After the call, Nana Toki didn’t linger; night pooled like ink as she led Mengmeng Feng toward the Si Family villa.

Waiting for Zixia Chen could only drag her back into the station’s iron smell, so she cut that thread like a knife through fog.

“It’s late,” she said, voice soft as dusk wind, “Miss Mengmeng, want to head home with me?”

Mengmeng Feng’s face was gray like a rainy sky, and she clung to Nana’s white hem like a child to drifting reed.

Nana feared the Protagonist Lord would twist the plot again, a sly tide restoring Mengmeng’s favorability like sand rebuilt by waves.

Best to keep them apart for now, like boats staying clear in a storm-swept harbor.

The enemy of my enemy is my ally, a flint spark in a dark cave.

Right now the heroines should stand shoulder to shoulder, like bamboo in wind, against a scumbag river that keeps flooding.

“Mm…” Mengmeng nodded, dusk settling behind her eyes like dying embers.

Her parents worked late like lanterns flickering far away, and a night outside was just a pebble in a wide river.

At the precinct, Zixia Chen sipped tea like winter rain and plotted a hearty dinner to warm a long, cold day.

Nana’s call hit like a stone on still water, and Zixia’s plans sank with a ring of ripples.

Who had the gall to organize illegal fun so brazenly, like fireworks in a dry forest?

Her face shifted like passing clouds, then she remembered the Si Family heiress hunted like a deer in X City’s thickets.

With a sharp flick like a swallow’s wing, Zixia swept up the whole bureau as if gathering a storm front.

“Move! With me, to the XX Hotel,” she barked, voice like a whip crack in dry air.

They rolled up hot and fast, sirens like red comets, and Zixia stepped out hunting for the maid’s shadow.

She searched like a hawk across a field, but Nana’s trace melted like frost under sun.

Her colleagues traded puzzled looks, faces like blank paper, wondering if the captain planned dinner under neon stars.

“Go,” Zixia said, eyes like steel, “search for anyone suspicious, like wolves sniffing the wind.”

They swept the grounds like a brush through tall grass, and found none of the figures Nana had painted.

Instead they tripped a nest of gunrunners, a viper’s clutch tucked deep as roots.

This wasn’t petty soot; it was a coal seam blazing, a batch heavy as stormcloud.

Lucky the whole precinct hit like hailstones, and the crooks froze like rabbits in a hunter’s lamp.

They were bagged before a struggle could spark, stunned like fish in a sudden net.

Her colleagues flushed red as ripe haw, giddy as sparrows at dawn over merit, bonuses, and bright ladders.

But Zixia’s face stayed cold as river stone; the call and the catch didn’t rhyme like proper couplets.

There was a hook in the stream, but she couldn’t see the glint under this night clay.

Was that maid really just a maid, or a crane standing among ducks?

Work first, she told herself, tying her thoughts like a tight knot.

They marched the gunrunners back like cattle in rain, then Zixia took a handful of trusted hands into the hotel’s hive.

“XX Precinct,” she announced, voice like a bell in a quiet temple. “We received a report of organized prostitution. We’re conducting an inspection.”

The front-desk girl blanched like paper in snow, then fetched the boss like a flustered quail.

They moved room to room, keys like cold rain, until a door hummed with honeyed heat.

Inside, Yiwei Yang and Huaiyue Qin tangled like vines, air rippling with soft birdsong.

Zixia listened in the hall, her face darkening like a storm gathering over the sea.

The sound was faint as moth wings, but it was a woman gasping, a river finding stones.

So the hotel really hosted a nest, a wasp hive behind silk curtains.

The boss turned pale as chalk, sweat beading like dew on winter bamboo.

Zixia didn’t waste breath; her eyes flashed like lightning, and she signaled with a tilt sharp as a blade.

They swiped a master keycard, a quick chime like a raindrop—then, bang, the door burst like a thunderclap.

“XX Police!” Zixia’s shout cracked like ice. “Off the bed! Hands on your heads! Squat, now!”

Yiwei Yang had been kissing like a man drunk on spring wine; the crash flipped him like a startled carp.

“W-what the—” he stammered, grabbing the sheet like a shield of paper snow to cover himself and Huaiyue Qin.

He sank against the headboard, a chill climbing his spine like a black snake.

“Yiwei Yang,” Zixia said, voice like sleet, “you’ve got guts the size of mountains; we didn’t settle the nightclub, and you dare try a hotel?”

Her glare could peel bark, and he shrank like a leaf curling under fire.

“Officer Chen—this is a misunderstanding,” he blurted, words tumbling like loose pebbles. “This isn’t the nightclub thing! I’m sleeping with my girlfriend!”

