New Century Anime Warrior

There is a word called "world".

As the soft sound of a piano began, a short-haired girl in a middle school uniform stood on the empty school stairs.

Holding a dual-use military and civilian communication device that seemed out of place on campus, he kept dialing, trying to contact someone.

Until my middle school years, I vaguely believed that the world was simply a place where electrical signals could reach.

But why...?

Why can't I dial any numbers?

"Hey, is anyone home?"

Ah, I see... I'm no longer in that world.

The scene shifts, and the girl Lin Jiamei's daily school life transforms into a cockpit equipped with a holographic deck—a mecha floating in outer space on an alien planet.

Hello, Little Star!

A gentle, clear, and slightly delicate female voice rang out, carrying a restrained sadness and determination in the singing.

The scene returns to the school campus.

"Sheng, look!" the girl suddenly exclaimed to the boy, "There's a spaceship!"

I'm lonely as everything in birth.

"Hmm." Gazing at the colossal warship that pierced the clouds like a mountain peak on the horizon, the boy, Si Weisheng, spoke as if recounting some commonplace observation: "People from this town will be chosen too, right?"

"Chosen as a starter."

Upon hearing this, the girl paused, and her mood suddenly became somewhat downcast.

"Um."

The scene shifts from the campus to a railway crossing, where rows of mechs leave trails of flight, traversing half the sky.

The boy and girl gazed silently at this cutting-edge creation of human science, remaining speechless for a long time.

"Hey, Sheng." The girl suddenly leaned close to the boy's ear and casually mentioned something that seemed to have nothing to do with her.

"Actually, I... am going to drive that thing..."

I dream of you, the planet Earth.

The girl was already sitting in the cockpit of the mecha. The alien background projected inside the cockpit was the barren orange-yellow landscape of Mars, and in the distance, you could see Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.

The magnificent scenery before her seemed to have no effect on the girl. She quietly looked at the dual-use military and civilian communicator in her hand, which displayed a special message waiting to be sent to the boy.

"Will it reach you...?" the girl seemed to be asking herself.

Drop drop drop.

Petals drifted gently by, and the boy's special cell phone rang with a text message tone.

[It was sent by Jiaming!]

If I could fly across this night faster than the speed of light

I would spread these wings of mine / I want to spread my wings

It was just a simple greeting. The boy looked at the girl's text message and remained silent.

What he didn't know was that the girl had actually written a second text message, but hadn't sent it.

In the text message that had not yet been sent, the girl expressed her helplessness and also complained about not finding any trace of the enemy on Mars.

"...It would be best to return to Earth as soon as possible." This was the girl's deepest wish; she wanted to see the boy again.

Unbeknownst to her, at that moment, a warning suddenly popped up on the girl's cockpit screen: "Large numbers of enemies detected 12 kilometers away!"

"The fleet is about to make a space jump of one light-year."

The girl was jolted back to reality by the sudden notification and frantically searched for the modified special communicator.

She wanted to send that unsent text message, which contained her little secret, before the spatial jump...

One after another, Earth's fleet of spaceships made space jumps, instantly reaching a light-year away.

Meanwhile, the communicator also calculates the SMS sending time.

Recipient distance:

13477536000000km

Estimated arrival time of the message:

1 years, 16 days, 12 hours

The girl silently deleted the now meaningless message and rewrote a new one.

Through the Years and Far Away

Far Beyond the Milky Way

[It will take a year for this text message to reach Ah Sheng...]

[...and sending it from Sirius would take 8 years]

The girl understood that when the boy received this message sent from one light-year away, she had already arrived at Sirius, 8.6 light-years away.

Will you forget about me?

Drop drop drop.

A year later, the boy finally received the girl's second text message.

"...The fleet just made a space jump of 1 light-year, so to me, I'm still 15 years old..."

"Although it happened a year ago for Asheng, only 30 minutes have passed here, and we're still near the solar system..."

"When you receive this message from a year ago, I should already be on Sirius."

"From then on, our communication would take eight years and seven months..."

