In the days after the review, The Curio House regained its outward calm, but the ambiguous undercurrent between them, born of their “resonance,” never truly receded.
Xie Qingqiu’s injuries were nearly healed. The old wound on her shoulder had closed into a faint scar, and even her exhausted body, depleted by months on the run, was gradually recovering some of the sharpness and strength of a hunter. As her physical condition improved, the restlessness that had been trapped inside her for so many days began to rise to the surface again.
She began paying attention to how often Pei Yan went out and where she went, as well as to the growing stack of investigative documents on Pei Yan’s desk—documents Pei Yan still refused to fully disclose to her.
Pei Yan seemed to notice her undisguised scrutiny. While changing her bandages, she spoke even less than before, as though deliberately avoiding the increasingly obvious questions in Xie Qingqiu’s eyes.
“The things you’ve found these past few days…” Xie Qingqiu finally couldn’t hold back. A trace of undisguised displeasure colored her voice. “How long are you planning to keep me in the dark?”
Pei Yan did not pause in what she was doing, but her tone grew cooler. “If the facts haven’t been verified, telling you will only add to your psychological burden.”
“So you made the decision for me and decided I couldn’t handle it?” Xie Qingqiu let out a cold laugh. “Pei Yan, I spent three months rolling through piles of corpses. I watched my comrades fall dead right in front of me. What information do you think I can’t handle?”
Pei Yan’s hands stopped abruptly. The words had clearly struck a nerve. She looked up at Xie Qingqiu, emotions roiling briefly in her eyes before ultimately becoming a nearly inaudible sigh.
She could no longer stand being trapped in this glass room day after day, knowing nothing about the outside world and able only to passively wait for the scraps of information Pei Yan brought back.
“I want to go with you to meet that informant.” She spoke suddenly while her bandages were being changed that day, her tone carrying an unquestionable resolve.
Pei Yan’s fingers paused slightly. She looked up at her, open surprise flashing through her eyes.
“No.” She rejected the request almost without thinking. “Your wanted notice hasn’t been rescinded. Showing your face recklessly would be far too dangerous.”
“So I’m supposed to keep hiding here and wait for someone else to uncover the truth for me?” Xie Qingqiu’s voice rose several degrees. The frustration that had built up over so many days had finally found an outlet. “Pei Yan, this is my identity, my past, and the person I watched die with my own eyes. I have no reason to be denied even the right to take part in verifying the truth!”
Pei Yan was silent for a moment, then a rare weariness entered her voice. “I’m not trying to take away your right. I just don’t want you to put yourself in danger again.”
“Running away last time was reckless. I admit that.” Xie Qingqiu met her gaze without yielding an inch. “But this time is different. This time, I have a clear goal, and I’m willing to follow your arrangements. All I’m asking is that you stop treating me like something that only needs to be ‘preserved’ and doesn’t need to ‘participate.’”
The instant she said the word “something,” the air in the hidden room abruptly congealed.
Pei Yan’s expression stiffened slightly. An indescribably complicated emotion flickered rapidly through her deep-set eyes. She lowered her gaze, her voice dropping a little. “You think I treat you like a thing?”
“What else am I supposed to think?” Xie Qingqiu gritted her teeth and let all the emotions she had accumulated over the past few days spill out at once. “Changing my bandages, feeding me medicine, setting up defenses, putting on an act, resonance. Everything you arrange is precise and thorough, but from beginning to end, when have you ever truly asked me, ‘Do you want this?’”
Pei Yan stared at her in a daze. For the first time, the calm composure she always maintained showed the slightest crack in front of Xie Qingqiu.
“…I overlooked that.” At last, she spoke in a low voice, the weight of something close to self-reproach in her tone. “I’ve managed everything in the shop alone for so many years. I got used to making decisions for every collection piece. They never objected and never raised an issue.”
“But I’m not a doll.” Xie Qingqiu’s voice softened, though her refusal to yield remained. “I’m a living, breathing person. I have my own judgment, and I should have the right to claim a say in my own past.”
A long silence settled over the hidden room. Pei Yan lowered her eyes, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the remaining gauze in her hand, as though struggling to digest the unexpected accusation.
