Jin'en was the only one left in the corridor.
He stood in the doorway, his hand still resting on the frame, and stared for a few seconds in the direction Daffodil had dragged Broken Rainbow.
The end of the corridor was empty. The dim yellow light of the wall lamps spread across the wooden floor, without even a shadow in sight.
"Does everyone in this family walk around with silencers installed?" he muttered, closing the door.
He turned and sat back down in his chair. The rift on his right wrist was quiet, its silver markings lying beneath his skin as though asleep.
Jin'en dug out the old sketchbook and kept looking through it. It was full of sketches of different flowers, some he recognized and some he had never seen.
He stopped on the third page-the flower had layers upon layers of dark red petals, exactly like the ones in the mural on the dining room ceiling.
"This flower again." He shut the sketchbook and tossed it aside, deciding not to think about it.
The next two days passed more peacefully than Jin'en had expected.
The training grounds, the dining room, his room. Back and forth between the three.
Daffodil appeared at the training grounds at six sharp every morning. By the time Jin'en arrived, she had already made over a hundred slashes.
They barely spoke. Occasionally, Daffodil would stop to watch him practice for a while and offer a comment or two-"The rift's smaller," "No rebound this time," "Not bad"-before returning to hack at her wooden post.
Jin'en figured "not bad" was probably the highest praise she could give.
Broken Rainbow didn't come looking for him again.
At first, Jin'en didn't think much of it. After all, the girl hadn't looked particularly willing when Daffodil hauled her away.
But at dinner on the third day, he noticed Broken Rainbow's seat was still empty.
Daffodil ate in her usual seat, her movements following exactly the same rhythm as always, but Jin'en noticed that she picked all the greens out of her plate and piled them to one side without eating a single piece.
Jin'en didn't ask, and Daffodil didn't say anything.
Not until the fourth morning did Jin'en run into Flora in the corridor.
The little girl with twin ponytails came running from the direction of the library, holding a stack of new books, and nearly crashed straight into him.
"Whoa-Jin'en! Can you watch where you're going?"
"You were the one who ran into me."
"I'm in a hurry!" Flora bounced the books higher in her arms and tilted her head at him. "Oh, right. Have you seen Broken Rainbow lately?"
Jin'en shook his head.
Flora's expression grew a little odd, as though she wanted to say something but held back.
She looked both ways, made sure no one else was in the corridor, then leaned closer and lowered her voice.
"Listen, Mother's had Broken Rainbow confined to her room these past couple of days."
"...Why?"
"I heard she slacked off again the next day." Flora pursed her lips. "Mother punished her by making her stay in her room for three days. She's not allowed out. Big Sister Unica's been taking all her meals to her."
Jin'en was silent for two seconds.
"Which room?"
"The one at the very end of the west wing on the second floor." Then Flora suddenly gave him a wary look. "Why are you asking? You're not planning to visit her, are you? Mother said no one's allowed to during her confinement-"
"Just asking."
"That look on your face doesn't say 'just asking' at all!"
Jin'en turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Flora called after him twice. When he ignored her, she huffed and ran off with her books.
Jin'en didn't go to see Broken Rainbow.
The reason was simple: Inanna had set the rules, and he wouldn't casually break them before he understood the consequences.
But he began paying attention to the sounds of meals being delivered in the corridor.
Every noon and evening, Unica passed the corner of the second-floor west wing carrying a tray. Jin'en's room wasn't far from that route, and he could hear her footsteps if he left the door open.
At noon on the third day-the last day of her confinement-Jin'en sat in his room chewing on compressed biscuits as usual when his ears caught Unica's footsteps in the corridor.
They were as steady as on the previous two days, but today there was another sound.
Besides the bowl and chopsticks, there was something else on the tray.
Jin'en glanced through the crack in his door.
Unica walked past carrying the tray, with a piece of chocolate wrapped in waxed paper sitting on it, exactly like the kind Daffodil had given him before.
He withdrew his gaze and took a bite of his biscuit.
After her confinement ended, Broken Rainbow didn't come looking for Jin'en.
Daffodil did.
That evening, Jin'en had just returned to his room after training and was about to tear another strip off his increasingly threadbare old shirt for a spare bandage when two knocks came at the door.
They were quick, with barely a pause between them, completely unlike Inanna's unhurried knocking.
