After returning from the auction house, Jin'en changed his clothes, hung his trench coat back in the wardrobe, and tucked the fishing rod back into its inner pocket.
He never turned on the lights, moving around the room by the streetlight coming through the window.
One thing kept turning over in his mind.
Something had been off about Daffodil when she left today.
At the auction house, he had thought it was the pressure of the mission, but looking back now, she hadn't looked at his face since before getting into the car outside the mansion.
On every previous mission, she had at least nodded before getting into the car, a confirmation that she was ready.
Not today.
Jin'en sat on the edge of the bed and rested his right hand on his knee.
The silver markings were quiet, without the slightest glow.
That only made him more uneasy.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Very soft, but their rhythm was different from usual.
Daffodil always stepped right down the middle, never straying, walking as though measuring with a ruler.
Tonight, those footsteps were half an inch off, landing just to the left of the seams between the floorboards.
Jin'en stood and opened his door.
At the corner at the end of the hallway, a figure in black was heading toward the east wing.
Inanna's study was in the east wing.
Jin'en stood in the doorway for two seconds.
He told himself she might just be reporting on the mission. Daffodil often went to the study to report; there was nothing strange about it.
But her footsteps were wrong.
Jin'en followed.
He didn't walk fast, deliberately keeping his steps quiet.
Wall lamps stood every five or six paces along the hallway, their light dim and yellow, the grain of the wooden floor blurring together in the shadows.
Jin'en kept close to one wall, glancing into the courtyard as he passed the junction-the bare tree still stood behind the iron railings.
The east wing's hallway was narrower, its picture frames more densely packed.
As Jin'en rounded the final corner, he caught sight of Daffodil pushing open the study door and stepping inside.
The door didn't close all the way, leaving a gap a palm's width across.
Jin'en leaned against the wall at the corner and listened to the sounds inside.
Silence.
Several seconds of silence.
Then Inanna's voice came, unhurried. "Where's your mission report?"
"I didn't bring it."
Daffodil's voice was as flat as ever.
But Jin'en could hear it. That flatness wasn't quite the same as it was on the training grounds.
"You didn't bring it?" There was no audible change in Inanna's tone. "I sent you to keep watch at the auction house, and you came back without a report."
"Because there's nothing to report."
"Oh."
Warm light seeped through the study door, drawing a thin orange line across the hallway floor.
Jin'en heard a chair shift. Inanna had probably changed her position in the armchair.
"Something's off about you today," Inanna said.
"No."
"Yes." The chair legs sounded again. "Broken Rainbow was the same today. You two sisters-"
Daffodil cut her off.
"Don't call us sisters."
Jin'en's back pressed against the wall, his breathing turning shallow.
Silence held in the study for two beats.
"Interesting." Inanna's tone hadn't changed, but she spoke a little more slowly than usual. "Tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Tell me what's wrong with you today. You never interrupt me."
Daffodil fell silent for a while.
Jin'en could imagine her standing in the middle of the study.
"Mother," she said.
"Yes."
"Why did you adopt me back then?"
Inanna didn't answer immediately.
From inside the study came the sound of a riding crop tapping the armrest. Once, twice.
"You're talkative today," Inanna said.
"Answer me."
"I adopt a lot of people." Inanna's voice remained level, as though she were reading a script she had already memorized. "There's a reason for each one. Which version do you want to hear?"
"The truth."
"The truth is-"
The riding crop stopped.
Jin'en heard the armchair creak. Inanna had probably stood up. "I arranged your parents' deaths. From the day they entered the auction house, every step was part of my plan. I needed a child who hated deeply enough and was obedient enough."
Jin'en's breath stopped for a beat.
The hallway was so quiet it was as though the air had been sucked out.
"I let you see those images in the kaleidoscope," Inanna continued, her tone calm to the point of cruelty, "because I knew what a seven-year-old child would become after watching her parents die before her eyes. She would turn cold. Cold children are the most useful."
Daffodil made no sound.
"It took you all these years," Inanna's voice came a little closer; she had probably taken two steps toward the door, "to ask that question. That means you've finally figured it out today."
