A few days later, the second 2022 semester rolled in at Ivalice State University, like a bell wave rippling across quiet courtyards.

Yekase had two classes a week, both in the afternoon. Today—April 28—was her first lecture, nerves tight as a drum, hope shining like new glass.

She came thirty minutes early, breath steady, footsteps soft. The room already held waiting faces, perched like sparrows on a wire.

Fa’ai and Jiang Bailu were there… and two strangers, one boy, one girl. Noticing Yekase at the door, Fa’ai lifted a hand like a leaf in wind, while the pair—already tagged “power couple” in Yekase’s mind—smiled and dipped their heads, calling in unison, “Good afternoon, Professor.”

“You two know me?”

“We attended that magic deconstruction lecture,” the steadier boy said, voice even as river stone.

“Your take on portals was so fun. After you bolted, Professor Rosef just stood there, stunned,” the girl chimed, bright as a kite in sun.

“Ah, haha…” Her laugh was thin as paper; her first impression felt skewed, like a painting hung crooked.

Yekase climbed to the podium, lifted the teacher terminal, and opened the roll. Forty names flowed out at once, a stream of ink unspooling.

Eh?! This room has only twenty seats!

The four below ignored her visible wobble, then reported with a rhythm like drumbeats:

“Ein Rosenberg reporting.”

“Dorothy Rosenberg reporting!”

“Fa’ai Green… Griffin reporting!”

“Jiang Bailu reporting!”

So not a show-off couple—siblings. Because she had a younger sister, Yekase always softened for close siblings; her bias melted like frost under morning light.

She turned and flipped Jiang Bailu the middle finger. “You, cut it out. Shameless, sneaking in with the students?”

“Huh?! That’s discrimination!” Jiang Bailu raised her voice like a banner. “If one keeps a heart for learning, even at dusk one remains a student!”

“T-that’s… actually fair…” The retort hit clean; Yekase’s tongue tangled, but her mind flicked to solutions. No student record, no faculty record. Call the dean later and have her carried out. Easy.

She smiled despite herself and ticked three names on the roll, her mood settling like dust.

Half an hour later, thirty-seven students drifted in like a tide. The small room grew tighter, aisles packed, bodies pressed like reeds in a marsh. Yekase cursed the university’s course site under her breath—how did a twenty-seat class allow double the registrations? She raised the terminal, ready to ping the dean, and have a certain woman—more squeeze than seat—escorted out.

Right then, the room changed like a trick of light.

As Yekase checked the last name, the door sealed with a soft hiss. Everyone felt their bodies lighten, like a weight lifted from bone; the seatless students rose, feet leaving the floor, drifting like lanterns.

“Wh—”

They hadn’t ignored the seat issue out of laziness. They knew what was coming, and chatter bubbled like spring water.

The classroom block shifted to zero-G.

The metal ceiling unfurled, petals of steel opening. Twenty desks and chairs slid out, identical to the floor set—capacity doubled in a breath.

The seatless floated up with practiced ease, settling onto the ceiling like swallows under eaves. Only Yekase hung midair, feet adrift, eyes wide as moons.

No blackboard, just terminals. Tablets on every desk. Upside-down worked as clean as right-side up.

She cleared her throat, trying for authority, heart fluttering like a moth. “Ahem, let’s begin? Hello, everyone, I’m Luciferin.”

Laughter spilled up and down, surround sound like rain on a tin roof.

And the world’s first Flash Energy course began in that rustling, smiling weather.

…

After class, Yekase left the room and headed straight for her assigned lab, pace clipped like a knife. Jiang Bailu hurried behind, steps quick and cat-soft.

“You mad?”

Yekase ignored her and sped up, temper burning low like a coal.

“No way, really mad? I didn’t even take a seat.”

“You were floating in the center like a smug balloon, and you think that’s fine?!”

“Luciferin’s lecture was too good. I got carried away, like wind in a sail.”

Yekase snorted, followed the campus map, and found the lab. On the door hung a plaque: [Flash Energy Integrated Application Lab — Manager: Luciferin].

She swiped her card and pushed in, breath catching like a bird.

In the center stood a ring-shaped particle accelerator, silver as moonlight. Around it, instruments and machines gleamed, neat as troops on parade. Seeing the fresh metal, her foul mood blew away, like fog under sun.

“Hee hee hee…” She smiled at the machines, giddy as a child with fireworks.

“Damn, Doc, that grin’s kinda pervy,” Jiang Bailu murmured behind her, but the jab never reached Yekase’s ears.

Yekase slipped into a trance, steps soft as mist, and drifted close to the accelerator pipe. She opened her arms like a prayer.

She hugged the metal conduit, cheek to steel.

“Brand-new accelerator, brand-new detectors, brand-new lines… mine, all mine…”

She was so taken by the gift, she didn’t notice Jiang Bailu quietly closing the door behind them, then flipping the new dust seal lock with a practiced touch.

Suddenly, Jiang Bailu grabbed her from behind, hugging tight as a tide.

