The next day, Yekase planned to buy furniture to fill the Ambition Divine Ship’s metal ribs like straw in a new nest. No matter how flashy the name, or how high-end the lab and hangar, it was first a home, a small hearth under an open sky.

She wanted to order online, like tossing a net into a wide river. But Liu RuoYuan said you only know a table’s bones by touching the wood, and half-forced her to an IGEA furniture mall, like tugging a kite down from the wind.

What she didn’t expect was that Yekase had an ace up her sleeve on the way there, a hidden knife in a silk sleeve.

They stepped off the bus like stepping off a slow cloud. Yekase headed straight for the abstract sculpture by the gate, a lump of stone like frozen waves. Under it waited the helper she’d called—

Lu Yao.

“How many inside, what positions, and are they armed?” Lu Yao asked, her eyes like knife-edges under winter light.

“So, we’ve moved recently, and the new place is pretty big—” Yekase began, her voice like wind playing with chimes.

“No incident, I’m leaving,” Lu Yao said, turning like a shadow slipping behind a pillar.

“You’re renting alone, right? Then move in with us, like finding harbor before the tide rises.”

“Not interested,” she said, the words flat as still water.

“First, the place sits on a sky island thirty thousand meters up, as safe as a temple on a cliff.”

Lu Yao didn’t stop, but her pace slowed a shade, like a falcon angling its wings.

“Second, there’s an underground hangar, big enough for full armor to roll around like a bear in a cave.”

…She stopped.

No, it wasn’t the hangar big enough for the Peace Walker to roll in like a boar in mud. She just knew that if she walked farther, Yekase would raise her voice like a bell, and the wrong ears would make trouble like crows.

And she hadn’t finished—Lu Yao wanted to know what third hook could outshine a hangar. A capital gun? Orbital launch? Some secret blade—

“Third, I won’t charge you rent,” Yekase said, light as a coin flicked in the sun.

“…”

“Really free,” she added, smile bright as lacquer.

“That’s it?” Lu Yao asked, her breath a thin line of frost.

Listening to her was a waste of time, a path through fog.

Lu Yao had figured it out: for every ten sentences, four were fluff like dandelion seeds, three were lies like painted masks, two were sparks to stir trouble, and one was a harmless truth, a dull pebble with no weight left in war. But often, she tucked real daggers among the feathers and smoke. She hadn’t said where the sky island came from. Maybe furniture shopping was a screen, and she meant to talk in the empty pickup zone about seizing the Sinister Organization’s sky island, like pirates whispering on a moonless pier—

She came to, and the three of them had drifted into the bedroom display area like leaves into an eddy.

“...?” The thought slipped like a fish.

A soft pressure warmed her hand. Lu Yao looked down and saw Yekase swinging Liu RuoYuan’s hand and hers, like a child in a market under red lanterns.

“What furniture are we buying?” Yekase asked Liu RuoYuan, eyes bright as lamps.

Liu RuoYuan counted like a teacher ticking beads: “Dining table, chairs, a tea table, a sofa. For each room, cabinets, a desk, and a bed frame. That’s for now. The rest, we buy when needed.”

“That’s a lot,” Yekase said, grin quick as a spark. “Lu Yao, check what your room needs too. Oh, rent is waived, but we can’t expense your stuff, like drawing water from a dry well.”

“Why do you—” Lu Yao began, the words grinding like stone.

She’d been cold and thorny already, yet Yekase still chose this warm approach like pouring tea in winter. That kindliness fit Ling Yi. But Yekase had lied from day one, trap after trap, dragging her onto a pirate ship with silk ropes. This sunny warmth rang false in her ear like an out-of-tune bell.

“Because I want to compensate you,” Yekase said, voice low like rain on eaves. “Not just for the lies. For your past.”

“That’s none of your business,” Lu Yao said, a blade laid flat.

“It isn’t,” Yekase said, nodding like a willow in wind. “But heroes are busybodies, right? See evil, stop it. See suffering, help if you can. If I only praise a woman who survives in hardship—oh, so tough, so strong—and don’t lift a finger, then I’m burning incense to suffering, letting it roam like a wolf to bite others.”

