Yekase loved slipping on a new mask for no reason, like a snake trading skins.

In real life she ran four faces—Yekase, Mechbreaker, Magical Girl Icarus, and Luciferin. In the public eye they sat like stars in separate skies. In a pinch she’d shed one like a lizard drops its tail and wriggle free.

After she came to Europe, she kept using the name Luciferin. But her style couldn’t stay low‑key, and Europeans love baroque titles like ivy. Nicknames flocked like pigeons, enough to fill an inn. They all pointed to the same moon, though, so they weren’t usable masks.

Lymriel was too limited, like a statue chained to a plinth. Not fit for walking around.

To grow the Slackfish Cult and build that talent market she’d imagined, the Flash Energy professor, Luciferin, had to stand on the stage like a lantern. That meant Yekase’s own identity would be penned into a tiny corral.

Which meant it was time to knead a new mask, like rolling fresh dough.

Yekase had a neat trick for that, like a hidden dagger in her sash.

After her Flash Energy ascension, she gained a brand‑new method with near‑zero chance of exposure, like mist slipping through fingers.

She could drive her body into targeted evolution. It came from reverse‑engineering her seven‑year‑old mode, useless in a fight but perfect for disguise, like dye soaking silk.

She could push her looks forward to any age, then tweak her frame, as easy as sliding beads on an abacus.

It lagged behind Mind Energy’s free‑form face‑molding, and her core outline still showed like mountains under fog. But she was the first under heaven to sculpt a face with Flash Energy. Ordinary folks couldn’t even frame the idea. Like Ultraman’s human host vanishing a hundred times, and no one links him to Ultraman. That level was enough.

So Yekase stepped through a new portal and finally came home. She dashed into her room and got to work, sparks leaping like a forge.

First, she dragged her age to twenty‑eight, like sliding a bead to the end.

Ten years of growth rushed into a minute. Hair surged from shoulders to floor like a waterfall. Bones stretched, if not by much, like bamboo after rain. Curves deepened under cloth like hills under snow. Her headlights jumped straight to about a D.

She shed the ill‑fitting clothes and checked the full‑length mirror her little sis had forced in. She almost got turned on by her own reflection, like a moth to a lantern.

Maybe changing her lifespan did it. She didn’t look nearly thirty. She looked like an early‑twenties college girl, bright as spring buds. Except the hair screamed Sadako.

And the chest… for some reason, that size made her think of Professor F’s do‑not‑stare headlights, bright as twin lamps on a foggy pier.

It was a tiny possibility spliced from the evolution chain. When Yekase first became a girl by surgery, that near‑artificial body couldn’t grow, like a blossom pressed in a book. After her elevation, body age turned into a prop. Only during that window in Ivaris, after feeding Flash Energy but before the ascension, did her body have room to grow toward this shape, like a sapling finding sun.

“Ah… mm. My voice changed a lot too,” she murmured, like wind on chimes.

Good. Visually she was a different person, like a freshly painted mask. Next came her abilities.

Time to use the blood magic she’d learned at no small cost, like ink mixed with her own blood.

Infinite Power needed a veil too. She couldn’t let her signature blast smell like Yekase. She’d mask it with a device like the Flashblade System, hiding a blade in a cane.

It had to light up and chirp, sitting somewhere obvious. Let folks think, Ah, the device grants the power, like a talisman glowing on a sash.

Make it a belt, like a ring around a tree.

Done. Yekase slid into the lab and shut herself in, like a turtle drawing into its shell.

…

After a whole night, she walked out cradling a belt, like a mother holding a newborn.

She ran right into Liu RuoYuan coming downstairs to make breakfast, steam like morning mist behind her.

“Who are you?! …Wait, bro?!”

Why did you grow up overnight—no, why aren’t you wearing clothes?!

Yekase’s floor‑length hair hung in tangles, her face veiled with the dead light of an all‑nighter. Bare shoulders and bare backside gleamed like porcelain. Her arms cradled a weird machine like a ghost baby at her chest. She looked like something that slipped off a horror set.

“Wh‑what happened to you?!”

“Pulled an all‑nighter… died about seven times…”

“Why dying?! What about your evolution?”

“Some old traumas woke up, I guess…”

Yekase flopped into Liu RuoYuan’s arms, like driftwood into a harbor.

“Whoa‑whoa‑whoa—”

Yekase’s hands suddenly loosened. The miracle gizmo almost fell. Liu RuoYuan caught it near her belly and tried to prop Yekase with a shoulder… missed.

When the sky falls, the tall hold it up—yet some other part met first, like two soft clouds. The tiny impact was already cushioned, warm and yielding.

“…”

“Not yet at the fatigue‑resistance… evolution threshold. Give it… a moment…”

“I think you should nap now?”

