Jiang Bailu opened her eyes again.

Endless blue filled the sky. At the edge of her vision, pale-cyan eaves and palace walls cut a clean line.

"...?"

...Did I fall?

She cupped the dull ache at the back of her head and pushed herself up from the ground.

"Coffee Moon."

Her faithful ghost slid into being beside her without a sound.

What happened just now?

Low blood sugar? And at a time like this?

Bailu didn’t understand. She took Coffee Moon’s hand and stood, lifting her gaze to the towering palace wall. A guess coalesced like mist turning to frost:

It’s a dead city now, but before everyone vanished into thin air, this should’ve been the capital, the seat of the most exalted.

A place like this would have wards to turn back intruders. That’s only natural.

But Jiang Bailu is who she is. Even if she forgot her name, her temper is carved into the bedrock of her soul. Obstacles breed curiosity.

She’d already tested the price of flying over—fine. Then break the door.

"—!!"

Bailu flicked a finger at the heavy stone gate. Coffee Moon arced through the air and dove. Her fists fell like rain. Stone turned to chips, then dust, until a hole yawned wide enough for Bailu to slip through.

She peered in and saw the hall.

A vast round plaza—much like the place where she first woke. All around it, packed tight as barnacles—

...crystals.

Every last one was crystal. In each crystal, a person was sealed, their fate unknown.

Bailu didn’t linger on the crystals.

Her gaze was claimed by the one at the very center.

She half reclined on a stone bench. Black hair, slashed with a red fringe, spilled across shoulder and back. It skimmed a full chest and a gentle waist, then pooled on the back of her hand.

"I’ve been looking for you for so long."

Said the girl with eyes like flame.

Crack.

At those words, something split in Bailu’s head. Shards of memory surged, drowning thought. When she surfaced, her sight steadied.

"Doctor..."

"I’m here, Bailu."

She staggered forward.

She wrapped the Doctor’s shoulders and pulled her close.

"Doctor, I missed you so much..."

"...Then come home with me."

"Mm. But before that—"

Bailu bared her fangs and sank them into Yekase’s jade-smooth neck. She drank, slow and resolute.

As if to repay the days apart—careful, grateful, taking life with all her heart.

"Mm, I knew it..."

Yekase’s complaint came muffled and sweet; to Bailu, it was a spoiled, playful pout. No rejection. No disgust. Only a warmth that could hold every part of her.

Even if Bailu can’t quit spinach, only stands with heroes for Yekase’s sake, clings with near-sick possessiveness and a need to control, mind forever in the gutter...

Even then, Yekase would still say:

"Hurry up. When you’re done fooling around, let’s go home."

She accepts me.

That sense of home laid bedrock beneath Bailu’s hollow world. Sky and earth finally split apart. She was a soul standing on solid ground. She needed nothing else.

You mistook respect for love.

The words that had haunted a hundred nights took on a new shape.

Admiration, romance... would those words make it sound silly? From strangers to tacit understanding, love isn’t the opening—love is the sum. The Doctor started at the end, the final shape of all human ties—an irreplaceable family.

No need to fall in love. We’re already family.

Just repeating it made Bailu feel featherlight.

She smiled, sugar-sweet.

"Doctor, I’ve always loved you..."

One hand cupped Yekase’s headlights. The other slid beneath her skirt, pressing the girl to the stone bed.

"...Take me," Yekase breathed at her ear.

Bailu’s mind went buzz at that. She nuzzled Yekase’s cheek and met those eyes—usually steady and sure. Now, teased by Bailu’s fingers, they shimmered with a misted want.

This soft creature was a top-tier machinist, an Infinite Power engineer, an Ancient Alchemist, heir to a will, the one who spread Flash Energy, a rebel against exploitation...

And at the same time, just a girl.

Her gentleness wasn’t limp indecision or throwaway concern. It was the grin after she smoothed everything out, the simple, "All done." In that, she carried a striking masculinity.

That’s how she should be. The Doctor should be just like this.

