Yekase stepped into the courtyard that held the corner shop, and the air felt skewed, like a pond under frost.

Too quiet—silence settled like ash over the lanes.

No kids. No adults doing New Year visits. No elders gossiping by the gate. Four homes wrapped a little sky well, yet not a breath stirred.

Yekase narrowed her eyes like knife-edges, then strolled in as if nothing were off.

“Are you open?”

Inside was still the shape in her memory—a square table and chairs like an altar, an L-shaped glass counter gleaming like ice, and a towering cabinet crammed with bright, off-brand snacks and bottled fizz, a dragon’s hoard from childhood. Back then she begged the shop kid and got nothing; now the sight tasted sweet as candied haw in winter.

“Eh, sorry,” a young man in a pilled old cotton coat poked his head from behind a curtain, voice thin as a draft. “Closed today. Please go buy at the brigade office.”

“Happy New Year—so why’s your shop dark for New Year? Not doing business?”

She studied him like you squint into dusk. A smear of familiar lines showed through. He had to be that old playmate… what was his name again? Lost. Only the nickname stuck—Binbin.

She pulled out a long bench and sat by the table, calm as a cat on a warm sill.

“Your doorway’s a bit empty. Feels like the wind forgot to pass.”

“…”

Yekase glanced at him, a pebble skipping the surface. “Someone looking for trouble?”

“No—how would that be? We do small business, no debts and no grudges.” Binbin’s face pinched like wet paper. “Please head back, ma’am. The one in charge stepped out.”

“I just want a Coke. Do I need your boss for that?”

Yekase’s smile rose like spring sun. She propped her cheek with one hand, amused eyes steady on him. “Do you know who I am?”

Binbin shook his head, stiff as a scarecrow.

“Good. Means I’m not here for collection.”

“…!”

“See? Someone’s collecting.”

She had seen that reflex often in the Twin Towers. Setting a hook in a conversation felt like steering a boat in a known current.

She looked back toward the gate, clouds in her eyes clearing—no uninvited footsteps drifting near. “I know you,” she said, voice light as falling snow. “And I don’t mind helping a little. Tell me what hit you.”

…

…

Later, Binbin sat at the corner of the table at a right angle to her, words dribbling like a leaky tap. Yekase gathered it into one thread:

His mom left to work, got tricked, and slid onto ice—meth cold as winter. The years of corner-shop savings melted into mud. His dad, honest as a field stone, didn’t spot it; when he did, the ledger was a blank river and loans already coiled around them. He broke. He drinks every day now, drowning in bitter foam.

Common as dust in the countryside, and none of that makes it less cruel. Yekase doubted the “got tricked” line, but she was an outsider; if he named “ice,” he was already at the cliff’s edge.

“So, collectors drop by every few days. You hand them a smoke and bow them out.”

“…Yes.”

Yekase rubbed her hairless chin, face changing like sky before rain. “Come with me.”

She stood and slipped into the inner room, quiet as a shadow crossing a lamp.

“Eh?”

Binbin rose, hand twitching to block her, then stopped—she knew the shop’s layout like the lines in her palm. Passing the counter, she even plucked a packet of cola-flavored Pop Rocks as if it belonged to her.

This girl… who on earth?

Seventeen or eighteen at a glance. Short, but face bright as peach blossom. City kid with clean shoes. How would she tie to a bumpkin like him, rooted in the village soil all his life?

“Who are you?!”

“Me? Call me Yekase.”

Binbin followed into the inner room. Yekase had already opened a corner cabinet, lifted out a dust-choked Xiao Ba Wang—Subor—set it by the TV, and plugged it in. It looked like a relic dug from a riverbed.

“Ah, that’s already… broken…”

Yekase raised her right hand, formed a blade, and chopped down.

Crack.

Flash Energy, ten-horse push—circuit rewire.

Bathed in Flash Energy flowing through her palm, the old circuitry flushed new, like vines after rain. The power light blinked alive.

“—?!”

“Done.”

She dug a controller from the cabinet’s depths, its color worn to fog, and handed one to Binbin.

Her voice was ordinary as warm rice. Her movements were habit carved in bone.

Binbin’s head was going gray from worry, and this stranger only piled more questions. Yet in that instant, the afternoon fifteen years ago blew open like a window.

A boy climbed through his window, and the two of them fought Contra—stuck at that corridor of electric grids, losing again and again in the summer heat.

“You…”

“Remember?”

“Why did—”

“Don’t ask. Long story. I’m lazy.”

Yekase slipped off her shoes, sat cross-legged by the bed like a monk among quilts. Binbin swallowed his questions and focused on the game, fingers clumsy as winter birds.

…Turns out the hands were still that bad.

Not a child’s illusion—the Subor’s controller had input lag. You saw bullets drift in like silver fish, yet couldn’t dodge. Even Yekase, soaked in modern games, fell back to that old level.

“Door closed?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You’ve got neighbors—” She took another bullet, then let the controller fall like a leaf. “They hide well, but their scopes glint like starlight. You sure they’re just collectors?”

“Y-yes…”

“What kind of collector brings a TAC-50? That’s for collecting souls.”

“TA-what?”

“A big gun. Long and thick. One shot and your skull is a watermelon rind.”

“Eek—?!”

“Keep it down.”

