Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...

Wind scraped past their ears like a river over stone. It didn’t bite with cold; it brushed cool, like shade under bamboo.

They sat in a helicopter knifing through high sky, door flung wide, glass fanged and broken. Yet neither the gale nor the thin breath of heaven touched Ling or Alicia. That’s the warped grace of a Yokai.

The cabin door was completely open, and several windows were smashed—born from Ling’s one careless line: “I wanna try it.” Words tossed like pebbles, ripples that broke metal.

The pilot suffered for it. Stray gusts slipped under his sleeves like icy snakes, and the cold-thin air needled up his nose. The oxygen mask fed him breath, spared him their madness. As for telling them to stop—who dares yell at their own boss?

“Hey, Alicia—why aren’t we there yet?” Ling’s voice carried like a bell in mist.

Alicia lowered her eyes to the earth—a hide of dark forests, beasts crawling like ants. One stomp could end the pests that plagued so many villagers. But that wasn’t the point. Ling’s longed-for Fairy Forest was still nowhere, not even a shadow between clouds.

“I don’t know… we probably need to fly a while more,” Alicia said, calm as rain on tiles. “No need to rush. Just wait.”

“Mhm. I’ll be good. Not rushing… the longer we stay outside, the better.” She murmured it like a secret slipped under a door.

But some mysterious Eastern power hears what the wind shouldn’t. Whisper caught; consequence follows.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!

The alarm tore through the cabin like a hawk’s cry. The pilot snapped his gaze to Alicia, eyes a storm.

“Reporting! Unknown flying object approaching!”

Unknown flying object?

Curiosity pricked Ling like nettles. She popped her head out into the streaming air, gathering a fine thread of magic into her eyes. Colors flooded her pupils like ink in water; sight sharpened until far distance felt near enough to touch. There—she saw the not-so-unknown thing.

Two wings flowered behind it—delicate as an insect’s, but finer, prettier, each beat flashing like a fish-scale in sun. Her gaze drifted up: a golden-haired girl. Not the most beautiful in the world, maybe, but nowhere near plain. Petite frame matched to a perfect shape, a goddess by any human measure. Panic pooled on her face, softening beauty into something irresistibly cute—pretty plus panic, and she beat any mortal goddess.

Ling sifted her countless past-life memories of paper-cut waifus and streaming idols. This had to be a legend given flesh—an elf.

A quick gasp, then a knot of questions. Why the panic? Chased? Chased? Still chased?

She zoomed her vision like a magnifying glass. Focus snapped toward a very magnetic pair of legs—no, her eyes, beautiful eyes. Reflected in those irises came a strange shape. At a squint, it was a helicopter. Looked just like the one they were riding. Since when did helicopters have trendy “it” models?

She shook off the urge to buy one online. Clarity hit—as clean as a bell. The elf girl was about to slam into that chopper.

Ling’s heart pricked with sympathy… like hell.

“Climb, climb, climb!”

She ducked back inside and yelled at the cockpit, voice cutting like a whip. The pilot’s brain lagged, but his hands obeyed, hauling the craft upward.

Fate likes to play with people. A machine that usually danced like a hummingbird went dull, sluggish in its lift. And the elf—an idiot in that heartbeat—froze instead of dodging. Tail met girl, an intimate collision written by bad timing.

Forward thrust hit the elf like a battering ram; she dropped out of the sky. The helicopter’s tail snapped—smoke spilled like ink, and the craft pinwheeled helplessly through air. It carved dizzy circles, then only hit ground long after the elf did. Good thing Ling and Alicia rode inside. With the uncanny bodies of Yokai, they jumped from a few hundred meters, hit the earth, and punched a crater into dirt. No harm, no bruise. Behind them, the helicopter exploded, a blossoming fireball painting them in orange glory—alive and looking cool, two birds with one stone.

They dragged the two humans—fainting from existential terror—aside like sacks dropped off a cart. Then the slow-to-fire synapses in Ling sparked, and she glanced at Alicia.

“Did we… forget something?”

Alicia hadn’t watched with Ling’s eyes. She’d only seen a golden blur smack the tail. Everything else was fog.

Crack.

The burning wreckage hissed and popped—metal peeling, something pried open by heat or will.

Ling turned. Flame filled her vision, a sea of red tongues. Inside that blaze flickered a vein of gold. She leaned in with her gaze, and the gold resolved into… a head.

A golden head.

Her mind rifled its shelves, skipping the impossible Flan. A recent memory bobbed up—the elf girl.

Everything slotted into place. Worry rose first, heavy as a stone in the chest.

From that height, with that impact… if not dead, then half-ruined.

While Ling still wrestled rescue or not, a single ahoge sprouted from the golden head trembled. It perked up for a second, then wagged wildly, a brave twig in a furnace. Even that silly swirl didn’t catch fire, lucky as a European roll.

Since she’s got that European luck, I can save her, right? This is pure kindness, okay? Absolutely not me trying to sneak a sip of her good fortune.