The "Possibility Wine Glass" at Lin Yue's fingertips suddenly rippled. Among the twelve layers of emotional colors, Xia Zichen's "Star Gold" intertwined with her "Wind Blue" to create a fluorescent, flocculent pattern. A black cat perched on the hilt of the sword, wagging its tail. "Meow! That's the emotional synapses growing. The 'like neurons' in your brain are secreting dopamine that smells like strawberry soda."
Xia Zichen's star-patterned sword suddenly swung uncontrollably toward Lin Yue, its spine reflecting the flickering image in his pupils—in some parallel universe, they sat on the "Vine of Attachment" on the "Island of Emotional Relics." He pinned a lemon-yellow hairpin made from the "spark of first encounter" on her head, and the wind through her hair mingled with the warmth of the firefly tail he had gifted her. Ah Fu's oracle-inscribed sword vines wrapped around his wrist, revealing an ancient rune: "When star tracks intersect wind lines, the law of increasing entropy yields to the heartbeat."
The Entropy Scythe girl stacked the dice into a heart shape. The topmost "Reunion" dice suddenly cracked, releasing fragments of frosted memory: Three years ago, on a rainstorm night, Xia Zichen had shielded Lin Yue from the falling World Tree in the nursery, leaving behind a crescent-shaped "Guardian Scar" on the back of his neck. Now, that scar glowed warmly through his collar, echoing the halo of the "Wind Mark" on Lin Yue's collarbone. Old Zhang's pocket watch oozed a juice like strawberry jam, drawing their overlapping shadows on the ground.
"Look at this." Lin Yue opened her pocket of wind, and out poured not seeds but a handful of "heart-beating cavities"—each one imbued with a hidden moment: the sweaty back of Xia Zichen's neck as he swung his sword, his silhouette crouching in the nursery reading poetry to firefly larvae, their pinkies accidentally touching while stargazing side by side. She planted the cavities in the crystallized ground, and vines instantly sprouted "ambiguous bells," each one containing an unspoken "Do you know?"
Xia Zichen reached out to touch the bell, and vines suddenly wrapped around his wrist, revealing a holographic projection: In Universe 42, where the "Law of Affective Computing" was rampant, he and Lin Yue, guardians of "Illogical Tears," had once shared half a "Rebellious Cookie" while hiding in the Data Ruins. His fingertips brushed against the frosting on the corner of her mouth, but when she looked up, he pretended to scratch his nose. The tips of his ears in the projection tinged red, and in reality, he subconsciously touched the tip of his nose, meeting Lin Yue's gaze.
The black cat jumped into the "Ambiguous Bell" vine and pricked the brightest one with its claws: "Meow~ This smell is sweeter than the afterbirth of the 'Undefined Quadrant'." When it swung its tail, it knocked a bell off, and the "Did you know" inside turned into a flying note, floating to Xia Zichen's palm and unfolding: "When you were blocking the tree, I smelled a sense of security mixed with the scent of cedar and rust." His fingers trembled slightly, and the note suddenly caught fire. A "seedling of courage" grew out of the ashes, topped with the silver star earring that he had not given away three years ago.
The Entropy Scythe girl suddenly pointed at the "Emotional Star Clothes." The silver threads of the fabric unexpectedly wove together silhouettes of two people: in the "Adventure Bubble" universe, they were pirates fighting back to back. As he shielded her from a laser cannon, she backhandedly plunged her "gentle dagger" into the enemy's energy core. In the "Wandering Poet" universe, the sonnets he wrote for her were hidden in every rhyme, while her pocket of wind held all his unsung choruses. Lin Yue observed the silhouettes and realized that in each universe, their weapons were always pointed at the enemy, and their backs were always left to each other.
Lao Zhang's pocket watch flickered with blood-red markings, and the writing on the inside of the cover changed to: "When your heartbeat is faster than entropy, time will grow rose thorns for you." He placed the pocket watch close to Lin Yue's "Mark of the Wind", and Xia Zichen's perspective emerged in the halo: every time she turned and walked towards danger, he could see the arc of her hair rising up, like a sail pointing in the direction he must follow, and his sword-gripping hand was always ready to swing 0.1 seconds faster than his heartbeat.
"Actually..." When Xia Zichen opened his mouth, the "Possibility Compass" suddenly spewed out pink smoke, and the torn pages of the first guardian's diary emerged from the smoke: "The best nutrients for emotional synapses are half-finished sentences." Lin Yue watched the red on the tip of his ear spread to his neck, and reached out to straighten his crooked bow tie. Her fingertips touched the vibration of his Adam's apple, and they both heard each other's accelerated heartbeats at the same time - a frequency that was hotter than the "empathy magma".
The black cat curled its tail around a "sapling of courage" and planted it between their touching palms. The seedling instantly grew into a "confession tree," its branches laden with multilingual "I love you" fruits. Each fruit had a distinct flavor: Chinese had the sweetness of a green plum, English the crispness of mint soda, and Klingon a ambivalent mixture of gunpowder and honey. Xia Zichen plucked a Japanese fruit, biting into it. Instead of juice, it gushed out the countless times he'd practiced the "good" (好きです), a slight tremor of nervousness.
Lin Yue bit into the Chinese fruit, but the taste on her tongue wasn't entirely sweet—the bottom layer held the bitterness she'd always hesitated to express, the middle layer contained the bitterness of fighting alongside them, and finally, the top layer was the sweetness that blossomed in this moment. She suddenly remembered that time in the "Stranger Universe," when they were sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons and he'd suddenly said, "There's a leaf in your hair." She'd known that already, but she just wanted to feel the warmth of his fingertips brushing against her hair a little longer.
The Entropy Scythe girl tossed twelve dice, and this time they landed to form the pattern "Closer to 0.1 Centimeters." When the first die flipped, the roots of the "Confession Tree" oozed "heart-beating magma," forming a small lake at their feet, reflecting the starry sky. Floating on the lake were all their unspoken memories: his deliberately slow movements as he bandaged her wound, the extra star pattern she'd stitched as she mended his sword tassel, and the half-breath they'd both held while adjusting their bow ties.
Xia Zichen's Star Pattern Sword automatically sheathed. He reached out and brushed away the fragments of the "Ambiguous Bell" from Lin Yue's hair. His fingertips finally stopped pretending to scratch her nose and gently rested behind her ear. "Actually, when the firefly landed on your eyelashes in the nursery, I smelled it..." He paused, looking at his reflection in her pupils, and suddenly laughed out loud. "Forget it, I'll tell you when you get a taste of 'over-beating heart' one day."
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