Tonight was never going to be a quiet night; the city’s skin felt tight, like a drum before the strike.

After beating bloody the ones who’d once stuck her with drugs, Nana Toki finally let out a breath, steam curling like a kettle on the boil.

“Now I’m in a great mood,” she said, a grin like a knife’s bright edge.

System: “...” Psycho.

“Y-you... what are you?” His voice frayed like a wet match trying to spark.

The private room was wrecked, glass glittering like ice shards, streaks of sticky blood smeared like dark paint; A-Bao stood in a corner, his mouth twitching like a snagged thread.

Is that Suo Sen? The thought skittered like a rat behind a wall.

No. Absolutely not; the picture and the file didn’t mesh, like two faces on torn paper that wouldn’t align.

In every move and word, the woman before him was a world apart, a river split from its old bed by a quake.

Compared to the streetwalker act that night, today’s Suo Sen felt like someone from the underworld, a blade wrapped in silk.

Her hands showed no mercy; her eyes held no one in them, a winter sky with no birds, and it was hard to overlap this woman with the Suo Sen from before.

Nana Toki hadn’t laid a hand on A-Bao, a lantern left unlit in a room of fire.

Maybe there was a deeper reason under the floorboards, a current you couldn’t see but felt.

A-Bao didn’t guess and had no time to guess, his thoughts scattering like leaves in wind.

Right now, getting out of this was the only choice, like finding the alley when the sirens start.

“Hey, you’ve got that thing, right?” Her voice was casual, smoke curling from a match.

Cold and sudden, called by name, A-Bao felt weirdly flattered, like a stray dog tossed a bone.

“What?”

“This. This.” She lifted a hand, a gesture like a hook in water.

He didn’t get it at first, a shadow without a shape, until she mimed a jab, and the picture snapped into place like a trap.

She was asking if they had drugs here, sweet poison coiled like a white snake.

She did all this for a few bags of powder, a bonfire to catch a moth, and he thought, Is she a lunatic?

“You’ve got it, don’t you?” Her look slid over him like an icy blade.

The room reeked of blood, thick enough to gag, a warm rust stink that stuck to the tongue.

Nana Toki sat with one leg hooked over the other on a clean sofa, lazy as a cat on temple steps, not caring about the red smears on floor and table.

Bodies lay strewn around her like broken dolls, faces swollen out of shape, turning the scene into a theater of shadows.

N-no… He almost said it, the lie like a fishbone in his throat.

But that deep, cold gaze knifed up from his soles to his skull, a frost line climbing a windowpane.

She smiled, but it felt like a silk scarf hiding barbed wire; his words jammed at his throat, a cork hammered in.

For a heartbeat, he felt death brush his neck, a winter wind under a thin shirt.

“Y-yeah… yeah.” He folded, a reed in the current.

Yes. He gave in, because that stare felt like a hand around his windpipe, steady and patient.

Under that gaze, he didn’t dare make a pointless stand, a lone match waving at a storm.

Yes. He couldn’t fathom what life could carve a woman into this shape, a statue chiseled by lightning.

“I knew you’d have it,” Nana Toki said, her smile cooling like moonlight on steel.

“I won’t ask for much. Enough for ten people,” she added, the number landing like stones in a bowl.

A-Bao didn’t answer right away, silence ticking like a metronome in his ribs.

He thought, quick as a mouse mapping walls, about fetching help under the excuse of getting the goods.

“Don’t even think about running,” Nana Toki said, snapping his thought like a twig between fingers. “There are a few lives here, you can’t run and leave them; that’d make you a deserter with bodies on your back.”

Colored neon washed her face, foxfire on a mask, beautiful and wrong.

“And even if you bring a crowd, it won’t matter,” she said, her tone light as falling ash.

“Wanna try?” The last three words felt like a finger tapping a gun’s hammer.

From A-Bao’s angle, the woman on the sofa looked like a ghost climbed from hell, incense smoke wrapped in thorns.

