Ferrel sat on my lap, her feet swinging like twin pendulums; I wrapped her shoulders, my chin roosting on her small head like a quiet bird under warm dusk.

Mr. Andor’s physics mini-class is now in session: don’t hold your girlfriend like this. A soul chained by gravity—no, a human neck—takes a load like a millstone. If your enraged girlfriend slaps you flat on the tiles, I accept zero liability.

Find poses that keep both of you loose, like reeds in wind. Don’t try to copy manga stunts carved from clouds.

“Look at the young man on the left.” I pointed past the ice cream parlor’s glass, where light pooled like milk. “His gaze flicks left and right, beads of sweat glitter like dew on his brow. His right leg jitters like a drumstick. He bows his head to check the time, pops back up at the signboard, paces the curb like a stray, even stomps once.”

Society says, tone it down in public, like lantern light behind screens. But an ice cream parlor? How’s that excessive? It’s private ground, my own little garden.

Our maid smiled, wind-smooth, and swept out anyone angling for trouble like leaves off a stoop.

“Mmm… I guess he’s waiting for his girlfriend!” Ferrel sucked a finger, thought, then smacked her palm like a cymbal.

“You sure?”

“Sure!”

“Then I’ll bet he’s meeting some thug for a trade: a bio-weapon that, within a forty-kilometer radius, converts failed human resistance into monsters. After that, a mass terror strike at Hero Academy.”

“Hey, Andreas, your mind’s ugly.” Her tone puffed like a cheeky cloud. “First date. Boy waits. He wants her to come, fears he’ll blow it, hopes she can’t make it, so he won’t ruin it. Until she arrives, it’s Schrödinger’s anticipation. How do you not get that?” She boxed my chest with tiny fists, a kitten playing. Cute. Not painful—pff.

Next date, I should dial up my physics stats. At least don’t snap two ribs like today.

Enough chatter; let the kettle settle.

In a previous life, through unending exchanges, debates, and sideline watching, Ferrel and I were sealed—omniscient yet powerless—as if pressed under glass. Watching mortals come and go was our only entertainment, fish drifting in a bowl of time.

Sometimes we’d dispute right and wrong, good and evil, like thunderheads testing each other’s edges.

Now, we aren’t all-knowing, not for the moment. For fun, we watch mortals again, guess at their intentions and moves, batting yarn like cats. It’s interesting.

Human observation—the mischievous hobby of gods and demons.

“Want to bet on something?”

“Want! If I win, I lead tonight in bed!”

I should ask Miss Vega to teach Ferrel a few “be-happy-in-the-world” basics for a Divine Being. If our own maid hadn’t cleared the whole parlor, someone might’ve reported me for loli indecency.

After all, Ferrel looks thirteen or fourteen right now, a big-loli build, small enough to fit fully in my arms like a bundled moon.

“Then it’s settled,” I said, light as a skim of frost.

“Mm! Settled!” She lifted her small fist and waved, sparks in her eyes.

“I’m already considering how many poses to put you in tonight…”

My foolish girlfriend, you don’t think the way I’m spelling it out is off?

Right—again, it’s my trick.

I loosened my arms around Ferrel. I kneaded my face back to the look of Shadow Artisan Andor, shadows like ink washing over bone. I summoned from the Shadow a greatsword broad as a door slab—Valor—and set the small one from my lap on the chair beside me.

“Andreas? What are you doing?” Her head tilted forty-five degrees, a curious bird’s glance.

“Failsafes. And the cast for the last cool entrance… not important. I’ve got things to do. After I leave, go home on your own. Or run around. Or hide nearby and watch. Either way, few in the human world can scratch you.”

“Oh!” She kept her sunlit smile, and answered like a bell.

“Say ‘Got it.’”

“Got it!”

At the crossroad by Hero Academy, the air was still honey-sweet. The florist trimmed blackthorn spikes like a careful gardener pruning thorns. Patrols directed traffic like shepherd dogs nudging sheep. That youth waiting for the trade kept pacing, tide to and fro.

Mr. Victor stepped off a public arcane construct car, face flat as slate, suitcase dangling like a weight. His eyes narrowed to knife-slits; his profession’s chill ringed him like winter. He scanned left and right, hawk-sure, and fixed his target.

Not my cue yet.

“Okay,” I said, softer, like rain. “Andreas is about to tell Ferrel a story. See over there? The girl with bright green hair and sharp ears? No, not that red-haired idiot—this one’s a girl. Since she got off the airship, she’s been sprinting, a smile of longing like dawn on her face. She must miss someone. She must hope to see someone. Then she stopped, right in the middle of the road, like a deer suddenly tasting silence.”

“Mmm, this time it’s ‘the Schrödinger series: separated lovers’…” Ferrel propped her chin, sure as a judge.