"What I've figured out is something else."
Daffodil's voice changed.
It became very soft, so soft Jin'en almost couldn't make it out.
"The injury to the bones in my left wrist wasn't from training," she said. "You struck them with the back of a blade... that time I let the target go, you said you would make me remember.
That night, my fever reached forty degrees. You put my blade beside the bed and said, 'We continue tomorrow.'"
Inanna didn't deny it.
"So?" she said.
"So today, I came..." Daffodil paused. "Not to report on the mission."
Jin'en heard a very faint sound.
The sound of a blade leaving its sheath.
His hand clenched instantly.
The silver markings on his right wrist flared beneath his sleeve.
He pressed down on his wrist, his fingers gripping his cuff tightly.
Inside the study, Inanna gave a laugh.
"You're going to kill me."
Jin'en heard an extremely brief scrape of metal, followed by the dull crash of a table and chairs toppling, and then-a very soft wet thud.
He had heard that sound before.
He had seen gang fights in the alleys of the Bridge District. That was the sound a blade made when it plunged into flesh, dull and muffled.
Then came a stifled groan.
Jin'en's feet were already moving.
He didn't knock, driving his shoulder straight into the half-open door.
The smell of blood in the study was far stronger than Jin'en had expected.
Inanna lay on the floor between the armchair and the low table, her long silver-white hair spread across the floor like a bolt of torn silk.
Her dark gray trench coat hung open, the fabric beneath her left ribs soaked with blood, dark red liquid spreading along her waist.
She didn't move.
Her eyes were closed, her face ashen, the smile that always lingered at the corners of her mouth gone.
Several strands of her long silver-white hair were stuck to the floor with blood, their ends soaking in the pool.
Jin'en's right hand was trembling.
The spatial silver markings lit up uncontrollably, cracks the size of fingernails silently opening and closing near his palm.
He crouched and pressed his fingers against the side of Inanna's neck.
Beneath his fingertips was a faint but unmistakable pulse.
One beat, then another, very weak.
"She's still alive," Jin'en said quietly.
He lowered his head to examine the wound.
The blade had entered at an angle between her left ribs, its tricky trajectory avoiding her heart and major blood vessels, but the bleeding was heavy.
With Daffodil's precision with a blade, she couldn't have missed.
Jin'en reached behind Inanna's waist, his knuckles brushing something hard.
He felt it out and took a look: a palm-sized sheet of metal, warm from the blood soaking it, its edges engraved with densely packed fine markings, which he drew from a concealed pocket inside her trench coat.
The patterns on the metal's surface had a rhythm somewhat similar to the silver markings of the spatial rifts on Jin'en's wrist. At the instant the blade's tip touched her skin, this thing had absorbed most of the impact, turning the piercing strike into a blunt blow.
Holding the metal sheet, Jin'en stared at Inanna's unconscious face for two seconds.
She had known all along that Daffodil would come.
She had even known where Daffodil would stab.
This anomaly item had been hidden inside the trench coat, right against her left ribs, perfectly positioned to block that blade.
This woman had calculated everything.
Jin'en set the metal sheet on the floor and stood.
He turned and walked out of the study.
The hallway was empty.
The dim yellow light of the wall lamps spread over the wooden floor. The dark figure at the corner at the end of the hallway had already vanished.
But Jin'en knew which way she had gone.
He closed his eyes.
In his awareness, space was like a taut net.
Every wall, every beam and pillar, every inch of floor had precise coordinates on that net.
He searched the net for the traces Daffodil had left-she had only just gone, and the "creases" in space hadn't fully recovered.
He found them.
On the eastern outer wall of the Scarlet Letter Mansion, about three meters above the ground, the distortion in space hadn't yet settled.
She had jumped down from there.
Jin'en opened his eyes.
The silver markings on his right wrist lit up, brighter than they had ever been during training.
He didn't press them down.
He simply let them open.
A rift tore open before him, half a meter wide, its silver edges shimmering with flecks of light.
On the other side of the rift were the coordinates he had sensed-the garden outside the mansion, near the mountainside road.
He stepped inside.
Space folded around his body for an instant.