Every word carried a promise to kill, sharp as frost on a blade under dawn.

He couldn’t deny it; he had no certainty anyone he called would match her, a stray dog sent after a tiger.

Her strikes were all edge and no mercy, a door slammed with no light left under it.

But why hadn’t she finished the job, a butcher stopping mid-swing?

The ones down weren’t dead, just skin ripped and bones rattled, pain blooming like bruised fruit, far from the river’s end.

Did she have concerns, a string tied to her wrist, tugging?

Or was killing just too much trouble, a mess that stains the shoes?

He couldn’t tell, the coin kept spinning in fog.

Mo Yao was still in this room, a lantern that must not go out, and he wouldn’t gamble his life on a loaded dice.

“You win,” A-Bao said, eyes on the woman on the sofa, breath held like a sponge in a fist. “I’ll bring it right away.”

“You’ve got five minutes,” Nana Toki said, pointing at the wall clock, its hands like knives at 11:55. “Before midnight, or I’ll get bored and do something ‘fun.’ You know what I mean.”

That dense, playful smile crawled over her face like ivy, and A-Bao’s skin prickled as if ants woke under it.

“I got it,” he said, turning away, glancing once at Mo Yao sprawled on the sofa like a fallen banner, then leaving the room fast, feet light as a thief’s.

...

When Nana Toki stepped out of Yuedi Club, it was past one; the night sagged like a tired curtain.

The Black Street, empty in early mornings, was blazing now like a furnace mouth; punks in all kinds of gear slouched about, and packs of women flowed in and out of bars and dance floors like moths circling strobe-lit flame.

A street once quiet as steamed rice at dawn was stuffed now with filthy curses and saw-toothed rock, a river of noise that drowned thought.

It felt like another world under the same sky, a skin shed and left writhing.

Chasing primal desire, people stoked fires that would scorch them to bone, a ruin they built with their own hands.

She tossed the packets A-Bao had given her, white dust fluttering inside like trapped snow, and side-eyed the crowd with a crooked smile.

Sure enough, people were puppets pulled by desire, strings humming like wasp wings.

I wonder what interesting thing will happen next, she thought, curiosity flicking like a fox’s tail.

...

Meanwhile, inside the private room at Yuedi Club, the air held its breath like glass before a crack.

A-Bao stood with five syringes and five packets of white powder Nana Toki had handed back, his hands hot as if he gripped live coals.

You’re interesting, she’d said; I think you’ll need this. Her words hung in the air like incense that wouldn’t die.

“You’ve endured a long time. It must hurt,” that tempting demon-voice breathed by his ear, sweet as rot. “This kind of restraint is pointless. Drop it now.”

“You’re just a flower blooming beside a trash can, bright and doomed; fate already wrote the script in black ink.”

“I’m giving you a chance. Take it now. It’s good for you, and good for me.”

Mind empty and loud at once, A-Bao stood there in a fog, a bird beating wings inside a cage.

He knew what he should do, the steps laid out like stones across a stream: dial 120, the emergency number, get Young Master back for treatment, then call a few guys to toss the trash out.

That was his job, his place, a line scratched in stone he’d traced a hundred times.

Yes. He knew his place better than anyone, a guard dog bound to a post.

But. The word opened like a crack in ice.

A-Bao picked up a syringe and a packet, the plastic whispering like a snake’s tongue.

Why am I keeping these rules, he thought, the question glowing like a coal under ash.

Was it because of what happened before, old scars like rope burns; or because Young Master saved him and he owed a debt, a chain of gratitude tight as wire?

He cut the powder with water and drew it into the syringe, the clear barrel turning cloudy like a winter sky.

He shook it once, twice, a tiny storm in a tube, then stared at the loaded needle, a fang gleaming in a wolf’s mouth.

Finally, at a point in time that felt like a stone dropping into a well, he grinned, a savage crack of teeth, and drove the needle into his neck like a strike from a viper.

None of it!