"What are you waiting for?"
Broken Rainbow's voice came from behind him.
Jin'en could feel Broken Rainbow's gaze pinned to his back.
"You can't bring yourself to do it?" she asked again.
"Shut up."
An indistinct syllable squeezed out of Herman's throat.
It sounded like "mercy," or perhaps "who."
The silver markings on the inside of Jin'en's right wrist pulsed.
It wasn't the rift widening. Space itself warped slightly around him, like a sheet of paper pressed down by a finger.
He remembered that alley in the Bridge District three years ago.
The gray sky, the shattered walls, the broken bricks stretching from one end of the alley to the other.
A woman's body lay at the edge of the rubble, covered in blood, but her eyes were open.
Back then, he had thought she was dead. He hadn't known she was still alive.
Inanna had said Mili was the only survivor.
"Jin'en." Broken Rainbow's voice drew closer. This time, she didn't call him big brother.
Jin'en's right hand moved.
He didn't withdraw the rift.
He pushed his right hand forward an inch.
The edge of the rift touched the skin on the back of Herman's neck, and space churned like boiling water at the point of contact for an instant.
Then Jin'en did something he had practiced on the training grounds for ten years.
Close.
The silver markings on his wrist shone at their brightest.
The edges of the rift contracted violently-not closing together, but collapsing inward.
Space folded inward around the back of Herman's neck, like a sheet of paper being pushed toward the center from all four corners at once.
Herman's body began disappearing from the edges.
First his shoulders, then his torso, then-
No blood.
No sound.
No scraps of flesh.
Space swallowed him.
All that remained on the carpet was a dark mark, shaped like the indentation left by someone lying there for a long time.
Even the fabric of his clothes had been folded into that point.
Jin'en withdrew his right hand.
The silver markings dimmed instantly. His fingertips were trembling.
"Wow."
Broken Rainbow's voice sounded behind him, very soft, with a tone Jin'en knew all too well but found especially grating at that moment, as though she had spotted something amusing.
"You made him disappear completely."
Jin'en turned around.
Broken Rainbow leaned against the doorframe, her blade cradled in her arms, her green eyes far too bright.
She looked at the human-shaped indentation in the carpet, the corners of her mouth slowly rising.
"Not even a scrap left."
"Shut up."
"I'm just stating facts." Broken Rainbow tilted her head, her white hair sliding off her shoulder. "When that rift of yours tightened just now, I saw the direction of the Spatial Folding. You folded him into-"
"Broken Rainbow!!!"
"Fine, I'll stop." She pursed her lips, but her eyes remained fixed on the mark on the carpet.
Jin'en looked at Mili.
The short-haired woman in the gray suit still stood where she had been, her muscles bulging with her physical enhancement active, like a tree cast from iron.
But her eyes were open.
Those eyes stared at Jin'en.
No, at the patch of carpet behind him.
Jin'en took a step forward.
Mili recoiled sharply, her lower back hitting the low table. The wine bottle tipped over, spilling dark red liquid across the tabletop.
"Don't come any closer." Her voice was hoarse.
Jin'en stopped.
"Do you still remember me?" he said.
Mili's lips were trembling, just as Herman's had been.
But there was something in her eyes that Jin'en recognized-he had seen it in the mirror.
Three years ago, in the Bridge District.
His rift had gone out of control, tearing space to pieces within a radius of dozens of meters.
The alley walls, the trash cans, the streetlights-everything had become fragments jumbled together.
Mili had lain amid those fragments, covered in blood, but alive.
"You-" Mili's voice came in fits and starts. "Back then... you were different from now."
"Back then, you were out of control." She stared at Jin'en's right hand. The silver markings had gone completely dark, making it look no different from an ordinary hand.
Beside them, Broken Rainbow watched Mili with her head tilted, her green eyes shifting.
"Your ability is perception." Broken Rainbow took a step forward, her blade still cradled in her arms, her tone airy. "Can you sense his fluctuations now?"
Mili pressed her lips tight.
"Yes," she said, her voice even hoarser than before. "When he acted just now... the spatial structure of the entire room changed. I could feel it from three meters away."
Broken Rainbow glanced back at Jin'en, the corners of her mouth raised.
"Hear that, big brother? You make an even bigger stir than big sister when you act."
"Wrap things up," Jin'en said.
Broken Rainbow shrugged and turned toward the door.
As she passed Mili, her green eyes flicked sideways.
Mili's body stiffened for an instant.
Broken Rainbow didn't stop, her bare feet treading lightly across the dark red carpet.
She pulled open the double wooden doors. The hallway outside was quiet, the twelve security guards still standing where they had been, their eyes vacant, like a row of unwound dolls.
