Ling Yi took Luo Jie to Arcadia, like two sparrows winging into a sunlit garden.

Yekase smoothed Rice Rice’s fur like calming ripples on a pond, and weighed the cassette her other self left like a pebble heavy with history.

As everyone knows—okay, maybe not anymore—these tapes have two faces like twin moons, A and B, each holding its own tide of sound. But Ling Yi left like a gust and never said what that “love letter” meant, or which moon it lived on, so only Yekase’s ears could fish it out.

Ivaris ran an errand like a courier hawk, found a thrift-shop Walkman in Twin Towers City, and pressed it into Yekase’s palm like a warm stone.

Back when Yekase was a kid—early aughts, a hazy noon in memory—Walkmen hadn’t been swept away by phones, and they dotted street corners like little black shells. A portable that ate both CDs and cassettes was a king’s badge, and in school you’d be begged at lunch like a shrine to play Jay Chou.

This Walkman was a ten-by-ten-centimeter square, a palm-sized brick, about two centimeters thick, big as a cookie but dense as a book, just enough belly for one CD and one tape.

“What do you think that other you will say?” Ivaris asked, voice like a pebble tossed into a still pool.

Yekase slotted the tape like threading a loom, shut the lid, and hit play with a tap like a heartbeat.

Whirr—soft as moth wings on glass.

Under the clear plastic shell, the dark-brown ribbon flowed from spindle to spindle like a river slipping through culverts.

The speaker breathed out a voice identical to the Yekase here, like a mirror speaking back:

[The final enemy is Supreme Omega, one of the Three-Pillar Machine Gods. The silicon-based species “Omicron” that worships it has a method to manufacture androids, and they can perfectly copy even Infinite Power—so we must find a form of Infinite Power they can’t comprehend, to forge warriors they can’t copy.]

“So she really left intel!” The words burst out like a match flaring in wind.

Yekase wasn’t surprised; a grin climbed her face like a sunrise. “I knew it—‘that me’ would do exactly this! Because if it were me, I’d do exactly this!”

The other Yekase paused, a breath like the hush before rain, then spoke again:

[Psychic abilities can’t be copied either, but there are too few… As insurance, I suggest you immediately find the two strongest espers and secure them.]

[Their names and abilities are—]

[‘Coffee Moon,’ Jiang Bailu, and…]

[‘Microcosm Phenomenon,’ Gu Xiangshi.]

“...!”

“So in the worldline where Lalabel succeeded, you and Jiang Bailu forgot each other, but re-met through this,” Ivaris guessed, voice like a lantern lighting a path. “She became a hero against the Omicron. Maybe even Gu Xiangshi did too…”

“...Now it’s clear; most things still drift the same way,” Yekase said, rubbing her temples like easing stormclouds.

“The parallel me recorded this tape, then gave it to a parallel Jiang Bailu who still became a vampire, and had her follow behind Luo Jie to cross over… so who attacked us?”

“Feels obvious,” Ivaris said, opening her arms like a nest; Rice Rice flicked her tail like a ribbon and hopped into her hold.

“An android—same kind of thing as Professor F, but not a scout, an attacker. Didn’t you notice? She wore Miss Jiang’s face like a mask, yet never once lit up ‘Coffee Moon.’”

“…”

A being like Professor F. The Omicron civilization. A creation of Omega…

“...Ah.”

The small sound slipped from Yekase’s mouth like a bead, and she sprang from the deck chair like a deer and bolted inside.

“Don’t run! Mind the kid!”

“Oh!”

She braked hard, momentum folding into a fast walk like a stream tamed into a canal.

Thump-thump-thump up to the second floor, and she knocked on the last door like tapping at a drum.

“What is it?” Lu Yao opened the door, her gaze cool as moonlight.

Yekase bowed her head, plea soft as rain on eaves. “It’s a bit cruel to ask… but I want to re-walk the scene where the original team was wiped out. Every detail you can recall.”

Lu Yao looked at her face, bit back any why like swallowing a thorn, and stepped aside like parting a curtain.

“Sit.”

Yekase sank into the desk chair and drew a breath like drawing a bowstring, then met Lu Yao’s eyes, each word a nail laid straight: “I suspect the old incident never ended.”

“What’s your reason and evidence?”

“Omega M—the ‘supporter’ of the first Beast King. Did you ever see his body?”

“No—but,”

“Strip the filter and think hard. We now know your sister joined the Sinister Organization to go undercover and save lives by a crooked path. But does undercover work require slaughtering your teammates and the logistics crew to the roots?”

“What about proving loyalty with blood?”

“Did she take the bodies away?”

Lu Yao’s disbelief unspooled into a slow head shake like a pendulum fading.

“Then where did Omega M go—the other of two scouts Supreme Omega sent to Earth? Is he still alive? Is he—still on Earth?”

“You mean… back then, Professor M killed the team and fled, and my sister stood there with the sword only to hold off his attack…”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” The thought clicked into place like a key turning.

Given how the Lu sisters tell each other nothing even when it hurts, it’s very like Luzhixing to let the misunderstanding stand and go deep undercover like a knife hiding in its sheath.

And with that line pulled taut, another loose thread found its knot:

Why did Luo Jie bring them back to March 2023, a month that looks flat as calm water?