Bailu lowered her lashes and buried her face in Yekase’s rounded twin spheres. Her left arm circled the girl’s waist, holding her tight. Warm breath slid through the valley.

"When did these unruly things get so bold?"

She reached with her free hand to tend the neglected side. But Yekase’s legs clamped her palm, slick skin squelching.

"Doctor’s in quite a mood today..."

Bailu welcomed it with both hands and feet—well, one hand was trapped, so metaphorically. Before, no matter how much she took from Yekase, response rarely came back. It made her wonder if she was just doing violence. Next time, she’d push harder.

Refuse me once, even if it’s firm.

Say you hate it, even if it’s after.

But no.

Even locked in a box, drained for days, Yekase never called to complain. She quietly asked Labyrinth City to find Bailu a vampire tutor, and waited for her to sulk like a runaway child and come home.

It was like—if she had to draw a line—like a mother, or someone who could be her mother.

In Bailu’s birth home, both parents were in the Sinister Organization. Rigid. Traditional. Oblivious to the evil of their smallness. A snowflake in an avalanche.

Always at the Organization. Always overtime. Parenting was neglect. Their only ask was for her to marry a rich, high-ranking cadre.

So faced with love this heavy, Bailu sinking deeper felt almost natural.

It’s all the Doctor’s fault.

A lean evening wind combed their skirts. Above the fog, day and night slipped back into rhythm. The sun, half drowned in the mountains, couldn’t cast light on the floating city. Pale-cyan bricks darkened to the color of night.

Palace, plaza, crystals, and the people asleep within them stood solemn, near-sacred. They watched in silence the only two living souls in a dead city.

Bailu had played enough with those non-Newtonian spheres. Her forefinger traced a teasing circle around the peak. Then, like a small creature finding its trail, she kissed from collarbone to the side of the neck, leaving a wet path.

Her hand kneaded two soft petals. Pale pink flesh flushed and swelled, opening and closing to a steady beat.

It was about time.

Coffee Moon’s fingers—slender as the body’s—slipped into the seam between flesh and flesh. Stronger than the original, they pried it open. Then they vanished, letting a never-sunned secret taste first air.

They shivered, little tremors gathering force for a rush toward the crown. Invisible fingers gently peeled back the event horizon wrapped around a singularity. The red core showed, twitching.

But when Bailu finished counting, her fingers met no Flash Energy.

The tense walls and heat that could scald promised an endgame called climax. Yet the expected surge did not arrive.

She lay on Yekase—silent since the midpoint—and let the heat inside her cool, unstoppable.

A hollow sense of loss.

Like solving a case only to find a ghost did it. Like Science Explained blaming static on dry air. The journey matters. But that final mutual nod is the period that makes the sentence perfect.

...

...Bai...

Who?

...Bailu... sis...

Someone was calling her name.

Bailu jolted. Yekase’s face—filled with dazed allure—blurred out of true.

"Ling Yi?"

No... what am I doing here?

My name is Jiang Bailu.

This is Arcadia.

Why am I in Arcadia?

Why do I kno-w Ar-ca-di-a?

Coffee Moon snapped into place behind her, fists clenched, warding an enemy nowhere and everywhere.

Bailu slid off the stone bed and sat on the floor, breath coming fast.

This is... an illusion.

When did it start? Where?

When I woke beneath the palace wall?

When I woke inside a crystal?

When I entered Soville City?

Against her will, Coffee Moon slowly raised its right hand.

In that phantom palm, still damp with "Yekase," lay a bullet.

Ah. So that’s it.

She stared at the bullet, its tail faintly blue, and remembered everything.

This is my trump card.

Sorry for the trouble, girls.

Coffee Moon pinched the bullet between fore and middle fingers, thumb on the base. It aimed at Bailu’s temple.

Like a pistol set for self-harm.

The hand was a ghost’s. The firing pin, a warped force field.

At a thought, the Yekase-imbued Soul Power bullet would accelerate into her skull.

What if this is real?

No doubt. She’d die.

Then let’s gamble.

She grinned, cherry lips parting.

"Bang."