The morning rain had not stopped.
Fine strands of rain pattered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the suite on the forty-eighth floor of The Peninsula Tokyo, converging into winding streams that blurred the gray outline of the city outside.
When Zhang Qi opened his eyes, dawn had only just broken.
He turned his head and looked at the woman still sleeping beside him.
Yaeko's face was buried in the cotton pillow, revealing only the fair nape of her neck and her beautifully curved shoulders.
The tight OL suit she had worn last night had been casually tossed aside—
He reached out, his fingertips gently brushing the damp ends of her scattered hair.
"Darling—"
As if sensing Zhang Qi's movement, Yaeko opened her eyes.
Those eyes, always filled with shrewdness and vigilance, were now brimming with an indescribable, mist-like emotion.
She did not know whether the choice she had made in the car last night meant grasping a lifesaving piece of driftwood—or willingly leaping into a deeper, colder sea.
She parted her lips, her throat dry.
"Don't worry. This will be over soon."
Seeing this, Zhang Qi spoke and snapped his fingers.
There was no sound and no light. The space before him seemed to be sliced open by an invisible blade, revealing a pitch-black rift.
Zhang Qi took a Memory from that pure void and held it out to Yaeko.
It was a Memory with the texture of liquid gold throughout. There was no standard Museum skull emblem on its surface; in its place were intricate golden patterns like integrated circuits, slowly flowing across it.
"What is this?"
Yaeko accepted it instinctively, its icy smoothness passing through her fingertips.
"It's something I modified based on the T2 Memory."
Zhang Qi sat up and leaned against the headboard. "Paired with a