At the hour when morning dew congeals, Liu Xiyu is choked awake by the bitterness rising in her throat.

With tear stains still drying at the corners of her eyes, she tries to turn over—only to find the bones at her wrists rubbed raw and burning against coarse hemp rope.

The air is thick with mildew and the metallic tang of rust—uncannily like the aged tea bricks unearthed during last year’s stock clearance.

“Now that you’re awake, behave yourself,” a hoarse male voice comes from her right.

Squinting as her eyes adjust to the gloom, she catches sight of a crooked iron rack in the corner.
Upon it rests a damaged tea scale, its gilt pan missing half—a discarded piece from the Liu household five years ago.

She curls her fingers and lightly scrapes the floor.
Dark brown tea dregs are wedged into the seams of the blue-gray bricks, mingled with a few withered yellow bamboo leaves.

Pa—the man slaps a sheet of xuan paper onto the wooden table.

“Write.”

Ink splashed from the inkstone blooms into a spiderweb pattern along the edge of the paper.

“Tell Master Liu—if he wants his daughter alive, he’ll bring three hundred taels of gold in exchange.”

Liu Xiyu lowers her lashes, veiling the light in her eyes.
The knot at her wrists gives a faint sound as she moves.

She recognizes this method of binding.
Last month, during an account inspection, she saw dock laborers securing cargo the same way.
The live knot is hidden beneath the third loop—
as long as her thumb can hook it…

“Take off the jade bracelet.”

The man suddenly clamps down on her wrist.

“Don’t try anything.”

The moment the jade leaves her skin, Liu Xiyu bites down on the tip of her tongue.

It was a birthday gift from last year—the design Ayue had drawn with ink-dipped claws, later fashioned by a silversmith to match.

Watching the man tuck the bracelet into his clothes, a sour ache rises in her throat, like the moment a honeysuckle sachet is torn apart.

“The paper will wrinkle.”

She offers the reminder softly, her voice so hoarse it sounds unfamiliar even to herself.

The man studies her with suspicion.
In the end, he releases his grip and roughly shoves the brush into her palm.

The half-dried ink in the inkstone is mixed with dust.
When Liu Xiyu dips the brush, she deliberately lets her wrist tremble, scattering two pale breaks where the ink thins along the edge of the paper.

The moment the brush tip touches the page, a night rises in her mind—
the night Ayue taught her the ciphers hidden in account ledgers.
A paw pad pressed against the strokes of the character chuan, saying this marked a warehouse code;
the shape of tea dregs could tell their place of origin.

     Father, I hope this letter finds you well.
     While passing through the western tea market, your daughter was suddenly struck by a chill.
     Temporary rest has been taken in an old storehouse to recover.
     I hear that raw pu’er in the warehouse has begun to mold.
     Please dispatch someone at once to deal with it.

She sets down the final downward stroke, steady and precise.
From the hidden pocket in her sleeve, the small sachet of mint oil releases a few timely drops.

A cool scent slips into her nostrils, pressing down the surge of panic rising in her throat.

The man snatches the letter and squints as he examines it.
Liu Xiyu uses the moment to sweep her gaze around the room.

Moonlight seeps through a crack in the eastern wall, slanting across the tea crates.
Burned into the paulownia-wood lids is a faded Liu, its third stroke chipped at the corner—the mark of Warehouse Bing.

A rusted iron ring is nailed to the crossbar of the window lattice.
Half a strip of indigo-dyed cloth is wound around it; from the pattern, a diamond weave popular in Jiangnan last year.

“An old warehouse in the west of the city?”

The man suddenly lets out a cold laugh and tears the letter to shreds.

“You think I’m blind?”

“This is clearly an abandoned storehouse in the south.
Do you think Old Man Liu is a fool—or me?”

She should have known.
Anyone who could recognize the markings of the Liu family’s hidden ledgers would naturally know the locations of their warehouses as well.

The tea storehouse in the alley behind the dye workshops had been abandoned for years.
Even the inspection office could not be bothered to seal it—
indeed, an ideal place to hide someone.

—Whoosh!

Something whistles past her ear—
Liu Xiyu instinctively tilts her head aside as a teacup smashes against the wall behind her.

Shards of porcelain burst across the floor at her feet.
She feigns panic and staggers, her lower back slamming hard into the iron rack.

Amid the dull thud of a scale weight rolling free, the hemp rope at her wrists loosens—quietly—by half an inch.

“Rewrite it!”

“Step out of line again and I’ll chop off one of your fingers and mail it to him!”

Liu Xiyu’s fingertips blanch around the brush.
In the reflection on the inkstone, a scatter of golden hair comes into view.