Through Yekase’s bangs, a curtain of hair, Liu RuoYuan saw that faint frown and vacant eyes. Her face was written with gloom like rain‑stained ink.

A body more mature than ever, and an aura softer than ever—Yekase as she’d never been, like a blade sheathed in velvet.

…Gulp.

For some reason, in this state, she wanted to bully her a little, like poking a sleepy cat.

Back in middle school, Yekase was dozing before the third mock exam. The first thing Liu RuoYuan did was swap the Pepsi into the Coke bottle from the fridge.

She bombed the mock next day.

Back home, Yekase only smiled helplessly at her, like a lantern in drizzle. She said nothing, did nothing.

After that, Liu RuoYuan never pulled that kind of prank again. She turned into a gentle, thoughtful daughter who surprised even Mom, and even got into a normal university to be a teacher.

Even her students called her too homely and able—no one would guess she’d climbed trees for nests, swum in reservoirs, and raced a tractor along field ridges with Yekase. For their age, they did more exercise than their whole class combined.

Let’s be nostalgic for once, while the wind’s right.

“With a body this mature, doesn’t ‘bro’ feel off? My. Sis. Ter.”

“…Sis…?” Yekase mumbled.

“Sis, I learned pour‑over coffee. If you won’t nap, I’ll brew you a cup.”

“Mm. Okay…”

Liu RuoYuan guided Yekase to the table, where she looked ready to sleep yet stubborn as a mule. She set the wonder‑device aside, draped a coat over her, and went into the kitchen.

Soon, XiaoLei came downstairs.

She saw a woman in just a coat slumped at the table, head bobbing like a dozing pigeon.

“…???”

A fifty‑year‑old farm woman had never seen a scene like this. She froze like a scarecrow in frost.

With Lu Yao gone to the City of Ivalice, only she and her second daughter remained on this sky‑island. Through the kitchen window she saw Liu RuoYuan fussing with her new coffee machine. So who was this shameless‑looking woman in someone else’s home?

XiaoLei decided this wouldn’t do. Even if she was a friend, that posture was too—

Right then, Yekase’s fatigue meter climbed to a new threshold. Her brain flash‑chilled like dunked in ice, and clarity breezed back.

She lifted her head.

Her eyes met XiaoLei’s, like two blades tapping.

“…”

“…”

“…Morning?”

“Wh‑who are you? Why are you in our home?!”

Mom snapped out of it and got mad, like thunder over a field!

Yekase felt a chill and looked down—no clothes. She remembered changing her body yesterday and stripping everything, then tinkering alone in the lab, blind as a bat.

“I can explain—”

“What’s your name?” XiaoLei demanded, like a gavel hitting wood.

“Uh,”

Calling herself Yekase to Mom felt weird, like reading an edgy teen diary to family. She thought of her old male name, and her first reaction was, Who the hell is that. She blanked.

“I… I’m your son!”

“Phone scam, huh? I don’t have a son!”

“You adapted that fast?!”

Yekase slid off the chair, knelt, and cupped her face, like a snowman slumping in sun. “Do you really want me to call myself Yekase in front of you?!”

“…Oh, it’s you, kid.”

XiaoLei sighed in relief, then flared anew like a stove catching. “How many times have I told you, a girl should keep her clothes on even at home!”

“You just called me ‘kid’…”

“Hm?”

“I’ll get dressed right now!”

Yekase flailed upstairs. A few minutes later she flailed back down. “My clothes don’t fit!”

“…”

“Sis, wear mine,” Liu RuoYuan called from the kitchen. “You’re about my size now… oh, except one spot won’t fit.”

Under the gaze of one big and one small woman, even Yekase felt a flicker of shame. She covered her chest on instinct, like a squirrel hiding a nut.

“For the record, this size is the body’s own calculation. Not my kink!”

“Sure, sure,” Liu RuoYuan said, all perfunctory waves, like a fan in summer.

“At least you know to cover up. Progress,” XiaoLei nodded, like approving a harvest.

Basked in looks that seemed to understand everything, Yekase scurried back to her room. She wriggled into a shirt and jeans. As for the layer underneath… she’d better shift back to seventeen and go buy some… no, that meant touching herself again. Such a hassle.

Forget it. I’m going out like this to buy some, she thought, surrendering like a flag in wind.

She threw on one more layer, felt sealed up enough, and fled the sky‑island, even forgetting to show off the new gadget to her sis.

She’d been a girl for so long, yet still made rookie mistakes. It pulled up last year’s green days like old film. Thinking back, it hadn’t been easy, no less grueling than her fugitive days.

“Ivalice’s lingerie shops, where were they…”

…

“…Sis?”