In a milk-tea shop in the Old District, the upright air conditioner in the corner droned like an aged tractor.
Theresa cradled a cup of taro-paste bubble milk tea with a double serving of pearls in both hands, the plastic straw already chewed full of dents and pits.
She stared fixedly at Bronie sitting across from her, those big round eyes blazing with a roaring fire woven from gossip and worry.
"You can tell me now, right?" Theresa lowered her voice. "What on earth is the deal with that kid? And what's the deal with that man called Su Yu?"
Bronie leaned back against the plastic chair, which let out a dangerous creak. She idly stirred the ice cubes in her cup.
"Don't be in such a rush, megastar." Bronie slurped down a big mouthful of ice water. "This thing has to be sorted out from the beginning — you remember how, a while back, in order to infiltrate the Tiger Claw Gang, I went undercover among that pack of street-racers, the Arc City Wild Ghosts?"
Theresa nodded.
"That night, I'd actually already made contact with the Tiger Claw Gang's go-between, and it looked like I was about to get my hands on their money-laundering ledger."
Bronie rolled her eyes, her tone carrying a teeth-gritting helplessness.
"And then at noon that day, Kiana, wearing the badge of a Vigilante, just up and kicked the fire door clean open."
Bronie mimed a single chopping-down motion of her hand.
"Quick as one-two-three, not even five minutes, she'd beaten that whole bunch of thugs flat onto the ground."
Theresa sucked in a cold breath, the image of Kiana bending a steel pipe one-handed automatically surfacing in her mind.
"I was completely dumbfounded at the time. To keep her from lumping me in and beating me too, I had no choice but to reveal my undercover identity."
"So didn't all your work go to waste?"
"Yeah. Wasted."
"And then?"
"And then it got weird."
"After Kiana realized she'd botched my operation, she didn't react the ordinary way — like 'oops, sorry, I messed up.' Her attitude, how do I put it, it was as if she'd known me for ages."
"What do you mean?"
"It's that kind of..." Bronie thought over her phrasing. "The first time you meet a stranger, a normal person keeps at least a little distance, right? But Kiana didn't. The look in her eyes, the way she talked, including that heartfelt guilt when she apologized — none of it was the kind of reaction you'd have toward someone you'd known for just a few dozen minutes."
Bronie paused.
"Then she said she wanted to make it up to me, and invited me over to sit at her place."
Theresa slammed the table hard, rattling the two cups of milk tea.
"Wait!" Her eyes went wide, her pitch climbing. "You're saying that kid, after knowing you for less than a few dozen minutes, just brought you — a hacker of dubious background — home with her?!"
"Yep."
"How can she have so little wariness!" Theresa clutched her chest in heartfelt anguish. "It's only because she ran into you. What if she'd run into a bad person? She'd be sold off and still be counting the money for them!"
Bronie gave a cold snort and shot Theresa a glance reserved for an idiot.
"What qualifies you to talk about her?" Bronie pointed at Theresa. "At noon today, in front of the Xinxin Chess & Card Parlor, didn't she also reel you — a sweet little idol — back home with just two or three sentences? And didn't you go along obediently?"
Theresa was left speechless, her fair cheeks flushing red in a flash.
"I... I did that to go deep behind enemy lines! To investigate the truth!"
She argued back with brazen sophistry, her voice growing smaller and smaller.
"Still, this kid is way too carefree, leaving herself wide open just because she's good in a fight. No, this won't do. As her Auntie, from now on I absolutely have to give her a proper education in how treacherous society is."
Bronie couldn't be bothered to humor Theresa's self-insertion, and went on with the story.
"Later, we teamed up and used sheepdog tactics to wipe out several of the Tiger Claw Gang's strongholds. Right up until that day you sent me a message lying that the old crone Cioara was gravely ill, and tricked me back to the bar."
Theresa shrank her neck back, looking a little guilty.
"I got into a huge argument with Cioara at the bar. And as it turned out, didn't two customers come into the place that day?" Bronie rapped on the table. "You were there too at the time — one was Eden, and the other one was Su Yu."
Theresa's eyes lit up, her gossip radar spinning like mad.
"You saw what happened after that too. That man smoothed Cioara over with a few sentences, recruited me into his studio, and even nailed down Eden's investment." Bronie curled her lip. "He's a guy with a bit of ability, I'll give him that."
"Then since Su Yu is one of your own people, your boss!" Theresa knit her brows in confusion. "Why wouldn't you let me finish talking back at the apartment just now? I was just about to give him a good grilling about exactly what designs he has on little Kiana!"
Bronie heaved a heavy sigh, as if looking at a hopeless fool.
