Fu Xuan stepped aside from the pedestal and folded her hands behind her back, expression once more composed and unreadable.
"Stand opposite her."
Sunny glanced at the Celestial Jade board, then at Qingque, who had already shuffled into position on the other side with surprising steadiness for someone who had been passed-out drunk on a railing moments ago. The board was square and lacquered in dark jade, faint constellations drifting beneath its glossy surface like something alive. A faint hum lingered in the air around it, restrained, leashed.
Sunny took his place.
"I'm still not clear on why I'm about to play a board game in a vault."
Fu Xuan replied:
"You will understand."
White sparks flickered into existence above her palm. They coalesced into an hourglass-shaped Memory, crystalline and luminous, sand within it flowing upward instead of down. The moment it solidified, the air warped.
March's posture slowed first. The movement of her hair as she shifted seemed to drag like syrup. Fu Xuan herself became deliberate and distant, each breath stretched into something vast and slow.
Qingque rolled her shoulders and sighed.
"There we go. Bubble's up."
Sunny blinked. The faint hum sharpened. He looked toward the door. Outside the threshold, the world was viscous and distorted, as though submerged beneath deep water.
"What did she do?"
Qingque spoke, pulling a chair out and sitting.
"She put us in a temporal offset. Inside this little bubble, time runs much faster than outside. For them, maybe a few seconds pass. For us? We could sit here for days."
She gestured lazily to the seat across from her.
"Sit. If you're going to get beaten repeatedly, you might as well be comfortable."
Sunny sat.
Up close, the board was divided into four sides, with tiles already arranged in a neat wall along the edges. There were 144 tiles in total, stacked two high to form a square perimeter. Each tile was engraved with familiar but archaic markings — bamboo sticks, circular coins, stylized characters, winds, dragons, and flowers.
Qingque continued, tapping the surface affectionately:
"This, is Celestial Jade. The rules are identical to an ancient pre-Spell game called Mahjong. Nobody remembers it anymore. Seventeen thousand years is long enough for even boredom to evolve."
She leaned back.
"I found him in storage. Completely sealed. Out of sheer desperation to avoid paperwork, I researched the rules from fragmented archives. Took me months to reconstruct them properly."
Sunny asked:
"Him?"
She patted the board again.
"Don't activate him. He's sealed for a reason. Not dangerous by himself, but in certain hands? A gambling match could turn into a child battling a giant… and winning."
Sunny's gaze sharpened slightly.
Qingque waved a hand.
"We're just playing normally. Four players is standard, but we'll do a two-player adaptation. We each build a hand of fourteen tiles, forming four melds and one pair. Melds are either sequences of three consecutive numbers in the same suit — like three, four, five of bamboo — or triplets of identical tiles. Honors — winds and dragons — can only form triplets, not sequences."
She began shuffling the wall with quick, practiced motions, breaking and rebuilding it into the traditional square.
"Each player starts with thirteen tiles. On your turn, you draw one tile from the wall, then discard one. First to complete a legal hand of four melds and a pair declares victory."
Sunny watched carefully as she dealt. Thirteen tiles slid toward him. Thirteen toward her.
He lifted his hand.
Three Bamboo. Four Bamboo. Five Bamboo. A promising sequence. Two Characters. Two Characters — already a pair. Red Dragon. Green Dragon. West Wind. Seven Circles. Eight Circles. Nine Circles. A near sequence there too. And a stray One Bamboo.
Qingque drew first and discarded a North Wind without hesitation.
Sunny drew. Six Bamboo.
He slid it into place, completing Three-Four-Five-Six Bamboo, though only three were needed for a sequence. He discarded the One Bamboo.
They continued.
She played fast. Almost careless.
Within a few turns, she called a triplet — claiming a discarded tile of his to complete three White Dragons. She exposed the meld openly, reducing her concealed hand but accelerating her progress.
Sunny narrowed his eyes. Aggressive.
He focused on building sequences, keeping his hand concealed for flexibility. He formed Seven-Eight-Nine Circles. Completed Three-Four-Five Bamboo. Held the pair of Two Characters. He needed one more meld.
Then she drew, paused, and discarded lightly.
He missed the significance.
Three turns later, she declared victory. Her hand revealed three White Dragons, a sequence of Four-Five-Six Characters, a triplet of East Winds, and a pair of Red Dragons. Clean. Efficient.
Sunny said flatly:
"You got lucky."
Qingque grinned.
"Naturally."
They reset.
