Daffodil tucked the cloth bag into the inside pocket of her coat, then looked up at Jin'en, her gray eyes blinking once beneath the streetlight.
"I'm leaving."
Jin'en nodded.
Daffodil turned and took a step.
Then she stopped.
Jin'en looked at the lines of her back-black clothing fitted against her spine, ponytail tied tight, shoulders tense.
She stood there for three seconds, then turned around, so quickly it was as though she feared changing her mind.
She took a step and a half forward and went straight into Jin'en's arms.
Jin'en's right hand rose instinctively-a spatial rift flickered deep within the silver markings. He instinctively held his wrist down, his palm stopping in midair.
Daffodil's forehead rested just below his collarbone, the top of her head reaching his chin.
Her hands hung at her sides. She did not embrace him, just stood straight, her whole body pressed into his arms.
Very tightly.
So tightly that Jin'en could feel her shoulders trembling faintly.
Jin'en slowly lowered his right hand, bringing his palm to the back of her head without touching it, merely hovering there.
His left hand hung at his side, motionless too.
He simply stood there, letting Daffodil lean against him.
"I don't hate you." Daffodil's voice was muffled against his chest, barely clear. "Red Letter, Inanna, that Garden, so many things-I hate them all."
Jin'en said nothing.
"But you're different." Her voice paused, as though searching for the right word. "You're... someone I accept."
Jin'en's throat moved.
"Mm."
Just one word.
Daffodil stood there for another two seconds, then took a step back, leaving his embrace.
By the time she raised her head, her usual expression had returned.
This time, she did not look back.
Jin'en stood beside the low wall, watching her retreating figure follow the gravel path down the mountain.
Then she rounded a bend in the mountain path, and the bushes swallowed her black-clad figure.
Jin'en stayed where he was for roughly half a minute before stirring.
He pulled his right hand from his pocket and glanced at it-his instinctive move to hold his wrist down had worked. The rift had not even opened.
"Not bad," he murmured.
Then he closed his eyes.
Space unfolded within his consciousness.
When he found his footing again, he stood in the side corridor of the Scarlet Letter Mansion's east wing.
The wall lamps were still lit, spreading warm yellow light across the wooden floor. The eyes in the picture frames had stopped moving again.
The corridor was quiet. Faint footsteps and voices sounded in the distance, but they were all far away.
Then he heard a voice.
"What a beautiful color..."
It was very soft, so soft it seemed to seep out of the air.
He turned his head.
Broken Rainbow sat on the windowsill at the end of the side corridor, her legs dangling outside, her back against the window frame.
Her white hair hung loose, unbraided, draped unevenly over her shoulders. Her green eyes shone in the dim light as though coated with oil.
She wore those cargo pants that were clearly two sizes too large, and bandages were wrapped around her right wrist.
When the wind blew in, the legs of her cargo pants swayed a couple of times.
"When did you follow me?" Jin'en said.
"I followed right behind you when you left." Broken Rainbow tilted her head, a lock of white hair sliding off her shoulder. "You folded space too quickly. I almost couldn't keep up."
Jin'en leaned against the corridor wall, watching her from a few steps away.
Broken Rainbow's expression was not quite her usual one.
Usually, when she smiled, her little fangs showed and her green eyes curved into crescents, making her look like a mischievous girl.
But now, although the corners of her mouth were raised, there was something in her eyes Jin'en could not put into words.
As though she had just watched a very good show and was still savoring it.
"What did you just say?" Jin'en asked.
"I already said it." Broken Rainbow hopped down from the windowsill, her bare feet landing on the wooden floor, her toes curling. "What a beautiful color."
Jin'en stared at her for two seconds.
"You saw Daffodil."
"I did." Broken Rainbow slipped her hands into her pockets and watched him with her head tilted, white hair hanging beside her face and covering half an eyebrow. "When you held her, the color of her soul changed."
Jin'en did not answer.
Broken Rainbow had not expected him to.
She took a step forward and tilted her face up toward Jin'en's, her green eyes roving over his pupils.
"Big sister's soul has always had a very special color," she said, her voice a little softer than usual, as though speaking to herself. "Ever since I first met her in Red Letter, it's been a ball of white flame. A particularly clean white, almost like dawn."
