! Eviscerate!”

Yekase has the controller, fingers carving arcs like swallows. The sisters flank her left and right, chirping over her shoulder like sparrows in a market.

“Don’t rush, don’t rush… good, there’s the stagger!”

On-screen, a hunter in a black long coat flickers forward, and the saw-cleaver blooms into a chain of transforming strikes like petals unfolding. The boss’s last sliver of health bleeds away like a sunset line on the horizon.

[Hunt Successful!]

“Nice!”

“Who’s up next? My hands are rusty.”

Yekase hands off the controller, shaking her wrist to loosen fingers like rain shaking off leaves.

“I’m in!” Ling Yi volunteers, bright as a flare.

…Three minutes later, three dog-like mobs burst from the alley and body her into a corner. It’s a mess, torn like paper.

She respawns in silence. Tries again.

…Same spot. Same three dogs. Same fate.

…

“I’m done.”

That quick surrender tugs a mirror up for Yekase, reflecting last night’s her trying to study Alchemy and bouncing off it like a moth off glass.

Alchemy. Alchemy.

“What do you two think when you hear Alchemy?”

“I don’t know! I never thought about it,” Ling Yi says, honest as a clear pond.

“Sorcery is a real-class Infinite Power, but it strictly relies on its user,” Ling Ya recites, steady as a textbook pinned open. “It can’t run itself, and it can’t be used like Mind Energy to directly make things. Alchemy was born to bridge that gap… that’s what the books say.”

“A stand-in for magic… huh.”

Normal methods can’t build machines powered by Sorcery, so modern Alchemy loops around it like a detour road. It’s utilitarian to the bone… no wonder Sandryon turns up her nose.

Too bad the thing Yekase wants is exactly what Sandryon detests.

Drag the mystical off its horse. Make it as handy and forgettable as a toothbrush cup tossed by the sink.

With that thought, her chest swells with a fight-the-sky, wrestle-the-earth fervor, a hot-blood challenge like beating war drums, and a wicked thrill like stepping over a line on purpose.

Using modern, practical thinking to stain someone else’s sacred faith—it feels like scuffing the hem of a noble lady’s dress.

Sinful. Delicious.

“Yeka-sis, you’re into Alchemy lately? That scroll wasn’t cheap, right?”

“Ah… yeah.”

She admits it easily, like opening a window. She always dives into new fields on a whim, studies ten days or half a month, then lets the fire cool and walks away. It’s not rare for her; it’s a weather pattern.

“I’m thinking how to have a machine draw alchemic arrays for me.”

“Eh?! Those unhinged missionaries in Europe will put a bounty on your head…” Ling Ya warns, voice small, eyes wide, like a rabbit sensing hawks.

“But the alchemists over there with normal brains will thank me.”

Yekase never stoops to wrestle with ignorant, backward zealots. She’s a child of the new era—a staunch atheist, a materialist…

Of course, truly mastering a mind-born Infinite Power and bending it to your material aims is, without doubt, a kind of materialism. Two hands, one blade.

“Ling Ya, you seem to know Europe well?”

“More or less. I hop the firewall and read international news a lot… you’re interested in Europe now?”

Yekase nods, thoughts moving like cloud shadows.

“Any good headlines?”

“The French moved their palace and government onto a giant tree to ‘get close to the essence of magic.’ Their national network went dark, and millions vanished online like a tide draining from the bay. The Brits got pummeled, sank into a funk, then snapped and decided the Industrial Revolution birthed magical prosperity. They’re planning a ‘sun-never-sets revival’ by artificially pumping industrial smog across the island…”

“Shit…”

Suddenly, the top-level organs in Huaxia feel downright sane, like old pines that don’t sway for gossip.

They love money like everyone else, but they don’t pull absurd headline stunts every other week.

“Right, the Germans have strong Alchemy. Might give you references. It’s mainly car factories and soap factories. You know what German car plants were busy with a few decades ago.”

“Busy with what?”

“Building tanks!”

“Oh!”

And the soap factories would be… forget it. Don’t ask. Let certain shadows stay shadows.

Outside, dusk thickens like bruised ink. Time bleeds into night.

The three slip out of the observatory and pad down the silent corridor toward the Bird Research Club, feet soft like cats on wooden boards.

After club hours, the tech building looks trashed, a sleeping giant in the half-light smelling of iron and dust, harsher than the teaching blocks, a stern chill rolling off it like a winter wind.

Maybe it’s the garbage strewn everywhere like driftwood after a storm.

Do none of these people clean up after themselves? Aren’t they afraid a passing student will step on, pick up, or wreck something? Yekase hates tidying too, lazy as a cat in sun, but she cherishes her own things like treasures tucked in drawers.

“Here we are… the windows are still open.”

Thank you, Wang Ping.

I’ll save you a seat in the waking world.

They climb in hands and feet like raccoons slipping through a fence.

A dozen birds lift their heads together. Their bead-sized round eyes fix on the intruders, little nails of attention tapping in, making the air feel judged.

“We meet again.”

