A few more days slipped by, like leaves drifting along a slow stream.

“Hey, Miss Lu, mind if I ask—why is there an inflatable pool on the school roof?” Wen Quan’s tone carried wary heat, a breeze that didn’t cool.

It was a lunch break. The rooftop was empty, a quiet stage under a blazing sun. Nana Toki, still in her school uniform, crouched by a faucet like a nimble otter. She held a plastic hose and let water glug into the already inflated pool, the flow a silver ribbon.

“I recall you dragged me up here to get today’s photos done, didn’t you?” Wen Quan’s patience felt thin, a paper fan in a furnace.

“Yep. That’s right.” Nana’s smile bloomed bright, like a sunflower turning to noon.

“Then what’s with the pool?” Wen Quan watched her hum a tune, lazy as a cat in shade. Her lip twitched. In school, this kind of pool screamed trouble. Summer or not, heat or not, a teacher catching them would be a storm.

“Relax. I put a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on the way up before you came. No one from admin will find us.” Nana’s voice rang breezy, like wind skipping over tiles.

Wen Quan’s silence was dry thunder. This felt even more reckless.

“Still, why the sudden urge to play with water at school?” She had mostly gotten used to Nana’s habit of playing by her own rules. But every time she got pulled in, exhaustion puddled in her bones.

“Obviously to finish our daily ten-minute photo routine.” Nana laughed, clear as bells. “Look, I even got your swimsuit ready.” She held up a white bikini, its light like sea-foam. The size matched Wen Quan perfectly—Nana had noted measurements from last time at the lingerie shop.

Wen Quan’s gaze cooled. This woman.

“Come on, don’t zone out. The pool’s nearly full.” Nana’s voice tapped like fingers on glass. “If you’ve got no more questions, go change.”

The sun was at its fiercest. Wen Quan stood by the plastic pool and felt a wave of dizziness, heat shimmering like mirages. The surface glittered, sun-scales flickering, and a strange pull tugged her closer.

Hot. The kind that pressed on skin like a heavy quilt.

“What’s wrong? Heat got you?” A teasing lilt brushed her ear, a breeze that knew where to tickle. Wen Quan narrowed her eyes and lifted her head. Nana’s exposed skin was pale as new snow. Sunlight scattered across her, a sprite mid-leap.

“When did you change?” Wen Quan stared at Nana’s black bikini, stunned. Before the thought landed, Nana lifted the hose and sprayed her square in the face.

“Aah!” Wen Quan flinched too slow. She was a drenched chick in an instant, feathers stuck by rain.

“Awake now?” Nana’s voice ran cool, like spring water threading through a mountain ravine. Wen Quan shivered. At Nana’s feet lay a tossed school uniform skirt. So the swimsuit had been under her clothes all along.

“Stop spacing out. Change and get in.” Nana stood in the inflatable pool with a fox-bright grin. Sunlight climbed her body, and Wen Quan’s heartbeat kicked, a sparrow startled from a branch. “Stay wet in this heat and you’ll catch a cold.”

Wen Quan knew she couldn’t return to class in a soaked uniform. A sigh slid out, thin as steam. She accepted fate and started unbuttoning, fingers calm as rain tapping eaves. “If I catch a cold, it’s on you.”

“Hey, don’t be like that. I did get you wet, sure, but you’ll still make it back to class.” Nana snapped her fingers and pulled out a fresh plastic bag like a street magician. “I brought you a new uniform. You’re safe.”

Wen Quan’s stare said everything. This girl.

“But why the rooftop pool?” Wen Quan eased into the water, the cool licking her skin like shade. “We could’ve gone to a public pool.”

Nana’s favor with Wen Quan had recently nudged past twenty percent; Wen Quan had started talking to her on her own, though rarely.

“The public pool…” Nana tilted her face to the sun, eyes half-closed like a cat. “I don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“The pool’s too big. I can’t squeeze in close to you like this.” Her joke was half light, half heat.

Wen Quan’s silence rippled.