"Three minutes," Broken Rainbow said without looking back. "My illusion will dissipate in three minutes."
Jin'en followed.
He paused as he passed Mili.
Mili's back pressed against the low table, her entire body taut as a string.
"You can go," Jin'en said.
Mili's pupils contracted.
"You-you're not going to kill me?"
"I couldn't kill you three years ago." Jin'en's voice barely fluctuated. "I wasn't planning to finish the job today, either."
He left.
Broken Rainbow was already waiting for him by the elevator, her blade tucked behind her waist again, both hands in her cargo pants pockets as she leaned against the wall beside the elevator doors. The doors stood open, the light inside buzzing.
"What did you just say to her?" Broken Rainbow asked.
"Told her to go."
"You let her go."
"Yeah."
Broken Rainbow tilted her head.
Her expression wasn't displeasure. It was closer to puzzlement.
"She saw your face, and she saw how you fight." Broken Rainbow stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor. "Mother won't be happy."
"Whether Mother's happy can wait until tomorrow." Jin'en followed her inside and leaned against the opposite wall.
The elevator doors closed.
The two of them remained silent in the enclosed space for several seconds.
The elevator descended, the numbers ticking down from thirty.
Under the elevator light, Broken Rainbow's white hair looked paler than usual, like a glowing cloud.
"That folding you just did," she said suddenly.
"What about it?"
"When you folded space, the folds went in a different direction than usual." Broken Rainbow turned to look at him, her green eyes pale in the elevator's white light. "Usually, you push outward when you fold it. That one pulled inward."
"You could even see that?"
"I told you, I have good eyes." Broken Rainbow pulled one hand from her pocket and spread her fingers, her palm facing Jin'en. "When you pulled inward just now, when space folded over Herman, the direction-it was toward the silver markings on your wrist."
What Broken Rainbow said was true.
What Jin'en had just done wasn't simply spatial tearing. It was spatial collapse.
As the rift closed, it forcibly dragged the surrounding space toward a central point, and that point was on his wrist.
"You folded an entire person into the rift on your wrist." Broken Rainbow drew her hand back and slipped it into her pocket, her tone as lazy as ever. "So where did he go?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"The rift's exit has no coordinates," Jin'en said. "Anything folded into it could end up anywhere. Maybe in another space, maybe in the gaps between spaces. Maybe-"
"Maybe he'll never get out." Broken Rainbow finished for him.
Jin'en didn't deny it.
The elevator stopped on the first floor.
The doors opened onto the passage leading to the building's back entrance.
The hallway was darker than upstairs, with only half the fluorescent lights on, their pallid glow laying a cold tint over the gray concrete walls.
The two of them walked out.
Jin'en's combat boots landed on the concrete with dull thuds.
Broken Rainbow's bare feet made almost no sound.
An iron door stood at the end of the rear passage, leading to the dark alley behind the building.
Jin'en pushed the door open. Night wind poured in, carrying the chill of late autumn.
"What was it you said just now?" Broken Rainbow came out from behind him and stood at the edge of the light in the dark alley.
Streetlight shone in from the alley entrance, turning her white hair translucent and reflecting in her green eyes like two gleaming coins.
"What?"
"In the elevator-you weren't talking?" Broken Rainbow tilted her head at him.
"Didn't feel like it."
"Do you always go quiet after killing someone?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"Anything." Broken Rainbow took half a step forward and stood in front of him, looking up.
The streetlight fell squarely on her face, illuminating her two white canine teeth. "Like, 'That felt pretty good today,' or 'That Herman guy's hair was hideous'-don't you think his gray dye job looked really fake?"
Jin'en looked at her.
Broken Rainbow's expression was relaxed, the corners of her mouth raised, exactly like her usual smiling face.
But her fingers were clutching something in her pocket again.
Jin'en could tell from the outline beneath the fabric of her cargo pants pocket that she was clutching that braided cord in her palm again.
"Broken Rainbow," he said.
"Hm?"
"Back in there."
"What about it?"
"When you saw me fold him-"
"I saw."
"How did you feel?"
Broken Rainbow's expression paused for a beat.
It was brief, so brief that Jin'en would never have noticed if he hadn't been watching her face the whole time.
She pulled her hand from her pocket, exposing a length of white braided cord. Its end twirled once between her fingers.
"I thought it looked pretty."
Jin'en's eyebrows twitched.
"What did you say?"
"Your folding." Broken Rainbow wound the braided cord around her index finger, loosened it, then wound it around again, as though repeating an unconscious motion. "Big sister's blade work is clean when she kills. One slash and they're gone, with barely any blood splashing. But yours is different."
