The two girls climbed the stairs to the second floor while bickering, but their voices were as small and fine as their bodies, so no one noticed them. The second floor was still a long corridor, with several guest rooms on either side. Their doors were tightly shut and shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to tell whether the people from earlier were staying inside. Most likely they were, because when the two crept past several doors, they heard faint voices conversing behind them.
By rights, they should have hurried past such a dangerous place, but the little elf listened with great interest to the voices in each room. In the first room, the burly man's voice and the voice of the young person called Aifei were conversing, seemingly discussing the plan from earlier. She couldn't understand a single word, so she left the door disappointed and came to the next one. Sini lay across her shoulder without stopping her, instead asking curiously, "Who is inside?"
The little elf shook her head, indicating that there were no voices inside. She continued forward. The third room held two voices she had never heard before. She guessed they belonged to the two people among the six who had not spoken.
"These two are the landlady's guards." After listening for a while, she said to Sini as though she had uncovered some great secret, "This candy shop must have an enormous business. Even the landlady has guards."
"Because she isn't a landlady at all," Sini replied.
"Why? What makes you say that?" the little elf asked, knitting her brows.
"Fine, I'm not going to argue with you. If you say she is, then she is—"
The two continued onward and came to the fourth door—the last one. The end of the corridor was