Sisters and "Sisters"

North Borough, Backlund University of Industry and Technology.

Sunday morning marked the end of the day-and-a-half-long entrance examination. Many parents gathered at the university gates, waiting for the examinees to leave the examination halls.

Most of them were respectable gentlemen and ladies, looking past the enormous steam train locomotive in the plaza before the school gates toward the increasingly noisy teaching buildings with concern but no impatience. Yet there were also a few parents dressed in work clothes, such as workers' canvas trousers and postman uniforms.

The latter were clearly far more constrained and nervous. Compared with middle-class families that had more options, this examination concerned their entire families' futures.

At one side of the plaza, some distance away from them, a man who looked over thirty stood gazing up at the retired locomotive, which possessed a striking industrial beauty. He wore a silk top hat and a thin black formal suit. Beside him stood a young woman with light golden hair and a rather round face, speaking slowly:

"...After the first trains equipped with improved steam engines gradually replaced the old locomotives, the Technical College bought this retired locomotive that had been scheduled for dismantling and made it one of the school's public displays. After the Technical College was upgraded into the University of Industry and Technology, the entire plaza was preserved..."

As she introduced it, Benson Moretti—whose black hair, wrinkles at the corners of his brown eyes, and somewhat aged appearance made him look older than his peers—kept nodding. His curious gaze lingered on the locomotive's complicated pipes and rusty marks before he suddenly asked:

"Can it still run?"

"I think it probably can. After all, it's only old, not broken. But perhaps we should ask Melissa. She knows more about these industrial products."

The woman answered with