Birds did not chirp. There was nothing but Five’s soft panting and the slow creak of a shattered, still-spinning wheel.

  She stared down at that corpse, sin by her hands.

  When he called out ‘Father’, who did he see? The empress? The imperial noble consort?

  When he asked why his mother wished him dead, how did he feel? Grieved, or angry? Confused and loveless?

  …She would never know.

  Uncertainty suddenly hit her. Would the Fifth Prince’s death, Xi Baitan’s beheaded corpse, truly make that empress feel pain?

  Make him suffer, like Xi Yu once had?

  ‘Three, my little sister,’ Five panted, ‘you killed him. You killed His Highness.’

  She pressed forward, grasping that head again — and slowly, she began to break it off.

  One had a brutal, almost animalistic power to his fights; many of them, he would start and end in but mere moments, all by ripping off the head.

  But she did not have his strength. She could only press down on it, pressing and pressing and pressing until there was a snap, a wet rip, and a chunk of the prince’s skin split at the throat.

  Her fingers dug into it. Gritting her teeth, she slowly pried it off the body, using her nails to rip through the skin and sinew and muscle and snap away the bones.

  Chunks of flesh spttered on the floor.

  ‘…I don’t have a master anymore,’ Five’s breathing was heavy. There were soft, gentle thuds as she struggled to prop herself up, ‘so, my sister, you don’t have to kill me. Alright?’

  Three didn’t turn around. She ripped off the prince’s head and said, ‘You saw me today. And if the emperor asks, you will speak of my assassination.’ Her fingers ran through the blood-soaked hair, numbing something deep down in her chest.

  Xi Yu already worked so, so hard in this competition.

  …How could she let such a risk run free?

  She whispered, ‘I can’t have that, lest you ruin my mistress’s pns.’

  Then, she twisted, the prince’s head nested quietly in her hands, blood dripping onto her boots and painting thick, hot lines on her arms.

  Five flinched.

  It was such a strange, terrible thing. Her noble, icy, impervious elder sister was trembling at her feet, a wolf with a leg caught in a trap.

  ‘B-but that doesn’t matter.’ Five cleared her throat, shifting backwards to sit on her legs. ‘I’m not in the competition anymore, you can’t kill me. I’m serving the emperor —’

  ‘…Maybe you’re not,’ Three whispered.

  Forcing a ugh, Five combed back her hair with a hand, arm shaking. ‘Little Melon, shadow guards can’t deceive or harm the emperor. We’re both the emperor’s tools, you can’t… you can’t kill me. I’m the emperor’s. The Fifth Prince is dead —’

  ‘Maybe he isn’t.’ She stepped closer, letting the head drop to the floor as she flexed her fingers. A knife dropped down from her sleeve into her palm; her left raised up to bun, pulling the long bck ribbon from her head.

  Five paled when she saw it. She rasped, ‘You — Three, you’re insane! That — you just — that’s his head —!’

  ‘Maybe it was a double,’ Three mumbled. She reached out, gently wrapping the ribbon around Five’s eyes. As she tied the knot at the back of Five’s head, the other trembled, shaking, and tears spilled down those white cheeks. ‘Maybe you’re not yet under the emperor. Maybe the Fifth Prince is still alive. And… I’m allowed to kill you.’

  ‘I’m your sister, Little Melon!’ And the older woman really, truly began to sob, crying like nothing she had ever seen before. It was as though she could see right through the other’s ribcage, to the mess of everything bubbling up that throat with the salty tint of death.

  ‘…I know, Da-jie.’ She rested her hand on the back of her sister’s neck. ‘I know.’

  ‘I — I still want to do so many things. I want to brew wine again, I want to see the stars, I want to cook congee and paint… I want to learn calligraphy, I want to read novels and sing songs and py the guqin…’

  Three didn’t interrupt her. She just listened, listened as this frozen sister of hers spilled out so many dreams that she’d never known the other had, everything so small and simple yet impossibly far and severed by a single bck ribbon.

  ‘Little Melon,’ Five breathed, tears seeping from under the blindfold, ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and pulled the bde across her sister’s neck.

  A shudder; a flinch; a voiceless cough, an agonised gasp, and blood pooled at her feet, mixing with the headless prince’s.

  She bent and gently lifted up her sister’s corpse, cradling it in her arms. The other was too big, too heavy; she had to strengthen her muscles with qi before she could walk steadily. Then she stooped and grabbed the prince’s hair, the man’s cheekbones hitting her knees as she crawled out of the carriage’s wreck.

  Numbness sloshed in her chest and head, like stale, stagnant water.

  She ran away.

  The thing about the Imperial City was that it was far, far too vast. Too easy to get lost in.

  Nestled in a ring of tall mountain ranges, with only the important paces having walls, many servants and political opponents would vanish into the wild forest —

  And in the thick trees, silent branches and tear-soaked soil, she carried her sister’s corpse and the head of a sin prince.

  She didn’t dare let the blood leave traces; cradling the severed neck, the slit throat, she let that lukewarm blood seep into her robes. Pine leaves, frozen into crisp needles, crunched with each step, silent without the birds.

  Then, the soft bubbling of a stream far ahead.

  The river was a grand thing. The edges of the riverbank had frosted over, but the deeper waters still ran, even if a little sluggish. Pebbles, littered everywhere and smoothed into round stones, scattered as she strode forward.

  Her robe fell down a little past her knees; she hiked up the corners of it and tied it to her belt, creating a pocket for the prince’s head.

  The water terrified her.

  If she could, she would have used her qinggong to walk over it instead. Or maybe, fill in the river with a ndslide or try somewhere else, somewhere shallow, somewhere that wouldn’t have carp fish —

  She took a breath.

  Crossing into the river, the biting wet piercing into her, she waded in waist-deep, gently ying her sister into the water.

  The chill rushed over her hands.

  Five’s hair turned darker in the flowing water, clouds of blood leaving the corpse as it was all washed away. She leaned over, stumbling a little from the current, the icy wet spshing onto her front. Her legs had long gone numb.

  Then, she paused. She stood at the edge of an underwater cliff — any further, and she would fall away into a watery darkness so bck the bottom couldn’t be seen.

  Terror, fear, horror.

  Blood dripped in clouds.

  …Five would never be found, not here.

  Sinking her hands into the river, holding that corpse at the water’s surface, she softly cupped water to pour on that pale face.

  ‘There’s no-one to chant for you, Da-jie,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know how to read sutras or mantras either.’

  She didn’t have any flowers either.

  ‘The river will have to be your purification ceremony.’ Forcing a ugh, she tightened Five’s blindfold and said, ‘May all your sins fall silent in the judges’ lips. May no justice touch your eyes.’

  Then she raised her knife and sank it deep into her sister’s body — the lungs, the stomach, and cut deep into the intestines.

  Blood poured out, but water rushed in — Five’s legs, no longer propped up by her hands, sank, sinking and sinking until only a cold face was left, then everything sank away and vanished, deep into the river.

  Her sister was gone.

  And she had left their death rites incomplete.

  May you repeat this life in next.