“Wrong. She simply forgot to bring back a souvenir. See that despair on her face? Her crimson armor looks bleached, chalk-dry… Ahem. I figure she spotted a pretty dress in Saigebaru, planned to treat it as payment for this kingdom draft, to have the Veneli king buy it. But the social calls and balls came like locusts, her sanity dropped hard, she got air-dropped back to the City of Heroes, and only just remembered. Mm, she went into the flower shop, picking left and right, then haggling. I can see the veins bulging on the shopkeeper’s brow. They’re scrapping. Mm—Stini… I mean the green-haired girl got smacked. As a local, the bond between Heroes and commoners is still intimate, like neighbors trading salt.”

The youth at the flower shop door spotted Victor approaching. Flame-bright red hair isn’t a common color; only a few in the Nation of Pure Waters carry it, like coral in a clear stream.

In a crowd, he’s a lighthouse. And on the suitcase, the emblem—black dragon sprawled on a rotting World Tree, sneering—Savior Demon King Army’s mark. Not widespread yet, but the youth recognized it; a shiver ran through him like frost.

As a former assassin with fine habits, Victor, once he found his target, didn’t let his gaze drift. He watched the path, not faces, and closed in like a tide. At the crossing instant, he palmed the suitcase into the target’s hands, like he’d slid daggers into hearts a hundred times—precise, discreet, efficient.

But the youth wasn’t a hardened agent. The moment he received the case, he curled like a leaf, bent lower, sweat poured like rain, his hair clumped in strings, his front soaked. Good thing he’s not my subordinate, or he’d be more than dumpling filling.

—And he collided with Stini, who stepped out wearing dark rings under her eyes, the badge of a haggling victory, smile content as a cat with cream.

For a heartbeat, the world froze like a pond under moon.

The suitcase fell at a speed you could almost ignore, like a feather stalling.

Blackthorn blossoms scattered in air; petals tapped her crimson armor like soft hail.

The youth’s face drained to chalk; he seemed to age decades in a blink.

Victor heard the sound, obeyed habit, glanced back once, then melted into the crowd like smoke, gone.

On our table, the sundae stopped melting, a glacier mid-thaw. A wineglass tilted, yet no drop fell; sunlight turned limp, as if stopped at the window.

That black dragon on the rotting World Tree kept sneering, laughing at human inevitabilities, at changed courses, at ordained fates, its grin hooked like a scythe.

Ferrel stared at the dragon emblem on the suitcase, silent as winter. She spooned a bite of sundae into her mouth; this time, no smile blossomed.

“Stini bought blackthorn, a specialty blossom of Wilderness Kingdom Veneli,” I teased, wind-light. “She plans to pretend she got it in Veneli and gift it to me. Tsk tsk, cunning.”

“Nothing’s happened yet.” She cut to the heart, her voice stripped of the usual natural warmth, iron under silk.

Not knowing evil doesn’t mean foolish. It doesn’t mean weak. It doesn’t mean timid.

She and I differ only by not recognizing evil’s face.

So the “future” I can foresee is equal for her too. Ferrel knows what the future I’ve planned looks like, and what’s about to unfold.

A Divine Being loves the world yet doesn’t act—not because she can’t, but because sometimes she chooses to believe, like seed trusting spring.

“But everything will happen, as long as time keeps flowing like a river.”

“Don’t kill my child.” She scooped another bite, eyes on the spoon, not on me.

“Mm. No problem. If I brought you out to see it, I won’t be the worst one, the wolf in the fold.”

“Don’t let my child die.”

“You know, where there’s light there’s Shadow, where there’s life there’s—”

“No.”

“…”

“No, Andreas. No.” She shook her head hard, long hair swaying like willow branches. If I didn’t agree, she’d shake forever, a metronome of refusal.

Hmm… That adds a lot of trouble, ants in honey.

But if Ferrel insists, I can’t do much, like tide against rock.

Didn’t expect her reaction this strong; the last few times were fine, smoke that never sparked.

Mm…

“Fine, fine. I’ll put in more heart and work.”

I grabbed a handful of her long hair, drawing a cute “Ayaya” yelp like a piccolo. I hauled Valor from the Shadow and slung it over my shoulder like a sunset beam.

“You’ve beaten me,” I sighed, a breeze admitting defeat.

I pushed open the parlor door. I looked back. Ferrel’s smile bloomed again, warm rain over fields, and she kept eating her ice cream in happy bites.

“See you tonight, Andreas!”

“Yeah, see you. Just wait.”

My cute girlfriend raised her arm and waved wide, a banner of trust. She said:

“I believe in you!”

That’s the problem. Ferrel, can you understand betrayal and doubt, thorns on the rose?

Can you distrust someone, let frost nip the leaf?

That’s the problem.

Well, for now— I turned and stepped out of the ice cream parlor, into streets like a stage.

Mortals, congratulations. Thanks to the mercy of a Divine Being, there’ll be no death today. Those who were meant to die will be lent more days, to prepare for death like travelers packing for night.

Everything thawed. Time shrugged off the chokehold and ran, a river freed from ice.

The youth yelped and toppled to the ground, a felled sapling.

Stini snatched the scattered blackthorn blossoms midair, fingers swift as swallows.

The suitcase hit the pavement with a click, cracked open. Something inside gleamed like a fang, and its malice seeped over everyone present like cold smoke.