Strange, isn’t it.

Sometimes people still keep a wild animal’s pricked ears and doubt, like grass whispering before a snake strikes.

Raise the AC one degree, let the water run a touch cool, toss an offhand line, throw one indifferent glance—your skin crawls like ants under glass.

That’s the itch and raw nerve of adolescence, a summer storm caged under the ribs.

And sometimes people go tepid, like a frog in a pot watching the rim for rain.

Time leaks like sand, presence thins like mist, memory and reality get quietly rewritten, and the [World]line is given a Cycle like a Möbius strip.

Life is a delicate torture, like pasting thin damp tissues over a face, inch by inch stealing breath—elegant as silk, brutal as rope—while the victim stays blank as stone.

“Seriously—”

A black-haired boy with shard-short bangs sat cross‑legged in a broken [World], ringed by mirror debris scattered like trash, each piece flashing a rainbow like oil on water.

Shards filled his eyes like constellations, and in those shards, countless worlds died and bloomed like frost and spring.

He sighed. “What a hassle. Kinda don’t want to play.”

“Don’t joke. Don’t you dare quit. You killed my Demon King—Ye Weibai!!”

...

...

“What a hassle.”

Yexiaobai let out a breath.

He lay on his bed, holding a notebook he’d snagged from Li Hang by pure accident, a little black book with Suzhiayao’s details.

Li Hang swore the girl stuck in Yexiaobai’s mind was Suzhiaoyao, but after he read the notebook back and forth, it just didn’t sit right, like a shoe full of sand.

How to say it... the girl in his memory was called “Yuhan.”

He met her behind the school auditorium, on that empty strip of grass where shadows slept.

Lantern Festival night wrapped the quiet campus like blue silk.

Fireworks bloomed in silence at a distance, their colors painting the black night, dyeing the long-haired girl who dropped from the sky with the hues of a flower.

Yexiaobai could only stare at her back, stunned, a moth fixed to glass; he didn’t know this girl who arrived from nowhere, and fate gave them no natural crossing.

If those were parallel lines from two worlds, then this was the one point where the [World]lines crossed—he knew it at once, called out, and then he said—

He said—

“What did I even say?” Yexiaobai clutched his hair and sighed. “It was important, like thunder in a clear sky. Why’d it vanish? Why do I only remember ‘Yuhan’ and ‘Qingya University’... what was the rest?”

He tried to sigh again, but that breath tore away like a leaf in wind when a face popped up at his bedside.

“Kong-jie!”

Yexiaobai nearly choked. He jolted upright and shoved the notebook away on reflex, like hiding a flame under the quilt.

“When did you get in? Not a sound.”

Yexiaokong was squatting at the bed’s edge, smiling with her eyes like crescent moons. She looked fresh from the shower, barefaced, long wet hair trailing like ink, an oversized T-shirt draped over curves, simple hot pants below, and long pale legs out in the open like winter birch.

“I just came in.”

“When was that—”

“Mm? Probably around when my dear brother sat here grinning like a fool, thinking about some wild woman.”

“Then she’s been here from the start! And I wasn’t grinning!”

“Not important.” Yexiaokong stood, tugged a chair over, sat, and crossed her legs. The loose shirt hid the short shorts, pants vanishing like a magic trick, leaving two long legs pointed right at Yexiaobai.

He covered his face. “Sis, come on. Try to look like a university staffer for once.”

“Before that, I’m your sister.”

“That’s what a sister looks like?”

“Don’t dodge. What’s that notebook?” Yexiaokong smiled, and Yexiaobai went stiff like a deer in headlight.

“Alright, look at you suffering.” She reached out and smoothed his ridiculous cowlick like you’d calm a ruffled chick.

A warm perfume steamed off her skin like tea in winter, and Yexiaobai oddly relaxed, as if he’d stepped backward into childhood.

Back then... he and his sister...

The memories were smudged like an abstract painting fingered wet, broken pieces strung only by a few floating words.

—The feeling was exactly like the “Yuhan” thing.

Yexiaobai blinked. Yexiaokong asked at once, “What is it? Embarrassed?”

“No. Just...” He stared at his sister, a little lost in the fog. “Sis, I can’t quite remember our childhood. Not just that. Some other things too. Am I—my head—”

“Don’t.”

Her gentle hand paused a heartbeat. Light flared and fell in her black-and-white eyes like lightning behind clouds. Then she wrecked his hair with a firm rub, drew back, and shaped an unbreakable smile. “Xiaobai.”

“Mm.”

“Living in this [World], your job is to eat, drink, and stay happy. You’ve grown up. I won’t meddle in the rest. If you like a girl, chase her. If it doesn’t work, chant your sister’s name. I’ll help remotely.”

