Trouble

A little after three in the afternoon, sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains in the living room, casting several slanted, soft bands of light across the floor. Gu Yue lay on her side in bed, her face buried in a buckwheat husk pillow, her hair spread across the pillowcase like ink bleeding through water.

She had been woken by the noise.

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand. It was not a message alert, but a call—the ringtone Tang Wulin had set for her last week, piercing enough to wake even the deepest sleeper. Gu Yue frowned slightly, her lashes trembling, but did not open her eyes at once. Not until the third ring did she reach out, her fingertips brushing the worn edge of the silicone case. She picked it up, squinted, and swiped to answer.

"Hello." Her throat felt as if it were full of coarse sand.

The other end did not pause. Ye Xinglan's voice crashed over her, forceful enough to blast through the speaker. "Gu Yue! That bastard Xie Xie blew up my cat's litter tray with firecrackers! The cat's about to lose its mind! Are you going to do something or not?!"

Gu Yue instantly woke halfway up, nearly letting the phone slip onto the blanket. She shifted back against the headboard. Her shoulders and neck were still loose, but her eardrums had gone taut. "...Slow down. What happened to the cat?"

"The litter tray! The ceramic one! Blown into powder! The cat jumped onto the chandelier and won't come down, its whiskers are all puffed up! Xie Xie used one of those 'God of War' things, a modified double-bang firecracker. One boom, and dust rained all over my entryway! He ran right after setting it off and sent me a message saying, 'Sister Xinglan, I