“The doctor’s true heart, the doctor’s body, the doctor’s lips… mine, all mine—”

“Ehh—?!” The mood snapped like a string. Here? Now?

Yekase struggled instantly, hands flashing. Her palm smacked the accelerator pipe—thud, deep and long—shock jolted her spine, and she pulled back her force like a fish from a hook.

She swore she saw a tiny dent form, like that scene in Kung Fu where the hero trains Buddha’s Palm inside the iron barrel. Sin, sin!

Jiang Bailu pressed her to the pipe, then rested her face on Yekase’s shoulder, breath warm as tea at her ear. “Once the doctor steps into a lab, she ties her own hands—this is my strategy.”

“Wh—”

“I know these instruments are like your children. You fear every nick and scratch. Your girlfriend still trapped in the Void, yet behind her back you’ve had children. Naughty, isn’t it?”

“W-why the formal ‘you’ again?!” Panic flickered; she tried to steer the talk away like rowing against current.

“Because I’m about to do things that betray you. Let this be my apology. Please forgive me, Doctor.”

“My suggestion is don’t do them to start with… eek!”

Her left hand was already in Yekase’s mouth, tugging the corner like Luffy, then pinching her chin, index and middle finger slipping in, playing with her tongue like silk.

“Mm—guh—”

“Gagging already? Sorry, I rushed. You’re not used to foreign things in your mouth, are you?”

“Why would anyone get used to that…”

“Then you need to, soon. We’re about to certify this skill.”

“???”

“On your first day at the State University, you got sidetracked and never came to the lab, right? I used that time to hire a mechanic from [Why Do Clotheslines Fall Down Instead of Flying Up?]. We built an automatic Flash Energy production line just for you, tucked deep in this lab.”

“??????” The sounds she made were thick and sticky, like honey struggling to drip.

“Next class is next week. Stay here a while… produce some Flash Energy for the upcoming lectures.”

She kept Yekase pinned, then lifted the gradient gray-blue skirt, revealing an inner cosmos studded with stars. Her right hand slid straight into that night.

Two fingers touched the secret universe’s eye, slow as moonrise.

Her nails were clipped to nothing. Even if the doctor wouldn’t get hurt easily, and would heal fast, wounds should appear where they belong. She couldn’t bear to make pain at the girl’s most precious place.

She didn’t push apart those two crinkled nebulae that had guarded ancient mysteries since time’s dawn, nor probe the singularity hidden in the black hole. She sent a tactile sensor instead, gathering data along the outer rim, patient as a monk.

“Doctor, it feels new every time, doesn’t it?” Her voice was soft, like a fingertip on water.

Just from that, Yekase went from bracing with her back to inch out, to a salted fish slumping against the pipe, waiting for sun.

“Mm… hawa… don’t, m—” Her tongue wrapped unconsciously around Jiang Bailu’s left index finger, like a child remembering lollipops.

Her body vibrated like an ever-expanding universe, heat blooming from core to skin. Down that hidden corridor, condensed liquid matter was born.

It was Flash Energy, and it ran clean—high purity, bright as first dawn.

At the beginning, matter and antimatter rose from the blank chaos, found each other, and annihilated. They didn’t leave a perfect zero. A spill of light quanta slipped from the seam and lit the cosmos, and under someone’s observation at the Causal Horizon, leaned toward the red, “Good” alignment within Infinite Power.

Thus, time gained weight, and concept grew bones.

That unseen grand process now hummed below Yekase’s belly, orderly as gears.

“Wait… haah,” She tried to breathe; the world dragged like silk.

Jiang Bailu eased her left hand from Yekase’s mouth, tasted the lingering flavor of Flash Energy like a bright drink, then used a ring to nick her finger. Her species shifted—temporarily—a vampire born of a drop, fangs budding like white thorns.

Her right-hand searching paid off. With a tremor anyone could see, the girl in her arms arched, spine ringing, breath spent like a tide. About a hundred milliliters of high-purity liquid Flash Energy flowed, clear as glacier melt.

Jiang Bailu spoke in her ear, voice warm and low as dusk. “I overstep again and again, and you indulge me again and again. Isn’t that love? I don’t understand… Or is the word ‘love’ itself taboo to you? Because you lost her, you placed every blame on yourself, and lost even the will to love, all-powerful genius Miss Yekase?”

“…mm…” The sound was small, like a sparrow trapped in a sleeve.

“Then say it. Say your heart holds only the woman named Ivaris, and I’ll give up. If not, say you love me.”

“I really… don’t know.” Confusion coiled like mist on water.

“As expected.” She smiled, thin and knowing. “Then come. Let’s begin round two.”

The soft struggle in her arms grew a shade stronger, yet still easy to lift with one hand from below, as if she weighed nothing. Jiang Bailu bared two sharpened canines, then pressed them in with a gentleness that brooked no refusal, biting the girl’s snow-white neck like a winter moon touching a pale shore.