——
The apartment was small.
It had always been small.
Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that connected directly to the living room because there wasn't enough space for them to be separate things. The walls were thin. The pipes made noise. The upstairs neighbour walked heavily at all hours.
Wei Xuan had grown up here and loved it.
Tonight she sat at the kitchen table and looked at the expulsion letter and couldn't breathe properly.
From the bedroom — her mother's voice.
Not words. Just sound. The specific broken sound of a woman crying quietly because she didn't want her children to hear and didn't quite succeed.
Wei Xuan's hands were clenched tightly on the table.
The letter was between them.
From the doorway — her little brother. Twelve years old. Standing in his pyjamas with his hair messy from sleep, eyes moving between her face and the letter with the careful attention of a child who understood more than adults gave him credit for.
"Xuan jie," he said quietly. "What happened."
She looked at him.This boy.
Who she had promised things to.
Better things than this apartment. Better things than thin walls and heavy footsteps and their mother crying quietly in the next room.
"Nothing," she said. "Go back to sleep."
He didn't move.
"Is it school?"
She looked at the letter.
"Go to sleep, Xiao Ming."
He stood there for another moment.
Then he crossed the kitchen, sat down next to her, and put his small hand over hers on the table.
Said nothing.
Just — sat there.
Wei Xuan looked at his hand.
Something moved through her chest that she was not going to let become tears because if she started she wasn't sure she'd stop and she had things to do tomorrow and the day after and every day after that and she could not afford to fall apart tonight.
She turned her hand over.
Held his.
Five years, she thought.
Five years of work.
Gone in one afternoon because a girl with a pretty face had walked into the wrong bathroom and Young Master Si Xi had decided that was his business.
No.
Not because of that girl.
Because of Yunjinna.
She thought about that carefully redirected finger.
That gentle voice.
She has a way of making things seem worse than they are.
Wei Xuan's jaw tightened.
She had defended the wrong person.
She had burned five years defending the wrong person.
"Go to sleep, Xiao Ming," she said again.
Her voice was even.
Her eyes were dry.
Her heart was cold in the particular way that hearts went cold when they made decisions they intended to keep.
Yun Jiao.
Yunjinna.Both of them.
She wasn't done yet.
Not even close.
———
Somewhere that was not Imperial Capital City, in a building that was not on any public map, in a room that contained several weapons and one very comfortable sofa, were 4 people whose names alone send shivers in the hearts of the people, whose names were Legend and never seen, only heard. Those who had seen were already rotting corpes and bones.
Ghost Empress Xuanxuan read Hawk's message for the fourth time.
She's eating well. She'll explain soon.
She stared at it.
Then she looked up at the three people in the room with her.
Lu Jingxi — Dummy Head — was sitting backwards on a chair eating instant noodles with the unbothered energy of someone who had decided life was too short for bowls.
Scorpion was at the window. Still. Quiet. The way he always was. Like furniture that could kill you.
Spotless Cheetah was on the sofa doing something on three laptops simultaneously and occasionally making small sounds of either distress or satisfaction — it was genuinely impossible to tell which.
"She says she's eating well," Xuanxuan announced.
Silence.
Lu Jingxi stopped chewing.
"That's it?" he said.
"That's it."
He stared at her
"Five years," he said.
"FIVE YEARS. And she sends — she's eating well??"
"She said she'll explain soon."
"SOON?!" He put the noodles down. Stood up. Sat back down. Stood up again. "I thought she was dead! I had a whole — I was processing grief — I told my therapist—"
"You don't have a therapist," Scorpion said from the window.
"I was CONSIDERING getting one—"
"Lu Jingxi." Xuanxuan's voice cut through the room like a blade wrapped in silk. Warm on the surface. Absolute underneath. "Sit down."
He sat Immediately.
Spotless Cheetah looked up from his laptops. "Is she in trouble?"
"I don't know," Xuanxuan said.
"Is she safe?"
"Hawk says yes."
"Then she's safe," Cheetah said, and went back to his laptops with the unshakeable confidence of someone who trusted Hawk's assessment completely.
Xuanxuan looked at the message again.
She's eating well.
She knew what that meant.
It meant: I'm okay but I can't talk yet. It meant: I'm in the middle of something. It meant: don't come. Not yet.
She knew because she had taught the girl herself.
Every signal. Every code. Every way of saying things without saying them.
She's eating well meant: I'm alive and I'm working and I need time.
Xuanxuan put her phone down.
Looked at the ceiling.
"We wait," she said.
Lu Jingxi made a grunt sound.
"We wait," she said again, firmer.
"For how long—"
"Until she tells us to move." She looked at him. Those eyes. The ones that had made grown men reconsider everything. "She always tells us when to move. You know that."
He looked at his noodles.
Picked them up.
Put them back down."I just want to know she's okay," he said.
Quieter now.
The complaint gone.
Just — that.
Xuanxuan looked at him.This man. This ridiculous, loud, deeply loyal man who had followed Yun Jiao into 14 countries and Nine near-death situations and had cried exactly once that she'd ever seen and immediately pretended it was allergies.
"She's okay," she said.
Not because Hawk had said so.
Because she knew her little sister.
And Yun Jiao, wherever she was, whatever she was doing—Was always okay.
Even when she wasn't.
"Make yourself useful," she told the room. "I want eyes on Imperial Capital. Quietly. Nobody moves without my word."
Scorpion turned from the window.
Nodded once.
Cheetah was already typing.
Lu Jingxi picked up his noodles.
"Fine," he said. "But when I see her I'm lecturing her for a minimum of forty-five minutes."
"You can have twenty,"
Xuanxuan said.
"Thirty."
"Twenty-two."
"Deal."—