If the worldline split on whether Yekase won her bet with Lalabel, she should have gone straight to August 2021, and found the Yekase still in school digging into Magical Girl chronicles.

Even if her memories were rewritten into a pure-bred 17-year-old high school girl, that Yekase would still have walked into Flash Energy research like a river finds the sea, still have met Jiang Bailu, Lu Yao, Gu Xiangshi, and, a thousand years on, still have led humanity into the stars like a lighthouse. The outcome wouldn’t lag behind this Yekase by much at all.

Changing her self-image from a 28-year-old trans woman to a 17-year-old JK felt like an earthquake to her, but on the scale of civilization, the drift wasn’t big enough to birth a doom-tide.

So if the answer isn’t “wrong coordinates,” perhaps the tide was tugged by something else.

For example, in this seemingly plain March, like a pond hiding a black current,

some fate-defining event happened where Yekase couldn’t see.

“And that truly decisive event is—”

“—Omega M leaving Earth, carrying coordinates and intel back to the Omicron homeworld,” Ivaris said, leaning on the doorframe like ivy.

Yekase nodded without words, the motion small as a leaf nodding to wind.

Lu Yao stared at her crime-board of notes like gazing into a star map, and murmured, “So that’s it… so, that’s it…”

How many years has it been?

Since that blood-red night, Lu Yao hasn’t slept easy even once, only curling tight in cramped spaces like a hedgehog to doze, because it recalls the tiny room she shared with her sister. Even so, her sister’s betraying eyes, the career cut off like a blade, the faces and laughter of comrades—these burst into her dreams like lightning and snap her awake drenched in sweat.

If it were anyone else, she could have let hatred blaze like a torch and called it a road.

But it was her older sister.

The sister she clung to like a boat clings to a shore, her last tight knot to the world, the one she loved most.

She couldn’t strike, and she never would. So she had only a chase without answers, like running after a mirage across salt flats.

“Now we can finally say this for certain—your sister, Luzhixing, didn’t stain her hands with innocent blood.”

“Ha… hahaha… ha…” Lu Yao’s laughter came ragged like wind through reeds, and she swayed against the bunk’s wooden pillar like a tired willow; yet a smile climbed her cheeks like sun after rain—relief, release, and rest.

Thank goodness—her sister didn’t kill.

She no longer had to choose between vengeance and duty; the trolley vanished from the split tracks like a ghost train in fog.

“Good. We’ve got the picture, then. Take your time to breathe it in,” Yekase said, rising like a spring that found its push.

“Wait—are you going after Omega M now?”

“Yeah. I’m calling Chuyu to have her Star Wand watch any craft leaving Earth, then I’ll work contacts near Area 59 to sniff the off-world lanes,” Yekase said, words moving like chess pieces.

“I’m coming.” Lu Yao was already grabbing her jacket like a soldier taking up a shield. “You’ve never seen Omega M, right? You narrow the field; I’ll hunt the people.”

Yekase glanced at Ivaris like a bird checking the wind.

“What if cosmic radiation mutates the baby?” Ivaris asked, worry pooling like dark water.

“First, we might not need to go to space,” Yekase said, voice steady as a keel. “Second, if we must, I can have Voltage Roller drones shadow Lu Yao, while I lie at home like a sleeper pilot.”

Ivaris’s doubt wavered like heat-haze. “...Fine.”

Yekase nodded to Lu Yao like a drumbeat, walked out while already calling Chuyu, her voice threading orders like sewing a sail. By the time they reached the portal, the handoff was done, and she was dialing a number she hadn’t touched since saving it.

A scholar she met at the Sovell Conference. An American named Richard. After receiving Yekase’s blessing last time, he survived North America’s daily battle royale like a cockroach with nine lives, and now he worked in Washington—close to Area 59, like a shadow near a gate.

“Oh, Miss Luciferin! Hearing that you’re well is a relief,” came his voice, warm as coffee steam.

“Same here. Urgent matter—global stakes—so I’ll skip the niceties. Do you have friends in Area 59?” Her tone cut straight like a knife through paper.

Richard thought a beat, then caught the subtext like a fish in a net. “...You want to bypass Shadow Curtain International to get into space?”

“Close enough. I’m tracking an alien embedded on Earth. He’s about to head home. If he makes it back, Earth’s coordinates are blown, and humanity’s in danger. I’ll explain more on-site—if you’ve got a door, open it for me.”

“Sounds like a superhero movie plot—but got it. I’ll reach out now,” he said, voice picking up like a runner’s stride.

“I’ve got a fixed-point portal. Send coords, and my friend and I will wait in your lab,” she said, words crisp as flint.

“OK! Sending now!”

A minute after the call ended, Yekase received latitude and longitude like pinpricks on a globe. She fed them into the Ambition Divine Ship’s main console, opened the portal, and a brand-new streetscape bloomed beyond like a second stage lit in blue.

Since Jiang Bailu (?) had gone straight for Sky Island in her first strike like a hawk stooping on a nest, Ivaris chose to stand guard here, protecting Liu RuoYuan and XiaoLei like a wall of willow and steel.

Yekase put one foot into the portal like stepping into a river, then paused and glanced back, waving to her girlfriend like a banner in sunlight.

“Well then, let’s go save the Earth a little!”

Ivaris stood hands on hips in the doorway, and burst into a laugh like a bell.