Doll

Late at night, Black Pigeon headquarters.

Joshua had just finished today's update when Thousand Faces sent him a text message saying, "I found some huge news," and had Joshua and Ciri drive a Magic Mechanical Vehicle to Black Pigeon headquarters.

"Thousand Faces, are you still doing... child trafficking?"

The moment Joshua arrived at Thousand Faces' office, he saw a shabbily dressed little boy. He looked about ten years old and wore Léon's favorite knit cap from "Leon: The Professional."

But it was the boy's eyes that caught Joshua's attention. They were a pure blue.

There were plenty of blue-eyed humans in this world, but this boy's pupils were blue to an almost... unnatural degree.

"I never did that before!" Thousand Faces protested against Joshua's slander.

"Really?"

Joshua was reluctant to believe her. He knew how chaotic Squirrel Street had once been, and Thousand Faces was no softhearted Ruler. She had been a cold-blooded assassin.

"Black Pigeon never accepts jobs targeting children or pregnant women. That's a rule I set," Thousand Faces said.

"That sounds like something straight out of a novel. Thousand Faces, do you read Shadow Chaser too?"

As Ciri listened to Thousand Faces, she recalled something from a novel she had secretly read during class.

"That book was written by one of my subordinates."

Thousand Faces suddenly felt exhausted. Whenever she spoke with Joshua, he always said strange, incomprehensible things.

With Ciri added in, it was twice as exhausting, because Ciri would always take a topic Joshua brought up and lead it into an even stranger territory.

"All right, all right. So the huge news you mentioned is them?"

Joshua sized up the little boy. He had kept his head lowered, staring at his own hands as though he had not noticed Joshua's arrival at all.

Beside the