Jin'en opened the door.
Daffodil stood outside, dressed in black, with blue streaks in her hair and a blade tucked behind her waist.
Her expression was as flat as usual, but Jin'en noticed her right hand lightly tap the doorframe, as though checking something.
"Broken Rainbow wants you."
"...Now?"
"Now."
With that, Daffodil turned and left.
Jin'en stood in the doorway for two seconds, then pulled on his coat and followed.
Daffodil took him along a different route this time.
Instead of taking the main corridor, she turned from the second-floor east wing into a narrower side corridor, skirted the courtyard, and headed toward the west wing.
The side corridor was much darker, with a wall lamp only every five or six steps. Jin'en nearly walked into Daffodil's back at a corner.
"Could you make some noise when you walk?"
"Your footwork's too poor."
Jin'en decided not to argue with her.
At the end of the side corridor was a half-open door.
Daffodil stopped outside it and turned her head to glance at Jin'en.
"She's inside. Don't stay too long."
"You're not coming in?"
"I still have practice to finish." Daffodil left as soon as she finished speaking, her footsteps as quick as before. In the blink of an eye, she disappeared around the corner of the side corridor.
Jin'en looked at the half-open door, raised his hand, and knocked twice.
"Come iiin-"
Broken Rainbow's voice drifted out, the last word drawn out as though she had just woken up.
Jin'en pushed the door open and entered.
The room was a little smaller than he had imagined, with simple furnishings: a bed, a cabinet, and a low table.
Broken Rainbow sat on the bed, her white hair tied into two crooked little braids. Neither was particularly symmetrical; the right one stuck up, while the left one drooped.
She sat cross-legged, wrapped in a blanket, with fresh bandages around her right wrist. They looked much better than Jin'en's earlier work-clearly Daffodil's handiwork.
"You're here." Broken Rainbow tilted her head at him, her green eyes peeking through her white hair.
"Daffodil said you wanted me."
"Mm." Broken Rainbow patted the edge of the bed. "Sit."
Jin'en didn't sit.
"Your hand better?"
Broken Rainbow raised her right arm and waved it.
"I can move it now. Big Sister bandaged it."
Jin'en glanced at the bandages. They were indeed neatly wrapped, neither too tight nor too loose.
"What did you want?"
Broken Rainbow didn't answer right away.
She stared at Jin'en for a few seconds, then slowly curled her lips, revealing her little fangs. There was something in that smile that sent a chill down the back of Jin'en's neck.
"Guess."
"No."
"Then leave."
Jin'en turned to go.
"Hey-" Broken Rainbow's voice chased after him, a little urgent. "Why are you actually leaving?"
Jin'en stopped without turning around.
"What exactly do you want?"
"Come back."
Jin'en sighed and turned back.
Broken Rainbow slid off the bed, walked barefoot to the low table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, gesturing for Jin'en to sit opposite her.
An empty teacup sat on the table, with a few sheets of paper spread out beside it and a pencil. The drawings were a jumble of lines.
Jin'en sat down across the low table from her.
Broken Rainbow rested her chin in her hands and looked at him, her green eyes bright. Her expression was much like when she had asked him that string of questions in the dining room, but Jin'en felt something was different.
Her gaze lacked its earlier aimless curiosity. It was more as though she were waiting for something.
"How many days have you been practicing at the training grounds?" she asked.
"Four."
"How much can you control the rift?"
Jin'en thought for a moment.
"I can close it after opening it, but not completely."
"Not completely?" Broken Rainbow tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
Jin'en held out his right hand and rolled up his sleeve.
The silver markings on the inside of his wrist were almost invisible in the evening light, but a faint trace was still discernible on closer inspection.
"I can pull it back in after practice, but it leaves a mark." He lowered his sleeve. "It fades again by the next morning, then comes back when I practice."
Broken Rainbow stared at his wrist for a few seconds, then shifted her gaze to his face, looking it over.
"Okay." She suddenly stood, walked over to the cabinet, and rummaged something out.
It was a rope.
A white cotton rope, about an arm's length, knotted at both ends, with a small stone tied in the middle.
"What's that thing?" Jin'en looked at the rope.
"I made it." Broken Rainbow returned and put the rope on the table. "For testing."
"Testing what?"
"The range of that rift of yours."
