Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Golden honey sunset spilled across the penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows as if someone had knocked over a jar. The pricey off-white carpet glowed lazy tangerine, and the air was stuffed with smells that clawed at every hungry corner of the brain—fiery crayfish, cumin-dusted grill smoke, molten pizza cheese, and three bulbous straws poking from condensation-beaded cups of full-sugar boba milk tea, sweet enough to count as a misdemeanor. The crystal chandelier diced the light into jumping shards across the marble coffee table, dazzling the eye.
Dead centre of the living room, the “god” Wei Wu had claimed his throne. Clad only in a stretched tank top, he sat spread-legged in a sofa soft as cumulus, the coffee table before him buried under a mountain range of take-out coffins. He brandished a glossy red crayfish, droplets of beer-foam spittle flying like a TED talk.
“...you should’ve seen it! My mum—man, the energy!” He chugged beer, foam clinging to stubble before he swiped it away. “Dragged me to the plaza-dance crew, new ‘Phoenix Legend’ routine, whoa! Nearly ripped this old skeleton into five separate pieces!” He winked across the table. “Only thing is, the old lady keeps nagging about you, Xi Zi—asks when I’m bringing ‘the girlfriend’ home for inspection. Hah! Pressure’s on, bro—uh, sis!”
The named “Xi Zi”—Yun Xi—was rolled into a ball in a single armchair, playing dead fish. Grey loungewear, silver-white hair cascading like a waterfall, a few rogue strands curling over the jawline and onto a cushion printed with a dopey cat face. She sipped her milk tea; the sweetness exploded on her tongue but couldn’t melt the thin film of exhaustion between her brows. At Wei Wu’s tease she twitched a corner of her mouth: “Wei Bro, spare me... say hi to Auntie for me.” Her voice held the gravel of someone who’d just finished brawling with Shadowmares.
“Senior Yun Xi!” A marshmallow voice piped up. Milu hugged an oak staff nearly her own height, crouched on the carpet like a rabbit that had found its burrow. Emerald eyes sparkled. “Today, when that huge black shadow lunged, Milu wasn’t scared at all! Honest!” She puffed her chest, radiating ‘praise me’. “The staff went bzzt and the Guardian Shield whooshed up! Star-Moon Shield! Super—awesome!”
“Saw it,” Yun Xi answered, fingers ruffling the girl’s silky hair. “Xiao Milu was very brave. Top marks.” Her gaze brushed the faintly glowing crystal at the staff’s tip; something fugitive flickered behind her eyes.
An indigo orb—Xing Dian—ping-ponged above the milk-tea cups like a hyperactive kid, zapping invisible purifying bolts at any fly dumb enough to buzz the crayfish. Snow-white Yue Fei, meanwhile, crouched at the table’s edge like a picky gourmet, licking the purified wisps of grilled-fish energy from the air, purple-crystal eyes half-lidded in regal laziness.
Yun Xi’s glance slid across the culinary war-zone and settled on her left wrist. The antique silver-blue bracelet Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss rested against her skin. CAMCC’s consultant fee had landed—enough digits to let her forget, for tonight, the sadness of living pay-cheque to pay-cheque. Wei Wu’s bellow, Milu’s star-struck glow, the perfume of food, the sinful sugar—everything conspired to weave a bubble called home and haul her back from Xinghui Amusement Park, that frozen fun-fair of twisted time and broken echoes.
She lifted a grilled-squid skewer, instinctively summoned a bead of indigo light—Preservation Spell! The spark hiccupped, coalescing a beat slower than usual, its energy trail kinking like a stone thrown into still water. The squid’s oil gloss froze for a nanosecond, then resumed glistening. The micro-glitch was caught by half-lidded purple-crystal eyes; Yue Fei’s tail-tip twitched.
“Yo—dug up the ultimate treasure!” Wei Wu slapped his oily thigh; phone screen thrust under Yun Xi’s nose. “Look, Xi Zi—remember this place? Uni league finals! Last thirty seconds, divine combo! You stole the ball, I ran the break, alley-oop for the win! Epic!”
