The garden was Still. Moonlight doing its thing. Koi living their best lives.
Yun Jiao sat with the lollipop in her mouth and thought about a name.
Xue Lian.
She turned it over in her mind the way you turned a coin over. Looking at both sides.
Looking for the trick.
Because there was always a trick.
"Hawk," she said suddenly.
"Still looking."
"Stop."
A pause.
"...Stop?"
"Stop looking." She pulled the lollipop out. Examined it. "For now."
"Master you just told me to—"
"I know what I said." She put it back in her mouth. "And now I'm saying stop."
Hawk went quiet. Processing. Then — carefully: "You don't believe her."
Yun Jiao looked at Tangerine doing his faithful laps.
"I don't believe anyone who hands me information in the dark at nine PM after spending three days trying to destroy me,"
she said pleasantly. "Call me old fashioned."
"But the name—"
"Could be real." She tilted her head. "....or Could be a name she was fed specifically to make me run in the wrong direction." She paused. "Could be both. Could be neither."
She looked at the city lights beyond the wall. "What I know for certain is that Yunjinna cannot wait for me to drop dead. She's been trying since day one." A beat. "So why would she hand me something real?"
Silence."Unless," Hawk said slowly.
"Unless she's not handing me something real," Yun Jiao finished. "She's handing me something dangerous. Wrapped in something real." She stood up. Brushed off her knees. "Which means even if Xue Lian is connected to my mother — and I don't know that yet, I don't know anything yet — going after that name right now is exactly what she wants me to do."
"Walk into the trap herself," Hawk said quietly.
"Mm." She picked up her bag. "So we don't walk."
"We crawl?"....."We watch." She looked at the house. At the lit window of Yunjinna's room on the second floor. "We let her think the bait worked. We let her get comfortable. And while she's comfortable—"
the corner of her lips curled up, "—we find out what Xue Lian actually is from our own sources. Without going anywhere near whoever that name belongs to."
A pause.
"Master," Hawk said.
"Mm?"
"You are genuinely terrifying."
"Thank you."
"That was entirely not a compliment."
"I know." She walked toward the house. "It never is."
——
In Yunjinna's room, she was smiling. Actually smiling, The real kind. Not the performance one. The one that came out when things were going exactly as planned and she could feel the satisfaction of it settling into her bones.
She sat at her vanity humming and looked at her reflection and felt, for the first time since Monday, like herself again.
The seed was planted.
Yun Jiao had that name now.
And a girl like her — smart, proud, driven, the type who couldn't leave a mystery alone — would go digging.
And when she dug ___hehehe—The person attached to that name would find her.
And that would be the end of Yun Jiao. Clean. Untraceable. Nothing pointing back to Yunjinna. She picked up her phone. Called Chu Jintan.
He answered on the second ring. "How did it go."
"Perfectly," she said.
A pause.
"She took the bait?"
"Hook, line and sinker." Yunjinna examined her nails. "She tried to be smart about it. Threw my threats back at me. The recording thing, the cameras—"
She waved a hand.
"Typical. But I saw her face when I said the name." A small satisfied smile. "She couldn't hide it."
On the other end of the phone—Chu Jintan was quiet for a moment.
"Good," he said.
"You don't sound convinced."
"I'm convinced." Another pause. "I just think you should be careful. That girl—"
"Is going to be someone else's problem very soon," Yunjinna said firmly. "That's the whole point."
"Right." His voice was even. Smooth.
"Right." Yunjinna looked at her reflection.
Thought about a face she had seen on the front steps three days ago.
Thought about Chu Jintan's footsteps slowing for half a second this morning in the courtyard.
Pressed her lips together.
"Jintan."
"Mm?"
"When this is over," she said. "I don't want to hear her name again."
A beat.
"Of course," he said.
She hung up. Looked at her reflection.The smile was still there. But her eyes—Were doing something her smile wasn't. She turned the mirror slightly away and Went to bed.
——
Ruan suyin's phone rang at exactly 10:45pm. Unknown number.
She knew better than to not answer.
"Yes," she said.
The voice on the other end was not loud. Not threatening. Not the dramatic movie-villain voice that people imagined when they thought about dangerous people. It was quiet. Almost gentle.Which made it infinitely worse.
"Your daughter talked," it said.
Ruan Suyin's hand tightened on the phone. Just slightly.
"I'm not sure what you—"
"The garden. Tonight. Nine PM." A pause. "The name was said."
The room felt smaller suddenly.
Ruan Suyin sat very still.
"She doesn't know anything substantial," she said carefully.
"Just a name. No context. No—"
"A name is enough." The voice remained gentle. Terrifyingly gentle. "You said you had control of your household."
"I do—"
"Your daughter just handed a loaded weapon to the wrong person and called it strategy." A pause. The kind of pause that had weight to it. "I suggest you remind her what happens when people in your position make mistakes."
The line went dead.
Ruan Suyin sat in the dark.
Phone in her hand.
For a long moment she didn't move.Then she set the phone down.
Looked at the wall. In seventeen years of running this household, of managing Yunting, of building every layer of this life with her own two hands—She had never once allowed herself to feel afraid.Tonight—Just for a moment.She finally felt it deeply.Then she straightened. Picked up her phone again.This time she called Yunjinna.Yunjinna answered sleepily. "Mother it's almost eleven—"
"My office," Ruan Suyin said. "Now."
The sleepiness disappeared instantly."...Now?"
"Now."
She hung up. Sat in the dark. Thought about a quiet voice on the phone. Thought about a girl sitting by a koi pond who had received a name tonight.Thought about the very specific expression on that girl's face at the formal meeting when Liang Boshen had walked in.
Not afraid. Not overwhelmed. Just—Waiting. Her jaw tightened. She had made this mistake before. Looking at Yun Jiao and seeing what she appeared to be instead of what she was. She would not make it again.