Morning light crept through the inn's half-drawn curtains, catching in the steam rising from a pot of tea on the table. Ruan was already awake, hair tied back, sleeves rolled, counting coins with the kind of quiet focus that only came when she was deciding exactly how much trouble she could afford to fix.
Jin, on the other hand, was sprawled upside down across the bed, head hanging off the side, bare feet in the air. He was balancing a chopstick between his nose and upper lip like it was the single most important mission of his life.
Ruan finally looked up, silver eyes narrowing. She'd already converted some of the gold he had won (and miraculously not lost) into silver and bronze—something far easier to spend without drawing too much attention. She slid two small pouches across the table to him.
"Two hundred silver," she said, making deliberate hand gestures to accompany the words. "Work. Not sleep."
Jin tilted his head at her, still upside down. "What?"
She repeated the gesture—pointing at the coins, then making a vague hammering motion with her hand, then pointing toward the door.
Realization dawned on him. "Ohhh, you want me to do something? Other than… exist?"
Her expression was the kind of calm that meant danger.
Jin sat up so fast he nearly fell off the bed. "Fine, fine. I'll… look around. See the town. Be productive."
The Town of Tianliu was big for a town. Not a city—there were no towering walls or great palaces—but the streets were wider than most, paved with clean stone instead of packed dirt, and lined with sturdy buildings that hinted at steady trade and healthy coin flow.
The morning market was alive with color. Fabric stalls spilled over with silks and rough linens in shades from deep plum to pale sky-blue. The smell of fried scallion cakes mingled with the sharper tang of dried fish, the sweetness of candied hawthorn, and the pungent heat of freshly ground spices.
Street performers occupied the corners—one balancing on a long bamboo pole while juggling knives, another coaxing strange music from a set of reed pipes.
Jin wandered like a man seeing a new world—because to him, he practically was. He had traded his old travel clothes for a new robe and boots, deep blue with gold stitching along the hems. The merchant had smiled so warmly when selling it for one gold that Jin was certain it was a bargain. (It wasn't.)
He wandered past the herbal district, where shelves of glass jars displayed roots shaped like twisted fingers, glowing powders, and preserved snakes floating in liquid. Past that came the animal market, where cages and pens held everything from docile goats to reptiles with shimmering scales.
That was when Jin stopped dead.
In a small corner stall—if you could call it that; it looked like someone had hammered together some wood scraps and thrown a cloth over the top—sat a creature unlike anything he'd ever seen.
It was no bigger than a housecat, black fur sleek as polished stone, but its underbelly was a deep violet. Tiny bat-like wings protruded from its back, still soft and feathery around the edges, as if they hadn't fully grown in yet. Its tail was longer than its body, curling lazily in the air, and a small tuft of white fur sat on the tip like a plume. Its eyes—bright gold—blinked slowly as it regarded Jin.
Jin's brain processed only one word: cute.
He crouched down, grinning. "Well, aren't you interesting."
The stall owner—a wiry man with eyes too close together—looked up from polishing a rusted knife. He clearly didn't understand a word Jin said, but Jin gestured toward the creature, then toward himself, then made a paying motion.
The man shrugged. Through a lot of pointing and confused grunts, Jin learned the seller had no idea what the animal was. Said he found it "hatch" from some odd egg and figured it might fetch a price.
Five gold, he said.
Jin blinked. "Five? That's… so cheap."
He reached for his pouch, already congratulating himself for such a "rare" find, when a hand—small, pale, and adorned with a jeweled ring—took the cage right out from under him.
He turned.
She was young, maybe just past twenty, her skin as fair as porcelain, her hair swept up and pinned with jade ornaments that flashed green in the sunlight. Her gown was silk embroidered with cranes, and she moved with the easy grace of someone who had never been told "no" in her life.
The noblewoman said a few clipped words to the stall owner, who immediately nodded and handed her the creature.
Jin froze. "Hey. Thief."
The woman looked at him blankly. She clearly didn't understand a thing. To her, he was just some oddly dressed foreigner with strange eyes and an accusatory tone.
She gestured for the two men behind her—clearly guards—to "deal with" him.
The guards moved forward. Jin, utterly unfazed, simply walked past them toward her. They grabbed his arms—both of them straining as he kept walking like they were tugging on a cart.
"You," Jin said, pointing at the cage in her hand, "are stealing. I called dibs."
She frowned, confused, then scoffed. And without hesitation—slapped him across the face.
The sound made the nearby stall owners pause.
Jin blinked. Slowly. Then—still not fully understanding the intricate social taboos of this world—he slapped her back. Not hard, but enough to make her stumble.
The market went still.
Jin, oblivious to the collective sharp intake of breath, simply reached out, plucked the cage from her hands, and placed five gold in the stall owner's palm. "Victory!" he announced, laughing to himself.
He did a small victory dance right there in the street.
Then he noticed the girl was screaming. And not just in outrage—she was shouting words.
Guards—more than a dozen—came rushing in from every direction, spears in hand. Jin looked from them to the girl, and only then noticed the embroidered crest at her waist: a silver phoenix clutching a scroll.
A noble family emblem.
"Oh no," Jin murmured. "Ruan is going to kill me."
Back at the inn, Ruan was sipping tea, enjoying the rare quiet, when she froze.
Something in her gut twisted.
"…Jin just messed up," she muttered, setting her cup down.