Ruo Yu waits for nightfall, to unleash who she really is—Ruo Yu again, the controlling entity, the unending covenant.
She slips out of her room before the sun rises and lights up the sky.
She has been analyzing the place since she entered, moving like a professional dancer— freely, lightly.
But not for her freedom.
She dances for a cause too distant to belong to her, just a piece in a maze she's desperate to escape.
She reaches a hidden room—one she saw Madam Wen enter.
She listens, watches, gathers pieces.
Evidence that this place holds secrets deeper than it appears. Sessions that play with minds.
Girls being sold.
Girls losing their minds.
She hadn't been here long, nor was she one to sympathize. From the earliest memory, she had done everything for a reason. Even the pure act of helping carried a thousand goals, a thousand ambitions—yet, their desperate, wretched lives were something that Ruo Yu had knew, and lived. She wanted, with a desire that was purely hers, not Xue Yan's, to help them. But because a person doesn't mature apart from their true identities, she couldn't think of any gain from doing so. After all, what's above them isn't her enemy, and they're at the bottom, useless to her.
Ruo Yu hears a whisper— quickly hides in a narrow, airless corner, swallowed by shadow. The sound outside doesn't go away. So she stays still. She doesn't breathe. She silences even her fear.
And for a moment, she thinks she might die here— alone, unnamed.
And a death like that doesn't scare her, even though it ruins her plan on the way it ends. But characters like her always live uniquely and die uniquely. "I wish I could die a more horrible death." That's how she thinks.
When the sound fades, she waits longer still. She tastes the drowning feeling,
despite being far from any river.
She slips out.
The day comes.
She hasn't yet uncovered the truth.
But she knows now—
She didn't yet find anything that Xiu Yan would probably need.
She went as lightly as she had come, to her room, before she left she had to take one more look, perhaps she thought one more look might make her sympathize with them enough to save them.
This place was toying with girls for various purposes, all of which were beyond their comprehension. Not only were they a commodity, but they were like dolls in their thinking, and like animals in the eyes of those who exploited them.
Some of them must have families waiting for them, Ruo thought. But she didn't have a home, or anyone waiting for her. She found their lack of awareness worse than the feeling of missing those who loved and waited for them.
When she pretended in the morning that she had just come out of her room - as if she hadn't been roaming around the place like a thief - Ready to end a character she didn't sympathize with, and it was as if she'd never left it at all.
The girl who cried during the session approached her.
"You look tired. I heard you went through a lot to get here."
"Yes," Ruo Yu said. "But everyone here seems like me."
The girl laughed softly, But in the rhythm of her laughter, there was really no innocence. It was too strange for Ruo Yu.
"No one has really lived what the others lived." She said.
"Maybe what I lived was truly mine alone."
"But even if it's unique, or painful—
there's always a moment, a detail,
that makes it lighter in your memory, isn't there?"
Ruo Yu shook her head.
"Whenever I remember it,
it carries the same weight.
And when I open my eyes,
reality feels heavier."
She smiled.
And even she didn't know
if it was part of Lily's mask—
or something real that slipped through.
The girl extended her hands, offering a cup of tea.
"Drink this. It might comfort you."
Ruo smiled faintly and took the cup.
If the girl hadn't stayed standing,
she might've refused it.
But she had no choice.
The girl motioned for her to sit at the table that was a few steps away from Ruo Yu's room, so she sat as she was told. She was Still holding that gentle smile, still offering warmth like a borrowed blanket.
Her name was An Mei.
Ruo Yu noticed it then—
the way An Mei watched her,
not just listened.
Studied her.
Too calm. Too smooth.
As if she already knew who Ruo was.
Not Lily.
Not the lost girl they'd all met yesterday.
But someone else.
But even if she wasn't Lily—she wasn't even Ruo Yu. She didn't really carry any identity other than hatred.
Ruo Yu's ingenious ability to represent everything she is not stems deeply from her disbelief in anything.
And when Madam Wen passed by,
An Mei's expression tightened—
just slightly. The smile didn't fade,
but it shifted. Like it had to adjust.
Madam Wen placed a hand on Ruo Yu's back. "She's adjusting well," she said.
An Mei nodded.
"Better than I expected."
The words were light,
but they landed wrong.
Expected?
Ruo Yu sipped the tea.
It was sweet.
Too sweet.
She looked at An Mei again.
The girl's posture was relaxed,
but her eyes didn't blink as much as they should.
Her questions weren't careless—they were calculated.
And she'd been the first to speak to her this morning.
First to offer something.
First to plant a seed.
For a mere doll, she was anything but a doll. Ruo Yu remembered An Mei saying that she had killed someone. In that vague atmosphere, she might not have realized, but in the sunlight, she felt that she understood a lot.
Maybe Madam Wen was Strange, but too good at hiding it.
but not careful.
Not this careful.
An Mei was something else -- Ruo Yu knew.
She Was Someone who needed a shield.
Someone who felt the shift when Ruo Yu walked in— and decided to redirect the eyes elsewhere.
Ruo Yu stood.
Smiled.
"Thank you for the tea."
An Mei nodded gently.
"You'll fit in here.
Just let go of what's behind you."
Ruo Yu walked away,
but she didn't forget the way An Mei looked at her just before she turned.
Not fear.
Not friendship.
Control.
She knew that look.
She wore it, once.
An Mei felt something—and it wasn't a threat. Ruo Yu couldn't find any other explanations, and had to let her soul fall into the hands of doubt and confusion.