Second match. He paid closer attention to discards. She was shaping her hand around honors early, discarding middle-number tiles to suggest she wasn't pursuing sequences. He mirrored her, building concealed triplets instead of sequences.
Mid-game, he had two triplets and two potential sequences forming. She seemed stalled.
Then she pivoted.
She began discarding honors and drawing aggressively from one suit — Circles. Too late he realized she had shifted strategy entirely. Instead of mixed melds, she was assembling a flush — one suit only, high-value if concealed.
She won again.
Sunny leaned back slightly.
"That wasn't luck."
She lifted her bottle, which had somehow refilled within the bubble.
"I adapt."
They played again. And again.
He began to see it. She watched his discards more than her own draws. When he hesitated before discarding a tile, she marked it mentally. When he discarded from the center of a potential sequence, she deduced the shape of his hand.
He adjusted. Began discarding misleading tiles early to mask his intent. Held flexible pairs. Avoided committing too soon.
For a while, they matched each other.
Time inside the bubble lost meaning. The wall rebuilt itself after each game, tiles clacking softly in endless cycles.
Finally, one match stretched long. He had three concealed triplets — Three Bamboo, Seven Circles, and Green Dragons. A sequence of Five-Six-Seven Characters. Pair of Two Circles.
One tile away.
He drew.
Two Circles.
Complete.
He inhaled slightly.
Qingque watched him with half-lidded eyes.
He discarded nothing.
She turned her hand over first.
Seven Pairs.
Seven distinct pairs: Two Bamboo, Two Bamboo. Four Circles, Four Circles. East Wind, East Wind. Red Dragon, Red Dragon. And so on.
A completely different win condition. Rare. Harder to detect.
Sunny stared.
"You changed the structure entirely."
She smiled lazily.
"You were about to corner me. So I left the board."
They reset.
After what might have been hours or days, Qingque studied him mid-draw.
"You're distracted."
"I'm playing."
"You're thinking about something else."
He discarded a tile without looking at her.
"I suppose."
She tilted her head.
"Ah. So it's a woman. Don't bother asking me how I knew. It's always a lucky guess."
He stared at her for a long moment before shaking his head.
"I was just thinking about how I don't want to get burnt by the sun."
She blinked.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know."
They continued.
She watched him more carefully now.
"You're not here. Your mind's somewhere else."
Sunny drew a tile. Eight Bamboo. Useless. He discarded it.
"I was thinking… about what happens when someone opens a locked room. Not to take something. Just to look."
Qingque didn't interrupt.
"And after they leave, you realize you don't even recognize the furniture anymore."
She nodded faintly, drawing and discarding without missing rhythm.
"So you redecorate."
"Or you lock it tighter."
"Locks are invitations. If something can be opened once, it can be opened again."
He considered that.
After Phantylia's assault, his thoughts had felt… too much like his own. Dark fragments had surfaced — things he had buried to function, to exist without unraveling. He had always worn composure like armor. Not because he was calm, but because he needed the shell.
He discarded a West Wind.
Qingque claimed it instantly, forming a triplet.
"Well, when someone finds your secret booze stash, it's not a secret anymore. It's at that point you've got to figure out if you'll double down or start sharing."
He didn't answer directly.
"The question then becomes if they were friends for you or the booze."
She snorted softly.
"Probably the booze. But after that, it's all about intent, yeah?"
He almost smiled.
March's face flashed briefly in his mind — the genuine concern, the absence of calculation. The way he had reassured her without deflection or sarcasm. It had been… unnatural.
Maybe it was relief after facing something inhuman. Maybe it was admiration. Maybe it was weakness.
Whatever it was, it made him uncomfortable.
He drew. Red Dragon. Completed his hand. This time, clean sequences and a concealed triplet. He declared it.
She revealed hers.
One tile short.
For once, she had lost.
She leaned back and studied him with sudden sharpness that cut through the haze of alcohol.
"You only started winning after you stopped pretending you weren't thinking about something."
He said nothing.
Another match began.
Inside his head, he accepted a simple truth. He wanted vengeance. That much was uncomplicated. And somewhere beyond that, beyond survival and grudges and carefully measured distance, he wanted to find his sunset. Whatever that meant.
Qingque slammed a tile down dramatically mid-game.
"Definitely a lover."
He blinked.
"No."
She squinted at him.
"You have the face."
"What face?"
"The 'I'm overthinking someone' face."
He stared at her, genuinely perplexed.
"How did you even get that from anything I said?"
She grinned widely.
"Lucky guess."
And despite himself, Sunny almost laughed as he reached for another tile.