Jin'en leaned against the wall and listened.
"I've seen everyone's soul color over all my years in Red Letter." Broken Rainbow pulled a hand from her pocket, pinched the white ends of her hair between two fingers, and wound them around her fingers. "Some are red, some black, some gray, some that filthy sort of yellow. Everyone's flames are burning, and they look terribly ugly as they burn."
She released her hair and looked up at Jin'en.
"But big sister's is different. Her flame doesn't burn. It just shines, so quietly, like frost on a window on a winter morning."
"When she hugged you just now..." Broken Rainbow paused, the light in her green eyes shifting. "That white flame flickered."
"Flickered?"
"Mm, as though the wind had blown against it." Broken Rainbow gestured, pressing two fingers together and flicking them upward. "Just once, very quickly... but the whole color brightened."
She drew her fingers back and slipped her hand into her pocket again.
"I've seen too many souls burn to destruction in Red Letter," Broken Rainbow said. "Mother makes everyone's fire blaze fiercely. The fiercer it burns, the sooner it goes out. Big sister is the only one... I can't look at with the Eye of Bewilderment."
"Why?"
Broken Rainbow tilted her head, as though considering how to put it.
"Because when I look at other people's souls, I can see what they're afraid of," she said. "Pain, death, abandonment, not being strong enough. One look, and I know where to start. But big sister-"
She paused for a beat.
"Big sister isn't afraid of anything. Or rather, her fear is different from everyone else's. I can't tell what it is. So I've never dared use the Eye of Bewilderment on her."
Jin'en looked at Broken Rainbow's face.
She stood in the corridor's dim yellow light, white hair hanging loose, the wall lamps reflected in her green eyes.
Usually, she was always smiling, but there was no smile on her face now.
She was very quiet.
"You know she's gone," Jin'en said.
"Mm. I knew when you were holding her." Broken Rainbow raised her right hand and looked at her bandaged wrist, her voice flat. "If big sister were staying, she wouldn't have let you hold her like that."
Jin'en said nothing.
Broken Rainbow lowered her right hand and slipped it back into her pocket.
Her gaze shifted from Jin'en's face to the door leading to the main building at the end of the side corridor.
"It's good that she left," Broken Rainbow said, more seriously than Jin'en had ever heard her speak. "Red Letter isn't where she belongs. It never was."
She turned, took two steps toward the main building, then stopped and glanced back at Jin'en.
"Come on."
"Where?"
"To the study," Broken Rainbow said. "Mother's probably awake."
Jin'en followed Broken Rainbow through the side corridor and back into the main hallway.
They walked side by side. Broken Rainbow's bare feet made very little sound against the floor, while Jin'en's military boots fell more heavily than usual.
As they reached the courtyard, Jin'en glanced inside.
The bare tree still stood behind the iron railings, its leafless trunk resembling a broken finger in the dim light.
Broken Rainbow glanced at it too.
"That tree..." she said, out of nowhere. "It still had leaves when I first came to Red Letter."
Jin'en glanced at her.
"Later, all the leaves fell off." Broken Rainbow looked away and kept walking. "Mother said it was time for it to bear fruit."
Jin'en did not ask any further.
The study door stood open.
Jin'en paused at the doorway.
Inanna sat in the armchair.
Her trench coat hung open. The fabric beneath her left ribs was soaked in blood, dark red stains spreading along her waistline like a half-open flower on the dark gray material.
Her long, silvery-white hair lay loose behind her shoulders, less tidy than usual, a few strands sticking to the skin beside her neck.
But her eyes were open.
Her red irises looked especially bright in the study's warm light.
She looked toward the doorway, her gaze lingering on Jin'en's face for a second before shifting to Broken Rainbow and back again.
The corners of her mouth curved slightly. It was a shallow curve, less like a smile than some kind of confirmation.
"You're back," she said.
Jin'en stood in the doorway without entering.
"Mm."
Inanna's right hand rested on the armrest, her fingers slightly curled.
Her left hand lay over the wound at her waist, clutching a blood-soaked handkerchief in her palm.
Her complexion was a shade paler than usual, her lips nearly bloodless too.
But her tone remained steady, as though she had just returned from a long trip rather than been stabbed and left lying on the study floor.
