JFWCM Chapter 22

Little Bear Biscuits

The wind on the rooftop, carrying cherry blossoms, swept across Yi Shang’s eyelashes. She lowered her eyes, watching the glowing star trail imprint on the back of Jiang Wan’yuan’s neck – the final energy core of the bidirectional connector, pulsating with their intertwined heartbeats.

“Close your eyes,” Yi Shang’s command carried the residual electronic static of a Star Whisperer.

But Jiang Wan’yuan deliberately widened her eyes, watching the shattered starlight refracted on the other’s irises by the clearing laser: “No way, this is my bridal course practice…”

The unfinished words were crushed between their touching lips. Yi Shang’s canine teeth pierced the enhancer interface on Jiang Wan’yuan’s lower lip, and a neural pulse mixed with the taste of iron instantly ran through her entire body. The entire campus’s defense system suddenly defected, and holographic auroras rose from the fountain, trapping the pursuing mechanical guards in rainbow cages.

“You swapped the principal’s office password!” Jiang Wan’yuan exclaimed in the intervals between breaths, her fingertips touching the raised chip on the back of Yi Shang’s neck – the strawberry-flavored encryption module she had secretly replaced when they infiltrated the data center last night.

Yi Shang pinned her against the edge of the signal tower, with a panorama of neon lights behind her: “It’s a certain idiot’s love virus that was too conspicuous.” Her mechanical left hand suddenly turned transparent, piercing Jiang Wan’yuan’s chest and grasping her violently beating heart, “For example, right now, this place is saying…”

“Bang!”

A quantum sniper bullet grazed her ear, and the mechanical coating on Yi Shang’s right arm peeled off, revealing the internal circulating β-star fluid. Jiang Wan’yuan’s pupils shrank – the silvery-white liquid metal was now seeping with dark red blood.

“I see,” Zhang Yao’s mechanical body hovered in mid-air, the muzzle aimed at Yi Shang’s heart, “The so-called humanization is the β-star consciousness devouring you…”

Jiang Wan’yuan suddenly tore open her school uniform shirt, revealing the star-shaped interface on her chest. Twelve luminous stickers lit up at this moment, forming the unknown constellation they had discovered at the observatory that year: “If anyone’s going to be devoured, it’ll be me first!”

The instant the neural connector was overclocked, the city’s energy network suddenly went out. The β-star fluid in Yi Shang’s body was forcibly extracted, solidifying into a dazzling star cocoon between them. Data remnants from her mother’s deathbed flashed across Jiang Wan’yuan’s retina – the code that had been encrypted by her father for decades was the key to awakening the star cocoon.

“Grab the light,” she bit Yi Shang’s lip, smearing the blood on the surface of the star cocoon.

The Interstellar Court’s fleet exploded into fireworks overhead, and they fell into the collapsing starlight. Yi Shang’s last human memory suddenly revived: when she was seven years old, through the laboratory glass, a little girl in a strawberry dress stuck luminous stars on her mechanical shell and whispered, “Don’t be afraid, I stole my dad’s highest authority to love you.”

When dawn came again, Jiang Wan’yuan woke up in a medical pod. A β-star crystal flower bloomed from the connector on her chest, and stardust condensed on Yi Shang’s sleeping eyelashes – the first tender era written by the newborn universe in their clasped hands.

A pinned post on the campus forum was suddenly updated: 【Bridal Course, Lesson Two: How to Restart the Universe with Heartbeats】. The posting ID displayed as [0927&WanYuan Star], and the attachment was a wedding march played by the entire galaxy for them.

The fluorescent lights in the medical bay suddenly exploded, and in the halo of the β-star crystal flower, Yi Shang’s eyelashes trembled. Jiang Wan’yuan’s neural enhancer automatically activated night vision mode, but she saw an unforgettable scene – the starlight blooming from Yi Shang’s fingertips was reorganizing the molecular structure of the medical bay, and the metal walls were turning into scattered stardust.

“We’re going to be late for morning classes,” Yi Shang’s voice still carried the chill of the hibernation pod, but her palm was scalding as it pressed against Jiang Wan’yuan’s waist. The stardust wove school uniforms around them, the collars embroidered with luminous star trail patterns.

The quantum blackboard in Class A of the third year crashed the moment they stepped in. The class monitor’s fingertips, as she debugged the equipment, were suddenly entangled by the holographic screen – the love virus that Jiang Wan’yuan had implanted last night began to run wild, and every mathematical formula turned into a throbbing heart-shaped function.

“Solve this problem,” the math teacher pointed to the equation 【lim(My Heartbeat→∞) as x approaches you】.

Yi Shang walked to the podium, and β-star fluid flowed from the tip of the chalk. When the equation reached the third line, the entire blackboard suddenly collapsed into a miniature black hole, condensing the chalk dust into a diamond star ring.

“The correct answer is…” She turned around and put the star ring on Jiang Wan’yuan’s ring finger, “Positive infinity.”

