The wound on her neck had mostly stopped hurting. Her resilience and recovery rate never ceased to surprise her.
But Jin Xueli's irritation kept building, like weeds choking every corner of her mind — impossible to pull out, no matter how hard she tried.
Turns out history was more stubborn than she'd given it credit for. Change one small detail, and somehow the whole trajectory stayed the same. People always said that missing a single turn could send your life in a completely different direction. What a load of garbage.
A stalker, of all people, putting on this whole destined-lover, fated-soulmate act. Just thinking about it made her sick.
Jin Xueli glanced at the corpse.
This was the first time she'd ever killed one of those supposedly unkillable residents — and she'd only managed it by talking it to death, literally. She couldn't quite shake the unease. Every so often she had to look over, half-convinced it would come lurching back up off the floor the moment she stopped watching.
But she was worrying over nothing. Death had soaked into that body like cold water, freezing it solid, leaving nothing behind.
She studied it for a moment longer, then let out a quiet breath and opened the fire slot again.
One more try. This time, Jin Xueli planned to cut off any chance of their meeting right at the root.
She melted the candle from the same window of time and watched as transparent Candle Tears dripped down through the air, pooling into a still, glassy lake.
Inside that lake of wax, a tiny Jin Xueli and a tiny Amber stepped out of a miniature taxi together, laughing and talking as they walked into the bar. Jin Xueli watched them disappear through the front entrance, then swept her gaze back out to the street.
She remembered that night clearly. When the stalker Anthony had approached her, he'd said: "You must have arrived before me. If I'd walked in while a girl like you was coming through the door, there's no way I wouldn't have noticed."
Not that you could take a pickup line at face value, but thinking back on it — Anthony really had shown up slightly after her.
Jin Xueli swallowed down her frustration and kept her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the bar's front entrance.
The place had been packed that night. Within twenty or thirty minutes, four or five groups of strangers had climbed out of a string of cars. She'd never had to track this many tiny living people at once, all of them clustered in twos and threes, moving through the dark and the lamplight — nearly impossible to sort out. Her eyes were beginning to blur. Then, finally, she spotted Anthony rounding the corner.
From what she'd read, "suicide" through the Candle Tears seemed possible. But nothing mentioned whether it could kill someone else.
Jin Xueli decided to find out.
What could be more conclusive than simply turning him into a corpse?
She'd never been eager to kill. In fact, since becoming a Hunter, she'd seen plenty of dead bodies — but not a single one had died by her hand. Not until tonight.
But something had cracked open inside her this evening. Something that hadn't been there before was clawing its way out.
Then again, she'd already killed herself. Trying to kill someone from the past — a stalker, no less — hardly seemed worth agonizing over.
And if it didn't work, she'd find another way. Either way, she'd at least learn more about what the Candle Tears could actually do.
Jin Xueli held her finger suspended directly above Anthony's head — like some massive celestial body hanging over the Earth, moments away from crashing down and wiping out the dinosaurs.
He had no idea. Hands in his pockets, posture easy, tall and loose-limbed. He looked, she had to admit, like a perfectly decent man.
…She'd have to wash her hands after crushing him.
Jin Xueli curled her knuckle and brought it down hard on that carefully styled head.
She'd expected something like squashing a large bug. Instead, it felt more like pressing down on a slippery ball — the stalker stumbled, shoved half a step sideways by the force of her blow, then steadied himself almost immediately. Not only was he still alive, he didn't even seem to be in pain.
Anthony looked down, muttered a curse, and kicked a pebble away.
…So you couldn't just reach in and kill someone else? Only yourself?
That was almost funny.
As annoyed as she was, two more attempts only seemed to confirm the theory. She tried nudging tiny Anthony into the road — an oncoming car swerved around him in time, leaving him with nothing worse than an earful of abuse from the driver. She managed to pry loose a neon sign, timed it carefully, and watched it arc through the air and slam into the pavement right at Anthony's feet, grazing his nose on the way down.
The stalker was clearly not an ordinary person. After brushing past danger three times in a row, he strolled right into the bar without so much as a second thought.
Some "most powerful Illusion." The broadcast had seriously oversold it. Can't kill anyone, can't stop a chance meeting — what was the point of this pathetic little candle containing the past at all?
In the end, wasn't everything exactly the same? Nothing changed?
Swallowing her frustration, Jin Xueli moved through the Candle Tears, searching for herself.
She'd gotten fairly good at navigating them by now. It didn't take long to find the moment they met: tiny Anthony pushed open the dark red back door, spotted tiny Jin Xueli, and walked straight over to start talking to her.
"I didn't have the guts to ask for your number. I'm not the kind of guy who goes around chatting up girls." Anthony said it with something like wonder in his voice. "But you know what? On my way here, a neon sign came out of nowhere and crashed down right in front of me — this close. One more half-step and I'd have been dead. When something like that happens, you start thinking about how unpredictable life is, and you can't let moments slip by…"
She'd upgraded his pickup line for him?
Jin Xueli had played The Sims as a kid. Watching tiny Anthony and tiny herself swap numbers through the Candle Tears, she felt a disorienting, almost dreamlike sense of familiarity — and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
But this wasn't a video game.
Jin Xueli watched that tiny, oblivious version of herself do exactly what she'd been hoping to prevent — exchange numbers with Anthony. She let out a quiet, irritated sigh and shut the fire slot. She needed to let the Candle Tears cool and set, to lock this new version of events in place, before melting them again and trying to rewrite it one more time.
Tiny Jin Xueli — she'd lost count of how many times now — pushed open the back door and stepped out of the bar, leaving behind the thick tangle of music and alcohol fumes, breathing in the outside air.
