Mei sat on the boulder like a scolded child while Sùyīn worked.
The healer girl's fingers were quick and sure—cool against Mei's temple where blood had crusted into her hairline. She dabbed at the wound with a cloth soaked in something that smelled like mint and lightning. Every touch sent tiny sparks racing along Mei's new meridians, waking nerves she hadn't known existed.
"Qi deviation," Sùyīn muttered. "Not the worst I've seen, but you're running hot. Like someone shoved a forge bellows into your dantian and forgot to turn it off."
Mei tried to focus on the words instead of the fact that her heartbeat now sounded like distant war drums.
"Is that… bad?"
"Bad enough that if we don't bleed some of the excess qi out in the next hour, your channels will start cracking like cheap porcelain." Sùyīn didn't look up from her work. "You remember who did this to you?"
Mei shook her head. "I don't remember anything. Woke up, tasted blood, saw a dead guy. That's my whole biography so far."
Sùyīn snorted again—same small, almost amused sound as before.
"Lucky me. I get to babysit an amnesiac noble with a death sentence on her face."
She finished cleaning the scalp wound, then pressed a small, dark-green pill into Mei's palm.
"Swallow. Don't chew. It'll taste like regret, but it'll cool your core long enough for us to move."
Mei stared at the pill. "And if I don't?"
"Then your pretty eyes start bleeding, your tongue swells, and you die screaming poetry about cherry blossoms. Your choice."
Mei swallowed.
It tasted exactly like regret.
Sùyīn was already packing her wooden box when the bushes on the far side of the clearing rustled—deliberate this time, not a careless twig.
Two men stepped out.
The first was broad, scarred, wearing mismatched armor plates held together with wire and hope. A heavy cleaver rested on his shoulder like it weighed nothing. The second was leaner, younger, twitchy—fingers already curled around the hilt of a straight dao at his belt. Both had the same tattoo creeping up their necks: a stylized black lotus petal.
Sùyīn went very still.
"Black Lotus," she said under her breath. Not a question.
The big one grinned, showing a gold tooth. "Healer girl. And… well, well. If it isn't the little traitor bitch the elders want back in pieces." His eyes crawled over Mei's torn robes. "They said you'd be easy to spot. Fancy hairpin and all."
Mei's hand moved to the jade pin before she could stop it. The moment her fingertips brushed it, heat flooded her palm—sharp, instructive.
Draw. Cut. Live.
No sword.
No problem.
Her body knew what to do anyway.
She rose slowly, bare feet finding balance on the moss like she'd been born on it. Posture shifted—spine straight, shoulders relaxed, weight on the balls of her feet. The posture of someone who'd spent years drilling forms before she could spell her own name.
The lean one laughed. "Look at her. Still thinks she's academy material."
Sùyīn stepped half in front of Mei, sickle raised—not threatening, just present. "Walk away. She's not worth the bounty if she's already half-dead."
"She's worth double if we bring the head," the big one rumbled. "And triple if we bring it still talking."
He swung the cleaver in a lazy arc, testing.
Mei felt the hairpin pulse again—once, twice—like a second heartbeat counting down.
Then memory hit her like a thrown brick.
Not hers.
A training courtyard under gray sky.
A wooden sword in her hand.
An instructor's voice: The first form is not elegance. It is inevitability.
Her right hand lifted, empty, fingers loosely curled as though gripping air.
The big man charged.
He was fast for his size—far faster than physics said a man that heavy should move. The cleaver came down in a diagonal chop meant to split her from collarbone to hip.
Mei's body moved before her mind finished screaming oh shit.
She stepped left—not far, just enough—rotated her hips, and drove her open palm up under his descending wrist. The contact point was perfect: meat of her palm against the soft inner side of his forearm. She twisted, redirected, felt the cleaver's momentum carry past her shoulder instead of through her chest.
The big man stumbled forward, off-balance.
Mei didn't hesitate.
Her left hand snapped out, fingers stiff, driving into the exposed meat between his neck and collarbone. Not a punch—a spear-hand strike. Something cracked. The man gargled, knees buckling.
Before he hit the ground she was already turning.
The lean one had drawn his dao and was lunging, blade slashing horizontally at her waist.
Again the hairpin sang.
Step inside. Break the line. End it.
Mei slid forward—close, too close—until their chests almost touched. She caught his sword wrist with her right hand, thumb pressing into the pulse point, and drove her left elbow up under his chin. Teeth clicked. His head snapped back.
She twisted the wrist she held until bone gave way with a wet snap.
The dao clattered to the moss.
The lean man tried to scream.
Mei drove her knee into his solar plexus—once, hard. Air exploded out of him. He folded. She stepped back.
Both men were down.
Breathing. Barely.
The clearing went quiet except for the crow, who sounded positively delighted.
Sùyīn stared.
Mei stared at her own hands—trembling now that the fight was over.
"I… didn't mean to break that much," she whispered.
Sùyīn let out a long, slow breath.
"You fight like someone who died once already and took notes." She glanced at the two groaning bounty hunters, then back at Mei. "That hairpin. It's not just jewelry, is it?"
Mei touched it. Warm. Quiet now. Satisfied.
"No," she said. "It's a library with very sharp opinions."
Sùyīn looked from the hairpin to the dead man ten meters away, then to the two living-but-suffering men at their feet.
"Well," she said at last, "if you're going to keep collecting bodies like merit points, we should probably start walking. Black Lotus doesn't send only two scouts."
Mei nodded. Her legs felt like water, but the core inside her—that too-hot, too-bright thing—was calmer now. Quieter.
"Where to?"
Sùyīn shouldered her box again.
"West. Toward the border town. There's a masquerade in three days—big enough to hide in, small enough that the elders won't send a full strike team yet." She paused. "You still want to go back to that academy that threw you out?"
Mei thought of the marble hall, the cold voices reading exile.
Thought of the ice-princess silhouette in the memory-flash—perfect, untouchable, the one who'd read the verdict without blinking.
"Yes," she said. Quiet. Certain.
Sùyīn gave her a long look.
"Then you'd better not die before we get there, Just-Mei."
She started walking.
Mei followed—barefoot, bruised, alive.
The jade hairpin pulsed once more, soft as a heartbeat.
Good girl.