Lumine peeked down from the attic.
Good Hunter was quiet at this hour—only the owner was still awake.
Mona's notebook and quill lay on the table, but the astrologer herself was nowhere to be seen.
So Lumine padded down the stairs.
She'd changed into a clean white dress—simple, comfortable, and the first nice thing she'd worn in a long time.
Since arriving in this world, she'd been living rough: dust, wind, wilderness, survival.
Tonight, she'd finally had the chance to feel like herself again.
"Kaito," she called softly.
She stepped beside him. "It's so late… what are you still cooking?"
Kaito kept his attention on the stove. "Soup. Something restorative."
He nodded to the other burner. "And my dinner."
A simple pot of wheat porridge simmered there.
Today had been nonstop. He hadn't properly eaten once.
Lumine breathed in the rich aroma from the soup and—without thinking—let out a small burp.
She froze.
Then covered her mouth, mortified.
"Too much meat earlier?" Kaito asked, not teasing—just matter-of-fact.
"…Mm."
"Want some porridge?" Kaito ladled out half a bowl and handed it to her.
Lumine took it carefully and sat at the table, feeling oddly… content.
Her gaze drifted, almost on its own, to Mona's notebook.
The writing was completely unreadable to her.
Then a faint sound came from the chimney ladder.
Mona climbed down from the roof, composed as ever.
She gave Lumine a polite nod, then said, "Fischl is… toward Inazuma."
"So your reading only gives a direction," Kaito murmured. "Then she's far."
Mona's skill was exceptional.
Her only problem was tact.
If the stars looked bad, she'd say it straight: terrible match, terrible luck, terrible idea.
Hard to stay popular that way.
"We'll send word through the Adventurers' Guild," Kaito said, thinking aloud. "See if anyone has eyes on her."
"If you need help with scouting, you can ask me," Mona offered.
Kaito's gaze flicked over her—brief, assessing.
Mona was strong in a way most people didn't understand: not brute force, but information.
In ruins, that mattered.
But she also hated getting dragged into trouble.
"I need Fischl and Oz back," Kaito said. "For this."
Mona's brow furrowed. "Then let me handle it."
"No," Kaito said, firm. "Your connections make it messy."
This wasn't about ability.
It was about consequences.
If Mona got noticed by the wrong people, she'd get pulled into a conflict far bigger than Mondstadt's day-to-day headaches.
"Signora…?" Lumine's eyes widened.
Kaito needed people to "watch" a woman?
Her brain immediately ran in the wrong direction—then crashed into confusion.
Kaito noticed and let out a short laugh. "Not that kind of 'lady.'"
He explained evenly, "She's a Fatui Harbinger. Codename: La Signora."
Mona was in the middle of scooping soup into a bowl.
Her hand jerked.
The bowl nearly slipped.
The Eleven Harbingers under the Tsaritsa—any one of them carried enough weight to make whole cities tense.
Even Jean, as Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius, couldn't casually throw political weight around at that level.
And one was here?
In Mondstadt?
"Th-then we should report it to the Knights immediately," Mona said at once—trying to shove the responsibility as far away from herself as possible.
Also, she was extremely grateful she hadn't spilled the soup.
Wasting food that expensive would haunt her for weeks.
"If the Knights know," Kaito said calmly, "it becomes harder for me to move."
Lumine's eyes widened again.
So Kaito and the Knights… weren't perfectly aligned.
She'd already seen the Fatui's presence in the city. She understood enough to know the Knights were walking on a knife's edge.
And Kaito was saying this openly in front of her.
That meant he trusted her.
Lumine decided, instantly, to keep it to herself.
Between the Knights and Kaito—
she trusted Kaito more.
She took small sips of wheat porridge.
For some reason, it tasted faintly sweet.
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