"Because this is something Su Yu asked of me. He told me to keep it secret."
"Keep what secret?"
"Listen carefully, this thing is a little convoluted."
Theresa pushed her milk tea cup forward and flopped her whole body onto the tabletop.
"Kiana is hiding it from Su Yu, secretly meeting up with me, the hacker, to do Vigilante missions."
"That much I pretty much guessed."
"But do you know what she does with the money she earns from these missions?"
Theresa shook her head.
"Buying presents."
"Huh?"
"Buying presents for Su Yu." Bronie's voice carried a 'can you believe it' exasperation. "She wants to save up enough money to buy Su Yu a graphics card, so she's hiding it from Su Yu and secretly teaming up with me to do missions and earn cash."
Theresa's mouth fell open into an O-shape.
"And as for Su Yu." Bronie held up a second finger. "He actually already knew ages ago that Kiana was secretly doing missions, and he told me to hide the fact that he knows."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't want to spoil Kiana's fun."
Bronie spread her hands.
"Kiana thinks she's hiding it really well, putting on a perfectly nonchalant act every time she comes back from a mission. And Su Yu, well, he pretends he doesn't know a thing, playing along with her act. He says Kiana wants to give him a surprise, so he's just waiting for her to serve the surprise up to him."
The milk tea straw in Theresa's hand dropped onto the tabletop.
"This... this is some earth-shattering pair of total-idiot lovebirds, isn't it?!"
"Right?"
Bronie spread both hands, wearing a let-the-broken-pot-smash expression.
"I think these two are out-and-out idiots as well. But what can I do? One's my friend, the other's my BOSS. All I can do is play deaf and dumb stuck in the middle."
"So back at the apartment just now, I was desperately holding you back, not letting you bring up the fact that Su Yu knows us."
It took Theresa a full minute to swallow down this mouthful of cloyingly sweet dog food.
"Bronie."
"Hm?"
"You really live an exhausting life."
"Thanks for understanding."
Theresa rubbed her slightly numb cheeks and forcibly dragged her train of thought back on track.
"Alright, let's set the romance issue aside for now." Theresa's gaze turned sharp again. "So what exactly is Kiana's background? That monstrous strength of hers, plus that kind of instinctive combat sense — those are absolutely not things an ordinary person could possess."
Bronie put away her joking expression and fished a black USB drive out of her pocket, spinning it between her fingertips.
"I looked into it. According to the official records, Kiana is the direct-line successor of a reclusive sect called the Tai Xu Sword Sect."
"She even has a Shenzhou name, called [Ye Shunguang]."
"And Su Yu is an outer-sect disciple of that sect — the official line is that Su Yu, acting on his Master's orders, brought his green-as-grass Little Junior Sister down the mountain to train and gain experience."
Theresa knit her brows. "The Tai Xu Sword Sect? I thought I was listening to some kind of xianxia story."
"That's how the records are written. And they're encrypted records internal to the police station." Bronie shrugged. "As for Su Yu's information, I deployed the highest-level hacking methods to dig into it, but I ran smack into an iron wall."
"As for Su Yu's information, I did investigate." Bronie's expression sobered a bit. "But unfortunately, there's a lot that just can't be found."
"His web of connections is too deep. Dr. Mei, Mobius, that whole crowd from the Golden Courtyard are all his backing. The information walls around these people aren't something hacking methods can break through."
She paused.
"But from actually interacting with them, I don't think there's anything wrong with either Kiana or Su Yu."
"This Kiana, well, she's a bit of a dummy, but her heart's good. Same with Su Yu — sure, his mouth is a little nasty, but he's reliable when it comes to getting things done. Apart from being a bit of a pair of idiot lovebirds, there's nothing wrong with them."
Bronie had assumed this speech would dispel Theresa's doubts.
But she'd underestimated the imaginative powers of a veteran prime-time-melodrama viewer.
Far from relaxing, Theresa's eyes only grew wider, her pupils flickering with a fanatical light known as the "soul of a detective."
"Tai Xu Sword Sect... reclusive... sect... top-secret records..."
Theresa muttered to herself, both hands unconsciously drawing circles on the tabletop. Suddenly, she slapped her thigh hard, producing a crisp smack.
"I've got it!"
Bronie was startled.
"What have you 'got' this time?"
Theresa leaned in close to Bronie, lowered her voice, her tone brimming with the excitement and fury of one who has seen through the secrets of heaven.
"That old bastard Siegfried — back then he must have, in order to cover his tracks, secretly fostered the newborn Kiana with the Tai Xu Sword Sect!"