“Last time was a setup,” he added, bitter as windblown grit. “I didn’t even get a crumb.”

Huaiyue Qin moved with calm like a moon gliding through cloud, drawing the sheet to veil her disheveled silk.

Her gaze swept them like a blade across grass, cool and measuring as winter stars.

“Since when can police trample privacy so brazenly?” she asked, voice smooth as iced jade.

“Privacy?” Zixia’s laugh cracked like dry wood. “Caught mid-act, and you cry privacy—what a season of weeds.”

“Illegal activity?” Huaiyue Qin’s face cooled like a lake under shade, anger burbling like a spring.

To call the Qin Family’s eldest a brothel keeper was a slap of mud on white jade.

“What makes you think we’re running anything illegal?” she asked, words sharp as icicles.

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Zixia said, flipping handcuffs onto the table with a metallic thud, like a hammer on anvil.

“We got a citizen report, like thunder before rain—so we act. Save your story for the station.”

She cut the air with a hand like a sword. “Take them.”

As the farce swelled at the XX Hotel like a storm over rooftops, another scene flickered across town like a lantern.

Nana Toki led Mengmeng Feng into the Si Family villa, the gate whispering shut like reeds in wind.

“What were you two doing this afternoon?” Qingyu Si asked, perched on Nana’s bed like a snow egret, pajamas pale as moonlight.

She crossed her legs with cool poise, gaze flat as a calm lake, at the two kneeling like quiet stones.

“Uh…” Nana’s eyes dipped to a pair of bare feet, pale as porcelain, and her cheeks warmed like sunrise.

“Something unexpected on the way back,” she said, scratching her head like a cat under rain. “We got delayed.”

“What could possibly happen to you?” Qingyu Si’s eyes sharpened like stars, landing on a light stain at Nana’s chest.

“Was the shopping street an ‘unexpected detour,’ like a river wandering into market lights?”

Nana’s throat stuck like rice, the truth a fishbone she could never show.

She couldn’t say she foresaw the male lead rolling in sheets and went to kick sand into the gears.

Who would believe a crane’s shadow on a moonlit pond?

Mengmeng answered instead, voice soft as willow fluff. “Sister An invited me to the shopping street to buy a gift for Student Si.”

“A gift, for me?” Qingyu Si glanced at Nana, surprise like a faint bell under snow. “What gift?”

“This one,” Nana said, quick as a swallow, pulling a blue crystal pendant, a drop of artificial sea.

She’d found it in a trinket shop, a glass lake that felt right for Qingyu, a shard of sky in a palm.

“It’s nothing grand,” she added, a little laugh like wind-bells, “but I thought it suited you.”

“Hmm.” Qingyu took it, turning it in her fingers like a small moon, face composed as frost.

Still, the air around her loosened like petals opening at dawn, and the room brightened a shade.

“I didn’t expect Sister An to be the Si Family maid,” Mengmeng said, a giggle bubbling like a spring, washing gloom from her eyes.

Qingyu coughed into her fist, a blush like a brushstroke hidden under snow, and tucked the pendant away like a keepsake leaf.

“Then how did you two meet?” she asked, voice returning to cool water, drawing the line back to shore.

“Me, me, me! I’ll say it!” Nana straightened like a sparrow on a twig, hand up and eyes bright.

“...Go on,” Qingyu said, mouth twitching like a thread pulled, shifting slightly as if to invite the tale.

Nana didn’t dawdle; she laid out the afternoon like stones on a riverbed, clear but skipping a few sharp ones.

She left out the planned bump with Yiwei Yang, that thorn she kept under a leaf.

As she spoke, Qingyu’s cool face gathered clouds, each word a drop darkening silk.

“This Yiwei Yang is really something,” she said at last, a laugh like ice cracking on a winter pond.

“Dating Mengmeng while entangled with other women, and scheming to flirt with my maid—then asking to guard my house like a fox at the coop.”

“All his courtesy was a mask, a lacquer over rot, a plum sweet outside and sour at the pit.”

She thought of his recent gifts, bees buzzing around honey, and her stomach turned like a boat in choppy water.

Men, she thought, so often two-faced—sweet mouths, dirty hands, like lotus leaves hiding mud.

Nana used the pause to explain softly, voice like a small lamp, about the so-called bodyguard talk and the past entanglement with the original host.

Mengmeng’s face went paler, color draining like tide pulling from sand, breath thin as mist.

“So, besides me, he liked so many girls,” she said, a bitter smile trembling like a cracked cup.

“I thought, so naively, I was the only one,” she whispered, hope collapsing like ash in rain.