Sweet Dreams of the Mechanical Tapir: The Stitched Past
The castle's spire twisted into a knot in the black fog. As the mechanical tapir's metal hooves crushed the clouds, each scale reflected the sunlight of sixty years ago—the afternoon when Xiaofang, holding her calico cat, chased butterflies in the threshing ground. Xiaodou's treasure-hunting radar vibrated wildly in her chest. The half-block of chocolate in her arms suddenly became hot, and the melted syrup drew a fragmented map on her palm: pointing to the third lock of the castle dungeon.
"Ouch!" Xiaodou was thrown back by the sudden surge of air, just as Ling Yuan's sword landed at her feet. The sweet coating on the blade collided with the black mist expelled by the mechanical tapir, and clusters of cherry blossoms suddenly blossomed—the cherry blossoms were from the Kyoto garden that Ling Yuan had guarded in his previous life. The petals landed on the tapir's nose, causing the steel giant to sneeze.
"Its core is devouring sweet memories." Lin Shen's data stream wrapped around the tapir's limb joints. "Look at the gaps in the scales. They're filled with torn candy wrappers, melted milk flakes... and this." He picked up a transparent sheet with his fingertips, and a blurry figure was reflected when the sunlight passed through: a little girl with pigtails, stuffing osmanthus cake into the gear mouth of the mechanical cat.
Bai Yan's fox fire suddenly surged, and the red flames coalesced behind him into the sleeves of his costume. "That's the 'Memory Glass' I gave to Xiaofang," he said, his voice tense. "She said she wanted to seal the sweetest moments inside, leaving it as a signpost for lost animals." Before he could finish his words, the mechanical tapir suddenly raised its head and screamed. Countless mechanical claws emerged from the black mist, grabbing pieces of glass and shoving them down its throat.
As Xiaodou slid along the sword blade to the dungeon door, the third lock was wrapped with Xiaofang's shoelaces—the red rope with the bell tied to it, now strangling the door like a living thing. She bit the chocolate in her palm, the syrup seeping through her fingers into the keyhole. Suddenly, she heard a faint whimper from the lock core: the voices of countless "Xiaofangs" overlapping.
"Help...help my cat..."
"Mom said that memories soaked in absinthe won't sprout..."
"Will Brother Bai Yan's fox mask rust if it gets touched by honey?"
Lin Shen's data stream suddenly exploded: "This isn't a lock, it's a curse the witch stitched together using 'memory fragments'! She's torn Xiaofang's past into countless pieces, each one stuffed into a different container—the dolls in the candy house, the guards' gears, and this mechanical tapir!"
Bai Yan's earring fragments tinkled like silver bells atop the witch tower. He suddenly lunged at the mechanical tapir's gaping maw. Red foxfire condensed into a folding fan at his fingertips. The moment the fan unfolded, a paper fox flew out, snaking a shard of glass into the tapir's throat.
"Xiaofang taught me that origami can carry wishes." Bai Yan's voice was tinged with operatic cadence, yet it carried an unprecedented degree of conviction. The moment the paper fox passed through the black fog, the mechanical tapir's scales suddenly peeled away, revealing what lay within: a calico cat, part mechanical, part flesh, its front paws clutching a half-bitten piece of osmanthus cake, its eyes like two gleaming glass candies.
"Meow..." The calico cat's mechanical tail tip shook, Bai Yan's face was reflected in its glass candy eyes, and suddenly honey-colored tears flowed out.
The dungeon door burst open. Xiaodou rushed in and saw the witch's mechanical claws grasping a glowing object—a ball of light formed from countless memories of "Xiaofang," its surface still stained with wet black syrup.
"Don't touch it!" Xiaodou's fur suddenly stood up, and the golden lines on the panda's paw spread all over her body. The moment she pounced, all the sweet memories that had been imprisoned suddenly resonated: 1960 in the chocolate, the threshing ground in the glass, the osmanthus cake under the calico cat's paw... Transformed into a golden light, it crashed into the witch.
The witch's mechanical arm was shattered, and Xiaodou held the light ball firmly before it fell to the ground. She heard countless "Xiaofang" laughing in the light ball: "It turns out that it's not the memory that's bitter, but the forgetting of how to be sweet..."
The mechanical tapir's body melted into a pool of syrup in the sunlight. The calico cat licked Xiaodou's paw and suddenly spat out a rusty badge. It was engraved with "GM-001," the original serial number of the White Abyss Three Souls doll. When Lin Shen picked it up, he found small inscription on the back: "Experimental 'Bitter Sweet Balance' 73rd Failure Record."
At the highest point of the castle ruins, in the unburned black fog, a figure in a white coat vaguely emerged, holding a photo in his hand: the young man was stuffing a crying little girl (Xiaofang) into the cockpit of the mechanical cat.
"Finally, we've found a container that can hold Absolute Sweetness..." The figure's voice overlapped with the witch's mechanical voice. "Next, it's time to wake up White Abyss."
Xiaodou was holding the ball of light when he suddenly found a mark on the syrup map in his palm: it pointed to a dry well on the edge of Storybrooke. There seemed to be something glowing at the bottom of the well, like a star that had been buried for a long time.
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