Violet sat in the middle of the apartment with her back against the sofa, one knee drawn up slightly beneath her. The room had been quiet for several minutes. Outside, a car passed along the street, slowed at the intersection, then continued on.
She let the sound fade.
Her breathing settled with it. She wasn't trying to force anything open. She had learned a long time ago that some things became harder to see the moment you reached for them. So she waited.
At first, there was only darkness behind her eyes. Then the darkness shifted.
The change was so gradual that she almost missed it. The floor beneath her seemed to recede, and something else took its place. Stone emerged beneath a thin layer of wavering light. A courtyard followed, enclosed by old walls and dark tiled roofs.
Violet knew the place at once.
'The Yè ancestral residence.'
She didn't move.
The courtyard she had seen before was still there, but the house was different.
A wooden door hung crooked from one hinge. One of the paper windows had been torn open, and the loose frame moved slightly whenever the wind passed through. A storage chest had been overturned near the corridor. Several scrolls lay scattered across the stone floor, some still rolled, others crushed beneath someone's footsteps.
The study had suffered worse. Its doors stood open. The shelves inside had been emptied.
Violet watched the scene carefully.
This wasn't the break-in itself. There was no movement, no struggle, no trace of the people who had done it.
She was seeing what they had left behind. The damage was already a week old. Yet nothing had been repaired.
No police had come. No officials had sealed the residence. No one had even bothered to replace the broken doors. That was unusual enough.
Then Violet noticed something else.
There was no sign that anyone had been living there since. The house had simply been left as it was.
She remained still.
The image rippled.
The courtyard disappeared, but it did not give way to darkness this time. The scene shifted somewhere else entirely.
A different city.
Violet could tell from the buildings alone. The architecture had changed, the streets were wider, and the old stonework of the Yè residence was nowhere to be seen.
She watched without moving as Huáng Nián Qīng walked through another courtyard, her steps measured against the worn stone beneath her feet.
The man waiting for her was already there.
Black robes. Hood drawn low.
He did not look like someone who belonged in the field. He looked like someone field agents answered to.
"Supervisor."
Huáng Nián Qīng stopped a few steps away.
The man gave a slight nod.
"The search at the Yè residence produced nothing."
"I know."
"Then you also know why you're here."
Huáng Nián Qīng looked at him.
"The next assignment?"
He took a sealed scroll from his sleeve and handed it to her.
"Read it."
She opened the seal. Her eyes moved across the first few lines. Nothing changed on her face, but her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the paper.
"This is confirmed?"
"It has already begun."
She looked up.
"How many people?"
"None."
Huáng Nián Qīng was quiet for a moment.
"You want me to go alone."
"Yes."
"Why?"
The supervisor looked past her toward the courtyard.
"Because this isn't a search anymore."
He paused.
"We're trying to find something that doesn't want to be found."
Violet's attention settled on the scroll. She couldn't read every character from this distance, but she didn't need to.
The way Huáng Nián Qīng had reacted was enough. ET had failed to find what it wanted in the Yè residence. They hadn't stopped. They had simply changed methods.
The image thinned.
The other city, the courtyard, Huáng Nián Qīng and the supervisor all faded from Violet's awareness as the stillness slowly released her.
Violet opened her eyes. She didn't move immediately. Her gaze stayed on the empty space in front of her.
The refrigerator hummed beside the kitchen. A page on the table had shifted slightly beneath the air from the vent. Somewhere outside, a car passed and continued down the street.
ET had searched the Yè residence once. They had found nothing.
ET wasn't looking for the Yè family's records anymore. At least, that was no longer the only thing they were looking for.
And whatever the new assignment was, Huáng Nián Qīng had been told to handle it alone.
Violet's fingers tightened slightly against her knee.
"Someone..." she murmured.
The word stayed in the room. Then she looked toward the window.
Somewhere across the city, Qiū Huà Bǐ was still sitting in a lecture hall, probably complaining about something while Yè Yī tried to keep him from doing anything stupid.
Violet almost smiled. Her eyes returned to the street below.
"Looks like they've started looking in the wrong direction."
She reached for her phone. It had only been fifteen minutes.
Violet stared at the screen, lost in thought for a while. Then she locked the phone, her gaze still lowered.
"So that's how you're moving now."
She reached for her jacket. She had a feeling the next time she saw Huáng Nián Qīng, it wouldn't be through a vision.
Outside, a flight of birds, not more than seven passed by the window and blocked the sunlight for a few seconds.
When the light returned, Violet was already standing.