Yekase stopped trying to flex with live mixology. She asked Shen Shanshan for a moonboost, a cool-blue drink that gleamed like frost on steel. Last time it was called moonblast, but BTC got skittish after Luzhixing set a monstrous Mind Energy Piercing Light Cannon dead-center on the lunar frontline at Von Braun. They changed the name, like painting over a war scar.

“The human eye has a quirk,” she said, voice steady as a metronome. “The faster you move, the narrower your field gets, until it’s just a pinprick straight ahead.”

Lu Yao drank in silence, the liquor sitting heavy like rain-soaked wool.

“If you keep chasing your sister’s silhouette, you’ll miss the world blooming around you. It’s just trade-offs; no one gets to judge. I won’t drop that cheap line, ‘obsession is pointless.’ Life barely holds any grand meaning to begin with. That’s why you get to do what you truly want. Revenge or inquiry, it’s about staying true to your core. If you go mad, then go mad.”

“…So what are you actually saying?”

Lu Yao set down the empty glass boot. Her eyes flushed red, like dawn pushing through fog—maybe emotion, maybe alcohol, probably both.

Yekase opened her right hand, five fingers like a fan of pale petals. Her voice fell from a high crest to a calm pond.

“We’ve basically mapped out four types of Infinite Power. Add my Flash Energy, that makes five.”

“Two-term and three-term blends, in every ratio. Field-tested, safe mixes: one hundred and forty-four. Numbers like lanterns along a night road.”

“An origin environment that accepts all Infinite Power. A crack in the door to a grand unified theory. Ancient Alchemy. Seventy-two common runes, fifteen link-keys. Bones and sinew for a living world.”

“You’re stuck on silver. You’re missing the whole rainbow. Everything could be a wind at your back when you move beyond your sister. I’m not here to preach. I’m just—”

“As your comrade, I’d feel it’s a waste.”

She only listed numbers, pebble by pebble, but warmth rose from her voice like steam from fresh tea—something Lu Yao had never felt from her before, a gentle room of sunlit windows.

“…”

This woman is a central air unit that grants every wish, Lu Yao’s flickering reason warned, a candle in a drafty hall. But the alcohol tugged her downward, like tide pulling feet into sand.

“Why…” Lu Yao murmured, words soft as ash.

“We both live in the past. Why… can you look toward the future?”

She lowered her head. Her fingers dug into the oak tabletop, trying to carve grief into wood grain.

“Jealousy.” She could hear it herself—warped and ugly, a shadow with teeth, spilling from that single word.

“Because you can too. You’re just missing one thing: a try.”

Yekase heard a flare, not a flaw. A signal fire, not a sin.

Why look forward? To her, “can” never needed a lecture. But she wouldn’t treat any step as a given.

What mattered was this: Lu Yao finally showed something besides refusal and nostalgia. A spark under her ribs, more alive than any moment in years. That feeling, bright or dark, meant she’d begun to peer beyond the cocoon she spun around herself.

“We carry a lot. We owe a lot. That doesn’t mean we have to wear tragedy every day like a wet cloak. Think of a broke student. Sure, don’t blow your grant on designer sneakers. But buying a snack? That’s okay. A small sweetness in a gray afternoon.”

What a trash metaphor, Lu Yao thought, a smirk ghosting like smoke.

“If you plan to raise your eyes and look around, you can ask me for directions anytime. I’ll do the job right. I’ll introduce the whole world, street by street. If you feel you can’t swallow your pride, I’ve got options for that too.”

She covered her mouth, suddenly moved, the feeling cresting like a spring flood.

“…Ugh!”

Something unspeakable seeped between her fingers, like tar oozing from a crack.

…

She bolted for the bathroom, a blur of shame and staggered steps.

Yekase rolled her eyes skyward. Shen Shanshan slid in, wiping a glass and shaking her head with theatrical sorrow.

“You’re too good at mood talk. Look, you made her sick.”

“She drank herself sick!”

“So who is she?”

“A hero who’s more competent than me by a lot.”

“Can you call a hero ‘competent’? It’s not a job title.”

“It is a calling. A long work that runs until people don’t need it anymore.”

She set the empty highball glass on the counter and laughed, a quick sparrow sound.

Shen Shanshan rinsed the glass, then kept polishing, circling the rim like a moon tracing tides. “I asked around when I came. The famous inventor’s calendar is a thunderstorm. Research, teaching, then casually solving incidents and offing a few church hounds—now you’re doing therapy too?”

“No help for it. That’s the fate of a genius.”