She remembered the villain mask she wore in front of Lu Yao, and added, almost sheepish, “Ling Yi would say it better.”

“I want to see what your ‘within your power’ really means,” Lu Yao said, her gaze steady as a mountain line.

“Stick with me, and you’ll see,” Yekase said, smile like dawn under clouds.

…She couldn’t win with words. The tongue was a blade, and Yekase wielded it like a dancer.

Yet even when the tone ran cocky as a rooster, Lu Yao felt no anger. Her anger was already banked like coals for the Sinister Organization and for her sister—though those two names felt like overlapping shadows now.

A shrill squeal cut through the air, like chalk on slate. A nearby kid lay on a display bed and screeched like a cat.

Yekase and Liu RuoYuan were right there looking at beds, careful as monks appraising a bell. They’d slept on the floor in rentals, so they were serious.

“This solid bed frame looks good,” Liu RuoYuan said, tapping wood like testing a drum. “No space under it to worry about cleaning.”

“But we’ve got a whole-house permanent cleaning spell,” Yekase said, breezy as a kite tail.

“That strong? Then I want a canopy,” she laughed, eyes like curved moons. “Miss Lu, which do you like?”

Called by name, Lu Yao folded her arms and averted her gaze like a fox turning away. “Don’t interrogate me,” she said, voice cool as dew.

This woman was Yekase’s own sister—looked a bit over twenty, fresh as spring. Yekase had pinged her secretly: her sister was a language teacher, no ties to the hidden world, no combat ability at all, like a sparrow far from storms.

So don’t bring up the Sinister Organization in front of her, was that it?

Lu Yao was gentle with ordinary citizens, softer than with Yekase, like shade under a pine. She even preferred talking to Liu RuoYuan.

“Were you serious about me moving in?” she asked, the words cautious as stepping stones.

“Of course,” Liu RuoYuan said, nodding like a pecking bird. “Look at your dark circles, and your straw-dry hair. You barely care for your health, right? Eating and sleeping all over the place, like a candle guttering in wind. You think you’re young so it doesn’t matter. But if you end up sick all over, the loss outweighs the gain, like cracking jade to polish it.”

Okay. That sermon tone could only belong to a teacher, as steady as a bell.

“A-Yuan, she’s older than you. She’s almost thirty,” Yekase reminded, mischief flashing like a fish—then both of them glared, their eyes like twin arrows.

Yekase shrank her neck, silent as a turtle in its shell.

Heh. Women, Lu Yao thought, a dry leaf turning in breeze.

They wandered all afternoon, like ants tracing lines, and picked out most of what they needed. After a nudge from Liu RuoYuan, Lu Yao reluctantly chose the bare minimum, like a monk with one bowl.

Liu RuoYuan went to the pickup zone to get staff to load the car, footsteps quick as sparrows. Yekase and Lu Yao sat in the first-floor café, like two stones by a stream.

Yekase ate a hot dog slathered in yellow mustard, bright as saffron, and then asked out of nowhere, voice light as ash, “Official Hero—do you think it’ll work?”

“You in a joking mood today?” Lu Yao said, eyes still as night water.

“Haha, kind of,” Yekase said, licking mustard from the corner of her mouth like a cat. “I’ve met Gu Xiangshi. She’s got ideas, but her horizon’s narrow as a well-mouth. Too naive. Reformism inside a wrong system ends badly, like planting rice in salt flats.”

“Why ask me?” Lu Yao said, her tone a cool stone.

“I’m just reminding you,” Yekase said, like tapping a bell. “When time comes, it’ll die on its own. You don’t need to waste arrows. Soon, you’ll face your sister. I hope you meet her at full strength. Otherwise, you probably lose.”

Calm first, then question; Lu Yao let the second half pass like smoke. “How does it die naturally?” she asked, voice flat as slate.

“Official Hero serves the Sinister Organization’s interests,” Yekase said, like placing pieces on a board. “It’s doomed to do harmless postwar relief, or be a tool in dog-eat-dog fights. When they see they can’t break that cage, it fades like mist at noon.”

“She just wants to hijack the word hero,” Lu Yao said, a nail on wood.

