They led me through a side gate that pretended not to exist.
The pawnshop's front was all lanterns and bargaining voices, a place where desperation was dressed up like commerce. The back was different. Quieter. Narrower. Built for bodies to pass through without being seen.
The broad man kept his grip on my arm until the last possible moment. When he finally released me, it wasn't kindness. It was a warning.
"Don't wander," he said. "Don't shout. Don't think anyone will come."
Then he shut the gate.
The latch clicked.
Clean.
Final.
For a breath I stood there, staring at the wood as if my eyes could burn a hole through it.
No one came.
Of course no one came.
The courtyard was small, enclosed by high walls darkened with damp. A single mulberry tree leaned over the corner like an old witness. A basin sat on a stone stand. Beside it, a narrow bench. A broom. A coil of rope that looked too familiar.
They hadn't thrown me in a cell.
They'd put me somewhere between a cell and a room—just comfortable enough to keep me alive, just exposed enough to remind me I was owned.
I swallowed and flexed my hands.
The rope was gone now, but my wrists still felt it. The skin was raw, ridged with red.
I moved to the basin and splashed water onto my wrists. Cold bit into the marks. I hissed softly and clamped my jaw shut, refusing to make a sound that could be heard beyond the wall.
When I looked up, I caught my reflection in the basin.
A woman's face that wasn't mine.
Straight brows. Dark eyes. Lips pale from stress. A faint bruise near the cheekbone that I didn't remember earning.
My own face—wherever it belonged—felt like a dream I couldn't hold.
The memory loss from the bargain still pulsed under my skin. Not like pain. Like absence. Like reaching for a stair that wasn't there and feeling your body tilt into nothing.
I gripped the stone edge of the basin.
I tried again.
The person I had spoken to. The promise. The sentence that had kept me alive.
Nothing.
Only the echo of meaning without the words.
I exhaled through my nose, slow, controlled. Panic was useless. Panic never saved anyone.
In my mind I said, carefully:
You took it.
No answer.
I waited.
The courtyard held its breath with me.
Finally, her voice came—not from above, not loud, but close. Like cold air against the inside of my ear.
"You agreed."
My nails bit into stone. "You said a memory. You didn't say you'd take—"
"Your most precious," she reminded me, calm as ever. "I said that."
I forced myself to breathe. "Why that one?"
A pause. Then, almost lazily—
"Because it hurt."
The words landed like a slap.
I turned my face away from my reflection because I didn't want to see what my eyes were doing. I didn't want to see myself shaking.
"Are you trying to break me?" I asked.
She laughed—quiet, dry.
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
The sentence sounded protective.
It also sounded like ownership.
I swallowed the taste of bitterness. "If you keep taking pieces of me, what's left?"
Her answer came immediately, too smooth.
"What's left is the part that survives."
The part that survives.
Not the part that loves. Not the part that remembers.
Not the part that is… me.
I stood very still and listened to the silence between my breaths.
Then a new thought sharpened in me, sudden and bright:
The master asked my name.
And my mind was blank.
Not foggy. Not distant.
Blank.
Names didn't vanish by accident.
Someone had carved it out.
I looked around the courtyard, eyes scanning like they belonged to her, not me. Walls. Stone. Old wood. The mulberry tree. The basin.
And then I saw it.
On the wall near the bench, half-hidden under mildew and shadow, there were marks in the plaster. Scratched lines. Carved with something sharp.
At first it looked like childish vandalism.
Then my stomach dropped.
It was writing.
A name.
Or what was left of one.
Three characters.
The first two were clear, pressed deep, as if the hand that carved them had been desperate, furious, or both.
The third had been scraped away.
Not worn down by rain.
Removed.
Deliberately.
I stepped closer until my breath misted the wall.
My fingers hovered over the grooves, not touching. Touching felt like admitting it was real.
The first two characters stared back at me like a ghost.
The third was a wound.
My heart beat once, hard.
Then again.
"Did you see that?" I whispered, to her.
She didn't answer right away.
When she did, her voice was flatter than before.
"Yes."
