The moment Jin'en said that, Broken Rainbow herself froze.
Then she tugged the covers up over half her face, leaving only a pair of green eyes darting around outside.
"I said I was wondering when you'd leave. Is there something wrong with your ears?"
Jin'en stared at her for two seconds.
The eyes peeking over the covers practically said, "What are you going to do about it?"
"...You clearly just said, 'Thinking about you,'" he said.
"What proof do you have?" Broken Rainbow pulled the covers up another inch, her voice muffled beneath them. "Did you record it? No? Then don't accuse people without evidence, big brother."
That "big brother" rolled right off her tongue, nothing like the deliberately forced way she'd said it before.
Jin'en almost failed to realize that this girl was taking liberties with him.
"You-who are you calling that?"
"You, obviously." Broken Rainbow threw off the covers and sat up without a trace of shame, her white hair sticking up in a tangled mess. "You're older than me. What else would I call you but big brother?"
"You can call me Jin'en."
"Too distant."
"We've only known each other a few days."
"So what?" Broken Rainbow shook her head, sending her two crooked braids swinging. "My sister called you big brother too. I heard it in the hallway that day."
Jin'en's back went rigid in an instant.
"You heard that?"
"The whole second floor heard it. With how loud my sister was-" Broken Rainbow suppressed a laugh, her shoulders shaking. "She sounded like a mosquito."
Jin'en decided to change the subject.
"What exactly do you want?"
"Sit down." Broken Rainbow patted the edge of the bed. "Talking while standing is tiring."
Jin'en didn't sit.
Broken Rainbow stared at him for three seconds, then suddenly tilted her head, her tone turning utterly serious. "All right. Actually, these past few days in confinement, I've thought of a very important question."
"...What question?"
"Does your rift have a color when it opens?"
Jin'en paused.
The question was so normal that its very normality made him feel something was wrong.
"Yes," he said. "Silver."
"Silver?" Broken Rainbow's green eyes brightened. "Like moonlight?"
"More or less."
"Then-" Broken Rainbow slid off the bed, stepped barefoot onto the floor, and went over to the low table to dig out the rope. "Let's test it again. I'll stand at a different angle this time."
Looking at the rope in her hand, Jin'en felt something wasn't right.
But he took it anyway.
After several days of practicing his control over the rift, he could just about manage opening and closing it over a short distance, as long as he wasn't interrupted.
"Where are you standing?"
"On your left."
"Why the left?"
Broken Rainbow blinked. "Because the lighting on the right is bad. I can't see the stone clearly."
Dubiously, Jin'en pinched one end of the rope.
Broken Rainbow took the other end and stepped back to his left. The rope stretched between them, with the little stone hanging near the middle, a little closer to Jin'en.
"Go ahead."
Jin'en took a deep breath and slowly relaxed his hold.
The rift slowly opened on the inside of his right wrist. Silver markings surfaced on his skin, the air warped slightly, and the little stone was pulled toward him.
Broken Rainbow lowered her head to watch the stone shift, made a mark on the rope, and muttered to herself.
After a dozen seconds or so, Jin'en felt that was enough and drew his power back, closing the rift.
"Half a centimeter farther than last time." Broken Rainbow looked up, her expression serious. "That means the limits of your control are expanding."
"...Are you serious?"
"I'm always serious." Broken Rainbow wound the rope around her hand and turned toward the cabinet, her back to him.
Jin'en felt something was wrong.
He glanced down at his right hand-the rift had indeed closed, cleanly, and the silver markings were fading.
Everything was normal.
Then he looked up.
Broken Rainbow stood in front of the cabinet, but the cabinet was gone. More precisely, the entire room had changed.
The walls had turned grayish white. There were no windows or doors, only smooth surfaces on all four sides, as though cast from concrete. The low table was gone, the bed was gone, and so were the lights.
Only he remained.
Jin'en's pupils abruptly contracted.
He looked down at his wrist-the rift's silver markings were gone. His skin was clean, without a single trace.
Wrong.
"Broken Rainbow?" His voice echoed through the empty space, as though something had swallowed most of it.
No response.
Jin'en stepped back, his back hitting the wall. The cold sensation was real.
He pressed his palm against it, and a faint vibration came through the wall.
He closed his eyes.
He told himself: her ability created illusions, visual ones.
