The landlady smiled like a warm lamp behind paper, seeing Night Frost as a green shoot still startled by spring rain, saying the years would flow, marriage and children would bloom, and she’d get used to all this.
Heat rushed up Night Frost’s face like sunset climbing a red wall; she skimmed the contract with leaves-rustling speed, signed in one clean stroke, and fled to the washroom like a deer into mist.
Kaneko sat calm as a still pond under moonlight; though young, her core was steady as stone, and she couldn’t grasp why Night Frost would blush at this, but perhaps that’s human—shame curling like a hidden knot in bamboo, even if it didn’t fit Night Frost’s brushstroke.
In her eyes, Night Frost moved like lightning across a board of go, plans laid with compass and straightedge, soft as blossom to look at yet tempered like forged iron within.
Silk and steel braided in her, a fragrance and edge mingled like tea and blade, and that blend became a spell you could taste in the air.
Yet today Night Frost showed another petal, a gentler hue like peach blush behind a veil; shyness and retreat rang like a soft bell, off-beat with her earlier stride, but it added ink to her charm and made Kaneko’s curiosity ripple like wind over reeds.
Night Frost slipped out of the washroom like a cat on frost, saw the landlady finish nursing with a cradle-moon in her arms, and her heart settled like a stone in clear water as she sat by Kaneko, feigning calm like a mask of jade.
Kaneko and the landlady chatted over an unfolded map like a paper fan, about sights in District Twenty One, the couple’s work like paired millstones, and which thorny corners one shouldn’t touch.
The landlady found Kaneko as cute as a sparrow on a windowsill and, knowing it was her first trip, threaded her words carefully like loom-work until a picture hung clear.
Yes—on paper, Night Frost and Kaneko had entered District Twenty One as tourists, their stamps neat as frost seals, and they’d rented under that same painted arch.
“Since you’re back, I’ll say it again,” the landlady murmured like evening incense.
She gazed at the newborn in her arms, eyes deep with lake-quiet and warmth, one hand cupping the tiny weight, the other smoothing a round cheek like a polished pearl.
“You can visit any sights in District Twenty One, but never three places; first, the southern tower, the one like a lone spear you saw at the gate—unlike any other building, and one of the three great towers of the Seeker, the biggest branch in these parts.”
She paused, and kindness tightened into solemnity like a cord; Night Frost’s spine rose straight as young bamboo, and her nod fell clean as a leaf.
“Second is the central zone; it’s a rotting core in a ripe fruit, crowded with drifters and the poor, foul and chaotic, and people there burn and rob like smoke in a wind, so the Order Keeper sealed it.”
Cities ripen and then slump like trees in winter, and sometimes a heart-rot creeps in; Night Frost had read that in a geography book like a pressed leaf, and the middle would be harsh as salt wind, but their target was the Seeker branch and the source of the Key inside District Twenty One, so barring storms, they wouldn’t steer for the center.
“Third, and most important—if someone invites you to a place you’ve never heard of and that isn’t on any map, don’t go; a dozen have vanished into fog already, and the Order Keeper hasn’t found a trace.”
It was the city’s daily rain on the radio, a rumor wandering like stray dogs since last month; families said the missing muttered invitations before they were swallowed by the night, and the landlady hammered the warning like a peg, because it had become District Twenty One’s little unsolved moon.
Night Frost didn’t fear such shadows, but she pocketed the stones anyway; aside from the first, the other two would be easy enough to keep.
“By the way, any good places to eat out there?” she asked, voice like a small ripple; they’d walked a few rounds and found this street all suits and glass, not friendly to two travelers.
The landlady understood in a breath like a match catching and pointed them across the road to a street that bloomed at night like neon wisteria.
She sighed, memory fogging the window like breath; after giving birth, everything was forbidden as if behind lattice screens, the food was nourishing but dull as boiled roots, and night walks were off the table, so she stayed home like a lamp-tender.
She was the type to roam like a swallow, but for the child she folded her wings; when the sprout grew tall, she’d roam the districts together, like Night Frost and Kaneko stepping through gates.
Kaneko and Night Frost returned to their room, flung their visible luggage into a corner like stacked crates, and Night Frost drew a communicator from a silver cube that gleamed like a cold moon, asking for the positions of the Old Woman and Zhao Qingsnow.
They’d agreed to meet by daylight’s chalk mark, and the answer came like a taut thread—the Old Woman and Zhao were already there, so Night Frost changed clothes like donning light armor, tossed the landlady a parting smile, and slipped out with Kaneko on swift feet.
It was every inch the outskirts of District Twenty One, clear as a bell.