Zhang Yao’s mechanical eye flashed red in the back row, but the moment she activated the recording mode, she was hit by Jiang Wan’yuan’s eraser. The eraser suddenly unfolded into a holographic curtain, cyclically playing surveillance footage of Zhang Yao secretly eating pudding in the medical bay – the corners of her mouth were still stained with Yi Shang’s β-star crystal fragments.

The rooftop was very windy at lunchtime. Jiang Wan’yuan pinned Yi Shang against the edge of the signal tower, her fingertips probing into the star trail interface on the back of the other’s neck: “Today’s mechanical arm temperature… is 0.7℃ higher than usual?”

“Thanks to someone,” Yi Shang’s canine teeth grazed the nerve node on her collarbone, “Who hacked into my hibernation pod last night and modified the thermostat program?”

A sudden air raid siren interrupted the intimacy. The Interstellar Court’s new warship tore through the clouds, but its cannons fired countless cherry blossoms – the virus that Jiang Wan’yuan had planted in the defense system last week had taken effect.

“Surprised?” She pressed Yi Shang’s mechanical left hand against her chest, “Your clearing program code is now my wedding invitation generator.”

Cherry blossoms in the twilight flowed backwards into a galaxy, and Yi Shang found a new note on Jiang Wan’yuan’s desk: 【Heartbeat Course, Lesson Three: When Machines Learn Jealousy】. Underneath the yellowed page was half a mechanical heart fragment – the No. 0927 component that had been crushed by the clearing program seven years ago, now flickering with the frequency of her breathing, much like the disordered electrocardiogram of a human being jealous.

And in dimensions that cannot be captured by the holographic weather station, the newborn universe is quietly growing with their clasped hands as the singularity.

When the automatic door of the medical bay opened, the morning light in the corridor plated Yi Shang with gold. Jiang Wan’yuan’s neural enhancer suddenly popped up a historical prompt: 【Detected the first autonomous smile of individual No. 0927, backed up to galactic cloud storage】

“Morning,” Yi Shang’s voice still had the grainy texture of mechanical sound, but her palm held steaming strawberry milk, “Your stomach acid concentration needs to be replenished.”

Jiang Wan’yuan’s fingertips brushed against the inside of her wrist – where there used to be a β-star crystal interface, now there was a pale cyan blood vessel pulsating.

The floating desks in Class A of the third year automatically pieced together into a heart shape. When Yi Shang stepped into the classroom, the holographic blackboard suddenly played real-time footage of the star cocoon breaking – Jiang Wan’yuan’s masterpiece of hacking into the interstellar satellite.

“Delete,” Yi Shang’s command carried a lazy human tone, but the pink data stream ejected from her fingertips rendered the battle scene into a wedding clip.

Zhang Yao’s mechanical arm sizzled in front of the locker. The secretly filmed video she had tried to destroy last night was now being cyclically played on the holographic curtain through the cleaning robot’s spraying device – the redness on Yi Shang’s ear when Jiang Wan’yuan fed her strawberries was more maddening to the astronomy club than a supernova explosion.

The rooftop was piled with love letters at lunchtime. Jiang Wan’yuan folded them into paper airplanes with neural pulses, each carrying a tampered clearing code. When Yi Shang’s mechanical left hand caught the 1314th plane, the paper airplane suddenly unfolded into a star map: “Today’s heartbeat frequency meets the standard, unlock kissing permission √”

“Childish,” Yi Shang’s criticism was blocked back into her throat by Jiang Wan’yuan’s lip warmth. A star trail composed of luminous stickers suddenly lit up under their feet – the sticker that had escaped formatting seven years ago was now guiding the β-star fluid to bloom a crystal rose on Jiang Wan’yuan’s chest.

During quantum physics class, the professor found that all the formulas came with a pink filter. Jiang Wan’yuan held Yi Shang’s newborn left hand under the desk, and imported the other’s residual mechanical pulse into her own neural interface. When the theory of relativity suddenly turned into the musical score of a wedding march, Yi Shang’s human pupils finally learned the advanced expression of rolling her eyes.

When the twilight soaked the laboratory, Jiang Wan’yuan found a surprise on Yi Shang’s dissection table – the wreckage of Little Bear Biscuits carefully assembled by the mechanical arm, the snacks she had secretly stuffed seven years ago, now reborn covered with β-star crystal frosting. The mechanical font on the note was melting: 【Human Taste Course Graduation Project】

The star projector automatically started, and the lights of the entire campus flickered with their heartbeats. And on the newborn string of the universe, the Interstellar Court’s clearing order was being rewritten as a marriage certificate, each starlight being the fingerprint of the officiant.

When the morning dew condensed again, two notes lay quietly in the depths of Yi Shang’s desk:

The yellowed 【No. 0927 Clearing Log】 and the brand new 【Jiang Wan’yuan Feeding Manual】, merged into an eternal contract under the effect of β-star fluid. The anti-gravity cherry blossoms outside the window flew backwards towards the galaxy, much like the immature starlight that penetrated the laboratory glass back then.