Chapter Six
After the search that night, Pei Yan indeed showed no sign of letting her guard down.
Over the next few days, she practically combed through the entire Curio House from top to bottom.
She added several new blind spots to the surveillance system, changed the glass room's access code three times, and even upgraded the shop's pheromone filtration system with another layer of modifications, determined to suppress any trace that might leak out to the absolute minimum.
Watching her rush in and out, Xie Qingqiu felt the guilt born from having "dragged her into this" grow heavier by several degrees.
But they had both underestimated just how persistent the man who called it a routine inspection truly was.
On the evening of the fifth day, the bell over the shop door rang again. This time, it wasn't the three hurried chimes that served as a signal, but the ordinary sound of a customer pushing open the door.
Through the surveillance feed inside the glass room, Xie Qingqiu saw that familiar figure.
The man who had visited three days earlier had changed into plain clothes. He stood in front of the counter with a mild smile, accompanied by a young female subordinate holding a stack of forms.
"Boss Pei, sorry to bother you again." The man's tone was even more courteous than last time. "This isn't an investigation. It's a routine 'dual-person pheromone registration recheck.' The district revised its regulations last month. Any prime Alpha living alone who has a long-term cohabiting partner at home must re-register them on file, so we can compile data on pheromone distribution in the district and prevent sudden pheromone-conflict incidents."
Pei Yan's expression didn't change. "That's the first I've heard of this regulation."
"It's a new regulation. It was only issued last month." The man smiled, a faint, almost imperceptible probing note in his voice. "We checked your registration records, Boss Pei. There are no cohabitants listed under your name. But your neighbors say they've been seeing the lights in your shop burning all night lately. I assume... someone new has moved in?"
Xie Qingqiu's heart clenched.
Hidden deep inside the glass room, she unconsciously gripped the hem of her clothes. She knew all too well that this seemingly harmless small talk was actually the most dangerous kind of probing.
The other side had clearly come prepared. If Pei Yan's answer slipped even slightly, tonight's "routine recheck" could instantly turn into a genuine manhunt.
Pei Yan merely smiled, her tone carrying just the right amount of frankness and bashfulness.
"You've noticed." She said, "There is someone else at home now. We just haven't announced her identity publicly yet, so I suppose the neighbors have had a good laugh at our expense."
The man's brows rose, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. "Oh? May I ask who the lucky person is, the one who managed to get the usually solitary Boss Pei to make an exception and take her in?"
"An old friend... I hadn't seen in a long time." Pei Yan slowed her voice, adding a solemnity Xie Qingqiu had never heard from her before, one that came close to tenderness. "We ran into each other again recently, and it was only natural that she move in with me. We haven't gotten around to completing the paperwork. If you really need to register her, please wait a moment. I'll bring her out."
Xie Qingqiu's eyes flew open.
She understood Pei Yan's intention almost immediately. Instead of passively responding to the man's escalating probes, Pei Yan would seize the initiative and package this "stranger living with her" as a natural relationship that could withstand scrutiny. The decision was daring to the point of recklessness, but it had also landed precisely on the only way to break the deadlock before them.
The hidden-room door slid open without a sound. Pei Yan's gaze fell on her, and a nearly apologetic signal flashed through those deep eyes.
She knew how difficult this request was, but there was no better choice.
Xie Qingqiu drew a deep breath, suppressing the turmoil in her heart, and finally nodded.
She changed out of her long-damaged old clothes. Pei Yan somehow found a plain, casual house dress. It wasn't particularly well-fitted, but it could just barely conceal the lingering signs of a fugitive's disheveled state.
She tidied her hair in front of the mirror and took a deep breath before following Pei Yan out of the glass room and into the familiar yet strange pool of warm yellow light in the shop's front room.
"And this is?" The man's gaze lingered on Xie Qingqiu for a moment, as though rapidly comparing her to something in his mind.
"Xie Zhi." Pei Yan gave an unfamiliar name without hesitation, her tone so natural it held not a single flaw. "An old acquaintance from college. We lost touch last year, and only recently managed to reconnect after going through a few twists and turns."
Xie Qingqiu lowered her eyes and cooperated by revealing a slightly awkward, perfectly measured look of shyness. "Sorry to trouble you both."
She deliberately lowered her voice, making it sound entirely different from the cold, sharp voice on the wanted notice.
The man's gaze moved between them for a moment without detecting anything amiss. Instead, the female subordinate behind him smiled and handed over the forms. "As required, we need to collect both parties' baseline pheromone readings on-site and record a simple compatibility match. It won't take long."
Xie Qingqiu's heart sank.
Once her baseline pheromone readings were formally collected and compared, the special structure of her reverse-evolution anomaly's scent glands would be nearly impossible for any professional instrument to miss.
Pei Yan clearly realized the fatal flaw at the exact same moment.
"Actually..." she began, her voice taking on a perfectly measured, almost suggestive smile. Without drawing attention to it, she stepped half a pace closer to Xie Qingqiu and gently draped an arm around her shoulders. "Why don't you two try another method? Instead of relying on an instrument, you could see for yourselves whether our pheromones are compatible."