…

After a quiet stretch, Shen Shanshan blurted, words slipping like a note under a door:

“You’re so busy. Will we get to meet again?”

She kept wiping the already-clean glass, over and over, pressing away a sliver of loneliness like a leaf under a book.

“Like before. You lugged a few new gadgets—most of which I thought were junk—set up a stall in the black market, and we talked all afternoon. We didn’t sell a feather, but it was fun.”

“Only you had fun.”

“Merc business is thriving here, but I don’t have the taste for it anymore. Over at the Twin Towers, my bar crew’s great. There’s a girl with cat-ear implants who says she’ll marry me. I thought I’d have a sea of words when I saw you, but… I guess we’re drifting.”

“Mm.”

Lu Yao wobbled out of the bathroom, face pale and damp, like paper after rain.

Yekase grinned, sun through cloud. “It’s fine. If you want, we can meet anytime. The Earth’s round, remember?”

…

…

Outside the bar, Ling Yi and Dorothy were glued to a stall where a crafter used Wind Breath technique to blow glass bottles, the flame bending like a serpent. She was fifteen, after all. Once Dorothy started playing, she shed her persona like a summer jacket and went wild with Ling Yi.

Jiang Bailu, the temporary guardian, had grown so bored she was counting heads like beads on a string. She waited and waited, and finally Yekase stepped out of the bar. But the person behind her wasn’t Lu Yao. It was a white-haired girl in a sailor uniform.

…?

Just a drink, and she’d picked up someone new? Again?

“You—You…” Jiang Bailu sputtered, anger sparking like dry straw.

Yekase answered with clean lines, a straight road. “Lu Yao got drunk and teleported home. This is Shen Shanshan’s friend. The bar’s slammed, so she asked me to take the girl out to see the town.”

Huh?

Shen Shanshan has a silver-haired beauty for a friend?

Jiang Bailu had quit around the Lantern Festival incident, but they’d worked together long enough. If Shen Shanshan had a friend this cute, she’d have heard. This felt off, like a carved mask smiling wrong.

She stared at Yekase. Nothing. Then stared at the white-haired girl.

The girl looked Ling Yi’s age. Her white hair glowed like frost under full moon, braided into a thick rope that fell from shoulder to chest. Her face was doll-perfect, a cherry mouth pressed tight with nerves, green eyes glistening and evasive. She wore a sailor uniform that looked suspiciously familiar—almost a match for Yekase’s Magical Girl mode. Coincidence felt like a magic trick.

The girl didn’t speak. She clutched Yekase’s hem, hiding at her flank like a fawn behind a tree.

“…Don’t you dare steal somebody’s wife,” Jiang Bailu muttered, half-joking, half-warning. “I’ll cut ties.”

Close call. If she’d met the younger sister here, the mask would’ve slipped, Yekase thought, a cold bead sliding down her spine. She gently guided the girl forward.

“Her name’s Yin.”

“H…Hi,” Yin whispered, the word fluttering like a moth.

“No need to be that nervous. We don’t bite.”

Jiang Bailu shrugged and took Yin’s left side, so she and Yekase flanked the girl. They drifted behind the vanguard of Ling Yi and Dorothy, a little parade sliding through market noise.

Her stride was longer, and the crowd pushed them into a funnel shape. Yin and Yekase ended up trailing, two quiet shadows at the tail.

“That Fa-e fellow,” Yekase said, skipping stones across memory. “He pulled his show, vanished, then came back as a girl. I stepped up, took her from a squad of Church knights—steel clashed like winter hail. Next day, I saw his statue in the church garden. The tour guide said he martyred himself for science.”

Yin listened hard, eyes fixed like dew on grass, then asked:

“He reincarnates every fifty years, lives again and again. Can he stack attributes or abilities?”

“Doesn’t show. Maybe it’s ascetic practice at its core. Ancient scholars had a shared plight. The road of science beneath their feet seemed to end. They looked up and saw no horizon, just fog. Pride told them they’d hit the final wall. In that cold, many turned to idealism.”

“Why… does it go that way?”

“Newton’s the clearest case. With classic physics—the peak of materialism then—he walked straight into a paradox. In classical thought, there has to be a Prime Mover. Without that first push, nothing starts. That push points, almost blatantly, to God.”

Even now, quantum theory wriggles out by saying “in extremely rare cases,” symmetry breaks for a heartbeat, and particles pick up mass from the Higgs field—like a gust rippling a still lake.

If you ask me, I use the Causal Horizon, a higher-stratum frame, to thread cause through the loom.

“See? Even the universe itself was born from a clumsy accident. So a person’s flaws and black history are just weather. They pass.”