Her green eyes watched Jin'en's hand, her gaze settling on his right wrist. His cuff covered it, leaving nothing visible.
"Yours was like erasing someone from a picture. Not killing someone, but wiping away their existence." Broken Rainbow unwound the cord from her finger and wrapped it back around her wrist, speaking without looking up.
Jin'en didn't respond.
Broken Rainbow suddenly raised her head, as though she had remembered something.
"Oh, right. You called me a pervert," she said, her tone barely changing, though the corners of her mouth curled higher.
"I didn't."
"That look on your face just now did."
"What look?"
"That 'there's something wrong with what you're saying' face of yours." Broken Rainbow wound the other end of the braided cord around her wrist too, the white cotton cord leaving a faint indentation on the back of her hand. "It's not the first time someone's said that about me. I'm used to it."
She slipped both hands back into her pockets and turned toward the mouth of the alley.
After two steps, she stopped and turned her head.
"Are you coming or not? The car's over there."
Jin'en followed.
They walked through the dark alley, the light from the streetlamps spilling down overhead and stretching their shadows across the concrete, one long and one short.
Jin'en's shadow extended farther than Broken Rainbow's, their shadows overlapping in turn between one streetlamp and the next.
"Broken Rainbow."
"Mm."
"You said you're used to people calling you a pervert."
"Mm."
"Who said it?"
Broken Rainbow kept walking, her bare feet treading on the damp concrete, her toes pale in the lamplight.
"When I was little, in the Eye-Carving Bird's dungeon," she said, her tone flat, much like she was reporting coordinates. "Those people in white coats. They said the things in my eyes were too dangerous. Said I was a monster. Later, Mother came and said I was a beautiful flower. Then later-"
She paused.
"My sister said I was scary sometimes, but she never called me a pervert."
Jin'en walked half a step behind her on her right, his gaze resting on the mass of white hair at the back of her head.
The end of the braided cord dangled from her wrist, swaying gently with her steps.
"Do you still wear that eyepatch?" he asked.
Broken Rainbow's steps slowed for an instant.
"What eyepatch?"
"Back when your sister wore an eyepatch, you made one yourself," Jin'en said. "You didn't wear it, but you kept it in your pocket. I saw it on the training ground once. It had been stepped on and dirtied."
Broken Rainbow fell silent for two beats.
"You even saw that."
"I'm used to looking at things."
"You're used to seeing everything." Broken Rainbow turned her head to look at him, her white hair slipping off her shoulder to cover half her face.
The exposed green eye looked very pale beneath the streetlamp, like a glass marble. "After my sister left, I stopped wearing it."
"Why?"
"Because there was no one left to look."
Jin'en's steps faltered.
Broken Rainbow kept walking at the same pace, her bare footsteps soft against the concrete.
"My sister wore an eyepatch because she didn't want to see too much," she said, her voice scattering a little in the night breeze. "I made an eyepatch because she wore one. After she left, what would I wear it for?"
Jin'en said nothing.
When they reached the mouth of the alley, the car was still parked in the darkness two streets away.
A thin layer of dew had settled on its body, reflecting a faint white gleam beneath the streetlamp.
Jin'en opened the driver's door and got in. Broken Rainbow got in from the other side, drew the blade from behind her waist, and stood it beside her knee, the end of its sheath resting against the carpet.
Jin'en started the car.
The engine sounded in the quiet night.
He turned the steering wheel, and the car swung onto the main road, streetlamps sliding across the windshield one after another.
Broken Rainbow leaned back in the passenger seat, her face turned toward the window.
"Before you went on the mission today, you taught Little Red Riding Hood standing practice," she said suddenly.
"Mm."
"You talked quite a lot when you were teaching her."
"You need to explain things clearly when you teach."
"You didn't talk that much when you taught me."
Jin'en held the steering wheel, tapping a finger lightly against the leather.
"You learned fast," he said.
Broken Rainbow turned to look at him. Her green eyes were strikingly bright in the dim car.
"Was that a compliment?"
"A statement of fact."
"Then you're terrible at giving compliments." Broken Rainbow turned away and went back to looking out the window.
The guardrails on either side of the highway looked like two silver lines in the headlights, the streetlamps growing sparser and the night growing darker.
(PS: I'll bring you another 4,000 words tonight to make it 10,000.
This book has now officially entered the recommendation phase. I hope you'll all give it plenty of support and leave it a rating.
If enough people read this book, this author really doesn't mind updating 10,000 words a day. And I know what kind of content you all want to see! You'll just have to wait a little for that-writing too much of that sort of content before the 100,000-word mark will get me elbowed by Shenhe.
Please leave ratings, comments, and free gifts-please!!!)