On the screen, a sun-bleached photo: two sweat-drenched boys under a rickety outdoor hoop, arms over each other’s shoulders, grinning like idiots. Left: buzz-cut Wei Wu, muscles straining his tank, crude V-sign at the lens. Right: hair plastered to forehead, equally toothy grin, eyes a pair of small suns—Yun Xi (male). Jersey filthy, arm muscles corded, the living poster-boy for sunshine, wildness, brother-ball.
Wei Wu boomed on, voice thick with nostalgia and bro-love: “Look at us—beasts on court, could’ve eaten a whole cow after a game! Now you—uh, girl,” he swept his eyes over Yun Xi’s loungewear-cushion-hair ensemble, “skirts suit you, all fairy vibes, but—heh—kinda miss that rough-and-ready macho dazzle, y’know? Raw masculine beauty—hahaha!”
“Macho... raw...”
The five words slammed into Yun Xi like five frost-tipped daggers.
Her smile froze mid-frame. Eyes locked on the photo: the fierce, cocky boy radiating pure testosterone. She looked down at the hand resting on the cushion—slender, porcelain, nails glossy enough to mirror light. Felt hair tickling her neck. Ended on the bracelet branding her wrist: Witch Yun Xi.
A sharp, drowning dissonance—ice water mixed with glass shards—filled every organ. The boy in the picture and the girl in the mirror belonged to parallel universes. She felt like a roughneck soul crammed inside a BJD doll, beautiful shell, innards a box of mis-aligned screws.
“......” Throat mortared shut. The squid skewer turned cold, heavy as lead. The bracelet’s chill was no longer comfort but an invisible ankle-monitor. A wisp of frost—barely visible—puffed from her wrist and vanished.
“—milk tea’s too sweet, grabbing a Coke Zero.” Yun Xi rocketed up, tail-step of a startled cat. She dropped the line without meeting anyone’s eyes, fled toward the open kitchen, back screaming: evacuation zone!
On the far side of the wall, refrigerator hum and stainless-steel chill. She leaned against the double-door fridge, cold bleeding through thin fabric into bone. Eyes shut, she inhaled the icy air, trying to drown the tsunami inside. On the smudged steel she saw a silver-haired, blue-eyed girl.
Yet the brain cycled the court-side memory: sweat-slick chest bump, roar of boys. And Xinghui Amusement Park: frozen laughter, terror shattered, Cocoon of Termination turning joy to stardust—Shadowmares, residue of dead timelines. Was she another kind of residue? A bug with past erased, future locked? The bracelet lay against skin, cool, ancient, heavy as a branding iron.
Eventually the party thinned. Only the chandelier’s lowest setting lingered, a night-watchman over the ruins: empty boba cups, crayfish shell mountain, skewer pick-up sticks. Wei Wu snored in the guest room, probably still dancing plaza dreams. Milu curled on the sofa, oak staff clutched like a teddy, silver hair fanned, breathing even. Xing Dian dimmed to a power-saving blue night-light beside her.
At the vast window Yun Xi stood statue-still. A galaxy of city lights flowed beneath her, headlight rivers carving the steel forest’s heartbeat. Silver strands lifted in the cool night breeze.
She raised her right hand, thumb unconsciously brushing the bracelet again and again. Its ridges felt cold, hard, eternal. Starlight glittered in deep-blue eyes yet lit none of the wasteland behind them.
“Yue Fei...” The name left her lips shredded by the wind, a thread of vulnerability she hadn’t meant to show. “Is the person in the mirror... really ‘me’? The whole... me?”
White shadow soundless at her feet. Yue Fei tilted a small head, amethyst eyes shining in the gloom, gaze steady, ancient, pitying. No answer, no judgment—only the weight of seeing.
A mere breath of a meow, softer than the night itself, a sigh from some distant epoch. The fluffy tail, warm with life, brushed once—twice—against her sock-covered ankle. The faint warmth rippled out, swallowed at once by the vast cold of doubt.
Outside, the city roared on, brilliant and deafening. Inside, the silence was heavy enough to bend iron. Only Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss gleamed, cool, immutable, a riddle that refused to speak.