“Microscopic particles can’t cradle position and momentum in the same hand; entangled photons sing in unison across oceans; the world keeps a veil of mystery like dawn fog.

Not to scare us off, but to nudge us forward, like wind at our back—don’t you feel that’s the universe’s ultimate romance?”

Yekase turned, leaving Alicia Alicia dissolving behind her into drifting motes, like fireflies thinning in moonlight.

“Good night, teacher. I’m going to leave you behind.”

“...”

Alice shed her lightning cloak like a storm dropping rain, and became that small, strutting archmage, one of the two mentors Yekase admitted in her heart.

Her ruined body fell while fading like ash in wind, yet her eyes climbed the sky, past Yekase and Ling Yi, into the endless night.

She saw a nebula swallowing and breathing stardust, pulsars spitting life like furnaces, twin suns colliding after a billion-year dance, and—black holes, silent as wells.

“‘Romance,’ is it...”

All that she couldn’t explain, like mist over a river, and all that must someday be explained, like sunrise breaking it.

All that she once wanted to see, then feared to see, yet still wanted to see in the end, like a moth returning to flame.

“Hahahahahahaha—good night, world! Turns out I’ve loved you all along, like a heart tuned to your tide!”

The Golden Apple split cleanly in two, and the surge of Sorcery poured like a flood, stoking the warped air above the courtyard into a final blaze.

A narrow wormhole budded there, a bright scar in space—Arcadia’s standard model, like a keyhole cut in midnight.

Yekase caught the infant hatched from the fruit, staring at her chubby cheeks like peaches under soft sun.

“Hee.”

Their gazes met, and the baby laughed, like a bell rung by a breeze.

“You...” Yekase sighed and smiled, like a thaw after frost. The moment the little painter said “da Vinci,” she knew De Finxi had lied about her past.

She wasn’t the historical “Monster of the Renaissance,” not that phantom carved by legend like a statue in shadow.

You Longlifers really love wearing masks, like actors under paper lanterns?

Oh. I do too.

Yekase dug into the transport crate and took out the parchment scroll Sandryon had sold her for 450 bucks, then wrapped it with the baby in a bedsheet like a cloud.

“What now... Alice sped time by over four hundred years; this wormhole drifts about a thousand years, like a slow river.

If I toss you in, you’ll land in the fifteenth century.

Then study Alchemy for six hundred years, and sell me this scroll.”

Not bad, right? Whether fate’s script or a new branch of time, Yekase was happy to ink this coincidence like a story written in starlight.

Magical lifeforms don’t starve, like cacti nursing dew, so it’s not abandonment.

“Go!”

She tossed little Sandryon into the wormhole; the chaotic energy touched the bedsheet and gentled like rain on silk, swallowing the bundle slowly.

It vanished like a pebble dropping into a still lake.

The imperial garden settled back to calm, and time straightened like a riverbed, leaving debris scattered like fallen leaves.

Silent ruins explained the truth: those withered roses in the garden would never bloom again, like summers lost.

So the four finally greeted the dawn of July 15, 2022, like sailors sighting shore.

“My lady, the first cohort of the Arcadia Engineering Academy is about to report.”

“...Oh. You go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Waking as if from a dream, Yekase raised her head and climbed from the ground, brushing dust from the tombstone’s crown like soot from stone.

[Dorothy de Blois]

[2007–2022]

[Dawn of France]

She stepped back, hands on hips, studying those three lines like constellations, and spotted a missing stroke of red lacquer on the character for “ming.”

She pricked her finger with Dawn of Eden and filled it, smearing red like sunrise along a ridge.

While she smoothed it, she said, “Dorothy, you still owe me the answer to that problem I set in the Arctic, like a letter never mailed.”

Her hand slipped; the paint overflowed like water past a bank, like panel-lining gone heavy on a model.

She crouched to even it out, and the “sun” half of the character seemed to glow, like a lantern lit within.

“Forget it. You’ve graduated. I’ll pass you.”

Yekase touched her offline-space stud and pulled out a square single bed, crisp as a tile pulled from a hidden room.

It was the very bed Alicia Alicia lay on when they first met above Huaxia, like a cloud cradling thunder.

Old Newton left no children in either guise, no close friends, so the rabbit hole’s alchemical produce passed to Yekase, the final closed-door disciple.

She accepted it openly and without guilt, like taking a torch from a fallen runner.

The bed anchored a flight spell and came with semi-automatic controls and an air capsule, like a glider wired to obey.

You lay down and say “forward,” “land,” “Z-maneuver,” and it executes flawlessly, like a hawk obeying the glove.

Aside from a harmless lick of acceleration, it felt no different than your bed at home, like waves rocking a cradle.

Yekase settled in; the flying bed rose like a kite, and followed Beelzebub toward Arcadia, a silver leaf in wind.

Crossing the French megacrater, Beelzebub asked, “My lady, what’s the point of a tombstone, besides stone in a garden?”

“So strangers can know what she did for them, like a plaque under an old tree.”

“Then just tell them, right? With your power, you could force memory like a brand.”

“That’s why you’re a magical lifeform, and I’m human, like water and stone.”