When he stood steady again, a cold, damp gravel path lay beneath his feet. The streetlight shone down from overhead, stretching his shadow long.
Daffodil was up ahead.
She stood beside the low wall at the edge of the garden, still holding her blade in her right hand.
The blood on the blade had already congealed into dark red streaks, running down its surface onto her fingers, then dripping onto the gravel path.
Her black-clad shoulders rose and fell slightly, her breathing unsteady.
She heard the sound of the spatial rift.
The instant she turned, her blade was already held across her body.
Her gray eyes fixed on Jin'en, her pupils shrinking to pinpoints beneath the streetlight.
The mountain wind lifted her blue-streaked bangs, revealing the eye beneath, filled with wariness.
"Are you here to kill me?" she asked.
Jin'en took a step forward. The silver markings on his right wrist had already dimmed, and the rift had closed completely.
"Did Mother send you?"
"She's still lying on the study floor."
Jin'en spoke with little inflection. "I pulled the heart-protecting mirror out of her clothes, took a look, and tossed it back."
Daffodil fell silent for two seconds.
"She isn't dead."
"I know." At last, there was a slight change in Daffodil's voice. "I knew the moment the tip of my blade touched her."
She put the knife away behind her waist, moving a little more slowly than usual.
She raised her left hand and tucked her wind-tousled bangs behind her ear, revealing her whole face.
Under the streetlight, her face was a shade paler than usual, whether because of the nighttime chill or something else.
"Then what are you here for?" she asked.
Jin'en reached inside his trench coat and took out a cloth pouch.
It wasn't large, but it was heavy.
He held the pouch out to her.
Daffodil glanced down at it but didn't take it.
"What is it?"
"Fons," Jin'en said. "I saved it up. Mother gives me spending money when I go on missions. I don't spend much."
Daffodil stared at the pouch, then looked up at him.
"What do you mean by this?"
"You left in a hurry. You definitely didn't bring any money." Jin'en held the pouch a little farther out, his hand suspended in midair. "Hethereau is so big. Prices are low in the Bridge District. Find somewhere to stay first. Don't go to the New Hethereau District. The hotels there are expensive, and there are lots of Bureau people."
Daffodil didn't move.
She looked at Jin'en's hand, at the cloth pouch, at the excessively calm expression on his face.
A gust of wind made the end of her ponytail sway twice. Stray hairs brushed her cheeks, but she left them alone.
"You chased after me," she said slowly, as though confirming something, "just to bring me money?"
"What else?"
"I thought-" She stopped, her throat moving as though she were swallowing something. "I thought you came to stop me."
Jin'en said nothing.
"Or to kill me," Daffodil said, her voice a little softer than before. "You used Spatial Folding to get here just now, right?"
"Yes."
"Then you-"
"Daffodil." Jin'en interrupted her. "After you stabbed her..."
Jin'en said, "There was no longer a place for you in Red Letter."
Daffodil: "..."
"The first thing Mother will do when she wakes up is go through your things." Jin'en's voice was so flat that even he felt it sounded a little false. "Your file, training records, mission reports, all of it will be archived-your room will be sealed. Starting tonight, there will be no daffodil in Red Letter's garden."
Daffodil's jaw tightened.
"I understand. Of course I understand what the consequences of doing this are?"
"So all you can do is leave." Jin'en pressed the pouch into her hand.
Daffodil's fingers flinched the instant they touched the pouch, but Jin'en didn't let go, pressing it into her palm.
The pouch's weight bore down on her hand.
She looked down at the coarse cloth, her thumb resting on the drawstring.
"Why aren't you stopping me?" she asked.
Jin'en withdrew his hand and slipped it into his trench coat pocket.
"You hated her for more than ten years," Jin'en said, his voice dropping until the wind almost drowned it out. "But you still didn't kill her. Why would I stop you?"
Daffodil stared at him for a long time.
The streetlight shone on her from the side, dividing her face into light and shadow.
"Big brother," she said.
Jin'en nodded once.
"Go," he said. "Leave the Miguel District before dawn. The early bus to the Bridge District leaves at six. Stay at an inn there first."