Mara stopped.
The question clawed its way out before she could cage it.
"What do you mean," she said, voice like gravel underfoot, "when you say someone did the same for you."
He didn't answer right away, He didn't dodge. He simply looked at her, the way one looks through dust at something halfburied in memory.
For a breath, the room felt heavier, older than its cracked walls and sagging ceiling, as if time itself had leaned in to listen.
"Ah," he murmured at last.
"I will explain. But first," he said.
And then—
A soft mechanical click, precise as a lock tumbler falling into place.
Mara's head jerked toward the doorway. She hadn't heard it open.
A girl entered. The same one who was in the room a while back. Mara didn't realise when she had left.
Up close, she was not quite a girl. Too exact. Too flawless in her economy of motion, every shift of weight and angle pre-calibrated, as though her body were a instrument someone else had tuned long ago.
Her once-white uniform had aged to the color of old bone, yet the edges remained impossibly crisp against the grime of Shadow Lane. Her dark hair hung straight and undisturbed, indifferent to the damp air, as if even humidity knew better than to touch it. Her eyes swept the room once—clinical, unhurried—then settled on the man.
"Master," she said.
The word landed like a key turning in a door that should have stayed locked.
She crossed the floor carrying a small metal tray, footsteps silent. On it, two cups. Steam rose in disciplined, almost reluctant spirals.
Tea. In this rotting place. The absurdity of it clawed at Mara's throat.
The girl set the tray on the dusty school desk and moved it between them with surgical care, then nudged it a fraction of an inch, correcting some invisible misalignment only she could perceive.
"Temperature stable," she announced quietly.
The man gave a single nod. "Thank you."
She did not withdraw. She remained standing there, perfectly poised, waiting for the circuit of her task to complete.
He lifted one cup and tilted his head toward the other in a quiet invitation.
"Sit," he told Mara.
Not an order. Something gentler.
"Let's have a tea party."
For a second, Mara thought she'd misheard him.
Then the words landed. A sharp, disbelieving breath tore out of her—half laugh, half something uglier.
"A what?"
"A tea party," he repeated, as if saying it again could make it sane.
Something inside her snapped.
"You dragged me out of a purge zone," she said, voice rising, raw and ragged, "stitched me back together without my consent, and now you want to sit here pretending this is normal?"
"It helps," he said calmly.
"Helps what?"
"With the trauma."
That did it.
Mara let out a short, bitter laugh that sent fresh pain spiking through her ribs.
"You think I need tea right now."
"Were you not just having a breakdown in an alleyway before we found you just now? I think you know the answer to your question".
Mara did not know what to say. She slowly moved back in towards the desk. As absurd as it sounded. It was "Tea time".