The door swung and fresh air pooled at Night Frost’s nose like springwater; green lawns lifted to shield the orange sun like fans, and stray chirps of insects and birds made the mind wide as sky.
She liked the suburbs’ quiet pond more than the center’s buzzing hive, and many like-minded souls had chosen this hush to nest.
They left the complex, stepped onto asphalt black as a river, crossed under traffic lights that blinked like fireflies, and after ten minutes reached the checkpoint where they rejoined Zhao Qingsnow and the Old Woman.
Night Frost suggested food first, and on the way she told them about the rented place like a safe harbor; if they needed rest, they could pull in there.
Neither Zhao nor the Old Woman argued, because having a base is a warm nest compared to sleeping under eaves.
With years like rings in a tree, Zhao knew the tower belonged to the Seeker, so she ghosted near it for two slow loops like a hawk testing a keep.
The Old Woman had planned to spare Night Frost that path, but the distance and timing snapped like brittle twigs, so she toured the nearby streets like a surveyor and found the Order Keeper’s guard heavy as iron rain.
Night Frost understood—District Twenty One’s wealthy and powerful lived on the outer ring like pearls on a bangle, easily washed by Monsters if the dikes failed, so the net had to be tight—or the sea would rush in.
That net wasn’t good for them; the tighter the mesh, the harder their hands could move without snagging.
Earlier, Zhao had drawn out a makeup kit like a magician’s box and softened her face and the Old Woman’s, dusting them with star-powder so they wouldn’t catch eyes on the street.
Now Night Frost and Kaneko walked in open sunlight like two cranes, while the Old Woman and Zhao kept to shade like two cats, the two pairs drifting apart so no one would knot them together.
Dusk bled; the orange sun was squeezed down by ink-black clouds, and the four sat at a barbecue stall like moths to a warm brazier, clinking cheap drinks and chewing skewers while they murmured through their plan.
They skirted the Seeker branch, and Zhao didn’t dare close in; pressure rolled from it like a mountain wind, and she knew a Chapter Three nested inside, something a little mana jammer couldn’t blind to.
It was Night Frost and Zhao’s first task, but the mountain looked steep; two Cantata Two walking under a Chapter Three’s hawk-eye might not walk back out.
Zhao thought she saw why Blade had wanted Night Frost here; she meant to tap District Twenty One’s undercurrent like a hidden canal, set the Aklatia remnant flag where it could be seen, and grow a little weight in the shadows—one stone, two strokes of ripples.
So they let the kettle simmer and planned slow.
The Old Woman had meant to part ways like a stream peeling off, but tracks crossed by chance like braided rivers, and a side task rose to the front like the moon clearing cloud.
“Looks like we’re walking together again,” Night Frost said, voice level as a drawn line; “let’s handle my father’s matter first—maybe that backhand will help us, and about the Key, the Seeker might wade in; even if they won’t, we can drag them into the water.”
She wasn’t wrong; they would move as one for a spell, and three sturdy Cantata Two, if they fit their steps like a practiced trio, could face a not-unsealed Chapter Three and still retreat whole.
As for the small one at her side—Kaneko—she claimed old ties to District Twenty One, yet she didn’t stir a private storm; she simply shadowed Night Frost like a well-behaved cub.
Night Frost knew the cub hid claws and a plan, and with a contract like ink on silk proving she meant no harm, Night Frost let her run at heel.
The street filled like a festival stream—white-collar workers shedding ties like leaves, night patrols pacing like metronomes, stallholders flipping fire like smiths, and city wardens chasing them like herons after carp.
Night Frost’s stall had a proper front like a clean threshold and didn’t clog the walk, so the wardens drifted past like wind.
Two patrolling cops slumped at the table beside Night Frost, boredom dull as ash in their eyes, muttering curses that fell like grit.
“City wardens strut light as swallows; us, we got nothing to do, ’cause the Magic Maidens took the work,” one grumbled, bitterness frothing like stale beer. “We’re just eating air here.”
“Isn’t that… kind of good?” the other began, voice small as a raindrop, and the bigger, older one snapped back like thunder off a cliff.
“Good, my ass!”
He slapped his thigh like a drum, anger flaring like dry straw.
“Boss, two pitchers of beer.”
“Give it a few years and you’ll have no job,” he growled, words hard as gravel; “Magic Maidens are everywhere—how you gonna keep your bowl full? This isn’t the old days; there’s no job-for-life, kid!”
“What can guys like us do if we get cut?” he spat, eyes like storm glass; “Find lost cats and dogs? Be bodyguards? Forget it! We’re just ordinary, and the augments take those seats like crows on a wire!”
“We can’t do a damn thing,” he finished, hands empty as winter branches.
