First, the weather she shows her partners isn’t the same.

Fujiwara Ningning, bluntly, is a launchpad for Mind Body Manipulation, not a mind for tactics; she grips a curse that turns others into tools, yet she herself is Alice’s tool, summoned and dismissed, status like dust in a draft.

But even when she’s ordered around, no spell like mind control ever touched her spirit.

Yekase still remembers Sandryon tossing out lines like “I’ll make you into a doll.” Alice is the famed Crescent Puppeteer; her hands cut moonlight finer than anyone’s. Even if she didn’t go that far, with so many runes, picking one tied to “subordination” or “dominion” should’ve been easy.

Yet she didn’t.

Facing a walking bomb who can impose permanent brainwash once she has a True Name, Alice—out of pride or trust—left Fujiwara Ningning free.

Then she turns around and tries to brainwash Yekase, whom she’s barely met twice?

It doesn’t add up.

Unless—what she wants from Fujiwara Ningning and what she wants from Yekase aren’t in the same league at all.

What she wants Yekase to do—seize the World Tree’s second Golden Apple in five hundred years—the Philosopher’s Stone hides a purpose she can’t tell a soul.

Not even Yekase, who’s already walking the Flash Energy ascent path and has little use for a high‑purity Sorcery crystal.

Alice lying in wait in Mysidia means she did her homework on Yekase. Of course she’d know that baseline. She’d also know Yekase values connections and might accept a partnership.

So that sealed purpose—the one no one can hear, the one Yekase would never accept and could only be forced by brainwashing—is Alice’s softest underbelly.

She must guard it at all costs.

Under that sky, Alice, perched on the intel high ground, is the one under the lens—she has to look both ways and show no seams.

And Yekase?

Yes, her not being successfully brainwashed is exposed. So what?

Fujiwara Ningning’s IQ is questionable, but in Yekase’s book she’s no harmless sweetheart; she’s a high‑grade fighter swinging inhumane power like a blind sword. The moment she winds up to repeat her trick, Yekase will take her life without flinching.

Alicia Alicia has completely lost the chance to put a leash on Yekase—in this world, there’s a woman named Yekase who will never be a puppet in a puppeteer’s palm.

Two women, split by four hundred years, finally stand on even ground.

“…Say it. What do you want me to do that’s worth throwing Mind Body Manipulation at me?”

Yekase blows across her red tea. The aroma rolls like velvet; it speaks of pedigree and, offhand, of Alice’s rank in this city… at least more aristocratic than Sandryon, who writes an essay just to sew a skirt for her apprentice.

1:8 maid dolls in snug, hand‑sewn outfits flit through the room like swallows, dusting, setting out tea. The old‑school mage pomp is immaculate.

“The Golden Apple.”

“Mm. I know.”

“I must have the Golden Apple. That simple.”

…

“—Not that simple, right?”

Yekase’s gaze slides over the teacup’s steam and pins Alice’s eyes like a needle through silk.

“I once played a game where seven humans called seven heroes from history to fight for a wish‑granting Holy Grail. You want the Golden Apple. I get that. …And then?”

“What will you do with a five‑hundred‑year Sorcery crystal? You don’t have to tell me, as long as it’s not evil. I’ll keep watch. On that basis, we keep a minimum, needs‑only cooperation—”

“…I want to research it.”

Alice cups her tea, voice low.

“…?”

“I want to study that apple. Find the principles inside it… then change the basic rules of the world. Let everyone gain fully free life. Bring the Archetypal World.”

Afternoon light slants through the window, a gold veil thrown across the puppeteer’s cheek and shoulder.

Dreamlike and hollow, like the doll in her hands.

She speaks steadily—there’s Will in those words, and a kind of Power.

“You…”

“What I’ve chased my entire life is the romance of art. Birth, aging, sickness, death—too real, too unromantic. A life doesn’t shine because it’s brief; it tends toward completeness in the eternal, approaching the ‘archetype.’ The future I want is a world where everyone lays down the fear of life and death, and lives free.”

—Collective Soul Power ascension?!

Yekase startles. It sounds too wild, which makes it almost convincing, yet she still doesn’t buy it at once.

“…So you want all humanity immortal—not quite immortal, but to live as long as they want.”

“Exactly.”

It’s not a rare ideal, but in stories, nine times out of ten, people holding it wear the classic villain’s mask.