“...Yeka-sis, are you talking to the birds?”

“What?! Has it come to this? That bird-raising guy… he’s an enemy too…?”

“What are you even saying? Don’t gross me out.” Yekase pinches Ling Yi’s cheeks like kneading dough.

They came to hunt the BUG in this room. She moves at once, pulling open boxes and drawers like turning stones in a stream.

Ling Yi, cowed by a tiger-striped budgie’s glare like a tiny general, squats by the cage and tries to talk, patient as a bridge to nowhere.

Ling Ya imitates Yekase, rummaging here and there, but nothing worth note turns up. Empty shells, empty air.

The secret sweep is stalling. Yekase sees it, and a small ache pricks behind her ribs. There’s no formal progress bar, but her time’s almost spent—one day and some hours left. Subtract sleep and class, and it’s basically just a single day. Sand trickles.

“—Nian nian. Nian nian.”

The parrot Ling Yi’s teasing pipes up suddenly, voice crisp as coins tapping porcelain.

Yekase blinks.

“Nian nian”? Nian nian you yu—year after year with surplus?

Who teaches a parrot that? It’s a bit tacky. Not that the phrase itself is special; it just smells like a middle-aged aunt’s living room decor, red paper cutouts and plastic flowers.

“But… their word banks go deep.”

If each bird can speak ten lines, this room’s avian hard drives store close to two hundred sentences. That’s a hefty payload, like a suitcase full of keys.

Using parrots to remember or pass clues isn’t far-fetched. Yekase’s seen it in so many stories.

Like, Ace Attorney.

The first time she saw it, it hit like thunder. If Yekase can pass intel via parrots, she’ll do it without blinking. Because why? Because it’s cool. No further justification needed.

—Eh?

“I got it!”

She clenches her right hand and thumps her left palm, a spark jumping like flint.

“What, what?”

“In the memories that got deleted, I pulled every stunt—leaving passwords for myself, that kind of show-off move. If there’s a chance to do something stylish, the past me wouldn’t let it pass!”

“So committed to being cool…” Ling Ya’s mouth twitches like a fishing line snagging weed.

“Then I definitely left myself a clue here—through these parrots and mynas! If current me thinks it’s cool, past me must’ve tried it!”

“I don’t understand a word!”

“I mean, I need the keyword—the phrase that tunes them to one channel so their words link into a sentence!”

Yekase’s cheeks flush, pulse quick, like a drum ramping up before battle.

“As for that keyword, that keyword…”

What would it be?

It has to be a command—sharp, stylish, a little chuuni. Something like “Sing together and praise the God of Engines”… “Begin the ensemble”… stuff with a shine.

And then,

For no clear reason, a memory bubbles up—the unsent text message like a bottled note washing ashore.

“August 27, 2012,”

“one minute before 3 p.m.,”

“you were with us.”

Was that addressed to her father two days ago, or to herself? The pronouns flicker like shadows on a wall.

Who’s “us”?

Why August 27, afternoon?

On that summer day so ordinary, so warm, so bright—the cicadas singing like wires humming—

…

And for no clear reason, she opens her mouth.

“Because of you, I’ll remember that minute.”

…

…

The birds stop moving.

Like machines losing power mid-gesture, or gears biting cleanly into place, they go still, quiet as frost.

Then a dozen eyes turn to Yekase in perfect unison, pupils like black seeds. The harmony in their motion carries a chill—something not quite alive, not quite flesh.

And then,

The birds begin to speak—

“No.”

“Do—”

“Not!”

“Forget…”

“Re—”

“mem—”

“ber.”

“the—”

“One—”

“Year!”

“War.”

…

Yekase even forgets to snap the finger that means victory. No punctuation, no celebration.

Around her, the world fractures like carved glass hit by a hammer, pieces falling to expose the black behind the stage curtain.

Ling Yi and Ling Ya, the birds, the cages, the tables and cupboards—ordinary set dressing—split and scatter together, shards swirling like snow.

At the same time, a certain gate that’s been sealed for two days swings open like a flood sluice.

What was held back rushes away in the current. What was lost pours in, roaring.

Knowledge and memory surge into her skull like a river after rain, cold and bright.

It feels like she’s no longer herself—

—No. It feels like herself has finally returned to herself.

What was taken, what was bound, comes home like swallows to eaves.

Not some “reckless seventeen-year-old schoolgirl,” not some “good student paying attention in class,” but the plainest and strangest—no one but Yekase.

“—Huh. So deep down, I really do say chuuni lines like ‘drag the mystical off its horse.’”

Yekase makes herself laugh, a small bell ringing in a quiet temple.

…Let’s head back.

There are people waiting for the hero’s return. Plenty of them. Lamps lit like stars.

“Objectively, I do fit the genius everyone expects. That’s fine.” Her tone steadies like a blade aligning. “Solving by intuition isn’t rational, but it’s pure Flash Energy. Idealism and materialism, creation and destruction—contradiction and antinomy suit me.”

“—Don’t you think so, Lalabel?”