“That part’s done,” Yekase said, shrugging like a willow. “Even if the project collapses, ‘hero’ is already muddied and warped like a river after rain. You know what I mean, Comrade Lu Yao.”

“Got any tricks?” Lu Yao asked, gaze steady as iron.

“If I could sway public opinion, would I be here?” Yekase laughed, shoulders shaking like bells. “I’d get a sociology PhD, strut on TV, and make money just flapping my lips like a market hawker.”

She finished her grand analysis that solved nothing and cracked herself up, almost shaking the half-eaten sausage out of the bun like a fish from a net.

“I envy how you can laugh at anything,” Lu Yao said, voice low as dusk.

“People gotta laugh more,” Yekase said, smile a little lantern.

“Heh,” Lu Yao breathed, a dry wind.

Yekase knew that laugh—mocking a twenty-seven-year-old who talked like seventy-two. She was grateful, though, that Lu Yao ignored her current seven-year-old appearance, a child’s face over old boots.

Furniture malls brim with kids and newlyweds, like spring ponds and paired swallows. Watching them, Yekase felt a tug in her chest, like a string on a kite. She finished the hot dog, then stared at Lu Yao as if watching a mountain at dawn.

“What are you looking at?” Lu Yao asked, eyes narrowing like shutters.

“I’ve seen people with early misfortune,” Yekase said, voice slow as tide. “I’ve seen comrades die, leaving only one person to remember, like a lone candle in a dark hall. They blend into society and become cogs—neither innocent nor wicked, like gears greased with dust. But someone who suffered both and still stays a hero? First time I’ve seen that, like a star still burning after the storm.”

“What was that?” Lu Yao asked, the words a thin wire.

“Nothing,” Yekase murmured, like a leaf falling.

Lu Yao narrowed her eyes at Yekase’s profile, expecting a flippant smirk, a riddle-solver’s smug curve, like sunlight on a blade. Instead, she saw the smile gone and a thread of loneliness, like a lantern with low oil.

“There’s a song that goes,” Yekase said, voice tapping a rhythm. “Look, listen, laugh, cry—”

“After you’ve tasted it all, go back,” she added, the words dry as winter reeds.

She tried to hum the tune, a line of river, but failed, and only air moved like a breeze in grass.

“I just think, if someone like you must curl up in a cold shell to survive,” she said, eyes soft as rain, “that would be our failure, like frost in spring. So I have to do something for you.”

“No need,” Lu Yao said, like shutting a door.

“But it’s necessary,” Yekase answered, a quiet bell.

In the distance, they saw Liu RuoYuan coming back, waving like a branch.

“All done! I’m exhausted!” she called, cheeks flushed like peaches.

Yekase hopped off the bench like a sparrow and ran to her, hooking her arm like ivy. “Let’s celebrate with a good dinner. Hot pot or buffet?” she chirped.

“Hot pot buffet!” Liu RuoYuan said, eyes sparking like fire.

“No problem!” Yekase grinned, bright as a banner.

“What about Miss Lu?” Liu RuoYuan asked, looking over like a sunbeam.

“What’s it got to do with me?” Lu Yao said, a cat’s glance.

“You moving in counts as a housewarming too,” Yekase said, as if it were rain in season.

“When did I say—” Lu Yao began, the words stumbling like pebbles.

“You even bought your own bed,” Yekase said, eyes wicked as foxfire. “A children’s bunk bed. Saving the top bunk for your sister?”

“N-not at all!” Lu Yao snapped, color rising like a spilled sunset.

Her face flushed—Yekase’s first time seeing this shift, soft as a petal. Paired with that near-ascetic, about-to-ascend gauntness, it was oddly endearing, like a thorned rose.

Lu Yao’s first instinct was to throw a smoke bomb and vanish like a ghost. Seeing the crowd, she held back, pretended to fix her bangs as a shield, and only mussed her hair into proper chaos, like a bird’s nest after wind.

Yekase took her silence as consent. She hugged Liu RuoYuan’s arm tight, and the two “sisters” hopped toward the exit like twin sparrows.

Those words from earlier—how much of it was true? Lu Yao didn’t know, her thoughts like reeds in a current.

I’ve got to have… somewhere I can return to, too, she thought, the wish a warm ember in a cold shell.