"sorry."

"We're like..."

The boy read the last sentence of the message aloud.

At that moment, he seemed to hear the girl whispering the same helpless words in his ear.

"Lovers separated by the universe and the earth..."

-----------------

Lin Jiamei looked up at the sky and saw a rainstorm through the holographic image.

A rain from Agartha, the fourth planet in the Sirius system.

The brilliant starlight shone through the alien cloud layer 8.6 light-years away from Earth, casting a dreamlike glow.

"I really want to get caught in the rain..."

"I really want to go to the convenience store and eat ice cream together..."

"I miss...Ah Sheng so much..."

The girl's longing was like the rain, no longer able to be suppressed. Like a small animal, she curled up in the mecha cockpit, sobbing softly.

See the Shine That Never Blinks

The Shine That Never Fades / A Starlight That Never Fades

The girl took out her communicator again and quickly entered the latest information.

"Hello, 24-year-old Asheng!"

"I am Jiamei, 15 years old..."

"I still like Ah Sheng very, very much even now."

Estimated arrival time of the message:

8 years, 224 days, 18 hours

[This message must be relayed...]

Thousand Years and Far Away

Far Beyond the Silky Way

The young man, now a teenager, returned home to find several copies of the latest theories on cosmology piled up in the corner of his rented room.

The book at the very top was prominently titled "On the Practical Application of Faster-Than-Light Communication," but the boy's heart began to feel numb.

An eight-year communication gap is practically no different from eternity in the context of their short lives.

I no longer expect new information from the stars.

Today's newspapers reported on the Pyrrhic victory that took place eight years ago on Sirius, in which the original expeditionary force was almost completely wiped out.

The battle situation was not reported back to Earth until eight years later, and the only surviving fleet flagship had no chance of returning.

He never received a message from the girl, which seemed to confirm his suspicions.

Perhaps it's already...

Drop drop drop.

It's still that communicator I modified, but it contains new information...

The boy opened the message without any expectations.

"Hello, 24-year-old Asheng!"

"..."

Seeing the girl's unwavering resolve in the text message, the boy realized he wasn't as excited as he had imagined.

Instead, he calmly replied with an almost identical message.

"Hello, Jiaming, who is 32 years old!"

"I'm 24-year-old Asheng..."

"I still like Jia Mei very, very much."

He seemed to hear the girl's innocent voice echoing in his ears once again.

Through the Years and Far Away

Far Beyond the Milky Way

At that moment, the boy seemed to see the girl's battle.

Her high-frequency close-range dagger cleaved through the bodies of alien bio-weapons countless times.

Her mech moved at incredible speeds between the fleets, maneuvering against the alien fighters.

Her ultra-long-range light-powered weapons carved out path after path of light leading to victory in the pitch-black universe.

He saw every miracle she saw, as well as her tears and her longing...

He: "Hey, Jia Mei, it's me..."

She said, "Sheng, there are many things I miss."

Even though we are 8.6 light-years apart, the person in my heart is right in front of me right now.

He and she: "For example..."

He said, "Summer clouds."

She said, "The sound of raindrops hitting an umbrella."

He said, "The rain was cold."

She said, "The soft soil in spring."

He said, "The scent of autumn wind."

She said, "The peace of mind that comes from late-night convenience stores."

He said, "The weather is cool after school."

She said, "It smelled like chalk dust on the blackboard."

You're the Shine That Never Blinks

The Shine That Never Dies / Is a Radiance That Never Fades

She said, "Hey, Sheng, even though we're separated by a great distance..."

He said, "But perhaps longing really can transcend time and distance."

She said, "Please remember this..."

He and she: "I'm right here."

The boy leaned against the balcony railing, looking towards the Sirius star system in the night sky, with a brand-new, ironed United Nations Space Force uniform behind him.

In that direction, Lin Jiamei's tattered mecha drifted silently in deep space, 8.6 light-years away, in that boundless dark universe.

It seems that even across a thousand years, she is waiting for the arrival of a boy.