Jin'en stared at the stone for two seconds, then looked at Broken Rainbow's face.
She looked perfectly serious, but although Jin'en hadn't known her long, he had already learned one thing-the more serious Broken Rainbow looked, the less she could be trusted.
"You're sure this is just a test?"
"Of course." Broken Rainbow pushed the rope toward him with complete assurance. "You hold this end, and I'll hold the end by the stone. You loosen up and release the rift, and I'll see how far the stone gets pulled."
"...That's it?"
"That's it."
Jin'en picked up one end of the rope, while Broken Rainbow pinched the other end near the stone.
With the table between them, the rope was just long enough to leave the little stone suspended near the center of the tabletop, slightly toward Jin'en's side.
"Go ahead," Broken Rainbow said.
Jin'en took a deep breath and looked down at his right hand.
After four days of practicing control over the rift, he could already sense the threshold between "loose" and "tight."
It felt like gripping a wet rope. Too loose, and it would slip away; too tight, and it would be twisted apart. He had to hold it at that point just before it loosened.
He slowly relaxed his grip.
The rift opened, far more quietly than it had four days ago.
Silver markings surfaced on the inside of his wrist, and the air near the rift warped slightly, as though scorched by a wave of heat.
The little stone above the table moved.
The rope jerked, and the stone slid two or three centimeters toward Jin'en. Broken Rainbow's fingers followed it forward a little.
"Mm, not bad." Broken Rainbow looked down at how far the stone had moved, her tone much like Daffodil's when assessing his training. "Loosen up a little more."
Jin'en relaxed a little more.
The rift widened by an inch, and the stone was pulled faster. Broken Rainbow's hand reached almost to the center of the table, her fingertips less than a palm's width from the edge of the rift.
"Stop," she said.
Jin'en immediately tightened his control, and the rift closed within seconds.
Broken Rainbow picked up the stone and examined it, turning it over and checking it all around before putting it down.
"The range is pretty stable," she concluded with certainty. "Getting this far in four days of practice is faster than I expected."
Jin'en put down the rope and stared at her for two seconds.
"When did you learn to make something like this?"
"I had nothing to do during confinement these past few days." Broken Rainbow gathered up the rope and stuffed it and the stone back into the cabinet. Her movements were deft, and she looked nothing like someone who had just been shut away for three days. "When Big Sister brought my food, I asked her to bring me a rope and a stone."
"And she just brought them?"
"Mm." Broken Rainbow closed the cabinet and dusted off her hands. "Big Sister doesn't ask me why."
Jin'en picked up on something in those words.
Daffodil didn't ask, not because she wasn't curious, but because she trusted Broken Rainbow not to use them for anything dangerous.
Or rather, she trusted Broken Rainbow to know what she could and couldn't do.
The relationship between these sisters was far more complicated than it looked.
Jin'en decided not to dwell on it.
"Anything else?" He stood up.
Broken Rainbow looked at him, the corners of her mouth starting to curl up again.
"Yes."
"What?"
"Sit down."
Looking at that smile, Jin'en felt that chill at the back of his neck return.
"Tell me what it is first."
"Just sit down." Broken Rainbow hopped off her chair, came around beside Jin'en, and pressed down on his shoulders with both hands.
Jin'en was pushed back into his chair.
Broken Rainbow stood beside him, looking down at him, her green eyes full of amusement.
"You-"
Broken Rainbow extended her right hand in front of him, all five fingers spread, the bandages around her wrist faintly white in the dim light.
Then she snapped her fingers.
Snap.
Jin'en's vision flickered.
There was no sound, no light.
Something simply "flipped" his vision for an instant, as if someone had pressed the channel button on a remote, then quickly switched back.
He blinked.
Nothing in the room had changed.
The orange light spilling through the gap in the curtains still slanted in at the same angle, the low table was still the same low table, and Broken Rainbow was still standing beside him, her fingers not yet withdrawn.
"What did you do?" Jin'en's voice was half a pitch higher than usual.
Broken Rainbow tilted her head at him, her green eyes curving into crescents, her pointed canines showing as she grinned like a cat that had stolen a fish.
"What did you see?"
"Nothing."
"Liar." Broken Rainbow withdrew her right hand and used it to brush aside the white hair falling across her face. "Your pupils contracted just now. Don't think I missed it."
