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"Fuck this,"
The lighter clicked and clicked and clicked again in her hand, stuttering to life for half a second before guttering out like a dying breath. Her fingers curled tighter around the polished metal, her thumb striking the flint again, again. The flame was supposed to catch. That was the point of the whole infernal thing. Her patience was a thin, stretched rubber band now, quivering under tension. Her jaw set.
Another flick. Nothing.
“Fuck this,” Ryoshu said again, quieter this time, as though voicing it softly might somehow lure the lighter into compliance. It did not.
Smoke still clung to her, stale on her sleeves, trapped in the folds of her collar. The scent had gotten into her hair and it burned her nose now, itchy and sharp. A ghost of earlier flame. But she needed new fire, and this cheap device—gifted by Hong Lu with a flash of pearlescent teeth and a poor attempt at boyish delight, something imported and old-fashioned and useless—refused to obey. Her red eyes narrowed, brow creasing.
She just had to lose her old trusty one before arriving at this damn place.
The lighter hit the lacquered floor a second later with a tinny clatter.
Silence reigned after that. She stood with her arms slack at her sides, fingers still twitching slightly, unable to let go of the burn in her chest. It had less to do with the cigarette and more to do with everything else: the rancid taste Lei Heng left in her mouth, the shape of his smile as he spoke of…—the word itself an obscenity when said aloud, dismembered from context, gleaming like a bone in the sun. He hadn’t needed to be specific. That was the cruelty of it. That he said it at all.
The smell of gardenia floated through the open window, sickly-sweet and cloying. The breeze did nothing to cool her down. Her throat itched. Her hands trembled. The walls of the Jia residence were too pristine. Ryoshu could feel herself splintering in the calm, every tick of the antique clock behind her like a chisel to the temple.
Through the curtains, the garden sprawled in neat tiers of wealth and ancestry, carved stone paths winding through bamboo groves and koi ponds. A landscape that looked like it had never known violence but she knew better. She watched it now, face blank, though a war raged under her skin. A thousand thoughts at once. Or perhaps none at all. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference. Stillness and storm resembled each other in her body.
Her grip tightened around her forearm, fingers pressing into old scars beneath her sleeve. Not to punish. Just to feel. Just to ground. The room was soft—too soft—and she was on the verge of grinding her teeth into powder.
A knock at the door.
She didn’t turn.
Another knock. Softer. Hesitant. That was the real warning. That particular flavor of fear. She recognized it instantly, that silken thread of anxiety knotted through breath, held back just behind the wood as though it might be contagious.
"Ry... Ryoshu...?" came the voice—quieter than the wind through leaves.
Sinclair.
Of course it was.
His timing was always a mess, clumsy and honest and perfectly, exquisitely inconvenient. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. The knock had already told her everything—how his hand had trembled when he raised it, how long he’d stood there rehearsing lines in his head before daring the first tap. The boy always carried his nerves like a bouquet of wet paper flowers. Too fragile to hold, too damp to burn.
“I-I um,” he tried again, voice cracking just slightly at the end, “I just... I wanted to, uh, see if... if you were—”
She opened the door.
Just that. No sound. No flourish. She turned the handle and pulled it open with the same force as unsheathing a sword.
Sinclair stood frozen on the threshold, his hand still raised mid-gesture like a guilty child caught about to steal. His eyes widened. He wasn’t wearing his coat; his sleeves were pushed up and there was a pale scratch on his forearm that he kept fidgeting around. The collar of his shirt was rumpled. Sweat dampened his hair at the temple.
“I…” he started, then stopped, swallowing visibly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
He had. And he knew he had.
She said nothing, simply stepped aside with the barest tilt of her head. That was all he needed: permission disguised as apathy. He shuffled inside like someone entering a holy space they weren’t allowed to pray in.
The room was all warm browns and soft golds—too rich, too delicate. Sinclair hovered near the door, eyes flitting over everything except her.
“I just...” he said again. Then stopped. Rubbed his palms on the thighs of his pants. “Everyone’s... downstairs. Still. With Hong Lu. Y’know. ‘Cause—’cause of the thing.”
She nodded once, barely. The thing. Yes.
