The apartment had lost its color. The morning light filtering through the grime-streaked window was a cold, clinical grey that bled the life out of everything it touched.
*THUD-THUD-THUD.*
It wasn't a knock; it was a physical assault. Each strike sent a fine, white powder of plaster falling from the ceiling like a funeral shroud.
The door frame—held together by decades of lead paint—shrieks as the wood fibers began to splinter.
Joey was a study in raw, unvarnished panic. She was on her hands and knees in the middle of the floor, her movements jerky and uncoordinated as she clawed at the dust bunnies under the bed, finally dragging out a single, scuffed sneaker.
"Cheng!" she whispered, her voice a frantic, terrified hitch. "What did you do? At that car wash… did you accidentally scrub the paint off a Senator's car? My God, my landlord… he'll give us up to the devil himself for a week of peace!"
Lu Xingcheng stood in the center of the chaos, the absolute eye of the storm. He didn't look at the door. He was standing by the window, his posture a masterpiece of suppressed violence.
He counted the strikes. *One. Two. Three.*
He knew the deadbolt would fail in exactly four more hits. These weren't Ghost Clan assassins; their movements were too heavy, too "procedural." It was the police. A nuisance, but one that would leave a trail for the wolves to follow.
"I told you, Peppercorn," Xingcheng said, his voice like low-octane honey—smooth and terrifyingly calm. "I have a very… punchable face. People frequently misunderstand my 'method acting' for genuine aggression."
He reached for the window latch. The metal was rusted shut, fused by years of salt air. Xingcheng didn't struggle.
He simply shifted his weight, his scarred knuckles whitening as he exerted a singular, surgical pressure.
*SNAP.*
The latch gave way. He threw the window open, and the cold morning air rushed in, smelling of wet asphalt and industrial waste. He looked at the fire escape—a skeletal, rusted ribcage clinging to the side of the building.
"We can't go out there!" Joey cried, clutching her sneaker to her chest like a shield. "It's five stories! That metal hasn't been inspected since the Great Depression! We'll fall, Cheng!"
Xingcheng turned. He crossed the room in two long, predatory strides, occupying her entire field of vision. He grabbed her hand.
His grip wasn't the desperate hold of a runaway—it was firm, grounding, and absolute. For a heartbeat, the faded "BOB" shirt seemed to vanish, replaced by the invisible weight of a general's cape.
"Do you trust me, Joey?" he asked, his gaze a physical weight. "Not the 'actor.' Not the 'bum.' Do you trust the man standing in front of you right now?"
Joey bit her lip so hard a bead of red appeared, searching his obsidian eyes.
"I shouldn't. You're a walking disaster. You're a mystery I can't solve and a debt I can't pay. But…"
She looked at the hand that had just snapped steel like a twig and found a strange safety in the danger.
"Yeah. I trust you. Lead the way, 'Background Boy.'"
They scrambled onto the fire escape, the iron structure groaning with a resonant
*CREAK*.
Xingcheng positioned his body between her and the abyss, guiding her down with silent, synchronized grace.
*CRUNCH.*
The apartment door was kicked off its hinges. A heavy-set officer, his face a deep, unhealthy red, lunged into the room.
He knocked over Joey's stack of nursing textbooks as he charged toward the open window, his hand resting on his service weapon.
"STOP! POLICE! DON'T MOVE!"
The officer leaned out the window, his eyes darting frantically across the maze of laundry lines and rusted metal. But the fire escape was a ghost town. They were already gone, swallowed by the shadows of the fourth-floor landing.
Frustrated, the officer slammed his meaty palm down on the windowsill. Underneath his hand, pinned to the peeling paint, was a single, neon-pink "Powerpuff Girls" sticker—the one Joey used to mark her territory. It was a splash of vibrant innocence against the grey, industrial sky.
Five stories down, in the shadows of a dumpster, Xingcheng looked up one last time. He saw the officer's silhouette and pulled Joey deeper into the dark, his hand never leaving hers.
The 'Bob' persona is dead, Ghost Clan, he thought, his eyes narrowing into predatory slits. You wanted to hunt me in her world? Fine. Now, you're in mine.