"You caught up with her," Inanna said.
It was not a question.
"I did."
"And then?"
"Gave her something."
Inanna's eyes narrowed.
The movement was slight, but Jin'en saw it clearly.
She stared at him for roughly three seconds, her red pupils like two glowing coals beneath the lamplight.
"What did you give her?"
"Money."
The curve at the corners of Inanna's mouth diminished a little.
"What you'd saved up?"
"Yes."
Silence filled the study for two beats.
Broken Rainbow stood beside Jin'en, both hands in her pockets, her green eyes moving between Inanna and Jin'en without a word.
Inanna's gaze shifted from Jin'en's face to the floor beside the armchair.
Jin'en had tossed the thin piece of metal back where it had been-the thing he had pulled from her trench coat's hidden pocket. The fine markings on its surface gleamed darkly beneath the light.
"You picked it up," she said.
"Had a look."
"What did you see?"
"You knew she would come." Jin'en's voice was flat. "And you knew where she'd stab. That thing was positioned just right to block the knife tip."
Inanna did not deny it.
She moved her left hand away from the wound and glanced at the blood-soaked handkerchief in her palm, her expression unchanged.
"She's gone," Inanna said.
Jin'en said, "That's right."
Inanna said, "You didn't stop her."
Jin'en said, "Why would I?"
Inanna raised her eyes to him.
Those red eyes were very dark beneath the light.
Her lips were still curved, but little humor remained in that curve.
"Jin'en," she said, her voice a little softer than before, probably because the wound hurt. "I raised her for over a decade."
Jin'en said nothing.
"She was the first bloom of my first batch of flowers." Inanna's gaze shifted toward the window. Night seeped in from behind the half-drawn curtains, dividing her profile into light and shadow. "I gave her a name-Daffodil. She was the most beautiful flower in my Garden."
"You let her go..." Inanna looked back at Jin'en. "Do you know what that means?"
Jin'en leaned against the door frame, both hands in his trench coat pockets.
His expression was no different from usual, his dark gray eyes quiet. "With her gone, Red Letter no longer has a Daffodil."
"Not just Daffodil." Inanna's voice dropped a register. "Her missions. Her position. Everything she did in Red Letter. All the intelligence she brought back. All the contacts she made."
"I know all of that about her," Jin'en said.
Inanna stared at him for a few seconds.
The curve at the corners of her mouth finally faded.
Her expression went flat, almost as flat as when she watched Daffodil swing her blade on the training ground.
"Explain yourself," she said.
"Her assignments were assassination and intelligence." Jin'en's voice was quiet, but every word was steady. "Before every assignment, Mother would let me review the files. What Daffodil was going to do, where she was going, who she would contact, what she would bring back. I knew all of it."
Broken Rainbow tilted her head beside him.
She did not interrupt, but the light in her green eyes shifted.
Inanna tapped the armrest twice with her fingers.
"So when you chased after her today," she said slowly, "it wasn't just to give her money."
"The money was real. She left in a hurry and took nothing with her." Jin'en pulled his hand from his pocket and let it hang at his side. The cuff covered his right wrist completely, the silver markings lying quietly beneath his skin. "But I also told her that after she left, Red Letter wouldn't come after her."
Inanna raised an eyebrow.
"You made a decision for me."
"I didn't make a decision for you," Jin'en said, his voice as level as before. "I just told her a fact. The first thing you did after waking up was clear out the files, not send people after her. Because you'd already considered that she would leave."
The study fell silent for a longer beat.
Inanna pressed her left hand to the wound at her waist. Another layer of blood soaked into the handkerchief beneath her palm.
She pressed her lips together. It was a slight movement, but Jin'en saw it.
"When did you come to understand me so well?" she said.
"I've been here ten years," Jin'en said. "I've seen enough to understand."
Inanna stared at him.
She leaned against the back of the armchair, her chest rising and falling slightly. The wound probably hurt far more than she let on.
"You're protecting her," she said. There was something in her voice Jin'en did not quite recognize, like some suppressed emotion with a rather ugly shape.
"Yes. She's my little sister."
"Do you know what I dislike most about you?"
"I do." Jin'en looked at her. "I'm just like Daffodil."
Inanna's fingers paused.