Every time Yekase sees it, she thinks: immortality sounds great; universal immortality sounds greater. Maybe those authors know it’s hard to argue, so they bolt on “a dark cost,” or “some must be sacrificed,” all that forced gloom.

Anime takes the crown here: almost every tale that touches immortality grabs the reader’s head and says, “Only imperfect life finds meaning.” It’s bizarre, a distinctly Japanese blend of edgy and precious.

…

Yekase stays silent a long time, then says:

“…If such a world really exists,”

She can’t be sure Alice isn’t lying. But before she rips the lie open, that far, fragile dream deserves a little help.

For her kid sister and her mom, she’s ready to be duped into a tool.

Yekase offers her hand to Alice.

“Alice, this is a pact.”

“No need for any domination. I’ll lend you my power—”

“In return, show me your dream.”

…

…

Only now does Alice seem to notice Yekase thinks on “this” side of the river.

“Trying to brainwash you into a servant was my fault. I won’t apologize.”

“Your apology’s useless,” Yekase drains her tea and has a 1:8 maid doll refill it. “If you’re lying, I’ll kill you on the spot. If you’re not, then when the Archetypal World is complete, I’ll settle that bill slowly.”

“…Being this ignorant of the sky’s height is its own talent.”

Yekase smiles, careless, then asks, “So, Crescent Puppeteer Alicia Alicia, bearer of a grand vow—how were you planning to use me as a tool to win the Golden Apple?”

Alice snaps her fingers.

A dozen little dolls shoulder out from a hidden door, carrying a life‑sized female doll.

It’s undressed, and at a glance it’s indistinguishable from a human. Skin and hair are eerily real. If not for those gorgeous glass eyes and a lateral seam across the belly, Yekase might have thought it a poor girl turned into a doll by an evil witch.

Showing surprise would bleed away her leverage. Yekase quickly sips her tea.

The tiny porters set the big doll by the table, poised like a real attendant waiting at her side.

“The maid dolls used daily in the French court are all my works. I enter the palace every year to service them.”

“Mm.”

“I choose the service day. I planned to use that window. You’d slip in through a hidden passage I prepared. Then I’d stuff you into any doll—”

“Hold up, you can hide a person inside a doll?”

“Hollow the inside, and it hides one.”

“????”

“Relax. The service routines are etched on the shell. You stay inside as filler. Wait for the right moment, burst the shell, seize the fruit.”

Yekase protests, sharp: “No, that’s not the only problem—okay, it is a problem—but inside that shell, how do I eat, drink, use a bathroom? Do your dolls even eat?”

“Oh, that’s where your Flash Energy comes in.”

“Like hell that works!”

“The waiting time won’t be long.”

“That’s not comfort.”

“Then you tell me. As a resident of Mysidia, I signed at birth a blood pact forbidding me from harming or plundering the World Tree. My dolls can’t either. Only you can take this apple. If I weren’t out of moves, I wouldn’t reach beyond our walls.”

Alice spreads her hands, deadpan, like a statue shrugging.

You still have Fujiwara Ningning… fine, she’s not someone you send on a stealth op.

Yekase thinks for a long time and truly finds no clean path. The French court will watch the World Tree’s fruit like hawks. Without infiltration, a frontal clash with a nation’s war footing? She’s not that delusional.

Not to mention the winds of factions rising across Europe. If not for that sliver of hope and curiosity toward Alice’s world, she’d never dip a toe in this obvious catastrophe.

At last, Yekase sighs and yields:

“I can evolve some resistance to hunger and thirst, but it’s still animal‑grade. If you can lock the Golden Apple’s ripening within three days, so I won’t wait longer, I’ll accept.”

“Piece of cake.”

“And,” Yekase turns the blade, “I teach at Ivalice. To keep in touch, I’ll have to travel back and forth. People will notice. So I need a legitimate reason.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to teach me the Runic Words.”

Yekase rises, walks to the window, and looks out at the city’s lush green.

“Especially runes tied to the ‘Inverted Tree.’”

…The City of Sorcery, Mysidia.

Raised atop the World Tree to fulfill the concept of the Radiant Tetrahedron, yet sworn not to pluck a twig. People who live here under True Names—what are they really seeking?

Yekase realizes she understands these mystic riddle‑mongers less and less.