“Remote help—what’s that. You a Love Deity now?” He couldn’t help himself.

“You wouldn’t know. Your sister is very capable. Love Deities? Low‑tier, barely worth pocket change.” She flipped the tone with a snap. “But—Mu Xiaowei is a hard pass.”

“Setting aside whether there’s anything with Xiaowei—why are you always on her case?”

“Tch. A proper sister with a brother fixation never likes the girl next door. Common sense.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying.” He was speechless.

“Best if you don’t.” She kept smiling. “Anyway, this notebook.”

She lifted two slim fingers, a black notebook pinched like a caught moth.

“Eh!” Yexiaobai’s eyes went wide at the book that vanished from nowhere and reappeared in her hand like a magic coin.

“Not detailed enough, right?”

“N-no idea what you mean.” He looked away like a cat pretending the vase is fine. “Nice model, though.”

“Still hiding from me. If the info’s thin, flip further back. Maybe you missed a page the first time.” She patted the cover and tossed it back.

He fumbled the catch to his chest. Before he could speak, arms wrapped him, pulling him into warmth and softness like falling into a quilt of sun.

His sister’s embrace.

He didn’t even struggle before the voice came.

He froze, because he had never heard that tone from Yexiaokong.

His sister was always bright as noon, bold as wind, shameless as a stray cat.

When had she ever sounded like this—

“Xiaobai.”

She said it like a lantern lit in a quiet room.

“Do whatever you want.”

His rigid body softened like wax. He felt unconditional love like a roof in rain. His head tucked into her shoulder, and a muffled “Mm” rolled out of his nose.

...

...

[Prime World], somewhere off the map.

“About the recent mess?”

“Mm. You got word too.”

“Of course. Since Ragnarok, after [Trade] rallied the deities and launched the Borrowing Game, nothing this big has hit—so many Deities pulled in at once. I don’t know who did it... but that’s no small fry.”

“I heard even [Void] and [Trade] got tangled.”

“[Trade]?!”

“Sure. The other Deities might not have reacted in time. She cut the lines of causality, naturally. But rumor says [Void] didn’t dodge it.”

“Didn’t dodge, or couldn’t be bothered? That crazy, brother‑obsessed [Void]—who knows what she’s thinking. So? What did those causal lines do?”

“Took a piece.”

“Huh? Took what?”

“Randomly borrowed a portion. Every Deity involved had a slice of divine power taken and...”

“And?”

“Personality.”

“...What about [Void]?”

“You guessed it. All the news on her is from her mouth—who else could pry it out? She’s been running around the [Void Tunnel], dropping notes everywhere, saying—”

...

...

“Hey! Listen up! Guess what! My little brother came to me the other day!”

Ice‑blue hair streamed like a comet’s tail. Blue particles howled around her like a metallic storm. She raised her right hand, and an endless blue river unrolled across who knew how many kilometers, brushing past the writhing, twisted [Void Drifters] ahead.

The black tide of monsters collapsed like a wave sucked back by the moon.

The particles fell away, and the fireworks went dark.

“Guess why he came?”

Tall and lithe, the woman’s eyes burned blue like spirit lamps, joy too bright to hide. [Void], alone and smiling like spring, sang, “My little brother borrowed my brother‑obsession.”

The [Void Drifters] were foul births from the corpses of Deities after the last war—immortal and unending—but they were shackled by [Void]’s spatial trait. Scatter them into separate cells of space, and they can’t reknit, no matter how stubborn their flesh.

With a casual swipe, [Void] erased most of them. The lucky ones were left as scraps and chips, bodies already warped now stranger still, and not a whiff of terror left.

If they could speak, the air would be nothing but wails.

She sighed, disappointed. “Tsk. A pity. Always you lot. And you never understand a word I say. Boring. I’m off.”

She sliced the emptiness like silk, opened a blue door, and stepped her long legs into a corridor of space.

The survivors barely had time to inhale relief.

Just as she was about to vanish, [Void] flicked her wrist. Another sweeping blue river paved half the [Void Tunnel]’s cross‑section, grinding the lurkers to powder like grain under a millstone.

“If you can’t feel the joy of me meeting Xiaobai, you’re pitiful. Disappear.”

...

...

“Don’t stay up too late, Xiaobai. Or you’ll have a wet dream.”

“G-got it—!”

After shooing out Yexiaokong, who’d camped in his room like a cat, Yexiaobai lay back down. He remembered her words and opened the notebook again.

“Missing info, huh.”

He murmured to the ceiling.

“Maybe I’ll actually find something on Yuhan.”

...

...

Thunk.

Someone swung a heavy hammer and drove a long nail that appeared from thin air, ramming it into the [World] like a spike into a tree.

“Ow.”

It pierced Zhaomingming’s body.