After Xi handed her the friend-zone card, Ling wandered in a fog. How long? No idea. Each day Alicia led her to the theater like a puppet on strings, and Ling hit her marks by muscle memory, like a river flowing even with stones in it. Zi scolded her often, thunder over a quiet lake. So Bewildered Ling doubled down, carving muscle memory deeper like knife-lines on bamboo, until she could speak with feeling on autopilot. Only then did Zi nod, like wind easing after rain.

It took roughly a full week, right as National Day’s flags fluttered like red leaves. Ling finally processed it: she’d been friend‑zoned. Two seconds to cry, two to think, two to reset—six heartbeats like raindrops on a sill. After wading through briars, she set the whole Xi issue down like a stone at the roadside shrine.

Recovered, the tiny girl slid into the breakfast seat for daily quests, mood bright as morning steam off tea. She reached for her toast, spread a blush of strawberry jam, and nibbled like a hamster storing seeds for winter. Across the table, Alicia spotted the light back in those eyes—no more seven-day dead calm—and that incurable itch to tease flared like a spark on dry pine. With a cute little target right here, of course Ling would catch strays.

“Ling, you’re not bothered by Xi’s friend card anymore?”

Way to poke the bruise. The memories rushed back like a tide overfoot. Ling’s chewing paused, then resumed; she sped up, swallowed, then raised her right hand and traced the air, as if searching brush and bamboo for a hidden lever. She found the mythical shutdown switch, flipped it, and—click—went silent.

First she curled into a ball, a fallen leaf around its own stem. Then she produced a quilt from who-knows-where and covered herself head to toe—physical hermit mode, like a turtle drawing into its shell.

Alicia set down her utensils, skirting the table to the fluffy bundle. She hadn’t expected this kind of adorable counterattack; she’d thought she’d earn a glare at most, a summer thunderclap. Seeing this? Absolute profit, like finding plum blossoms in snow.

She quietly promised herself to increase the teasing schedule, and to target this one particular little sister. Then she started soothing, or the bundle might stay sealed for another week, like winter locked behind frost.

“Alright, alright, it’s big sis’s fault. I won’t bring it up. Forgive me, okay?”

After a long while, a small voice seeped from the quilt, like a cricket under leaves. “No! Absolutely not! Ling will never forgive a bad big sister who makes fun of me!”

Even through cotton and down, the anger crackled like dry twigs. Alicia gave a helpless laugh, a small ripple across still water. She hadn’t expected real temper. Not great.

She tugged the quilt. The girl inside tugged back. Stalemate. Between them, the quilt became the most pitiful creature in the room, a kite pulled by two contrary winds.

“Let go! Don’t shut down again! If you don’t come out, big sis will show you big‑sis authority!”

“No, no, no! Absolutely not!”

Hiss—

The quilt hit its limit. Every thread pulled taut like bowstrings. Quilts have limits. Alas, this one couldn’t don some strange mask and break through like a wrestler at a festival.

“Ah—!”

With a shiver that made no sense and too much sense, the quilt split. It died to two Daemons, one big and one small, who spared it no sympathy, thinking only of their own little war. Let’s bow three silent heartbeats for Quilt‑kun; then cheer one minute for the legacy it left behind—fanservice.

Just before the rip, Ling realized her current strength only let her deadlock Alicia, like two stags interlocked. If she didn’t add power, this would drag on forever. She raised the limit bar and pulled.

The extra force became the last straw. The quilt gave out. At the same time, Alicia’s body lurched forward, momentum like rain off a tile eave. She toppled—straight toward Ling.

So an unscientific, yet inevitable scene bloomed like a peach blossom panel in an opera.

Alicia crashed into Ling, taking half a quilt and a chair’s worth of balance to the floor. Ling’s eyes were still hooded by cloth. She had no magic sense to warn her, only the sudden weight of a pounce, tiger out of bamboo. She didn’t even have time to yelp before they hit the floor. Luckily, the back of her head met quilt, not wood, or the boards would be wearing a cute little back‑of‑head stamp.

She flung the quilt off her eyes, clouds parting from a moon, and glared at the culprit pinning her. No need to guess.

Alicia’s red eyes weren’t their usual shade. On most days they were lovely with a touch of warmth, embers in a brazier. Right now they burned with fierce affection—and a flick of possessiveness, a hawk’s shadow crossing a field.

Strange. Ling didn’t know why Alicia’s eyes spoke that language, but the feeling wrote a bad omen across her heart like ink on rice paper.

“B‑big sis… c‑could you get up, please? You’re crushing your little sister…”

Thud.

Alicia’s right hand planted beside Ling’s head. Her back arched a little. The pose, and their faces less than a breath apart, turned the air syrupy. Pink peach petals drifted in the mind’s eye.

…I’m doomed.

Knowing she’d cooked her own fate, Alicia spoke exactly as Ling feared.

“Ling, I—”

To be continued…