"Neither of you is afraid of me," she said.
"It's not that we aren't afraid," Jin'en said.
Inanna looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
"It's that being afraid doesn't help." Jin'en leaned against the doorframe, his shoulder against the wood, and lightly tapped the floor with the toe of his military boot. "Your rules are there. Afraid or not, we have to follow them. Daffodil was afraid for more than ten years, and she never escaped a single beating she was due."
The study was silent for a long time.
Broken Rainbow stood beside Jin'en, her bare feet on the wooden floor, her white hair loose. Her green eyes moved from Jin'en's face to Inanna's, then back again.
She said nothing, but the corners of her mouth slowly lifted, ever so slightly.
Inanna shifted her gaze from Jin'en to the wound at her waist.
The handkerchief was soaked through. Dark red liquid spread along her waist, blooming into a large stain on her dark gray trench coat.
"Broken Rainbow," she said.
Broken Rainbow straightened.
"Go get the medical kit."
"Yes."
Broken Rainbow turned and left the study.
Her bare feet made very little noise against the wooden floor. At the doorway, she turned her head and glanced at Jin'en.
It did not look like sympathy or happiness, but more like a kind of "just as I thought."
Then she turned out of the doorway, and her footsteps receded down the corridor.
Only Jin'en and Inanna remained in the study.
Inanna leaned against the back of the chair, her trench coat open, her long silver-white hair spilling behind her shoulders. A few strands, sticky with blood, clung to the side of her neck.
She closed her eyes and took a few breaths, her chest rising and falling more deeply than before.
"She calls you Big Brother," she said suddenly.
Jin'en looked at her.
"Daffodil." Inanna opened her eyes, her red irises dark beneath the lamplight. "She calls you Big Brother now."
"Yes. She has for a long time."
Inanna stared at him for two seconds.
Then she rested her head against the back of the chair and turned her gaze to the ceiling.
The study ceiling bore the same mural as the dining room-a bird's-eye view of an entire garden, bursting with flowers and rich colors. At the very center of every flower was a small patch of shadow.
"I brought her to Red Letter when she was seven," Inanna said, her voice softer than before, so soft it sounded as though she were speaking to herself. "She didn't cry the night she arrived. She didn't speak, either. I gave her a room. She stood in the doorway looking at it for a while, then went inside and laid out the bedsheets neatly."
Jin'en leaned against the doorframe and listened.
"When I went to see her the next morning, she was already up. She was standing on the training ground with a blade in her hand. She didn't know how to hold it, but she stood there holding it anyway, waiting for me."
Inanna's gaze moved from the ceiling back to Jin'en's face.
"Do you know what I thought then?"
Jin'en said nothing.
"I thought, this child could be useful," Inanna said. "I spent more than ten years turning her into Daffodil. But it only took you a few days to get her to call you Big Brother."
Jin'en pulled his hand from his pocket and let it hang at his side.
"You left the blade in her hand," he said.
Inanna looked at him.
"You taught her to swing a blade, to kill, to stop fearing pain." Jin'en's voice was level, as though he were reporting figures on the training ground. "But you never taught her how to stop. She stabbed you today because she finally stopped on her own for once."
Inanna's fingers paused on the armrest.
"What are you trying to say?"
"What I'm trying to say is," Jin'en said, looking at her, his dark gray eyes pale in the warm light, "she's gone, but her position is still here."
Inanna did not answer immediately.
She leaned against the back of the chair, her red eyes fixed on Jin'en's face.
She looked at him for a long time, so long that Broken Rainbow's footsteps in the corridor drew closer and closer.
Then she gave a laugh.
It was very quiet, with a hint of hoarseness from the pull on her wound.
"You want her position."
Jin'en did not deny it.
"You know Red Letter's rules," Inanna said. "Daffodil's position isn't a title. It's a whole set of things.
"Chains of assignments, networks of contacts, intelligence nodes. Daffodil spent more than ten years in Red Letter building all of that. You-"
She looked him up and down.
"You've spent most of your time warming the bench."
"I'm aware of that," Jin'en said.
Inanna tilted her head. The movement was exactly the same as when she had first met him in the abandoned apartment, with a casual, almost girlish angle to it.