“My lady, you’re a Longlifer, a textbook magical lifeform like us,” Beelzebub said, head tilted like a curious bird.

Yekase wagged a finger, meaning deep as a well. “You don’t get it. You’re young, sometimes childish. You still need to learn.”

She’d thought drawing stars with the Cosmic Bubble relic was romantic, like threading pearls, but maybe it was just color matching.

Maybe Yekase was the one pouring warmth into them, like tea into an empty cup.

“Speaking of the painting-world, how’s it coming?”

“The inside has expanded to the size of the academy plaza, and keeps growing on its own, like moss on stone.”

“What’s the limit?”

“Unknown. The relic’s information density is too high, like a compressed sea.

It might become a small world with physical laws like reality.

That way we can run dangerous experiments inside; if a local threshold trips, the students get ejected, like seeds popped from a pod.”

“Oh... Hm? Where’d the dangerous experiments come from? Who told you to run them on students?”

Beelzebub looked innocent as a cat. “Jiang Bailu. After she took the Applied Infinite Power faculty, she stuffed our manual with explosive experiments.”

“She said they’d spark student interest, like fireworks.”

“They’ll spark parents’ fury,” Yekase snapped, heat rising like a flare.

She kip-upped like a spring, and yelled, “Swordfish, punch it!”

She became a meteor streaking toward Arcadia, like iron through air.

Faint curses trailed like smoke. “Jiang Bailu, you little—! I’m gonna clobber you!”

Jiang Bailu tried to flee across the floating isles, but a laser web stopped her like a spider’s net, and she was caught on the spot.

Yekase hauled her by the back collar like a misbehaving pup, took her to the highest office of the Arcadia Infinite Power Engineering Academy, then stepped through a portal home to the Ambition Divine Ship cottage.

Ivaris lay in a beanbag like a lazy cat, playing a mobile game. “I ordered milk tea. One for you.”

“Nice.”

Yekase answered lightly, dropped Jiang Bailu into the problem-child seat, and straps whipped out like snakes, locking her limbs and waist.

“Doctor, please, release me,” Jiang Bailu begged, tears in voice like rain. “I’ve learned my lesson.

I won’t do the 6-3-1 fireworks mix for students again... ever.”

“Uh, delivery can reach here?” Yekase asked, ignoring the pleas, like driftwood ignoring tide.

“They deliver to Arcadia,” Ivaris said, calm as shade. “We’ll have Rice Rice pick it up. Dead Sea Logistics couriers are all mages.”

“Dead Sea Logistics... huh?”

Those Dead Sea rogue mages? They knuckled under and took jobs, like wolves wearing bells?

Just three vanguards dead, and they lost their spine, like tents after wind?

Or the World Tree went down, the mana hub faith’s tide ebbed, and they sought another path, like fish finding a new stream?

“Whatever.”

Yekase wasn’t the broke little mechanic anymore, the one who had to see and fix everything, like a ant crossing every stone.

Now the academy and the Slackfish Cult’s growth sat with four leaders, who loved any job that needled the Church, like sparrows heckling eagles.

Infinite Power development was handled by the Baroque Workshop; Yekase dropped by to set direction and unknot snarls, like a gardener pruning vines.

Without big events, Ling Yi studied at the City of Ivalice; they met on weekends and in Flash Energy electives, now at the Academy, like moons aligning.

Lu Yao had no chance soon to go to the moon and settle scores with her sister; children’s welfare tugged her like a tide.

She moved to the second line; after rebuilding Paris, she began adopting orphans, ferrying batches to Arcadia, like boats bringing seedlings.

As stipends rose, she refused Yekase’s aid, piloted her mecha, and took cheap infrastructure gigs; Peace Walker became a banner of peace and growth, like wheat after rain.

And then there was Jiang Bailu. She taught at the Academy... and let herself fly, like a kite cut loose.

She blew up labs with students day after day, like thunder rehearsed.

“Since France’s liberation, you’ve blown up three labs, plus wrecked a machine tool. Will you reform?”

Seeing Yekase smile mid-sentence, Jiang Bailu felt doom like frost; this time, she was truly angry.

“I’ll change today. Right now.”

“Looks like this chair can’t satisfy you anymore.”

“No! I’m very satis— I mean, I’m not into bondage. I’m not you, Doctor!”

“...”

Yekase’s smile deepened like a crescent moon. Even Ivaris laughed, like chimes.

“Then tell me—what’s your kink?”

“That would be... you,” Jiang Bailu said, wilting like a flower, hoping flattery would quench fire.

“Good, good, good.”

Yekase laid a hand on the iron chair; the parts binding Jiang Bailu detached and reshaped into silver cuff-like devices, like bracelets forged from rain.

“Come with me.”

She led Jiang Bailu—like a cosplay automaton—out to the lawn of the Ambition Divine Ship, green as a sea.

A new object sat there: a marble plinth one meter square, half a meter high, like an altar; its metal nameplate still blank like a new page.

Jiang Bailu began to tremble, leaves in wind. “D-Doctor, you’re not going to... No way, no way...”

Yekase gestured invitingly, like opening a gate. “Correct. One point for you. Step on up.”