One glance at the clock, and the afternoon sun had already slid like warm honey into the next day.

They’d broken into the administrative zone near midnight. They’d clashed with Chao Liangqun around dawn. Underground, they’d slept like stones for most of a day.

In that span, Twin Towers bled too many fighters and officially abandoned the Emerald Pool front. They pulled out. Meanwhile Fang Tang’s e-war hit like a lightning net. Emerald Pool’s intranet fell. The heroes seized real control of the underground facility.

Yekase fished her phone from the teleport crate. The screen flashed a string of missed calls—every one from Liu RuoYuan.

...Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no oh no.

A jolt ran through Yekase. She sprang off the little camp lounger like a cat off hot tiles. They were still in Steel-7’s tent. Ling Yi slept beside her like a hog in winter. Lu Yao sat quiet in the corner, field-stripping her Glock under lamplight. Yekase’s leap pulled every glance in the tent, even the quartermaster aunties and uncles.

“What’s up, little miss? Bad dream?”

“My family’s freaking out. I gotta go!”

“I feel you by my side! Celestial Speech! Parallel Passion Continuous Flight Technique!”

She flashed into a Magical Girl and shot out like a comet.

…

“So. That’s your reason for not coming home all night?”

“Uh... well... yeah.”

Yekase knelt, small and tense, on her membrane keyboard. Her knees stung, but worry hit the board first. This model had been discontinued years ago.

Liu RuoYuan stood before her with a warped heat-haze aura, like a storm god stepping through a shrine’s smoke.

Facing that fully blackened woman was scarier than ten billion Chao Liangquns. Terrifying. Terrifying!

“But I brought a cat home! Look!”

Yekase grabbed the black-and-white cat sitting like a little judge by the chair. “Her name’s Rice Rice.”

“Meow.”

Rice Rice offered a perfect, on-cue meow.

“…”

Liu RuoYuan went quiet.

Well? Well? Yekase peeked up.

Her sister sighed and held out both hands. Rice Rice, never an ordinary animal, read the room and hopped into her arms.

Yekase tried to ride the wave and rise off her beloved keyboard—

“You keep kneeling.”

“Uh.”

“You took Ling Yi into a battlefield with a city-level organization. You two bounced around all night. Then you rushed the enemy leader with just the pair of you, and blacked out half a day. The whole Twin Towers City felt the quake you kicked up underground. You know that?”

“N-no…”

She truly didn’t. Those last two finishers—had their blasts shaken the earth like that? Cold sweat beaded like dew.

“And then you ended up... like this...”

Liu RuoYuan’s voice searched for words and found none. Her face said, Could you be any more ridiculous?

Yekase had nothing to say. She hunched her shoulders, head down, and stayed put on the keys.

…

“...Anywhere hurt?”

A long sigh. Liu RuoYuan finally eased her tone.

“Not really...”

“Can you change back? I mean, into the seventeen-year mode.”

“I don’t know...”

“Great. Everyone else grows up; you grow backward. And by ten-year chunks. Next time, you planning to split back into an egg and a sperm?”

“That definitely won’t happen!” Yekase blurted.

When Liu RuoYuan switched to strict homeroom-teacher mode, Yekase didn’t dare rebel.

But she still argued, steady and quick: “Emerald Pool forced employees and families to take loans for container bunks in their underground city. Bad living. High interest. They chained them to the line. Quit, and the breach fee crushes you. We saved thousands.”

“You saved thousands. If the Sinister Organization comes to your door, who saves you?”

“We save ourselves.”

Yekase scratched her cheek, casual as a breeze. “There’s one good thing about Sinister Organizations. They only see profit. They’re great at cutting losses. If they miss a hero again and again, and the manpower cost outweighs the damage, most of them stop chasing.”

“Is that true?”

“Think. Even Twin Towers City, a cancer on the coast with top-ten crime rates, swarms with heroes. But how often do you hear a hero died or got captured?”

Liu RuoYuan frowned, thinking. “Not often... Then why are they still so rampant?”

“You think they’re those brainless villains from old rubber-suit tokusatsu shows who only pillage and burn?” Yekase wagged a finger. “Sure, pillage and burn exists. It’s what heroes mostly fight. But—”

She flexed her knees, which now had a keyboard pattern stamped on them, and kept going.

“When you want to be a hero, you buy gear and a gun at a weapon shop. The cash ends up in the Organization’s pocket. Even the instant noodles you slurp after upholding justice come from their factories. What do you fight them with?”

