CHAPTER 6: Red Echoes

The city didn't sleep. It smoldered.

Rain sliced down the windows of Jiucheng Tower, and somewhere inside it, a memory burned between two people who shouldn't have touched, but did. A kiss wasn't supposed to undo everything. But this one had teeth—and left bruises where it hadn't touched skin.

Shuǒrán ran a fingertip along the lip of a crystal glass in her suite, the remnants of bourbon and bad decisions clinging to the rim. The taste of him lingered—smoke, metal, restraint. She wasn't drunk, but she felt unsteady. Not from the kiss. From the silence that followed. Her body hummed like a live wire beneath silken skin.

Somewhere across Jiucheng, Lín Yàonán leaned against the door frame of his private quarters, tie loosened, shirt wrinkled from fists that weren't supposed to hold him like that. His hands still trembled. Not from fear. From memory. Her hands, her mouth, her voice whispering like smoke in his ear. Her breath had ignited something under his ribs that training couldn't snuff out.

They were both alone. They were both replaying the same moment.

In Jian's office, high above them, the surveillance replay ran again—slow, forensic. Jian's face was unreadable. But his jaw ticked once. His thumb circled the rim of his untouched wineglass.

"You've gotten good at pretending," he murmured to the screen. Whether to Shuǒrán or Yàonán, even he wasn't sure. And it didn't matter. They were both his.

Down below, in her bedroom, Shuǒrán sat before a mirror, bare-shouldered, eyes shadowed. She touched the curve of her collarbone where his hand had rested. The one place he'd touched without pressure. Gentle. Like he was afraid of breaking something he didn't deserve to touch.

She hated how much that scared her. Because it didn't feel like strategy. It felt like truth.

She reached for her burner phone. A chime. Wu Xīnlei's voice cracked through her encrypted comm line: "Ghost Pup has eyes on Jian's tech pattern. Data loops are doubling. Something changed."

"Pull the logs," Shuǒrán replied, voice icy. "If it's Yàonán… I want to know if he's still watching me."

And elsewhere, he was. Just not through cameras.

Yàonán sat alone with a drink he hadn't touched, eyes trained on the shadows beyond his window. He stared at his laptop screen—blank. Empty fields where his report should've gone. Mission success: unverified. Emotional compromise: unspoken.

He typed her name. Then deleted it.

She wasn't part of the report. She was the reason he couldn't write one.

Footsteps. His door clicked open.

Qín Mùyĕ entered without knocking, dressed in black, an expression carved from steel. The air shifted with him, like silence folding a blade.

"You hesitated," Mùyĕ said simply.

"I moved," Yàonán replied, calm.

"You moved late."

They locked eyes, handler and agent, predator and pawn.

"Next time," Mùyĕ said, sliding a file onto the desk, "you'll be moved out."

Inside it: a still frame. Shuǒrán on the terrace. A red circle drawn on her shoulder. Target not neutralized.

The door shut. Yàonán didn't move. He stared at the image. Her posture. Her face. She'd known he was there.

Across the city, Shuǒrán's lips parted as if someone had just whispered her name. Her spine stiffened. Something beneath her skin coiled tight.

She stood.

The war wasn't coming. It was already here.

And the next time she touched Lín Yàonán, it wouldn't be in a kiss.

It would be in blood.

And maybe—if he was lucky—she'd make it quick.