Ruo Yu thought this was the end.
Not of the mission—of herself.
She hadn't done her best.
But sometimes, best wasn't survival.
Sometimes, survival was knowing when to walk away.
If she stayed, she'd be forced to protect herself. And she never fought halfway.
There'd be blood.
Too much of it.
And none of it worth spilling.
So she moved. Slow, calculated steps,
like a guest slipping out of a dream she didn't belong to.
The hallway was quiet.
Too quiet.
But the kind of quiet that dared to scream if you stayed too long.
She passed the final door.
She didn't look back.
Her breath steady, her hands inside her sleeves, hiding the slight shake in her fingers. She blamed her trembling hands on the morning air. And forgot to blame the cruel time. And the forgotten fate.
Outside, The sun was sunny, not enough to burn you, not enough to warm you —
that early hour where no one was sure if the world was asleep or just pretending.
She had almost made it.
Then a voice.
Sharp. Drawn from silk and poison.
A noblewoman.
She stood near the gate, backlit by lantern light. Arguing—or playing—with a common girl who carried a tray.
Ruo didn't stop at first.
But the voice carried.
"You're comparing me to the filth of the underworld?"
A scoff.
The kind born from centuries of power,
and nothing to prove.
"My dear, it seems you're still a child indeed."
Ruo paused.
Not because she cared for the words.
But because she recognized the weight behind them.
That's how people lived.
Layered. Masked.
With rules that bent only for the cruel.
We all live comparing our souls to the souls of others. Even though Ruo Yu carried a certainty - that we are all corrupt.
She stood there for a second more,
long enough to let the world remind her what it was made of.
Then she slipped past the last gate.
And didn't look back.
She took every secret route, every deserted road. If anyone had seen her, they would have asked themselves, what kind of life did a girl like that have to live to know every shortcut to every street and every secret place to places she had never seen before? How did she live instead of being a girl who wouldn't get out of a carriage carried by her servants?
Anyone else wouldn't have left before finding out who Mei was, but regardless, Ruo Yu didn't care. She had the look of someone with many doubts and many reasons in her eyes.
---
Ruo Yu made her way to Xue Yan's place. Xia, Xue Yan's assistant led her to a room. When Ruo Yu entered, Xue Yan wasn't alone. Just like the first time they met, the killer quartet was present. Xue Yan -- Lu Yi, Jiang Yi, and Fang Zihan. But she wasn't shaken. This time, she didn't need to perform any roles in any drama. Xue Yan speaks, "Did you run away? Or did you win?"
"I never run away, I just win. Always."
She looked exhausted, and she knew she was lying. But she was embarrassed by the loss, and she hated the fact that having been alone for so long, she had already stopped trying to prove herself to others.
"Okay, show me your victory. It's not just in your words, is it?"
Ruo Yu stepped forward.
Her fingers trembling slightly—
but steady enough to offer the papers.
Just as they left her hands—
her body betrayed her.
A violent cough. Sharp. Sudden. Then blood. It burst from her mouth in a streak of deep crimson, spraying across the floor, the papers, the silence. Her knees buckled before she even realized she was falling. Papers scattered like shattered wings around her.
And Lu Yi—
he moved faster than thought.
He caught her mid-fall,
arms wrapping around her like instinct,
as if some part of him had always known he would.
"Ruo Yu!"
His voice cracked—not with panic, but something more raw.
Something that sounded like fear wearing love's disguise.
She collapsed into him,
her weight light but full of something heavier than flesh.
Blood smeared across his sleeve.
Her breath was shallow against his neck.
And from the corner of the room—
Xue Yan put down the teacup, his expression steady - almost unconcerned, he looked at her blood that was splattered everywhere, looked at her. His gaze was not like the way he looked when she looked at him from afar, as if everything around him was strange and inexplicable, Ruo Yu didn't know when she looked furtively, whether it was a look of sorrow or mockery, she felt that perhaps at the heart of it was a tender emotion that she didn't understand.
How could she ever understand?
His eyes dropped to Ruo Yu's hands,
clutching Lu Yi's clothes like a child trying not to drown. The floor beneath them gleamed red. Ruo Yu's blood soaking into it, quietly.
Xue Yan's breath caught.
She sat down slowly—unconsciously—her knees hitting the cold tile.
Her hands—open, empty—rested in her lap. She didn't know when it happened.
The moment it stopped being just a plan.
And yet—
She didn't cry.
She didn't speak.
She only stared at the scene in front of her, and wondered if every choice she'd made was always leading here.
She had told herself she never loses.
She believed it when she said it.
But watching herself now,
blood dripping from her lips onto Lu Yi's chest—
it was clear.
She had been losing for a long time.
And maybe, just maybe—
this was the only truth she couldn't rewrite.
(the day before Ruo Yu escape, Xu Yan's residence)
"I don't mean to cast doubt on you, sir, but why her? is She truly worthy, especially in such a dangerous place?"
The red-haired girl that Ruo Yue had seen last time spoke, her tone more like that of a friend than a mere maid or guard. She was standing next to Xue Yan, who sat reading in front of the window.
"I can see a tenderness in you, but I understand you. She is so worthy that she could die acting, but it would be a loss for me and a gain for them if they saw such a great scene and I didn't. Then I would have to turn back time. And you know that such a thing is impossible."
"At least we agree on wanting her to live." "True, but who are we in the face of fate? We have no hand; with our eyes we have to see everything happen, helplessly." He said