“Uh...”

“People who shrug at the Organization will say, ‘You use a phone they made. You wear clothes they sponsor. What face do you have to resist them? Didn’t you play pirated games as a kid?’”

Shock widened Liu RuoYuan’s eyes. Words failed her.

Yekase took the chance to rise from her kneel and inspect the keyboard. Luckily, the weight of an eight- or nine-year-old was a feather. Every key sprang back like fresh reeds.

Rice Rice hopped from Liu RuoYuan’s arms to Yekase’s feet. The moment Yekase sat, the cat flowed onto her lap like warm ink.

“So yeah. We can use that and do what we think is right. As for changing the world, we go slow. It has to be done, but maybe not in our lifetime. If we could fix centuries of rot in one sweep, would we still be here playing at being mere heroes? The whole map would’ve been painted red long ago.”

Liu RuoYuan looked like the middle-schooler from years back, half-understanding, listening to Yekase talk about the future of Infinite Power.

She didn’t get it, but she listened like it was a story.

Back then, Yekase said Infinite Power would leapfrog productivity. Robots would replace every human job. Everyone would live well without working.

Later, even Yekase understood. If robots really replaced labor, the result would be workers laid off and starving.

“So what do we... do? Do we give up? Or do we run ourselves ragged, doing things that treat the symptoms, not the root—” Fear and fog edged Liu RuoYuan’s voice.

“Nightlight Torch.”

Yekase hugged the Polaris Staff, two heads taller than she was, straining like a sapling bracing a mast. She spoke the skill’s name.

Nine years sat too far away. Even with the Reverse Meme lifted, the whole picture wouldn’t return. Most of the time it felt like watching someone else’s life. The old feelings lay behind glass.

But she’d slowly understood this. Why that true desk-bound version of her, who never set foot on the front line, loved a self-made spell with such a meager effect.

The room’s daylight was decent. Even so, the staff’s warm light flickered in their pupils like hearthfire. The heat brushed both cheeks.

“We light the lamps. Even if we run ourselves ragged with band-aids, we leave embers in people’s hearts. In decades, in a hundred years, those embers will pass on and spread.”

“And then they’ll burn the old world to ash.”

…

…

Liu RuoYuan opened a shopping app and started browsing cat supplies.

Yekase said Rice Rice wasn’t a normal cat—she was Infinite Power turned into a cat. An Infinite Cat. Liu RuoYuan half believed, until Yekase did a live transformation. Then she grudgingly checked out her entire cart.

Dinner settled in like calm rain.

As if to make up for last night’s missing meal, Liu RuoYuan cooked a lavish three dishes and a soup.

Roast duck with wheat pancakes. Braised pork with kelp knots. Hot-and-sour cabbage. A steaming bowl of scarlet borscht.

“So this time, zero revenue? Running on love?”

Across the table, Liu RuoYuan asked with a wry smile.

“That was the plan. But we did end up with a payout. The hero team that took over as final victors seized Emerald Pool’s assets. They cut a big chunk to me and Ling Yi for taking the leader’s head. Ling Yi’s still young. I’m holding her share for now. I only gave her a thousand. That’s about a month of allowance.”

Liu RuoYuan nodded. “You thought that through. Too much cash at once, and she’d be lost.”

“If that breeds crooked desires and twists her hero’s heart, that’s my absolute failure.”

Yekase said it solemnly, then popped a kelp knot into her mouth.

Under the table, her black-stockinged short legs swung naturally, like reeds in a mild breeze.

Watching her, Liu RuoYuan’s piled-up worry and scolding blew away. She snorted a laugh.

“Has anyone told you, with that face...”

“I’ve heard it! Don’t finish!”

“You feel just like a cat.”

“That one too!”

“Hm? That too...?”

Liu RuoYuan rubbed her chin, suspicion rising.

“Boy or girl? Don’t tell me... you’re dating.”

“Huh?”

“My college prof said this. Between girls, calling someone cute or pretty is normal. Saying she’s cat-like is more intimate. It can be a sign of puppy love.”

“Puppy love? At my age?”

“Who is it?!”

“Ling Yi!”

Liu RuoYuan let out a clear breath. “If it’s Ling Yi, it’s fine. She probably just thinks you look like one.”

“I shouldn’t be the one to say this, but... don’t you have a weird bias in her favor?”