A convoy of matte-black Mercedes SUVs rose out of the night without a sound. Every vehicle was armored — blast-proof, bulletproof — maintaining perfectly even spacing as they rolled past the bar's back door one by one.
As the last one was about to pass, Jin Xueli reached out and flicked it toward the back door. The SUV — no bigger than a matchbox — was caught by the force, its front end wrenching sideways. With a sharp shriek of tires, it slammed nose-first into the back entrance of the bar.
The door, which hadn't been fully shut to begin with, took the full impact — panels caved in, hinges twisted out of shape. It hung there at a crooked angle. Anyone could see it wasn't closing again.
Tiny Jin Xueli stood two steps away from the SUV, face gone pale.
Oh. Right. She'd forgotten to protect her past self. Oh well — she hadn't been hit, hadn't died. Good enough.
It wasn't as if Jin Xueli had asked to get tangled up with some stalker. If past-her had to suffer a good scare because of it, honestly, she had it coming.
With a sort of detached, vaguely contemptuous indifference, Jin Xueli watched tiny-her stumble back a few steps and shout at no one in particular: "Someone call for help — there's been a crash!"
If the accident shut the bar down temporarily, it might be enough to keep the two of them from ever crossing paths —
She hadn't even finished the thought when the driver's door of the SUV was shoved open. A man in a black suit half-fell out of the vehicle, scrambled around to the far side of the open door, and dropped into a low crouch. His left temple had split open on impact; blood, dark curls, and an earpiece were all matted together in a tangled mess.
But the most noticeable thing was the 9mm pistol held steady between both hands.
Nearby, the moment tiny Jin Xueli's eyes landed on that gun, her lips pressed into a thin line.
The car had been hit. It couldn't move. He'd bailed immediately — because staying inside would have made him a sitting duck. He was sheltering behind the door — using it as cover against any potential sniper. Despite taking what looked like a significant blow, the 9mm was still held in a firing position, elbow slightly bent, not so much as trembling…
Both the Jin Xueli inside the Candle Tears and the one outside it arrived at the same conclusion: this was a highly trained private bodyguard.
Which meant the other vehicles —
Jin Xueli turned immediately. As expected — not a moment wasted. The rest of the convoy had already scattered in every direction: the other four SUVs had each broken formation simultaneously, changing lanes, splitting off, accelerating away into the depths of the dark streets and scattered lights.
That's an impressive level of professionalism, she thought.
The instant the rear vehicle was hit and disabled, the rest of the convoy had abandoned it, dissolved the formation, and peeled off in separate directions — creating maximum distance between themselves in a matter of seconds. This was clearly a crisis protocol they'd prepared for in advance.
Protocols like that generally served one purpose: to protect whoever was riding in one specific car within the convoy, and to make sure any potential enemy couldn't determine which car that was.
"…No, I can't confirm what was done to the vehicle at this stage. Correct — no hostile contact so far." The man in the black suit crouched behind the door, speaking in a low voice into his earpiece. "The situation with the car is strange, but I'm not seeing any signs that an Illusion was used in the area… Understood. There's a bar here. Civilians in the vicinity — they've likely already called the police."
Illusion? Did he just say Illusion?
Jin Xueli's interest sharpened instantly. She leaned in closer — fortunately, the man in the black suit was just a tiny figure inside the Candle Tears, completely unaware that a massive human ear was hovering in the air above his car, catching every word.
"…Understood." A few seconds passed. He spoke again, voice low and measured. "In any dealings or communications going forward, I will not mention Mr. Westley's name."
Mr. Westley?
Jin Xueli went still.
An important figure. The surname Westley. Could it be — was the person this convoy was protecting none other than Westley himself, Blackmoor City's most powerful and wealthy man?
Westley certainly held an elevated position in society, but he wasn't a head of state. The fact that his security was this tight could only mean one thing: he knew he was in danger. Real danger.
Was it possible that his death, not far off from now, wasn't from natural causes — but from someone's hand?
Had he sensed someone was planning to assassinate him months in advance, and put these meticulous security measures in place because of it?
Curious as she was, Jin Xueli hadn't lost sight of why she was here. She glanced back at the rear entrance.
The crash had drawn everyone outside — some gawking, some on their phones, a few already posting photos to Twitter. The man in the black suit had read the situation quickly; to avoid causing a scene, he'd already tucked the 9mm back into the holster beneath his jacket. His hand still rested over it, ready to draw at any moment.
In the middle of the gathered crowd, tiny Jin Xueli and Amber were speaking quietly to each other. A short distance away, tiny Anthony was glancing over at them repeatedly.
A few seconds later, he walked up, flashed a smile, and said hello to tiny Jin Xueli.
Unbelievable. Was there seriously no way to keep herself from running into Anthony?
Jin Xueli swore silently, but after a moment's consideration, decided to set the stalker problem aside for now.
The fact that Westley had appeared in her Candle Tears history meant his fate had crossed hers in some way. And that was the interesting part: what possible connection could she have with Blackmoor City's wealthiest man, who was about to die?
She left tiny Jin Xueli and the stalker to their own devices, and worked backward through the Candle Tears from the time the Westley convoy had appeared, tracing her way to an approximate point before lighting a new fire slot.
If she could track Westley's history, there was no telling how much she might uncover…
The more you watched something, the slower it moved.
Jin Xueli touched the melting wax, adjusted the flame, touched it again — restless, impatient, her thoughts scattered. Her gaze drifted aimlessly around the room.
It wasn't until some time later that she suddenly registered two things.
First: the section of Candle Tears in which she and Anthony had met because of the car crash had solidified again, locking into place as the latest version of history.
Second: the corpse on the gallery floor had vanished.