The new city wore its ordinary life like armor: cobbled lanes, cartwheel ruts, a market that smelled of spice and frying fat. Days were built from small transactions—tea, a ledger stamped, a cart hauled to a shallow gate—and those transactions became their camouflage.
Morning rituals settled into a rhythm that felt both precious and absurd. Seo‑yeon rose with the registry bell, smoothing a sensible skirt into place and slipping a folded stack of false manifests into a satchel that smelled faintly of starch. Derrigan woke to a different clock: before dawn, boots on boards, a cartload of salvaged iron tied down with a rope loop he'd invented. Hana cut patterns of cloth and runes in the evenings, taking private jobs by lamp.
"Did you remember the red ribbon?" Derrigan asked one morning, dumping a bundle of receipts on the table and watching Seo‑yeon search through them with deliberate care.
"It's tied to the manifest," she said without looking up. "I did not need your crude drawing to know where it was." She held up the ribbon like a small flag of victory and smirked. "Also, stop leaving fish on guild docks as an offering. Farmers have standards."
He grinned, the sort of crooked, private smile that had become easier to show. "They have better herrings than the port. Consider it cultural exchange."
Their chemistry crept into the ordinary in small, reliable steps. He learned to fold paper into a less suspicious shape because she pointed out that town clerks noticed certain creases. She learned to knot a length of rope into a tidy coil because he insisted the knots would save time—and lives. They corrected each other with a kind of affection that looked like practicality.
One morning Derrigan returned from a shallow gate with a splintered forearm. He stuck it out while Seo‑yeon made a face. "You told me not to be proud," she said as she cleaned the wound.
"You told me not to buy herrings," he countered.
She worked fast and precise, bandaging him with the sort of hands that had learned ink and order. "Next time you bring fish, bring a better excuse." Her finger lingered a second when she wrapped the last strip of cloth; the gesture was small but steady.
They learned to laugh at small embarrassments. A neighbor's goat once broke into their stairwell and upended a basket of Hana's drying cloaks. Seo‑yeon, who had been folding manifests, found herself chasing a bleating animal through the market while Derrigan improvised a herding line with a plank and a spool of sausages. A circle of market‑folk applauded their ridiculous competence; Hana laughed until she had to sit down.
"You are not allowed to pretend any of that was planned," Hana said between guffaws when they finally corralled the goat.
"Everything is planned," Derrigan replied. "Even chaos."
"Then your planning needs better snacks," Seo‑yeon said, folding a cloak and tapping it neat.
Work gave them reasons to be apart—and ways to come back together. Seo‑yeon's desk at the registry offered small, quiet power: the right phrasing could reroute an inquisitive courier; a deferential seal could act like a gentle shove away from their trail. She learned the art of refusal: measured sympathy, an angled signature that made people go away with their dignity intact. In the evenings she confided minor triumphs over burnt tea and cold bread.
"I rerouted a merchant's inquiry today," she told Derrigan once as she refilled a chipped cup. "He wanted names. I made it sound like a pothole petition and he signed off on it himself."
"You phrased potholes as people," Derrigan said. "That's practical poetry."
Derrigan's work at the shallow‑gate guild was different practice: physical, fast, and sometimes dangerous. He learned which gates coughed out animals and which spat up weather, which locks were old and which were newly crooked. He learned to sell a piece of salvage with a story that dulled curiosity and to listen for the kind of buyer who liked things that pretended to be ordinary.
One evening on a run he came back with a small wooden carving and a bruise across his forearm. At dinner he set the carving down and Haeun's eyes lit.
"Where'd you get this?" she asked, holding it like a secret charm.
"From beyond the gate," Derrigan said. "A place that smells of old smoke and cold wood."
Minji peered over her bowl. "Can I keep it?" she asked.
Derrigan looked at Seo‑yeon. "If you promise to feed it salted fish."
Seo‑yeon made a face that pretended to be offended and then nodded. "Deal. But you are on kitchen duty tomorrow."
They made small friends: Anja, the innkeeper who kept the backroom and rules—no ledger talk; Tobin, a fence with two different‑colored gloves who laughed too loud and trusted Derrigan with small, profitable salvage; a registry foreman who liked tea and a slice of explanation whenever paperwork swam into the wrong hands. These ties were fragile and pragmatic, and they were warm in a way the ledger could not be.
"Listen," Anja said one evening as she showed Seo‑yeon the back of a ledger she used for inn bookkeeping. "Neighbors like stories. Your lives are quiet if you tell quiet lies. Tell them you're seamstress's helpers. Smile when they ask where your papers come from."
Seo‑yeon smiled the practiced clerk smile. "I can do the quiet lie."
"Good," Anja said. "And if you start singing the truth, I'll put a plate of broth in the yard and call it a performance."
They practiced invisibility as if it were a new language. The ledger stayed under the false floor, wrapped in linens and warded trunks. Hana's paper‑knife ward softened into a background note only she and Derrigan could feel. They shifted morning routes, rehearsed a code of signals for immediate flight, and taught Haeun and Minji short phrases to answer strangers—plain, ordinary things that required no story.