Yekase walked to the window and drew the curtain, motion smooth as silk.

“There’s one in back too, tucked under the woodpile—a P2000. One squad, one big sniper. Raising a gun for the boss, huh?”

Binbin’s mind fogged like dawn. He only knew this was bad.

“In a minute, you hide under the bed. I’ll handle it this once.” Her words were clean as cold water. “But you tell me what you’re really hiding—if you swear they’re just punks, I treat them like punks. When those black round muzzles stare at you, that’s on you.”

“…”

Head lowered, he forced the words out, rough as gravel: “My mom… stole a bag of ice from the den. It’s under the counter, disguised as milk tea powder. I don’t know what to do, so I left it…”

“Oh.”

Yekase had seen flyers’ tricks too many times. She tore open the Pop Rocks and took a sniff—no sour bite.

“Which bag?”

“The innermost one… What are you going to do?”

Yekase flicked him a glance, swift as a blade.

Her crimson eyes glowed like embers. His inner walls cracked. He felt his thoughts bare as winter branches.

“You can’t bear to toss it?”

Binbin shook his head hard, like a rattle drum.

She patted his shoulder, tilted her head back, and poured the Pop Rocks in, thunder fizzing on her tongue, then slid out the door.

“You—you’re not scared? Their guns—”

“Dawn of Eden.”

She spoke with the mouth’s crackling sparks, a word like dawn wind.

A long blade, silver-black and strange, appeared at her hip. She lifted and drew, resting it on her shoulder like a crescent.

Click.

Rotate the cylinder one notch.

Click.

Thumb the safety.

Light the circuit. Praise the Tri-Pillar Machine God.

The Gunblade’s etched veins filled with Infinite Power spilling from the cylinder, flaring silver-white like moon over water.

She raised her left hand and beckoned, across two hundred meters of brittle air, to the TAC-50’s keeper.

“All right. Let’s start the test—”

Her head tipped back. The incoming round hissed past like a hawk, smashing the wardrobe mirror into cold rain.

“—the ‘Order’ Continuous Blade.”

From under the woodpile, the eaves, the chicken coop, the ruin behind—fighters rose like weeds. The far ones drew guns. The near ones drew blades. The empty concrete yard cinched tight like a snare, a dozen men rushing the shop in a single wave.

…And at the door, three fell as she lifted her hand and tapped shots, clean as picking seeds from a pomegranate.

“Did anyone teach you—don’t swarm in tight spaces? It’s dangerous.”

Yekase grabbed the counter weights and hurled them into the crowd—three arcs, big to small—then snatched the wooden scale beam and speared it like a javelin.

The beam was shot from the air, but they dodged the weights—smart enough to fear a skull cracked like pottery. Seeing they valued life in the smallest way, she hooked the bench with her foot, kicked it out like a battering ram, and hopped onto the table, light as a cat.

The fighters at the door flinched toward the flying bench. The distant snipers saw her rise and wouldn’t waste the chance. Two angles, two shots—one from the big rifle’s owner—would cross like shears—

Yekase let her toes kiss the tabletop, then tucked and sprang toward a fighter who’d ducked the bench, clamped his arm, and flung him back, swapping places in a blink. Wrong man in the wrong spot had no time to read her intent; his chest burst under his friend’s round, red blooming like winter camellia.

She didn’t look back. The Gunblade thrust and withdrew, pulling a spray of blood from the fifth man’s neck, bright as lacquer.

“Fall back! She’s a pro! Don’t go close!”

The shout came from the rear like a crow’s warning.

Yekase lowered her body and blew into the thinned crowd like a cold front; only now did she meet them proper.

A machete swung down from a stubborn hand, chopping wind. Dawn of Eden caught all the edges in one clean breath, steel singing. Yekase, under the Gunblade’s shadow, didn’t shove off; she lifted her leg and drove her heel between the man’s knees.

“Uwah?!”

“You’ve got two bad eggs down there. I took care of them.”

The ‘Order’ Continuous Blade—strikes chained by Omega Ray through Dawn of Eden. Compared to the Evolution Continuous Blade, this mode doesn’t ramp speed, can’t splash Infinite Power into the world, but it polishes my ugly turtle-fists into something passable, even mimics that Emerald Pool cadre’s exacting parries.

Cut, thrust, block, lift—moves neat as calligraphy.

She carved the melee down to one, like slicing melons, and stood unscathed save for dust on her clothes.

The Pop Rocks hadn’t even finished melting.

She realized she liked this mode—maybe more than her native Flash Energy. At least she wouldn’t limp home and get scolded by Liu RuoYuan for bleeding everywhere.

She seized the last fighter’s neck, jammed that squawking meat shield in front of her, then sat among the bodies for a breath, calm as moonlight.

…The load was heavy, though. Continuous Blade modes always bite deep. Seems that won’t change.

“How many sniper nests? Besides the two that fired.” Her forehead pressed to the fighter’s back like ice, voice cool.

“I will never betray—ugh!”

“You don’t grasp your situation,”

Yekase drew the Gunblade back to rest, voice even. “How many left?”

He thrashed on. “How could I tell you…! Death comes to all. I’ll meet it head-on!”

“True.” Crackle fizzed on her tongue. “By the way—Happy New Year.”

Bang!