Why is there another Anonymous G… are you all doing performance art as a troupe?

Ling Yi saw through the bouncy tiger mascot in one glance, but the person inside clearly didn’t want to talk. They dropped off the speaker, then faded back into place like a shadow slipping behind a curtain.

They’re really waiting till I finish fighting to ask questions, huh!

Yet for some reason, the moment Ling Yi handled that cassette, ROZE—riding the wind like a storm at full tilt—chose to withdraw. The whole mech winked out of the sky, like thunder sucked back into cloud.

Tourists sighed in regret and scattered like startled sparrows.

That left Ling Yi standing by the crater with a boombox, awkward as a reed in an empty pond. Thankfully, Luo Jie read the air. She cracked open the chest cockpit a touch, and Ling Yi slid in with the speaker, hiding like a cat into a warm box.

“Honestly, if it’s a player… I’ve got one.”

Ling Yi had just settled into the pilot’s chair when Luo Jie’s figure shimmered up behind her.

She pointed toward a corner of the cockpit. A hammock hung there, and beneath it lay a tumble of game consoles, snacks, controllers, every kind of charging cable like vines.

“All these… the Doctor’s things?”

“Mm.”

Not “things,” but “relics,” right? Yekase could be buried in work, but she’d never skip gaming to decompress. In that world, she was so overrun she hauled the console into the mech itself…

Ling Yi didn’t touch the heap. She lifted the portable speaker and hit play.

Squeak—squeak—

The tape turned. A voice drifted from the speaker like a candle-flame in a quiet room.

“I’m recording a beloved person.”

“…It’s the Doctor’s voice.”

“A wanderer who crossed the world and, all her life, linked the stars on earth. If it’s by your hand—even when heaven and earth split, hearts forever apart—believe fate won’t lose its way.”

“Who gave you this tape?” Luo Jie asked.

“Anonymous J.”

“?”

“Anonymous J entrusted it to me,” Ling Yi repeated.

Feeling a chill, she curled in the pilot’s seat and hugged the now-finished speaker, like a child clutching a hot bun in winter.

“…Hey, Luo Jie. In your world, we… no, forget the details. Can you tell me how human civilization later—uh, never mind. Let’s move before we talk.”

With the black mech gone and the crisis lifted, staff started gathering at the crater Luo Jie had carved. Seeing trouble coming like rain on wind, Ling Yi urged Luo Jie to retract the mech and prep a getaway.

“Why not just fly?”

“Because someone’s watching us! Stand her up, and we’ll have round two!”

Luciferin—the mech, not the person—undid herself into silver and red filaments, threads of energy peeling away like silk from a cocoon. The two of them sank gently on those lines, like spiders lowered on dew-wet webbing.

Ling Yi tugged Luo Jie toward a quiet stretch. The answer to her earlier question stumbled after them from behind:

“In our golden age, the spiral arms became district names. Countless ships coursed between jeweled star systems, trading travelers, materials, goods…”

“That’s the future you’re painting?”

Anonymous G arrived on cue, blocking their path. A low female voice leaked from the tiger suit, like a drum muffled in cloth: “Once we stride into the star sea, humans will need a strong central steward—someone to manage everything. Don’t you think so?”

Ling Yi set Luo Jie behind her and didn’t answer. She just glared at the tiger stripes, eyes like flints.

“So that’s your answer? You don’t know what’s good, but you’re sure the present is bad. Look around. On my word, every Sinister Organization under C-rank dissolves on the spot. Isn’t that far more efficient than your way?”

—

Ling Yi surged forward, snagged the mascot by the collar, and after a steadying breath unleashed a volley:

“Small outfits vanish—does the father robbing to pay for his daughter’s cure vanish too? Do dungeon laborers working fifteen hours a day vanish? If the small ones vanish, why do your Official Heroes still exist? Whose throats do those ‘heroes’ aim their blades at? Don’t stain the word hero!”

“They’re the necessary components of this world, scars we can’t excise yet—we haven’t even left Earth. Some live in white, some in black, most in the gray. And you and your Doctor… you want a world so crystal-clear no fish can live, stripping people of their refuge?”

Anonymous G braced Ling Yi’s wrist, trying to pry it down. She used all her strength, but it didn’t budge. She stayed locked in that awkward lift, and when a few bystanders stepped forward, she halted them with a single raised hand, fingers cutting the air like a blade.

…

“No one is born to live in gray—especially when that gray’s the grease you smeared with your meat-fed hands. Don’t mix your decay with others’ suffering when they had no choice.”