"Today at the auction house..." she said. "When that bronze mirror resonated with your ability, you did nothing."
"You told me to sit still."
"I told you to sit still because you'd blow the place apart if you acted." Inanna's voice took on a little of her usual lecturing tone. "The radius of your spatial rifts is too large. Open one in a crowd, and the target won't be the only one who dies."
"So I warm the bench."
"Good, as long as you know." Inanna lifted her left hand from the wound and glanced at the sodden handkerchief in her palm.
The blood was darker than before, probably beginning to clot. "Red Letter's twin blades are Daffodil and Broken Rainbow. One assassinates, the other sows confusion. You-"
She paused.
"You're the sheath."
Jin'en leaned against the doorframe without speaking.
"When they look at me..." Inanna turned her gaze to the window. The night breeze stirred the curtains. "What they see is a boy standing behind me, with long hair and leather gloves, saying nothing.
"They don't know you're the strongest one in Red Letter, and they don't need to."
She turned her gaze back from the window and settled it on Jin'en's face again.
"But Daffodil is gone," she said, her tone changing, becoming slower and more serious than before. "Daffodil's position is vacant now."
Jin'en looked at her.
Inanna was silent for two beats.
Broken Rainbow's footsteps drew closer in the corridor. The clatter of the medical kit's handle came from around the corner, crisp sounds, one after another.
"Fine," Inanna said.
Just that one word.
Jin'en looked at her without pressing.
"You'll take her assignments." Inanna's voice returned to its usual unhurried cadence. "I'll have Unica deliver her files to your room tomorrow. Take over the intelligence nodes gradually. The routes Daffodil usually took, the people she contacted, the codes she used-you'll have to learn all of it."
"All right."
"But there's one thing you need to remember." Inanna turned her head to look at him, her red eyes dark beneath the lamplight. "You may not be able to do everything Daffodil could."
"Why?"
"Because of your rifts." Inanna's gaze fell on his right wrist, where his cuff covered it. "Her ability is Thousand Blades, Thousand Eyes. It can cut through anomalies, and it can cut through people. Her blade is clean and precise. She can rein it in. Your space is different."
She pressed her left hand back over the wound.
"When you kill," she said, "you can't rein it in."
Broken Rainbow came through the doorway carrying the medical kit, her white hair brushing against the doorframe.
She glanced at the two people in the study and the thin piece of metal on the floor, then set the medical kit on the low table beside Inanna.
"Mother," she said, opening the lid and beginning to take out gauze and medicine bottles. "You need to take your sleeve off."
Inanna glanced at her.
"Go outside first."
"I'll help you bandage-"
"I said, get out."
Broken Rainbow's hands paused. Then she put the gauze back in the kit, stood up, and walked toward the door.
As she passed Jin'en, she tilted her face up to glance at him.
This time, Jin'en understood the look in her green eyes.
She was saying, I'll wait for you outside.
Then she left.
Jin'en took half a step back toward the doorway and pulled the study door mostly shut, leaving a crack.
Inanna changed her gauze inside the study.
Jin'en heard her occasional faint intake of breath and the sound of gauze being torn open.
Broken Rainbow waited for him in the corridor, leaning against the wall.
Her white hair hung loose, her bare feet resting on the wooden floor. The bandage around her right wrist shone white in the dim light.
"Did she agree?" Broken Rainbow asked.
"She did."
Broken Rainbow tilted her head.
"Then you won't be able to keep standing in the back anymore," she said, her voice carrying a note Jin'en knew well, as though she were enjoying a show. "Big Sister's assignments aren't easy to take over. She's killed more people than you've been on assignments."
"I know."
Broken Rainbow stared at him for two seconds.
Then she put both hands behind her back and looked up at him, her white hair hanging down, her green eyes curving slightly.
"Big Brother."
"Hmm?"
"You're going to be a blade," Broken Rainbow said, her voice very soft, so soft it sounded as though she were talking about something that had already happened. "But don't forget, my big sister isn't just a blade."
Jin'en looked at her.
"She's your little sister, too." Broken Rainbow tilted her head. "The one you acknowledged."
(P.S. Little Red Riding Hood will appear in the next chapter. This author is actually even more impatient than you are-please leave comments, urge me to update, and send free gifts. Thank you all for your support!)