“All right.” After a long while, she finally spoke. Her voice held a difficult but genuine concession. “You can come with me this time. But you have to promise me that you’ll follow my arrangements throughout. No acting on your own again.”
Xie Qingqiu froze, clearly not expecting Pei Yan to give in so easily. She stared at her, trying to find a trace of insincerity on the face that had returned to its usual calm, but all she saw was an almost solemn seriousness.
“…All right.” At last, she nodded.
Three days later, deep in the night, the two of them went out in disguise and eventually arrived at an inconspicuous watch-repair shop on the other side of the city.
The “old friend from the research and development department” Pei Yan had mentioned was a sharp-looking old man with graying hair. When he saw Xie Qingqiu accompanying her, his brows drew together almost imperceptibly, but he did not ask any questions. He merely led them past a workbench piled with parts and into a hidden consultation room in the back.
“I found some of the information you wanted.” Lowering his voice, the old man brought up an encrypted file. “The special observation group is nominally attached to the Joint Defense Bureau, but its actual funding and orders come from elsewhere—a private research institution called Muze Biotechnology.”
Xie Qingqiu’s heart sank.
“Muze Biotechnology…” she repeated quietly. The unfamiliar name stirred those broken fragments of memory in her mind once more.
Fluorescent lights. Metal cabin walls. And that perpetually blurred sentence: “This sample must be left for the people upstairs to handle personally.”
“That institution has deep roots.” A trace of wariness, difficult to detect, entered the old man’s voice. “On the surface, it’s a medical technology company specializing in the treatment of pheromone-related diseases. In private, however, it has tangled financial interests with several high-ranking officials inside the Joint Defense Bureau. Ms. Xie, forgive my bluntness, but if you really are connected to one of this institution’s ‘projects,’ then I’m afraid this involves far more than a single wanted case.”
Xie Qingqiu’s fingers clenched unconsciously, her knuckles turning white. In three months of flight, this was the first time she had so clearly touched the outline of the vast, suffocating shadow behind her origins.
“There’s one more thing.” The old man paused, his expression growing even more grave. “For nearly half a month, the institution’s underground research division seems to have been accelerating a project codenamed ‘Return to the Nest.’ The details are unknown, but from the few fragments I’ve managed to gather, it seems to involve the mass production of stable reverse-evolution samples.”
Xie Qingqiu’s whole body jolted.
“Mass production…” She struggled to find her voice. “You mean they want to replicate more people like me?”
The old man did not answer directly. He merely gave her a meaningful look, then glanced at Pei Yan, who had remained silent, her expression growing increasingly grim.
The air in the consultation room froze. At that moment, a faint unusual sound suddenly came from outside the shop, as though someone were deliberately lightening their steps and lingering near the storefront.
Pei Yan’s expression turned sharply alert. She rose at once and gestured for Xie Qingqiu and the old man to keep quiet, then silently moved to the window and peered outside through the gaps in the blinds.
Across the street, a car sat quietly with its engine running. One of its windows was lowered a fraction, and someone inside could vaguely be seen holding a telescope-like device aimed toward the watch shop.
“A pheromone detector.” Pei Yan’s voice was low, her vigilance compressed to its absolute limit. “Someone is monitoring the pheromone fluctuations in this area. They most likely tracked us here by following the traces we left when we came in.”
The old man’s expression shifted. He quickly destroyed the file he had just opened, then pointed toward an unremarkable side door deep in the back room. “There’s a narrow passage in the rear alley that leads to a market three blocks away. If you leave now, you can still make it.”
Xie Qingqiu’s heartbeat accelerated abruptly, and that long-lost alertness of prey surged through her entire body.
Pei Yan seized her wrist and led her swiftly through the side door. They disappeared into the deep darkness of the narrow alley, and only after shaking off the car’s pursuit range did they dare slow their pace and gasp for breath.
By the time they left the watch shop, they had already managed to lose the suspicious car tailing them. In the depths of the night, only their slightly hurried breathing remained.
Xie Qingqiu stayed silent the entire way, repeatedly chewing over the suffocating information they had just received. When they reached a secluded street corner, she finally stopped and looked at Pei Yan, a rare fragility in her voice.
“If…” she began with difficulty. “If I really am one of the ‘samples’ from that project, would you think that what you took in wasn’t a piece of art worth collecting, but a dangerous counterfeit that someone had already tampered with?”