“Right. That idealist talk. You stayed quiet beside her so long, I thought you’d yielded.”

Ling Yi shook off Anonymous G’s hand and led Luo Jie toward the go-kart track, her steps like drumbeats.

Anonymous G didn’t block them, letting the two slip past like fish through reeds.

“…Was that last line taught by the Doctor?”

“No! I thought it up myself!”

Such force! And she’s just a dummy… Anonymous G had meant to plant a seed of doubt, a little fog in Ling Yi’s heart—no need to win her over, just make her hesitate when Yekase returns to Huaxia at the key moment. But is she too dense to even consider real-world problems?!

“Miss, should we keep monitoring them?” one of the would-be helpers murmured.

“…Who told you to monitor them? I said I’d play alone. Who told you to tail me? Go, go—check that black mech!”

…

…

After the back-and-forth with Anonymous G, Ling Yi went quiet.

She drove go-karts in silence, sat in the spinning coffee cups in silence, rode the pirate ship in silence… Luo Jie felt her gloom but couldn’t find the knot. Was it that masked woman’s words?

She tried to comfort Ling Yi in her own way: “It’s okay. In our era, humans have eliminated hunger and disease. All work’s done by SCVs, fully managed by the self-evolving Silverstar System.”

“I’m not worried about that… Thanks.”

They sat side by side on a bench by the path. Ling Yi patted Luo Jie’s head, then bit into a fresh flatbread, steam like ghosts curling up into the shade of leaves.

“I believe we’ll get there. Even if new problems come, the people of that time will find a way together. There’s no unchanging utopia. The road may be so long a Longlifer can’t finish it. But if you settle like the vested, you won’t even take the first step… I won’t be confused on this.”

“Then…”

Then why the bad mood?

Ling Yi’s face dimmed like a sky before rain. In a heavy voice, halting, she confessed—

“Actually, my lab class just posted finals… I barely passed. I’m worried—can I still help the Doctor in the future? I can’t be a fighter forever…”

“…”

Then do more problem sets, isn’t that it? Or work in the lab as an assistant… Luo Jie, a data life born inside a mech, couldn’t parse “can’t learn.” She scratched her head like a puzzled bird.

“—Forget it. I’ll deal with it next semester.”

Giving up fast!

Ling Yi’s smile lit again, quick as a lantern relit. “Tell me a story from the galaxy?”

“Let me think…”

After a moment, Luo Jie said, “The capital of the Union sits on a safe orbit around the galactic-center black hole, built from hundreds of thousands of sky-islands, patched into a loose artificial shell. Day to day we draw gravity energy from the hole, and use it to process waste.”

“We named that man-made world around the black hole ‘Tianwai Tiangai’—Beyond the Beyond—paired with the Federation’s ‘Tianya Haijiao,’ the Far Edge. Its oldest, most central part holds the Silverstar System’s admin core—Arcadia—an air-island from Earth’s age… ah, maybe it already exists now?”

“Arcadia, huh…”

Ling Yi nodded. The Cloud-Crown Archipelago becoming part of the Union’s capital star felt natural—Yekase’s so nostalgic…

Speaking of Arcadia.

Right now a certain lab-coat-wearing, prickly soul was hiding on Arcadia, using work as an excuse to avoid them.

Ling Yi didn’t think Jiang Bailu and Yekase’s cold war—what is this, the umpteenth time?—would last long. But letting it drag wasn’t right. This was her cue to mediate.

Besides, with that “Jiang Bailu (?)” around, some things feel pointless unless the person involved sees them with her own eyes.

Ling Yi finished her flatbread in three bites, then asked with a smile, “—Luo Jie, want to see Arcadia as it is in this era?”

“I do! I really do! Back home it’s a core machine room, mechs aren’t allowed inside—I’ve never seen it up close!”

“Good, then let’s go!”

Playing the aunt showing a niece the world, Ling Yi flicked her hand and opened a portal back to the Ambition Divine Ship.

Through the doorway, they could see Yekase sprawled on a canvas chair, Rice Rice flopped on her round belly. One human, one cat, identical expressions—eyes half-closed, soaking sun like sleepy seals.

“Doctor, you’re really not handling anything?”

“What would I handle? I’m nurturing a baby…”

Ling Yi walked over and handed her the tape.

Yekase took it. With nothing to play it on, she turned it in her hands like a pebble picked from a stream. “What’s this?”

“A love letter you wrote me—from that timeline.”

Ling Yi sighed deep, like wind through pines. “I envy that me.”

“????”