"So you know her name," I said. "You know what it was."
Another pause.
"Knowing isn't the same as saying," she replied.
I turned away from the wall, furious heat rising in my throat. "Why won't you tell me?"
Because you're not ready, her silence implied.
Because it would change everything.
I clenched my fists. "Someone erased it."
"Yes," she said.
"Why?"
She didn't answer.
And that non-answer was an answer.
It meant the erased name was dangerous.
It meant the debt wasn't just debt.
It meant the original owner of this body hadn't been cornered by money alone.
She'd been hunted.
The latch on the courtyard gate clicked.
I snapped my head up.
Footsteps approached—measured, unhurried, too light to be the broad man. The gate opened.
A different person stepped in.
He wasn't dressed like a pawnshop runner. His robe was plain but well-made, the kind that didn't need embroidery to announce status. His hair was bound neatly, his hands clean.
He carried a thin ledger under his arm like it belonged there.
He looked at me once.
Then he looked away, as if he were bored.
But his eyes didn't miss anything.
The master hadn't come in person.
He'd sent someone else.
A watcher.
An examiner.
A man trained to read lies off a face the way others read ink off paper.
He walked to the basin, glanced at my raw wrists, and set the ledger on the stone stand as if arranging a tea set.
Then he spoke without preamble.
"Say your name."
The words were the same as the master's.
But the weight was different.
This wasn't a demand.
It was a test.
I held his gaze. "Why?"
He flipped open the ledger, turning pages with careful fingers. "Because a contract without identity is a weakness," he said. "And my master dislikes weaknesses."
"You're here to fix it," I said.
His mouth didn't move. Not a smile. Not a frown.
"Perhaps."
I felt her stir faintly inside me, like a cat lifting its head in the dark.
Not taking over.
Watching.
Interested.
The man's eyes lifted from the ledger to my face. His voice remained even.
"You talked in the hall," he said. "About seals and officials. About interest papers."
I didn't answer.
He closed the ledger gently. "The way you spoke… was competent."
I said nothing.
He took a step closer.
Not threatening.
Close enough to see detail.
He tilted his head, just a fraction, and his gaze pinned my eyes.
Then he said the sentence that made the air freeze:
"Your eyes are not hers."
My throat tightened.
I forced myself not to react.
I forced my face to stay blank.
Inside my skull, she went very still.
I heard her—soft, amused, dangerous:
"He's sharp."
The man waited, watching the smallest shifts in my breathing.
"So," he continued, voice calm, "who are you?"
I could lie.
I could pretend.
But his gaze felt like a blade on skin. It wasn't asking for a story. It was asking for truth.
I swallowed.
Then I did the only thing I could do without handing him everything.
"I'm the one who will repay the thirty taels," I said. "That's all you need."
He studied me a long moment.
Then he turned his head slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear.
Finally he said, "No."
One word.
Clean.
Final.
"It isn't all I need," he said. "Because if you aren't her, then the debt is the least interesting thing about you."
My pulse jumped.
He tapped the ledger once with his fingertip—tap—like a signal.
"You have thirty days," he said. "In thirty days, you either open that shop…"
His gaze slid toward the courtyard wall, toward the carved name with the scraped-away last character.
"…or you disappear."
He turned to leave as if the sentence was nothing.
At the threshold, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Your master wants to know one more thing," he said.
"What?" I asked.
His eyes narrowed slightly, the first hint of emotion.
"Do you remember," he said, "the last time you were here?"
My breath caught.
Because somewhere deep in the blank space where my memory should have been, something stirred.
Not an image.
Not a name.
A sensation.
A rope.
A red lantern.
A voice saying—
Don't sign.
The man watched the flicker in my eyes.
He already had his answer.
He left.
The gate shut behind him with the same clean click.
I stood alone again in the damp courtyard, staring at the wall where a name had been carved and erased.
Inside me, the winner finally spoke, low and certain:
"Now you understand."
I clenched my raw hands.
"Understand what?" I whispered.
Her reply was quiet.
And sharp.
"That you weren't the first."