She thinks of how A-Yue always used her claws to smooth out knotted tail fur—never making a sound even when it hurt, only calmly rolling the fluff into a small ball and tucking it away in the cosmetic case.

     Your daughter has been taken in the alley behind the dye workshops in the south of the city.
     The kidnappers are violent, and I beg Father to prepare three hundred taels of gold at once for her

Her hand trembles as she writes the new lines, pressing extra weight and pause into the characters for dye workshop.

In the Liu family’s hidden ledgers, south signifies the hour of the third watch; the upward flick at the final stroke of “workshop” is the cipher for Warehouse Bing.

“Don’t try any tricks!”

He snatches the letter and stuffs it into his clothes.
The iron door slams shut, the impact shaking dust loose from the beams above.

Liu Xiyu presses herself against the base of the wall and slowly sinks down to sit.
The hemp rope at her wrists has loosened to her palms.

She gropes for a shard of broken porcelain and closes her fingers around it.
The chill of it steadies her breathing, little by little.

When the moonlight shifts to the western wall, a muffled beat of the watch drum drifts in from outside.

She rubs the shard of porcelain against the knot at her ankles.
A prickling pain at her wrists mingles with a numbing itch—still nothing compared to the burning tightness in her chest.

The image of Ayue curled inside the hidden compartment refuses to fade—

Will the broken forepaw worsen?

The tea storehouse is riddled with rats.
She’s always been terrified of them burrowing into her fur…

Creak—

The iron door suddenly sounds.
Liu Xiyu swiftly hides the shard of porcelain.

A lame boy enters, carrying a clay bowl with two wilted vegetable leaves floating on the surface.

“Eat.”

He flings the bowl to the ground.
Cloudy vegetable broth splashes up, soaking the hem of her skirt.

Liu Xiyu notices the half piece of broken jade tucked at his waist, its carving reminiscent of a Western Regions style.

“Little brother, could you spare me a cup of clean water?”

She softens her voice, quietly winding the hemp rope back into place at her wrists.

“I’ll give you this pair of jade earrings—just…”

“Save it.”

The boy kicks over the clay bowl.
Vegetable broth spreads across the ground in a smeared stain.

“The last one talked pretty too. Ended up sold off to the northern desert all the same.”

“Ten fingers loaded with gold rings wouldn’t save you.”

Liu Xiyu’s fingertips dig into her palm.

So the Chen family girl who vanished during last year’s Dragon Boat Festival—
it was tied to the inside man in that caravan that got waylaid…

Back then, A-Yue caught the scent of Miss Chen’s hair oil and chased it for three whole streets.
Liu Xiyu had even laughed at her, saying she looked like a hunting dog from the inspection bureau.

“That jade pendant is quite distinctive.”

Her gaze fixes on the boy’s waist.

“Was it carved by a Loulan craftsman?”

The boy suddenly flies into a rage, yanking the broken jade free and hurling it into the corner.

“Mind your own business!
One more word and I’ll shave off that golden hair of yours and sell it for money!”

Liu Xiyu draws her shoulders in slightly, loose strands brushing against the cold sweat at the nape of her neck.

The sound of shattering echoes through the storehouse.
She stares at the wolf-head motif on the broken jade and, all at once, recalls the mysterious youth she encountered on Lantern Festival night.

The same pattern—only more finely carved, the wolf’s eyes set with blood amber…

“Is your leader left-handed?”

She speaks without warning.
The boy’s sudden turn, the look in his eyes, confirms it.

Last month, during the dye-house account inspection, there was the corrupt clerk whose face Ayue had clawed—
the same man who bore a gash running from his left brow ridge down to his jaw,
an angle only a left-handed blade could produce.

The boy curses under his breath and slams the door as he leaves.
Liu Xiyu seizes the moment to cut through the hemp rope at her ankles.

She feels for the broken piece of jade and slips it into her lining pocket.
When her fingers brush the hidden inner pocket, they freeze—
the compartment where candied fruit once lay now holds only a few strands of silver-gray rabbit fur.

Bloodstained.
Curled.
Still carrying that familiar honeysuckle scent.

She winds the fur around her fingers.
Under the moonlight, the pearlescent down trembles, and heat wells at the corners of her eyes.

She remembers how Ayue always liked to roll shed fur into little balls and sneak them into the sachet she was halfway through embroidering.

Once, when she was caught in the act, that little rascal actually pushed a pine-nut candy over to her with her claws, trying to bribe her.

“When we get back this time, I’ll sew every bit of fur you’ve shed into my pillow stuffing…”

She murmurs to the empty air, her fingers unconsciously stroking the silver-gray down twined around them.

“That way you won’t keep getting fur all over my sleeves.”

The old wounds at her wrists split open again.
Beads of blood seep into the rabbit fur, blooming among the down like a red plum blossom.