By the time Xiyan returned to school the next morning, her hands still smelled faintly of gun oil. She'd washed them twice, but the scent clung like a secret.
She sank into her seat in the back row of Class 2-A, hoodie up, eyes half-lidded, giving every impression of someone who had pulled an all-nighter binging dramas instead of dismantling military-grade firearms. And yet, every movement she made was calculated. Fluid. Quiet.
Qiao Zeyan, annoyingly observant as ever, flicked a pen cap at her from his seat in front. "You look like someone who fought a war last night," he said without turning around.
She smiled lazily. "Maybe I did. The war of calculus."
Zeyan raised an eyebrow. "Calculus doesn't give you calluses."
Xiyan quickly shoved her hands under the desk.
She couldn't stand him. Not because he was rude or a show-off—but because he noticed everything. The twitch in her eye when the school intercom buzzed like a distant gunshot. The way she always sat facing the window, back never fully exposed. The fact that she could memorize a textbook page after glancing at it once.
He wasn't a threat. Yet. But he was the kind of person who asked the right questions until things unraveled.
The homeroom teacher, Mr. Chu, burst in like a hurricane of chalk dust and bad breath. "Pop quiz today, everyone!" he said with the kind of joy that only sadistic educators could summon before 9 a.m.
A chorus of groans echoed across the room. Xiyan didn't flinch. After surviving electroshock posture training, nothing Mr. Chu did could phase her.
Except
"Also, the quiz will be oral. We'll go in pairs. Stand up and quiz your seat partner!"
She froze. Her seat partner? Oh no.
She looked to her right, and there he was—Zeyan—smirking like the universe had just handed him a five-course meal.
"I ask, you answer," he said smugly. "Or is that too threatening, Miss Mysterious?"
Xiyan leaned in, voice flat. "You should be careful, Qiao Zeyan. People who ask too many questions sometimes disappear."
His grin faltered for just a second. Good, she thought.
But then, he grinned wider.
"I like mysteries."
That night, the laughter of high school life vanished like a discarded mask.
She crouched on the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse, sniper training in full swing. Tonight's exercise: moving targets, low visibility. Sergeant Zhang's voice barked in her earpiece like static thunder.
"Breathing is off again, Xu Xiyan. Reset. You're aiming with emotion."
She clenched her jaw. That name—Xu Xiyan. It still hurt. Still felt foreign. Her old self had died the day her family was wiped out. The new her had no room for grief, only precision.
She lined up her scope again, the memory of blood on ivory piano keys flashing through her mind like a phantom.
Focus.
She pulled the trigger.
A clean hit.
But in that moment, something in her peripheral caught her attention. Movement. Not part of the exercise. A shadow slinking across the scaffolding.
She adjusted her scope quickly—too late. It was gone.
A chill ran down her spine.
Someone else was watching.