Time for a proper date, bright as a lantern in fog.

While Stini and the Hero Squad were basking in the Hero’s hospitality in Vineri’s royal capital, three days slid by like rain over tiles. Vega finally mended my ruined formalwear back to perfect, not a thread out of place, and I could stop living on a clothes rack like a ghost on a pole.

Before Stini questioned my identity and rushed back like thunder on my doorstep, I wanted the warm, simple thing—go out with my girlfriend, like sunlight on a bench.

So I changed my face like swapping masks at dusk and went to find Ferrel. She’d borrowed a star-spirit’s body and descended as an Aerian; wings like sails in a human harbor, impossible to miss.

I penned her range like a chalk circle around the Hero Academy, so this wish-granting machine wouldn’t blow up the town like a kettle left to boil. Vega’s parallel-thinking avatars tailed her as walking wallets and dampeners, shadows tied to a kite.

Berenz once joked her mistress was “husband-whipped,” and I taught him a lesson for it, like a gust flattening careless candles. Different story, different storm.

If Ferrel ever went truly berserk, only Andor—her “equal”—could counterweight the scales, so Vega’s avatar kept a live thread to me, tighter than a bowstring. She said the guard-post clone was more exhausting than ten dispatch clones, like holding a flood behind a flimsy gate.

Makes sense. We monsters from the dark break things like hail on glass; guarding is not the hand we favor.

I found Ferrel in a maid-themed ice cream parlor, talking with a veiled lady. They drifted from skincare and outfits—topics that lull men like crickets at noon—to politics at the banquet, and to how the “loyal” Demon King Army’s strike on Beatrice of the Azure Wind cratered the economy like frost on early crops.

I stepped in, pulled out a stool like drawing a sword from its scabbard, and sat. Because of our “parity,” the moment I saw her, she felt me like heat through a curtain. Ferrel didn’t act surprised. She just sprang up and glued to me like a hunting octopus, while the lady startled like a deer at a twig-snap.

We traded small talk like scattering petals on a stream; the lady excused herself with politeness smooth as lacquer. It looked like a chance meeting, it looked like an ordinary goodbye, like a cloud passing the sun.

If not for that almost invisible tremor in her hands and feet, a leaf shaking when no wind blew.

If a normal life were a novel, you’d feel a stitch out of place here, then call it a trick of the light and move on.

That’s called foreshadowing.

For gods and demons, that prickle is called the future.

I sent a ping through the Shadow Realm like a ripple through black water, and told Vega to look into that suspicious lady. The rest would return like birds to a roost.

“First, a chocolate Isaka Parfait, and… that’s all for now.”

Ferrel had a chokehold around my neck like a scarf in winter. I pried her face off with one hand, pushed her aside gently, then popped my misaligned neck joint back like snapping a twig into place. I told the smiling maid who’d been waiting like a lantern in still air.

She’d been a third-year senior in the Hero Academy’s martial track, cool as steel in the sun. She signed with me for magic from the Shadow, and the price was her soul after death, heavy as a stone in my pocket.

Then, unlucky as a sparrow in a storm, her squad got wiped during finals in the Fengming Mountains. An elite goblin took her throat like frost takes a blossom.

Now she’s folded into Vega’s “smart” dispatch team, and on slow days she works this maid parlor Ferrel loves, a safety line ready for a sudden gale.

That’s why the maid didn’t panic when her guest’s neck went wrong like a bent reed; she just smiled and let me set it right, calm as moonlight on water.

Still, I scolded my girlfriend under my breath. Human bones aren’t built to be swings, no matter how bright the carnival. No more beyond-human stunts in public, and if my throat makes bad noises, release me like a fish back to the stream.

For now, romance first, like sugar before tea. I swallowed the froth of blood from my torn trachea back down, and thought so, dry as dust and oddly content.

“How’s the place?” I’d bought Ferrel a small townhouse, a shade smaller than Stini’s ancestral home. It did feel like keeping a mistress on the side to avoid ripples at home, though this side was the official girlfriend, the moon in the doorway.