She lowered her head until her temple nearly brushed Xie Qingqiu's hair. That thread of cool sandalwood spread without warning, enveloping Xie Qingqiu completely and without the slightest attempt at concealment.
Xie Qingqiu went rigid, her heartbeat suddenly losing its rhythm.
She could clearly feel the warmth of Pei Yan's breath, close enough to hear the other woman's steady heartbeat. That closeness, almost like a declaration of possession, instantly dyed the tips of her ears an inescapable red.
She lowered her eyes in panic and instinctively tried to pull away, but the arm around her shoulders gently held her in place. All she could do was let the sandalwood and the faint trace of icy air remaining on her body, suppressed almost to nothing by the suppressor ring, quietly mingle in the air.
The strange harmony, almost a sense of perfect compatibility, felt so natural that even Xie Qingqiu herself couldn't detect any pretense in it.
The man watched with interest. The scrutiny on his face gradually eased, replaced by a hint of convinced understanding.
"You two make quite a pair." He smiled as he wrote a few lines on the form. "I'll file the basic registration for you both for now. We'll schedule the detailed instrument recheck separately next time. We really have imposed on you enough today."
Xie Qingqiu practically held her breath as she listened to the words "schedule it separately next time." Only then did the taut string inside her loosen by half a degree, though it did not truly relax.
She knew this had merely postponed the danger. It had not resolved it completely.
The moment the two visitors left and the shop door closed again, Pei Yan finally withdrew her arm from Xie Qingqiu's shoulders. The sudden distance between them left Xie Qingqiu strangely at a loss.
"Xie Zhi?" she asked, changing the subject, a barely perceptible tremor in her voice as she tried to hide her flustered heartbeat. "Did you just make that name up?"
"Not exactly." Pei Yan's gaze settled on her, her tone carrying a trace of seriousness so faint it was almost impossible to catch. "The word 'Zhi' comes from the 'zhi' in 'zhiji,' a soulmate or kindred spirit. Ms. Xie, if you don't mind, you may have to use this name in public for the time being."
Xie Qingqiu was briefly rendered speechless. She turned her face away, refusing to look at the overly serious expression in Pei Yan's eyes.
"The next recheck..." She changed the subject again, her voice tightening. "Once the instruments detect my scent-gland structure, today's act won't be able to continue."
Pei Yan's expression darkened. Clearly, she had been considering the same problem.
"So," she said slowly, "before then, we need to find a way to eliminate your 'flaw' completely. Either we find a way around the recheck, or..."
She paused, her gaze falling on the redness along Xie Qingqiu's neck. Her tone grew heavier with a weight even she had not noticed.
"Or we get to the bottom of your scent-gland abnormality and find a way to transform this 'danger' into a power that can truly protect you."
Xie Qingqiu stared at her blankly. Outside the window, night had completely fallen. The newly repaired streetlamp at the mouth of the alley finally lit up, casting a hazy yellow halo into the darkness.
She lowered her head and looked at her wrist. The cold silver suppressor ring glimmered beneath the light, but an alarm was blaring inside her. In front of that strange man, she had actually allowed Pei Yan to hold her by the shoulder and press close with her sandalwood scent without showing the slightest resistance.
Her cooperation had been far too smooth—so smooth that even she couldn't tell whether it had been the survival instinct of a fugitive or something else, something quietly growing inside her that she refused to acknowledge.
Late that night, Pei Yan brought over a pot of hot tea, and the two sat across from each other with a low table between them. Cradling her teacup, Xie Qingqiu felt the warmth seep into her fingertips, and the nerves she had kept taut all evening finally began to relax.
"When you held me just now..." she finally said, her voice a little tight. "It didn't look like something you came up with on the spot."
Pei Yan's hand paused slightly around her teacup. A trace of embarrassment, faint enough to be nearly imperceptible, flashed through her eyes.
It was the first time Xie Qingqiu had seen something resembling guilt on her face.
"Improvisation has to look convincing." Pei Yan lowered her eyes, her tone deliberately bland. "If I did a half-assed job, I'd be more likely to expose a flaw."
"Is that so?" Xie Qingqiu looked at her with a half-smile, unusually finding herself on the winning side. "Because it seems to me that Boss Pei put in more effort than merely making it 'convincing.'"
Rarely did Pei Yan fail to argue back at once. Instead, she lifted her teacup and used the act of drinking to conceal the momentary lapse in her expression.
"Perhaps," she finally said in a low voice, with an almost self-mocking honesty, "it's because it wasn't entirely an act."
As soon as the words fell, a subtle silence descended between them. Xie Qingqiu's fingers tightened around the teacup, and the tips of her ears heated uncontrollably again. She wanted to argue, to use a cutting remark to pull the increasingly unstable atmosphere back to its original safe distance, but the words stuck in her throat.
"About the recheck..." she finally chose to change the subject, her voice steadier than before. "What are you planning to do?"