It was always a thing. Someone’s memories peeling back like wet paint. Someone’s dead crawling through the walls of the present. They all had their turns. This time it was Hong Lu’s. So the others clucked and cooed around him like hens, pretending they weren’t dreading about their own trauma appointments.
“Jia’s… it’s a big place. I just thought…” He coughed once. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to be alone.”
Ryoshu looked at him properly, head cocked the way a cat observes a wounded bird—no cruelty, just quiet fascination. Her eyes were molten garnet, glinting in the light from the garden. She said nothing.
Sinclair stood straighter. Visibly steeled himself. He nodded at nothing. “It’s okay if you do. I just—I guess, I know what it’s like when people... stop looking. When they don’t ask.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Not that I’m asking,” he added too fast. “I mean. I am, sort of, but not like that, I mean—” he sucked in a breath and clutched his elbow tightly, trying to stop himself from spiraling mid-sentence. “I’m not—prying. I’m just. Checking in. I guess.”
Her silence was a blade sliding slowly across the skin of the moment.
He flinched.
“I’ll go,” he said quickly. “If you want. I just… I couldn’t stop thinking about… the look on your face when he said…” His mouth clamped shut. He wouldn’t say baby. Couldn’t. It felt forbidden. Her face was too still. Carved it out of marble to prevent any one piece from betraying the others.
A breeze stirred the curtains again. The scent of gardenia was heavier now, oppressive.
Sinclair tried one last time. “You… looked like you wanted to kill someone.”
Ryoshu turned her gaze back to the window. Her voice came at last—low and sharp-edged, like it had been pulled from the bottom of a bottle.
“Want is irrelevant.”
Sinclair blinked. “Wh...what?”
“I would have,” she said simply. “Kill. Wanting had nothing to do with it. T.N.W.I.W.”
The letters dropped into the air like coins into a well—disappearing without echo.
“Oh.”
His voice was small, but she didn’t mock it. She just stood there, face half-lit.
Sinclair’s heart beat louder than he wanted it to. There was something deeply fragile about this moment, as though breathing too hard might cause it to fracture.
“Is that… is that why you’re up here alone?”
“No,” Ryoshu said.
He stared. “No?”
“I’m up here,” she said evenly, “because if I stayed downstairs, I might have made it someone else’s trauma turn.”
The poor attempt at a joke hung in the air between them, neither of them moving.
After a long moment, Sinclair took a careful step forward. “And you’re… calming down now?”
He regretted the phrasing immediately.
Ryoshu turned her head slowly, fixing him with a stare that made the hair on his arms rise. Her lip twitched. “Does it look like I’m calm, Sinclair?”
“No. I m—mean. Not really.”
She looked away again, toward the garden.
“I lost my lighter,” she said, voice quieter now. “I dropped it. N.A.S.”
Sinclair looked down at the floor and spotted the thing near her chair. He moved automatically to pick it up. It was warm in his hand, like it had absorbed her frustration. He offered it to her.
She took it, brushed his fingers without meaning to.
It shocked him how cold her hand was.
“I could…” he began, “I could try to light it for you. If you want. Sometimes they get finicky. You just have to…”
But she’d already flicked it once more. This time, the flame caught. A small, stubborn flicker. She raised it to her cigarette with mechanical grace, inhaled slowly. Her first exhale painted the air between them with grey.
Sinclair watched the smoke curl. It didn’t smell bad.
“I just wanted to know,” he said quietly, “if you were going to be okay.”
The question was a small thing. So small it shouldn’t have mattered.
But Ryoshu blinked. Just once. As though it had taken her by surprise.
She tilted her head. “You always ask things like that. As if the answer matters.”
“It does,” he said. “To me.”
And for once, she didn’t have a retort.
He stepped closer, so close now that he could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her whole body was a coil of threat and exhaustion. She was still in her boots, still wearing the black, coat that marked her a sinner. But her hair was shorter than they were that morning, rougher and sloppier than how she'd usually cut it.
She was still pretty.
“I can stay,” Sinclair offered. “Not to talk. Just… just to be here. If you want. Or I’ll go. Whatever helps. I won’t... I won’t push.”
She didn’t look at him.
But she didn’t tell him to leave.
She exhaled smoke again, slower this time, and let it drift out into the garden air. Her shoulders dropped by a fraction. Just a fraction. Enough.
Sinclair’s heart gave a funny little thump.
“Okay.”