“If you ignore the ‘stay near the area’ rule Andreas slapped on me… mm-hmm, it’s pretty nice!”

She pouted like a raincloud and, in petty revenge, carved out the fattest jam-bright chunk of my parfait.

“Hey, you stripped the dream right out of the parfait with that little bit of jam gone!”

Before she could eat it, I sprang up and bit her spoon, a thief in a cherry orchard.

I even bit off the spoon’s top. Ferrel wailed and thumped my head with the handle like hail on a tin roof.

“That was my favorite spoon!”

I’ll never understand you people who bring your own cute spoon to an ice cream shop, like carrying a talisman into a fair. Ow! Stop, stop—don’t flip it and use it that way! The broken edge is sharp as a shard!

I had to promise a shopping trip and a replacement before Ferrel sat down again, cheeks puffed like steamed buns.

Are you Raven? That’s her signature face.

Then I remembered our relationship is “parity,” so during a date she’d sense me thinking of another girl like a shadow across glass. Luckily, possessiveness is a weed that grows on the side of “evil.” Ferrel, who stands for all bright things, doesn’t have that thorn.

“Andreas, you’re really bad at dating.”

Ferrel settled with contentment like a cat in a sunbeam. She didn’t mind the rudeness in my head. She called the maid, hovered between the biggest sundaes like a butterfly picking flowers, then tossed me a pleading look soft as mist.

I flipped a Colonna coin. “Bring them one by one.” Ferrel squealed like a lark and lunged in to kiss me hard, a spark in dry grass.

“Alright, alright… all I can do is pay for things. If you expect your boyfriend to whip up jaw-dropping skits, or twist this stiff dead face into proper social smiles, I’m sorry. Stone doesn’t bend like willow.”

“Mmm. At least we can sit together and watch the sky and earth of this world, like river and shore. I can see the comfort in your eyes, and you can see my face. Mmm, mmm. You’ve given me so many gifts already. I’m happy.”

“Dummy. Swallow before you talk.”

I ran a hand through her long, fine hair, soft as silk in warm wind, and didn’t want to let go like fingers reluctant at dusk.

This is why I came back to Silver from the future, like a salmon to its river.

My small, small, almost trivial wish, a candle cupped from the wind.

Ferrel’s wings brushed the decorative shrubs with a whoosh, leaves tickled into whispers. She turned the bench toward the street, swinging her feet like a child, and opened her arms and chest to the passing humans like a sunrise greeting roofs.

Embrace this beautiful world.

She wore a clean smile like first light. Sun through the tall window pooled on her white sleeveless dress, and her calves and arms shone, skin fresh as peeled lychee, brighter than any gemstone.

“My child, my little ones,” Ferrel breathed, voice soft as rain on fields.

She loves her children.

Even after He died, that great love traveled with His relics like a flame in a lantern and fell into His heir’s hands.

The divine loves the world the way the sun and rain love the fields, asking for nothing, just giving like a well that never counts its buckets.

“I want to do something, for my children.”

She smiled and turned to me, light in her eyes like a lake at noon.

It wasn’t a plea to the great, nor a threat to an enemy, nor a vow to those who heap their hopes on her like stones on a cairn.

She simply said it.

She explained the love from the root of her heart, and told her boyfriend all her thundering excitement, like blossoms spilling from a branch.

You who walk with me, who can see the same breathtaking view; you who can share joy and grief with me like two cups at one table… I’m already satisfied…

Infamy and wickedness, let them pour through my hands like ink in the rain.

Kindness and good deeds, let them spread under your name like birds carrying seeds.

Ferrel never needs to feel guilt over my cold-blooded labor; she only has to dream and perform on the stage I hand her, bright as a festival. If you are by my side, I’m happy. That’s the exchange, the bargain, a clasped-hands oath under lantern light—

For this contract named love, I’ll sign with blood as ink and soul as pen, solemn as thunder over the sea.