Jin'en's back tensed.
His pupils had contracted?
He hadn't felt it at all.
"You-you used your ability?" Jin'en stared at her face, trying to find some clue in her expression.
Broken Rainbow's smile faded a little, becoming a more restrained curve, closer to smugness.
"Just a tiny bit," she said airily. "A very, very tiny bit. You didn't see anything, right?"
"...Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure." Broken Rainbow crouched and looked up at him, the upward angle making her green eyes seem especially large and bright. "My 'Eye of Bewilderment' can make people see illusions."
Jin'en fell silent for a beat.
Daffodil had mentioned it.
He remembered that day in the hallway, when Daffodil had said Broken Rainbow could make the other children hide at the sight of her and cry at the sound of her voice.
"What did you make me see just now?"
"Seeing nothing is the whole point." Broken Rainbow stood up and brushed nonexistent dust off her knees. "Just now, I made your vision flicker for half a second. It went back to normal after that half second, and you didn't see anything, right?"
"Right."
"That means your eyes received the image, but your mind didn't have time to process it." Broken Rainbow explained it as though reciting a textbook, but her expression was another matter entirely. Her lips were pressed together, clearly holding back laughter. "So you didn't see anything."
Jin'en slowly let out a breath.
"So you-were just using me to test whether your ability could fool my eyes?"
"Not fool." Broken Rainbow raised a finger and wagged it. "Confirm. While I was in confinement, I kept wondering: your spatial rifts can tear reality apart, so do my illusions count as another kind of reality? If your eyes can see through rifts, can they see through illusions too?"
"And your conclusion?"
"My conclusion is-" Broken Rainbow put both hands behind her back, leaned forward slightly, and tilted her face up at him, her little white braids sliding off her shoulders. "You have no idea."
Jin'en stared at her.
Broken Rainbow stared back.
Their gazes met in the air, and then Broken Rainbow broke first. Her mouth spread into a grin, laughter escaping between her teeth as she pulled her hands from behind her back to clutch her stomach and leaned backward.
"That look on your face-haha-" Her shoulders shook with laughter, her green eyes squeezed into slits. "Are you thinking, 'Did this girl actually put me under an illusion or not?' Hahahaha-"
Jin'en watched her laugh, expressionless.
"Did you actually put me under an illusion just now or not?"
Broken Rainbow finally managed to rein in her laughter a little, wiped the corner of her eye, and raised her head.
"Guess."
Jin'en stood up and headed for the door.
"Hey-don't go, don't go!" Broken Rainbow chased after him and tugged his sleeve, pinching his cuff with her right hand. She wasn't pulling hard, but her grip was firm. "I'm telling the truth. Just once, it really only flickered for half a second. You didn't even see an image. That doesn't count as putting you under an illusion."
"Then what does it count as?"
"It counts as-" Broken Rainbow tilted her head and thought for a moment. "Saying hello."
Jin'en glanced down at the hand gripping his cuff. The bandages around her wrist showed beyond her sleeve, neatly wrapped.
"You have a very strange way of saying hello."
"My sister says so too." Broken Rainbow matter-of-factly let go, retreated to the bed, sat down, and wrapped the blanket around herself again, leaving only a pair of green eyes exposed. "But you weren't scared."
"I was scared."
"You didn't yell."
"That's because you'd only laugh if I did."
Broken Rainbow blinked twice inside the blanket.
"You do know me pretty well."
Jin'en didn't answer.
He stood at the door for two seconds, then glanced back.
Broken Rainbow huddled on the bed wrapped in her blanket, her little white braids sticking crookedly out of it, a section of the bandages on her right arm showing beneath its edge.
She looked no different from the other girls in this mansion, small and thin, sitting on the bed as though she might disappear at any moment.
But that snap of her fingers had made Jin'en's entire field of vision flicker for half a second.
For half a second, he could see nothing and feel nothing. That "nothing" was itself a kind of attack. If she snapped her fingers in battle and blurred an enemy's vision for half a second, far too much could happen in that half second.
"Broken Rainbow," Jin'en said.
"Hmm?"
"What exactly were you thinking about while you were in confinement?"
Broken Rainbow's green eyes flickered inside the blanket.
"About you," she said, her voice so soft that Jin'en almost thought he'd misheard.
Jin'en said, "-What?!"