Pei Yan turned around. Looking at the bewilderment on Xie Qingqiu’s face in the night, the deep light in her eyes was unusually firm.
“Whether you’re a counterfeit or a sample,” she said, each word deliberate and free of hesitation, “Ms. Xie, from the moment I personally cleaned and treated your wounds, you stopped being a number in any institution’s files in my eyes. You are Xie Qingqiu, a person with the right to seek justice for her own past herself.”
Xie Qingqiu stared at her blankly. The night breeze passed through the space between them, carrying a hint of chill, but it could not disperse the complicated, indistinguishable warmth and ache surging in her chest.
She turned her face away, not daring to meet Pei Yan’s eyes again. In her heart, she quietly committed those words to memory, along with the unsettling names “Muze Biotechnology” and “Return to the Nest Project.”
The two of them walked back through the quiet streets and alleys. The night was heavy, the streetlights dim and yellow. Xie Qingqiu walked at Pei Yan’s side, but her mind was still in turmoil from their conversation.
“The name ‘Return to the Nest’…” she murmured suddenly, as though speaking to herself or seeking Pei Yan’s opinion. “It sounds like they want to call something back to a certain place.”
Pei Yan’s steps faltered slightly, her gaze settling on Xie Qingqiu with cautious thoughtfulness.
“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “what they want to call back isn’t merely the ‘samples’ scattered outside. It may also include all the data and resources that originally belonged to the project. When you escaped back then, did you take anything with you—something you didn’t even notice yourself?”
Xie Qingqiu frowned, searching desperately through the broken fragments of her memory.
That chaotic night three months ago: the fluorescent lights in the interrogation room, the sudden alarm, the convulsing body collapsed at the end of the corridor… She remembered grabbing something in the confusion and stuffing it into her pocket, but she had never been able to recall what it was.
“I’m not sure.” She shook her head with difficulty, frustration in her voice. “That memory is too chaotic, too fragmented. I’ve tried so many times, but I can’t piece it together.”
“There’s no rush.” A rare trace of warm patience entered Pei Yan’s voice. “When we get back, I’ll have that friend look into whether there are any instruments or medications that can assist with memory recovery. This isn’t something you can rush or force.”
Xie Qingqiu looked at her, and the lingering anger from their argument gradually gave way to something more complicated.
She suddenly realized that after her near-accusatory outburst, Pei Yan had shown no anger or attempted rebuttal. Instead, she had genuinely listened to Xie Qingqiu’s demands and put them into action.
“Pei Yan,” she called softly.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for being willing to bring me along.” Her voice was quiet but unusually sincere. “That matters more than any clue you could have found for me.”
Pei Yan glanced sideways at her, the faintest hint of a smile touching the corner of her lips.
“It’s your right.” She paused, then continued, “From now on, I’ll tell you everything I learn about your origins. But, Ms. Xie, you have to promise me that you won’t act impulsively on your own again. The road to uncovering the truth is destined to be dangerous. I hope we walk it side by side, not fight our own separate battles.”
Xie Qingqiu looked at her serious profile and suddenly felt that this tug-of-war over trust had finally found, tonight, a balance where they could both set down their emotions for the time being.
She nodded without saying anything else. She simply walked beside Pei Yan down the silent avenue, letting the night and the cool breeze quietly wrap around the understanding between them—an understanding that was becoming clearer, yet still carried a few thorns and a certain distance.
But when they reached the corner, Xie Qingqiu suddenly stopped again and looked back toward the watch shop, her brows drawing together.
“The people who followed us there tonight,” she said quietly, “could they cause trouble for your friend?”
Pei Yan’s expression darkened slightly.
“He’s been in this line of work for years. He has his own ways of getting away.” She paused, a trace of hard-to-detect gravity entering her tone. “Still, tonight’s visit probably left a trace on Muze’s end. From now on, we’ll have to be even more careful.”
Xie Qingqiu said nothing more. She merely watched the profile of the person beside her, outlined by the night, and the unease born of the unknown danger in her heart was quietly replaced by a strange certainty.
No matter how perilous the road ahead might be, at least now she was no longer prey running in panic, utterly alone.
She quickened her pace by two steps and walked shoulder to shoulder with Pei Yan.