Blending in demanded small compromises—envelopes of coin here, a lenient signature there. Seo‑yeon paid a minor unofficial fee to a registry foreman to keep certain papers offline; Derrigan sold small portions of his salvage to Tobin, who took it with a grin and kept his mouth shut. Hana traded small wards for a tailor's silence. None of it felt like selling the ledger—only like buying time.
"You don't like bribery on principle," Hana said once, folding a new ward into a cloak.
"I like arithmetic," Derrigan answered. "This is cheaper than a running exile."
Tension threaded the small days like a seam that might split. An anonymous courier asked after Dock 9 in a market—and then vanished into the crowd. A merchant's button embroidered with a faint, familiar rune made Hana pause when he passed. Once, an old woman at a stall muttered "accounts" under her breath as they walked by, and Seo‑yeon felt that small prickle at the back of the neck authors call the first page of a storm.
"Someone is testing," Hana said softly that night as she tightened a stitch. "Not a raid. A feeler. Fingers at the seams."
Seo‑yeon folded the manifest into the precise rectangle she preferred. "We keep low. We keep tidy. We keep moving when we must."
They taught each other the small trades of their new lives. Seo‑yeon showed Derrigan how to phrase a refusal so it sounded like sympathy; Derrigan taught Seo‑yeon a quick half‑knot that could secure a crate in under a breath. Hana showed Derrigan how to feel runic eddies in a cloak—rippleed spaces where a ledger's memory might leak—and then scolded him when he tried to eyeball a ward without asking permission.
"You can't muscle some of it," she said, thumbing a stitch. "You need hands that listen."
"It's better if the hands can punch and listen," he muttered.
She pretended not to be amused.
The ledger itself remained a sleeping thing under the floorboards, but it was not silent. One night Hana felt a small, precise tug in the wards—an old echo of salt and rope. She found, on the edge of the linen that covered the book, a faint smudge that smelled of harbor tide. She did not wake the others. Instead she added a narrow stitch to the ward and left a scrap of thread like a mark only they would recognize.
When the market closed and the lamps blinked low, they walked home together under a thin rain. Derrigan carried a crate that rattled like a small drum; Seo‑yeon hummed a counting tune she used to teach Minji how to keep numbers straight. She flicked a look at him and then, as if surprised at herself, slipped the small red ribbon into the pocket of his coat.
"You're keeping my ribbon?" she asked.
"You lost it for me," he said, surprised and pleased when she laughed.
They returned to the safe house; the wooden horse sat on the sill like a secret. Minji and Haeun slept with the toy between them, faces softer than the city's angles. Hana had stitched a new, subtler ward into the trunk: a loop that blurred the book's outline to touch. Derrigan checked the false floor with fingers that moved like an old habit, then sat and breathed out the day.
There was real laughter that evening, a soft, private warmth. There was also the small ache of people learning to trust one another—doubts half spoken and the slow accrual of reliance. "If it gets worse," Seo‑yeon said quietly over stew, "we go on the move. This city buys quiet and sells nothing worth dying for."
Derrigan set his spoon down. "If it gets worse," he replied, "we will carry and we will run. But for now we sleep here."
They did sleep. For the time being, ordinary life worked as a shield: plain clothes, small jobs, neighbors who liked gossip more than trouble. But the ledger had been fought for, and fights have a way of calling old debts. News traveled the smaller channels: a broker had asked questions in a tavern about a book from Dock 9; a sampler at the market mentioned a contested account in passing. The city, indifferent in its day, set a small watch at its edges.
At the close of the week, Tobin stopped by with a bag of salted herrings and a grin that suggested both business and goodwill. "You lot look like you could use a night off," he said, twirling one glove between his fingers. "Buy me a drink, and tell me what to fence. I like two things: honest coin and good company."
Hana regarded him with a careful look. "You like keeping secrets."
"I like keeping mine profitable," Tobin said. "And if someone looks too hard for a ledger, better for them to be looking at a fence who sells boots than at a seamstress who stitches wards."
Seo‑yeon folded and set a coin on the table. "We'll keep it small. No rumors."
"Wise," Tobin said. He tapped his glove. "And if a courier snaps a picture of you, tell them you're seamstress's helpers. Smile. People forget you easier when they like you."
They ate, they drank, they laughed. The ledger stayed under the floor, quiet and waiting. The city offered them the small miracle of being ordinary for a while: market mornings without raids, registry days with petty quarrels about potholes, nights with stew that did not include salt and teeth.
They were not safe. They were simply becoming better at the art of hiding in plain sight, at building a life that could be carried in pockets and pockets of trust. They were sharpening domestic muscles—caring for scraped knees, covering for late returns, learning how to answer questions without telling stories.
The chapter closed on a small, private ritual. Seo‑yeon and Derrigan walked the seamstress lane home, rain soft on their coats. She reached over and tucked the red ribbon into his inner pocket again, a gesture both simple and enormous. He felt the weight and let himself imagine the possibility of a life where rope and paperwork could be shared rather than borne alone.
They went inside. The ledger lay quiet beneath the floorboards. Minji and Haeun turned in sleep with the wooden horse between them. Hana hummed a mending tune. The city breathed around them, indifferent, hospitable, dangerous in its very ordinariness.
They had bought time. They had found small friends. They had learned to laugh at days that might have broken them elsewhere. For now, that was enough.