Theresa's speech grew faster and faster, the logic looping madly to closure in her mind.
"Think about it! The Kaslana family bloodline is too eye-catching! To protect an illegitimate daughter, the best method is to fabricate a completely unrelated background for her! Ye Shunguang? That's clearly a fake name made up to cover his tracks!"
The more Theresa talked, the more worked up she got, her eyes beginning to rim red again.
"That old bastard! Dumping his own flesh-and-blood daughter in the Deep Mountains and Old Forests, not a word of concern for over a decade!"
"No wonder that kid is so lacking in common sense — she even needs Su Yu, that outer-sect disciple, to take her along just to buy clothes! In other words, Kiana grew up this big and may never even have seen her birth father's face!"
"Over a decade, Bronie! A father, throwing his own flesh-and-blood daughter into the Deep Mountains and Old Forests for over a decade, using a fake name, a fake identity, making her call someone else Master. During the holidays, all the other little kids have their mommies and daddies coming to pick them up, and she's all alone..."
Theresa shot to her feet and slapped her palm on the table, rattling things hard enough that the customers at the next table all turned to stare.
"This is honestly a hundred, a thousand times worse than what I imagined just now! Siegfried! You wife-abandoning, child-forsaking scumbag! Repent!"
Bronie looked at the white-haired shorty in front of her, who had now completely sunk into self-moved sentiment and raging fury, and pressed a hand weakly to her forehead, her face streaked with black lines.
"Sister Theresa, you really have got it wrong. If your imagination didn't go into scriptwriting it'd be a genuine waste of talent." Bronie sighed and made one last-ditch struggle. "Even if she also has white hair, that doesn't prove she's Siegfried's daughter."
Theresa whipped her head around and stared dead at Bronie.
"How can you prove she's not?!"
Theresa braced both hands on the tabletop, looming down to bear down on Bronie.
"White hair! Blue eyes! Even if the right eye is gold, who's to say it isn't colored contacts or a genetic mutation?"
"And the most crucial thing is her behavior and motives!"
Theresa's gaze grew incomparably sharp, as if to see straight through Bronie's soul.
"Bronie, use that brain of yours — the one that calls itself the number-one hacker of Arc City — and think hard! Why did she act so warm the very first time she met you? Why did she bring you home without the slightest wariness?"
Bronie froze.
"Why, when she met me for the first time in the alley today, did she not only fail to expose my idol identity, but instead go along with whatever I said, and even tacitly accept it when I called myself her Auntie?"
Theresa pressed in step by step.
"She doesn't act at all like she doesn't know us! The way she looks at us — that's absolutely not how you look at strangers!"
Theresa drew a deep breath and threw out her final trump card.
"Don't tell me — don't you find it strange at all?"
Bronie opened her mouth, only to find she couldn't get out so much as half a word.
The cold air of the air conditioner blew across the back of her neck, raising a fine layer of goosebumps.
This seemingly absurd reasoning of Theresa's had, in an unexpected way, pointed straight at the blind spot Bronie had been deliberately ignoring all this time.
Yeah.
Why?
She thought back to that afternoon when she'd first met Kiana.
In the abandoned factory of the Arc City Wild Ghosts, the smoke and dust not yet fully settled, a dozen-odd thugs sprawled crooked and toppled all over the ground.
The look in Kiana's eyes when she'd revealed her identity.
Not surprise.
Not wariness.
It was something very complicated.
Like she'd seen someone she hadn't seen in a very long time.
Like she had something to say but didn't know how to begin.
Like she was holding something back, struggling to make her own expression look normal.
At the time, Bronie had thought this white-haired woman was a little odd.
But later, after they'd spent a long time together, that oddness got worn smooth by everyday life, and she hadn't thought about it again in any detail.
Now, with Theresa bringing it up like this.
The back of Bronie's neck went a little cold.
It really did seem... kind of strange, didn't it?
Theresa leaned back against her chair, arms folded across her chest, the expression on her face that smug "see, I was right" look.
"So my deduction is, Kiana knows us. She's not playing at not knowing us — she really does know us, she just can't say so."
Bronie's gaze fell on the ice cubes in her cup. The ice was melting, droplets trickling down the side of the glass.
She wanted to refute it.
But she found that, for the moment, she couldn't come up with a suitable reason to refute it.
The air conditioner's vents in the milk-tea shop blew out cold air with a whoosh, and the light tubes overhead gave off a faint electrical hum.
The high schoolers at the next table were discussing summer cram-school stuff, and someone at the counter ordered a cup of mango pomelo sago.
Bronie suddenly felt that this iced milk tea was a little scalding to drink.
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