Jin'en snapped his eyes open.
The grayish-white space remained.
But directly ahead, someone had appeared at some point.
A woman.
A dark red coat, red eyes.
Inanna.
She stood there, watching him with her head tilted and her lips curved in exactly the same way as when he'd first met her in the abandoned apartment.
"Let me see your hand," she said.
Jin'en hid his right hand behind his back.
The woman took a step forward, the click of her high heels exceptionally crisp in this grayish-white space.
"You know what that is."
"Stay back." Jin'en forced the words through his teeth.
She took another step.
Jin'en's back was already against the wall. He had nowhere left to retreat.
He looked down at his right hand-the rift's markings were slowly emerging, silver light shining through his skin bit by bit.
"The more you fear it..." The woman's voice suddenly became someone else's, softer and younger. "The bigger the rift gets."
Jin'en looked up.
Inanna was gone.
Broken Rainbow stood there instead.
White hair, green eyes, crooked braids, a bandaged right wrist.
She stood less than an arm's length away, looking up at him with the corners of her mouth lifted.
"The more scared you get, the more worked up it gets," she said.
Jin'en let out a heavy breath.
He stared at Broken Rainbow's face and suddenly noticed a detail-this face was too clear.
So clear that it didn't look like Broken Rainbow usually did.
Normally, the green of Broken Rainbow's eyes was mottled like shards of broken glass, but now the green in these eyes was as uniform as paint.
He took a deep breath.
"Your right eye," Jin'en said.
"Hmm?"
"Broken Rainbow's right eye is covered by her bangs. Yours isn't."
Broken Rainbow's expression froze for half a second.
Then her whole face split as though someone had torn it down the middle. Silvery-white light poured from the opening, and the grayish-white space cracked like a shattered mirror, its fragments curling as they fell.
Jin'en's vision flickered. When he came to his senses, he was sitting in the chair beside the low table, a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Broken Rainbow sat across from him, chin propped in her hand, her green eyes curved into two crescents.
"Not bad."
Jin'en stared at her.
His chest was still rising and falling rapidly.
"How long?"
"About half a minute." Broken Rainbow spun the pencil on the table. "From when I started talking until you saw through it yourself, forty-seven seconds. Much better than last time."
"Last time was only half a second."
"Last time I only used ten percent of my power." Broken Rainbow set down the pencil and rested her chin in both hands, her tone like she was reviewing a dish. "This time I used about thirty percent."
Jin'en slowly exhaled.
"You-" He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"Angry?" Broken Rainbow tilted her head.
"No." Jin'en pushed his chair back a little, putting more distance between them.
Watching him move, Broken Rainbow's smile faded slightly, but soon returned.
"What did you see in there just now?"
"Inanna."
Broken Rainbow's fingers paused against the tabletop.
"Oh," she said.
Then she went back to wearing that same grin.
"Then you're afraid of Mother, not my illusion. That means my illusion was actually pretty good."
Jin'en didn't answer.
Broken Rainbow stood, came around to his side of the low table, and crouched beside him, looking up at him.
From below, her green eyes looked especially bright, and especially unguarded.
"Listen to me." Her voice softened until it sounded as though she was speaking to him alone. "My ability can only fool the eyes. If someone's mind is clear enough to find a flaw, the illusion will shatter."
"So you're practicing on me?"
"It wasn't purely for practice." Broken Rainbow blinked, revealing her two pointed canines. "I just wanted to see whether you'd get scared. You always look like 'the whole world owes me money.' I wanted to see what you looked like startled."
"I wasn't scared."
"Your heart was beating so fast just now that I could feel it across the table."
"..."
"But." Broken Rainbow stepped back and sat down in her own seat again, her tone suddenly softening. "You didn't run. The first time my sister was trapped in an illusion, she nearly drew her blade."
Jin'en looked at her.
"So you've never used this on Daffodil?"
"Once." Broken Rainbow looked down at her hands. "My sister stood in there for three seconds, then cleaved the illusion apart with one slash.
"She said, 'Stop messing around.'"
"And then?"
"Then I didn't dare speak to her for three days."
Jin'en couldn't help it; the corner of his mouth twitched.
Broken Rainbow caught it immediately and pointed at him. "Look, look! You smiled!"
"I didn't smile."