“Honestly, it’s because I’m selfish. I don’t want to share your charm.” Her voice softened unexpectedly, a warm brush in winter air. “A body being glanced at costs nothing, sure. But you’re mine. If I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”

Wen Quan’s eyes cooled, moonlight on a still pond. It was so very Nana to say it that way.

“Since when did I become your property?” She pushed water with her fingers, calm-faced, eyes rising like quiet stars. In truth, their tie was a one-sided blackmail.

Nana didn’t argue. She just smiled, a crescent over dark water. “Since long ago. And you don’t get to resist.”

The rooftop water-play lasted only that lunch break. Nana lingered like the last note of a song, but there was a cram session in the afternoon. Both of them had to return and sign in.

English was the subject. The teacher was a balding, middle-aged uncle with a Mediterranean hairline. Nana had zero interest in listening. She slacked the whole afternoon like a fish sliding under lilies. When classes finally ended and the classroom emptied like tide going out, Nana shouldered her backpack. She planned to swing by the commercial street and ask Zhao Sitian about Wen Quan’s family.

She had barely stepped out when a girl jogged over from down the hall. Nana hadn’t seen her before, but the uniform marked her as a student from the same school.

“You’re Lu Qiqi, right?” the girl asked first, voice quick as a sparrow.

“Hm? What’s up?” Nana scanned her, mind turning, but no memory clicked into place.

“Someone asked me to give you this.” The girl pressed an envelope into Nana’s hand and hurried off, footsteps fading like rain beads rolling down.

Puzzled, Nana opened the white envelope, a scent of ink rising like fresh tea.

Inside were several photos and a note.

“Hm? Is this…?” A nude shot of Wen Quan?

Nana slid out one photo and her face went dark, cloud shadow swallowing sun.

The faces were mostly half profiles, but it was clearly Wen Quan. Corners of the frame caught rooftop landmarks, the specific edges that screamed their school’s roof. So they’d been shot today, in that moment.

Wen Quan had changed into her swimsuit at a less exposed corner. Nana had checked, careful as a cat watching a doorway. Still, someone had been there.

Stranger yet, why send the photos to her?

Blackmail? Or something with deeper roots?

Her expression flickered, sun and cloud wrestling. Only then did she unfold the forgotten note.

“If you don’t want these photos posted all over school tomorrow morning, come to the abandoned factory at the end of Changshan Street before 7 p.m. today.”

The words were printed. The ink smell clung, thick as smoke after burning talismans.

Tsk. Changshan Street.

Memory surfaced like a bruise. The east side, poor security, streets that collected trouble. Several vocational schools nearby, with low advancement rates. Most kids there drifted like dead leaves, mixed up with street punks.

If Nana remembered right, there had been a few juvenile assault cases there. Later they got pressed down for reasons unknown. The place was odd, fog hanging low.

But why would people from Changshan show up at this school?

It wasn’t far, but not doorstep close either. What did those punks want, sneaking shots of her and Wen Quan?

Pure coincidence?

Nana frowned, a crow flitting across the sun.

Forget it. One step at a time. They’re just students. She could handle idiots with both hands tied.

She walked out of the gate and flagged down a taxi, hand slicing air like a white gull.

“Changshan Street, please.”

“Got it.” The driver was a bespectacled middle-aged man, thirty-something, frame steady as an old elm. After Nana got in, his eyes kept darting to the rearview, like minnows peeking upstream.

“Something on your mind?” Nana felt his stare prick like sand, so she asked first.

“Nothing much. Just wondering why a young girl would head into Changshan Street.” His accent rolled like a country stream. “That place ain’t clean. Street rats loaf around there all day. A pretty schoolgirl going alone? That’s danger.”

“Danger?” Nana tilted her head, playing light. “It’s just a street. How dangerous can it be?”

“You’re a student, you don’t know.” He sighed, breath like a draft under a door. “It’s a rotten street, sure, but some rich brats waste their days there too. Not long ago, a gang of punks assaulted a girl from another school. The news said it was linked to Aomori High.”

He glanced up, brow wrinkling. “Hey, kid, that uniform… aren’t you also from Aomori High?”

When his voice faded, a cold sank into the back seat, like shadow water pooling behind Nana’s knees.