Pei Yan pondered for a moment before slowly answering, "The Joint Defense Bureau's pheromone collection instruments are precise, but they're not flawless. If I can obtain their technical specifications in advance, I may be able to find a way to make the readings 'distort.' I know an old friend who used to work in instrument development. I'll ask around tomorrow."
"You'll owe someone another favor?" Xie Qingqiu frowned.
"I'm used to it." Pei Yan smiled faintly. "For the past seventeen years, this shop has survived on more than my skill at restoring dolls. It has also survived on the favors I've accumulated over the years—the kind that can be useful at a critical moment."
Looking at her calm, unconcerned expression, Xie Qingqiu suddenly realized that her unprepared intrusion had, without her noticing, caused Pei Yan to stake the connections and years of effort she had built up, bit by bit, on her.
The weight of it stirred an indistinct unease in her heart. She disliked owing favors, and she disliked even more becoming something another person was willing to risk everything to protect. It meant that, without realizing it, she had become the collection piece Pei Yan could not bear to part with.
"Pei Yan." Her voice was colder than before.
"Hmm?"
"I never asked you to do this." She lowered her eyes, deliberate distance entering her tone. "Putting your connections and reputation on the line for me—what are you after? I'm not one of your dolls. I won't obediently let you arrange me however you want, and I don't owe you some debt of gratitude that has to be repaid."
Pei Yan's hand paused slightly around her teacup. A trace of emotion, so faint it was nearly impossible to detect, flashed in her eyes before she lowered them as though nothing had happened.
"Who said I wanted you to repay me?" Her tone remained calm, but now carried an almost stubborn insistence. "Ms. Xie, I have never expected you to be grateful, much less obedient. From the very beginning, this has had nothing to do with your 'cooperation.' It has only had to do with my own decision."
Xie Qingqiu was briefly speechless again. She turned her face away, refusing to look at those overly certain eyes. She hated the feeling of being seen through at a glance and yet having no way to refute it. It was clearly Pei Yan acting on her own, but the righteous resistance that should have filled Xie Qingqiu's heart now seemed, for some reason, especially lacking in force.
"You don't need to thank me." Pei Yan added in a low voice, the corners of her lips lifting in an extremely faint smile. "If a collection piece breaks, the collector naturally has to do everything possible to repair it. I never intended to take those words back—from the very first day."
The night outside was thick enough to drown in. The light on the second floor of the Curio House once again stayed on until dawn. Between the two women seated across from each other at the low table, the clearly defined boundary between captor and captive still remained. Yet Xie Qingqiu had to admit that the confidence behind her deliberately cold interrogation had been far weaker than she had imagined.
After returning to the glass room, Xie Qingqiu remained unable to fall asleep for a long time.
She lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, replaying over and over the sensation of Pei Yan's sandalwood scent spreading the instant she put an arm around her shoulders, as well as the rare, fleeting hesitation in Pei Yan's eyes when she said, "It wasn't entirely an act."
The more she thought about it, the more irritated she became. Finally, she rolled over with her back to the surveillance camera and squeezed her eyes shut. She told herself that this was merely one of Pei Yan's usual methods. Someone skilled enough to plant a doll's eyelashes with flawless precision would naturally be skilled enough to perform a casual charade so convincingly that no one could tell truth from fiction.
She remembered that three months ago, she had still been the wanted criminal covered in blood in the interrogation room, facing every gun barrel and every ounce of malice alone. She remembered countless nights spent curled up in ditches and ruins, forcing herself through them on nothing but a final breath.
Back then, she would never have allowed herself to become unsettled by a single person's embrace. Yet now, inside the glass room that imprisoned her, she had developed such disgraceful doubts about someone who so plainly treated her as a collection piece.
The realization made her furious and frustrated. She almost wanted to get up immediately and take back that "thank you"—with interest.
Outside, the streetlamp at the mouth of the alley cast a small, weak patch of light through the ventilation shaft onto the glass room's wall. Xie Qingqiu stared at it. Amid her irritation and vigilance, she only barely managed to fall asleep in the latter half of the night, her guard still tense and unwilling to relax even in dreams.
Meanwhile, on the shop's second floor, Pei Yan sat alone at the desk. Spread before her was a copy of Xie Qingqiu's wanted notice, along with the information on pheromone collection instruments she had organized late into the night.
Her gaze lingered over the documents for a long time, but she never put pen to paper. Instead, against her will, she kept remembering Xie Qingqiu's question: "What are you after?" The distance and wariness in that voice had been an unmistakable rejection from a thousand miles away. Yet Pei Yan found that she had somehow savored a nearly satisfied amusement in that stiff resistance.
She pressed her fingers to her brow and gave a low, self-mocking laugh, as though confirming that the sight of her fixation remaining untamed had not frightened her away. Instead, it had awakened a measure of a hunter's patience.
She had never expected Xie Qingqiu to lower her guard easily. That sharpness was, after all, one of the reasons she had wanted to collect this particular collection piece in the first place.